Out of the strain of war, weaknesses have become ever more evident in our administrative organization, in our legislative machinery. Our federal government is still overcentralized, for we have upon the hands of our government enormous industrial activities which have yet to be demobilized. We are swamped with debt and burdened with taxation. Credit is woefully inflated; speculation and waste are rampant. Our own productivity is decreasing. Our industrial population is crying for remedies for the increasing cost of living and aspiring to better conditions of life and labor. But beyond all this, great hopes and aspirations are abroad; great moral and social forces have been stimulated by the war and will not be quieted by the ratification of peace. These are but some of the problems with which we must deal. I have no fear that our people will not find solutions. But progress is sometimes like the old-fashioned rail fence--some rails are perhaps misshapen and all look to point the wrong way; but in the end, the fence progresses. Your committees, jointly with those of other engineering societies, have had before them and expressed their views on many matters concerning the handling of the railways, shipping, the reorganization of the government engineering work, the national budget, and other practical items. The war nationalization of railways and shipping are our two greatest problems in governmental control awaiting demobilization. There are many fundamental objections to continuation of these experiments in socialism necessitated by the war. They lie chiefly in their destruction of initiative in our people and the dangers of political domination that can grow from governmental operation. Beyond this, the engineers will hold that the successful conduct of great industries is to a transcendant degree dependent upon the personal abilities and character of their employees and staff. No scheme of political appointment has ever yet been devised that will replace competition in its selection of ability and character. Both shipping and railways have today the advantage of many skilled persons sifted out in the hard school of competition, and even then the government operation of these enterprises is not proving satisfactory. Therefore, the ultimate inefficiency that would arise from the deadening paralysis of bureaucracy has not yet had full opportunity for development. Already we can show that no government under pressure of ever-present political or sectional interests can properly conduct the risks of extension and improvement, or can be free from local pressure to conduct unwarranted services in industrial enterprise. On the other hand, our people have long since recognized that we cannot turn monopoly over to unrestrained operation for profit nor that the human rights of employees can ever be dominated by dividends.