The American Missionary. Volume 49, No. 04, April, 1895

Miss D. E. Emerson, Bible House, N. Y.

COMMUNICATIONS

Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretaries; letters for "The American Missionary," to the Editor, at the New York Office; letters relating to the finances, to the Treasurer; letters relating to woman's work, to the Secretary of the Woman's Bureau.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

In drafts, checks, registered letters, or post-office orders, may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, Treasurer, Bible House, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill., or Congregational Rooms, Y. M. C. A. Building, Cleveland, Ohio. A payment of thirty dollars constitutes a Life Member.

Notice to Subscribers.—The date on the "address label" indicates the time to which the subscription is paid. Changes are made in date on label to the 10th of each month. If payment of subscription be made afterward the change on the label will appear a month later. Please send early notice of change in post-office address, giving the former address and the new address, in order that our periodicals and occasional papers may be correctly mailed.

FORM OF A BEQUEST

"I give and bequeath the sum of – dollars to the 'American Missionary Association,' incorporated by act of the Legislature of the State of New York." The will should be attested by three witnesses.

EDITORIAL

OUR FINANCIAL OUTLOOK

Our debt is large, but we rejoice to say that during the last three months it has been slowly diminishing. It reached its highest point November 30—$82,425.58. December 31 it was $82,032.07; January 31, $79,502.77; February 28, $76,431.49. The cause of this decrease varies in the different months. Sometimes the legacies are in advance, and sometimes the donations. The expenses have been largely reduced in all departments.

While these figures are somewhat encouraging, yet the size of the debt is ominous. The winter months, usually most fruitful in collections, have passed away, and the time for the annual appropriations is near at hand. Unless the debt can be greatly reduced, the cutting down of the appropriations for the next year must be disastrous to this great work. We do not lose our trust in God, nor our hope that the friends of these ignorant and yet struggling people will not suffer the work to be seriously hindered. We respectfully invoke pastors to secure for us as liberal contributions as possible, and we ask individual donors to remember the work with special gifts.

DEATH OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS

The unexpected and sudden death of Mr. Douglass has awakened a sense of profound sympathy never before expressed toward a person identified with the negro race, and seldom toward one of the white race. We are not surprised at the manifestations of profound respect and sorrow of the colored people, and we rejoice, too, that the white race has shown almost equal regard for his memory, by their attendance when he lay in state in Washington, and when his body was interred in Rochester. The press has voiced the sentiment of the nation in the full and eulogistic notices of his life. Frederick Douglass deserved it all.

No man, perhaps, in this country has broken through so heavy a crust of ignorance, poverty and race prejudice as was done by this boy born on a slave plantation, stealing his education, fleeing from his slave home and then achieving for himself a rank among the foremost men of the nation in intelligence, eloquence and of personal influence in the great anti-slavery struggle of this country. He has achieved honors in the public service of the nation, and has faithfully and honorably fulfilled every trust laid upon him.

Mr. Douglass is among the last survivors of that band of Abolitionists that were so potent in their influence in arousing the nation to the evils of slavery. The recent death of Theodore D. Weld, in his ninety-first year, recalls a name now almost forgotten, but that two generations ago indicated the foremost orator in the anti-slavery ranks. The poet of anti-slavery, Whittier, has gone recently, and now the most conspicuous name left of that noble band is that of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe.

The American Missionary Association has reason to congratulate itself that its last annual meeting was made memorable by the presence of Mr. Douglass, and its vast audience stirred most deeply by his eloquent address. In that address he expressed his gratitude for himself and his people for the work done by the Association in their behalf. And in a letter subsequently addressed to the senior secretary of the Association, he says, in speaking of that address: "I am very glad to have been able thus publicly to record my sense of the value of the great work of the Association in saving my people. I am a friend of free thought and free inquiry, but I find them to be no substitute for the work of educating the ignorant and lifting up the lowly. Time and toil have nearly taken me from the lecture field, but I still have a good word to say in the cause to which the American Missionary Association is devoted."

ITEMS

Of the twelve millions of families now in the United States, it is said that one million cannot secure the needed work to procure the luxuries and comforts of life. On this basis the one and a half millions of colored families are at a special disadvantage. They have to contend not only against the hard times, but against the immense disadvantages of race prejudice.

The appointment of Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, to be a member of the Board of Indian Commissioners was an appointment eminently fit to be made. Few men in this country stand higher in their knowledge of the Indians and their wants, or have shown a more intelligent and self-sacrificing interest in their behalf.

