American Missionary | Page 2

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.
WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF THIS SUPPLY?
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.
THE INADEQUACY OF THE SUPPLY.
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