The Daniel Hand Fund is a separate and distinct trust, and its income cannot be used for the general work of the Association, and may demand some further notice before this report is closed.  The general condition of the fund is found on the printed abstract already mentioned.

We find the system of keeping the accounts clear, convenient, and well adapted to exhibit from month to month the exact pecuniary condition of the Association, and the restrictions upon drawing money from the treasury well calculated to insure safety in that respect, and we find the management of the Treasurer’s accounts and office in all details satisfactory and deserving our commendation.  Comparing the gifts and work of the Association for the last year just closed with the previous year, and the recommendations of the Finance Committee a year ago, we find that the year 1888 closed with a deficit of over $5,000, that the amount of receipts for that year had been $320,953.42; that the Finance Committee then recommended that the friends of the Association should raise for the year $375,000 for its current expenditures.  It is a source of great gratification to find that this recommendation has been nobly met, and $376,216.88 have been received during the year just closed, an increase of over $55,000; that the deficit of the former year has been supplied, and that the Association commences the current year with a fund in the treasury of $4,471.67.  This we deem substantial indorsement of the Association and its work, by the churches, Sunday-schools, missionary societies and its individual friends.  This report might stop here with congratulations for the prosperous year just closed, but the duties so well done, and work so well performed, must simply furnish the Association a standing place and vantage ground for a greater work on its part, and grounds for greater sacrifices and gifts by its friends for the year to come.

The National Council, representing the Congregational churches of the whole nation, lately in session at Worcester, by a unanimous vote recommended that the churches and friends of the work of this Association raise for it for current expenditures for the year now commenced the sum of $500,000.  Is this magnificent sum too much to ask for the year now auspiciously begun?  Happily for your committee, we are saved the necessity of elaborate or studied examination of the needs of the work that has been done by the papers read and to be printed and addresses delivered from the platform during the meetings up to this time.  You are thus informed more fully than we could hope to inform you what these needs are and their urgency.  But we may say that of the 8,000,000 Negroes in the South it is estimated only 2,000,000 can read and write.  Add to these the millions of poor whites in the mountains and the red men of the West and the Chinese in our land, and we are fully justified in asserting that the work of this Association equals in magnitude any work of the church, and involves