Читать книгу The Choctaw Freedmen and the Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy - Robert Elliott Flickinger - Страница 104

The Board of Missions for Freedmen of the Presbyterian church merits the intelligent sympathy and cordial co-operation not only of our whole church but of all the friends who favor christian education among the dependent colored people in the south part of our land.

It educates ministers and teachers, and supports them in their work. It builds academies, seminaries and colleges, and aids in the erection of churches and manses. Its 24 boarding schools, having normal and industrial departments, are distributed so that there is one or more in every southern state.

It now owns and controls school, church and manse properties that represent a value of one and a half million dollars.

Its permanent investments, that bring an annual income for the promotion of its work however, are yet only $200,202.50. In these days of big business, the evidence of unusual prosperity, it ought to have an endowment of one million dollars.

Education is the most costly of all philanthropic enterprises. The following reason recently expressed for a large endowment of the College Board applies with equal force to the Freedmen's Board.

"A million dollar corporation is now considerably more than twice as efficient, as an instrument to accomplish results than one of a half million. In this day of large things the men who are interested in education, prefer to employ as their agent, an organization whose resources are large enough to place its permanent and financial stability beyond question. A bank with a million dollars of capital has considerable advantage over one having only a quarter of a million. The law, 'To him that hath shall be given,' still prevails among the children of men."

The members of the Freedmen's Board have been selected, because of their manifest interest in the educational and spiritual welfare of the colored people; and they are conscientiously striving, to the best of their ability, to promote the interests of the Freedmen, in behalf of the great body of generous hearted christian people whom they represent.

The work of the Freedmen's Board has hitherto by its charter been limited to the Freedmen in southern states. At the next General Assembly, an effort will be made to extend its work, so as to include the negroes in the northern states.