Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/37

Rh ten thousand dollars; twenty general secretaries, and five buildings. Nine States are organized, and five employ state secretaries. The following words from a recent Kansas report sound strangely, almost like a joke, to one who remembers the peculiar influence of Missouri upon the infant Kansas: "Kansas owes much of her standing to-day to the fostering care and efforts of the Missouri state executive committee." In 1870, two visitors were sent to the Southern States. There were then three associations only between Virginia and Texas. There are now one hundred and fifty-seven.

Previous to the Civil War the work was well under way, but had been almost entirely given up. Our visitors were not at once received as brethren, but Christian love did its work and gradually all differences were forgotten by these Christians in the wonderful tie which truly united them, and when, in 1877, the convention met at Richmond, not only harmony prevailed, but it seemed as though each were trying to prove to the other his intenser brotherly love. The cross truly conquered. No one who was present can ever forget those scenes, or cease to bless God for what I truly believe was the greatest step toward the uniting again of North and South. Mr. T. K. Cree has had charge of this work since the beginning. Not only has sectional spreading

of associations been done by the committee, but, in the language of the report already quoted: "Special classes of young men, isolated in a measure from their fellows by virtue of occupation, training, or foreign birth, have from time to time so strongly appealed to the attention of the American associations as to elicit specific efforts in their behalf." Thus, in 1868, the first secretary of the committee was directed to devote his time to railroad employees. For one year he labored among them. The general call on his time then