University, located on the Illinois Central R. R., about eight miles north of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, receives State aid to the amount of $3,000 annually. Two hundred and sixteen students last year have taxed its utmost capacity for accommodation. Governor Lowry and the State Board of Visitors attended the commencement exercises, and were surprised at the evidence of the Negro's capacity for education. Four students took degrees in the elementary Normal course that requires ten years to complete it, and one took the degree from the higher Normal course, to complete which requires twelve years.

Straight University, New Orleans, notwithstanding the devastation of floods and the failure of cotton crops that last year so severely affected the very limited finances of the colored people of Louisiana, was filled with students at the beginning of the school year, and continued not only crowded, but overcrowded to the end; 584 scholars were enrolled, including representatives from Cuba, Honduras, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, and even Old England.

Tillotson Institute, Texas, has also had a very crowded and successful year. This is the youngest of our chartered schools. It has the modesty that in every way is becoming the youngest member of the family, but in all that is excellent in work it stands not a whit behind the oldest and the best. It has already outgrown the comfortable limits of its habitation. The crowding process has struck it, and its cry for relief is growing sharper and sharper. We shall have to heed its cry one of these days. The great and rapidly-growing State of Texas challenges our forethought and our care. The State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Hon. B. M. Baker, was present at the commencement exercises, and after commending the teachers for their faithful work and testifying that the best teachers of the colored schools in Texas were graduates of the Tillotson Institute, he publicly thanked the people of the North for the establishment and maintenance of the school. Judge Fullmore, a county school superintendent, who was also present, not only indorsed all that Mr. Baker had said, but added that in his appointments of teachers he always gave Tillotson graduates the preference, and that a certificate of graduation from Tillotson in the hands of an applicant was all the evidence of character and ability he needed.

Were we to continue sketching the salient points in the work of our other schools scattered all over the South, it would be simply to give fresh illustrations of the five facts already made prominent—crowded schools, growing necessities, faithful work, good results and outside commendation.

As compared with last year, the statistics in our school work show a falling off of two chartered institutions and seven common schools. On its face, this looks like loss; in reality, it is gain. The two chartered institutions dropped out of our statistics are Berea and Hampton, that, as a matter of fact, have been for several years self-sustaining and independent, and which, as formerly fostered by us, we have hitherto reported; they are still in the field, doing a greater work than ever, while the seven common schools, dropped because they ceased to be needed where they were located, are more than represented in the better work of the other schools, to strengthen which the money thus set free has been transferred.

We are steadily but slowly coming to the realization of the idea that was the inspiration of the American Missionary Association's school system—Christian colleges and Normal schools for the training of leaders, and Christian preparatory schools to furnish them with the right kind of material. The South is year by year, as its financial ability increases and its public sentiment improves, doing more for the rudimental instruction of its children. It is the duty of the State to provide elementary education for every child within its borders, and to that point the Southern States must one day come; but just in proportion as they come to that point, the necessities for our work increase. The demand for Christian teachers and preachers and professional men in all ranks at the South will grow as facilities for the elementary education of the children multiply. Our aim is not only to save the land from ignorance, but to save it from godless intelligence. Infidelity is as much the enemy of free institutions as ignorance; and when the children are intelligent, an ignorant leadership is almost as effective as an infidel leadership to raise up an infidel people; so that, as intelligence spreads among the youth of the South, we are placed under accumulating obligations, by virtue of our loyalty to the kingdom of our Lord, and by virtue of our interest in the perpetuity of republican institutions, to strengthen, enlarge and multiply this work. Of course, just now, and for a great many years to come, by far the greater part of our school work must be in the lower grades of instruction. So long as it can be said, that in the Southern States eighty per cent. of the colored and thirty per cent. of the white population are illiterate; that there are not educational facilities enough to furnish fifty per cent. of the children with even a chance to learn their letters; that there are whole communities and sections in which there are no schools whatever; that there are thousands and tens of thousands of children and youth who would be glad to go to school did they have opportunity; so long we must continue to furnish elementary instruction in all our schools, and as far as possible to open such small schools as may meet the present but transient exigency, to be dropped, as we have the seven common schools above referred to, when, from whatever cause, the necessity for them has passed away. The Executive Committee desires to emphasize and to have the constituents of the American Missionary Association keep it constantly before them, that as the cause and means of popular education extend in the South, the necessity for the work of the Association becomes stronger and stronger.

As seen from this stand-point, the desirability of bringing our larger institutions as speedily as possible, where they shall be able to take care of themselves, becomes clear and urgent. They should be at once so far endowed that the question of their permanence as conservators of the supremacy of Christian leadership in the thought, character and life of the people should be settled beyond peradventure for all time.

We commend these schools to the special regard of those who are looking about to invest money where, in the name of the Lord, it will yield rich and enduring returns.

INDUSTRIAL TRAINING.