The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896

Excerpt

UP TO DATE.

For the first ten months of our current fiscal year our expenditures have been $53,000 less than for the corresponding ten months three years ago. They are $37,000 less than for the first ten months of the next year. They are $13,000 less than last year. These facts indicate the severity of our retrenchments.

We have most earnestly hoped for such a large increase of benefactions as would greatly reduce our debts. Up to this time our receipts are nearly $25,000 greater than at this date last year, but they are $11,000 less than at this time year before last. That year closed with a debt on its operations of $66,000, and last year with an additional debt of $30,000. Thus far this year we have not only saved ourselves from debt, but have gained $8,000 on the debts of the previous two years.

This is a favorable difference of $38,000 between our financial standing now and that at this date last year. This advance has been made possible only by the sympathetic and generous responses from many givers and churches which have cheered the presentation of our work. Very many others have promised future aid which will lift the burden. But, for the time being, we have had to maintain our standing chiefly by making continued reductions of expenditures. This has been a difficult and sorrowful task. In answer to numberless appeals in behalf of the ignorant and suffering, we have had to explain constantly that the refusals of the Association were due, not to lack of sympathy, but to lack of means. In general, the Association can administer only the means confided to its charge. Its historic and permanent policy has been against incurring a debt. Its careful and conservative forecast two years ago encountered, like all similar benevolent work in all the denominations, a sudden and serious reduction of receipts. The next year it provided a much diminished schedule of expenditures, but this was met with a further additional reduction of support.

Therefore, the task now set to the Association is to carry on only what work it can while recovering what has been already expended in these mission fields. We believe this recovery can be made. We are most grateful to the churches, mission societies, and individual givers who have so generously come to our help in this difficult and trying year. From the promising responses which reach us, we can but believe that very many more are planning for the relief of these missions in their distress. Just now public attention is concentrated on national issues of so perplexing and doubtful a character that every enterprise, whether of business or of benevolence, waits upon their settlement. We hope and pray that the coming months may lift the clouds and pour prosperity again throughout all these vast mission fields.

At the time these lines reach the eyes of most of our readers, only thirty days will remain of the fiftieth year in the work of the American Missionary Association.

We look forward to these few days with anxious hope....