606 



REFORMED CHURCHES. 



larly poor school-teachers of the bonuses or gratifi- 

 cations which the law authorizes, and which they 

 had the right to expect for the said year, to the 

 amount of $14,000." 



Mr. Marchand, in his budget speech, defended 

 the Government, pointing out that the withdrawal 

 of the marriage-license fees from the universities 

 helped the poor municipalities and weak elemen- 

 tary schools, and that his Government had been 

 unjustly accused of practicing an undue economy 

 by depriving public instruction of its legitimate 

 share of the expenditure. He declared that if the 

 amounts of the special grants of certain educa- 

 tional institutions and to night schools, entered 

 under other headings, were taken into account 

 with the ordinary expenditure for public instruc- 

 tion, it would be found that the present Govern- 

 ment had laid out last year upon the cause of edu- 

 cation $412,657, as compared with $389,759, the 

 amount expended by the Conservatives on it in 

 1895-'96, the last full year of their regime. Not 

 only had the ordinary appropriations for elemen- 

 tary schools, for superior education, and for liter- 

 ary, scientific, and industrial institutions been fully 

 employed, but this present Government had added 

 considerably thereto for the purposes just indi- 

 cated. In addition, they founded at Montreal a 

 normal school for female teachers, which was actu- 

 ally in full operation. They had also made pro- 

 vision for the free distribution of a geographical 

 map of the province to all the public schools. This 

 map was ready, and its distribution would be 

 effected as soon as it had been approved by the 

 Council of Public Instruction. They were, more- 

 over, preparing to distribute a free series of ele- 

 mentary-school text-books to primary schools. 



The Roman Catholic elementary schools in the 

 province, on June 30, 1899, included 4,203 under 

 control of municipalities and 53 independent. The 

 model schools were 347 under municipal control 

 and 140 independent. The academies under the 

 former head numbered 35, and under the latter 96. 

 The independent Catholic normal schools, classical 

 colleges, universities, etc., numbered 26. Of the 

 Protestant schools, 885 of an. elementary nature 

 were under municipal control, together with 52 



model schools and 29 academies. There were 7 

 universities, colleges, and normal schools. The 

 Catholic pupils in Roman Catholic schools of all 

 kinds numbered 276,988; the Protestant pupils in 

 Protestant schools numbered 36,808. There were 

 1,040 students at Laval and 1,320 at McGill and 

 Bishop's College. The expenditure by municipali- 

 ties upon education in 1899 was $1,448,695. 



Railways and Bridges. The mileage of rail- 

 way track in the province in 1899 was 3,345 miles. 

 A new railway was subsidized for colonization pur- 

 poses, between Labelle and Lake Nominingui, with 

 $5,000 a year for twelve years. The South Shore 

 Railway Company was granted $8,900 annually for 

 ten years, to build bridges over St. Francis and 

 Yamaska rivers. The great event of the year, how- 

 ever, was the large Dominion grant of $1,000,000, 

 and a promise of another million, to the proposed 

 bridge over the St. Lawrence, near Quebec. The 

 provincial subsidy was $250,000, and a grant of 

 $300,000 came from the city of Quebec. 



Mines.- The iron ore produced by the province 

 in 1898 amounted to 17,873 tons. The gold pro 

 duction was only $4,916 in value in 1899. The 

 silver production was $43,655. The phosphate wa> 

 valued at $9,200. 



Colonization. The amount spent in 1899 for 

 colonization, including grants to colonization soci- 

 eties, was $79,000. Much of this was spent on 527 

 miles of road and 13,047 feet of bridge work. Half 

 of the total amount of grants went to the Meta- 

 pedia, Lake St. John, and Ottawa districts alone. 

 All bridges are constructed under the immediate 

 supervision of the Department of Mines and Colo 

 nization. Its annual report for 1899 recommended 

 that lands for settlement be sold only where they 

 would be easy of access, in order to group colonie* 

 together as far as possible, and to enable the de-J 

 partment to see readily who were bona fide set~\ 

 tiers. About 278,105 acres of land were surveyed,, 

 at a cost of $36,037. The expenditure of the de- 

 partment for 1898-'99 amounted to $140,493. The 

 Quebec office handled 3,146 immigrants and the 

 Montreal office 2,550, the great majority of them 

 being English, Scotch, and Irish. The number of re-l 

 patriated French Canadians was 5,561 for the year. 



REFORMED CHURCHES. Reformed 

 Church, in America. The Committee on the 

 State of the Church reported to the General 

 Synod of this Church in June the following 

 numbers for the denomination: Of churches, 

 643; of ministers, 715; of families, 60,716; 

 of communicants, 109,899; of admissions dur- 

 ing the year on confession, 4,696: of Sunday 

 schools, 925, with 124,248 enrolled members, 25,061 

 of whom were under systematic catechetical in- 

 struction; of Christian Endeavor Societies, 475 

 senior, 200 junior; and between 40 and 50 So- 

 cieties of the Brotherhood of Andrew and Philip. 

 Amount of contributions for benevolent purposes, 

 $354,343, or $38,061 more than in 1899; for con- 

 gregational purposes, $1,900.000. The Sunday 

 schools had contributed $21,817, and the Chris- 

 tian Endeavor Societies $9,198 to foreign and 

 domestic missions and education. Twenty-two 

 hundred and sixty-one persons had been received 

 into the communion of the Church from the 

 Sunday schools. The apparent whole number of 

 communicants had been reduced 1,766 through 

 a revision of the rolls in accordance with a rec- 

 ommendation of the previous General Synod. 



The Committee on Domestic Missions reported 

 that it had closed its year free from debt, witli 

 a balance of several hundred dollars in its treas- 

 ury. Of the 650 churches, 227 were aided by th* 

 committee. 



The Board of Education reported itself for th> 

 first time in half a century out of debt. 



The Committee on the Disabled Ministers' fund 

 returned a slight increase of contributions iron 

 the churches, but no increase of income from in- 

 vested funds. Of its 46 beneficiaries, 34 were 

 women. A proposition from the mayor and citi- 

 zens of Pekin, 111., for the establishment of i 

 ministers' home of the Reformed Church in con- 

 nection with a hospital contemplated in tluit 

 city was referred by the General Synod to tlie 

 Board of Direction. 



The present total capital of the Widows' foul 

 was returned at $107,828, showing an increa> 

 for the year of $1,044. The year's receipts had 

 been $11,782. and the payments $10,189. The full 

 amount of $200 had been paid to annuitant-. 



The year's contributions for the Theological 

 Seminary at New Brunswick. N. J., had bwn 

 $4,005 for current expenses, and $27,036 for en- 



