2. NEW WEST WORK.

By this is meant the field formerly occupied by the Congregational New West Education Commission. Here is distinctly missionary ground, where are intrenched two great religious systems foreign to the simplicity of the gospel and preventive of a right conception of the Christian religion and the Christian commonwealth. The present need is for enlargement. Schools that have long had an excellent record should now be given a much better equipment. Dormitories and new buildings are needed, advanced grades should be provided, and the society asks the Council to recognize this call by making larger contributions of money such as were received when the society was in operation.

3. THE WESTERN FIELD SECRETARY.

During the last few years the service of our western field secretary has to some extent been employed in helping institutions which had reached a financial crisis, or which were just coming into existence. These institutions are not always connected with the society; for instance, Billings Polytechnic Institute at Billings, Mont. The society, by means of its field. secretary, has been able to arouse local interest and to obtain generous gifts of money which would not have been secured without this personal effort. These services have been rendered by Dr. Clifton, in addition to the usual work of presenting the claims of the society to the churches. In this way the society has broadened its service and extended a helping hand to institutions that have not appealed directly to the society for financial assistance, but have sought to maintain themselves by local support.

4. A NEW QUESTION.

In order to secure the benefits of the pension fund for college instructors left by Mr. Carnegie, colleges have been asked to be released from whatever legal ties bound them to the society and the denomination.

The revival in late years of denominational consciousness has demanded that institutions and churches helped by Congregational money should be held to the denomination by some legal

form. Agreements, and in some cases mortgages, were received which constituted such a legal tie.

It is easy to see that the present situation raises an important question, involving the relations of the society to institutions already aided and those to be aided in the future. This problem is before the educational boards of other denominations as well as our own, and will receive the most careful and thorough consideration. Its various aspects call for wise deliberation, and it is to be hoped that the society will arrive at such a conclusion as will best serve all the recognized interests.

5. STATE UNIVERSITIES.

The state universities, with their large and increasing enrollments, offer an inviting field, which should be entered. The state cannot be expected to furnish religious instruction in its schools and universities. In many cases the Young Men's Christian Association is the organized religious force undertaking to meet the problem; but its service must, in the nature of the case, be general. In many instances the professors and teachers in these universities are noble Christian men and women, whose lives are an inspiration and blessing. But particular supervision of the student cannot be expected in state universities.

What is felt to be needed is a broad-minded, sympathetic leader who shall be constantly at hand, looking after the children of Congregational parents while they are away from their homes and who may be in need of moral and spiritual guidance and brotherly counsel, who in short shall be a university Congregational pastor. Such a man might also conduct courses of instruction in ethics and Biblical literature.

There should also be at each of these institutions a church home, which should be the center of religious life of the Congregational students and a meeting place for social functions, entertainments, and religious addresses.

The Congregational brethren in California are already moving in the matter in connection with their state university at Berkeley.

During this last year the society sent its western field secretary to the aid of the Wisconsin brethren, at their earnest request, who have taken up the matter with enthusiasm and secured a

clergyman who is already on the ground. The society stands ready to continue this form of service as it may be desired. While the Education Society recognizes that this involves somewhat of a departure from its traditional form of service, yet it is in keeping with the scope and spirit of its constitution, which permits a response to this larger and pressing call.

STATEMENT AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.

The working force of the Association for the past year has consisted of 822 missionaries, 305 of whom were negroes, 37 orientals, 30 Indians, and 10 Porto Ricans. About 150 were ordained ministers. These have labored for seven groups of our humbler American brethren, sundered from the dominant stock of the nation by racial barriers; and also for the mountain people of the South. Their fields have included all the fringes of our civilization from Alaska to Porto Rico. Generally they have been in the cruder and more backward regions, and always on the outskirts of social privilege and esteem.

The two fundamental agencies of our missionary service continue to be the school and the church. Of schools small and great there have been 79, with 612 teachers and an enrollment of 16,507. Organized churches have numbered 217, with 213 regular pastors and evangelists. (The above figures do not include the auxiliary forces of the Hawaiian Evangelical Association, supported by the American Missionary Association.) Besides the established institutions above enumerated, there has been a vast amount of evangelistic activity occupying some two hundred outstations, as well as manifold out-reachings in educational and social service on the part of our schools, the whole constituting an array of Christian activities which no

man can measure.

The total paid out during the year in support of this mission work, including administration and publicity, has been $472,244.47. We should be unfaithful to our deepest convictions did we not insist that these latter expenditures also should be credited to the missionary results of our work, and that the ministry to the churches of advocacy and reminder on behalf of neglected peoples under our flag is as truly worth while from the standpoint of missionary education and the spiritual health of Christians as is any part of our missionary service. In appealing to the churches for financial support in this their work, we have been unfailingly conscious that we were preaching a gospel

to them as well as making the gospel through them possible for tens of thousands of their less favored brethren.

The work of the Association goes on from year to year in intimate and responsive sympathy with its great environments, the vast agencies which serve the moral forces of the denomination, the modern church as a whole, the nation, and the world. A year, or even three years, is far too short a time in which to report decisively the trend of movements on so vast a scale. Yet in the larger sense the successes and failures of our ministry are bound up with those of national righteousness, of the general missionary movement, and the character of Congregational Christianity.

Within the nation the presence of the "little peoples" now and again presses itself on public conscience. The immediate past has seen a changed policy in the matter of federal appointments of negroes; a financial protectorate for Liberia; tremendous Indian land scandals; and important Porto Rican legislation. Oklahoma, with less than seven per cent negro population, and with no reasonable fear of political domination by that race, has put the disfranchising "grandfather clause " into its constitution. On the other hand, the organization of the National Negro Conference and allied agencies, and their definite establishment as agencies of agitation and public appeal, suggests a new alignment of the best modern spirit of social justice with the more radical aspirations of colored Americans, and is especially significant as the first confessed merging of the class struggle with the race struggle in America. Thus as a people we are kept aware of those problems upon which the Association has for a half century brought the gospel to bear.

Within the general missionary enterprise, there is increasing tendency to recognize the distinctive place of such work as the Association chiefly does, as a third essential form of Christian service, intermediate between foreign missions on the one hand and home missions in the sense of denominational extension on the other. This distinctive position has been acknowledged in the educational propaganda in the Young People's Missionary Movement, which during the past year enrolled many thousands in the study of two of our chief interests, the negro and the Porto Rican. Through the Home Missions Council the entire Protestant work in Porto Rico and for the Indians has taken on