and school reports, and been back and forth until the whole field is in
his mind, not simply this one locality. These facts _in extenso_ are
reported to the officers in New York. Conferences many and patient are
held over them until finally it is settled that this place rather than
some other shall be selected for the new school. Now such care as this
would be impossible except as the A.M.A., through its officers and
teachers, knew the whole field. By independent or individual effort this
could not be done. It is not the absolute, but the comparative need and
hopefulness that determine the wisdom of fixing upon a certain place for
a school or church. This comparative need can only be known by an
organized society which has frequent and abundant communication with the
whole field, and has officers whose business it is to know that field.
The experiments being tried in different places have already been made by
the A.M.A., and proved to be either absolutely failures or relatively an
uneconomic use of funds.

The saving to you who furnish the money is very great by this method of
systematic spending. Let me illustrate by a single example which occurred
only a few months ago. Two towns, only a few miles apart, were clamoring
for help in school work. We opened a school tentatively in one of these
places, as we had one missionary there already, and I visited the other
place. This is what I found: A teacher independent of any society, and
consequently knowing only a small part of the South, had opened a school.
She had labored very faithfully, but very unwisely, putting money and
years of hard work into a field which, from its very conditions, could
not be largely successful. She had a poor building for teachers' home, a
rough school-house with no desks, a narrow strip of land, and an
enrollment of about eighty pupils. She was anxious to have the A.M.A.
take the work. She informed me that in order to secure it, it would be
necessary to pay out from $2,500 to $3,000 in paying debts and putting