I. Figures that will not lie. The first half of the present fiscal year ended March 3. The statistical reports for these six months are the best we have had for more than ten years. The total number of pupils enrolled in our 19 mission schools thus far is 970: about as many as in the whole year '95 to '96. The average membership month by month has been about 430, and the average attendance 234. Every month has been fraught with saving light and love for some dark souls. I cannot give an exact statement, but I think that nearly 50 conversions have been reported, making a total, since our work began, of fully 1,600.
II. The new mission house. It has cost us, finished and furnished (so far as it is yet furnished), fully $19,500. It is a fine building in an admirable location, the best that could be found, overlooking a pretty square, yet standing just within the border line of San Francisco's Chinatown. It is four stories high, with a dry basement and a flat roof, and it is utilized on these six floors. The Noyes Memorial Chapel on the first floor is an attractive place of worship seating easily 250, and is used on week days for the Central School, which is, doubtless, the largest Chinese week-day school in our country. Rev. Jee Gam, with his large family, has several rooms as a sort of parsonage. Other Christian families occupy apartments. Homeless young men rent some of our best rooms, and use them for social purposes and as a retreat from the wickedness of almost every other gathering place in Chinatown. Most of these young men were Christians when they came to occupy these rooms. One among those who were not Christians has already turned to Christ, the first fruits in this our new garden of the Lord. We owe $13,250 on this building, of which $2,000 ought to be paid at once.
New Mission House.
III. Our work for mothers and children is to be distinguished from the Rescue work among the female slaves bought and sold for the worst of purposes, who constitute a large majority of all the Chinese women in California. This latter work our Presbyterian and Methodist Missions have been doing for many years at large expense and with good results. They were prepared to take care of all who would come to them, and we did not enter into that field, for we never have used missionary money for the purpose of competition with other denominations, and we never will. The mothers living in wedlock and their children constitute our field, and wherever we have missions this is carried on with more or less activity according to the number of families and the welcomes extended. In Los Angeles, Marysville, San Francisco and Watsonville, there are visitors giving to this undertaking so much of their time as to make it necessary to assist in their support. I doubt if any human beings anywhere on earth have more hindrances to overcome, more lions to face, more superstitions to be laid aside in coming to Christ, than have the Chinese women. The tyranny of heathen husbands, the scorn of neighbors, the vague dread of untold calamities which the ghosts of the dead will inflict upon them if not duly worshipped, the stories told them of children kidnapped, eyes put out, hurtful spells thrown upon people by foreign devils; all these and other obstacles must be met and overcome. But Christian kindness will overcome everything if persistently shown, and I believe the time is coming when the harvest among these Chinese mothers will exceed, in proportion to the numbers within reach of us, any reaped elsewhere. I would like to go into the details of this comparatively new work but my limits forbid it.
IV. The Chinese population in America is, I believe, increasing. I cannot prove this, and I state it only as an impression. The Exclusion Law at its best is a leaky dike, and the tide washing up against it leaps through and sometimes overflows. How this comes to pass I have not space to tell, but while I do not believe that all men have their price, I suspect that some Custom House officials have not always been proof against temptation, and are not now. And perjury in the view of a non-christian Chinese is a venial offense except when so clumsily committed as to lead to detection. But, no matter how these new comers get here, once among us they are fish for our fishing, and when one of them becomes a Christian and tells me he has been in the country five or six or eight years, I do not feel bound to make him confess the method of his entrance. He was a heathen then. There is no probability whatever that the work of our mission will cease for lack of material to work upon, till long after the present workers have passed to their reward.
V. The finances. Under this head the tale is soon told. Appropriation from the A. M. A. exhausted. The last check for this fiscal year from the office in New York came to me on the 1st of March. The bills for April are provided for, however. As to May, June, July and August, bills, which if the work were done as it should be, could not even by closest economy, be brought below $4,000, we wait for the payment of upon God and upon those whom he has made to be the almoners of His bounty. Our Chinese will probably give about $1,500. Who will give the rest?
W. C. Pond.