find that the year 1888 closed with a deficit of over $5,000, that the
amount of receipts for that year had been $320,953.42; that the Finance
Committee then recommended that the friends of the Association should
raise for the year $375,000 for its current expenditures. It is a source
of great gratification to find that this recommendation has been nobly
met, and $376,216.88 have been received during the year just closed, an
increase of over $55,000; that the deficit of the former year has been
supplied, and that the Association commences the current year with a
fund in the treasury of $4,471.67. This we deem substantial indorsement
of the Association and its work, by the churches, Sunday-schools,
missionary societies and its individual friends. This report might stop
here with congratulations for the prosperous year just closed, but the
duties so well done, and work so well performed, must simply furnish the
Association a standing place and vantage ground for a greater work on
its part, and grounds for greater sacrifices and gifts by its friends
for the year to come.

The National Council, representing the Congregational churches of the
whole nation, lately in session at Worcester, by a unanimous vote
recommended that the churches and friends of the work of this
Association raise for it for current expenditures for the year now
commenced the sum of $500,000. Is this magnificent sum too much to ask
for the year now auspiciously begun? Happily for your committee, we are
saved the necessity of elaborate or studied examination of the needs of
the work that has been done by the papers read and to be printed and
addresses delivered from the platform during the meetings up to this
time. You are thus informed more fully than we could hope to inform you
what these needs are and their urgency. But we may say that of the
8,000,000 Negroes in the South it is estimated only 2,000,000 can read
and write. Add to these the millions of poor whites in the mountains and