The Indian Territory, occupied by what has been regarded as the Civilized Tribes, is in a precarious position. The recent investigation by the Committee under ex-Senator Dawes has brought out the facts in startling distinctness. The recommendations of the Senator are very clear and radical, but it is feared that delay in the settlement of the question will only protract and aggravate the difficulty.

The "Missing Link" has been discovered. It was found, we are told, in some fragments of skeletons dug up somewhere in Java. What an attraction this will be to lead scientific doctors to neglect living beings and wrangle over these old bones. In this country the real "Missing Link" is that charity on the part of the white people that recognizes the colored man as a fellow-citizen and a fellow Christian. Let that link be found and burnished up and a good many serious problems will be solved.

THE PROSPERITY OF THE SOUTH

From time to time there loom up prospects of great advancement in the Southern States. Iron and coal are found in close proximity and in unlimited quantity. At once the boom starts and great cities spring into existence with busy foundries and added railway facilities. But somehow or other the boom loses its fervor and the bright hopes are delayed. Yet the South has vast resources, though they can only be developed gradually, and as capital shall become assured that the labor problem in the South is satisfactorily adjusted.

We are told again that cotton mills are to be transferred from the North to the South. Hitherto cheap cottons have been the product of these Southern cotton mills. But now the promise is that the finest grades of cotton will be produced. Labor is cheap in the South, but skilled labor is very scarce, and no cheaper than at the North, and to transfer such labor from the North will be at the additional cost of transportation.

Great efforts are made from time to time to induce immigrants to settle in the South, and high hopes have been built on such endeavors. But immigrants continue to go to the North and West, and do not go South. This is not because the South is not rich in minerals, in a productive soil and a beautiful climate. Why is it? Capital in the hands of the whites in the South continues to crush labor in the person of the black man under the heel of prejudice. Perhaps the laborer from Europe may dread the same thing.

In spite of all drawbacks, the South is improving, and will continue to improve, and the process will be hastened as the white man lays aside his race prejudice and the black man lifts himself above it by acquiring property, intelligence and character. Whatever helps this consummation does more for the future good of the South than can be done in any other way.

NOTES-BY-THE-WAY

SECRETARY A. F. BEARD

Among places of greatest interest which I visited in my late Southern tour one was Tougaloo University. Its location is unique, and its work is also. In the very heart of the black belt of Mississippi, it is sending out its light among thousands who are in darkness. It would quite repay one who would study the problem of saving these children of the rural districts of the black belt to go far out of his way to visit Tougaloo. He should take time for it, to ride over its broad acres of cultivated land, its cotton fields, its fields of sugar cane and corn, its hay fields, all under the care of those who are being educated. They should see its shops for iron working, for wood working, and its varied other industries. They should see those who work by day, diligent students at the books all the long evenings until late. They should see the self help of all. They should go through the grades and notice the quality of the work done and its character, its classes in mathematics and in languages, and its work in the physical sciences. It is a great school—Tougaloo—and if people could see it, they would quote it more for its economy and efficiency. Not always are efficiency and economy found pulling equally in the same harness.

A little incident in Tougaloo interested me. A discussion of the topic, "How can we improve our homes," called from one student these words: "I find the negro lacks race pride. He despises his own makeup. Who of you ever heard any negro say that he thought the general characteristics of his race were as becoming as those of other races? Nor are they. The Anglo-Saxon is proud of his race characteristics. The Indian is, also, but the negro despises himself and would be anything else than what God has made him. But how can we escape hell if we hate ourselves because we are negroes, when this is the divine wisdom of a just God? We may talk about improving our homes by getting an education as much as we please, but we will never be anything until we have a race pride and try to carry out the great plan of God who made us and knew what is best for us. Let us be genuine negroes, pure and good, and not desire a drop of other blood in our veins."

This seems to be the spirit of Tougaloo. Its graduates whom I have met are manly and womanly, self-respecting and self-helping.

