The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 02, February, 1889

BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK

MISS D.E. EMERSON, SECRETARY

WOMAN'S STATE ORGANIZATIONS

CO-OPERATING WITH THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION

ME.—Woman's Aid to A.M.A.,

Chairman of Committee, Mrs. C.A. Woodbury, Woodfords, Me.

VT.—Woman's Aid to A.M.A.,

Chairman of Committee, Mrs. Henry Fairbanks, St. Johnsbury, Vt.

VT.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. Ellen Osgood, Montpelier, Vt.

CONN.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. S.M. Hotchkiss, 171 Capitol Ave., Hartford, Conn.

N.Y.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. William Spalding, Salmon Block, Syracuse, N.Y.

ALA.—Woman's Missionary Association,

Secretary, Mrs. G.W. Andrews, Talladega, Ala.

OHIO.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. Flora K. Regal, Oberlin, Ohio.

IND.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. W.E. Mossman, Fort Wayne, Ind.

ILL.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. C.H. Taintor, 151 Washington St., Chicago, Ill.

MINN.—Woman's Home Miss. Society,

Secretary, Miss Katharine Plant, 2651 Portland Avenue, Minneapolis, Minn.

IOWA.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Miss Ella E. Marsh, Grinnell, Iowa.

KANSAS.—Woman's Home Miss. Society,

Secretary, Mrs. G.L. Epps, Topeka, Kan.

MICH.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. Mary B. Warren, Lansing, Mich.

WIS.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. C. Matter, Brodhead, Wis.

NEB.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. L.F. Berry, 724 N. Broad St., Fremont, Neb.

COLORADO.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

Secretary, Mrs. S.M. Packard, Pueblo, Colo.

DAKOTA.—Woman's Home Miss. Union,

President, Mrs. T.M. Hills, Sioux Falls;

Secretary, Mrs. W.R. Dawes, Redfield;

Treasurer, Mrs. S.E. Fifield, Lake Preston.

We would suggest to all ladies connected with the auxiliaries of State Missionary Unions, that funds for the American Missionary Association be sent to us through the treasurers of the Union. Care, however, should be taken to designate the money as for the American Missionary Association, since undesignated funds will not reach us.

THE MOUNTAIN GIRLS

But why the girls? Because the girls are immortal as well as the boys. Because the girls in their education have been neglected far more than the boys. Because the girls are to be the mothers of the next generation.

That they are immortal, and capable of becoming and doing much in this life would seem to be doubted even by their parents. The neglect of the girls in their physical, mental, moral, and religious education, is enough to draw pity even from the most stupid Christian.

Hundreds are put into field work from spring till autumn. They follow the mule and "bull tongue." They wield the heavy hoe, sprouting newly cleared land. They look after cattle on the ranges and the mountain swine, and if these are needed for meat, kill and dress them as a man would do. Said a woman the other day, "I wish I had as many dollars as I have alone killed and dressed hogs." With parents the boy means a "heap" more than the girl. A boy can shoot deer and coon, fox and rabbit, can build cabins, can keep school, and "seems" be a doctor or go to Congress. With this impression, if anybody is clothed and sent to school, it is the boy, while as a rule, the girl is poorly clad and stays at home to do the boy's work, to make "craps," and grow up in ignorance. If in berry time they can get a few dimes to buy a calico dress and a pair of shoes, contentment settles over their faces. Aspirations for anything better they have not, for an avenue leading to a more hopeful life they have never dreamed of. To look into the future there is nothing sunny or bright. Illiterate, they marry young some poor fellow, and with no money they begin life, build their cabin home in the timber land, girdle a few acres of the stately trees of oak and chestnut, and there raise a family to take the same dark and gloomy view of life the parents have had.

Must this condition of things continue, among a people, too, who are all native born Americans, who have fair native abilities to become a power for good if trained in Christian schools?

Is it not time a special effort be made for these girls? They are growing older. They will soon be the mothers of a new generation. With illiterate mothers what will that generation be? Just what the present generation now is. What will it be if these girls now growing up are brought into a school like ours at Pleasant Hill? Here, if there can be sufficient room and ample teaching force, they will be taught and trained in a practical knowledge of all the duties of life, especially in those of the household. If we educate and save the girls we are using the very lever needed to lift these hopeless and neglected thousands living at our very doors, out of their degraded life and bring them into the light of the 19th century, and qualify them to take positions among the best women of the land.

The work for which I plead is full of encouragement and hope. It is not in Africa. It is within one or two days' ride of the largest and most wealthy churches of our country, those who love the Kingdom of Christ and have sent, and are still sending, their thousands of dollars to the ends of the earth, while these bright American girls are, by some strange oversight, neglected at our very doors.

The American Missionary Association has undertaken a noble work among them, and something has been accomplished, yet this good work has but just begun. The grey dawn has only cast a few signs of daylight over the mountains. To carry this work forward successfully in behalf of the neglected girls, there should be, in a great natural center of operations like Pleasant Hill, a spacious boarding hall with an industrial department and home, for those girls. It should not be stinted in size, but large, well-arranged, and well-equipped in all its departments from the primary upwards, where they can be taught everything a girl ought to learn, not only in books and in a Christian life, but taught to sew, knit, darn stockings, to make good bread, and keep house with order and neatness, and do everything needed to be done in a Christian home. If the native girls can come from their cabin homes into such an institution and be thus thoroughly trained, the axe is then laid at the very root of the tree of a squalid life of illiteracy, and a life of Christian culture and hope comes in its place, where Christian mothers throw angelic brightness over their households, and families of children are trained to act well their part in this great and growing nation. The institution I suggest, and for which I must plead, should not only be large enough to accommodate girls near at hand, but from other neighboring States who stand in need of such a home and training. It should be a Bethel for these immortal waifs, a house of bread, so well provided for as to take the poorest who cannot pay a cent of their own expenses. On this base it will be doing the greatest and grandest work possible for the two millions and a half who are scattered as lost sheep over the mountains of our own land.