the percentage of illiteracy in the lands represented by the larger body of immigrants with the illiteracy in our own Southern States the insignificance of the former is at once evident. The great body of illiterates are not those who come from across the ocean, but those who are born and bred in our own land—native Americans. That this is most emphatically true the following table gathered from the last census reports abundantly proves:

The following tables are compiled from the United States Census of 1890, and represent the condition in our Southern States:

From this table it will be seen that no foreign country of all the list given above equals in illiteracy any one of these Southern states with the exception of Tennessee.

It will be also noted that eliminating the Negro factor from the South and taking simply our native white population the percentage of illiteracy in North Carolina of this class is one-tenth of one per cent, greater than the percentage of illiteracy in Ireland, the most illiterate of all these given.

This is an amazing fact and ought to startle us all into more earnest efforts to lift up out of the darkness of ignorance and illiteracy this great mass of people, black and white, in our Southern states. It absolutely destroys the weight of the argument so often heard in presenting the dangers threatening our country on account of the ignorance of foreign immigrants. This alarm bell is muffled when we hear the alarm echo from Southern lowlands and mountains.

Another startling fact revealed by careful study of the census tables of 1890 concerning illiteracy is this: In every case the percentage of illiteracy of the native white population in these states is greater than that of the foreign white population in the same states. To illustrate: In Alabama the native white population is 18-4/10 per cent. The foreign white population show an illiteracy of 7-3/10 per cent. In Louisiana the native white population has 20-3/10 per cent. illiteracy, the foreign white 18-7/10 per cent. This principle holds good throughout. It is becoming in those of us who are patriotic not to boast too much concerning the education of our own people, or to urge the ignorance of those who come from abroad. The greatest problem before our Christian patriotism of to-day is the removal of this dark cloud of illiteracy in our own Southern states and the bringing in of the light of an intelligent Christianity.

FIELD WORKERS.

We publish in this number of the Missionary the annual list of our Field Workers. We wish our readers to follow them to their appointed locations, where they are now busied in the peculiar toils and anxieties incident to all who are engaged in their special callings. We say these are peculiar, for we believe that the faithful preacher and teacher carry special burdens of care and anxiety that tax not only the body and mind, but weigh most heavily on the heart. When Paul enumerates the great burdens which rest upon him, he names as last and greater than all outer "that which presseth upon me daily anxiety for all the churches."

But beyond all this, the toilers in the South, laboring as they do among the poorest and most ignorant in the land, have added trials in meagre salaries and limited means for enlargement, and especially in an environment if not hostile yet unsympathetic. The people for whom they labor are held down under a severe race prejudice, and their preachers and teachers must share the odium with them. We gladly admit that the prejudice in the South against our workers is in many places moderating, yet it remains as a trial and a hindrance felt in no other part of our land. These discouraging features occur to some extent in all parts of our field—among the mountaineers, the Indians, and the Chinese on the Pacific Coast. Poverty and ignorance are common to all, and the race prejudice that confronts the Indian and the Chinese is scarcely less than that which rests upon the Negro in the South. But these burdens our workers are willing to bear as followers of Him who spent His life among the lowly and gave as the greatest proof of His divine mission that the gospel was preached unto the poor.

But the hearts of these self-sacrificing toilers may be cheered by the sympathy and prayers of God's people and by such liberal gifts as will take away the continual fear of any further crippling of the work. We ask that in the supplications in the pulpit, at the family altar and in the closet, these consecrated men and women come in for a share in the petitions, and we ask also that in this, our Jubilee year, our treasury be remembered with so much liberality that it may be indeed for this great work a year of release.

THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN CENT SOCIETY.

REV. SPENCER SNELL.

We at Talladega are doing what we can by our pennies toward getting the American Missionary Association out of debt. The Abraham Lincoln Cent Society, which grew out of our effort on Lincoln Memorial Day last February to devise some organized plan by which we might help a little, has been the means of putting a good many pennies collected from very poor people into the treasury at New York. Besides organizing a cent society here an appeal was sent to other American Missionary Association churches and schools among the colored people asking that similar societies be organized. A number of them acted upon the suggestion, some of them sending their money here to be forwarded by the treasurer of our society to the New York office, and others sending it direct.

The members of these societies are asked