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