THE SOUTH

TOUGALOO UNIVERSITY, MISSISSIPPI

BY PRES. F. G. WOODWORTH, D.D

The chartered schools of the American Missionary Association, though doing an essentially similar work, are yet strongly individualized. Tougaloo University is emphatically the black belt plantation school of the Association, located in the country, in the midst of America's darkest Africa, touching that by far most numerous and important class on which the future of the negroes mainly rests—the plantation negroes. Forming the bulk of the colored population, least tinged with white blood, they are at once the most ignorant and the most hopeful class. Within seven miles of Jackson, the State capital, on the Illinois Central road, easily accessible, not only from Mississippi, but from large regions of Louisiana and Arkansas, it draws pupils from a wide area and sends its trained teachers and graduates to a region still wider. Its location is healthful and one of beauty, and, removed from town distractions and temptations, it is admirably situated for efficient work. The school was established in the autumn of 1869, and the early reports show a surrounding region which in its drunkenness, fighting and iniquity, is quite in contrast with the present condition of affairs. Five hundred acres of land were purchased and with them a fine mansion (page 125), then not many years old, intended for the finest plantation house of the State and built for a bride who came not. As the illustration shows, it is a handsome structure—the only one with any decided architectural pretensions in the place. It served at first for school rooms and dormitory purposes, and has been thus used during most of the life of the school. Now it contains the offices of president and treasurer, the main library—which greatly needs more books—music rooms, the doctor's office, teachers' rooms, and the president's home. There are now nine large buildings for school use, with several smaller ones. The next oldest of the large buildings is the girls' dormitory, just south of the mansion, where is the common dining room, with the necessary kitchen, laundry and bake house appliances, and dormitory room for several teachers and eighty to ninety girls.

Washington Hall, built just north of the mansion about the time of the girls' dormitory, was burned some years ago, and now on its site stands the Ballard Building, containing the study and recitation rooms of the grammar and intermediate departments, which lead up to the normal and the chapel, where all general exercises and Sabbath services are held. One of the greatest needs of the school is a church building, that can be specially devoted to religious purposes. There is a grand chance for a memorial building. A little northeast of Ballard is the boys' dormitory, Strieby Hall, erected in 1882, a brick structure 112 x 40 feet, and three stories high, with a basement which has a laundry and bathrooms. In this building the normal and higher work is carried on, with a fairly good physical and chemical laboratory and reference library, but needing great enlargement and additional facilities. The normal work is of chief importance, for the future of the race lies largely with the trained teachers of the common schools. Those who have gone from Tougaloo have won golden opinions from both races and do a work which in its scope and missionary character multiplies greatly the influence of the supporters of the school. Strieby has, by crowding, dormitory room for seventy to eighty boys. A separate building for normal work is greatly needed, one having a library, reading room, recitation room, museums and laboratories. Just northwest of Strieby is the large barn, which, with the picture of the cattle, will suggest the large agricultural department of the school with its stock, garden, fruit raising, etc. Here, too, a building is greatly needed for the farm boys and a foreman, where a special course of instruction can be given in fitting out good farmers. Not a few graduates and former students have been successful in the conduct of farms and market gardens, some of them in connection with teaching. Back of the mansion is a little and not at all beautiful building that has been a slave pen, day nursery for slave children; then, under the American Missionary Association, a dormitory known as Boston Hall, then a carpentry class room, then girls' "Industrial Cottage" and is now dignified as Bible Hall, and houses the theological department, which was established two years ago. This department has the beginning of a library, but needs books and maps very greatly, and has two courses based on the English Bible, one of two and one of four years. Though having this year but few pupils in the regular course, it is doing very thorough work. The evening class for outside preachers has been for some years a power for good. A glance at the picture will convince anyone that theology should have better quarters. Who will give them? Berkshire Cottage, of which a picture is given, accommodates the industrial training work of the girls. Here are classrooms for needlework and cookery, with courses extending over four years, and which all girls in the grammar grades are as much obliged to take as they are the English branches. To the normal girls special instruction in dressmaking is given. Berkshire, besides accommodating several teachers, has a kitchen, dining and sitting room, and several bedrooms, devoted to practical housekeeping, where, at present, four girls at a time keep house practically for six weeks at a time, so becoming competent for homemakers. Not far from this cottage is the Ballard shop building, where the manual training of the boys is carried on. Here to the small boys of the Hand school instruction in knifework is given, and to the boys of all higher grades careful instruction, in accordance with the best manual training methods, in wood-working, with excellent accommodations for more than twenty boys at a time. Forging, at which eight at a time can work, and mechanical and architectural drawing, with tables and tools for two dozen. The outcome of this work and of the girls' industries, teachers of which are supported by the Slater Fund, which has done, and is doing, so grand a work, has been most satisfactory and encouraging in the skill manifested, the increased earning capacity imparted, the greater ability to gain and maintain homes, and the development of character.

One other picture, the Hand Primary building, suggests the practical work of the Normal department, for here the Normal students have practice during the two closing years of their course, gathering pupils from surrounding cabins.

