mutually helpful and stimulating. An Indian classmate is kindly,
thoughtfully treated by his colored compeers. A race that has
been led is leading another. The “House-Father,” chief of our
sixty Sioux boys, is a negro. With perhaps finer mental and moral
texture, the red race does not produce half enough to feed itself;
the rougher, stronger blacks have not thrown a pauper upon the
country, and raise raw material for the mills of Christendom.
With benevolent intentions we have diminished and weakened the
one; using the other only for selfish purposes, it has multiplied
and grown stronger. Bringing both races under the care of the
American Missionary Association is most fitting and wise. Both are
peculiarly the concern of the American people, are providentially
committed to our care, and are a part of us. In doing for them we
are doing for ourselves, our children, and our country.
On the Indian girl rests most heavily the weight of past and
present influences. When, in October, 1881, I took 25 Indian boys
and five girls back to their Dakota homes, after three years’
training at Hampton, the former were readily placed in rooms by
themselves, away from the camp, employed in agency work-shops at
the trades they had learned, and thus helped on greatly. The girls
could not be so isolated; they had no trades, and though they
could make their own garments and do housework, there were not
suitable situations for them; they returned to their mothers and
grandmothers, who might sell them to the brave who would pay the
highest price in ponies for them.
One of the five, an earnest Christian, wrote: “Hard to be good
woman out here.” She finally married a white man of good repute.
Another is reported as a most satisfactory house servant in the
family of a missionary; another keeps her father’s store and books.
He is one of the best and most thrifty of Indians; but the family
live in one room in a log house. Two others, younger, are waiting
an opportunity to return to Hampton for two years’ more training,
with a view to becoming teachers.
Teaching is the career for Indian girls, as it has been the one way
for colored girls of the South to be more than drudges; there it is
the only field for a womanly ambition. The increase of educational
work for Indians creates some hope for their girls, on whom rests
the future of their race.
There is a tendency to increase our Indians’ course of study to
longer than three years. One set having returned, the Indians,
whose parental feelings are tender and strong, are more trustful
of us, and readily consent to a longer absence of their children.
One boy has already returned at his own expense, and another is
saving his money for the purpose, both to learn more and to perfect
themselves in their trade of shoemaking. The sooner the Indian can
stand without government aid, the better. Any boy can return who
will pay his way back. This gives a motive to work, and creates
appreciation of his opportunities.
For the practical necessities of Indian life their training should
be practical.
We give half the day to study and half to labor. An education which
does not fit them to take care of themselves may do them more harm
than good.
I think that when charity and the government are linked together
for Indian work, the former should erect the buildings and maintain
the teachers, the latter supply the wants of the body. United
States beef and flour and shoes are as good as any body’s, but
government employés, as our civil service stands, are not the men
to elevate the Indian. The telling factor in all work for men is
the person who does it. Unless that shall be supplied from the pure
fountains of our Christian civilization it will not, as a rule, be
supplied at all. I refer to the educational work at the agencies;
there the government day and boarding schools should be strictly
responsible to the controlling power, and their moral value will
be that of the agent in charge. Missionary institutions should
stimulate these, and should be conducted by superior men and women
directly responsible to their Eastern supporters. I call it sham
missionary work to send out Christian teachers to be supported
on public pay. The churches who do that, and some do, are doing
nothing. Let us first send our own teachers for the Indians, and
then fit them to become their own teachers; to make the teachers is
to make the people.
The free Negro schools in the South are vitalized by a number of
strong central institutions under Northern men that train the
picked growth of the race as teachers. This is, I think, the true
relation of Eastern charity to the Indian. There should be an
excellent boarding and industrial school at each important agency
for this purpose. Getting fifteen dollars a month of government for
food and clothing for each pupil need not in the least weaken the
independence or morals of teachers. The friends of the Indian will
do the rest.
The situation is critical, the opportunity is great; the rising
tide of public sentiment, the movement at Washington, the eagerness
as well as the exigency of the red man mean much.
But this work needs a leader; it will drag if thrown on an
overloaded man. The man is as much as the money; the one will bring
the other, both by wise appeals and good work that will commend
itself to the country.
For more than a century Indians rejected our civilization; now
their thinking men, for they are a race of thinkers, forecast the
future and wish their children taught the white man’s way as their
only hope.
They do not choose this; they are compelled to it. Hundreds,
thousands, are waiting for an education. They beg for what they
once refused.
* * * * *
THE CHINESE.
* * * * *
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.
Your Committee on the Chinese Mission of the Association have
agreed upon the following report:
There are three points which demand special thanksgiving to God.
First. The manifestly wise policy of the Association on the whole
question of Christianizing the Chinese. This appears (1) in the
noble stand it has taken and the work it is doing for education and
Christianity on our Pacific coast, thus uttering a perpetual rebuke
to the intolerable selfishness and barbarism of political parties
in the passage of the anti-Chinese bill; (2) in the admirable
disposition made of the proposed mission in China itself.
