rld is asking us to ratify long delayed
peace in the hope that such confidence will be restored as will enable
her to reconstruct her economic life. We are today contemplating
maintenance of an enlarged army and navy in preparedness for further
upheavals in the world, and failing to provide even some insurance
against war by a league to promote peace.

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 m