REPORT OF THE SECRETARY

This has been a year of meetings. We have already had Areal Meetings in Buffalo, Milwaukee and Seattle, and now comes the Annual Meeting. For the year 1949, we plan to have but two meetings: the Areal Meeting at Atlanta, Ga., April 13-15, and the Annual Meeting at San Francisco, Calif., November 14-17. There are two reasons why the number of meetings has been reduced. The first is that the force in the central office is too overloaded with work to carry on four meetings a year. The second, and all important, is that the commercial firms will not support so many meetings in one society. As a consequence, we stand likely to have a deficit in each of the three areal meetings. However, in two of these, one of the commercial firms assured us that it would make up any deficit, so that we are now in a position to write these two meetings off the books. I wish to call your attention to the meeting of the Second Pan-American Congress of Pediatrics at Mexico City from November 2-5, 1949, which will be under the direction of the Mexican pediatric group. Very few of our members have any conception of the amount of work which must precede one of our meetings, nor have they any conception of the amount of routine work which must be done in the central office. It seems likely that, in the not too distant future, we must enlarge our quarters and employ more help. One of the most encouraging things that has happened in the last year has been the way the committees have taken hold of their jobs and carried them out. Of the Standing Committees, the Committee on School Health has been so regularly efficient that it becomes routine for us to exclaim about it. Such Committees as the Committee on Fetus and Newborn have done outstanding work. The Committee on Legislation has been on the job regularly. The Committee on Governmental and Medical Agencies has been discharged with thanks and its work is taken over by the Committee for Improvement of Child Health. This last committee, under the direction of Dr. James L. Wilson, and with an efficient secretary in the form of Dr. Hubbard, is rounding into form and will have many suggestions to make to the Academy.