Some time since, as you recollect, you voted to try to raise $3000 with which to erect a brick structure at Good Will Farm to be known as the Round Table Industrial School. Although in Maine, Good Will Farm takes poor and homeless boys from every part of the country, so far as it has accommodation, gives them a Christian home, an education, and a start in the world.
Since you undertook the raising of this Fund, Good Will Farm has prospered wonderfully. A part of this prosperity has been due, it is but just to say, to the wider knowledge of its work and merits afforded by the Table and its large membership. Generous men have built new cottages as homes for more boys, and money has been given for the support of girls, so that the place is soon to be not alone Good Will Farm for boys, but Good Will Farm for girls as well. One citizen of New York has bought a tract of land across the Kennebec River from the farm, and in the grove on this land is to be held the summer school and annual July gathering.
In memory of a deceased brother some kind ladies have built a school-house—not an industrial, but a literary school, equipped with every convenience. The cost has been nearly if not quite $25,000, not including a proposed museum of natural history in one of its largest rooms.
With such gratifying prosperity Good Will has grown quite beyond the expectation held at the time we began our task. An industrial school large enough to meet its present and immediate future demands would cost at least $10,000—a sum far beyond the Table's ability to raise, and one that it never thought to undertake.
There are many things to be considered in connection with our work to date; 1, The times, which have been far from good; 2, The fact that young persons, not grown-ups, undertook the task; 3, And most important of all, our effort to earn, not to beg, the money we contributed—to be generous with what was ours, not with other people's money.
Of our Fund at date, amounting to $1682.35, all cash in hand, we have no reason to be ashamed. It is a handsome sum, and one that many an institution besides Good Will would be glad to receive at our hands.
If, now, we change our plans we ought to bear in mind that we are not the only persons who, finding that circumstances change, alter their minds and their acts to fit them. Especially ought we to be gratified, since the change that makes us alter our minds and acts is one of wonderful prosperity for the splendid charity which we started out to help.
After looking over the whole ground, and consultation with the supervisor and one of the leading trustees, we beg to make to the Founders this suggestion:
That the money now in hand be turned over to the trustees of Good Will Farm, to be invested by them according to their best judgment, the same to be known as the "Round Table Fund," and the income of it to be used to help educate at Good Will any boy or girl, or boys and girls, as the supervisor or trustee, or both, decide to be most worthy of such help.
Included in the amount of the Fund as given is money to pay for twelve Memorial Stones, which were to form part of the base-line of the school building. We suggest that the donors of this money be given the privilege of withdrawing it if they so desire; but if they do not wish to withdraw it, that the papers making the formal transfer contain "codicils" or "minutes" mentioning the names of the persons or Chapter, the same to forever form a part of the "Round Table Fund" foundation.