1889.]

We are gratified at the eagerness and hopefulness with which our Congregational brethren are pushing church work and school work among the whites in the South. There is a Congregational association and a Congregational conference in Georgiaone composed of "come-outer" or recalciup trant Methodists, and the other made men first sent out for work among the freedmen or those who followed in their wake.

Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Congregational, Friends, Mennonite, Episcopalian, Lutheran, .

of

Unitarian, Uncertain,

Total,

The hope and prospect of their union and then reunion with the great body of Congregationalists at the North seemed not only to give a coloring, but an inspiration and impetus, to the great recent meeting of the American Home Missionary Society at Saratoga. "It said to these southern brethren who are moving in the direction of our polity, Here is our hand; we greet you in the name of Christ."

Well, let us rejoice at every good church or school planted at the South, where it is needed. The harvest is great; the laborers are too few.

But while they are doing so much in a part of the country where they scarcely had any constituency before the war, is it not painful to reflect that we, who were one with our southern brethren in fellowship and labor before the war, have done so little to help them since the war? Let us take a new departure, or rather renew our diligence to dissipate the illiteracy in the South, and, without attempting to crowd out or supersede any other church, certainly not any southern church, as fast as men and women will furnish us the means let us go forward to plant churches in such great prosperous states as Alabama, Georgia and others, and thus help to educate, elevate and evangelize the people as God shall give us opportunity.

A gentleman of our Church, in answer to inquiries as to how much Presbyterians are doing for the Indians, received from the Secretary of the Interior the following table, showing the number of Indian children for whose education the United States government contracts with the various Christian denominations respectively:

207

2098

377

232

252

22

58

43

13

149

3244

In view of this, the writer very naturally asks, "Can we Presbyterians not do more than we are doing?"

We are very ready to answer most enphatically that our wealthy and powerful Church can do more and ought to do more than it is doing for the Indians and for multitudes of other needy and perishing people. At the same time, it is most proper and needful that Presbyterians should know just how much the Church is really doing-a showing which will differ widely from the above inadequate and unfair exhibit. So we give the figures.

We have 536 children in four day-schools in New Mexico, while the government pays us by contract for only 125. Out of 84 in the school at Tucson, the government pays us for 75. Out of 129 in our school at Goodwill mission, Sisseton agency, the government pays for 100. We have 1074 pupils in the schools in the Indian Territory, and the tribal governments, not the United States government, pay for 300. We have 225 in day-schools in Alaska, not counting Sitka, for which we get no help whatever from government. In the Sitka training-school we have 170 children or more, and the government declines to contract with us for more than 75, and last year proposed even to reduce the appropriation, which was retained in full only by dint of repeated visits and representations to the Indian department.

In all, we have 2441 children in Indian schools, and get government help for 408, which is the correct figure, although the above table credits us with only 377. The Presbyterian Church is thus doing for Indian education and evangelization more than sixfold what the above official state

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ment would lead an inquirer to believe; while that part of its work which is thus unrecognized is the very part for which it. deserves most credit, because it is done at its own expense. It is possible that the same may be the case in regard to the numbers. credited in the above table to other denominations, though as to this we have no information.

How many more Indian children the Roman Catholics are educating than the government allows them contracts for we do not know; but we do know that, if the Board had contracts for all it is educating, its number would surpass that of the Roman Catholics as given above. And it is further

true that the Board has asked for contracts for larger numbers than it has, without

success.

Severe disaster has just befallen two more of our missionaries.

Rev. Jacob Baay writes from Smith Centre, Kan., as follows:

On the night of June 25 a severe wind-storm wrecked our church building. You can judge somewhat of the power of the wind when I tell

you that a newly-laid sidewalk, for half a block, just opposite our church, was picked up and part of it carried over the whole block and thrown on the block south of it. Without a cent of money, people very busy in harvest, I commenced cleaning out the fallen plaster, and by Saturday had the building straightened up and cleaned out for worship on Sabbath. They are finishing plastering now. The pay will come next. I do not think that $100 will cover it.

Rev. T. Brouillette attended General Assembly as Commissioner from Puget Sound Presbytery, and now writes from Napavine, Washington:

We had gone to Winlock, a village five miles away, to celebrate the 4th, and on reaching home in the evening found the house, barn and outhouses burned down. It was a hard sight to look upon, and our feelings may be imagined more easily than I can describe them. We lost everything but the light summer clothes we bad on at the time. Our loss is about $1500— all our economies of ten years. It will be hard to get on without my library.

[September,

These are sore additions to a missionary's usual experience, none too easy at the best, and call for sympathy and help.

