Part 3

We believe that the Peace Policy of General Grant, which was continued by President Hayes, has been productive of great and lasting good to the Indians. Some infelicities have occurred between the Government representatives and those of the religious bodies having nominations intrusted to them, and these, together with other reasons, have served to diminish the interest once taken by the officials at Washington in the co-operation of the religious bodies. We have no wish to discuss the subject, nor to press upon the Administration the question of the continuance of the Peace Policy. We content ourselves, therefore, with giving a few statements relative to the Indian work under our care.

The general improvement of the Indians at the S’Kokomish Agency is indicated from the fact that the white employés, with the exception of the clerks, physicians, and those connected with the schools, have been discharged and their places filled by Indians. At this Agency, the long desired titles to their land have at last been granted to the Indians by the Government, and they have, therefore, additional inducements to become thrifty and make themselves homes. At Dunginess Station, where a few members of the S’Kokomish church reside, there is a church building, the only one in the county. This has been furnished recently with a bell and melodeon. An average attendance of forty on divine services at this point and of eighty at S’Kokomish is of much encouragement. Their gifts, also, to benevolent objects for the year, amounting to $614.67, indicate that the Indian may be counted upon to help on the world’s conversion. Good work has been done for Indians at Hampton and Carlisle, and we have the question under serious consideration of providing suitable accommodations for Indian youth in connection with other institutions.

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THE CHINESE.

The work among the Chinese on the Pacific Coast has been carried on under the able and energetic superintendence of Rev. W. C. Pond with unabated interest and success. Here there has been enlargement. The excess of teachers for the past year over the previous year has been six, that of pupils 76, and of hopeful conversions 13. A comparison of the statistics and work shows an improvement at all points. The total enrollment last year was 1,556; this year, 1,632. The number last year who gave evidence of conversion was 127; this year, 140. All reports that have come to us are exceedingly encouraging, and not the least among them is the repeated expression of the need there is of some well chosen point in Southern China for a mission station from which converted Chinamen returning to their fatherland may go forth to preach to their countrymen. We do not purpose to act hastily upon suggestions of this kind. We seek, however, to learn clearly the will of the Master, and to expand His work whenever and wherever it is evident He is leading the way.

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FINANCES.

The financial success reported at our last Annual Meeting, while full of encouragement, cast upon us a shade of anxiety. It was not certain that the additional funds made necessary by the large gifts we had received for new buildings, and the plans we had adopted for enlargement at different points, would be forthcoming. Efforts were made throughout that meeting to impress upon all those present the urgent necessity we were under for at least 25 per cent. of increase in receipts over the previous year for current expenses. The same necessity was also set forth at the National Council at St. Louis, in our publications and in the pulpits, and at conferences and conventions wherever opportunity was afforded. We felt that God had called us to do an enlarged work, and that if we could convey the information to His people, and share with them the burden we felt ourselves, the responses would be sufficiently liberal to meet all demands. In this we were not disappointed. The receipts reported for the fiscal year closing Sept. 30, 1880, were, for current work, $187,480.02; this year, $243,795.23, a gain of $56,315.21. This shows an advance of 30 per cent. mainly in the ordinary subscriptions over last year, and indicates the people’s hearty appreciation and indorsement of our work. For this we return profound gratitude to Almighty God. The fiscal year was closed free from debt, and with a balance in our treasury of $518.80. We are sure that the liberality displayed augurs well for the future. We believe the money received was expended wisely. We do not see how we could have done justice to our work without it. But additional outlay for current expenses is sure to be needful. The Stone Hall just finished at Straight University will afford accommodations for the teachers and sixty girls. The cost, however, for student aid, for insurance and the care of the building, will require additional receipts. What is true at New Orleans is equally true at Talladega College, with its new dormitory for a hundred boarders, and at Tougaloo, Miss., with the facilities of its new Hall. When Livingstone Missionary Hall, at Nashville, is done, and Stone Hall, at Atlanta University, completed, two hundred additional boarding students will make new demands which must be met.

To all we have mentioned must be added the consideration that we are laying foundations for a mission in Africa on the Upper Nile, at a point further remote from the coast than any occupied by other societies, either home or foreign, and that the outlay for this, if carried forward, will be considerable in the near future. We believe, therefore, that it is our duty to ask the friends of this Association to give us during the coming year not less than $300,000 for the support and enlargement of the varied work we have in charge.

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DEMANDS OF THE FUTURE.

