some particulars with decided improvement. The society in Milwaukee is about to build a handsome parsonage. The Union Church in Monroe has resumed activity under the pastorate of Rev. J. H. Palmer. The church has been closed for five years.

In Minnesota our field agent, Rev. V. J. Emery, has been actively at work during the year. He has given the greater part of his time to assisting Rev. Henry M. Simmons in the work of the First Unitarian Church in Minneapolis, and has also given attention to the struggling society in Winona, and to possibilities at New Ulm, Mankato, and other thriving towns. The churches in Duluth and St. Cloud have suffered severe loss by removal.

The work of the Iowa Unitarian Association maintains its well-known efficiency under the administration of Rev. A. M. Judy of Davenport, President, and Rev. Mary A. Safford of Des Moines, Secretary. The State Association has completed its payments on the church building at Iowa City, which is now with encumbrance the property of the Iowa Unitarian Association. The society in Perry has also discharged all the indebtedness resting on the property. A subscription has been raised toward the erection of a new church at Des Moines, which, when completed, will serve also as the headquarters of the State Association, and so add very much to the efficiency of our associates in that important State.

Our hold upon the State of Missouri is not so strong as it might be made if the Committee was financially able to give it more attention. Several places are known where we might wisely undertake the establishment of churches. It is a matter of importance that Rev. Charles Ferguson has undertaken the reviving of our work in St. Joseph, Mo., in connection with services in Kansas

City. Reports of his work are encouraging, although he has been on the field but three months.

The churches of Nebraska and Kansas are bound together by the Missouri Valley Conference, to the meetings of which the ministers and other leaders of our work in the Missouri Valley are most earnestly devoted. At a recent meeting of this Conference a vote was passed asking the Association to send a field agent to this district, and good evidence was offered that there would be more than enough for such an officer to do. Real progress has been made in all the churches in this Conference, each one confidently expecting to become more and more the centre of an ever-widening influence.

In Colorado the work of our society in Fort Collins has been strengthened by the ministry of Rev. F. K. Gifford, but the society in Colorado Springs has suffered severely by the death and removal of important members. A steady growth is maintained at Pueblo, where the entrance upon the new church has given a great incentive to the work. The little movement at Grand Junction, in the western part of the State, is one of peculiar interest. It was founded two years ago by Rev. J. Munroe Stewart, a new-comer from the Presbyterian ministry, who chose to win his spurs in Unitarian service by establishing a new society. Grand Junction is an important railroad and agricultural centre, from which our influence easily radiates to many towns and hamlets roundabout, preaching to very small congregations, under peculiarly difficult circumstances, and with an unusually small salary, Mr. Stewart may well be mentioned as one showing to the fullest extent the genuine missionary earnestness which at the present time animates a very large percentage of our ministers.

The work among the Scandinavians of the North-west

has been greatly strengthened by the entrance into it of two young, well-equipped ministers. Under Rev. J. P. Solmundsson's ministry the society at Gimli has purchased a lot, and will presently undertake the building of a modest church. Under the careful leadership of Rev. R. Petursson the society in Winnipeg has effected an advantageous sale of the old property, the plan being to purchase a lot in a better location, and to build a more suitable church as soon as possible.

Rev. M. J. Skaptason, the Nestor of our Scandinavian work in the North, has reported the migration to the Pacific Coast of practically his entire congregations at Roseau and Pine Valley. Mr. Skaptason has done us faithful service for many years among the Scandinavians, and we owe chiefly to him such recruits as have been found for the Scandinavian missions. It has not seemed advisable to ask Mr. Skaptason to go to the Pacific Coast in pursuit of his vanished congregation, so it may prove that his labors for the Association have come to an end.

In Minneapolis and Hanska Rev. A. H. Norman continues to render valuable and systematic service. The new building for the use of the Hanska society is going forward, and will add very much to the value of our work there. A very promising Swedish Unitarian Society has just been organized in Chicago, under the charge of Rev. Mr. Dellgren. The church at Underwood has bought a lot and a building which it proposes to move onto the new lot. The society in Hudson, Wis., has finally finished the equipment of its new church, and occupies it for the first time next Sunday.

The work among the Scandinavians will hereafter be in charge of the Committee on New Americans,

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON PACIFIC

STATES

C. E. WARE, JAMES EELLS, P. R. FROTHINGHAM, M. J. SAVAGE, EMILY P. MORTON, COMMITTEE.

The report of this Committee can be brief because the Field Secretary for the Pacific States Department is to address the Association at the afternoon meeting. It is to the zeal and industry of Mr. Stone that the present prosperity of our churches in California and the Northwest is largely due. For four years he has been untiring in his labors in their behalf. His business experience, genial temperament, preaching power, and close acquaintance with the aims and purposes of the Directors of the Association, acquired through his term of service as Treasurer, have all contributed to make his work effective. He has further enjoyed the closest cooperation with the President of the Association and with Dr. Savage in New York, and through these friends has been able to develop resources which have materially aided many of the churches under his care. At present it may be said that every church in the department has a minister, that almost all of the societies are equipped with adequate church buildings, and that a spirit of unity and optimism permeates the whole department.

The Pacific Coast Department is the only department of our work which is able to maintain a local Unitarian paper. The Pacific Unitarian continues to be most ably edited by Mr. Charles A. Murdock, with the assistance

of Mr. Stone; and it proves, as for the last twelve years, an invaluable ally in all missionary endeavors.

Through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Cutting and Mr. and Mrs. Horace Davis the department is now to be equipped with a training school for ministers, which, while at first obviously experimental in character, holds the potency of inestimable good for our churches.

The Pacific Coast Conference is a vigorous and forwardlooking body. It is safe to say that no other Conference in the country is able to command the attendance at its sessions of so large a proportion of its distant members. At the session held last week in San Francisco the ministers and delegates came not only from Central California, but also from the churches of the far Northwest and of the extreme South. It is as if to a meeting in Washington ministers and delegates were to come from churches in Florida and Georgia, on the one hand, and Maine and New Hampshire, on the other. On account of the great distance, however, it has been found best to supplement the work of the Pacific Conference by the organization of three subordinate Conferences, one in Southern California, one in Central California, and one in Oregon and Washington. In his general work of superintendency Mr. Stone is ably seconded by the field agent of the Association in Oregon and Washington, Rev. William G. Eliot, Jr., who in large measure relieves Mr. Stone of the care of the mission churches in the North-west.

The strong and self-supporting churches of the department are in no sense under the care of this Committee, but it is gratifying to report that all of them are in more vigorous and fruitful condition than ever before in their history. Most of them have increased this year their gifts to the Association.

Almost all the churches that look to this Committee