1897

This last letter of the year for the MAGAZINE gives the class secretary a chance to sum up a little on the statistical side of our class and note also the movements of our classmates as they go about. Ten classmates Balch,Bolser, Gibson, Hilton, Johnson, Meserve,Mosher, Rowe, Tent and Watson have retired. Ouite a good many of them have interesting hobbies and. I think, if each of you during the summer would write me the things that you are most interested in, it would be useful for keeping in touch with our activities. A listing of the books you have enjoyed recently would be very much appreciated by those of us who are still carrying on our jobs.

Mosher is the most retired man in our class having been for years enjoying life in the mountains in the summer and in his city home in the winter. Gibson has become a southerner and holds onto the South until New England calls during the months of July and August when he travels North. Bolser has for a number of years done exactly the opposite, spending all but a few winter months in the North, going South for the coldest months. Ward has been a roamer, gone across the country from East to West eight times. Meserve was born in the West and went East to grow up and then settled in the center of the country at Cincinnati, and now has gone West to get the sunshine in his retirement. Johnson goes up and down the Atlantic Seaboard and spends part of his winter in Puerto Rico. Noyes, Watson and Appleton have had family cares to keep them from travelling very much.

I like to turn over in my mind the progress of work efforts in our advancing years and take a look at the change of things. For instance medicine, which has had a great change noted by the philosopher, "Mr. Dooley," in a few keen well-aimed shots with his versatile pen. I quote:

Him that traated you and me When we was young They wouldn't lave him trate a spavined horse now."

Speaking of the old, kindly doctor again I quote Mr. Dooley:

'I can remember him, as he drove down through the strates of the Village, With his old gray mare, and Him and the prast was the only two That had gold watches."

Our doctors can well claim they have lengthened the life of our generation. They sure have introduced a lot of kinds of vitamins since they shaved off their whiskers.

Our engineers have "shot" the works since 1897 with new things in power and high pressures. There has been a change from 150 lbs. to 1300 lbs. in stationary plants for generating electricity, and they have tied in the steam plant with the water power in New England to increase the value of river power and carry over the dry summer months of August and September, and also the frozen months of January and February, so that more prime power can be sold. Other engineering advances are copper tubes, and now aluminum in thousands of new uses. For example, I tore out ten miles of iron and steel pipe and put in long tubes of copper, all having sweat joints or the flare joints and squeeze fitting joints, all new. I also installed 773 kitchen sink units of polished heat treated glass to make it tough. These glass sinks have beautiful colors. Just last week I installed a hot water heater, all aluminum, so new in its development that the Gas Cos. engineers hadn't seen it. Natural gas has been brought from Texas in great pipes at very high pressures. Television has started teaching the children many useful elements in the history of our country and the world, and also many new tricks that will have to be given careful attention.

Think of this one change, instead of using water for making steam for high pressures, mercury is now used for generating high pressure vapor because it picks up the heat units faster.

Our lawyers have had to peek into lots of new things since the study of John Locke has been sort of sidetracked, and the lawyers are making much more money now by keeping up with the rushing elements of new business processes and manufacturing ways, organizing business for distribution of everything from nylon stockings to 20-ton clam shell excavators. The lawyer has become more of a business man than a pleader in the late years and is needed more and more in helping to steer business.

Now I want to present one sober observation to all of you to think about for the summer. We've been through three wars —one in 1898, one in 1914 and one in 1942, and now we are tearing the hearts of our mothers and wives and sweethearts in this new generation in a fourth war in our time. War, in my opinion, is the wrong way to go, and we can't go far on the war ways of life, as war is now being developed, without bringing about a downfall of civilization. Some of the scientists are afraid of the H-Bomb tearing the atmosphere of the earth apart, and the use of tooth and claw of ages long past may have been far better than the H-Bomb may develop to be if dropped from a jet driven, skyscraping plane, high enough up to be out of this world in the everlasting blue. There must be a better way than war, and I think our advice to the present generation ought to be to find this way before it is too late.

Secretary and Treasurer 886 Main St., Bridgeport 3, Conn.

Class Agent, 862 Park Square Bldg., Boston 16, Mass.