The desire of earnest Christian Chinamen in California that a
mission be started in Southern China, which might be a “rallying
centre” of Christian influence for converted men on their return
home, and from which they could “go forth to carry the gospel
to their countrymen,” is a desire which must commend itself to
reason; and the readiness of these Christian Chinamen to aid
such a movement with contributions of their own is worthy of
the highest commendation. Moreover, that Hong Kong, that great
gateway of Chinese emigration, that district wrenched away from
the Chinese by English selfishness and rapacity forty years ago,
in the ignominious struggle of the opium war, should be the place
agreed upon for that mission, seemed peculiarly fitting. But that
this Association should be the body to establish the mission
there, thus distracting attention from its great peculiar work at
home, and dividing the contributions of American Congregational
churches between two foreign Congregational boards in China, could
hardly seem wise to any. How gratifying then to learn that this
Association, holding to the purpose of no more missions abroad, has
successfully arranged with the American Board to accept and carry
forward this movement at Hong Kong. The principle of simplicity
of arrangement and economical division of labor among our great
benevolent societies is thus endorsed once for all.
Second. The second point calling for thanksgiving is the marked
success of the work among the Chinese on the Pacific coast. There
is no more promising work for China, as a whole, in all the world,
than that now being done by the California Chinese Mission. Its
fifteen schools, with thirty-one teachers, eleven of whom are
converted Chinamen, twenty-five hundred scholars—an increase of
almost a thousand over last year, and a hundred and six conversions
to Christ, all show that it is no longer a mere experiment. The
efficient Christian organization known as the Congregational
Association of Christian Chinese, with its missionary spirit and
liberal contributions, demonstrate the fact on our own soil that
the Chinamen, like others, when touched by the spirit of Christ,
are a power for righteousness.
Third. The recent influx of 25,000 Chinamen, hastening to reach our
shores before the pagan bill of Congress should go into effect, has
suddenly increased the demand for laborers and money.
The work on the Pacific coast ought not to receive less than
$13,000 the coming year, that the 125,000 Chinese already in the
country may, during the ten years of national disgrace, be quietly
fitted to become a great Christian power for the elevation of their
countrymen.
While the anti-Chinese outcry from California has filled the
ears of the nation, your Committee wishes to recognize with
thanksgiving the noble work which many of the Christians of that
State have done and are doing for China and for Christ. The Chinese
missions of the Association are at present restricted to the
State of California. But your Committee are impressed with the
importance to the Association, in this part of its work, of full
and exact information as to the condition of the Chinese population
throughout the country, and as to the work done in their behalf by
various Christian agencies, and especially by the local churches
of various denominations. And we recommend that a systematic
inquiry be instituted on this subject, the result of which shall be
reported at the next annual meeting.
JAMES BRAND, _Chairman_.
* * * * *
ADDRESS OF REV. JAMES BRAND, D.D.
MR. PRESIDENT: At one of the former meetings of this Association,
one speaker, in pleading for China, proposed that the audience go
with him, in imagination, to the Chinese quarter in San Francisco,
in order that from a personal inspection of the thrift, economy
and order manifested there he might get an argument for Christian
sympathy and support in Chinese education. They did so and the
argument was good. At the same meeting, another speaker, pleading
the same cause, proposed to the audience to go with him to a more
sacred place than the Chinese quarter, namely, the battle-fields
of the war, that he might gather from the memory and suggestions
of those hallowed places an argument for the maintenance of the
national and Christian principles contended for in that war, and
hence an argument for the Christian treatment of the Chinese.
Now, in getting the purchase for another argument for the same
unhappy people, I propose that you go for a few moments with me to
a more sacred place still than either the Chinese quarter or the
battle-fields of the war. I mean that upper room where, eighteen
centuries ago, occurred that last, long interview between Christ
and his disciples, before the crucifixion. Let us reverently step
in there and stand behind that little circle of the eleven. Let
us catch the spirit and the suggestions of that tender and holy
scene. The Divine One is speaking his last words to those men who
are soon to go forth and undertake the conversion of the world.
What is his most weighty thought? It is that which was expressed in
his closing prayer: “As thou hast sent me into the world even so
have I sent them into the world;” that is, the mission of Christian
men in the world was to be the same as His own. It was to be a
mission of vicarious suffering and service for all the world. Men
were dying in their sins in all countries. The nations were sitting
in the shadow of death. Generations were tramping on, each in the
track of the others, to hopeless doom. They did not know God’s
redeeming love. It is this spectacle of humanity rushing on to a
hopeless eternity, that puts that solemn and intense tone into the
Saviour’s voice as He talks and prays. They were to be men like
Christ. They were to go into all the world, bearing the love of God.
