I 9/^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF Miss A. Williams Cornell University Library BV 2851.S93 1916 South American nf,ig'}'J°li^,,(„ Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924020402123 EDITED UNDER THE DIRECTIOK OF THE MISSIONARY EPUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS REQUEST FOR INFORMATION Send this to the Secretary of your denominational mission board whose address is in the " List of Mission Boards and Correspondents " at the end of the book. Dear I want to form a mission study class on the text-book. South American Neighbors, in our church, and desire " Suggestions for Leaders " and other material that will help me in organizing and conducting it. Very sincerely yours. Name- Street and Number- — City or Town State- Church : SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS BY HOMER C. STUNTZ BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE U. S. A. 156 FIFTH AVENUE ^ - - NEW YORK 395 /9/C Copyright, 1916, by Missionary Education Movement of thk United States and Canada CONTENTS CHAPTER PACB Foreword ix I The Continent of To- Morrow I II Glimpses of Four Centuries 25 III Some Social Factors 49 IV The Spirit of the Pioneers 73 V Present-Day Religious Problems 97 VI Educating a Continent 123 VII The Evangelical Message and Method 149 VIII The Panama Congress and the Outlook 173 Appendixes A Statistics of Protestant Missions 200 B Population and School Statistics 206 C Bibliography 207 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Latin American Delegates, Panama Congress, 1916. .Frontispiece Docks and Flour Mills, Buenos Aires 12 Mammoth Grain Elevators, Buenos Aires 12 Municipal Theater, Sao Paulo 16 Avienda Rio Branca, Rio de Janeiro 16 Inca Street and Wall 34 Panorama of Cuzco 34 Simon Bolivar 38 D. F. Sarmiento 38 Francisco Pizarro 38 Dom Pedro II 38 Statue of San Martin, Mendoza, Argentina 44 European Immigrant Girls Picking Grapes 52 Italian Immigrants Showing Their Products 52 Indian Types 58 Rev. Thomas B. Wood 94 Rev. David Trumbull 94 Roman Catholic Cathedrals 102 Corpus Christi Procession 106 Dancing Before Virgin 106 Virgin in Church 106 Indians and Idols 106 Children of Illustrious Families, Rio de Janeiro 128 Public School in a New Section, Argentina 128 National University and Congress, Caracas 134 Palace of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro 134 Mackenzie College 142 Bible Colporteurs 158 Episcopal Church, La Boca Del Monte, Brazil 162 Presbyterian Church, Valparaiso, Chile 162 Map -. End FOREWORD This is the best hour in all history for a fresh interpretation of the missionary opportunity in South America. As never before South America is in the eye of North America. With Europe and not with North America have been the relations, the sympathies, and the business of South America. British and German capital have built the South American railways and financed her foreign banks and importing concerns. From Spain, Portugal, and Italy have come her settlers. European books, European ideals, European social and political forms, have dominated and still dominate the South American people. Meanwhile North America had vast problems to solve, and gave little thought to the possibilities in the southern half of the western world. But new factors have been thrust into the equation. These factors are powerful and affect world condi- tions profoundly. A wholly new interest is felt in South America. It is about us like a rising tide. Shall this new interest be commercial and diplo- matic only? Will Christian men and women permit the lure of gain or the chance for political advantage to be the chief expressions of North American interest in her sister continent? Shall our Churches permit the impact of the new commercial invasion of South America by our manufacturers, our merchants, and our banks to be delivered without seeking to Christian- X FOREWORD ize that impact? Shall the nations of the southern half of our. hemisphere be filled with hosts from other lands, while Christ's followers stand idle, and neither attempt to create a favorable spiritual atmosphere for their reception nor meet them in love as they come? This new interest in South America is of God. He has great designs of grace for its peoples. It is for us to be wise in the day of his power. That this may be set toward accomplishment this book has been prepared. It has been written in the crowded hours of a busy year spent in serving South America. No one can be more aware of its limitations and defects than the writer. Without the efficient help of my daughter, Mrs. Clara Stuntz Hunter, who spent more than a year teaching in Montevideo, Uruguay, the work could not have been done. Acknowledgment is gladly made of most valuable information secured from nearly all of the volumes named in the bibliography which appears in Appendix C. The publications of The Pan American Union have been freely used. Special help has been derived from the Reports of the eight Commissions of the Congress on Christian Work in Latin America (Panama, Feb. I0-20, 19 1 6). But four years of contact with the people in nearly all parts of the continent gave the best material that may be found in the book. Homer C. Stuntz New York City May 20, 1916, THE CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW South America has been called "The Neglected Continent." Another author calls it "The Continent of Opportunity." Thinking men everywhere are recognizing that its vast areas and immense resources make it certain that South America will witness greater economic, educational, and social development within this century than any other continent of the world. The world has not yet taken South America seri- ously. In North America we have classed all the republics from Venezuela and Colombia to Argentina together, and have spoken of them in slighting terms. Some who pass for cultured men and women are satisfied to remain in densest ignorance of the geog- raphy, resources, commerce, educational advance, and social progress of these growing Latin countries. They think of them as lying in the tropics, and chiefly in- habited by illiterate brigands, whose trade is not worth cultivating and whose political future is* negligible in world affairs. A prominent business man in New York state re- fused to make a subscription to a college enterprise in a large city in one of the South American repubhcs, giving as his reason that he did not care to invest any 2 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS money in countries "where they had a revolution every month." As a matter of fact, in that particular re- public there has been no political disturbance greater than a local riot for thirty-two years!. ■; One of the largest publishing houses in New York' City recently received a book order from a gentleman living in Buenos Aires. Whoever handled the order must have had it firmly fixed in his mind that Buenos Aires is in Brazil, for he wrote asking the person who had sent the order this question : "Will you kindly let us know at which of the following stations you can call to get this package: Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Bello Horizonte, Bahia, Pernambuco, and Para? We ask that you write the postal authorities at the nearest of the above stations and make arrangements to have the books forwarded from that place to you, writing us and informing us where to ship them." None of the towns mentioned is within two thousand miles of Buenos Aires, and one is at least three thousand miles away, or farther than from New York to San Francisco. A manufacturer in Chicago determined to get a share of South American trade, and as a first effort had something like a carload of literature printed. It was most attractively prepared with beautiful photo- gravures and concise, well-put statements of the ad- vantages gained by those who used the machinery turned out at his factories. But it was all printed in English! When North America takes the South American continent and people seriously, there will be CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 3 some hope of mutual trade expansion and missionary development. It is a mistake to think of the South American countries as a unit. We would not think in that way of North America, with its Central American States, Mexico, United States, Canada, and Alaska, with a climate varying from Panama to Greenland. South America contains ten republics — ^Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, and Ecuador; and the three Guianas, French, Dutch, and British colonies — with a climate varying from tropic heat to arctic cold. Vast Areas The area of South America confounds North American observers. We have lived in a fool's para- dise, having been deceived by the makers of maps, who have shown the United States and Canada on a scale twice and even ten times larger than that used in maps of South American republics. This has led us to suppose that the nations of South America were small. We have thought of Bolivia, for example, as a little country, but it is larger than Japan, Austria- Hungary, and Italy combined. Peru has more square miles than all of the United States from Nova Scotia to the west line of Indiana and from the Gulf to Canada. Argentina is one third as large as the Dominion of Canada. Or, to put it another way, Argentina is as large as twenty-five 4 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS n Pennsylvanias or twenty-four New Yorks. Sweden can be lost twice in Venezuela and still leave room for- Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The entire United States of America could be dropped into Brazil and have enough room left for Germany and Portugal. Chile is the longest and narrowest republic in the world. It consists of the western slope of the Andes Mountains, and beginning at the Strait of Magellan runs north twenty-seven hundred miles, as far as from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Calgary in Alberta. The distances between different parts of the con- tinent stagger us. When we try to measure distance by the time necessary to cover it, the impression grows, as neither steamers nor trains make as rapid time in southern waters and on southern railways as they do in the North Atlantic and in northern Europe and the United States. The writer has had duties in Panama and also in Paraguay. Taking a steamer at Panama and proceeding by ship all the way to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, tarrying at ports only to dis- charge and receive mail and cargo, more time is con- sumed than is needed to travel from New York by way of Gibraltar to Bombay, India, and back again to London. South America has 7,276,000 square miles as against 8,559,000 square miles in North America. Its' one great range of mountains is the Andes, and that is pushed to the extreme western edge of the continent. Millions of acres are available for cultivation in the rich valleys hidden away in this mountain chain, and CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 5 nearly all the remainder of the continent is free for the uses of man. Great sections of southern Brazil and practically all of Uruguay and Argentina consist of compara- tively level prairie land. The arable area of Peru equals the combined states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and California, and only seven per cent, of it has thus far been improved. Nowhere else in the world in such favorable climatic conditions are there such stretches of fertile prairie country. Land is the great asset of a nation's wealth. Command of the soil means domination of the earth. In the vastness of her mountains, valleys, and prairies lies the first sig- nificance of South America's future relation to the world. Natural Resources It is wholly within the facts to say that no part of the earth's surface is more richly endowed with min- erals, fertile soil, forests, natural waterways, and climatic advantages, than South America. Practically every one of the useful minerals is found there, and many of them in abundance. Gold is found in every South American state. The hills of the Guianas are still seamed with the yellow metal, though early discoverers began tearing open those hillsides in a mad search for it. Even in Tierra del Fuego, Indians wash out enough gold in a day to make good wages. Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela are rich in the precious metal. 6 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS The Inca-Oro gold mine of Bolivia is using the most modem machinery in a mine in which pre-Inca, Inca, and Spanish miners dug miles of tunnels in extracting gold during unknown centuries. Their mining engineer testifies that the full capacity of their present plant will be taxed for some years to work over the quartz which was rejected by miners of other years, and that the rich veins show no signs of being exhausted. It was in Cuzco, the ancient capital of Peru, that the Spanish found those massive gold plates blazing on the walls of the Temple of the Sun, and the table services of solid gold which had been prepared for the use of the royal head of the empire of the Incas. South America produces fifteen million ounces of silver annually. The famous mine at Potosi in Bolivia stands in the public mind as a synonym for silver. A recent visit paid to a silver mine near Oruro in Bolivia disclosed the fact that silver has been taken from that same mine for at least two thousand years and that "the visible supply" does not appear to be diminished. Copper is there in greater quantities than in the mines of Michigan, Montana, or Arizona. It is found chiefly in the west coast republics, in the Andean range, at from nine to fourteen thousand feet elevation. Even this metal is mixed with silver in nearly all the known deposits. In one mine in Peru enough silver is mined with the copper to pay all the expenses of mining, shipping the ore to the coast, from the coast to the smelter in North America, and to cover the entire cost of smelting in addition. At a place called CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 7 Chucacamati in northern Chile, the Guggenheim syndi- cate is building a copper mining plant equipped for several thousand workmen. It is estimated that they will spend on machinery and buildings $4,000,000 be- fore a penny of profit is expected. The same syndicate is working a copper mine of almost fabulous wealth at Rancagua, a few hours' railroad journey south of Santiago. If the diamond deposits in central Brazil were worked as efficiently as those of Kimberley, the splendor of the individual stones and the total yield would not suffer in comparison with its South African competitor. The rapid development of diamond min- ing in this Brazilian field has called into existence a modern city called Diamantina. Colombia has the largest known deposits of emer- alds. The mines are only seventy-five miles from Bogota, the capital. Despite the inefficient methods of working the mines and the lack of adequate trans- portation facilities for mining machinery, laborers,^ or product, these mines yield 700,000 carats of precious stones annually. Coal in large quantities is now being mined on the coast of Chile, south of Valparaiso. It is shipped from the two ports, Lota and Coronel. The veins of coal run out under the Pacific Ocean, and miners' mules haul their loaded trucks from under the waters of that ocean. Coal of a better quality is found far back in the interior of Brazil, and on the east side of the Andean range in northern Argentina, Bolivia, 8 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS Peru, and Ecuador. Those most familiar with the coal deposits declare that this fuel is so abundant in the southern continent that the needs of both Americas could be supplied from deposits in South America if all other sources were exhausted. These statements read strangely when it is known that pjractically all the coal now used in eastern South America is imported from Europe or Australia. The explanation is simple. South American coal deposits, so far as they have been discovered, lie far back in the interior in a mountainous country behind almost illimitable tracts of marsh and forest. Capital has not been forthcoming to build the lines of railway necessary to take in the machinery for working these veins of coal and to haul out the product. But railway lines are steadily approaching these great coal-fields, and within a decade or two little or no coal will be imported for the use of the east coast countries. The mines of Chile will be increasingly able to supply the west coast demands. Iron is found in Chile in great abundance. In the province of Coquimbo, one night's steamer journey north of Valparaiso, there is a range of hills assaying a high percentage of pure iron. The Bethlehem Steel Company has purchased this immense deposit of iron ore, and is now building its own town for work- men, its own railway to the coast, and its private docks with modern appliances for loading ore. They are also constructing several steel steamers to bring this ore through the Panama Canal in competition with CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 9 the ores of the United States. A mining engineer of large experience estimates that there is ore enough in that one province to supply the iron and steel works at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for seventy-five years. More tin is produced in Bolivia than in Cornwall, England, and Australia combined. Fortunes have been made and are being made in working these tin mines, though but a few of them have been opened, and only here and there are mining operations con- ducted with adequate machinery and modem adminis- tration. Oil is found in several plafces. The first oil field to be developed was on the north coast of Peru where for nearly one hundred miles derricks and oil tanks can be seen from the deck of every passing steamer. The product is taken in tank steamers to refineries in California or sold along the coast to an increasing number of oil-burning steamships. Within ten years extensive deposits of petroleum have been discovered in southeastern Argentina. The Argentine govern- ment has surrounded the operation of these oil wells with so many- difficulties by hampering legislation that their development has been slow. Capital has been frightened ; but when the European War sent the price of coal mounting into high figures, those who operate the oil fields were able to secure exemptions from the more burdensome of these restrictions and petroleum is now beginning to compete with coal as a fuel in the manufacturing industries of Argentina and Uruguay. Chile produces vast quantities of nitrates, manufac- lo SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS turing them from a deposit called caliche (ca-leech'-e). The amount of capital invested in this business runs into tens of millions of dollars. The output in the last year before the European War was valued at 314,000,000 pesos^ ($113,000,000). It is one of the best known fertilizers and has been extensively used in France, Germany, England, and the United States. By a different treatment of caliche, saltpeter is pro- duced, while iodine is a by-product of great value. All the manufacturers of explosives in the world look to Chile for much of their raw material. Experts declare that the known deposits of caHche will last another hundred years at the present rate of con- sumption. Besides these metals, platinum, lead, mer^ cury, tungsten, bismuth, antimony, and vanaditun are also found. But, rich as are the mines of South America, the wealth in her soil and her forests is far greater. The fertility of the soil both in tropical and temperate areas may be judged from the great yields in sugar, coffee, rubber, rice, wheat, corn, tobacco, alfalfa, and other crops. In 1914 Brazil exported 11,271,000 sacks of coffee, weighing about one hundred and thirty pounds each, and only a very small fraction of the land adapted to raising coffee is under cultivation. In northern Argentina in the sugar producing province of Tucuman the total output of sugar in the same year 'Peso is the Spanish word for the unit of currency corre- sponding to the "dollar" in most South American countries. CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW ii was 226,000 tons. Enough sugar is grown in one province of Argentina each year to sweeten the year's production of Brazilian coffee. The table-lands of central and southern Brazil, averaging from 3,000 to 4,500 feet above the sea, constitute one of the finest agricultural areas in the world. Wheat, corn, alfalfa, oats, and all kinds of clover and root crops give as large yields as the same crops when cultivated in Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, Ontario, or Georgia. The tropical sections of Brazil and all of Venezuela and Colombia yield rice, cotton, tobacco, and tropical fruits of all kinds wherever these are well cultivated. The west coast of Peru grows cotton of the longest and finest staple known. There is an abundant supply of water for irrigation pouring down the mountain- side from "the eternal snows" on the Andean summits. Millions of acres of irrigable land are still available for the growth of this fine quality of cotton. ''■ But it is in southern Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and southern Chile that one finds the great fertile area* of South America in a climate of the most favorable kind. The rapidity with which raw prairie land in Argen- tina is being converted into productive farms may be seen from the fact that, although Canada has increased the number of acres under plow seventy-five per cent, in the last twelve years, Argentina has increased the number of acres under plow two hundred and seventy- eight per cent, in the same period. Remembering that large discounts need to be made 12 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS for heat in northern Argentina and the cold as we approach the Strait of Magellan, it is nevertheless true that Argentina has the soil of Illinois and the climate of Southern California. Couple this with the fact that it enjoys an average rainfall of from twenty- five to sixty inches except in the arid regions near the base of the Andes Mountains, and it will be seen that Mr. John Foster Fraser is quite right in naming his new book on that country The Amazing Argentine.: It is amazing. In the line of agricultural develop- ment there is nothing so amazing in the history of nations. Not even in North America was the de- velopment so rapid as that which has taken place in Argentina and Uruguay in the last twenty-five years. Mr. Frank W. Harding, Secretary of the American Shorthorn Association, returned to the United States in September, 191 5, after several weeks given to the study of .the cattle business in Argentina. Wheat and meat, he says, form the backbone of the agricultural wealth of that vast country, with wool standing next in importance. Though much corn is produced, very little is fed to cattle, as practically all the beef of that country is grass fattened. Mr. Harding says that the acreage of alfalfa is enormous. Most of the millions of cattle marketed there are finished on this legume. He at- t€nded the Palermo stock show in Buenos Aires, where 1,200 shorthorn cattle were on exhibition. The ani- mals drawing first and second prizes sold at auction for $25,000 and $18,000. C-ipyrighl by Keystone View Go. DOCKS AND FLOUR MILLS, BUENOS AIRES MAMMOTH GRAIN ELEVATORS, BUENOS AIRES CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 13 Mr. Harding makes the unqualified statement that he never before had seen such uniformly high-class cattle. He reports that the largest dairy in the world is near Buenos Aires. It is the "La Martona" dairy, where seven thousand cows are milked daily. They are handled upon an estate of 20,000 acres, most of which is in alfalfa. Within twenty-five years Argen- tine beef and mutton have driven North American competition out of Europe. During the first year in which that country began to sell its chilled meat in the United States the total sales reached $27,000,000. Argentine corn and wheat are being imported into the United States, and the fertility of these vast stretches of black prairie soil has only begun to make itself felt in the markets of the world. j w^l: Within the last ten years^ the export value of live stock products has increased from $125,000,000- to $180,000,000, and agricultural products from $105,- 000,000 to $265,000,000. There are 30,000,000 cattle in the republic, 12,000,000 horses, and 80,000,000 sheep. While the value of export mutton remains very much what it was ten years ago, the value of chilled and frozen beef has risen from $7,500,000 to over $30,000,000 a year. England is only three weeks from Buenos Aires, and great ships laden with chilled meat are timed to arrive at London and other Euro- pean ports with the accuracy of express trains. It is impossible to go through the packing-houses at La ^Period ending 1913. 