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"It has bound the young men together as no other organization of the school has done."

"We have abundant evidence that the association, in fitting young men for wise and active Christian work after leaving the university, is bearing most excellent fruit in the fields where our graduates are laboring."

"Our largest revivals have had their beginning in the association Sunday meetings."

"The association promotes Bible study on the part of our students."

"The work of this organization has taken hold of our students to such an extent that matters of discipline are largely given over to it."

For twelve years association work among colored men was exclusively confined to students. At the end of that period, and in God's own time, the first regularly organized city association requiring the employment of a general secretary was started at Norfolk, Va., January 20, 1888. The extension of this work to other cities has been necessarily slow, and yet the progress made in thirteen years has been both substantial and encouraging. Twenty-one city associations are now in existence. Six of these associations own real estate valued at $30,000.

Besides their religious meetings and Bible classes and their healthy social influence, twelve of these associations have reading rooms and libraries, several carry on night schools, five have bath rooms and other facilities for physical culture. Ten colored men are devoting their entire time to association work -two as secretaries of the International Committee and eight as local general secretaries.

Special mention should be made of one fact which with God's blessing has been the source of much inspiration and help during the past ten years. In the earlier years there was little or no communication between the associations of this department. No conferences were held, and there was but little of the spirit of fellowship among the men of the different associations. But in 1890 the first conference of colored associations was held at Nashville, Tenn., when the members of three student associations of that city met together two days for a careful study of the work. Since then, from one to five interstate annual conferences have been held under the call of the International Committee. Last year, more than one hundred leaders of forty-two associations in eleven states were brought together in four conferences. They represented nearly five thousand of the most active Christian young men of the race now banded together in one fellowship for the extension of the kingdom of Christ among young men.

Begun twenty-five years ago among a people but a few years removed from slavery and still overshadowed by dense ignor

ance, this work has grown and prospered until it is now a recognized factor in the Christian development of the negro

race.

[See address of Principal Booker T. Washington, page 137.]

NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN DEPARTMENT

Of the somewhat more than 300,000 Indians in North America, nearly 30,000 are of the Sioux, or Dakota, tribe.

This once strong and warlike tribe is now settled upon the reservations of South and North Dakota, Nebraska, Montana and Manitoba. Christian young men of this tribe spontaneously organized what were practically Young Men's Christian Associations as early as 1881, and by 1885 there were as many as eleven associations on the various Dakota reservations with a membership of one hundred and forty-one. Without waiting for an association constitution, they had organized on "the rules of Jesus," being guided chiefly by the first chapter of the Gospel of John where they found that "one man who had the light went and found his brother who was in darkness."

Beginning in 1885, these associations were represented by delegates in the annual conventions of the Minnesota and Dakota associations and in 1894, the International Committee, in response to the urgent requests of the Indian young men and the missionaries at work among them, appointed Charles A. Eastman, M. D., a Sioux Indian graduate at Dartmouth college and a practicing physician, as Indian secretary of the International Committee, to develop and extend this work.

In 1898 Dr. Eastman was succeeded by Arthur T. Tibbetts who is still employed in this work and with very encouraging success. Mr. Tibbetts is a full-blooded Sioux Indian, is a graduate of the Santee Normal Training School and of the Association Training School at Springfield, Mass.

Resulting from the work of Dr. Eastman and of Mr. Tibbetts these associations have increased in number, in membership and in efficiency until there are now forty-four associations on the Sioux reservations with a total membership exceeding 1,300 young men.

Each of these associations conducts a weekly gospel meeting for young men, some young men coming from a distance of twelve or fifteen miles to attend. A monthly business meeting of each association is also held, at which each committee of the association renders a report of its work in writing. Each of these forty-four associations also conducts two Bible classes, one by the president of the association for the active members, another by the secretary for the associate members. Fully 1,000 Indian young men attended these Bible classes regularly during the season 1900-1901. A uniform course of Bible study

was followed by all, lessons for which were prepared by Mr. Tibbetts in a pamphlet of forty pages, in the Dakota language. These lessons were also published in Iapi Daye (Word Carrier), the missionary paper issued monthly in the Dakota language, a portion of which is regularly edited in the interests of the Indian association work.

Through the work of these associations over fifty conversions of Indian young men have been reported during the season of 1900-1901. Six reservation conferences were held in the spring and early summer of 1900, attended by over 1,000 Indian young men, and these conferences will be continued yearly.

An important result of the work of the Indian associations is the developing of young men in the Christian life and their training for leadership in Christian service both in association and in church work. Reading rooms have been opened and some educational and athletic work undertaken. Twelve association buildings have been erected on the different reservations, ten of these during the season of 1900-1901. These are small buildings constructed by the labor of the association members themselves, the total cost for the material of each building being about $25 contributed by the association members. The buildings are supplied with papers, magazines and games and are kept open evenings. What is being done among the young men of the Sioux tribe can be extended to other tribes. The key to the situation is in the trained leadership of native Indian young men who, like Mr. Tibbetts, may be found, trained and set apart to this work among their own people. [See address of A. T. Tibbetts, page 166.]

THE OFFICE DEPARTMENT

The headquarters of the International Committee, after having been temporarily located in various cities, were established permanently at New York in 1866. For the first few years thereafter the members of the committee carried on the correspondence and the work from their own business offices. Later the general secretary practically combined in himself the functions that have since been assigned to traveling and office secretaries, as the enlargement of the work from time to time has called for specialization. In 1870 the New York City association set apart in its new building a small room for the use of the committee, and in 1875 an office secretary was obtained in the present head of the office force, Mr. Erskine Uhl. In 1888 the work had so enlarged that more office room was required and the committee removed its headquarters to 40 East Twenty-third street. In April, 1898, a long needed opportunity to systematize the important work of the office was afforded by removal from crowded quarters that had

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(1) C. J. Hicks (2) C. K. Ober (3) J. R. Mott (4) W. A. Hunton (5) W. B. Millar (6) G. B. Hodge (7) F. S. Goodman (8) L. Gulick (9) E. M. Robinson SOME HEADS OF INTERNATIONAL DEPARTMENTS

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