THE American Missionary

Vol. LII. MARCH, 1898. No. 1.

REMOVAL.

The office of the American Missionary Association has been removed from the Bible House to the Congregational Rooms, Fourth Avenue and Twenty-second Street, New York City.

THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY, NOW A QUARTERLY.

Some of our friends write us, saying that they do not receive the "American Missionary" regularly. Perhaps these friends have not noticed the announcement that our magazine is now a quarterly and not a monthly. The last number was issued December, 1897, and this number will appear March, 1898.

LIST OF FIELD WORKERS.

We publish in this number of the magazine the annual list of our Field Workers. We take pleasure in presenting this list, believing that it will be valued, not only by the friends of these faithful workers, but by many others who will be glad to trace their names and locations. Our workers have been epoch makers. They entered upon the work during the first year of the war and followed the advance of the Union armies, and when at length the slaves became freemen, these teachers and preachers were their guides in the paths of industry, knowledge and piety. The work was opportune, for it needed a strong influence to direct their uncertain steps in the new life that broke so strangely upon them. Many of these workers have devoted well-nigh their active life to this work, and gray hairs are adorning the temples of some who entered the service in their early and vigorous youth. Their achievements are the ample reward for their self-denying and useful labors and are found in neat homes, family purity, skilled industry in shop and on farm, in well-prepared teachers and in educated and pious ministers of the gospel. Their work is multiplied by the successful toil of hundreds and perhaps thousands who have been trained by them. May God bless these workers and the peoples among whom they toil—the Emancipated Slaves, the Indians on our Western border, the Highlanders on our Southern mountains, the Chinese on the Pacific Coast, and the heroic family in far-off Alaska.

OUR INDUSTRIAL WORK.

The American Missionary Association was a pioneer in introducing industrial training and work among the freedmen of the South. In May, 1867, the Association purchased a tract of land on which the buildings at Hampton, Va., are now located, and agricultural and industrial pursuits were immediately inaugurated. In 1872 a charter was obtained and the property was turned over by the Association to a Board of Trustees, and Gen. Armstrong, with his remarkable enthusiasm and administrative skill, pushed the institution forward in its marvelous career.

At Talladega, Ala., in 1867, the Association purchased a large building, with forty acres of land attached, and the young men were set to tilling the soil under systematic training. In 1877 the Winsted Farm, of 160 acres, was secured, and ten years later the Newton Farm was added, the whole tract now containing 270 acres. On this large farm is carried forward every variety of agricultural industry in the preparation of the soil, in drainage and irrigation, rotation of crops and the raising of stock. An institute for farmers of the county is statedly held under the College auspices, and annual meetings of several days' length are conducted in three or four of the counties of the State. The varied industries of the shop are kept up with the home industries of cooking, laundry, sewing and nursing. A printing office publishes a little monthly which is very creditably printed. Similar periodicals are published in nearly all our large institutions.

At Tougaloo, Miss., the Association purchased 500 acres of land in 1869 and subsequently added another tract, until now the whole domain embraces 650 acres. A great feature of the institution is its industrial work. Here has been developed the full range of farming industries, stock raising and the cultivation of the various crops adapted to the soil, together with shops for mechanical work, embracing carpentry, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting, steam-sawing, sewing and other branches of domestic economy. Strawberries are raised and shipped to the Chicago market.

Our normal schools at Memphis, Tenn., Macon, Ga., and Williamsburg, Ky., have carpentry, printing and other industrial training for young men, and training in the various arts of home life for the young women. At Wilmington, Savannah, Thomasville, Athens, Marion, Mobile, Pleasant Hill and other normal, graded and common schools, the young women are trained in all things needed in making comfortable and pleasant homes.

In our Indian schools industries are taught and practiced. At the Santee Agency a tract of nearly 500 acres gives room that is well used for farming and stock-raising, and well-arranged shops give employment in carpentry, blacksmithing and printing and other avocations. The "Word Carrier," a monthly publication, is not surpassed in neatness of printing by any paper that comes to this office. In other Indian schools various industries are taught, especially those that relate to the care and improvement of homes.

As evidence that this industrial work is pushed forward, we may mention that in our most recently established school in the South, that at Enfield, N. C., the farm of more than a thousand acres of land (the gift of a generous Christian lady of Brooklyn, N. Y.), a large portion of which is under cultivation, gives ample employment to the student. Cotton, corn, potatoes, and the products of the field, the garden and the orchard are cultivated, while in the shops the boys are taught in blacksmithing and in carpentry, and the girls in the various kinds of domestic work, sewing, cooking and housework.

BOTH ARE RIGHT.

Mr. Booker T. Washington has written two very able articles in The Independent, setting forth the supreme importance of industrial training and work among the colored people of the South. On the other hand, Dr. T. J. Morgan, Secretary of the Baptist Home Missionary Society, has published in the same paper a carefully prepared article, emphasizing the absolute necessity of the higher education of the leaders of that people. Both these writers are correct. No people can rise unless they have the guidance and inspiration of highly educated ministers, teachers, thinkers and writers, and no people can rise if its masses are idle and unthrifty. The American Missionary Association aims, in its great work, to give due and impartial importance to both aspects of this great problem.

THE FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES.

A peculiar history is that of the five civilized tribes of Indians. It was supposed for a time that they had given the brightest example of the success of the Indian on his reservation. These tribes had forms of government modeled after that of the States. They had governors, legislators, and judges, schools and churches. Many of the members were highly educated. But the outcome has been a failure. The laws are inadequately administered, and crime has been rampant and unpunished. But now the general Government has taken the one decisive and initial step in the matter by directing that the United States courts should have civil and criminal jurisdiction over all cases arising in the Indian Territory, irrespective of race. Thus the wedge has entered, and the reservation system and the dream of Indian autonomy—an empire within an empire—will happily soon be a thing of the past.

CHINA AND THE CHINESE IN AMERICA.

China, with her vast population, has stood almost unmoved for thousands of years. But now disintegration threatens, and the nations of Europe may yet divide that great country among themselves, and a new world may arise. In such a change, the influence of Christianity must be a vital force, to guide and strengthen.

The coming of the children of China to our Western coast may be a providential element in this change and the importance of the work of the Association among these peoples on our Pacific Coast, so ready to learn, and many of them so ready to return to their native land as missionaries, may be a very significant factor in the future.

ALASKA.

In 1847, California was almost as little known and valued as Alaska was last year. But the discovery of gold in Sutton's mill-race changed the whole aspect of affairs in California, and it is now a State with a large and thrifty population, and its western shore is connected with the Atlantic seaboard by railroads, towns and cities. The discovery of gold made the change. The recent discoveries on the Yukon River in Alaska are sending hundreds and thousands of people thither, and while Alaska may never become a California in population, yet a wonderful change is taking place, the end of which no one can predict. But the native population of that distant land must not be neglected nor crushed under the pressure of hordes of gold hunters. The work at our mission station at Cape Prince of Wales should be enlarged and made more effective.