14 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS Plata, Buenos Aires, and Montevideo, or to visit the huge grain elevators at Buenos Aires, Rosario, and Bahia Blanca, pouring golden streams of wheat into the holds of Atlantic liners "without the imagination being stimulated while standing on the threshold of this new land's possibilities." The astonishing economic growth of Brazil, Uru- guay, and Argentina has been due chiefly to three causes : 1. The discovery of the process of making artificial ice. European countries may quarantine live cattle from eastern South American ports because of the prevalence of cattle diseases, but their ports are wide open to chilled meat from cattle killed under proper inspection. Thirty years ago a beef animal could be bought for about the price of its hide, horns, and hoofs, or from $5 to $10. To-day a similar animal is worth from $75 to $100. The difference has been made possible by the use of refrigerator ships. 2. The rapid extension of railways. Argentina is gridironed with railway tracks. Great Britain has furnished the capital. The idea was given by WilUam Wheelwright, who had come from the United States and knew how railways were stimulating the agri- cultural development of his own country. Returning, he sought to interest American capital in railway building in Argentina. Failing to do so and determined not to be beaten, he went to England and secured the needed funds to begin railway extension in the River Plata area. Americans missed one of the greatest oppor- CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 15 tunities in their history when they remained deaf to the plea of Wilham Wheelwright. If they had seen the opportunity which he offered to them and had gone to South America, the mutual relations of the two continents might now be vastly-, different. When the British had caught a glimpse of the profits to be made in freight and passenger traffic, they poured out their gold. For forty years a mile of railroad was laid down in the Argentine Republic for every day, and during later years this has increased to three miles a day. Brazil ranks twelfth among the nations of the world in its railway mileage, having increased from 9^ miles in 1854 to over 15,445 miles of railway in 1914. Argentina leads in mileage, with an increase from 154 miles in 1865 to 21,880 miles in 19 14. Chile has 5,008 miles in operation, while Colombia has only 708. Chile is the only one of the South American republics which has insisted upon building and operating prac- tically all of its lines. 3. Navigable rivers and ocean approaches. Brazil alone has 10,000 miles of rivers navigable for ocean steamers, and 50,000 additional navigable miles for light-draught vessels and flatboats. Ocean steamers can traverse almost the entire Amazon, sailing without danger over 2,500 miles from the coast. It attains a depth of from 240 to 1,625 feet. The Amazon has been well named "The Liquid Equator." At Iquitos, in Peru, on the Amazon within 500 miles of the Pacific Ocean, vessels from Atlantic waters i6 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS discharge and load from the wharves at that great new steaming city near the Andean base. And in the south the Parana is regularly navigated by steamers from the mouth below Buenos Aires, 2,400 miles, or well into the heart of Brazil. Nearly all of the 80,000,000 pounds of crude rubber, shipped from Brazil in 1914, found its way to market by means of these natural waterways. The Rio de la Plata is 120 miles wide at the mouth, or as far as from New York to Cape May. There are over twenty steamship lines from Europe and twelve steamship lines from North America. From this total of actual and potential resources great discounts must be made. MilHons of acres in Brazil lie so low as to be little better than marshes.. Almost impenetrable jungles, wide and rainless deserts like those of Atacama and Tarapaca in northern Chile fill the traveler with disappointment. Malaria and other tropical diseases are unchecked over wide spaces otherwise inviting. Savage and half-savage Indians roam unhindered over Amazonian areas as large as some of the North American provinces or states. But when all the discounts have been made, the great fact still confronting us is the vastness and richness of South America. "Latin America may already be considered as inde- pendent, from the agricultural point of view ; it pos- sesses riches which are peculiar to it; coffee to Brazil; wheat to the Argentine; sugar to Peru; fruits and rubber to the tropics. ... It may rule the markets Copyright by Keystone View Co. MUNICIPAL THEATER, SAO PAULO AVIENDA RIO BRANCA, RIO DE JANEIRO CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 17 of the world. The systematic exploitation of its mines will reveal treasures which are not even suspected." ^ Sparsity of Population Resources so rich and on a scale so vast guarantee a population far more numerous than that now found in South America. Argentina, with a territory as large as the United States east of Omaha, has only 8,000,000 people, or 1,000,000 less than the state of New York. If Argentina were populated as densely as Japan, her census would show 412,816,000 people. If Brazil had as many people to each square mile as Massachusetts, her population would reach the astound- ing total of 1,345,538,000, or but 350,000,000 less than the population of the whole world. Certain and rapid growth in population over areas so fertile and in a climate so favorable is something about which we do not need to prophesy. People are coming now by the hundreds of thousands. There are nearly 500,000 Italians in and near Buenos Aires. Spaniards are coming, also Germans, English, Hollanders, and Scandinavians, but thus far there is no immigration movement from North America. It is probable that for some generations to come the operations of econo- mic law will send Europeans rather than North Americans to avail themselves of the resources of the southern continent. There are two distinct fields for immigration in 'Calderon, Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 386. i8 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS South America: first, the tropical and heavily wooded areas of Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, equatorial Brazil, Peru, and Bolivia. This section is better adapted to Negroes, East Indians, and to those whose ancestors have long been accustomed to tropical con- ditions. White immigrants will hardly thrive in this portion of the continent. The second field is the temperate prairie and forest regions of Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil, and southern Chile, and those sections of the Andean Plateau which are not over 10,000 feet above sea level. These portions of the continent offer congenial surroundings to immigrants from cooler climates. Either by latitude or altitude climatic conditions in these areas are similar to those found in northern Europe and North America. Carefully prepared estimates put the population of these climatic zones, by the end of the present century, at not less than 100,000,000. Many believe this esti- mate too conservative and would place the total at not less than 150,000,000. The unoccupied land in South America lies within easy reach of Europe, and sooner or later must be settled and cultivated. The terrible war now raging in Europe will tend to in- crease rather than diminish the flood of immigrants. These will seek to repair their broken fortunes, and rebuild their shattered homes in South America. Asia is fully populated. Africa is fully exploited. North America is restless. And South America is the only spot on earth capable of offering homes to land-hungry CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 19 men from all climates. Australia and Canada cannot offer to the Italian, the Spaniard, the Frenchman, the Turk, and the inhabitants of the Balkan states such a congenial field as is open to them on the roomy con- tinent where "the Latins are blooming again." Signs of New Interest The attention of North Americans is being called to South America as never before. The completion of the Panama Canal has been a powerful factor in bringing this to pass. The visit of Mr. Elihu Root, while serving as the Secretary of State of the United States, and subsequent visits by Mr. William Jennings Bryan, Colonel Roosevelt, and Lord Bryce have deep- ened the impressions made by earlier visits. In the spring of 191 3 the Boston Chamber of Commerce sent a number of its own members and a few specialists in various lines of research on a tour of the continent by way of Panama. The Illinois Manufacturers' Association sent a large delegation soon afterward by way of Brazil and Argentina. Members of this association returned to the United States convinced of the rich opportunities of trade which face the exporter who has the business acumen necessary to select trained agents, prepare literature, and otherwise adapt himself to the com- mercial conditions of the southern continent. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace inaugurated and carried through an educational pil- 20 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS grimage under the leadership of Professor Harry Erwin Bard in the summer of 1914. "The object in view was to secure the presence in various widely scattered educational institutions in the United States of men who had seen South America with their own eyes, who could speak with some authority concerning the problems and activities of the other American republics." Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler closes the preface to the report of this tour with these words: "The peoples of the several American republics are being each year drawn together more closely than ever before. So soon as they find ways and means of breaking through the barriers which have been erected by difference of language and by separate political and historical traditions and come to a complete under- standing of each other's civilization and plan of life, they will be able to exert a profound influence on the Old World because of their essentially identical ideas and their common devotion to free institutions." Tourists are rapidly discovering the scenic splendors of South America and are crowding the passenger vessels down both coasts, visiting the ruined cities of Peru, traveling under the very shadows of the Andes Mountains, and seeing the splendor of Rio de Janeiro and the vast pampas of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil with wondering eyes. More is being written and published about South America in a single month than was put in print in an entire decade a few years ago. Almost every magazine has an article on some section of South CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 21 America. Lecturers are telling its story on a hundred platforms and before tens of thousands in Chautauqua audiences. A couple of enterprising men with South American experience have founded a monthly paper entitled South America, which is published in New York City in two editions, — one in English and one in Spanish. The National City Bank of New York City has entered deliberately upon a plan of establishing branch banks in the leading cities of that continent. Up to November, 1914, practically all of the banking of the continent had been done by British and German insti- tutions. Within a year from the opening of the first branch bank it had been the means of negotiating loans aggregating $70,000,000 to Argentina alone, the first governmental loans ever negotiated in North America by a South American nation. This beginning of closer com^nercial relations be- tween the two continents has been greatly accentuated by the European War. Goods which South Americans had been buying in Europe must now be bought in North America. Money which could formerly be borrowed in almost any amount from European sources must now be sought from Canada and the United States. This fact involves us in responsibilities as well as in greater and closer commercial relations with South America. How can North American merchants get this trade? Pirst, understand it. One thing that cannot be "made in North America" is knowledge of foreign markets. 22 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS They must be studied on the ground. Second, we must have warehouses there. They cannot wait on shipments from Canada and the United States. Third, we must build up a Spanish-speaking seUing agency. And, calamity of calamities> we of the United States must not let the impression go out that we are trying to take advantage of the present disabilities of Europe. We must secure the trade because it is there, not because the opposition is down and out. We must be sportsmen and stoop to nothing unworthy. The Pan-American Union, in Washington, District of Columbia, is the international organization and office maintained by the twenty-one American Repub- lics, controlled by a Governing Board composed of the diplomatic representatives in Washington of the Latin- American republics and the Secretary of 5tate of the United States, administered by a Director and Assis- tant Director chosen by this Board, and assisted by a staff of statisticians, compilers, trade experts, trans- lators, editors, librarians, and clerks, and devoted to the development and conservation of commerce, friendly intercourse, and good understanding among all the American republics. Several conferences have been held of international significance, composed of the representatives of finan- cial, educational, and scientific leaders in North and South America. The First Pan-American Scientific Congress was held in Chile in 1908, and even before that gatherings of a similar character had been held, at which leaders of these countries had met and dis- CONTINENT OF TO-MORROW 23 cussed prominent subjects of scientific interest. The first Pan-American Conference was convened in Wash- ington, District of Columbia, May 24-29, 1915, by the authority of the Congress of the United States, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury. The Conference considered such subjects as the uniformity of laws relating to trade, commerce, the exchange of money, postage rates, uniform regulations for com- mercial travelers, and the extension of the procedure of arbitration for the adjustment of all commercial- disputes. The Second Pan-American Scientific Congress was- held in Washington, from December 27th, 191 5, to- January 7th, 19 16, and brought to this country a groups of visitors from Latin America that was more broadly representative, not only of political and economic interests, but of educational, scientific, and humani- tarian activities generally, than any other group ever- assembled in America. The scope of this Congress is. indicated by its nine sections, each with its special, committee and secretary and corps of assistants, and. these sections, in turn, were subdivided into forty-five: subsections. The subjects studied included anthro- pology and allied subjects, astronomy, meteorology,, seismology, conservation of natural resources, agri- culture, irrigation, forestry, education, engineering, international law, public law, jurisprudence, mining and metallurgy, economic geology and applied chem- istry, public health, medical science, transportation,, commerce, finance, and taxation. 24 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS And, to crown all, there was held in Panama, February 10-20, 1916, the Congress on Christian Work in Latin America. This Congress did for the Latin American countries what the Edinburgh Conference, in 1910, did so worthily for the rest of the missionary world. A total of 481 delegates, of whom 230 were officially appointed by the denominational mission boards from practically all of the Christian countries of the world assembled to hear reports from com- missions on the survey and occupation of the field, the message and method of Christian work, education, literature, woman's work, the Church in Latin America, the activities of the mission boards at the home base, and close cooperation and union in a policy to possess the entire field. This Congress was held under the dominant impression that the present world situation has taught the world one supreme lesson, namely: that without Christ and his gospel, purely believed, faithfully obeyed, no science or culture or trade or diplomacy will avail to meet human need. In making out the case for South America as a field of missionary opportunity, it is concluded, that in a continent so roomy and so rich another century will witness a greater growth in population and a more rapid and significant political and social development than will take place in any other part of the world. II GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES Two European nations in 1494 divided the control of South America between them — Portugal and -Spain. Portugal imposed her rule and speech upon Brazil, while Spain dominated the remainder of the continent. We shall obtain the best perspective in our study of the four centuries which have passed since European occu- pation of that continent began if we study first Portu- guese South America, and then that portion of the continent which has been under Spanish rule and influence. Portuguese Influences The first Portuguese settlement was at Sao Vin- cento, near the present site of Santos in Brazil, the greatest coffee shipping port in the world. The Portu- guese pioneers were hardy and adventurous men. They soon discovered the fertile and salubrious plateau which runs parallel to the Atlantic coast through what is now central and southern Brazil. They pushed back and up into these higher and more beautiful lands, spreading to the north and south in their search for gold and for better pastoral and agricultural oppor- tunities. When news of the almost fabulous fertility 25 26 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS of the soil reached Portugal, the king endeavored to promote rapid settlement and improvement by granting lands, in almost boundless tracts, to his court favorites. This was the fundamental .blunder of both Portugal and Spain in all their new possessions. The land was thus placed under the control of a few, and the blight- ing effect of this system of enormous land grants is still felt. The king of Portugal sent the first governor to the city of Bahia in 1549. Six Jesuit priests accompanied him, — the first to set foot on any part of the western hemisphere. Their activity, as we shall see later, has profoundly affected the welfare of the populations of all Latin America. This band of Jesuits pushed into the interior and joined with the early colonists in founding the city of Sao Paulo (St. Paul), which is now a modern city of half a million people and the center of the great coffee industry of Brazil. From the beginning the colonists and the Jesuits were at loggerheads. The priests were determined to prevent the exactions of forced labor from the Indians. The earlier colonists found it very profitable to have their land tilled for them by the Indians, and stub- bornly resisted the efforts of the priests. The latter proposed the importation of Negroes from Africa as the solution of the problem of unpaid labor. Thus there was fastened upon Brazil the curse of Negro slavery; and the social, political, and religious prob- lems thus created have been even more serious than that which the Jesuits sought to solve. GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 27 The Jesuits grew steadily in power and strove con- tinually to dominate the civil and even the military life of the countries in which they were settled. Noted for political intrigue, they were both feared and hated because of their growing power and of their rapidly increasing riches. The antagonism became increasingly bitter, and the new colony was torn with dissension. At last the colonists rose in their might and drove the Jesuits into Paraguay and to the northern province of what is now Argentina. That province is still, named. "Misiones," a constant reminder of this century-long struggle. In their new location the Jesuits established them- selves firmly, built large churches, convents, orphan- ages, and industrial structures, the ruins of which, still interest and astonish the traveler. On the upper reaches of the Parana river they had thousands of docile and well-disciplined Indians working in their fields and worshiping in their churches. In 1759 the authorities of Brazil expelled the Jesuits from all Portuguese dominions, and in 1767 Spanish, authorities drove them from all Spanish South. America, confiscating their lands and property of whatever kind. The detailed history of their labors among the Indians abounds with examples of individual courage^, patience, scholarship, and unselfish endeavor; but as an organization the Jesuits placed the welfare of their order and Church above all motives of patriotism or loyalty. Though they gave the Indian the nearest 28 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS approach to justice he ever enjoyed, they did it by reducing him to blind obedience, making of him a tenant and servant. By their superior education they were enabled to rule great numbers of illiterate natives. The priest was governor, police, magistrate, and school- teacher, all in one. The Indians were easily induced to conform to the externals of the new faith. Their imaginations were captivated by the gorgeous cere- monials of worship and they soon became outwardly loyal to Christianity. With the expulsion of the Jesuits, the commercial and political development of the Portuguese settle- ments in what is now Brazil went forward rapidly. In spite of heavy and unreasonable exactions by the Portuguese crown, and in face of the fact that Portu- gal made Brazil the dumping-ground for her convicts, cities and towns sprang up as if by magic. Strangely enough the victories of Napoleon in Europe forced a crisis in the affairs of Brazil. King John of Portugal and his entire court, unable to mpet Napoleon's demands, fled from Lisbon and fixed their royal residence in Rio de Janeiro, the capital of their growing American colony. This coming of their king to live among them had the most astonishing effect upon the Portuguese of the New World. They were honored. They were flattered. They took fresh courage. They brought their grievances directly to the king. He was convinced of the great wrongs which had been perpetrated upon the colonists. He saw with his own eyes the evils which had resulted GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 29 from using Brazil as a colony for convicts. Orders were issued bringing to an end the worst abuses under which the Brazilians had groaned. The king opened up the great ports to foreign commerce, established a national bank, rescinded the orders which forbade j)rinting-presses, and invited immigration. This was in 1809 and 1810, and the leaven of democracy had long been at work in the Portuguese mind. It had been brought from France by those who had been present during the terrible years of the French Revolution. It had been brought from North America by those who knew of the successful struggles of the colonies against England. If the king and his court had not come to Rio de Janeiro, the whole of Brazil would soon have risen in revolt. But the presence of royalty checked revolution, yet only for a time. By the beginning of 1821 the movement, which had long been working under the surface, burst forth. In Rio de Janeiro the troops and people arose in a night, demanding an unconditional promise from the king to approve any constitution which their im- promptu leader, Cortez, might frame. King John, frightened out of his wits, was willing to agree to anything, and escaped to Portugal with his family, leaving his eldest son, Pedro, as regent. Pedro was a handsome, dashing, unprincipled youth, wholly unfit to be the leader of such a people at such a crisis in their history. He threw himself into the hands of the revolutionists, and on the 12th of October, 1822, was crowned as Dom Pedro I, 20 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS Constitutional Emperor of Brazil. Nine stormy years followed, but at the end of that period the country was worn out with an emperor who was at once a blatant demagog and a shameless libertine. In 183 1 mob violence and rioting broke out and Dom Pedro I was besieged in his palace. The troops which guarded his person