Some of the demands indicated above may be summarized as follows:

1. The increase of students this year over last year is 1,056. A considerable number of these were boarding students, but with our additional accommodations we shall require the coming year from five to ten thousand dollars more than usual for student aid.

2. We have no boys’ dormitory at Straight University, the new Stone Hall being exclusively for the teachers and girls. We need immediately fifteen thousand dollars to supply this want.

3. Funds also are necessary for libraries in at least ten of our different institutions. An advanced school without a sufficient library labors under great disadvantages, and especially so when located amid a people who have but very few books of their own. From ten to twenty thousand dollars for libraries could be used very profitably at once.

4. Our theological departments need better facilities and an increased corps of instructors. The number of students graduating from the different schools at the South is rapidly increasing. Many of these would enter the Christian ministry if sufficiently encouraged to do so. We need funds for the endowment of professors’ chairs at least at three different points south of the Ohio.

5. We need also endowment funds for all our chartered institutions. No colleges thrive for a great length of time without endowments. The work of a missionary society primarily is to plant churches and religious institutions, and to sustain them until they can care for themselves. Its business is, and must be, aggressive. As soon as may be, its churches and its educational institutions must become self-sustaining by their own endeavors, while the society goes forward to new fields. We need now, we surely ought to have in the near future, not less than five hundred thousand dollars for the endowment of our different institutions.

6. We need also ten thousand dollars at once for a suitable steamer for our Mendi Mission.

The negroes in the West Indies, the millions in South America, the two hundred millions in Africa, have their claims upon us. We are of them as a missionary society, and they are of us as our brethren in distress, awaiting such benefits as we have been blessed in bestowing on the few representatives in our own country.

Finally, this Association needs, most of all, the prayers of God’s people everywhere for the guidance of His Holy Spirit, and the sufficiency of His grace to direct its affairs in days to come, and for this your Committee puts forth its most urgent appeal.

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SUMMARY OF THE TREASURER’S REPORT OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION, FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPT. 30, 1881.

RECEIPTS.

From Churches, Sabbath Schools, Missionary Societies and Individuals $159,035.21 From Estates and Legacies 46,710.34 From Income, Sundry Funds 7,495.65 From Tuition and Public Fund 21,449.92 From Sale of Property 2,250.00 From Rents 1,208.40 ——————————238,149.52 From Donations for Tillotson C. and N. Institute Building 5,645.71 —————————— 243,795.23 Balance on hand, Sept. 30, 1880 783.73 ——————————$244,578.96 ===========

EXPENDITURES.

THE SOUTH.—For Church and Educational Work $180,753.26 For Tillotson C. and N. Institute Building 5,645.71 ———————————186,398.97 THE CHINESE.—For Supt., Teachers and School Expenses 8,858.50 THE INDIANS.—For Missionaries and Teachers and Student Aid 1,703.24 FOREIGN MISSIONS.—For Mendi Mission, Missionaries and Teachers 12,187.86 For Jamaica Mission 250.00 ————————— 12,437.86 PUBLICATIONS.—For American Missionary, Annual Report, Pamphlets, Postage, &c. 8,795.04 COLLECTING FUNDS.—Boston Office. Dist. Sec., Agent, Traveling Expenses, Rent, Clerk-hire, Printing, Postage, &c. 5,715.91 Middle District. Dist. Sec., Traveling Expenses, Clerk-hire. Printing, Postage, &c. 2,953.50 Chicago Office. Dist. Sec., Traveling Expenses, Clerk-hire, Printing, Postage, &c. 3,513.09 ———————— 12,182.50 ADMINISTRATION.—New York Office. Cor. Sec., Treasurer, Traveling Expenses, Clerk-hire, Rent, Printing, Stationery, Postage, &c. 11,943.89 MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.—Annual Meeting 335.51 Wills and Estates 251.32 Annuitants bal. 679.90 Traveling Expenses of Cor. Sec. as Delegate to England, and in other services abroad 473.43 ———————— 1,740.16 —————————— 244,060.16 Balance on hand, Sept. 30, 1881 518.80 ——————————$244,578.96 ===========

ENDOWMENT FUNDS.

GENERAL ENDOWMENT FUND.—Belinda Sanford, Lebanon Springs, N.Y. $1,000.00 SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENT FUND FOR FISK UNIVERSITY.—By Mrs. A. M. Haley, Buda, Ill., in memory of Samuel Gordon Haley, deceased, Two Scholarships $2,000.00 Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Plumb, Streator, Ill., Two Bonds, $1,000 each, of Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific R. R. 2,000.00 ———————— 4,000.00 THEOLOGICAL ENDOWMENT FUND FOR HOWARD UNIVERSITY.—Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, Malden, Mass. 25,000.00 ————————— 30,000.00

STATEMENT OF ARTHINGTON MISSION FUND FOR AFRICA.

