78 American Fisheries Society 



At the opening of the Exposition, there were two im- 

 portant facts set forth. One was that, as the Exposition 

 is celebrating a great achievement of American genius 

 in our own time, the completion of the Panama Canal 

 which is a work of the present, rather than the anni- 

 versary of some event which happened hundreds of 

 years ago, the Exposition should be a contemporaneous 

 one. None of the exhibits in these palaces are entitled 

 to be the subjects of award by the Jury of Awards unless 

 they have been made since the St. Louis Exposition of 

 1904. Therefore, the viewpoint of the Exposition is 

 essentially of the present. 



We have sought to gather in these exhibit palaces the 

 material evidences of the progress of mankind within 

 the last decade. But we thought, also, that the Exposi- 

 tion should bring together not only the actual material 

 proofs of the progress of mankind, but that it should 

 present to the world the methods by which that progress 

 has been made possible. In order to emphasize those 

 methods and particularly to emphasize the work of the 

 organized movements that are so characteristic of 

 modern development, we tried to bring together as large 

 a representation from the different organized bodies of 

 men and women as possible. The result is that more 

 than nine hundred congresses, conferences and conven- 

 tions are meeting in San Francisco and vicinity during 

 the Exposition period and we are glad to claim those 

 conventions as a part of the Exposition itself, setting 

 forth to the world the methods and the spirit of the 

 organizations which have made possible the progress 

 shown in our exhibit palaces. 



There is one other distinctive feature of our Exposi- 

 tion which we like to emphasize and that is, that we have 

 made the central purpose of it the idea of human serv- 

 ice. We have tried, in gathering these conventions, to 

 emphasize those ideas which make for the betterment 

 and improvement of the human race, and which con- 

 tribute to the sum total of human happiness, and we 

 believe that your work contributes materially to this 



