Various - The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 04, April, 1889

President Harrison's Inaugural gives in a brief sentence the remedy for the great Southern difficulty, viz. EDUCATION.

"If, in any of the States, the public security is thought to be threatened by ignorance among the electors, the obvious remedy is education."

The Southern situation has been vigorously discussed in the last few months on the platform, and in the magazines and newspapers, and the conclusion to which the minds of thoughtful men is rapidly coming is that announced in the President's Message.

But the remedy will not apply itself, and the means for an adequate supply of educational facilities must be furnished promptly or the time will soon come when the case will be hopeless.

1. The public school funds of the States themselves. This must be the main source. We recognize the fact that the Southern States are comparatively poor, and the further fact, so greatly to their credit, that some of them are paying as large a per cent. on the assessed value of their property as do some of the Northern States. But all the same, the supply of school houses and teachers is utterly inadequate.

2. From the National Government. The Government has done something in this direction; in giving lands to the States for educational purposes and in establishing the Freedmen's Bureau. It is urged to do more by the passage of an Educational Bill. It has been said that there are objections to every possible way of planting a hill of corn. But a good deal of corn has been planted, and it grows. There are objections to any possible Educational Bill that can be framed. Some of the funds will be wasted, some will be expended in favoritism and some will be neglected and not expended at all. But yet a large share of the money will be spent and well spent, and the great good will over-balance the minor evils. But even the appropriation, under any Educational Bill that has been proposed, will be but a drop in the bucket.

3. Another source is from Northern charitable funds. The North owes an immeasurable debt to both races in the South. It emancipated the slave, and in so doing, assumed its share of the responsibility for the consequences. It cannot shrink from the duty under the plea that it is a Southern question, or even because some of the people at the South protest against its interference.

The duty of the North is two-fold—educational and religious. It is bound to aid in primary, industrial, normal and higher education. It has the teachers and it has the money. It has a special obligation to impart religious instruction. The public school funds of the South and the money of the National Government cannot be applied to distinctively religious education. But there is no such restriction on the Northern schools in the South; they can give religious instruction in all departments, and they can train up religious teachers and preachers. The North, too, has an urgent call to found pure and intelligent churches among the masses in the South.

The North has not been idle in these respects. The public in both sections of the country have, we believe, a faint conception of the amount of money already expended in the South by Northern charitable individuals and societies. For example, the American Missionary Association, including some institutions which it founded and for a time sustained, has expended $7,124,151.26; and including, also, books and clothing and the amount collected and spent in connection with its boarding departments, the total sum, as near as can be computed, would be not far from ten millions of dollars since 1862; and this money has been economically and wisely expended. It is due to the Association and to those who have supplied it with the funds, that the grandeur of its work should be recognized. But, if now, to all this is added the amount expended in the South by other religious bodies and by the Peabody and Slater and Hand funds, it will be seen that a mighty force is at work, unobtrusive as it is helpful, arousing no antagonism in the South, and blessing in its rebound the benevolent contributors at the North.

But, as the disciples said in regard to the five barley loaves and the two fishes, " What are these among so many? " The means in both cases are utterly inadequate, and the need of multiplying is as imperative here as it was on the shore of Galilee. We have a Negro population of eight millions, which has doubled in the last twenty years, and increases at the rate of six hundred per day—requiring, if adequately supplied, the founding of a new Fisk University or Talladega College every twenty-four hours. There are 1,500,000 illiterate voters in the South, and how can the North, while admitting with President Harrison, that if the public security is threatened by this ignorance the remedy is education, withhold its share of the necessary means?

How can the churches of the North, who know that the future destiny of these ignorant masses depends upon their religious far more than upon their secular education, refuse the needed gifts for that purpose? Here is where the miracle wrought on the shore of Galilee needs to be repeated. Our Lord and Master is not here now in bodily presence, and he entrusts to his church the duty of multiplying the bread of life for these vast perishing masses. The churches of the North must awake to this great duty. If done at all, it must be done promptly. Present means are wholly inadequate. Every individual Christian at the North should feel his personal responsibility and should respond by a great increase of his contributions for this purpose. It is not too much to say that the religious influences sent from the North in school, in industrial training, in the preparation of Christian ministers and teachers, and in the planting of Christian churches, will well-nigh constitute the pivotal point of the whole movement. A loss now can never be regained, but the achievements of the present should be a stimulus for the future. The North withheld neither treasure nor blood to save the Union and to free the slave. Treasure and toil will now save the South and the Nation.

What proportion of the funds contributed by living donors to missionary societies comes directly from church collections? We presume the answer from a large majority of the contributors would be, three-fourths or four-fifths. But the curious fact is, that, for the three years, 1886, 1887 and 1888, the average contributions to the American Missionary Association from church collections are forty-seven per cent., from Sunday-schools seven per cent., from Woman's Missionary Societies five per cent., from individual donors forty-one per cent. It thus appears that less than one-half the total sum comes from collections in the churches. Another curious fact is, that these receipts directly from the churches are uniform, not differing to the extent of three per cent. in the past three years. So that, with all the importunity and pressure, the plate collections in the churches have not increased.

Another curious fact is, that one-third of the amount donated by individuals is for special objects, mainly for the increase of plant, and thus adds to the cost of running expenses, and is so far forth a burden and not a relief on regular appropriations for current expenses.

What, therefore, is the stable reliance of missionary societies on which to make annual appropriations? It cannot be on legacies. It cannot be on the special contributions of individuals. It ought to be based on church collections. These should carry current expenses, and the additional plant should come from outside sources. If this be so, and the societies are to increase their work at all from year to year; if, indeed, they are to meet the additional cost of the new plant given by individuals, then the church collections should be increased proportionately.