Another so-called Orphanage at still another Southern city, started as an individual venture.  It was allowed for a short time to have a conditional endorsement from the A.M.A., which was soon withdrawn and the enterprise disowned.  This has swallowed up thousands of dollars of the money of benevolence, and yet it has all the time been a sham and a falsehood.  There was nothing of it.  When a lady newspaper correspondent called to visit the institution, ten or a dozen children from a neighboring private school were borrowed and paraded as orphans, when at the time there were only two little children in the concern, and they had grandparents living near and abundantly able to take care of them.  “Wherefore this waste?”

In yet another Southern city, a couple of young ladies start a school.  Having once been under commission of the A.M.A., in connection with its institutions, they appear to many to have its endorsement and they make appeal to its constituents.  Money comes along for a work irresponsibly begun and without supervision.  Only a year goes by before they appeal by their leaflet-paper for several thousand dollars to buy land and build a home and school property.  Who but they shall hold and own the property?  Whose shall it be when they marry or grow weary of the work and leave?  What protection is there for such misplaced benefaction?

By no means would the Association seek to interfere with donations to individuals where the donors investigate for themselves and assume the responsibility, but it is not fair that we should be held as apparently responsible for movements that we disown, and it is not fair to our constituents that we should allow them to remain under the impression that in giving to irresponsible projects, they are favoring such as are endorsed by us.

Thirty-five years ago the Congregational Union was initiated in the Albany Convention on purpose to protect Eastern friends from the miscellaneous and irresponsible and persistent solicitation for individual church enterprise.  It is the business of that Society to receive, inspect and decide upon all such applications.  Take it away and the flood gates would be lifted again.  No less in the cause of missionary education is such discretionary service needed.

* * * * *

  THE NEGRO QUESTION.

This is the title of a recent brochure by George W. Cable, published by the American Missionary Association.  With the most vigorous and courageous devotion to the question that “is the gravest in American affairs,” Mr. Cable addresses himself to the problem and to the answer that should be made to it.  His apprehension of injustice is so keen and true, {155} and his seriousness, in view of the weariness and offence that the whole subject gives to a great majority of the people, is so urgent, that the paper has been criticized as pessimistic, and as an impatient cry against evils that are speedily being rectified.  We may say that the optimistic view of evils never did much to correct them, and that those who are patient with wrongs will never create a sentiment against them.  To us, this seems the voice of a prophet pleading for righteousness to man and righteousness in the land.