Читать книгу The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 06, June, 1889 - Various - Страница 3

We wish our friends to see as we see and hear as we hear from the field, as to the need of enlargement and the difficulty of closing schools prematurely, and hence we present some condensed facts as specimens.

McINTOSH, GA.—One hundred and nineteen in a single room and with only one teacher. No boarding department and scores must be turned away.

FLORENCE, ALA.—In a rapidly growing city, school held in our church building. Large numbers turned away for lack of room.

JONESBORO, TENN.—No boarding place for either boys or girls. Boys live in rough rooms in a barn, six in a small room. No more can possibly be accommodated.

GRAND VIEW, TENN.—Buildings crowded full; no place for any more, yet pupils are trying to crowd in.

PINE MOUNTAIN, TENN.—Situated in a region nearly a hundred miles long, without a single school except the almost worthless district schools for two or three months.

WILLIAMSBURG, KY.—Crowded full of students; more than sixty in one room large enough for only thirty.

JELLICO, TENN.—Our church and school building will not hold either our Sunday-school or those who attend the preaching services. Must be enlarged or no growth can follow.

ATHENS, TENN.—Growing town; nearly a thousand Northern people with no church suited to their needs. Some Congregationalists need aid in starting a church.

FORT BERTHOLD, DAKOTA.—Rev. C.L. Hall writes: "We have not at Fort Berthold the necessary buildings for our work. Our girls are in an old Government building out of repair, and a little cottage 16x22, and our boys and industrial teacher are crowded into the missionary's house, and a little one-story annex 14x22. There is no room for a guest to stay over night."

CHINESE IN CALIFORNIA.—Dr. Pond, the Superintendent of our Chinese Missions, makes a dollar go as far as any man in our service. He is one of the most careful men in making ends meet. But he has been caught in the cyclone and writes thus about the premature closing of the schools:

"Nothing seemed left for me to do but to notify the teachers that I could pay all bills for May, but could promise nothing more. When I had resolved to do this, the workers passed before me, one by one: most of our teachers are dependent on this slender stipend for their daily bread—teachers that had been in our service for many years, never measuring their service by their pay, but working in season and out of season, and most of the time rendering help not bargained for fully equal to that which I could have required. The helpers also passed before me. Jee Gam with his wife and five children; our brave, unselfish Low Quong; our faithful, almost saintly Chin Toy, our earnest and eloquent Yong Jin—all of whom have sacrificed their pecuniary interests for service in the mission, and all of whom, if their income from missionary work ceases, will be compelled at once to seek an income elsewhere because of those dependent upon them. Then the schools passed before me—closed and silent, most of them, the scholars scattered and the momentum from many years of earnest, unremitting effort gradually dying away."

The Daniel Hand Fund

It may be asked, Why not meet such pressing claims out of this Fund? We answer, That Fund is doing its noble work in its chosen field, among the colored people in the South, but cannot do all even in that; and it will be observed that most of these calls come from the other portions of our field, the mountains of the South, the Indians of the West, and the Chinese on the Pacific coast. Our main dependence must ever be on the churches.