On December 4, 1944, at the 308th meeting of The Symposium, the Fortieth Anniversary of the organization was celebrated. Howard L. Hughes, a member since 1917, recalled the city of Trenton in 1904:

"That was a very long while ago, although only 40 years as the calendar goes. Even then a Roosevelt ruled over us - Theodore, the rough rider, who inspired the youth of that day with his doctrine 'Don't flinch, don't foul, hit the line hard.' True, he was cordially hated by Wall Street, which did not know when it was well off. Theodore called them 'malefactors of great wealth.' Franklin used the term 'economic royalists.'

"The world then was relatively peaceful, except for the far-off Russo-Japanese War. The Japs had just finished off most of the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, and American sentiment as I recall it was with the Japs. The rest of the world was in a pleasant status quo which was taken for granted except by the German general staff. While the twentieth century had begun, the golden afterglow of the nineteenth still lingered. Only a year before, in 1903, Wilbur Wright had made his first flight of 120 feet.

"On the domestic scene, ladies' skirts reached downward to the ground and their shirtwaists reached upward to the ears. In New York a lady was arrested for smoking a cigarette on Fifth Avenue. The automobile was still a startling freak, without windshield, top or starter. Buggies with rubber-tired wheels were advertised at $50.00. There was not a square foot of concrete road in the state. A six-day bicycle race was on in Madison Square Garden.

"Trenton's own Rose Stahl was appearing in her most famous play, 'The Chorus Lady.' Caruso had completed his first season in America. In the book world the best sellers of the year were: Winston Churchill's 'Crossing,' John Fox's 'Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come'; and Kate Douglas Wiggins' 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.'

"Franklin Murphy was Governor of New Jersey in 1904, to be succeeded the next year by Edward Casper Stokes, who was elected to Symposium membership in 1906.

"Trenton was a large village of 73,000; the surrounding townships, now so urban in development, were then mostly farm lands. There were even farms within the city limits.

"The city hall still stood at the corner of State and Broad. The new high school at Hamilton and Chestnut Avenues was three years old and already crowded. The new public library on Academy Street was two years old. The young and alert Adam Strohm, [one of our founding members], was the librarian.

"There were about 2,000 telephones in the city and they all hung on the wall. One could ring up central and tell her whom he wanted without bothering to look up the number.<-> "There had been a heavy snowstorm the first week in December 1904 and those who owned fast trotters were enjoying sleigh races on Greenwood Avenue." This was the world in which, on a cold December 14th evening, fourteen gentlemen rode their sleighs and carriages to an 8:00 o'clock meeting at 143 East State Street, the studio of the well-known artist Frederick H. Clark. There they met to form The Symposium.

The founding members represented the cream of Trenton's leadership community. As was the custom in those days, they were categorized by their affiliations:

At the first meeting a Constitution was adopted. The purpose of the group was stated as follows:

Meetings were set for the second Monday of each month. The subjects for discussion were assigned to members two months in advance by a three-man Committee on Topics (originally Judge Lanning, Rev. Wishart and Rev. Minton) and, at first, it was assumed that only members would participate in the meetings, although the Constitution did have a provision stating that "Each member may invite one non-resident guest to one meeting in each year."

At the first regular meeting, on January 9, 1905, Linton Satterthwaite presented a paper on "Divorce."