Collections to Sept. 30, 1879 $ 45.00 Collections Oct. 1, 1879, to Sept. 30, 1880 6,576.48 Collections Oct. 1, 1880, to Sept. 30, 1881 26,289.62 ————————— 32,911.10 Amount expended to Sept. 30, 1881 7,433.57 Amount unexpended 25,477.53 ————————— 32,911.10

STATEMENT OF STONE FUND.

Received of Mrs. Valeria G. 150,000.00 Stone, Sept., 1880, Expended as follows: Straight University, Stone Hall and Lot, in full $ 25,000.00 Talladega College, Stone Hall and improvements, in full 15,000.00 Fisk University, Livingstone Missionary Hall, in part 22,476.50 Atlanta University, Stone Hall, in part 14,000.00 Supt. of Construction, in part 655.47 ———————— 77,131.97 Amount unexpended 72,868.03 ————————— 150,000.00

RECAPITULATION.

A. M. A. Current Fund $243,795.23 Endowment Funds 30,000.00 Arthington Mission Fund, expended 7,433.57 Stone Fund 77,131.97 ——————————$358,360.77

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The receipts of Berea College, Hampton N. and A. Institute and State appropriations of Georgia to Atlanta University, are added below, as presenting at one view the contributions of the same constituency for the general work in which the Association is engaged:

A. M. A. $358,360.77 Berea College 60,106.69 Hampton N. and A. Institute 102,578.77 Atlanta University 8,000.00 ——————————$529,046.23

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ADDRESS OF SENATOR GEO. F. HOAR.

MR. PRESIDENT AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:

I suppose your Secretary was well warranted in announcing my name, for early in the summer I made an engagement to prepare a paper to be read here to-night on Christian education in the South; but the occupations of the last four weeks, as imperative as they were unexpected, have put it entirely out of my power to comply with my engagement, as I informed your Secretary yesterday. But with a persistence which certainly affords a very good illustration of the doctrine of the “perseverance of the saints,” he has compelled me to come here to make my excuse in person.

I have not come at this late hour of the evening to enter upon an argument in favor of what I am sure every person within the sound of my voice is now thoroughly convinced of, but rather to express my gratitude and honor at the great work which is now going on in this country for a Christian education in the West and South, in which the American Missionary Association is so nobly taking the lead. I do not think you yourselves are entirely conscious of the sublimity of what you are doing and what you are helping to do. Why, take the $321,000 which, including the expenditure from the Stone fund, your treasurer reports you have expended during the past year: at the present rates at which the Government can borrow money, that represents the income of a capital of $9,000,000—the income of a capital which, I suppose, is greater than the entire aggregate of all the productive funds of the American colleges forty years ago, and which I know is more than fifteen times the entire productive fund of Harvard College as it was estimated by President Quincy in 1840. Gen. Eaton made an imperfect estimate of the amount given for education by voluntary contribution in this country, and in 1872 it amounted to $8,000,000 and upwards; in 1873, the last year before the great depression in business, it amounted to more than $11,000,000; and I am informed on credible and high authority that in this year of grace 1881, it will amount to more than $18,000,000—the income of a capital, at present rates, of more than $500,000,000—a vast national school fund invested not where thieves break through and steal and where moth doth corrupt, but invested in the patriotism and sense of religious duty of a Christian people. There is nothing in statesmanship, there is nothing in the opportunities for political effort, which the highest honors of the State can hold out to any of her public servants, which surpasses in dignity the opportunity to help and to bid God-speed to a work like this.

My friends, it is not strange that the wealth and the conscience of New England should arouse itself to the opportunities which God has held out to you in the present age. There are persons within the sound of my voice within whose lifetime twenty new states will be admitted to this Union from territory which now is scarcely settled. That “ancient, primitive and heroical work,” as Lord Bacon calls it, which he ranks as the highest work which is vouchsafed to man to take part in, is being performed in your day and by your hands, if you choose, in a manner unparalleled in human history; and the sixteen states now reconstructed, within which, until lately, slavery had bolted the door against every form of popular education, now, thank God, have their doors unfolded and afford a field of scarcely less interest than the other. How can the manufacturer, how can the merchant of Massachusetts fail to respond to the appeal of these good men and these good women for help in the great work of educating these communities? Combined, they are very soon to be the majority, both in states and in population, they are to determine every question of peace and war, every policy of finance or of tariff; they are to enact, they are to furnish the men who expound and the men who execute the laws under which you and I and our children are to live, and upon which depends the value of all property and the prosperity of all labor. Will the manufacturer or the merchant, who gladly taxes himself to insure his property against fire or against crime, hesitate a moment when you ask him to insure it against being governed by laws which are to be made by and rest upon ignorance?