went over to the popular party. About two o'clock in the morning, without apparent premedi- tation, he wrote and signed his abdication in favor of Ms young son, in the presence of the ministers of France and Great Britain. He was ^ven a safe con- duct to Portugal, and disappeared from Brazil. Dom Pedro II ruled under a regency until he was fifteen years of age and on the 23rd of July, 1840, assumed his imperial state. His first act on assuming power was to forbid any of his relatives or any of the employees of his household to ask any favors of him in regard to public affairs. Brazil had no serious internal disturbances during his reign. An era of great prosperity set in. The evils of the slave trade so deeply impressed him that in 1850 he forbade the further importation and sale of Negroes. In 1876 Dom Pedro visited the Centennial Exposition in Phila- delphia, impressing President Grant, the officers of the exposition, and all who met him, as a man of a keen brain and of sterling worth. In 1887 the emperor, in failing health, went to Europe, leaving the Princess Isabella as regent. He had intended to emancipate all the slaves in Brazil, but had hesitated for certain prudential reasons. Dur- GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 31 ing his absence Princess Isabella forced the issue, and on May 13, 1888, a law granting immediate and un- compensated emancipation of all slaves in Brazil passed both Houses and was signed by the princess. Her most fanatical adherence to Jesuitical teach- ing made her both feared and hated by the public. They feared that -if she succeeded to the throne she would prove to be another Bloody Mary. The emperor returned only to find the country ablaze with insurrection. Everywhere the people were de- termined upon the overthrow of the monarchy. On November 14, 1889, rebellion broke out, a provisional government was organized, and Brazil became a federal republic. The emperor accepted the situation, declar- ing that he would not allow himself to become the cause of the shedding of blood. He recognized that republican principles had been adopted by the majority of his people, and offered no opposition to the estab- lishment of a republican form of government. With outward evidence of respect, and even of affection, Dora Pedro II was placed on board a ship during the night o£ the i6th of November, 1889, and sent to Lisbon. With his departure all traces of monarchical rule in South America disappeared, except in the two small colonies, British and Dutch Guiana. The figure of Dom Pedro II, constitutional emperor of Brazil, stands out among those who have ruled as viceroys, presidents, or governors, in the four cen- turies of Latin rule in South America, as Fujiyama dominates the landscape of Japan. Incorruptible 32 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS honor, untiring industry, sound scholarship, and al- most perfect disinterestedness characterized the forty- nine years of his rule. Through many fluctuations of policy, marred by revolutions and insurrections from time to time, Brazil has progressed until she is now abreast of Argentina as a republic. If we are inclined to empha- size her lack of public order, to criticize her currency, or to point to the high percentage of illiteracy among her people, we do well to remember that she assumed her status as a republic less than thirty years ago; that her economic stability had been shaken to its foundation by the sudden emancipation of slaves in the preceding year; and we must give just praise to the Brazilian leaders who have achieved so much of public order, economic development, and educational progress in less than three decades and in the face of difficulties almost insurmountable. Spanish Influences The first Spanish settlement to be made on the shores of South America was 'established in 1508 under the leadership of the intrepid adventurer Ojeda. In 1513 Balboa cut his way through the almost im- penetrable jungle which covered the Isthmus of Panama, and discovered the Pacific Ocean. He waded into its waters and, with the cross in one hand and the flag of Spain in the other, claimed the ocean itself and all lands touched by its waters, in the name GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 33 of the King of Spain. Five years later, Davila founded the old city of Panama about five miles from the site of the city which now bears that name ; and this city, together with Darien, became the two gateways through which commerce passed back and forth be- tween Spain and her new possessions in South America. By far the most dramatic and significant event in the entire conquest of South America was the swift and complete overthrow of the mighty Inca empire by Francisco Pizarro and his fellow adventurer, Almagro. Prescott has told this story and none who propose to know South America should fail to read its every page. Pizarro had grown up as a hostler and camp-fol- lower of the armies in Spain. At the beginning of his career he could neither read nor write, but he was made in a great mold and, as Kipling puts it in his "Gunga Din," "He didn't seem to know the use of fear." He was utterly without principle. He scrupled at nothing. Being in the company of adventurers at Panama and Darien, he heard repeated stories of the great Inca nation in the mountains farther south, — a mighty people of high civilization, possessing and operating mines of gold, of seemingly inexhaustible riches. Pizarro and Almagro formed a partnership with a priest who controlled large sums of money and, after several experimental expeditions during 34 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS which they suffered indescribable hardships, landed on the west coast, about one thousand miles south of Panama, at a place called Tumbez. The iron will and desperate courage of Pizarro is shown in an incident which took place within a few weeks from his first landing at Tumbez. The food supply brought from Panama had been exhausted. For days Pizarro and his little company had lived upon roots and berries and such sea food as they could take with their hands. Tropical rain fell in torrents and they were without shelter. The heat was almost unbear- able, and scores of insects tormented them by night and day. Dissatisfaction was rife. Many were for abandoning the attempt to reach Peru. One day when the discussion had become stormy, Pizarro drew a line in the sand at riight angles with the ocean. He was as hungry as any of his men and as destitute of clothing or shelter. The prospects of their expedition could have been no more gloomy to them than to him. But Pizarro stepped across the line he had drawn and, standing on the south side of it, called upon those who were determined to pursue their plans at all hazards to come over on his side. The majority followed him without hesitation; and the others took the ship, re- turned to Panama, and were never heard of again. He marched toward the interior with a force so ridiculously small that it still provokes amazement at what he later accomplished. He had but one hundred and two foot-soldiers and seventy-two horsemen and a few cannon. >Vith this handful of men and guns he INCA STREET AND WALL PANORAMA OF CUZCO GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 35 climbed steadily up the stone roads built by the Incas, and after weeks of perilous travel was received by the emperor in the public square of the city of Cajamarca. Atahualpa, the Inca emperor, lived in great state and was just at the close of a military campaign sur- rounded by tens of thousands of his trained soldiery. Neither he nor his people, had ever seen white men or horses, nor had they ever heard the roar of cannon nor seen what was to them the miraculous results of powder and ball. Having nothing but contempt for any display of force which might be shown by such a little handful of men, Atahualpa received his visitors without taking the least precaution to safeguard his person. The formal salutations between Pizarro and the Inca ruler were outwardly cordial. He welcomed the strangers and Pizarro voiced the good-will of the King of Spain, under whose name he came to speak of the reHgion which they all hoped the Peruvians would later accept. The Spaniards were given quar- ters in the heart of the city, but before they retired the chiefs of the tiny invading force held a council of war. They were well aware of their desperate situa- tion. As they had ventured farther and farther into the interior of the country it had become increasingly clear that they were being lured to their destruction by fair words and glowing promises. Whether they were right or not, they felt that it was simply a ques- tion of whether they captured the person of the emperor, overawing the army by robbing it of its leader, or accepted the alternative of death before 36 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS another sunset, after tortures of a kind to make the stoutest heart quail. Their plan was to rush upon him as soon as he appeared, firing their cannon, discharg- ing their muskets, and using their horses to charge the crowds which might rush to his rescue, but on no account to take his life. This plan was carried out to the letter, with a success so immediate and complete that it is still one of the marvels of a century of marvels. The emperor bore his capture with a dignity befitting his royal state, being apparently supported by the xronfidence that his followers would easily rescue him. Pizarro promised him his freedom if, as a ransom, he would fill a room thirty feet long and eighteen feet wide to the height of his shoulders with gold. Greedy as were the Spanish conquerors for the precious yellow stuff, their wildest flights of imagination had never pictured such fabulous riches. When runners had spent months in bringing solid gold plates wrenched from the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco, their capital, and vessels of massive gold from the royal residences and lesser temples, Pizarro, "with eyes that fed on splendor" until he was dazzled, trampled upon his promise and publicly strangled the unfortunate monarch in the presence of his sorrowing but irresolute followers. Immediately he proclaimed the rule of Spain over the entire kingdom of the Incas, taking possession of the reins of government as a representative of his sovereign. Almagro brought reinforcements from Panama, and the systematic reduction of the whole GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 37 Andean plateau went forward with military precision and ruthless severity. One of his lieutenants was sent nortk and conquered what is now Ecuador, making his official residence in Quito. Pizarro went to Spain where he was laden with honors and where he assumed as much dignity and authority as if he had been born to the purple. The king appointed him viceroy of Peru with Almagro second in authority. On his return from Spain Almagro charged Pizarro with failure to secure adequate recognition and reward for him as a partner and fellow conqueror. The feud thus begun deepened with years and finally Pizarro brought his old friend to trial and had him executed. While still busy in completing his great plans for the subjection of the entire continent to the rule of his king, vengeance for his many crimes overtook Pizarro. The followers of Almagro, who called them- selves "The Men of Chile," rushed upon Pizarro as he sat at dinner in the palace he had built in Lima and dashed his brains out upon the stone floor. The old lion died fighting and, in his death agonies, kissed the sign of the cross, which he had traced on the floor, in blood which flowed from his own veins. History furnishes no more significant comment upon that word of Scripture which says: "He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword." In any attempt to judge this unique and forceful character, we should remember the lawless blood which flowed in his veins, the brutal associations amidst 38 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS which he spent his early life, the sanction of his bloodiest deeds by the priests who accompanied his expeditions, and the whole spirit of the age in which he lived. Whatever else he may have been, he was a man of unusual personal force. We cannot interpret the history of one half of the western hemisphere without reckoning with Francisco Pizarro, the illiterate and basely born peasant's son. The conquest of Chile was accomplished by Pedro Valdivia who, in 1546, subdued the country as far south as the Biobio river, nearly three hundred miles south of Santiago, the capital, after five years of stubborn resistance by the Indians of the central part of that country. Here he met the unconquerable Araucanians. Beyond this point he could not go. Again and again his battle-hardened Spanish veterans were hurled back by the only tribe of Indians on either continent who were never conquered by foreign arms. Valdivia contented himself with strengthening his government at Santiago, and, in the years immediately following, adventurous spirits from Chile and the con- quered country farther north found their way over the Andes Mountains and established the cities of Mendoza, Santiago del Estero, on the eastern Andean slope, and Cordoba, farther toward the Atlantic on the central plateau. In 1536, only four years after the conquest of Peru, Pedro de Mendoza founded Buenos Aires, at the mouth of the La Plata river. "The rapidity with which the Spanish explorers overran the western and southern sections of the con- SIMON BOLIVAR D. F. SARMIENTO FRANCISCO PIZARRO DOM PEDRO II GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 39 tinent is extraordinary. In fifty years they had laid the foundations of practicaljy all the Spanish states which are now organized as nine independent re- publics. One reason for the rapidity of conquest was the fact that the Spaniards had not come as agricul- tural settlers, but as seekers of gold. . . . The new- comers passed on to their children no inheritance of industrious conflict with common conditions, no dis- position to seek wealth in the orderly development of common resources, no agricultural knowledge, but only the dominant ideas of quick action or feudal ease." ^ During two hundred and seventy-eight years, from that fateful November in 1532 when the Incas social- istic civilization fell into utter ruins at the first dis- charge of European cannon, cruelty followed cruelty, and misrule and intolerance reigned. Spain forbade non-Spanish immigration into that portion of the con- tinent which she controlled. Powerful viceroys and. rich merchants in Peru influenced the Spanish Cortes to compel all merchandise for South American use to^ come by the way of Panama and Lima. For example, merchandise destined for Buenos Aires had to be taken, to Panama, unloaded, packed upon mules, carried across the Isthmus, loaded on sailing vessels, and taken on a voyage of more than a month down the west coast to Callao, the port for Lima, Peru. Thence, it must go to the storehouses of the importer, and thence ^Speer, South American Problems, 11. 40 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS on muleback over the bleak and snowy summits of the Andes Mountains and across the deserts and prairies of Bolivia and the Argentine, arriving at its destination three months after leaving Lima. And all the time the river and the sea gave immediate access to Buenos Aires from any European port. The absurdity and injustice of this arbitrary interference with the natural currents of trade can only be appre- ciated by those who will take pains to use maps in their efforts to understand it. The tyrannies of Spain had become insupportable. All that North American colonists ever experienced of hardships and misrule at the hands of England were "as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine" compared to the cup of bitterness which Spain pressed to the lips of her South American subjects. Leaders in every part of her domain had long felt her heavy hand, and had secretly resolved to seek deliverance at the first opportunity. The Spirit of Independence The fires of revolution were first lighted in Vene- zuela. A native of Caracas, Francisco Miranda, was the leading spirit. Falling heir to estates of consider- able value, he was liberally educated in Europe. While in France he met the Marquis de Lafayette and ac- companied him when Lafayette placed his services at the disposal of George Washington. Through the influence of this gallant French leader, Miranda was GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 41 given a place on Washington's personal staff, and saw two years of service in the Revolutionary War. His first attempt to secure the independence of Venezuela from Spain was made with New York as a base. Miranda sailed from there, early in 1806, with three ships manned by American filibusters, but his arrival was expected and he was beaten in a sea fight and sixty of his men were taken prisoners. Three months later he effected a landing and captured the city, but through lack of support was compelled to flee. He found his way to London and there organ- ized a secret company, enlisting among its number Simon Bolivar and Lieutenant-colonel San Martin, the latter a son of Argentine parents who had re- ceived a thorough education and military training in Spain. Bolivar was younger than Miranda by twenty-seven years. At the age of three he came into the posses- sion of immense estates. In Europe he played with the youth who became Ferdinand VII, King of Spain, and almost worshiped Napoleon. Returning to New Granada,^ he soon plunged into the struggle for Vene- zuelan independence. Brilliant successes in arms were followed by overwhelming defeats, but finally in the battle of Boyaca, in 1819, he became master of the wealthiest and most populous part of that country at a single stroke. But it was not until the 8th of November, 1823, that Puerto Cabello was taken by ^Embraced Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador. 42 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS assault, and the weary struggle for independence in Venezuela was at an end. Spurred by these successes, Bolivar now dreamed and planned for the lifting of the Spanish yoke from all South America. In the meantime, the provinces of Rio de la Plata had rebelled against Spanish tyranny. On the 2Sth of May, 1810, the struggle began in the city of Buenos Aires. Manuel Belgrano now came to the front as a leader. He had been educated in Spain and threw himself, with all his wealth, experience, and learning, into the cause of liberty. At Tucuman, in the north- west, the patriots issued a Declaration of Independence, and Belgrano secured a triumph over the Spanish army, his "gaucho cavalry, armed with knives and bolos, mounted on fleet little horses, carrying no bag- gage, and living on the cattle they killed at the end of each day's march, followed the fleeing Spaniards up into the mountains and inflicted enormous losses. The victory gave the Argentines for another year assurance against invasion by land, and Buenos Aires remained a focus whence anti-Spanish influence could spread over the rest of South America." ^ San Martin was the one far-seeing man in this group of eager but undisciplined patriots. He had no civil ambitions. One purpose animated him, and only one, and that was to clear the Spaniard oflf the con- tinent of South America. He was a soldier, and he trusted to military success entirely. From all accounts, 'Dawson, South American Republics, Vol. I, 94. GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES ^3 he was much like General Grant, a silent man, with a horror of display, but with tremendous will power, and patience born of a large grasp of his problem. He selected the best youth of the Argentine region and proceeded to form them into real soldiers. Nearly five years were spent in perfecting his military ma- chine. He pruned his little force without mercy, cutting out the physically and morally unfit, until only those remained who were willing to pay the price of soldiership. The plan of General San Martin was singularly broad while perfectly simple. He recognized that Peru was the real center of Spanish power on the continent. He saw his problem as a whole, recog- nizing the futility of any victory in Argentina and Bolivia so long as Peru remained untaken. He saw also the impossibility of reducing Peru to submission by any approach from the east or south. His plan was to cross the continent where it was narrow, reduce Chile to submission, and proceed to Peru by the Pacific. He took his forces to the extreme west of Argentina, making his base at Mendoza, on the eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains. From there, by a sudden and unexpected march, he scaled the precipitous heights of the Andean Cordilleras, falling upon the Spanish forces in control in Chile at Chacabuco. The victory was immediate and decisive. It was not only decisive so far as the control of Chile was concerned, but proved to be a turning-point in the revolution. By the help of a gifted Irishman named O'Higgins 44 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS and the Irish Admiral, Lord Cochrane, San Martin took his seasoned soldiers by the Pacific to Peru, where he utterly routed the Spanish troops and took posses- sion of both Peru and Bolivia. Thence he sailed north, meeting Simon Bolivar for the first time at Guayaquil in Ecuador. Bolivar had now decided to bring all Spanish- America together into one government, and apparently was determined to be its head. His plans were large, vague, and to the practical mind of San Martin, both unwise and impossible of realization. After several interviews San Martin recognized the impracticability of sharing with the imperious Bolivar in shaping civil government for the countries which his own military genius had wrested from the power of Spain. San Martin, rather than be a party to such broils and factions as had disgraced the revolutionary struggles in Argentina and New Granada, resigned his commission and returned to Paris. "Rather than precipitate a division between the patriots before the last Spaniard had been driven from South America, he submitted in silence to the reproach of cowardice. Rather than jeopardize independence, he sacrificed home, money, honors, even reputation itself." ^ The remainder of his life was spent in obscurity and poverty, his years of exile being rendered tolerable by the presence and ministrations of an only daughter. Neither continent of the western hemisphere has pro- ^Dawson, South American Republics, Vol. I, 112. Copyright hy Keyntone View Co. STATUE OF SAN MARTIN, MENDOZA, ARGENTINA GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 45 daced an abler soldier, and not Washington himself showed a more unselfish example of how a true patriot should serve a great cause. It is little wonder that his statue is found in the public square of almost every city and village throughout the continent, which now recognizes the splendid service he rendered. In Argentina there followed for fifty years a struggle which took two main directions : first, that of the states or provinces against the strong centralized government; and, second, that of the army against the civil power. Not until 1862 could it be said that this strife was at an end. In 1868 General Sarmiento was elected President while he was serving as Argentine minister to the United States. His motto was, "Build schools and you'll end revolutions." Out of the chaos and bloodshed in Paraguay, two names interpret the first fifty years after the revolu- tion ended, — Dr. Francia and the Second Lopez, Dr. Francia is named by Carlyle as one of the greatest heroes of the race. Whether hero or tyrant, he ruled Paraguay with a rod of iron for twenty-five years, having no confidante and no assistant. Educated for the priesthood, his reading led him to regard the Jesuits as the greatest enemy of civil order, and the medieval ecclesiasticism in which they served as a social incubus. He was followed by a more enlightened ruler named Lopez, whose son precipitated a long war with Brazil, and during its process distinguished him- self above all other rulers in the western hemisphere for deliberate and fiendish cruelties. 