Repository: UIHistories Project: Dedication - Transportation Building Dedication Addresses [PAGE 162]

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ADDRESS by Mr. Willard A. Smith, President Railway and Engineering Review, Chicago, 111.

There are no longer oloistered halls of learning. As the church has turned in the extreme later days

from monastic cells, from storied windows, rich trappings and dim religious light, from the burning of martyrs and from theological disputations to social service, so the institutions of learning at last are turning to the assistance in the development of the great material world progress, as well as the intellectual. The world is turning"backward to the primal words of creation, "Let there be light". Today our medical schools are sending their rays of light through the entire human system. Our schools

of engineering, of technology, and the sciences, are sending the X-rays through the material problems which the world is crowding faster and faster, year by year, within our view. The business of railroading is an emergency business. This is illustrated very clearly today in the absence

of several of your promised speakers. The men engaged, therefore, in railway management and operation, have neither the time nor the opportunity to carry on that systematic work of research and investigation which is fraught with such tremendous possibilities. The railroad