Alaska has a new governor, the Hon. Lyman E. Knapp, of Middlebury, Vt. He has just arrived at Sitka and assumed his functions. It augurs well for the interests of home missions in that far-away region that he is a Christian man, a member of a Congregational church. He is by virtue of his office a member of the territorial Board of Education, and we doubt not that he will be found fair in his handling and hearty in his help of all the schools, both the Board's and the government's.

Dr. Jackson writes:

Since the governor has arrived and with his whole family regularly attends church, it is creating a marked change in public sentiment. It now looks as if it might become fashionable to attend church.

ILLITERACY AND EDUCATION AT THE SOUTH.

Dr. Hartzell, corresponding secretary of the Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education

Society, in the conclusion of the twenty-first annual report uses these words:

The great mass of colored people in the Church are poor and ignorant, as also are a large proportion of the whites, especially in the central and further South. Illiteracy to an alarming extent prevails. The dire effects of slavery in many respects remain; race prejudices and problems are everywhere. In most of the territory the public school systems are such only in name; thousands of pulpits are occupied by incompetent men; schools of all grades for the people, especially for the masses of both races, need better teachers, and multitudes are perishing for lack of knowledge, because there are not even partially-qualified teachers to instruct them. Such is the field in the midst of which the Church, through this society, is seeking to develop a system of Christian schools sufficiently comprehensive and efficient to do her share toward saving and elevating needy millions.

Dr. J. F. Spence, president of the uni versity at Athens, Tenn., speaking more particularly of the whites, says:

1889.]

In the sixteen southern states there are four millions of whites and nearly two million colored children and youth of school age, of whom it can be said "not one third have school privileges."

Illiteracy is widespread. We read from the government statistics that there are two millions of voters in the United States who are unable to read their ballots. Three fourths of these illiterate voters live in the South, and 750,000 of them are white men!.

One third of the nation's territory contains three fourths of the nation's illiteracy. The last census shows that in the state of Tennessee there were 72,000 adult white women unable to read or write; and in the state of North Carolina 95,000 wholly illiterate. In the state of Tennessee there are nearly 50,000 white men unable to read their ballots. The number of white illiterates in the South is simply appalling. In the state of Tennessee, 210,227; Kentucky, 214,497; Virginia, 114,692; North Carolina, 192,032; Georgia, 128,934; Alabama, 111,767; Mississippi and Arkansas, 151,990 illiterate whites over ten years of age.

Thus in one half of the southern states there are 1,124,139 white persons over ten years of age wholly unable to read the Scriptures or write their names.

President Garfield once said, "Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained in this or any other country."

The illiteracy of the South is a national peril. Its removal is a national problem.

Dr. Haygood has a scheme for a southern university for girls at Sheffield, Ala. We learn from the Alabama Christian Advocate that the land company at Sheffield donates sixty acres of land and $100,000 to start the

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movement, besides $25,000 to beautify the grounds under the direction of a skillfui landscape gardener. That is a fine start, and we trust Dr. Haygood and his coadjutors will have the strong help of everybody.

The above shows what the feeling in the South is about female education. It shows that our new school at Asheville was not projected any too soon. It shows that with this institution and the three colleges, too poorly endowed, and the feeble but promising academies and other schools in the Synod of Tennessee, we have as yet scarcely fairly begun the great work of education in the central South; that it should not only engage the zeal of the women in our Church, as it has done, but that it also demands more and more the help of men, and men of wealth. When we see what we have done, we thank God and take courage; but when we see what others have done, we find little occasion for self-congratulation. Let us begin to do better.

Dr. Spence adds:

A fact full of encouragement is found in the good quality of the native southern stock of whites. In no place on earth do we find better brain and brawn than in that large area of country known as the mountainous central South. The per cent. of recent ignorant foreign immigration is remarkably small. The great mass of white people, cultured or illiterate, is of the Scotch-Irish, British or German descent, thoroughly Americanized, and respond most readily to educational efforts. They have good Protestant moral fibre, full of grit and pluck.

Many of our white youths in the mountains of the South are ambitious, and manifest a real hunger and thirst for an education.

Visitors to the Paris Exposition remark that nothing more delicious in quaint variety can be imagined than the kindergarten work of Japanese children. The work done by Japanese schools for the blind and for deaf mutes is also most interesting. A relief alphabet is used in pressed paper, and the letters are beautifully reproduced in wood by the pupils. The skill of the deaf mutes in wood carving, painting, modelling in clay and in designing for

ceramics, textiles and iron is almost phenomenal. The statistics accompanying the exhibit show that there are nearly three million children and seventy thousand teachers in the elementary schools of Japan. When the inquisitive minds of these people are thus on the alert, how intensely active should the Church be in presenting to them the truth as it is in Jesus!-The Missionary.