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.
ADDRESS OF REV. ADDISON P. FOSTER, D.D.
This Indian problem has been largely settled on its civil side. For many years the friends of the Indians have been consulting together, and have done their utmost to influence public opinion. And the Government has heeded the call—as it always does—of a widely extended and wise public sentiment; and, in consequence, our policy with regard to the Indian has been very largely re-shaped. To-day, by reason of the Dawes Bill, land is open to the Indians in severalty. There is a fair degree of law secured for the Indians. The great questions pertaining to their outward circumstances are under happy prospect of adjustment.
But, this being the fact, it simply increases the necessity laid upon us to meet the requirements of the present day. The door is open for the Indian to become a citizen; and in this land, whenever any man receives the privileges of citizenship, it is incumbent upon us to see to it that he is fitted for that sacred obligation by the church and by the school.
This is a necessity of our republic which we have recognized from our earliest day. When our fathers came to this land, they located side by side the school house and the church; and, wherever we have sought to open the privileges of the suffrage, and the dignities, and honors, and joys of citizenship, to any class of people among us, we have always felt it to be an imperative necessity to see to it that they had both these sacred training schools, the educational institution and the religious institution, side by side.