46 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS Uruguay has had a less stormy history and has made progress as rapidly as her larger sister, Argen- tina. Uruguay has secured the practical disestablish- ment of the Roman Catholic Church, and in theory at least maintains a policy of separation between Church and state. Ecuador came under the rule of General Alfaro in the late eighties, and he ruled his country much as Diaz ruled Mexico. Alfaro forced the separation of Church and state, selected a noted Protestant missionary in the person of Dr. Thomas B. Wood as his agent in establishing a system of free public schools, and started his country on a modern career. But the clerical party brought about the overthrow of Alfaro. He was dragged from his carriage and beaten to death in the streets of Quito. This was done by a mob tinder the leadership of priests. The mob cut out his heart and severed his head, exposing them both on poles in the public square ; and the country was again plunged into a series of revolutions from which it is only now emerging. This brief sketch of South American history leaves a few distinct impressions which have considerable bearing on the attitude of North America and South America toward each other. I. The traditions of the two Americas are different. The southern continent was occupied as the result of conquest by a few bloody and pitiless adventurers, in bold contrast with the liberty-loving founders of North America. The two continents look out on the world GLIMPSES OF FOUR CENTURIES 47 from two different sets of eyes. How will a knowl- edge of these traditions help toward mutual under- standing? Here is the first point to be mastered by- all who seek S3mipathetic contact with our Southern neighbors. 2. The type of civilization in South America is dominantly Latin. In North America it is Anglo- Saxon. The Southern republics are not free from the weaknesses of the Latin races. The Northern nations are not blameless in their boastful attitude. In work- ing out the common destiny of the two Americas, what will be the significance of the association of these two types? What will each contribute to the other ? Not to patronize but to fraternize in our rela- tions is the second challenging lesson from this glimpse of four centuries. 3. The South American pioneers had none of the ideals of civil or religious tolerance which were com- mon property to the Hollander, the German, and the British. On the contrary, the Moorish ideas of force and intolerance which have so profoundly influenced Spanish thought laid a heavy hand upon all move- ments for the betterment of the people. Can we not, then, better understand the eagerness for independence and democracy so manifest in their struggles ? Herein also is our opportunity to reveal those religious ideals, of which we are the heirs, — ideals gained from those industrious families who sought religious and civil peace in the New World. Both continents are in a New World — new world 48 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS of democracy. The republics of South America are relatively young. Their recent experiences in the establishment of democracy call from us a sympa- thetic response. Ill SOME SOCIAL FACTORS We have already observed that the population of South America is disappointingly small.^ It is esti- mated at fifty-five millions." Only an estimate is pos- sible. Some nations do not take a census at regular intervals. Some census figures are based upon immi- gration, birth-rate, death-rate, and certain items of taxation. In several of the republics the census is so carelessly taken that the results are full of errors. Some of the Indian tribes are nomadic, and therefore it is impossible for census enumerators to ascertain their numbers. Causes of Sparsity of Population The smallness of the population may be accounted for in several ways : 1. Early Spanish conquerors killed off more than eight millions of the ten million Incas by the cruel slave labor demanded of them in mines and fields. 2. Spain forbade all non-Spanish immigration during the centuries of her control. It was a colonial dependency of the crown, and the king and his minis- 'Chapter I, p. 17, 'Summary from the Statesman's Year Book, 1915. 49 50 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS ters were determined that Spaniards should reap the benefits. Thus, the races which have contributed so largely to the growth of population in North America were excluded. 3. When the peoples of Spanish-speaking South America established their independence a century ago, they threw open the doors to immigrants from all nations. But the bar sinister of religious intolerance was continued in force. Despite the earnest efforts of their greatest leaders, Generals San Martin and Bolivar, the ecclesiastical authorities had sufficient in- fluence with the framers of the new constitutions to make criminal any worship other than that of the Roman Catholic Church. Liberty-loving British, Ger- mans, Hollanders, and Scandinavians, the very peoples whose moral fiber and intellectual attainments were most needed to develop the resources of the continent, were turned to other lands in their search for homes. 4. Revolutions wasted the lives of men in selfish or futile struggles during the first half century of repre- sentative government. During the thirty years* war, Paraguay lost so many of her men in battle that the women outnumbered the men eleven to one. In Chile, women serve as street-car conductors, for the reason that the men were shot down in those struggles for national existence which marked the early period of Chilean history. 5. Epidemics of yellow fever, cholera, and smallpox have taken frightful toll in human lives. Tropical diseases, like malarial fever, which have now been SOME SOCIAL FACTORS 51 brought under perfect control by American and Euro- pean sanitary science, still carry off their tens of thousands annually on the continent south of us. 6. The influence of the land system has prevented the ownership of small farms, and thus operated silently but powerfully against influx and growth of population. Racial Types In racial origins the South American people present a less complicated problem than those of our own continent. Their foreign blood is chiefly Spanish and Portuguese. In the veins of a large proportion of the population flows the blood of the conquered Indians. The first great cause for this intermingling of the blood of the conquerors and conquered lies in the fact that the leaders in the early Spanish conquest gave immense tracts of land as rewards to their favor- ites, and with these tracts were included the native Indians living upon them. The grantees were author- ized to have entire control of the persons and services of these occupants of the soil. This right was pushed to its utmost limit. None of the native men or women dared protest against the wrongs inflicted upon them. From this mingling of blood sprang the earlier popu- lation, and intermarriage with Indian women and those having some admixture of Indian blood has been a constant factor in the South American social situation for nearly four centuries. Another reason for racial intermingling lies in 52 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS the character of the Indians whom Pizarro and his fellow conquerors found in the Andean Plateau. The unlikeness between them and the Indians who faced and fought our forefathers could hardly have been more complete. The Indians of North America were savage. The Indians whom Pizarro found were civilized. The Indians of North America were bel- ligerent to the last degree. Those who were first discovered by the Spaniards were docile and skilled in agriculture and many arts. With the Indians of North America the early settlers could have no sort of social relationship, while the very opposite was true of the millions who were subject to Atahualpa, the Inca ruler. Again, South America was not colonized so much as conquered, and the conquerors were military men and adventurers, most of whom went out without their families, or were single men. When these differences are taken into account, it can be readily tmderstood why there is a large admixture of Indian blood in the Spanish and Portuguese sections of South America. Brazil presents a new and different racial factor. Here only do we find the Negro in large numbers. It is estimated that there are more than five million Negroes and those with Negro blood in this one republic. The historical reasons for this racial problem have already been stated.^ Brazil is the nearest to Africa of any portion of the western hemisphere. 'Chapter II, p. 26. EUROPEAN IMMIGRANT GIRLS PICKING GRAPES ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS SHOWING THEIR PRODUCTS SOME SOCIAL FACTORS 53 The- extreme eastern shoulder of Brazil is less than three days by fast steamer from the west coast of Africa. They cross in sailing ships. In some parts of northern Brazil they still speak the dialects used in African villages and worship the images which claimed their devotions in their own land. They find the climate congenial, and Brazil oifers them a social status and a door of economic opportunity which were not theirs before coming. Italians are swarming into southern Brazil and Argentina. There are nearly five hundred thousand Italians in Buenos Aires and its immediate suburbs. Northern Italy sends more immigrants to South America than to the United States. They are a hardier and more adaptable people than those from Southern Italy and they find the bracing climate of Argentina and the boundless opportunities there exactly suited to them. These Italian immigrants are making money. They pass rapidly through the stages of laborer, boss, contractor, or rancher, and have already come into the possession of leadership in the building enterprises of central and southern Argentina. The total of Spanish immigration in later years is rapidly overtaking that from Italy. Many of the Basques, a thrifty, industrious folk from the north of Spain, are coming. They form a most welcome addi- tion and can be depended upon to discharge any duty given them faithfully and intelligently. Germans have come in great numbers in recent years. This is notably true in southern Brazil, where 54 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS over three hundred thousand Germans are massed. They speak their own language, and practically domi- nate the political, social, and commercial life of that section of Brazil. There are from thirty to fifty thousand Germans in Valdivia, Osorno, and other cities far south on the Chilean coast. Many of them are in trade or are operating ranches in the rich valleys which run parallel to the mountains and the sea. Be- sides these, thousands of German merchants and bankers are found in every part of the continent., The British are found in the largest numbers in Argentina, where their great investments in railways attract and hold thousands of men who are filling the higher posts connected with the administration of these transportation companies. And, as with the Germans, the British are to be found in commerce and banking wherever one travels in South America. They have been steadily building up commercial connections during the last century. The social total is not reached until the Indians, the most unhappy group in South America, have been sympathetically studied. There are not less than twelve^ millions of Indians in South America. In Brazil alone there are more than one hundred different tribes. There is the widest divergence in the character of the various members of this group, ranging from the descendants of the highly civilized Caras of Ecua- 'This number is an estimate, like most of the statistics for South America. SOME SOCIAL FACTORS 55 dor and the Incas of Peru to the lowest and most squaHd cannibal tribes of the little-known areas of interior Brazil. During nearly four centuries of Latin rule the Indians of both coasts have not only been greatly reduced in numbers but have "fallen far from the high state of daring and rugged health which they once held, and have become mere hewers of wood and drawers of water" for those who robbed them of their freedom and exploited them for their own ends. The intolerable cruelties suffered at the hands of merciless Spanish gold-hunters goaded the Indians of Peru to revolt in 1787. Naturally docile, satisfied with the most meager provisions for the ordinary needs of life, and re- sponding quickly to kindness and fair treatment, there, seemed no limit to the fury which had been slowly gathering during more than two hundred years of indescribable cruelties. But they were at length reduced to subniission, and now the landholding classes and the owners of great mining properties hold more than one half of the Indian population of South America in. a condition but little removed from slavery. The. Times of La Paz has been carrying on an agitation for better treatment of the Aymara and Quechua. Indians of Bolivia for several months. In a recent: number the editor wrote the following: "The condition of the Indians has changed all too little since the times of the Spanish domination. They continue to be pariahs, exploited by provincial author* 56 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS ities and brutalized by alcohol. The state has entered into a kind of partnership with the Church ; the former to sell alcohol to the Indians (having a monopoly of its sale) and the latter to provide in her festivals the occasion for its consumption. "The moral, intellectual, and material condition of the Indians is the worst possible, and hinders the progress of the nation, at the same time bringing us face to face with very many and very grave problems which must be solved, the tranquillity of outlying dis- tricts being meantime in constant danger. "Any one analyzing the stagnant and miserable life which the Indian leads cannot but wonder at the strength of that race which, badly fed, ignorant of hygiene, decimated by diseases, exploited by everybody, and poisoned by alcohol, does not disappear or at least lose its vigor. "When, his cup filled to overflowing by that con- dition of semi-slavery in which he lives in a country at once free and liberal, the Indian protests, — ^then, as the only remedy, as a supreme argument, we apply fierce whippings to his back." I have seen nothing more pathetic in any part of the world than the abject manner of this crushed yet sullen people. Again and again they will go hundreds of yards out of their way to avoid meeting a white man. And when they are met in the roads or by-paths or fields, their salutation is cringing, and their whole attitude indicative of fear, born of the knowledge that they have never known any rights which the white SOME SOCIAL FACTORS 57 man was bound to respect. If they had been truculent, if they had tomahawked and scalped those who first came from other lands to live among them, it would be possible to understand, though not to defend, the unpitying treatment which they have received. But they were friendly. They were even kindly. They toiled early and late, tilling the fields and digging the gold for their Spanish taskmasters. Now they have practically no land, and they must accept any price ,which their domineering masters choose to offer them for their labor, their stock, or their crops. Pagan Indians are to be found by the million in South America. Many of them have yielded a more or less fanatical obedience to the Church which came to South America with Spanish occupation. On the other hand, several miUions have stoutly refused any and every overture made to them by the representatives of Roman Catholicism during all these centuries, and remain as savage as when Columbus first set foot on the shores of the Western world. In later chapters we shall see that devoted workers have begun the uplift of these downtrodden folk. What they have begun must be taken up and carried on by others whose hearts are touched by the same Christian motives. Social Characteristics In any attempt to study social conditions in South America, the first and most significant fact is that the type of civilization is Latin. Jhe significance of this S8 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS for the life of the people torday is made clear by Senor F. Garcia Calderon, a Peruvian diplomat. "The character of the average citizen is weak, in- ferior to his imagination and intelligence; ideas of union and the spirit of solidarity have to contend with the innate indiscipHne of the race. These men, domi- nated by the solicitations of the outer world and the tumult of politics, have no inner life; you will find among them no great mystics, no great lyrical writers. They meet realities with an exasperated individuahsm. Undisciplined, superficial, brilliant, the South Ameri- cans belong to the great Latin family; they are the children of Spain, Portugal, and Italy by blood and by deep-rooted tradition; and by their general ideas they are the children of France. A French politician, M. Clemenceau, found in Brazil, the Argentine, and Uruguay 'a superabundant Latinism; a Latinism of feeling; a Latinism of thought and action with all its defects of method, its alternations of energy and failure in the accomplishment of design.' " ^ In the status of womanhood we see again the pro- found influence of the Moor over the Spaniard. The Moorish idea of the seclusion of women and their subordinate place in the social system has been ac- cepted by the Spaniard and his descendants with almost no change. As among the Moors, so in the South American social total, man becomes the center of all domestic and social life, and woman is a toy or a ^Latin America: Its Rise and Progress, 288. Copyright by Vndenouod St U-nderwoud, Co,n,ri(,ht hp Under,ro.. Anthony which was alleged by the priests to have survived a terrible shipwreck, and to have preceded the wrecked passengers to the land. Mr. Kidder found and translated the following order regarding the image over the signature of the governor of Bahia, province or state of Rodrigo da Costa : "I therefore assign to the glorious St. Anthony the rank and pay of captain in said fortress, and order that the solicitor of the Franciscan convent be author- ized to draw, in his behalf, the regular amount of a captain's pay." ^ In another connection, Mr. Kidder translates a passage from a sermon preached by an eloquent priest in Rio, presumably at the Christmas festivities. It is typical of the liberties taken by Roman Catholic preachers with the Word of God. "The Magi of the East and the Kings of the Orient came on painful journeys from distant lands and prostrating themselves at the feet of Our Lady [the Virgin Mary] offered her their crowns for the bestow- ment of her hand ; but she rejected them all, and gave it to the humble, the obscure, but pious St. Joseph." " In January, 1839, Mr. Kidder visited Santos, the 'Under date of July 16, 1705. 'Kidder and Fletcher, Brazil and Brazilians, 98. SPIRIT OF PIONEERS 8i first considerable seaport south of Rio, and from there went inland to Sao Paulo. He was the first Protestant minister to visit this important center, and his experi- ences there form one of the most interesting portions of his book entitled Sketches of Brazil. In Sao Paulo Mr. Kidder was justly shocked at the lack of reverence, the coarsening of the religious sensibilities, which appears to be inseparable from the use of images in worship. To call an alley "The little alley of the Sacred Heart of Jesus"; to name a meat-market "The meat-shop of the Holy Spirit"; and, worst of all, to advertise crucifixes, scapulas, and gold and silver objects of worship as though they were merely articles of commerce — all this was very shocking to his sense of spiritual fitness, and would be so to our own. He translates for us a sign which he saw in a shop-window just before the Festival of the Holy Spirit : "Notice to the Illustrious Preparers of the Festival of the Holy Spirit "Here may be found a beautiful assortment of Holy Ghosts, in gold, with glories, at 80 cents each, smaller sizes, without glories, at 40 cents. Silver Holy Ghosts, with glories, at $6.50 per hundred; ditto, without glories, $3.50- Holy Ghosts of tin resembling silver, 75 cents per hundred." Mr. Kidder visited all the large centers in the northern part of Brazil, and made an extensive trip 82 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS up the Amazon in his eagerness to place the Scrip- tures in the hands of the Brazilian people. Nearly five years of exhausting travel and continuous preach- ing were given to this, the first attempt ever made to sow Brazil with the Word of Truth. But the failing health of Mrs. Kidder called him back to Rio. While settUng down to the prosecution of systematic work in the establishment of a Portuguese Church her con- dition became rapidly worse, and the end came. This compelled him to return to the United States with his motherless son in 1841. No part of South America has yielded such mis- sionary results as Brazil. May this not be due, in some part at least, to the growth of the seed "which is the Word of God?" Captain Allen F. Gardiner. This high-souled British naval officer stands out as the most dramatic figure of all those who pioneered for Christ in South America. He began his naval career in 1810. In various voyages he saw much of Africa, Malaysia, and South America. While on the Dauntless he was deeply impressed with the pitiable condition of the aborigines of South America. His conversion occurred during the voyage, and he later saw much of mis- sionary work in Tahiti and Singapore. In South Africa he explored the Zulu country and started the first mission in Natal. In Chile he plunged into a hard struggle of three years to get his message before the Araucanian Indians in southern Chile, but at every turn his eflforts were balked by the deter- SPIRIT OF PIONEERS 83 mined efforts of the Roman Church led by a priest named Manuel. After much study and prayer, Captain Gardiner decided to do what he could for the degraded Indians of Patagonia. He chose the Falkland Islands as his headquarters, arriving there in 1841. His first visit among the Patagonian Indians gave him great en- couragement. They seemed both friendly and honest but their moral and spiritual condition was the lowest Gardiner had ever seen. He began at once to plan for a larger work than he or any other one man could hope to accomplish. Returning to England in 1843, he endeavored to get the growing Church Missionary Society of the Anglican Church to take up the work. Their leaders refused, and he led in founding the South American Missionary Society in 1844. Accompanied by Mr. Hunt, Gardiner returned to Patagonia in February, 1845. ^ut the Indians refused to receive them. Hostility and a belligerent spirit con- fronted them at every turn. Within a month they were forced to leave or they would probably have been put to death by torture. They then turned .their attention to the aboriginal Indians in that part of southeastern Bolivia, northern Argentina, and western Paraguay known as "El Gran Chaco." After some time spent in exploring among these cruel and superstitious marsh-dwellers, they went south again and attempted to open a mission among the barbarous Indians of Tierra del Fuego. They are among the lowest people in the 84 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS world, huddling in filthy, miserable huts made of reeds, and living upon sea-foods of various kinds gathered by the women of the tribe. They have few nets or other tackle, but the women depend upoil what they can catch by diving into the cold waters of those barren and wind-whipped shores south of the S4th parallel of latitude. Banner Cove was chosen as their first mission station. But their outfit was too small. They lacked supplies and equipment for intelligent and fruitful work among the Indians. Some explor- ing was done, but in their absence from Banner Cove the Indians stole nearly all of their possessions. Again he wfent to England, where he worked un- tiringly to gather a force of workers and collect funds to equip,- send, and maintain them in Tierra del Fuego. The new party, made up of Captain Gardiner and six others, sailed September 7, 1850. After reaching Banner Cove hardship and starva- tion dogged their steps. Driven from Banner Cove to Spaniard Harbor by the truculence and pilfering of the Indians whom they had come to save, they waited and prayed for the coming of the promised supply ship. Slowly dying of hunger and thirst, the little company scanned the horizons in vain for the promised ship bearing food and equipment. When it finally came, every member of this gallant band lay dead upon the shore. Their death had taken place one month before. The entries in Captain Gardiner's journal form a tribute to his faith and utter devotion to God. He died in a cavern in the rocks.' A British SPIRIT OF PIONEERS 85 searching party was guided by a hand painted on the stone at the entrance of this cavern, and near it Gardiner had traced this quotation from the 62nd Psalm : "My soul, wait thou only upon God ; For my expectation is from him, He only is my rock and my