Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/608

 594 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

first President of the Association was Professor William B. Rogers, a Vir- gfinian, and the son of one of Jefferson's English professors at the Uni- versity of Virginia, where he had been educated ; but then engaged in found- ing the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, since so distinguished. Its two general secretaries were Dr. Samuel Eliot, once President of Trinity College in Hartford, and the undersigned, then secretary and afterward chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Charities. Among the early mem- bers between 1865 and 1872 were Charles F. Adams, Edward Atkinson, Louis Agassiz, James M. Barnard, Dr. Henry Barnard, Francis W. Bird, Francis C. Barlow, George S. Boutell, Phillips Brooks, W. C. Bryant, Charles L. Brace, Charles Butler, Salmon P. Chase, Joseph H. Choate, Edward Cooper, J. Elliot Cabot, Mellen Doane, William Endicott, H. Sid- ney Everett, William M. Evarts, W. P. Fessenden, James W. Grimes, U. S. Grant, James A. Garfield, John Stanton Gould, E. L. Godkin, Horace Greeley, Joseph Henry, John and William Jay, A. A. Low, Theodore Lyman, William Lloyd Garrison, Oliver Johnson, H. C. Lea, Henry Lee of Boston, Robert Treat Paine, John Sherman, A. H. Rice, Charles Sumner, Francis S. Walker, David A. Wells, Emory Washburn, E. C. Wines, Robert C. Winthrop, and many more, names of great importance then, most of whose bearers are now dead. With so many nursing-fathers our Asso- ciation naturally was the mother of many children. Our first-born was the National Prison Association, founded in 1870 by a few of our early mem- bers, Z. R. Brockway, the great prison reformer, Dr. E. C. Wines, the unwearied missionary of penal reform, Emory Washburn, Dr. Howe, and others. In 1874 we initiated at a session in New York City, when George William Curtis was our president, the National Conference of Charities, and the American Health Association. Civil Service Reform, in which Mr. Curtis was long prominent, had been set on foot by our Association between 1865 and 1872, and during the administration of President Grant, one of our early members, it went forward to a degree of success. We revived the National Prison Association in 1882, which had fallen asleep after the death of Dr. Wines in 1879; and soon after, the American His- torical Association asked our society to assist at its birth in Saratoga, where for many years our annual meetings were held. Several other im- portant societies have lighted their candles at our small vestal lamp, which was kept alive all these years, although sometimes the flame was low, and the oil hardly filled the bowl — which Dr. Watts says is needful : To keep the lamp alive With oil we fill the bowl, 'Tis water makes the willow thrive, etc.

When the water got low, and our willows did not exactly thrive, we neither hung our harps thereon, nor did we weep, remembering the more flourishing days — ^but we chose a new secretary, and went several years in the strength thereof. Our most energetic secretary — ^would that we could have retained