ADDRESS OF REV. D.M. FISK, D.D.
It may be fitting to add a few supplementary words corroborative of the hopeful view taken in this report on the Mountain Work. At first glance it does seem that this is a discouraging field. I need not recapitulate what has been said in the report already before you. It is sufficiently discouraging; the ignorance and poverty are not the worst features. The position of the clergy in many sections—I am happy to say not in all—is full of discouragement. The worst thing we have to face is the apathy of the people. Their phrase, "We-uns never asked you-uns to come here," is certainly most pathetic.
What do we propose to do about it? What do we propose to do with more than two millions for whom Christ died, American citizens, in the very heart of our Nation, around whom the currents of commerce and industry swirl every day? Shall the greatest tidal wave of all time pass them by, and they not feel it for a moment? More than all, shall the great gospel of God, which is life, and hope, and peace, and home, for us, be nothing for them?
I am happy to say that it is not all dark by any manner of means. Your committee is hopeful, the members of this Association are hopeful, our brethren on the frontier are hopeful. There are very many favorable things, and one of the most favorable is their increasing numbers. Do we stop to estimate what two millions of souls means? More than thirty thousand cradles filled in a single year.
These men respect the Bible. They feel a superstitious regard for it; they are not infidel people. They have a simple, childlike faith, and the Bible word is to them final. Many things that many of us have to contend with, the brethren there do not meet I mean in the field of infidelity.
They have great respect for woman if she respects herself. I have the statement of one of our workers in the South that a woman can go even among these men when they are drunk, and if she respects herself and has maintained her character she is perfectly safe in their midst.
This same writer tells me of a young man who went out from one of their schools, and kept school in a certain place during the winter, When he returned, he said: "Nothing would tempt me to go back there again." Not so with the young ladies. It is one of the most astonishing signs of the times that really into the feeble hand of womanhood is given the key of the situation. They respect these girls, they reverence them and give them a place of dignity in their hearts. That makes it possible for these women to do a large and splendid work in the South.
Once let these girls that come under the influence of our Christian Northern women who go there as teachers, and the graduates of these various colleges and schools that we have planted, and are about to plant in the South; once let common womanhood in the South that has been so much under the heel of this oppression; once let girlhood feel the power that has come go girlhood, that to them as young women in the cradle of these hills, under this fair sky is given the power to turn over in not less than thirty or forty years this whole country for God and humanity, for enlightenment and for Christian peace;—once let that idea get into the minds of these girls, and we have not the same problem that we have to-day.
There is good blood there as well. There is a man in Congress to-day, honoring himself and his district and his nation, who went to school there, and I know not for how many years wore but one garment. I call that pretty good blood when from such circumstances a man can come up to such a large place.
There is a transition time with this whole section. New conditions are being put upon them. They feel the outside movement of the world. A friend of mine is now in the South who has brought up a large quantity of lumber in a certain district, and when he finds the right man he will plant a school there. Coal and iron are being extensively worked. My brother here (the Rev. S.E. Lathrop) tells me that near Cumberland Gap four hundred houses have gone up within a very brief time, and over two thousand workmen are pushing into a section not before opened. It will not come in an hour or in a day; but by and by, when these men face the new life of our times, when they have once felt its pressure, and the tremendous disparity between their manner of living and the high kind of life of Northern homes and Northern hearthstones, they will move, and a change will come over the spirit of their dreams. Even now, the native preachers, who have been so hostile to our work, are coming to these, our pastors, and asking for light on the Bible. Furthermore, our pupils are going out and organizing county institutes, and the work is going on everywhere.
There is a dark side to it, but I praise God there is a bright side. It is like a dam. When the dam begins to go, it will go all at once. Youth is on our side. In thirty years we shall not have the same problem we have now—no, not in twenty years. Wealth is coming in. A large tract of eleven thousand acres, containing some of the finest coal that the world knows, is being developed. This means a great influx of population, and this wealth is to be developed, and new material power is coming as an auxiliary to our spiritual power. This wealth is being converted. A man who five years ago was a godless man, and who owns to-day one-seventh of these eleven thousand acres of coal lands, was converted. He was made a Sunday-school Superintendent, but he could not say the Lord's Prayer; yet he was determined that the Lord's Prayer should be repeated in that school, and he hired a large number of small boys and gave them a dime apiece and told them to learn the Lord's Prayer that week. They did so; and when Sunday came, with a chorus to back him, he came on as a solo performer.
A dear girl of my own acquaintance dressed, in one morning, fifteen or sixteen women and children. They came around her and felt her all over, and wondered at the complexity of her garments. I speak of this thing because it indicates that that old apathy is breaking up, and they are coming to look at new things and feel a new interest in the life outside of themselves. And as this same dear girl taught from thirty to fifty of these women, they listened eagerly, and the tears rolled down their cheeks, and they said to her, "Oh, come and tell us more about Jesus, for we want to be different kind of women, different kind of mothers."
There was one girl, coarse enough in fiber, heavy enough in build, gross enough in appearance, who came out to one of our commencements, and went back with the arrow in her heart, saying, "I would give all the world if I had it, if I could write a piece and git up thar and read it like them." She went home determined she would go to college. She was a large girl, fifteen years old, yet did not know a single letter. She walked fifty miles nearly, and came and said to the college president that she wanted to work for her board, so that she could enter the school. What could she do? He found that really she was incapacitated for doing anything; but she said, "I can hoe corn like a nigger." Finally she was set at some sort of work, and that girl, after three or four years, went out as a school teacher into a district where young men dared not go, where her eyes were blistered with the sights she saw—men shot down before her face and eyes by the whisky distillers—and she was asked to organize a Sunday-school there. When any one starts a Sunday-school he is expected to preach, and so that girl had to become a preacher, and to-day she is preaching the gospel of God and spreading the work there. And yet she came from one of the very humblest classes.
There is a peaceful invasion of this people by themselves. This mission of the people to themselves is one of the most hopeful things about this work. And when they realize that they have a mission, Pauline in spirit, unto their own people, then victory shall come to us.