salvation : He is my defense ; I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory : The rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God. Trust in him at all times ; Ye people, pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us." The story of the sad yet heroic end of Captain Gardiner and his entire party stirred the Anglican Church to its depths. The South American Missionary Society took on new life, and not long afterward opened work both among the Araucanians of south Chile and the aborigines in the Gran Chaco of Argen- tina and Paraguay. Through this society Captain Gardiner "being dead yet speaketh." Bagby and Taylor. The Southern Baptist Conven- tion sent the Rev. W. B. Bagby to Brazil in 1881, and the Rev. Z. C. Taylor in 1882. The opening of their work in South America was brought about in a curious way. Immediately after the close of the Civil War a colony of Southern families migrated to Brazil and settled at Santa Barbara in the state of Sao Paulo. General A. T. Hawthorne was one of the leaders in 86 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS the movement. He was an active and eloquent layman among the Southern Baptists. He returned to Texas and began stirring up the Baptist leaders to make an effort to do something to give pure religion to the South Americans. Mr. Bagby and Mr. Taylor removed the mission headquarters from Santa Barbara to Bahia — seven hundred miles northeast — leaving the church first founded among the colony in Sao Paulo province to carry on its own work. From the very inception of the work in Bahia the blessing of God was upon the mission. The first Brazilian members were men and women of fine spiritual discernment. An ex-priest of great learning and eloquence joined the new church-r- Teixeira de Albuquerque. Mr. Bagby taught him thoroughly in evangelical doctrine, and he developed into a strong national leader. Recognizing in the worship of the Virgin, and in the mediatorial office which Rome teaches that she holds, one of the fundamental errors of that Church, Mrs. Taylor translated "The Portrait of Mary as She is in Heaven" from the writings of Roussel. Her husband secured its publication in a daily news- paper. The effect was immediate and amazing. It could not be declared false, for it was a translation of an approved and standard publication of the Church. What the priests felt most keenly was the public ex- posure of their real beliefs as to the Virgin. Religion became at once the theme of the street and the store and the home. Persecution became more severe, but SPIRIT OF PIONEERS 87 many came to the services to learn more of the Way of Life. Mr. Taylor wrote in those days: "Sometimes our house was stoned, sometimes we were ourselves stoned in the streets. Brother Bagby was laid prostrate by a stone while preaching. "The usual way of opening mission work was to get a house in a central yet retired place ; either second- story or in back rooms to evade the stones which might be thrown in and to avoid public notice. Ours was in the second story of a building. When we opened for worship, one would preach, one take charge of the outer door and one the inner door; so we preached to people along the way in and out ; the outer man giving tracts and inviting visitors to return. "The music attracted some. While the novelty lasted there were constant comers, but it only lasted three months. Then we would often find our hall quite vacant; therefore, we decided if the people would not come to us we would go to them. From that time we were regularly visiting the shops, stores, and any place where we could get people to listen to our ,message." Antagonism and bitter persecution became the lot of the young church which was so rapidly coming into the notice and confidence of the public. Both Mr. Taylor and his wife were arrested on another occasiou as he was about to baptize new members. The hall where he preached was stoned, and even the city officials lent their aid and comfort to the mob. Church- 88 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS members were evicted by Catholic landlords, under orders from ecclesiastics "higher up." Practically all the men who united with the church were summarily dismissed from their positions by Catholic employers. In August, 1884, Mr. and Mrs. Bagby organized the first Baptist congregation in Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the empire. Again strong leadership and the blessing of God are shown in the conversion and development of strong national pastors and evangelists. Self- support was constantly emphasized by this pioneer and founder of churches. Stewardship of property was stressed, and converts were constantly urged to measure up to their responsibility for the salvation of their countrymen. So well did these early leaders instil this fundamental lesson for all new work that the per capita giving of Baptists in the Brazilian Church in 19 14 was six dollars per member. Mr. Bagby is still in the field, laboring in Sao Paulo with unabated zeal. Ill health drove Mr. Taylor and his wife from the field, but they are exerting a powerful influence for the Brazilian work among the churches throughout the South. W. Barbrooke Grubb. In 1889 the South American Missionary Society sent the Rev. W. Barbrooke Grubb into the Gran Chaco to relieve Adolpho Henricksen in the work which they had begun among Lengua Indians. Mr. Grubb was only twenty-three years of age, and he faced a task which might well have caused a Livingstone or a Paton to shrink. The territory comprises nearly two hundred thou- SPIRIT OF PIONEERS 89 sand square miles of tropical country and is a huge heavily wooded swamp or jungle from one side to the other. Pouring rains, intense heat, swarming insect life, dense shade, impassable morasses, and utter re- moteness from civilized society are some of the visible factors entering into the unpleasantness to be endured in the life upon which he entered. But the squalor, the illiteracy, the cruel superstitions and revolting practises of the Indians whom he was to lead to Christ dwarfed all lesser and more tangible difficulties. His books, Unknown People in an Un- known Land and The Church in the Wild, give modest yet graphic pictures of missionary work carried on in the face of discouragements of the most depressing kind. An English soldier who served in the Argentine army in the Gran Chaco saw the people among whom Mr. Grubb and his associates were at work and wrote to a friend: "Wo to the poor soldier who falls into their hands ; the cruelties inflicted on such would stain the paper on which they were written. Of course we know that they are uncivilized and savage, or next door, and have never been taught a word about God and religion as we have ; therefore, we ought to pity and, if possible, help them. Why don't some of the missionaries come out here? They go among savages in Africa, in Australia, and many more places. Why don't they come here? There is plenty of scope for them, and a very large tract of land only waiting the moment that those Indians are brought under. I am sure 90 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS that three or four missionaries in a year would do more than ten regiments." Two out of many experiences will show something of the inner life of the Lengua tribes. "A woman lay dying," writes Mr. Grubb. "The men of her family prepared to bury her while life was yet in her body. I removed the matting with which they had covered her face. Her pleading eyes met my gaze and in a faint voice she implored me to give her a drink of water. This I procured for her, greatly to the annoy- ance of the rest. Presently two men drew near bringing a pole with them and announcing that the grave was ready. It was now about six o'clock and the sun was fast setting. (According to their laws the funeral ceremony must be concluded before the red glow has died out of the sky.) "There then ensued a heated altercation between myself and the men, I protesting against her burial and they eager to hasten it, her husband being one of the party. Eventually they agreed to wait until the last possible moment, which was not long in coming. I examined her again. She seemed to be quite uncon- scious, but was still breathing. Life, however, could not last much longer. In spite of my further pleading they carried her off, burying her without mutilation and only placing fire in the grave. I did not wait at the grave-side more than a few minutes, but hurried back to the village in order to soothe her three months' old child which had been left in a hammock. I had never even heard of their horrible custom of burying SPIRIT OF PIONEERS 91 an infant, thus left, with its mother, and I quite con- cluded that the father intended taking it with him when the rites were completed. What was my horror, therefore, when the father and another man appeared and prepared to carry the child off. " 'You surely will not kill the infant,' I said. 'Oh, no,' he replied; 'the mother would be angry. Our custom is to place it in the grave with the mother.' 'What! Alive?' I asked. 'Yes, such is our way,' he replied, and he appeared very angry at the mere suggestion on my part of any further interference with their customs." Mr. Grubb insisted, and took the child himself and saved its life, feeding it on rice-water and eggs until he could rally the superstitious father and sister to come to his aid. But after a few months the little one died. Some time after this experience, Mr. Grubb was going on a preaching trip to a distant tribe known as the Toothli. . His guide was supposedly a friendly Indian named Poit. After many actions which aroused suspicion in Mr. Grubb's mind, Poit shot him in the back with an arrow. But the missionary managed to get to a stream. "The water revived me somewhat, and I then proceeded to extract the arrow. This caused me great difficulty owing to its awkward posi- tion. On extracting it, I found that the point was bent and twisted, which partly accounted for the dififii- culty I had in pulling it out." He was found and assisted to the nearest village where he was cared for 92 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS as well as they knew how. "That night was to me a night of horror and discomfort, and to add to my pain, a roving goat landed squarely upon niy chest. Having no net, I also suffered from the swarms of mosquitoes." The next day he had many visitors. "On leaving me they all without exception imparted the pleasing information that I could not possibly live, so they had selected an exceptionally good site for my last resting- place." The Lengua Indians regard swooning and dying as identical, and proceed to bury as soon as the person is unconscious. The terror of swooning and being buried alive added to the excruciating pain from the deep arrow wound, gave him another day and night of mental and physical agony. The next day he staggered on as best he could, helped by friendly Indians. On arriving at the mission station he became unconscious and remembers nothing for many weeks. As soon as he was able to travel, he was taken four hundred miles east to Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, where good medical care restored him to health again. On his return trip he says : "There was no doubt that the whole tribe had been strongly affected and that the action of Poit had directly paved the way to the acceptance of the gospel." Some fifteen months after, Bishop Stirling of the Falkland Islands baptized Philip and James, two sincere and earnest natives, and thus laid the foundation of the Lengua Indian Church. In a communication to Commission I of the SPIRIT OF PIONEERS 93 Congress on Christian Work in Latin America, Mr. Grubb says : "The Roman Catholic Church at the present time is for practical purposes outside of consideration, so far as solving the problem of the salvation of these Indian tribes is concerned. ... In vast districts . . . that Church is not even known, nor have the Indians any traditions concerning it. . . . My Society has a fully organized mission work among the Lengua- mascoi in the Paraguayan Chaco. Here we have also an established work, under trained men fully con- versant with the Indian language, customs, and ways, among the Sanapanas, while we are pioneering among the Sulim tribes. A missionary staff is now engaged in pioneer work among Matacos and Tobas in the Argentine Chaco. . . . For the last eighteen years we have proceeded on a definite, well-considered plan, so arranged as to enable all our missions to be linked together, advancing from tribe to tribe along definitely laid down routes, each mission so merging into its neighbor that they all obtain the benefits of mutual help. ... As a Society we work on strictly evangelical lines. . . . Our first aim is to plant pure Christianity among the people. ..." Mr. Grubb has a record of service to the neglected pagans of South America which is an inspiration to all the churches of Christ. He is in the prime of life, and should see many victories for his Lord before he must give up active work. Dnvid Trumbull. This servant of the King preached 94 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS Jiis first sermon in South America in the harbor of Valparaiso, Chile, in January, 1846, on board the steamship Mississippi, on which he had sailed from the United States. He was a Presbyterian who was sent to Chile by a loosely organized society of Prot- estants in the United States, but when the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church opened work in Chile, he naturally united with them. Dr. Trumbull's work in Valparaiso led to the found- ing of the Union Church, to the establishment of an orphanage, and popular schools, and for over forty years he was the chief moral and spiritual human factor in that growing seaport. At the beginning of his work he was fought step by step by the priests and other officers of the Roman Church. British and German business men provided the funds for a house of worship where all the preach- ing would be in English or German. But the law forbade "public worship" ; so, although they were not permitted to give the chapel any of the appearance of a house of worship, still the fact that it opened on a public street made it public, and Dr. Trumbull and his official members were forced to hide their chapel behind a high and unsightly wall. His whole life was devoted to Chile. Although his chief work was that of ministering to British people, he so mastered the Spanish language that his preaching and writings in the tongue of the nation commanded the utmost respect of critical readers and hearers. His part in the continent-wide struggle for the passage SPIRIT OF PIONEERS 95 of laws granting civil marriage and religious liberty was a very large one. In Chile he was the central figure. When these laws were being debated in the Congress of that nation, he vowed that, if they were to become the laws of the land, he would become a citizen of Chile out of gratitude and confidence in its leaders. The reforms were won. The shackles of religious intolerance were broken and Dr. Trumbull kept his vow. On a beautiful stone slab which covers his grave in the foreign cemetery in Valparaiso loving and appreciative friends have set down some of his virtues and much of their gratitude and love. Memori^ Sacrum The Reverend David Trumbull, D.D. Founder and Minister of the Union Church, Valparaiso Born in Elizabeth, N. J., ist of Nov., 1819. Died in Valparaiso, ist of Feb., 1899. For forty-three years he gave himself to unwearied and successful effort in the cause of evangelical truth, and religious liberty in this country. As a gifted and faithful minister and as a friend he was honored and loved by foreign residents on this coast. In his public life he was the counselor of statesmen, the supporter of every good enterprise, the helper of the poor, and the consoler of the afflicted. 96 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS In memory of His eminent services, fidelity, charity, and sympathy This monument Has been raised by his friends in this community And by citizens of his adopted country. Thus these pioneers were. Thus they wrought. The men who founded the evangehcal work in South America were men of large mold, and men of clear vision, suffering not at all in comparison with the pathfinders and pacemakers for missionary effort in continents upon which more of prayer and expenditure in life and treasure have been made. They are "not a whit behind the chiefest apostles" of the modern or the ancient missionary campaigns of the Lord. They heard the Macedonian cry from a continent walled high against any worker bringing a pure gospel. They consulted not with flesh and blood, and counted not their lives dear unto themselves so that they might finish their missionary course in South America with joy. Their names are on high. Others equally worthy of notice have not been mentioned for lack of space. But named and unnamed the founders of modern missions have left "footprints of mighty marchers gone that way" of continental conquest in the name of their Lord. PRESENT-DAY RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS Three facts bulk largely in the mind of the student of the present-day problems of South American mis- sionary work: remnants of intolerance in religion, the spiritual and moral destitution of the millions of that vast continent, and the lack of missionaries to minister to this spiritual poverty. Travel where one may, and establish points of social and religious contact at as many places as possible, these facts assume propor- tions of increasing significance.. Religious Intolerance The first Protestant missionaries found the native populations of Spanish-speaking South America ringed about with iron bands of religious intolerance. The nation which had established the terrible inquisi- tion had so far stamped its image upon the hearts of the men who framed the nine new republics into which Spain's possessions on that continent fell after the "The Ten Years' War," that they wrote intolerance in religion into every one of the new constitutions. In 1819 General Simon Bolivar urged the newly- organized Congress of Venezuela to grant religious liberty to all the inhabitants of the new state. General 97 98 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS San Martin went further; he issued a decree granting religious toleration to all creeds in Peru. This his- toric utterance was published in full in the official Gazette, October 17, 1821. In the Assembly which drafted the first Constitu- tion of Peru a liberal-minded priest who was a member of the body proposed that the article on religion should read simply: "The religion of the State is the religion of Jesus Christ." As finally adopted, however, the Constitu- tion of that most bigoted state. Article IV.,, included these words: "The nation professes the Roman Catholic Apostolic Religion. The State protects it, and does not permit the public exercise of any other." ^ This was the usual Constitutional wording in all the Republics. In Peru, the Penal Code provided that any attempts to abolish or alter the Roman Cathohc religion should be punished by "expulsion from the country for three years," and that a similar punish- ment should be meted out to whoever "celebrates any public act of worship other than the Roman Catholic" within the bounds of that nation. Heresy was consti- tuted the first and deadliest crime against the states. But, this was not done without opposition. Eminent patriots stoutly fought to prevent such laws. The story of the gallant and victorious fight for religious liberty in South America is one of the most 'Italics by author. RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 99 moving and thrilling that can be found in the history of missions. It is a story in which the actors are so daring, so diplomatic, so resourceful, and so sublimely confident that defeat was impossible, that when it is written for all the world to read it will stir the churches as few chapters of modern missions have the power to do. It is the story foretold by Isaiah in which "one shall chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight." A few names loom up through the smoke of that long battle, and more are written on high which we may never know. Dr. Thomas B. Wood, Don Pablo Besson, Dr. John F. Thompson, Dr. William Goodfellow, Dr. David Trumbull, Dr. Pratt and men of like fiber faced an entrenched ecclesiasti- cism, arrogant, rich and past masters in all the arts of intrigue and "leagued unfaithfulness," and by the good blessing of God, and the earnest support of that element in all of the republics which stood for the liberal views of Bolivar and San Martin and their supporters, beat them on their own ground. To-day every republic of South America grants a more or less liberal religious toleration to all creeds, and in Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile there is practically all the religious freedom that we enjoy in the United States and Canada. The last stronghold to fall was that of Peru. This was as all had anticipated. Peru was the capital of Spain in the New World. To Lima her viceroys and archbishops came, and with them all the grandees of the empire who would bask in the reflected rays of colonial glory. Both state and Church were "true lOo SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS to form" in Lima. But Dr. Thomas B. Wood was moved there by the Methodist Episcopal Church almost at once after the liberation of the Rev. Fran- cisco Penzotti from eight months of imprisonment in, the filthy common jail of Callao for the crime of preaching to a few souls in a private house. The Peruvian courts had ruled that his offense was not one that merited imprisonment, as he had not celebrated an "act of public worship." It was in a private house. The invitations were privately extended. There was no singing. Therefore it was not a public service within the meaning of Article IV of the Constitution. At last Dr. Wood's labors and the toil and prayers of others who aided culminated in November of 191 5, when both houses of Congress passed a constitu- tional provision granting religious toleration in Peru. Tumultous scenes marked the last stages of this struggle. Fanatical women have ever been the main agents of a fanatical priesthood. Browning was wholly right when he put this saying into the mouth of one of the priests in The Ring and the Book: "Priests play with women, maids, wives, mothers, why? These play with men and take them off our hands." About two thousand Catholic women were enlisted to help compass the defeat of the bill when it should be put on its final passage. It had -been passed by both houses in October. The President had refused to sign it. According to Peruvian law, the bill could become a law if passed again by Congress when it had RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS loi remained a certain number of days without signature by the President. When that day came these women were marshaled in churches near to the houses of Congress and on signal they rushed into the building together with priests and a few loyal Catholic men shouting "Viva la Religion Catolica Romana," and sought thereby to drown the voices of those debating and voting. An intrepid priest seized the bill from the hand of the officer who was presenting it for final vote and tore it into shreds. But to the credit of those Peruvian legislators, the disturbers were ejected from the legislative chambers and the vote taken in an orderly manner. The original bill passed by an overwhelming majority ! The last ten words had been taken from Article IV of the Peruvian Constitution. The struggle of more than half a century was at an end. Once more the forces of righteousness can say, "His right hand, and his holy arm, hath wrought salvation for him." But it is sometimes a far cry from law to enforce- ment. It must be said that religious liberty in South American states does not mean religious equality before the law. When the law has been put on the statute book it is yet to be enforced. Where civil administrators are friendly to that law, enforcement is easy and becomes the normal thing to expect. But in bigoted centers and in the benighted interior of many a republic evangelical workers must fight for all the rights they enjoy. Persecutions are the common lot of nearly all who I02 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS espouse the cause of Protestantism. In the early days, even in Brazil, where a modified form of religious toleration has been in force since the establishment of the constitutional monarchy under Dom Pedro I, these persecutions have had to be endured by the mis- sionary and his converts as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. In Buenos Aires forty years ago Dr. John F. Thompson preached after being openly threatened with death if he continued. Believers who knew their rights under the new laws came armed to the services and sat about him to defend him in his work as a preacher of the gospel. Up on the border of Bolivia is the lonely grave of a humble but fearless colporteur of the American Bible Society who was put to death because he wis distributing the Bible among the common people and telling them the way of salvation by faith. ~ The common procedure of the priests, when Protes- tant workers come to a town in the interior, is to tell the Indians and the ignorant peons that these pestifer- ous heretics keep an image of Christ upon the cross, and take dehght in secretly reviling it, spitting upon it, and submitting it to other unnamable indignities, and that they keep and mistreat an image of the Virgin. These stories so roused ignorant half-breeds near Oruro, Bolivia, about ten years ago, that the police and his friends were compelled to hold a Protestant worker several hours practically a prisoner to protect him from a mob that had heated irons to run him through as a heretic and an enemy of all that is good. Copyright by Keystone View Co. Copyright by Keyatime Vitio Co. Copyright by Keystone View Go. Copyright by Underwood i& Underwood. ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRALS Buenos Aires, Argentina Santiago, Chile Arequipa, Peru Lima, Peru RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 103 In Brazil a prominent officer of the army, Captain Egydio, was powerfully converted after months of wonderment over the great change which conversion had brought to relatives and friends. His family thought him demented, he was so filled with joy in God and gave his testimony so publicly and fearlessly to the saving grace of Christ. They went so far as to cut his hair and rub liniment on his head to allay his mental disturbance as they deemed it. A priest paid two men sixty dollars to kill him. They came to his home and asked for employment. He invited them in and promised them work, but asked them to remain to prayers. As he had been telling them what wonderful things Christ would do for them if they would but repent of all their sins, they were so wrought upon that they could not shoot him as they had agreed to do. Later a priest prevailed upon him to stay with him over a night. He refused wine, but after taking coffee he became suddenly and violently ill. He firmly believed he had been poisoned. Later on he and the Rev. Z. C. Taylor, a Baptist missionary, were set upon while on a preaching tour and beaten and covered with mud. Only by the mercy of God were they saved from instant death. Through it all he never showed resent- ment, nor appeared to think that it was anything^ unusual for a servant "to be as his Lord." Threats of violence are common in nearly all parts of the field to the present hour. Homes are watched, and if a child from any one of these homes attends a Protestant Sunday-school, or if any member of the I04 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS family visits the missionary or goes even once to the preaching or prayer service, a heata^ is sent to warn against a repetition of the offense on pain of churchly penalties. In opening new work within the past two years in the shrine city of Lujan, near Buenos Aires, the men and women who have done the witnessing have been compelled to suffer indignities at the hands of those who are set on by the priests-. The people in North America seem scarcely to be able to credit these occurrences when we tell about them. Disabilities are imposed upon Protestants in the public schools. In many of the republics instruction in the doctrines of the Roman Church is compulsory. In the public hospital in Lima, Peru, one of the regula- tions in the list posted for the public to see and observe prohibits "anything contrary to the religion of the institution." This is interpreted to prohibit having a Testament or Bible or reading it. The nurses are nuns in their regulation dress, and those who refuse to confess or "conform" in some visible way are often made to suffer without food or medicine or care. Burial is another matter in which practise follows legislation afar off. In Argentina or Chile the ceme- teries have all been secularized. In Peru and Bolivia there are public cemeteries for only the larger cities, and these, away from the capital, all too often resemble 'Pronounced be-ah'-tah. A Catholic woman absorbed in devo- tion to the Church and religion lyho is at the call of the priests for this kind of work. RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 105 a rubbish heap rather than the last sacred resting- place of the remains of loved ones. Converts are made to feel the heavy hand of Rome in a kind of organized boycott of all who profess the new faith. So long as no such confession is made, the individual may live in open sin without rebuke from the Church which claims his membership ; but let him unite with the members being gathered in any one of the Missions and his employer is notified that it will be best for his trade if this obnoxious person is removed from his list of employees. The landlord who rents the house to him and his family receives a similar warning, and the convert is fortunate indeed if his landlord and employer have sufficient courage to ignore these attempts to punish him for seeking that which the law of the land permits him to enjoy. The spirit which gave rise to the inquisition still animates the. leaders of the historic ecclesiasticism where this work is being carried on. That the same punishments cannot be" inflicted as were possible in the days of the rack, the thumbscrew, and the auto da fe, is due to the new political and religious tides which are rising ever more steadily in the midst of Latin society. Moral and Spiritual Destitution South America does not have the gospel. Her mil- lions have almost no means of finding their way to Christ. They do not have the Word of God. The two great Bible Societies have strained every resource io6 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS to put the Scriptures into the hands of all the people of the continent, but "still there is room." Priests have forbidden their purchase or acceptance. Once they have been bought, the same enemies of the Word have called them in and have destroyed them. Mil- lions cannot read. It is still, despite many Bibles distributed, a Scriptureless continent. In millions of homes there is not a leaf of the Bible, nor even the most elementary knowledge of what the Bible really is. The Roman Church is not a preaching Church. Except in the larger cities of the coasts where foreign influence is strongly at work there are not a score of sermons a year preached in the language of the people in any of their churches. There are no prayers in the language which the common people understand. It is a Church which lives on ritualistic services, and teaches its people that these forms and sacraments of themselves have power to both give and sustain spiritual life. The Catechism of Christian Doctrine approved by the Bishop of Chile, edition of 1904, confirms the claim just made — if confirmation is needed by any reader of this book: Question. Who is a Christian? Answer. He who is baptized, and who believes and professes the doctrines of Jesus Christ and belongs to the visible Church which has the Pope for its head. Question. What do the sacraments teach us? Answer. In the sacraments we are taught the means to obtain divine grace with which we acquire and maintain the virtues. CORPUS CHRISTI VIRGIN IN CHURCH PROCESSION DANCING BEFORE VIRGIN INDIANS AND IDOLS RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 107 Question. What is the sign of the Christian? , Answer. The Holy Cross. Question. In what ways should we use the sign of the Cross? Answer. In two ways which are called to "sign" one's self (or cross one's self) and to sanctify one's self. Question. What is it to sanctify one's self ? Answer. To make a cross with the fingers of the right hand from the front to the breast and from the left shoulder to the right saying : "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." Question. What virtues have the sign of the Cross ? Answer. To drive out evil spirits, to help us to resist temptations, and to draw to us the blessings of Heaven. Question. What are the spiritual blessings of the Church ? Answer, i. The merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2. The grace of the Sacraments and the fruits of the Sacrifice of the Mass. 3. The merits of the Most Holy Virgin and of the Saints. 4. The prayers and good works of the faithful and the indulgences. Quotations multiplied to the length of a chapter could not make it more perfectly clear that there is no teaching of the Scriptural doctrine of the begin- nings of spiritual life in regeneration, and of the feeding of this new life of God by preaching, by the io8 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS private study of the Word and secret prayer. If that teaching is enjoyed in any part of the South American continent, it is at the hands of the evangelical mis- sionaries or of those who have found the Savior through their teachings. To this impotency of the Established Church as a means of imparting spiritual truth must be added the impending collapse of traditional Christian faith and the feebleness of our constructive efforts to render aid. Rationalism, materialism, naturalism, and posi- tivism are now dominant throughout South America. "In a religious classification, the total population may be divided into four groups varying numerically in proportion to each other in the several countries, but no group is absent from any one. They are (i) a violent anticlerical party, many of whom carry their opposition to religion of every form; (2) the more or less well-reasoned atheists and skeptics who look indulgently upon religion as harmless for women and for the lower classes, but who are themselves indif- ferent to its claims upon them personally; (3) the dissatisfied if not disillusioned and groping companies of souls who soon pass on to cynicism and hardness of heart; (4) those whose period of doubt and break- ing away is ahead of them as they are overtaken by free education." ^ The undermining of belief proceed- ing on a national scale in every division of the field is patent to all observers. It is reported that ninety per "Commission I, Panama Congress. RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 109 cent, of the population of Colombia are unbelievers in one form or another. In Ecuador it is generally con- sidered a sign of education and learning to express doubt of every dogma of the Church. Almost the entire student body of Peru is hostile to the Church. It is reported that the members of Congress and nearly all the government students of Bolivia are sworn enemies of the Church. The state teachers, the gov- ernment university students, and the high-school boys of Chile are anticlerical. An Argentine leader recently divided his fellow countrymen into three classes : those of no religious convictions, who support the Roman Catholic Church; those who have no religious convic- tions, but who oppose the Church ; those who have no religious convictions, and are indifferent to all churches. These three classes include fairly ninety per cent, of the men of the Argentine republic. The great mass of Brazilian students are not only alienated from the Church but antagonistic to all religion. Mr. J. H. Warner, of Pernambuco, said in his address at the. Rochester Student Volunteer Convention : "Senor Argymiro Galvao was at one time lecturer on philosophy in the law school in Sao Paulo, in many respects the leading law school in Brazil. One of his lectures, 'The Conception of God,' was published as a tract as late as 1906. I quote the following from that lecture : 'The Catholic faith is dead. There is no longer confidence in Christian dogma. The supernatural has been banished from the domain of science. The con- quests of philosophy have done away with the old no SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS preconception of spirituality. Astronomy with La Place, has invaded the heavenly fields and in all celes- tial space there has not been found a kingdom for your God. . . . We are in the realm of realism. The reason mediates not on theological principles, but upon facts furnished by experience. God is a myth, he has no reality, he is not an object of science. . . . Man in- vented gods and God that the world might be ruled. These conceptions resulted from his progressive intel- ligence. The simple spirit refrains from all criticisms and accepts the idea of God without resistance. The cultured spirit repels the idea in virtue of its inherent contradictions.' "Galvao is only one of many educators in the best school of Brazil who have broken with the Church, and of all the hundreds of students that annually sit under these teachings very few could be found who would question the accuracy of this Hne of thought or seek to justify the Christian faith. The great diffi- culty that confronts the laborer in this field is not that of tearing men away from an old faith. The great majority have already repudiated their old faith. The pity of it is that they think they have repudiated Christianity." ^ When the European War broke out in 1914, the author was forced to cross the Andes to meet an engagement in Bolivia. I crossed by mule stage and had ten Latin Americans as my fellow passengers for several days. One of them was an officer going ^E.ochester Convention, 327, 328. RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS iii to La Paz to take his seat. Another was a custom- house officer of the BoHvian government. Another was a teacher in the public school system of Argentina. Another was an officer of the Bolivian government. Another was the minister from one of the other republics to Bolivia, and there were others whose pro- fessions I do not now recall, but all were educated men. Not one of them made the least profession of loyalty to the Roman Catholic Church, but on the way across ridiculed the priests for their stupidity and im- morality and denounced the Church as the prime source of many national evils. Crossing the continent in the Trans-Andean Rail- way, I was seated with a professor from one of the state universities. He told me that, in over twenty years of teaching in government schools, his impres- sion was that not five per cent, of the government school students of college grade had any religious beliefs at all. A teacher in one of the universities told me that he was an agnostic and regretted it'; that in his boyhood he had been a firm believer in the Church but he had been educated in Europe and had seen the mischievous effects of just such teaching. He said "I am hungry for God, and if my reason could be satisfied with the evidences that Christianity is true, it would be an infinite rest to my soul." Many Latin Americans, literate and unlearned aUke, the earnest educator, statesman and others in public and private life condemn and deplore such a deplorable situation. "In El Sur of Arequipa, Peru, November 14, 112 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS 19 14, in an article headed 'Ruin' the writer says:^ 'That which cannot be cured, and which foreshadows death is moral failure. And this is the veil of this country. . , . We breathe a fetid atmosphere and are not sickened. The life of the country is poisoned, and the country needs a life purification. In the state in which we are the passing of the years does not change men, it only accentuates the evil. A purging and a struggle are absolutely 'necessary.' The vice-rector of La Plata University, Argentina, in his opening address of the college year, called upon the university to recognize its obligation to develop character in the young men who pass through its halls. 'It is with great sadness that I witness the steady decrease in the number of unselfish, idealistic, genuine men. How engulfing the tide of selfishness, of rebellion, of indis- cipline, and of unsatiable ambition! Impunity so commonly supplants justice that I fear for the spiritual future of the land of my children, unless we make haste to remedy the great evil, which is disregard for the noble, and the great and unmeasured lust for ' material riches.' This man who knows what he wants, but knows not how to get it, closed with the characteristically pessimistic note of almost all South Americans of high ideals. He quoted- froin Vogaz- zaro's The Saint, as follows : 'There are men who believe they disbelieve in God and who, when sickness and death approach, say, "Such isthe law of life; such 'Quoted in Commission I, Panama Congress. RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 113 is nature; such is the order of the universe. Let us bow the head, accept without a murmur, and go on complying with our duty." ' 'Gentlemen,' said the rector to his faculty, 'such men let us form not only in the University of La Plata, but in the great complex university of Argentina.' It is pathetic that such men know not the way. It is a call in the dark — but it is an increasingly loud call, an increasingly earnest call, a call that honestly wishes light. God hears that call and will not be long in answering unless men who know the way out are culpably slothful." An Inadequate Missionary Force "The laborers are few." How few we learn from the Report of Commission I of Panama Congress, 1916. In the Appendix of this masterly report on "Survey and Occupation" the total number of ordained foreign missionaries in all of South America is shown to be 320 ! In North America, in the evangelical churches, there are 160,000 clergymen, or one for every 622 of the whole population. In South America there is one ordained minister for every 156,250 of the population, against one to every 622 in North America. For Brazil this report gives 92 ordained foreign missionaries, or one to every 233,271. For Venezuela but three such workers are reported, or one to every 914,000 of the population! Argentina has only 70, or one ordained man to every 102,000, and this is more or less the relative supply of workers from abroad in all the republics. 114 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS Add to the ordained workers those who are sent as laymen — ^physicians, teachers, industrial workers — wives of married missionaries, single women in various forms of work — and the total is only 1,114. Tens of thousands of towns and cities are without a single preacher of the doctrine bi salvation by living faith in Christ. In the Argentine Republic, among all the organized to^vns and municipalities, there are Protestant churches in only thirty towns and villages. Cities with a population of from five to ninety-five thousand are entirely destitute of religious oppor- tunities of any vital kind. It would be easy to appoint three hundred trained missionaries to as many cities in South America having a population of five thou- sand and more where there is not a preaching service, nor a Sunday-school, nor a prayer-meeting, nor any of the religious opportunities which constitute so large a part of our spiritual privileges in North America. Add to this fact that they are without reli- gious reading and millions are without the ability to read if books were in their hands, illiteracy reaching from forty to eighty-five per cent, in the different republics, and some estimate can be formed of the appalling spiritual destitution of the continent. Strategic centers of population are without gospel privileges. Smaller places are almost never occupied by the missionary or by national pastors. On the whole continent only 640 Protestant churches have been organized. Of these from two to fifteen are found in a single large city, leaving the number of, RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 115 different towns and cities having a Protestant church organization not over four or five hundred. Tucuman in Argentina may well serve as an example of these unoccupied centers. It is a modern city having a population of 95,000 and connected by ex- cellent railways with the nation of which it is a pro- vincial capital. It has a national college with nearly one thousand students, wholesale houses of strength, electric street railways quite as good as those in our North American cities, banks with large capital, a five-story reenforced concrete hotel, with electric elevators, and baths in more than half of the rooms, with all appointments fine and modern. It is the political, civil, and commercial center for scores of smaller places, nearly all of which are easily reached by railway lines centering in Tucuman. But in that live and growing city, until July of 1914, there was but one denominational Mission chapel represent- ing evangeHcal Christianity. At that time the Meth- odist Episcopal Church opened work there, with the hearty cooperation of Mr. and Mrs. Clifford, who had labored faithfully fourteen years as the only repre- sentatives of evangelical teaching. The Methodists have only a rented place of worship, and but one married couple at work. Paying commercial and civil tribute to this city, there are scores of centers of popu- lation having from 1,000 to 20,000 inhabitants in which there is not now, and never has been a single missionary or native pastor, or Young Men's Christian Association or Young Women's Christian Association, ii6 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS or Sunday-school, or efforts of any kind to tell the thousands of men and women the way to Christ. This is the situation to-day. It was the situation yesterday, and ten years ago, and will be the same in another century unless we plan more generously for the spread of the gospel. Why is the foreign force so small ? How can North American and Europeari Christians explain their fail- ure to send forth laborers into these needy fields? The operation of the Monroe doctrine has had the effect of practically shutting European missionary forces out of South America. With few exceptions, the great European missionary societies have followed the flags of European nations into India, China, Africa, and the island world of the Pacific Ocean. As the Monroe doctrine forbids further European coloniza- tion in South America, these great societies have never been represented. Moreover, it is not at all likely that they ever will undertake work there. North Americans knew little of South America when missionary work was begun in the continent. Little enough is understood of actual conditions there even yet. But almost nothing was known then. Some early missionary workers advised delay in opening Christian efforts because of the difficulties growing out of in- tolerance in religion. A Mr. Brigham made a tour of South America in 1825, and advised the people of North America that a beginning better not be made at that time. He said in his report : "There is in that field a putrid mass of superstition RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 117 on which the sun of liberty must shine still longer before we can safely enter in and labor. We> must wait patiently a little longer until the Ruler of nations who has wrought such wonders in these countries during the last ten years shall open the way and bid us go forward." One can well believe that Mr. Brigham would have supported the ten spies who went to Canaan rather than have stood with doughty Caleb and Joshua, saying: "Let us go up at once and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it." Had the Churches of this land really understood what wide and effectual doors were thrown open to them by the revolution against Spain, the portion of South America where Spain had borne sway would have been rapidly brought under Protes- tant influences. The Rev. James Thompson of Scot- land seems to have been the only man of that age with a vision of what God meant all the evangelical Churches to see. From this failure to grasp the significance of South America as a great field of missionary endeavor, be- ginnings of missionary effort were feeble and inter- mittent. Where they should have entered boldly and invested generously, timidity and something almost like parsimony characterized their plans. In the report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church for 1838, we find this resolution: "Resolved, That the success which has attended our foreign missions calls for gratitude to God for what he has done, and for enlarged plans to extend their ii8 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS usefulness, particularly in Africa, South America, and Texas." The report