T The Program HERE must be special effort to keep in touch with the movement of oriental population, seasonal and permanent, so that our religious work may not be sporadic or massed in large centers, but follow a plan which covers the entire field of oriental settlements in a more adequate way. To do this plans must be devised for larger contacts with orientals scattered in the country, through traveling evangelists and colporters. It will be impracticable to do such work unless the districts where there is a large rural population of orientals are definitely assigned to some Christian agency, denominational or interdenominational, and workers are specially trained for this difficult task. Cooperation and combination in large centers should be developed for the sake of efficiency in our supplementary day and night schools for teaching English or Chinese and Japanese, for improvements in Sunday school methods and for kindergarten work. Mission boards must cooperate to secure proper dispensary and hospital facilities for oriental communities and opportunities for health education, especially among the women. There is need of more adequate buildings and equipment for our oriental missions in almost every place outside of San Francisco, where there has been a very disproportionate outlay. Much more is needed especially for Japanese buildings. Many encouraging Christian enterprises among the Chinese and Japanese are dwarfed and stunted by the lack of proper buildings. The reluctance of most mission boards to repeat the competitive building program of San Francisco has hindered proper advance in building in other places. Some combination is desirable in certain places as a preliminary to a new building program. The need is not alone for church buildings, but for dormitories to provide a Christian home for the single men, who still form a majority of the orientals in the United States. The contributory effect upon Christian work for orientals of the dormitories associated with almost every mission, at least in its earlier stages, and of the homes for oriental women and children which have been established by Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist churches in recent years has been very great, and such institutions are needed more than ever, although the increase in family life is a most hopeful aspect of Christian work at present. RELIGIOUS LITERATURE TH HERE is a particularly large opportunity for the circulation of Christian literature among the Japanese, who are almost all eager readers. Thousands of copies of Japanese Christian tracts have been sold to the Japanese of the Pacific Coast and Mountain states and the territory of Hawaii. The bookstores which are found in all large Japanese communities frequently carry a line of Christian books, the American Bible Society has distributed great numbers of Bibles and testaments, and the Japanese churches demand a highly educated ministry because they are generally well read and anxious for information. In addition to these papers with general circulation, very many Japanese ministers issue small local religious papers or church bulletins which are circulated widely beyond the circle of church attendance. Formerly a Christian monthly in Chinese was issued by the Chinese Church Union of San Francisco, but it has been discontinued. Such a paper is equally needed to promote the religious life and church development among the Chinese as among the Japanese, and encouragement of the production and circulation of Chinese religious literature, periodical and permanent, would be of very great advantage to the religious work just now. USING AVAILABLE FORCES HE public schools, national associations of Chinese and Japanese and the press in both languages might be utilized much more definitely by Christian workers among orientals, if systematic effort were made to secure the sympathetic cooperation of these agencies. Many public school teachers, influential editors of Chinese and Japanese newspapers and secretaries of national associations are Christians or interested in mission work. Careful plans for enlisting their support and promotion of oriental churches and schools, such as have been worked out in connection with the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association work for orientals, would probably secure larger results. There has been enlisted a large amount of generous volunteer service in the care of oriental churches from American pastors in local churches associated with oriental mission work, from laymen and women in those churches who have accepted large responsibilities in financing and advising the missions, and from teachers who have given their help in Sunday schools and instruction in English and music for the Chinese and Japanese. A CHRISTIAN ASSIMILATION THE completion of our task of Christian assimilation of orientals in America depends very largely on the enlistment of personal helpfulness in the local communities where the orientals are living. Generous increases in the budgets for oriental missions will not meet the situation unless the local American churches accept the obligation of neighborliness and Christian brotherhood toward the orientals living among them, and particularly toward the beginnings of Christian organizations which the mission boards undertake. Finally, the policies for the future look toward a more careful planning for the young people born in this country of oriental parentage, many of them with a better knowledge of English than of their parents' language. Often lacking many of the traditions and restraints either of oriental or American social life, they specially need social and vocational as well as religious guidance. Their pastors, with excellent training in Christianity and