This is what the world needs. This world of faith in force, and
faith in diplomacy, and faith in partisan politics; this world of
faith in intellectual skill; this world of brain power, elaborating
expedients; this world of self-seeking refinement; these nations
that are under the shadow of death are all sending up through the
gloom of their moral miseries the inarticulate cry to God for just
this Christlike mission of loving men, to the world. This, then,
is the warrant; this is the groundwork of my plea for China. It is
not that the Chinese are very worthy, or that our nation ought to
be very consistent with its fundamental principles, but it is that
400,000,000 souls need a Saviour from sin, and we, whose mission
is identical with Christ’s, have something to do in the case. This
applies, of course, to all nations as well as the Chinese, but I
plead for a special application of the principle to China on two
grounds:
I. Because of the vastness and need of China and the peculiar
relation it now sustains to ourselves. What have we done for her
people? We have shut our door in their face. We have said no poor
laboring man of China shall feed his children on our shore for ten
years to come. Three hundred and thirty thousand of them will have
gone into eternity before these ten black years shall have expired!
Do we not hear the echo of that tender voice from that upper room,
“Inasmuch as ye did it unto these, ye have done it unto me”?
II. I plead for China because of the wrongs she has suffered at
nominally Christian hands, and especially at the hands of the
United States Government.
The anti-Chinese bill is a violation of treaty, a violation of
the spirit of impartial justice to foreigners, a violation of our
own interest, because opposed to the spirit of Christ, which when
resisted always reacts. It was carried through, like the opium
trade, for present personal advantage on a small scale. It is the
child of partisan politics, born out of a fear lest other foreign
laborers, finding themselves underbidden by the more economical
Chinese, might raise an outcry, and disturb the equilibrium of
party power. Hence, to gain votes, one party will sacrifice
national policy and Christian principle, and the other will do the
same rather than lose votes. Thus China must be affronted, and
Christianity dishonored before the world. It is not, however, the
American people as such who have done this thing—thank God for
that! Whenever the national conscience has spoken at all on the
subject, it has spoken against it. This anti-Chinese legislation
is the adoption, in America, of the old barbaric cast-off policy
of exclusion, which China herself has pursued for centuries toward
other nations. China is going forward: we have gone back.
Now what is to be the result in this case? It must be _reaction_.
There must come reaction against American commerce, losing more
than it gains, reaction against American integrity as to treaty
stipulations, awakening Chinese distrust and hate, casting a
blight upon Western civilization and, worst of all, defeating
American Christianity.
The great American nation has divided at the Chinese quarter. Say
what you will, that Chinese quarter in San Francisco has become the
great moral _divortium_ or water-shed of America where Christian
and anti-Christian sentiment divide. On one side the Chinese
workman is mobbed, excluded; on the other he is educated and led
to Christ. On the one side men act for party ends and call the
Chinaman a “heathen dog;” on the other they recognize him with
all his infirmities as a man for whom Christ died, and call him
brother. This is a tremendous responsibility we assume when we thus
prejudice a fifth part of the human family against the religion of
Christ.
Now, then, if we make special pleas for the Indian because we
have manifestly wronged him and ought to make amends; if we are
under special obligation to the freedman because we have sinned
against him, or because he may become an important link between our
Christianity and perishing Africa, why is not the same argument
good for the Chinese on the Pacific coast? Surely, in God’s sight,
these ten black years ought to be ten very bright years for the
Christian schools for Chinamen in California. China ought to have
at the end of that time a larger force of native missionaries
trained up on the Pacific slope than all the Christian workers
employed in that great empire to-day. The truth is, we are all
taking one side or the other of this question. In deciding which it
shall be let us keep in mind the noble sentiment of Henry Richard.
Speaking on the opium question in the House of Commons, he said,
“I am not ashamed to say that I am one of those who believe that
there is a God who ruleth in the kingdom of men, and that it is not
safe for a community, any more than an individual, recklessly and
habitually to affront those great principles of truth and justice
and humanity, on which, I believe, He governs the world. And we may
be quite sure of this, that, in spite of our pride of place and
power, in spite of our vast possessions and enormous resources,
in spite of our boasted force by land and sea, if we come into
conflict with that Power we shall be crushed like an egg-shell
against the granite rock.”
Better still, let us listen again for the serious tone of the
Divine prayer in that upper room. “I pray for them; I pray not
for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they
are thine. And now I am no more in the world but these are in the
world. Holy Father, keep them!” While the shadow of to-morrow’s
cross was already darkening his path, his thought was not for
himself but for _them_. “These are in the world,” and to be in it,
to work, to choose, to suffer in it—“in the world,” and so are
tempted to use the world’s tactics, tempted to lose sight of their
great commission and to become callous to the world’s needs—“in
the world,” and so they have to settle momentous questions—“in the
world,” having to meet its pains, its storms, its falsehood, its
curse, its fascinations, and so, may lose sight of the claims of
thy kingdom of love: Holy Father, keep them! _Keep them!_
* * * * *
REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON FINANCE.
