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not time at the present, nor is it neccessary, to investigate the cause of this discimination which has been made against our profession; it is enough to know it has been done, partly because it has not been represented in the halls of legislation, as the other two have been, and partly from the mistaken idea that it was not of sufficient importance to provide for it. This feeling will give way as the light of truth breaks in upon the minds of the people and they better understand the functions, duties and responsibilities of an architect. This matter is of importance to the profession and is of equal importance to the public, and be inssited on continually, for the public will have to understand that it is for their interest before we can succeed in its attainment.

This subject is intimately blended with the billfor the regulation of the practice of architecture which we are preparing to present to the legislature; it is blended with it, because a profession of sufficient importance to require a license for the protection of the people before it can be practiced should require suitable proficiency to be made in the science and knowledge attaching to that profession, and ample means should be made to attain that proficiency. Do you not bbelieve that if there had been an architectural department in our university, as there is for law and medicine, that the legislature would not have enacted some law, on its own motion, at least similar to the one we are asking for? Because it is an unnatural father will disown his child. Graduation and license are linked together. I do not wish to be understood as advancing the idea that no man should be allowed to practice architecture unless he has gone through the curriculum which would be adopted in an institution of learning before he could be examined and licensed to practice, any more than the student of law or medicine is required to do so, but only that the same opportunities should be the one as is given the other, thus putting each upon an equal footing; but I do insist that men should be eamined and licensed by comptent authority before they are allowed to practice.

Many persons have fallen into the error that architect desire the enactment of a law requiring examination and licensure before practice can be allowed, from a desire of respectability and self interest. This is a mistake, for as a class they have too much self respect to have any desire for factitious respect, and sense enough to wish only to pass in the light of their own merit and indivudality rather than that of a borrowed light which might be given by a recognition from the state, neither is it from a selfish motive that the enactment of this law is desired, for I know of no facts showing them to be more selfish than other classes, but we know enough to justify us in the attempt to get such a law for the protection of the people. Law and medicine have such laws and the man would make himself contemptible who brought such a charge against lawyers or doctors. They advocated such protection, not for themselves only, but for the people, because each in their own profession were better qualified to detect charlatans and impostors than were others, and what the facts are in their case are exactly the facts in our case.

The architects want to be protected! Not at all, any further than the law throws its ægis around every citizen, and around other professions for the protection of the citizen. If any special protection had been necessary for our existence we would have become extinct long ago, for we have received protection than any other class of citizens in any department of business. No, we want no protection, other than the security of our rights; but the people want protection and it is the duty of the state to give it to them. In this as in all other instances where progress has been made in a right line the architect has the task before him of teaching others what is for their goods, and what is necessary for their own safety and comfort, and must live in advance of those around him and occupy a higher plane in technical, scientific and practical information, for he must not keep up with the advancement of the people, but must keep in advance of their advancement -- in his department, a leader able to instruct. Gentlemen, you thus see the work, or at least part of it, which lies before us. Many of us will not live long enough to see the fruits of our labor ripen into the golden harvest, but if we will be true to ourselves and true to the interests of others, those who will come after us will reap what we have sown. Each one is now busy drawing designs and laying out plans for foundations and their superstructures, and are having buildings erected which will stand as monuments to their labor and their worth, but as an association, we are laying a foundation deeper and broader than any we have laid as individuals, and the projecting compass of design will describe a nobler building and fairer in all its proportions -- a monument to the memory and the worth of the Texas Association of Architects. Sheltered within its walls the architects will keep abreast with the wants of this great state in all its improvements, until its sunny hills and umbrageous valleys rejoicing in the handiwork of man, will smile with their tasteful dwellings and gorgeous palaces, the picture of refined intelligence and a scene of beauty.

But decaying elements exist in all materials, which finally terminate in the ruin, and this structure which we raise will be brought to a speedy fall if we do not eliminate everything of a ruinous nature. We cannot expect success if each is trying to work