continues: "At the general meeting a collection was taken up amounting to $174.63 and subscriptions were received for various missions, chiefly for Buenos Aires, to the amount of $345 in addition." The same report goes on to state : "Being encouraged by the work of our Brother Spaulding in Rio de Janeiro, the American Bible Society has made our Missionary Society a donation of seventy-five Portuguese Bibles and twenty-five Testaments, which have been recently forwarded to Rio de Janeiro," It is hard to resist a smile when we think of the small- ness of plans for work in countries so vast and with such unmeasured possibilities as they possessed even then. A collection of $174.63 and a subscription from the representatives of a great denomination amounting to only $345, "chiefly for Buenos Aires," furnish all needed proof that the leaders of that day had a small idea of "enlarged plans to extend their usefulness in Africa, South America, and Texas!" The donation of Bibles is marked by the same characteristics. "Twenty-five New Testaments" for all of Brazil, and "seventy-five Portuguese Bibles !" The powerful advocacy of mission work in Asia and Africa, which has been supplied in the literature of European and American mission boards and by speak- ers from these fields, has been strangely lacking on behalf of South America. During all the period of missionary effort in South America the supporters of that work have been compelled to combat the wide- RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 119 spread feeling that missions are not needed in a land nominally Christian! Drawing their conception of Roman Catholicism from the form of it with which they are made familiar in our own land, they saw less need of giving South America the pure gospel than of sending it to Africa. But the facts are that the Report of Commission II, Panama Congress, is right when it says: "In general, the Roman Church regards itself as adequately occupying or preempting the entire Latin- American world. . . . This attitude, unfortunately, does not fully represent the real situation. Abundant evidence establishes the fact that the vast statistical membership of the census report is largely nominal and superficial. But that there are immense and grow- ing defections from the Roman Church, not only in inward conviction and sympathy but in outward allegiance and conformity, is patent beyond contra- diction in every Latin-American land. Multitudes having become alienated from the Roman Church are contemptuous or antagonistic toward all religion; still vaster multitudes have drifted into utter indifference regarding the teachings of Roman Catholicism, while yielding prudential compliance with its forms and cus- toms. Scientific candor based on indisputable testi- mony from both Roman Catholic and Protestant sources compels the statement that in the Roman Church, Latin America has inherited an institution which, though still influential, is rapidly declining in power. With notable exceptions its priesthood is dis- I20 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS credited by the thinking classes. Its moral life is weak and its spiritual witness faint. At the present time it is giving the people neither the Bible, nor the gospel, nor the intellectual guidance, nor the moral dynamic, nor the social uplift which they need. It is weighted with medievalism and other non-Christian accretions. Its emphasis is on dogma and ritual, while it is silent on the severe ethical demands of Christian character. It must bear the responsibility of what Lord Bryce calls Latin America's grave misfortune, — 'absence of a religious foundation for thought and conduct.' " And another writer well says of South America: "After three centuries of nominal Christi- anity any conversion of its people which will involve the practise of the elementary teaching of Christianity lies still in the seemingly distant future." ^ Missions are needed in South America because righteousness is needed there. The kingdom of God is declared by Paul to be "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." If "the practise of the ele- mentary teaching of Christianity" is to become the rule in that southern land with its immeasurable future, evangelical interpreters of that teaching must send missionaries there and sustain them until a native Church is planted which will take over and underwrite the program of Christ for their people. The burdened hearts among missionary statesmen of the Kingdom in South America are oppressed by 'Robinson, History of Christian Missions, 409. RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS 121 the painful and pitiful lack of the means to train and develop that type of intelligent lay and ministerial leadership which has been the salvation of Protestant- ism in Europe and America, and without which there can be little hope of a conquering Church. Missionary success is not now the problem that burdens the hearts of South American leaders. Of success they are assured, however. They are con- fident in God that this gracious and fundamental work will go steadily on in proportion to the staff and equip- ment available for pushing evangelistic victories. \ VI EDUCATING A CONTINENT National Illiteracy The exact illiteracy of South America cannot be given for the same reasons which make it difficult to present statistics of population. It is substantially accurate, however, to say that of the inhabitants of the continent as a whole, from forty to eighty-five per cent. of those over six years old can neither read nor write. 3y countries, the most accurate report that can be made puts Uruguay at the top of the list with 40 per cent. Argentina stands next to Uruguay with 50.5 per cent, of illiterates; Chile 63 per cent.; Brazil 70 per cent. ; while the most dependable estimates put Colom- bia and Venezuela at 80 per cent., and Peru at over 85 per cent. In Colombia about one person in twenty-two is attending public school. Ecuador has one in sixteen enrolled. The 300,000 Indians, forming about one half of the population of Ecuador, are getting practi- cally no education at all. While masters are obliged by law to provide a school if ten or more families are employed on an estate, yet the law is evaded. In Peru, with a large Indian population, only about eighteen per cent, of the children of school age are in school. 123 124 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS Dr. Robert E. Speer put a most striking comparative statement into his South American Problems^ when he stated that, while Argentina and New York state have nearly the same population, New York has 40,000 school-teachers to Argentina's 15,000, and 1,400,000 pupils in school to only 550,000 in the southern re- public; and, again, that although Venezuela and Iowa have substantially the same population, the state of Iowa had 30,000 teachers and 562,000 pupils as against 1,700 teachers and 36,000 pupils in Venezuela. When the illiteracy of the two areas is held in mind the figures given take on a deeper meaning. Standing by itself this total of untaught citizens might not be so depressing. But ignorance draws many other evils in its train. It imperils popular self-government. Democracy depends upon generally diffused education. A broad base of knowledge is demanded if governments "of the people" such as have been established in that continent are to survive. Agri- cultural progress cannot be made, mines cannot be worked, systems of transportation cannot be built nor efficiently maintained, and the higher moral and spiritual motives lie dormant or die. Personal hygiene and the sanitation of whole states and cities are im- possible achievements among illiterates. Flies multiply and swarm unchecked in whole states. No screens are provided for doors or windows. In the public markets of the cities, meats are cut and laid 'Issued in 1912. EDUCATING A CONTINENT 125 on boards which have had no adequate cleaning for months and even years, and are wholly unprotected from dust, flies, and ants. Open sewers are common. Water which has flowed through heavily manured truck gardens often has access to the channels or pipes carrying the potable water to whole cities. Typhoid fever is epidemic in Lima, Peru, without intermission year in and year out. Smallpox patients walk the streets freely in city after city. The ravages of pneumonia and tuberculosis move one to pity for the sufferers and their friends. Alcoholism is decimating the Indian populations. It is eating out the very life of the otherwise sturdy Chilean. Unventilated hovels where peons and laborers herd in wet and chilly weather take terrible toll of life and health. Infant mortality is alarmingly high, holding the populations of whole states almost stationary. Chile has the large birth record of 38.4 per 1,000 per- sons, — ^placing that nation fifth in the world in increase by births, — but death made such havoc among these infants in 1910 that the net increase of births over deaths was only 5.9 per cent. Lima, Peru, in a climate of marked excellence because of the proximity to the wide Pacific, and the cooling influence of the Humbolt Current, had a death-rate of 45.12 per 1,000 of its inhabitants recently. New York, with all its climatic severities, and with its crowded slum and tenement- housfe districts, averages 14 per 1,000. Evangelism alone will not solve the problem, which rises like a specter when such conditions are faced. 126 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS If we are to have Christian homes, communities, and states in South America, the school must stand by the church, and the teacher be a team-mate of the preacher. Every fair-minded student of education in the southern half of the western world cheerfully acknowl- edges all that was valuable in the school work done by leaders of the Roman Church. Previous to the estab- lishment of the republican form of government in the first half of the nineteenth century (except in Brazil), the Church controlled all education. For the masses it provided for education in religious, cere- monial, and catechetical instruction, with industrial training for very limited regions and groups. They set up eight universities and innumerable primary and secondary schools. Many of the teachers in these institutions were skilled instructors in the subjects they attempted to teach. The fault was not with their motive, but with their aim, their curricula, and their method. The medicine taught was the medicine of the medieval schoolmen. Mathematics and the classics were thoroughly taught, for at no point do pure mathematics or Latin collide with Church doctrines. Rhetoric was taught according to Castilian models. Astronomy was a sub- ject to which much attention was given, for here, also, little peril was seen. The astrological and the astro- nomical were not always separated in the minds of those who taught, and results were not the best. But theology overshadowed all other faculties and domi- nated the university. EDUCATING A CONTINENT 127 Heavy demands were made upon all classes of students in the way of doctrine. Under this head were grouped teachings as to the place and power of the papacy; what constituted a true priest, and what were his powers as the vicegerent of God and the pope; the sacraments and their alleged magical power to first give and then maintain true spiritual life in all who received them at the hands of a true priest; and the almost endless "thaumaturgy" of the Roman Church, — its alleged miracles wrought by the Virgin, images, and saints, and even by their dead bones. At the present time the Church believes in little if any more for the masses. Literary education will be of no advantage to them, it believes, and may be of great disadvantage, — as witness "the intellectuals." ^ Hence on the part of the most powerful social insti- tution there is indifference at best and often active hostility to public elementary education. This situation is rendered more acute by the fact that the Church still remains powerful in the operation of the public school system, controlling it in countries like Colombia and Ecuador. Public Schools Free popular education was not begun in South America until 1869. What were the reasons for this long delay? Why have the schools established by 'Those whom the Roman Church declares have been led into unbelief through modern scientific studies. 128 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS the states made such slow gains on the illiteracy which prevails ? 1. The fundamental ideals of social and political organization among the Latins in Europe were frankly antidemocratic. Only the favored classes were to be given educational opportunities. The effort was rather to teach the masses "to keep their place." The rootage of South America is in the soil of Latin Europe. Spanish and Portuguese rulers brought their old-world ideas to America, and could have brought nothing else. Their past held no story of a Magna Charta.: No Cromwell or Pym or Hampden had bequeathed to them ideals of civil and religious liberty. 2. The open Bible, and the right of private judg- ment as to its teachings, had given "understanding unto the simple" in Germany and Great Britain; but the Bible was a forbidden book to the Latins, and the blight of that prohibition is the deepest reason wiiy less than fifty years have passed since free popular education made its modest beginning in South America. 3. The Roman Catholic Church has opposed educa- tion by the state at every step. The Statutes of Colombia now in force show its attitude in all the republics. Articles 12-14 of the Concordat* puts all education in that country under the absolute control of the Catholic Church. Partial quotations will illus- trate the point: 'Agreement between the papal see and a secular power. Copi^right bii A'ei/alone View Co, CHILDREN OF ILLUSTRIOUS FAMILIES, RIO DE JANEIRO PUBLIC SCHOOL IN A NEW SECTION, ARGENTINA EDUCATING A CONTINENT 129 "In universities, colleges, schools, and other centers of instruction, public education and instruction shall be organized and directed in conformity with the dogmas and morals of the Catholic religion. Religious instruction is obligatory in these centers, and the pious practises of the Catholic religion shall be observed in them. . . . The .government shall impede the propa- gation of ideas contrary to Catholic dogma and to the respect and veneration due to the Church in the in- struction given in literary and scientific, as well as in all other branches of education. In case that the instruction in religion and morals, in spite of the orders and preventions of the government, shall not be con- formed to Catholic doctrines, the diocesan authorities can deprive the professors and teachers of their right to give instruction in these matters." Holding such views of the authority of the Church to override the state in every point where the two came into conflict, it was inevitable that the battle for the establishment and promotion of free public schools throughout South America should be contested inch by inch by the established Church. 4. Another powerful hindrance to the earlier begin- ning of this work was the scattered condition of the settlers and those pioneer conditions which colonizing populations always face in opening up the resources of new countries. In the purely agricultural portions of Argentina, Brazil, or almost any of the other nations, one hundred square miles of improved land will often fail to show a sufficient number of children of school I30 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS age to warrant the necessary buildings and teaching force. Roads which can be depended upon in all seasons simply do not exist. Poverty among frontier settlers frequently demands the services of all the children of the families as herders of sheep and cattle on the limitless and fenceless prairies or pampas, and even a compulsory school law can be evaded where police are inefficient and the center of authority is far away. 5. Here again we meet our old enemy, the system of land ownership, with immense holdings of fertile land paying little or no taxes which can be applied to the building of schools, the purchase of equipment, paying of teachers' salaries, and maintaining decent roads to make attendance possible. The same system compels the population to live at such great distances from each other that any government would find it difficult to provide educational opportunities under conditions of this character. No matter how devoted and states- manlike the educational leaders of Brazil or Venezuela or Chile may be, for years to come there will be wide spaces of their country where free public education can only exist in the form of legislative provision or executive decree. In Argentina President Sarmiento gave public education the impetus needed to make it a real power in the national life, and to communicate itself to nations where no beginning had been made. Sarmiento was a man of the people. Born in the extreme western part of Argentina, and growing up in conditions un- EDUCATING A CONTINENT 131 favorable to intellectual growth, he showed a passion for learning like that of President Lincoln. Books were more to this rugged lad of the pampas than food. The nation felt the power of the man, and he was given both military and civil prominence. While am- bassador to the United States, he studied their school system, made the acquaintance of Horace Mann and other eminent educators, and applied his whole mind to the task of adapting the educational plans of this nation and those of France, with which he was more familiar, to the needs of the Latin minds of his own country. While in Washington he was elected to the presidency of Argentina, and one of his first acts was to appoint the Rev. William Goodfellow, a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church returning to the United States, to select and send to the Argentine suitable teachers for kindergarten and normal work in inaugurating a nationwide program of tax-supported public education. So recently has all this happened that one or two of the earlier appointees are still living. The grateful government pensions them liber- ally, and they are held in the highest esteem. At a recent public gathering in Buenos Aires one of the pioneer kindergarteners who went from North America and helped introduce that system in Argentina^ took an inconspicuous seat in the great audience. Her presence was brought to the attention of the presiding officer, and she was led to the platform and presented amid rounds of applause. President Sarmiento put all his energy into the 132 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS establishment of the school system. It was a titanic undertaking. Everything was to be done. Buildings had to be erected, apparatus to be secured, teachers to be found or trained. Expenses ate up revenue at such a rate that "the Schoolmaster President" was accused of reckless waste of public funds. But he held to his course as stubbornly as did Columbus in tihie face of threatened mutiny. His oft-repeated maxim in those momentous days was, "Build schools and you will end revolutions." That struck the opposition a telling blow. All of them knew that revolutions took terrible toll of a monetary sort, besides killing and maiming the flower of the country's manhood. All knew that the tap-root of these revolutions went deep down into the soil of ignorance and fanaticism. The plan succeeded. It caught the popular imagination. It stands a living monument to the foresight and courage of a President who had sufifered the pinch of intellectual hunger, and seen the appalling waste of national illiteracy, and who lived only to serve his generation. Uruguay, Brazil, and Chile took similar action. To- day there is not one republic of that continent which does not have a more or less complete public school system. Manifold obstacles confronted the new pro- gram. The Church, which had taxed its great energies to prevent the plans, set all its powerful machinery at work to hinder their success. Wealthy and aristo- cratic members of society set up the cry that it would spoil "the masses" for "their place" in the provi- dential scheme of things if they were to receive an EDUCATING A CONTINENT 133 education. Lack of trained teachers embarrassed the venture in "city after city. Those who offered for the work had no proper conception of the stern demands of educational training, and were too often unwiUing to spend the time to master the teacher's profession. Even where schools were theoretically provided, teachers were unprepared or mercenary; and those who were qualified and Whose hearts were in their work could too often say of incompetent or grafting officials : "Ye forced us to glean in the highways the straw for the bricks we brought; Ye forced us to follow in byways the craft that ye never taught." And educational administrators, sick at heart over reports of slipshod work done by those who drew salaries as teachers, and apparently did little else, could say: "From forge and farm and mine and bench, Deck, altar, outpost lone. Mill, school, battalion, counter, trench. Rail, senate, sheepfold, throne. Creation's cry goes up on high From age to cheated age: 'Send us the men who do the work For which they draw the wage.' " In 1869 Argentina's percentage of illiteracy was over seventy. It has been reduced to 50.5 per cent., or well toward one half wiped out in the first half century. Every part of the nation feels the surge and 134 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS lift of this school enterprise. Clerks are more efi&cient in the stores. Farms are better tilled, houses are kept more neatly, commerce runs on swifter foot, sanita- tion becomes increasingly efficient, and revolutions dis- appear, and the will of the majority is accepted with increasing readiness. Types of Schools The main features of all these national school sys- tems are the same. French and North American influence is seen throughout, French predominating. There are universities, secondary schools, elementary work, in both primary and kindergarten forms as in North America; and technical and special schools, — normal, Commercial, agricultural and industrial — are all to be found in varying degrees of efficiency. The word university conveys a diflferent meaning to the Latin educator than to ourselves. Differences be- tween our university ideals and theirs are radical. They differ historically. Eight universities in South America were founded by the Roman Church: Lima, 1551; Bogota, 1572; Cordoba, 161 3; Sucre, 1623; Cuzco, 1692; Caracas, 1721; Santiago de Chile, 1738; Quito, 1787. When the Ten Years' War was over, nearly all of these were immediately taken over by the new republics, and now only one such university functions as all of them did in the beginning — directly under the control of the Church. All of the others have been "secularized." Copi/riglit by Kei/atone View Co. NATIONAL UNIVERSITY AND CONGRESS, CARACAS PALACE OF FINE ARTS, RIO DE JANEIRO EDUCATING A CONTINENT 135 These institutions have no physical unity. There is no campus, no central group of buildings. The medical building is often near some large hospital plant, the law school near the court buildings, and engineer- ing and agricultural schools in some other part of the city, or in a city entirely separate from the one in which the university is located. Therefore there can be no group life among the students, none of what is known among us as "school spirit" with its cultural and inspirational values enriching all of later life with the ripening fellowships of studefit days. Here and there dormitories for the student body — for men only — are being fostered or erected by the university authorities to cure some of the defects which are making themselves felt in this lack of physical unity and the absence of a common student life. No "faculty" exists giving all of its time to the university. If a few of the teaching force do give their entire time, it is quite exceptional. Lawyers come in two or three hours a week, teachers in private schools take a few hours a week in their special branch, a busy doctor gives a part of his crowded days to the class in anatomy or physiology, and the same method of recruiting the teaching force prevails in the majority of the work undertaken. There is usually no enrolment of all the students in one place. There is no "chapel" or other common meeting-place, and no record of class attendance or class standings. Of discipline there is not even a semblance. In only a few of the more progressive of 136 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS these institutions could the faculty or any member of it find where a particular student lived. The lecture