REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND ENLARGEMENT.
Your Committee on Finance and Enlargement, to whom was referred the financial exhibit of the Association for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1880, as presented by the Treasurer, beg leave to report that they have examined the accounts and found them duly audited. These accounts include a minute and detailed statement of receipts and expenditures, a list of the endowments, and also a full account of the property owned by the Association, and were accompanied by the account books of the Treasurer.
We are unanimous in vouching for the faithfulness and economy which characterize all branches of the financial administration. Nor can we refrain from a word of most emphatic commendation of the thorough explicitness of the Association’s financial statement.
But passing from this to the substance of the Report, we notice three points suggested by it which seem to call for special mention.
In the first place, it is ground for gratitude and thanksgiving that the year closes without leaving us burdened with a debt. On the contrary, there is a balance in the treasury of nearly eight hundred dollars. Not a very large surplus, surely, but the fact that the year’s work has been done and left us anything besides a disheartening deficiency, is itself occasion for thankfulness and cheer.
In the second place, there is ground for anxiety, lest the financial condition of the Association should be misunderstood. It is well known that a gift of $150,000 has recently come into its treasury. This fact, it is to be feared, has given, or may give, the impression that the Association is, for the present at least, in no further need of funds. We have already heard of one generous friend who has withheld an intended gift through such an entire misapprehension. And lest others should be similarly misled, it seems to us important not only to state, but to emphasize the fact, that this large gift brings no relief whatever to the usual wants of the Association. It is not designed to do the work which the Association is doing. This money is wholly appropriated to the erection of new buildings for the increasing numbers of colored students. It is to do nothing whatever towards meeting the ordinary expenses of the Association’s work; nothing whatever towards diminishing the necessity of aid which the Association is compelled to seek from the Christian and the philanthropist. It cannot be too clearly seen or too widely known, that so far as any augmented power for doing its proper work is concerned, the Association is not one whit better off for this gift of $150,000 than it would be if not a dollar of it had been given. But,
In the third place, this gift is itself a trumpet call for the enlargement of the Association’s resources and work. It is simply to erect new buildings for Fisk and Atlanta, at Talladega, New Orleans and Tougaloo. These buildings will soon be filled with students. That means the necessity for more teachers and more pecuniary aid to those who need it. It means increased work for the Association, and the necessity of increased funds with which to do the work. In one word, it means expansion, enlargement. God, Himself, is opening before us new furrows in hitherto untilled fields. That is His own call upon us for more seed-corn, and more labor for the enlarging harvest. He is building for us new homes for the development of mental culture and Christian character among the colored people of the South. Each one of these is a Divine summons for such co-operation on our part as is necessary for the best accomplishment of His designs.
In conclusion, therefore, your Committee respectfully suggest the adoption of the following resolution:
“Resolved, While most gratefully acknowledging the prosperity that has crowned our work through another year, we recognize and accept that prosperity as itself a call from God for still larger and more earnest work.”
W. H. Willcox, Chairman.