Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1134

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

The Women's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Protestant Church was organized Feb. 14, 1879, to bring the heathen to Christ. It has established schools, built churches and done a valuable work especially among girls. It has twenty branches and about 3,000 members. Mrs. F. A. Brown of Cardington, O., is serving her twenty-first year as president.

The Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society was organized April 3, 1871. The leading object is the Christianization of women in foreign lands by furnishing support through the American Baptist Missionary Union to Christian women employed by said Union as missionaries, native teachers or Bible readers, together. with the facilities needed for their work. Its missionaries have been sent to Burmah, Assam, India, China, Japan and Africa. The home constituency is found in the Baptist churches of the New England and Middle Atlantic States.

The total number of American missionaries supported for a longer or shorter time is 142. Of these seventy-eight are now connected with the society, 112 native Bible women employed as visitors in homes, and 367 boarding and day schools with more than 14,000 pupils are maintained. Many women who have been taught in these schools are exerting a strong influence as Christian wives, mothers and teachers. The medical missionaries have cared for souls and bodies alike. One of these doctors reports 17,000 treatments at her dispensary during the last year. Large sums of money have also been expended for mission work of various kinds under the care of the wives of missionaries. The total amount raised and expended in thirty years is over $2,000,000.

There are numerous auxiliary circles, including about 34,000 women, besides 10,000 younger women organized in guilds.

The Woman's Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West was organized May 9, 1871, for the elevation and Christianization of the women of foreign lands by furnishing support to Christian women employed as missionaries, to native teachers and to Bible women, together with the facilities needed for their work. It supports 177 schools, 5.337 pupils, 159 teachers and 94 Bible women. In the medical department it has two hospitals, two dispensaries, twenty medical students and three helpers; 597 patients were treated in the hospitals during the past year and 6,130 outside patients. The amount raised since organization is $885,279, and 105 missionaries have been sent out. There are 1,530 auxiliaries.

The Woman's Baptist Home Mission Society was organized Feb. 1, 1877, to aid in spreading the gospel and to Christianize homes by means of house-to-house visitation and by missions and schools with special reference to exceptional populations in the United States, and among neighboring countries. The missionary training school was organized Sept. 5, 1881, and located at the headquarters of the society, now in Chicago. The same year records the first issue of the monthly organ, Tidings, which has grown