Underneath all the work of the school is the dominating thought of the development of Christian character. The preaching, the Sabbath school, with its class prayer meetings directed by the Sabbath school teachers, the religious societies, the Covenant for Christian service, the personal influence of teachers and older pupils, all tend in that direction with most blessed results. Upon the surrounding region growing influence is exerted through the four Sabbath schools from two to four miles away, in which teachers and students from the University assist. A picture of one of the schools, McCharity, is given here. Mention should also be made of the "Tougaloo University Addition to Tougaloo." One hundred and twenty acres of land have been divided into five-acre house lots, which are being sold at $100 each to former students and those who wish to educate children at the University. In a few years it is expected that a fine community will be there.

Around three great fundamental ideas the work of Tougaloo, with its nearly 400 students and 23 instructors, with its theological, college preparatory, normal, agricultural, industrial, musical, and nurse training departments, its religious work, is grouped and carried on with notable success. These are the development of the family and home, leadership, and pure religious life. Who will endow a chair? Who will endow the University, and perpetuate one's influence in a most fruitful way? Successful as Tougaloo has been, its largest, widest work is yet to come.

LINCOLN MEMORIAL—SPECIAL METHOD

MRS. G. W. ANDREWS, TALLADEGA, ALA

There has been much enthusiasm here since Sabbath morning in starting an "Abraham Lincoln Cent Association" in order to give the poorest among our people an opportunity to do something toward helping to lift the debt of the American Missionary Association. There will be four departments of giving, one cent per day, one per week, one per month, and five dollars will constitute one a memorial member of the Association. The collection from those who pay a cent a day will be taken at the time of devotional exercise in the schools in the morning; the cent per week every Tuesday morning, the cent per month on the twelfth day of each month. Every quarter the treasurer will gather the different sums and send to the American Missionary Association treasury. The twelfth day of February each year will be a rallying day, when we trust much more will be realized. It is hoped by those who have this plan in hand, and we are all working in unison here in it, to extend it throughout all of our schools and churches in the South, that the present debt of the American Missionary Association may be brought close to their hearts, and kept there, as the proposition is that this association shall continue until the debt is lifted.

LINCOLN MEMORIAL DAY IN THE SOUTH

BY REV. W. J. LARKIN

On Lincoln's birthday most of the churches connected with the American Missionary Association in the South took occasion to make a contribution to it, and many gifts not large in themselves, but representing a great deal of sacrifice, have been received by our treasurer in New York. The pastor of our church in Marion, Alabama, sends a contribution of over $16 from his church, which amount represents more sacrifices than thousands of dollars would represent from many of our more favored churches. He writes: "We had a Lincoln's exercise on Lord's day, 10th, by the school at the church. It was a very cold, dark night, but our offering was $16.09. You will consider the hard times here—and they are hard, indeed, this year—we have had intense cold now nearly two months with the mercury nearly to zero. When ice is six inches thick in this part of Alabama it means intense suffering for the half-clad and half-fed negroes. We add to this $16.09, $11.26, which we have collected at our missionary prayer meetings, making in all $27.35."

"I called on a few of the old ex-slaves for some experiences of bygone days. Among others here is one: 'When I was a boy about twelve years of age there were several boys together telling what we would do when we became men. I said, "I am going to be free and keep a store, and perhaps employ some of you boys as my clerks." Among these boys standing there was a white boy, who, when he went home, told his father what I had been saying. Shortly after a lady, when I was passing her house one day called me in and said, "Steve, is that you?" "Yes, marm." "I want to see you; I hear you have been talking some bad talk with other boys." I said, "What is it, marm?" "You said that you were going to be free some day. Now let me tell you, if you do not stop talking such talk you will be hung and nobody can possibly save you. Let me tell you, you were ordained from the foundation of the world to be a slave; that is your destiny."' He continued, 'Although I never employed any of those boys as clerks, yet from that white boy, who reported my conversation, I have bought thousands of dollars' worth of goods since. I began by selling cakes on the railway cars. I remember down in Tennessee about the year 1852 a man came and preached, and was said to have abolition ideas. The white people took him and hung him. Oh! children, if I only had had the privileges you now have! I thank God for the American Missionary Association. It took my children and made men of them. When I was a boy a good Christian man taught me to read a little. The white people discovered it and said, "You stop teaching niggers," and cut off his forefinger for teaching us to write.'"

THE LOUISIANA ASSOCIATION

BY REV. G. W. MOORE, FIELD MISSIONARY

The Louisiana State Association held its twenty-sixth annual meeting with the church at Thibodeaux, February 1-4. It was one of the best meetings in interest and attendance in the history of the association.