vast amount of industrial work is today in operation in the missions of the Union. Our missionaries have never been slow to adopt any features which might contribute to the welfare of the people whose best interests they aim to serve. In giving a review of this work we are obliged to acknowledge that our sources of information are still imperfect and incomplete. So subsidiary has this feature of our missions been considered by our missionaries that a special request to the missionaries of the Union to furnish accounts of the industrial work has as yet met with small response. This review is therefore made up from references in the correspondence and in the annual reports of the Union and of the Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Societies. Doubtless the interest excited will lead to more complete reports of the work being done on various fields and a more full and systematic representation of this feature of missionary work in the future reports of the society.

BURMA Beginning with the oldest mission field of the American Baptist Missionary Union, it may be said in general that probably all the mission schools in Burma have in operation more or less industrial features. As a rule the scholars in the schools under the control of the missionaries of the Union care for their own apartments. The boys keep in order the grounds about the schoolhouses and bring the water required for the schools, as well as prepare what small amount of firewood may be necessary for the cooking operations. In almost every school the girls are taught sewing and other features of household work necessary

Where

to prepare them for the care of an orderly and suitable Christian home. there are separate schools for boys and girls the industrial features assume a somewhat wider range. In the boys' Burman school in Moulmein, for example, the boys do nearly all the work connected with the school, not only drawing water and getting wood, but doing also the cooking, sweeping, dishwashing, etc.

this is true to an extent in other schools from which reports have not been received. Probably the most important industrial feature connected with the missions in Burma is the steam sawmill maintained by the Sgaw Karen Christians of Bassein. This is an extensive establishment, erected, supplied with machinery and conducted wholly by the Karens, the income of which is devoted to the support of the Sgaw Karen Normal and Industrial Institute, where the young men and women are trained not only in general branches of education but in many lines of industrial work. In the other mission schools in Bassein, in the Burman department, as well as in the Pwo Karen, sewing is taught to the girls and the pupils are trained in habits of industry and order.

Next to Bassein, the most important exhibit of industrial features is found at Toungoo. Here, in the Bghai Karen department is a specially interesting school, with forty-five pupils who are trained in various lines of work - the girls in those lines which are more appropriate for them and the boys in printing, carpentry, blacksmithing, tin working, etc. The printing press and the weaving departments are entirely self-supporting, and even contribute to the expenses of other industrial lines of work which have not yet sufficiently developed to have reached the point of self-support. A full statement of this work was given by Dr. Bunker in this magazine for March, 1898. A considerable part of the expenses of the Paku

Karen mission school, Toungoo, have been paid from the income of a large coffee plantation of about two hundred thousand trees, established wholly at the expense of the Karens themselves, without aid from the mission funds. We regret to say that industry seems doomed to a severe loss on account of a disease which has attacked the coffee trees and threatens the entire extermination of the coffee industry in the vicinity of Toungoo, if not throughout Burma. This disaster will have a calamitous effect upon all questions connected with the self-support of the missions, especially in the Toungoo district.

A very interesting industrial mission is that at Amherst, under the care of Miss S. E. Haswell. Miss Haswell has started the industries of salt making and raising cotton as well as other agricultural products, for the special purpose of providing an income and enlargement for her orphanage. She writes: "I am trying to establish an industrial mission at Ahnkai which shall furnish employment to native Christians and furnish means for the support of orphans and other destitute children and cottage homes for the blind and their needy families. I have sixty-four acres of land and am trying to secure twenty more. Most of the land will be used as a cotton and sessamum plantation, but there is an eight-pan salt factory and a good-sized brick field. The clay is of the best quality for brickmaking and thousands of bricks have already been made and thousands of viss of salt have already been sold. Next year, we hope, our cotton, rice and sessamum crops will enable us to begin the orphanage and homes for the blind, the need for both of which cannot be overestimated."

At Thayetmyo station the industrial features under the leadership of Rev. B. A. Baldwin are of special interest. By the work on the land the boys in the mission

school all earn their own board and provide also a considerable part of the expenses of the school. As an exhibit of what they are doing we are glad to present with this a cut of the new girls' dormitory at the Thayetmyo Chin school, built by the scholars without an appropriation of mission funds. The building is of two stories and is erected at a total cost of about 350 rupees, not counting the labors of the schoolboys. The logs were sawed on the spot by a Christian Chin, and Mr. Baldwin, with the Chin boys of the school, did a large part of the work in the erection of the building, which is twenty by forty feet, with eighteen feet posts.

Industrial work at other stations, while having many similar features, is marked at each station by special lines which seem most appropriate to the circumstances of that locality. In the Tavoy Karen school the girls are taught sewing and the boys farming according to modern American methods. They also do the work in the care of the extensive mission grounds. In the Burman girls' school at Thongze seven hours a week are devoted to sewing and fancy work, as also in the Burman girls' school at Toungoo, and in the mission school at Sandoway sewing and knitting are taught to the girls. Other stations, and perhaps every station throughout Burma, could make substantially the same report.

Altogether the amount of industrial work in our missions in Burma is something very extended and affords substantial assistance to the missionary work in addition to the funds contributed by the native Christians and those sent from America.

Aside from this the scholars in all the mission schools are being trained in habits of industry, of order and of regularity in labor, and so are being prepared for active, useful and helpful lives in the future.

ASSAM The conditions of life in Assam are so similar to those in Burma that the industrial features of the missions and mission schools are much alike, and the story of industrial mission work in Burma might be repeated for the Garo mission at Tura, for the Naga mission at Impur and for several other stations in Assam. One special feature of the mission work in Assam, however, must be mentioned which differentiates the industrial features from all those which obtain in Burma. In the prosperous missions among the Kols, who are laborers in the tea gardens of the Assamese valley, the people are so fully occupied, both old and young, in their labors in the cultivation of tea that their industries are wholly absorbed in this line of work. Neither from the annual reports nor correspondence do we learn that it has been possible to introduce special industrial features in many of the mission schools in the Assam Valley.

SOUTH INDIA Turning to the Telugu mission we find an entirely different set of conditions from those which prevail in Burma. Burma is counted as the most prosperous province of British India; the soil is fertile and productive, and the general condition of the people is more independent than in Hindustan, consequently the lines of industry are different. In India proper, especially in southern India, the wages are only about one-third of those which are paid in Burma, and they are so small that no ordinary farm laborer or coolie can earn more than enough on which barely to live. Nearly all the converts in the Telugu Baptist Mission are from the poorest classes, so far as worldly goods are concerned. These outcastes, or Pariahs, as they are called, are divided into castes or classes by the lines of work which they follow and which they have inherited from their ancestors, son succeeding father in unvarying succession, and few ever