But there is a better reason even than this. I think the opportunity to take part in such a great benefaction is enough to stimulate every ingenuous soul. I think there is no more beautiful memorial among men than to have your name remembered or your picture hang on the walls of an institution of learning as one of its founders or benefactors. What gratitude is there like that which men feel for the college or the founder of the college where they were bred and educated? Now you have an opportunity to attach to you the coming generations of the South by this tie, a tie which will be far stronger than all the hatreds or the passions engendered by civil war, or which have grown up under years of misunderstanding and hatred.

I have been gratified in what I have heard and read of the speeches of this Annual Meeting, and what I have read in the reports of your Association, in seeing what theory it is upon which all your efforts seem to rest. The foundation of this American Missionary Association’s work seems to me to be—if I were to state it in a single phrase—_reverence for the individual soul_; that doctrine which Christ preached, for which Christ died—the doctrine without which there can be neither education, freedom, republic or self-government in the world—that every human soul, whether contained in a casket of ivory or a casket of bronze, is a precious thing in the sight of God, entitled to its equal right, to its equal opportunity, to its equal share in government with every other.

Now, my friends, you have got a great deal still to do to teach the people of this commonwealth of Massachusetts to believe and act upon that doctrine, whether they profess it or not. We avowed it, and pledged our lives and fortunes and sacred honor to support it on the fourth of July, 1776, and under it we grew up from a weak to a strong and mighty people. The doctrine crossed the water. When Mr. Webster, in his speech in 1843, at the completion of the Bunker Hill monument, undertook to sum up what it was that America had done for mankind in the seventy years, nearly, that had then elapsed, he mentioned a few inventions and a few new plants and new animals which had been contributed by this continent, and then he said that the one thing which we had done for the world was the avowal and illustration of this doctrine, that however poor or however humble a man might be, or whatever was his occupation, he was the equal in rights, the equal in dignity, the equal in capacity for improvement, in the presumption of the law, to every other man. Well, Europe began to adopt the doctrine. France established a republic; England becomes nothing but a republic, “hooped,” as somebody has said of her. In Spain, Italy and Germany, the doctrine is spreading; and lo and behold, 75,000 Chinamen landed on our shores and the great republic has struck its flag! Men are not free and equal any longer! God has not made of one blood all the nations of the earth any more!

My friends, there is nothing in this world, if there is any lesson of history to be depended upon, which God visits with a surer and a severer punishment than the violation of this law. Just think how we have undertaken to violate it in the case of the negro; and think of the terrible retribution in desolated homes, in debt and squandered treasure, and in the loss of precious human life, He exacted of us. Just think of our dealing with the Indians! Why, excluding the five civilized nations in this country, there are about 170,000 Indians, all told, including those in the states and including those on the plains. There are 34,000 Indian children, according to the estimate of the Indian Bureau, which I think is a little underestimated—certainly not more than 40,000 Indian children of school age in this country. I suppose Gen. Armstrong could tell you he could take the whole of them and educate them at one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars apiece. Why, that number of Indians is less than one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth part of the population of this country to-day. If you should gather them all into a city they would not form a city the tenth in population among the cities of America; they would not make two average Congressional districts out of our 293. And yet, in the mode in which this country has dealt with them, considering that good faith, honor, honesty, respect for property, respect for its own word, was out of place, from the time when Washington said that was our policy, almost in the words I have uttered, down to the time when the Ponca Indians were driven from their homes, and half Boston rushed to make itself an accomplice to the crime, our history has been marked by a disregard of this law, and has been marked by the terrible retribution which God has exacted of us. The Indian wars and the cost of supporting the Indians, of transportation and of military police, are estimated by a very thorough and careful estimate which I received from the statistician in the Treasury department the other day, at between five hundred and six hundred millions of dollars. I think it amounts to a thousand millions. The interest on the interest of what we have paid for Indian wars would take every Indian child of school age and give him a competent education.