oriental ideals, are unable to meet the problem of these American-born orientals. Very particular attention must increasingly be given to the Christian nurture of these young people. H HAWAII AWAII presents one of our most complex and difficult home mission fields. Its important location as well as the nature of its population makes it a field of great significance. A well known statesman recently said: "There is no spot under our flag today of such strategic importance to our government as Hawaii." The Hawaiian problem is in reality a Japanese problem. The estimated total population of Hawaii in 1917 was 250,627. Of these, 102,479 were Japanese. In other words, the group of Japanese was more than three times larger than the next largest racial group on the Islands and four times larger than the group of native Hawaiians. Since that time the number of Japanese has steadily increased. The number of Japanese children born in Hawaii is large. Already Japanese influence is the determining factor in the decision of many important questions. This was recently demonstrated in the defeat of the Americanization bill providing for the teaching of English and of the principles of the American government in the schools of the Islands. There are today seventy-eight Buddhist and Shinto temples in the Islands. The Buddhist temple in Honolulu cost $100,000 and is, with the exception of the Mormon temple there, the most expensive building on the Islands. Schools are maintained in connection with most of these temples where, after public school hours, boys and girls are taught the Japanese language and other things Japanese. The teachers are Buddhist priests or teachers imported largely from Japan. So strong has Buddhism become on the Islands that an organized persecution of Japanese Christians was undertaken in the spring of 1919. The Buddhists have recently shown their powerful hand in another way, namely, by defeating the proposed law to compel every teacher of every school to pass an examination in the English language and in American ideals. On the other hand Japanese Christians in Hawaii were among the most active supporters of this bill. Mormonism is also active here and the Mormon Church has gathered as many adherents among the native Hawaiian as has the first and oldest missionary society which has been at work in the Islands for a century. Missionary work in Hawaii divides itself largely into work for Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and natives. There is also work for Filipinos and Portuguese. The Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Congregational Church through its American Board, have been very active in Hawaii. According to a comity arrangement the Japanese and Chinese work has been largely given into the hands of the American Board while the Methodist Episcopal Church is at work among Koreans. An undenominational organization known as the Hawaiian Board is now the heir of the work of the American Board. This Board is largely supported by the children of missionaries who live in Hawaii. There are nineteen Japanese churches with a membership of 1,954 and eight Chinese churches with a membership of 653 under the Hawaiian Board and three Japanese churches and twenty-nine Korean missions under Methodist Episcopal auspices. The Episcopalians have a church and a school for Chinese and one for the Japanese. Although most of the territory of Hawaii has been districted and assigned to different denominations it is not yet fully or adequately occupied. Nothing but a united, spiritually energized Christian program can succeed in the face of such a challenge as is presented to the church in Hawaii. SPANISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES T IN THE UNITED STATES HE Spanish-speaking group in the United States is made up chiefly of Mexican, MexAmerican, Spanish, South American and West Indian elements. Of these the Mexican and Mex-American groups are the largest and for our present purposes the most important. The Mex-Americans (often called Spanish Americans) consist mainly of those individuals or their descendants who became a part of our nation through the acquisition of territory by the United States. They reside chiefly in the Southwest. Their language is Spanish. Many of them can neither speak nor read English. Their religious and moral conceptions have grown out of an environment and traditions quite different from our own. The total number of Mexicans in the United States is perhaps conservatively estimated at a million and a half. A recent report from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad indicated that it had more than 14,000 Mexicans employed on its lines, mostly in track work. During the war the demand for common labor on the farms of the Southwest led to the temporary admission of otherwise inadmissible Mexican aliens to work in agricultural pursuits, especially in the sugar beet fields. During a recent month 4,621 Mexicans were admitted to the United States and 255 departed. In the Southwest these new arrivals are doing almost every conceivable sort of labor. They work on the railroads, tend cattle, care for sheep, pick oranges and walnuts, work with Ignorance, superstition and prejudice are ob- irrigation, do construction work, raise flowers, stacles to be overcome. In the states of New Mexico and Arizona where the percentage of Mex-American population is particularly large the percentage of illiteracy was in 1910 nearly three times greater than the general average of illiteracy for the entire country, the percentage of illiteracy among the women of New Mexico over ten years of age being 25.4. Texas and California also have large Mexican populations and Mexicans are to be found in varying numbers in many other states. |