method is universal. Final examinations tell the only story asked by the authorities as to the quality of the work done. If a student can "pass," that is all that is required by either himself or the professor. The law department combines law and under- graduate college work, as these are taught in France, to such an extent that it bewilders North American students. Six years is the shortest course in law, and in one or two republics it covers eight years. But the course includes political science, social science, psy- chology, international law, history — a full course — and other subjects not supposed to belong in a course of special training for the practise of the legal profession in Canada or the United States. Direct state control is another marked and significant departure from university life and management as understood in our own institutions. "All officers from the professors to the janitor receive their appoint- ments directly from the state. . . . Party affiliations may enter into the selection and at times may even dominate the situation." Much of the inefficiency which their own educators are first to deplore is due to the degree to which "party affiliations" do "domi- nate" the selection of professors unfitted for their high tasks. This direct state control explains why it is that student agitation for or against particular govern- mental measures of legislation or administration are aimed at the responsible government of the hour. It EDUCATING A CONTINENT 137 is the best place for students to land their blows against abuses and in the interest of larger freedom. The South American university differs from its North American sister institution in being the only gateway to the professions. No one can "climb up some other way" into the professions of that continent. The universities not only teach the subjects to be mastered by aspirants for professional careers, but are commissioned by their governments to administer as a licensing body for the legal, medical, dental, or other professions. Foreigners coming into any of the states with full professional standing in their own countries must pass all the tests of the particular state university and in the Spanish or Portuguese languages before they can practise there. The liceos and colegios, or secondary schools, do the vast bulk of the educational work of the continent. Being the sole means of entrance to the universities, and the universities the only gateway to the profes- sions, these two types of schools ofifer to the ruling classes advantages which they are willing and even eager to support both by taxation and patronage. The teaching staff is of the same order as that of the universities. Little interest is likely to be taken in the welfare of individual pupils when instructors are paid for but a few hours of teaching each week, and their only touch with the students is during their lecture hour. Where trained teachers form a per- manent staff the results are so much more gratifying, that Argentina and Chile are adding a faculty of 138 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS educational science in their universities, as well as emphasizing afresh the normal school. The course covers six years and includes such college subjects as psychology, logic, the modern languages, and economics and sociology, while omitting too often the natural sciences, or teaching them with little or no attempt at laboratory work or field observation. Because the ruling classes are lukewarm or hostile to the education of the "masses," the elementary schools are the weakest part of the system. Direct state control robs provinces and municipalities of initiative and a feeling of local responsibility. In theory attendance is usually com- pulsory between the ages of six and thirteen or four- teen. In practise enforcement would be impossible for lack of school-room and shortage of teachers. Memoriter methods are relied upon here as else- where in the system, and the only result which could be expected follows : children fail to grasp such a multitude of subjects as are included in the curricula, the most of which are mechanically taught, and they come up to the secondary schools, believing what they are told. The child must not think for himself. He must commit and recite, and is unable to think clearly or to observe accurately. Dr. Ernesto Nelson of the Department of Education of Argentina speaks of the wrong perpetrated upon child life, by such a faulty method of instruction, as follows: "The child is not sufficiently considered in family or school. His individuality is given no chance to develop. He is told how to behave and what to believe, EDUCATING A CONTINENT 139 until he feels himself to be a puppet. Since all the consideration and privileges are reserved for adults, he is eager to be grown up as soon as possible. The keeping under of the child, the neglect to study him and understand him, to consider what he wants instead of what we want, causes him to grow into a man who will bully or cringe according as he is on top or under- neath. Hence the 'good citizen' of a democracy is not yet being produced by our education. Only free personalities developing together will ripen into citizens who will neither abuse power nor consent to be abused by it, who will respect the rights of others because they value their own." Normal, commercial, agricultural, and industrial schools do not diflfer so sharply from similar institu- tions among us as to call for much comment. Agri- cultural institutions face difficulties growing out of the contempt for manual labor which has been noted elsewhere. Higher industrial schools in Santiago, Buenos Aires, and in various centers in Brazil are splendidly equipped with the latest machinery and appliances of every kind, and are beginning to register results of a most encouraging sort in national workmen who cherish a fine pride in accuracy and despatch, and reveal a constructive touch upon manufacturing and trade conditions. Commercial education receives a degree of attention in free public schools not accorded the same subject in North America. This is in part due to the strong I40 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS desire to divert students from legal and other pro- fessional courses and overcome the prejudice against industry and trade, in order to get the young men of the several nations into line for the immense com- mercial and industrial development which all South Americans believe to lie just ahead. On the whole the weakness of the educational work of the continent could not be better expressed than in the words of Professor Villagran of the University of San Marcos (St. Mark) in Peru: "We still maintain the same ornamental and Kterary education which the Spaniards implanted in South America for political reasons, instead of an intellectual training capable of advancing material well-being; which gives brilliancy to cultivated minds, but does not produce practical intelligence; which can amuse the rich, but does not teach the poor how to work. We are a people possessed of the same mania for speaking and writing that characterizes old and decadent nations. We look with horror upon active professions which demand energy and the spirit of strife. Few of us are willing to endure the hardships of mining or to incur the risks of manufacture and trade. Instead, we like tranquillity and security, the semirepose of public office, and the literary professions to which the public opinion of our society urges us. Fathers of families like to see their sons advocates, doctors, office-holders, literati, and professors. Peru is much like China — the promised land of functionaries and literati." EDUCATING A CONTINENT 141 Educational Missions The Lancasterian schools estabHshed by the Rev. James Thompson were the first evangelical institutions to find a place in the life of South America. Many statesmen of later years received their liberal and democratic views in these schools. In the late sixties the Methodists started a small school for boys in Montevideo, in Uruguay. One proof of the energies released by such schools is seen in such graduates as Professor Monteverde, of the uni- versity faculty in Uruguay, a former student in that institution, who was chosen as President of the Inter- denominational Congress of Christian Work in Latin America because of the happy union of educational fitness and spiritual strength which he possesses. Eschola Americana was established in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1870; Instituto Internacional in Chile in 1873; and Mackenzie College in 1890. The Rev. William Taylor went down the west coast in 1878 and again in 1882 establishing self-supporting schools for the teaching of English. Several schools begun in those years have become institutions of real power in service rendered to the native populations in the Spanish language, — notably those at Callao, Iquique, Santiago, and Concepcion. The Presbyterians were in advance of Mr. Taylor in Chile, and have done steady and efficient work in the Instituto Ingles in Santiago without a break during more than forty years. 142 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS Evangelical schools undertake all forms of educa- tion except that of the university. Kindergarten schools were first planted by this agency in Brazil by Miss Phoebe Thomas in 1882 in Sao Paulo. The government of that nation employed an experienced kindergarten teacher vsrho had served her apprentice- ship with Miss Thomas to introduce that kind of work in the state normal school. "It is worthy of note that the conversion to Protestantism of a large family of the highest rank socially, a family ever since closely identified with the evangelical movement, is due directly to Miss Thomas' kindergarten, where access to the mother came through her children's attendance on the school." The Rev. William C. Morris carries on a system of evangelical schools in Buenos Aires which are the outstanding institutions of the evangelical forces in Argentina. They are now known as "The Argentine Philanthropical Schools." There are seventeen de- partments, 5,600 students, and they receive from the Argentine national treasury a subsidy of about $40,000 annually and own buildings worth nearly $300,000. Popular subscriptions bridge the wide gulf between the subsidy and the annual outlay for rentals and clothing and books and staff. Mr. Morris has well been called "the Dr. Bernardo of Buenos Aires." In central Brazil a type of elementary school has reached a total of thousands of young people, under the leader- ship of the Rev. William Waddell. It is a kind of Protestant parochial school supported almost wholly MACKENZIE COLLEGE Group of Girl Students Members of the Faculty, 1913 Two Buildings EDUCATING A CONTINENT 143 by the local constituency. One Presbytery reports more than forty of these schools. Mr. Waddell writes : "Their courses are in the vernacular and are very much like those of the primary grades in the United States. They offer the irreducible minimum of instruc- tion necessary to every citizen and church-member. The support is always local. The expense of super- intendence, and in great part, that of teacher training, falls on the Mission. One dollar spent thus can be made to call out from five to ten from local sources. Of course the schools must be housed, equipped, and manned on a scale of expense in keeping with the local resources. The foreign standard must be abandoned entirely." In more than forty municipalities these schools have been adopted as the public institutions of the towns and are supported by public funds. In such cases no religious instruction is attempted in school hours. Instead of limiting the influence of the evangelical workers it has appeared to widen and enrich that influence. The "Escuela Popular" of Valparaiso, begun by Dr. Trumbull in 1870, has grown to be an influential school. It has a fine new building, with room for the Principal and twenty girl boarders on the second floor, and schoolrooms below. Eight years are covered by the course. The enrolment reaches 300. Daily Bible instruction is given. Six branch day-schools are in operation in the same city, with 325 in attendance, and with a Sunday-school conducted in each of the branches. 144 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS The "Escuela Agricola" of the Southern Presby- terians in Lavras, Brazil, is so unique as to demand a word or two of particular notice. It attempts more successfully than any other institution which has es- sayed a similar program to tie up the evangehcal school to the national Church-membership, by offering a combined literary and industrial course in which work on the school farm meets the expenses of education for those who could not otherwise afford to attend. Higher education under evangelical auspices has its best exponent in Mackenzie College, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, under the leadership of the late Dr. Horace M. Lane. The college operates under a charter from the state of New York, and is interdenominational. Nine North Americans, eight native Brazilians, four Eng- lish, two Swiss and Swedes, Italian and Portuguese to the number of twenty-nine, of whom two are women, make up its faculty. Technological instruction out- runs art courses. Of the 366 students only 27 are women. A total of 68 are in graduate engineering courses, 46 in commercial courses, and 253 are doing what would be rated by North Americans as high school work. On a campus a mile distant is the affiliated school known as Eschola Americana, with 506 enrolled, and with 30 in the faculty. This is a day-school of primary and grammar grade. In the two institutions th^re were 201 boarders last year. The college is in high favor with the Brazilian govern- ment. It is" furnishing technically trained youth to the schools and the mines and the commercial life of EDUCATING A CONTINENT 145 the republic, and from its halls are coming many of the young ministers needed to give to Brazil the gospel. Dr. Lane's funeral was the largest ever known in Sao Paulo. The Law School, the Polytechnic School, the Normal School, and other public and private schools of that state capital were closed out of respect to this Christian educator. In the state legislature resolutions of sorrow were adopted and speeches of eulogy pronounced by leading members. In the lower house the President of the Committee on Public Instruction spoke in part as follows : "Mr. President, it is with the most profound sorrow that I call the attention of the Camara to the death of the educator, Horace M. Lane, which occurred yester- day,— a person noted among us for his entire life of good service to education among us, a name beloved among us as a prototype of virtues, of intelligent activity, and of fortunate initiative. A great Brazilian by the right which belongs to him who cooperates in the patriotic work of our development; he rendered remarkable service. Born in a distant land but living about forty .years among us, it is fitting that we should join in the mourning which surrounds his name, ren- dering homage to the tireless worker for our advance- ment, to the modest promoter of the education of the people of Sao Paulo, to the happy originator of the patriotic work of teaching so highly esteemed among us." Besides those institutions which seem to claim special mention, the leading mission boards carry on schools 146 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS of such a number and variety, and with such a gratify- ing multitude of pupils and teachers that a description of each institution and its work would demand a volume rather than a small portion of one chapter. The weakness of the eif ort thus far has been chiefly from lack of adequate support, whether that was expressed in terms of buildings, equipment, or staff, showing itself as follows: entire absence of endow- ment in nearly every school; lack of permanence in the teaching force, a weakness so fundamental as to cripple and almost kill the school in which it prevails ; the appointment of members of the faculties who are in no way trained for the schoolroom ; lack of coopera- tion among missions ; failure to make the schools serve a poor constituency. Results of Evangelical Schools The purpose of the evangelical schools is not to com- pete with the institutions fostered by the governments, but to supplement them. Our object is the spiritual and moral welfare of the pupils, and through them of the homes and the national life in its entirety. With illiteracy between fifty and eighty per cent., and with less than half the buildings and a mere tithe of the trained teachers necessary to furnish staffs for the government schools, competition need not be thought of in the plans made. Conversions have not been as numerous in these schools as those who began them hoped to see. EDUCATING A CONTINENT 147 Prejudice, lack of fundamental conceptions as to sin and righteousness, veracity, purity, and honor always follow the exclusion of the Word of God from a people. Wearing down prejudice, disarming hostility to the Scriptures and to those who teach it in its purity, and the conversion of an encouraging number who have come to real leadership in the things of the spirit have been some of the rewards which have gladdened the hearts of workers in what must be acknowledged to be a hard field. An eminent and successful Christian teacher of many years' experience in these schools writes.: "It must be remembered that in most cases, in new countries where the leaven of Christianity in its purest and freest vigor has not been in operation, what is called conversion, in any sense, is, and must necessarily be a process slow, deep, and often during a long period almost indiscernible. An atmosphere within and with- out the life must be formed, distinct from the pre- dominant environment, and soul atmosphere is not usually of rapid formation. Cramming and crowding and urging do harm." Another states what all who have traveled widely over the continent know to be true from scores of refreshing experiences : "There are many students in Latin America who have learned of Christ in our mission schools and who are to-day leading lives that are irreproachable in their purity and high endeavor, but who are not members of any evangelical Church, nor do they consider them- 148 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS selves as affiliated with the Roman Catholic com- munion. More than once students have written back to the principal or teachers stating that they are the only believers in the whole town or district, and that they were reading the Bible or studying the Sunday- school lessons absolutely alone." Teachers have had much satisfaction in the reflec- tion that if their pupils never climb to the experiences for which they have so ardently prayed and labored, their level of moral life will average much higher than if they had never come to the Protestant school. It is not a small thing to lift the whole level of a life. Each pupil becomes a lifelong friend of evangelical truth, and a nucleus of effort for a better day wherever their lot is cast, and perhaps it will be the children and the children's children who will take the part in Christ's work which it was hoped the pupil himself would assume. The Christian educator must not overemphasize "the seed basket theory." Immediate conversions are possible and cases could be cited by the page. But it is best not to narrow unduly the range of expectation. It is wisest to plan by decades and think in generations in so immense a campaign as that upon which we are launched. Our best leaders to-day are the product of our own evangelical schools. Thus it will be in the to-morrow of the work and much more so if all the workers are faithful. VII THE EVANGELICAL MESSAGE AND METHOD Man's need for God and the universal provisions of the gospel to meet that need are assumed. Man was made for God. Whether in North America, South America, in Africa, or in the islands of the sea "man is incurably religious," and the glorious gospel of Christ is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." Message But peculiar conditions in the southern continent call for emphasis on at least four features of that message. The Reality of Sin I. Racial inheritance and religious history unite in making large demands for emphasis upon the heinous- ness of sin in the sight of God. Going back to the sources of the large Indian contribution to the life of the South Americans of to-day, we find cults ranging from the crude animism of the barbarous Amazonian and La Plata tribes to the polytheistic faiths found among the Incas of Peru, the Chibchas of Colombia, 149 ISO SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS the Caras of Ecuador, and the fighting Araucanians of Chile. But among none of the cults was there a clear definition of sin. As that word is defined in the Bible and understood among evangelical Christians, there is nothing in that part of the religious inheritance which has come to the South American people from Indian sources which gives them the sense of guilt and shame, because of the nature of sin, as being inherently vile and hateful in the sight of God. In the religious history of the European racial ele- ments entering into the social total, the essential sin- fulness of sin has been slurred over, if not obscured. This has been due to four main causes: (i) The Roman Church claims the right to define what is truly sinful, and teaches that sins may be divided into two classes, venial and mortal. The former "weakens while it does not entirely destroy, divine grace,", according to Roman theology. The latter only is sin, as this stern word denotes in Scriptural usage. (2) The confes- sional, with its easily uttered forgiveness of sin by a man like themselves, inevitably lessens the loathing of sin in those for whom it is repeated year after year. (3) The granting of indulgences has dulled the sense of sin wherever the custom is taught and practised. But, does the Roman Church teach that indulgences may be secured, and promise their possessors certain blessing? In the Catechism of Christian Doctrine are these questions and answers :^ 'Pages 170, 171. MESSAGE AND METHOD 151 Question. What is an indulgence ? Answer. The pardon of the temporal punishment due on account of sins already pardoned, granted hy the Church aside from the Sacrament of Penance, by application of the merits of Jesus Christ, of the most Holy Virgin and of the Saints. Question. Has the Church power to grant in- dulgences ? Answer. It is of faith that it has. Question. Who are able to grant indulgences in the Church? Answer. The Pope in all the Church, the Bishops in their dioceses. Question. What is a plenary indulgence? Answer. One which pardons all the temporal penalty. Question. Will the one who secures a plenary in- dulgence go to Purgatory? Answer. He goes directly to heaven without going to Purgatory. In Browning's The Ring and the Book, we hear Count Guido Franceschirii, the wife slayer, say as he pleaded for pardon : "It must be, Frown law its fiercest, there's a wink somewhere.'' The fact that this titled criminal had long served as private secretary to "Rome's most productive plant — a Cardinal," gives edge to the statement. It came from a mind fixed in the conception that sin is not 152 SOUTH AMERICAN NEIGHBORS serious; that there is always a way out, "a wink somewhere." (4) The doctrine of the "double sense." This is nothing less than teaching that deceit is justi- fiable under certain circumstances. Incredible as it may seem, the religious history of the Roman Church has this black mark upon it. Cardinal S. Alfonso Maria de Liguori, in his book entitled Moral Theology, teaches this perversion of Scriptural truth. He died in 1787. In 1803 the Sacred Congregation of Rites declared that "in all the writings of Alfonso de Liguori, edited and unedited, there was not a word that could be justly found fault with." Pope Pius VII ratified the Decree and made Liguori a saint less than thirty years after his death. In his book, chapter IV, page 160, we read: "If a guest is asked if his dinner is good when really it is bad, he may answer that it is good, namely (in an aside) for mortification." Again in chapter IV, page 172: "If a man makes a false promise and swears to it, what sin does he commit, and to what is he bound? ... A man may make a false promise with an oath in three ways: i. Not intending to swear. 2. Not intending to bind himself. 3. Not intending to fulfil the promise." Additional items are not necessary to prove this point. , 2. The Living Christ, the only Savior and Mediator between God and man. This message is needed in South America because Christ is usually presented as