# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1918_S47 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) The Lutheran: Pioneer. 47 dred and fifty thousand miles of irrigation canals traverse the country in every direction. ‘These canals cost fifty million dollars, but they have turned more than twenty-two million acres of waste soil into rich farm land. India is the greatest cotton producer in the world next to the United States. One-sixth of the total out- put of this important staple is produced in India. Jute bags, so extensively used everywhere for coffee, wool, wheat, and the like, is a monopoly of Bengal Province, India. India has thirty thousand miles of railroads, and ranks fourth among the countries of the world in railroad mileage. The fare on these railroads is only one-third cent per mile. Fifty thousand miles of macadam roads have been built, and seventy thou- sand miles of telegraph lines are in operation. India’s trade is larger than that of China or Japan. The annual exports reach the sum of about four hundred and fifty million dollars, while the imports aggregate no less than seven hundred mil- lion dollars. ‘Thirty-five million people are dependent for their living upon mills and factories. In 1880 India had fifty-eight cotton mills; to-day it boasts of more than two hundred and fifty. India has within its * borders over one thousand tea plantations, four mints, forty-eight rubber plantations, twelve gold mines, ten paper mills, three hundred and fifty-three coal mines, three hundred and forty-one printing- presses, and eighteen auto works. F. J. 1. Mission-Schools in Asia. Christian schools are springing up everywhere in Asia, common schools, academies, and colleges, where the children and young people of the East are taught the Western knowledge, but, above all, things, the one thing needful. Everywhere it soon becomes apparent, no matter what field of mission- endeavor you examine, that, while the Church may bring the school, it is equally true that the school builds the Church. It is the same story every- where —in Japan, in China, in India. In India there are 53 colleges under Christian management.. In China the first eight colleges and universities founded by the government were established and set in running order by Christian missionaries. So also in Japan it was the Christian missionary Ver- “beck who founded the first college, and Roberts Col- lege, a Christian institution at Constantinople, for. years has most powerfully and beneficently affected the whole of the near East. But even more beneficial than the higher institu- tions .of learning, though less ostentatiously so, are the elementary Christian schools conducted by Chris- tian missionaries in all the countries mentioned above. It is through the lower grade schools with their daily Gospel-teaching that the blessed leaven of the Christian religion is brought into thousands of households, there to do its blessed work in silence and unnoticed, but, for all that, most surely and steadily. Teaching the Gospel of Jesus, the Savior of sinners, to the heathen children day after day in the mission-schools is the most certain, reliable, and thorough way of overcoming heathenism. They who despise not to work upon the hearts and minds of the children will in the end have the most abundant and enduring success. As experience in the home church proves that churches taking the best care of the children have the most rapid and steady growth, so also experience on the foreign field shows that, the mote attention is paid to the children of the field, the more rapid the growth of the Church and the more reliable the membership. May all the Christian congregations at the home base profit by the example of their congregations in the foreign field! FIL. We are the children of the conyerts of foreign missionaries, and fairness means that I do for others what men once did for me. BOOK TABLE. Testimony and Proof. By Prof. Th. Graebner. Con- cordia Publishing. House, St. Louis, Mo. a rege booklet, paper cover. Price, 5 cts., postpaid; 50 copies, $2.00, postage extra; 100 copies, $3.50, post- age extra; in quantities of 500 or more, at $30.00 per thousand, transportation extra. _ We can in no better way prove our love to our Church and our loyalty to our country than by assisting in the wholesale distribution of this booklet. It did the re viewer’s heart good when he saw the first copy, and as soon as he had read it through, he sat down and 300 copies for distribution in his church. We subscribe to every word the publishers say in announcing this timely tract: — f “One of the developments of our war with Gerinany in many localities is the assumption that the Lutheran Church is the: Kaiser’s church, and that the Kaiser in- directly or directly is influencing or even governing the Lutheran Church. By some irony of fate the Missouri _ Lutheran § Gas ewhicht owes ks) realac in to emigra- tion e Ka ‘3 on account o: lous op: ioe ra Rabers ea: pression. and persecution under the 17 . cestors, is singled out for especial odium by misinformed _ peas, and in the excitement of the such unfounded msinuations and charges gain credence & manner and — to an extent that bodes no good to our church-body. itiel = = Pee).