American Missionary | Page 8

(b.) Greatest care is required and exercised in planting new work. Let
us in fancy plant a new school in the South, as the Association does it.
Exhaustive correspondence is of course, the first step. Then the Field
Superintendent visits the field. He gathers every possible fact bearing
upon the question: The population; schools, if any; the opinions of
white and colored citizens; the religious complexion of the community,
etc., etc., etc. Now this Field Superintendent has studied maps and
statistics and school reports, and been back and forth until the whole
field is in his mind, not simply this one locality. These facts in extenso
are reported to the officers in New York. Conferences many and patient
are held over them until finally it is settled that this place rather than
some other shall be selected for the new school. Now such care as this
would be impossible except as the A.M.A., through its officers and
teachers, knew the whole field. By independent or individual effort this
could not be done. It is not the absolute, but the comparative need and
hopefulness that determine the wisdom of fixing upon a certain place
for a school or church. This comparative need can only be known by an
organized society which has frequent and abundant communication
with the whole field, and has officers whose business it is to know that
field. The experiments being tried in different places have already been
made by the A.M.A., and proved to be either absolutely failures or
relatively an uneconomic use of funds.
The saving to you who furnish the money is very great by this method
of systematic spending. Let me illustrate by a single example which

occurred only a few months ago. Two towns, only a few miles apart,
were clamoring for help in school work. We opened a school
tentatively in one of these places, as we had one missionary there
already, and I visited the other place. This is what I found: A teacher
independent of any society, and consequently knowing only a small
part of the South, had opened a school. She had labored very faithfully,
but very unwisely, putting money and years of hard work into a field
which, from its very conditions, could not be largely successful. She
had a poor building for teachers' home, a rough school-house with no
desks, a narrow strip of land, and an enrollment of about eighty pupils.
She was anxious to have the A.M.A. take the work. She informed me
that in order to secure it, it would be necessary to pay out from $2,500
to $3,000 in paying debts and putting the buildings in shape for
advantageous use. This was the case then: A fairly good house, a rough
school-house, a bit of land, and a school of less than one hundred
pupils, costing at least $2,500. At the other point under discussion,
there were five acres of land, five buildings, an enrollment of about 250
pupils, and the whole property could be secured for $600! $2,500 vs.
$600.
These are not very exceptional cases. It is only fair to the generous
constituency of this Association to know that their funds are being thus
guarded, and that those who give through independent agencies may
have their funds squandered because they cannot hold those doing this
independent work to strict account as they do the Association, nor can
these independent missionaries know the whole field as the A.M.A.
knows it. Here are nearly 500 missionaries in constant correspondence
with this office, besides the field officers appointed especially to gather
information.
(c.) Again, this systematic method of disbursing funds secures a
methodical arrangement of field work. Take the mountain field as an
illustration of this. This field has been divided into two general districts;
one having for its base the L.N.R.R., the other lying along the
Cincinnati Southern Railroad. Each department has its general
missionary, who goes back and forth in his district to lay out new work,
and to superintend the old. The missionaries, pastors and teachers are
all busy in their own places. Here then is systematic development of
this whole work. These noble missionaries in this way form a

well-organized army, and are not guerrillas fighting behind trees and
stones, and scattered hap-hazard over the mountains. We shall hold
these lines of railroad in the name of the Lord. Churches and missions
and Sunday-schools will supplant the saloons and gambling hells if you
as churches generously support this painfully urgent work. But when
school-houses shall stand in all their fertile coves and church bells shall
call to intelligent Christian worship on all those mountain sides, and the
people shall be lifted up into spiritual citizenship, it will simply be the
victory under God of the systematic planning and execution possible
only when