THE 1904 CONGRESS OF ACCOUNTANTS: NATIONAL OR INTERNATIONAL?

The international accounting congresses, which are held every five years, are numbered under the assumption that the first such international gathering was the one held in St. Louis in 1904. In this paper, the question is raised whether this 1904 Congress should be called "international". There are reasons to believe that the main objective of the congress was to raise the status of the profession in the United States, and that the slight international involvement was little more than window dressing.