Excerpt
FINANCIAL.
In some respects our report is favorable. Our receipts for the eight months ending May 31st are $18,487.18 more than for the same period last year. If the Association had received funds from the Government this year for the eight months, $10,127.95, the receipts would have been 28,615.13 more than last year. The payments for the eight months have been $11,315.16 less than last year. With this showing the debt of the current year to May 31st is $19,419.98 as over against $49,222.32 to May 31st of last year, but as this debt of the current year is to be added to the $45,028.11 due at the close of the year September 30th, 1893, it makes the total debt May 31, $64,448.09. Those who have read the statements made in the Missionarywill recall that in the month of March our debt was reduced $10,718.47, and in April $4,847.40, but the fear was then expressed, which has since been realized, that these reductions might not continue. The month of May shows an increase of the debt, bringing it now to $64,448.09. We appeal most earnestly to the friends of the Association to stay the progress of this debt.
SCHOOL ANNIVERSARIES.
We begin in this issue of the Missionary to print the reports of the anniversary exercises of our schools. They will occupy largely this number and the next, and will appear somewhat in the order of time in which the schools closed. When the whole are published, they will make an impression of the vastness, variety and usefulness of the work. It will show institutions of higher grade in nearly all the States of the South, normal and graded schools in nearly all the large cities, and parochial schools connected with many of the churches. The industrial feature of these schools will appear most conspicuously in the details given.
In the account of the larger schools, Fisk University, Talladega College, Tougaloo University, Straight University and Tillotson Institute, Austin, Texas, we give but in part the full extent of the plan originally laid down by the Association, for it does not include Hampton Institute, Atlanta University and Berea College, children of the Association which have set up and are conducting housekeeping on their own account.
The origin of Hampton Institute was in that first freedmen's school at Fortress Monroe, enlarged year by year, and at length falling under the sagacious eye of Gen. Armstrong, it opened to him in almost prophetic vision what his great genius and untiring industry brought to full consummation. Nor did the American Missionary Association send this child forth empty-handed. It turned over to its use the one hundred and twenty-five acres of beautiful land, with its buildings, permanent and transient, on which the wonderful plant is now established.
Atlanta University was founded by the Association, and under the wise leadership of President Ware, and the steady support of the Association for many years, it at length reached a condition of independence and self-support.
Berea College, founded by the intrepid John G....