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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
none of these considerations weigh with them; but there is a shrinking from the responsibility of the ballot, perhaps because they are not fully satisfied that they would gain all involved therein. Southern, women, as others, feel there is no limit to the possibilities of mind for highest culture, if proper conditions and suitable opportunities are guaranteed. They are more and more impressing the age as teachers, not only as teachers in the ordinary class work, but as organizers and superintendents of a high grade. As yet not many have entered the learned professions, possibly because their brothers are crowding in, leaving fields and vineyards for desks and offices. If this continues they may have to run the plantations to provide food and raiment. In speculations, booms, large money ventures, they do not plunge, not because of cowardice solely. They do not covet the bravery that risks their own property, the property of others. They do not indulge in gambling enough to blunt their moral sensibilities; a necessary training, I think, for a conscience that will spend other people’s money with no reasonable expectation of remuneration.
Perhaps in no direction have Southern women shown themselves more capable, more noble, than in the work of missions—the work of evangelizing the world. Recognizing the fact that American civilization and Christian civilization should take the world, they have projected and are carrying on the grandest enterprise of modern times. Mission stations have been planted in many parts of the world where the Gospel was not. As teachers they have gone out to occupy these stations, to deliver the Divine message with cheerful devotion. Those who have planned and now sustain the work, collect and disburse large sums of money with a cautious, discerning business integrity truly admirable. Their labors are unremunerative, as far as salaries or money go, and have been incessant and abundant. Those in the foreign field have shown as intelligent, devoted service as those at home, and with far more self-denial and suffering. From Georgia, in 1884, there went to China a woman who was born for great achievements, which marked her home life. Called to the foreign work, she took with her those rare qualities of mind and heart that distinguished her in her native state, and soon proved her power to do and dare much for the needs of China. Her first work, after mastering the intricate Chinese language, was to Romanize it, thus facilitating its acquisition. She next planned a home and school building; the money, $25,000, she secured by selling ten-dollar shares, which did not pay dividends in money— no dividends at all except the satisfaction that accompanies a soul-saving investment. From Kentucky went out a woman who founded and carried to successful issue a boarding-school in Piricicao, Brazil, and another from the same blue-grass section opened a school upon the Mexican border, which sent out branches into Mexico, and now manages successfully five schools in five separate mission stations, with an executive skill truly remarkable. The leaders of the work at home—the women who have made the basic work broad and strong which sustains the foreign, have shown keen, discriminating foresight, a foresight that has saved the missions during this phenomenal, financial restriction. A crowning result of their perseverance, their persistency in this enterprise stands on a high bluff overlooking the turbid Missouri in the suburbs of Kansas City.
After some years of missionary labor, realizing that trained workers were as necessary to success here as in secular pursuits, a training school was determined upon. There was no money—no, not a cent at command when the women determined upon the measure; but there was much prayer and strong hope A consecrated woman of unusual business tact and fine culture at this juncture consented to work up the financial resources, and passed through the South soliciting aid. Born and reared amid the wealth and refinement of Kentucky she laid aside the attractions of a beautiful home and did the work, a distasteful work, with untiring zeal, and in less than four years from its inception the cap-stone of the Scarritt Bible and Training School was placed upon it, amid the silent, though heartfelt, rejoicings of more than fifty thousand Southern women. A massive, well proportioned, elegant structure, it stands a handsome monument of the business tact, economy, self-denial and devotion of women,