18 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
to grow where one grew before would be a benefactor of mankind. How many 
fold greater would be he who, leaving the fertile land for the yet more fertile 
ocean, should develop the life-sustaining harvest of the waters in ever increasing 
abundance, for the benefit of all the world in generous equality. 
Your purpose is a great one, and in the effort to accomplish it you meet 
as fellow-workers toward the general welfare. I wish you godspeed in your 
work. 
OPENING SESSION, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22. 
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY HALL. 
The congress was opened at 10.30 a. m. by Hon. George M. Bowers, chair- 
man of the local committee of organization and Commissioner of Fisheries of 
the United States. 
Commissioner Bowers. Ladiesand gentlemen, as Commissioner of Fisheries 
and chief of the Bureau primarily responsible for the assembly of the Fourth 
International Fishery Congress in the city of Washington, I do now call this 
meeting to order. 
It gives me great pleasure to present to this meeting the Hon. Oscar §. 
Straus, Secretary of Commerce and Labor, who will deliver an address of wel- 
come to the congress in behalf of the Government of the United States. 
Secretary Straus. Mr. Commissioner, ladies, and gentlemen, it is a great 
pleasure and a high privilege, as head of the Department of Commerce and 
Labor, of which the Bureau of Fisheries forms an important part, to welcome 
you heartily to this the Fourth International Fishery Congress. 
The subject of fish as an article of food and as an industry, and I might 
say amusement, is one of the oldest and dates back to the earliest history of 
mankind. Even in Isaiah we read, when foretelling or forecasting the disso- 
lution of Egypt, ‘The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle 
into the brooks shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall 
languish,” showing that even in those early times the fish and fishers were 
held to be one of the important considerations of mankind. 
The question of food, and of fish as an important article of food for man- 
kind, was perhaps even more important in the dawn of history than it is to-day, 
in that the articles of food, the contributions to what made up the sustenance 
of mankind, were not so extensive as they are, and as they became, as nations 
became more enlightened and their needs became greater. 
Last spring the President of the United States, who as a historian is one 
of the greatest that this country has known, and whose horizon is therefore 
that of a historian, called together in conference the governors of our states 
for the purpose of considering the conservation of our natural resources— 
the forests, the lands, the waters, the minerals—recognizing, as all students 
