V. A vote of two-thirds of the delegates present shall be necessary to carry the approval of the Board upon any proposition which may appear or which may be placed upon the official programme.

VI. The rules of the House of Representatives of the United States shall govern the deliberations of the Board, so far as they may be applicable and in harmony with the Constitution and By-Laws.

VII. The annual assessment laid by the Executive Council shall be considered as due at the beginning of the year, which year shall commence with the annual meeting; no delegate shall be entitled to a seat at any meeting of the Board unless the constituent body to which he belongs shall have paid the assessment for the preceding year; and any constituent body participating in the proceedings of the annual meeting shall be held liable for the assessment of the current official year.

VIII. The annual assessment shall be based upon the officially reported membership of the constituent bodies at the date of the annual meeting at which it is made.

IX. The Executive Council shall recommend at each annual meeting the place at which it judges it to be expedient that the next annual meeting shall be held.

X. The term of service of not less than one year for which delegates are elected, shall commence with the date of the annual meeting of this Board.

XI.

These By-Laws may be amended at an annual meeting, on a vote of two-thirds of the delegates present.

FOURTH ANNUAL MEETING

OF THE

NATIONAL BOARD OF TRADE.

FIRST DAY.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1871.

THE Fourth Annual Meeting of the National Board of Trade was convened in the city of St. Louis, on Wednesday, the 6th of December, 1871, and the four following business days. The sessions were held in the Temple, a hall conveniently situated, which had been fitted, by the local Boards, with all the conveniences for the accommodation of the delegates.

The meeting was called to order at twelve o'clock, noon, on Wednesday, the 6th of December, by the President of the Board, Mr. FREDERICK FRALEY, of Philadelphia, who addressed the delegates as follows:

Gentlemen:- By God's good providence, we have been safely brought to this place and to the performance of our official duties. It is meet and right, for His protection of us by the way, that we should give thanks unto Him, and also that we should invoke His aid in the performance of the duties with which we have been entrusted by the constituent bodies, and ask for His blessing upon our labors. The Rev. Dr. NICCOLLS, of this city, will therefore ask our Heavenly Father so to help and comfort us.

The delegates united with the Rev. Dr. NICCOLLS in fervent supplication to the Most High for His guidance and blessing.

Mr. GERARD B. ALLEN, President of the St. Louis Union Merchants' Exchange, addressed the Board as follows:

Mr. President and Gentlemen:-On behalf of the Union Merchants' Exchange and the business interests of this city, mine is the pleasing duty to welcome you to the hospitality of St. Louis. You have honored our city, as men experienced in the vast commercial and productive interests of this broad land, by assembling here to interchange views as to what will best advance, not your prosperity alone, but the well-being of our common country. It is out of the daily recurring experiences of business men, who know what has been, what is, and what ought to be, that the nation can best learn what, in a practical way, should now be done-not to indulge in useless day dreams as to an Utopian future to be won without toil, but to suggest plain, practical, common sense measures for the achievement of desired results. In your representative character you have to meet questions of larger moment for the present and coming needs of the country than the most prophetic vision could have foreseen a few short years ago. The rapid changes caused by the productive skill and commercial enterprise of the time demand corresponding change in modes of action, regulations of trade and means of transit; thereby exacting from the government whatever shall best protect the rights and enforce the duties which, as fellow-citizens, we owe to each other, and the government owes to all. And who can so well advise as to what should be done, and how it should be done, as those who know and hourly feel, what is most needed men whom every wrongful change or failure to act most immediately touches? The wonderworking productiveness of the country through its unbounded mineral, manufacturing and agricultural resources, has given to its trade a force and extent of which the world had no conception when the genius of FULTON and STEPHENSON first sent through its arteries the life-blood of inter-State and inter-oceanic commerce. You know full well how intimately the well-being of each state and nation is interwoven with the well-being of all states and nations, and how inseparably each industrial pursuit is interlaced with all other industrial enterprises. Hence, you are here to-day to interchange words of wisdom drawn from the great storehouse of your American experience, so that common wants may be met and common blessings secured that practical and far-seeing experience which is the aptest guide for the present, and the best prophet for the future.