Your Committee on Finance beg leave to report that they have
examined the Treasurer’s statements of receipts and expenditures
and find them properly certified as correct by the auditors. Also
the trial balance, and the list of trust funds, and the books of
accounts are so certified.
The trust funds appear to be securely invested and wisely
administered for the purposes for which they were created.
We find that the accounts of the Treasurer are carefully kept
and that the control and disbursement of the current funds of
the Association are conducted in a thoroughly systematic and
business-like manner, with ample safeguards against error and loss.
Your Committee take pleasure in commending the wisdom, fidelity and
economy of the officers and Executive Committee in the financial
administration of the great trusts confided to their care.
It is gratifying to find that the expenditures of the Association
have been so carefully guarded and distributed that for six
consecutive years last past they have not exceeded the annual
income. During this period a large indebtedness previously incurred
has been wholly paid and no new indebtedness created in any
department of its work.
The balance in the treasury is $789.83, after paying all bills due
to September 30.
There is every reason to expect that this satisfactory condition of
things will be continued through the generosity of the churches to
this cause.
At the last annual meeting, your Committee on Finance recommended
that the churches increase their contributions from $243,000 to
$300,000 for the then current year; and the reports submitted at
this meeting show that this was done within $3,000. This additional
sum of $54,000 has been used partly in completing the college
buildings at Talladega, Ala., and Strieby Hall, at Tougaloo, Miss.
It has also greatly helped in the support of needy students,
besides materially increasing the working force and general church
and school efficiency.
It is worthy of remark that almost every dollar of this increased
contribution has done effective work in the mission fields,
since, while the receipts for the past two years have been more
than $100,000 larger than in the two years next preceding them,
the expense of raising and disbursing these funds and managing
the affairs of the Association has increased less than $400 per
annum, thus showing that the Association is fully equipped for
a much larger work without additional cost for the machinery of
administration. This fact constitutes a strong appeal to the
benevolent who wish their gifts applied without waste or diminution
to the good ends for which they are bestowed.
These more ample facilities for church and educational work bring
with them larger demands for funds, so that simply to preserve its
efficiency in fields already occupied the Association requires
an annual increase in contributions. Besides, new demands are
continually made for new foundations in different places.
From the reports and papers submitted at this meeting, we gather
that $5,000 more than last year will be needed to increase the work
among the Chinese in California; $20,000 more for the enlargement
of the work among the Indians; $25,000 more for the support of
schools and churches among the Freedmen, and $25,000 more towards
the building of Smith College at Little Rock, Ark.
In view of all these facts and reasons, the urgency of which all
friends of the Association will readily appreciate, your Committee
recommend that at least $50,000 be added to the current income of
the Association for general uses during the next fiscal year, and
express the earnest hope that the further sum of $25,000 may be
obtained for special purposes, making a grand total for 1882–3 of
$375,000.
J. G. W. COWLES, _Chairman_.
* * * * *
PETITION OF PRESIDENT E. A. WARE AND OTHERS.
REFERRED TO THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
We, the undersigned ministers and teachers, representing the
work of the American Missionary Association, mainly in the State
of Georgia, respectfully petition the annual meeting of the
Association about to assemble at Cleveland, Ohio, that they appoint
a committee of five, more or less, who shall report at the annual
meeting in 1883 with reference to the policy that should govern the
Association and its representatives in matters suggested by the
following questions:
First. Is it the mission of the Association to work solely among
the three despised races, so called, or through its work for
these races to labor for the upbuilding of other people without
distinction of race as rapidly as they can be brought within the
sphere of its influence?
Second. Should it or should it not be the policy of the Association
to establish separate churches or schools for different races?
Third. What should be the relations of comity between the
Association and our other benevolent societies when undertaking to
do missionary work of the same nature in the same field?
Fourth. What light, if any, is shed upon the foregoing questions by
the history of the foundation and early work of the Association?
We would suggest that the committee be instructed to invite
correspondence from the officers of the Association, from the
officers of our other missionary societies, from all workers in the
field, and from others interested, and that the report be published
in the religious press at least two months before the annual
meeting of 1883.
* * * * *
EXCHANGE OF MISSIONS.
BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.
At the regular meeting of the Executive Committee of the American
Missionary Association, held Sept. 11, 1882, the following
resolution was adopted:
_Resolved_, That a committee of three be appointed to invite a
conference with the Am. Board respecting the advisability of
transferring our African work to the Board, and assuming the work
among the Indians now carried on by the Board.