Directors, and served as Acting Superintendent for eight months at the time of Mr. Montgomery's trip to Sweden, while still a pastor. He came to Wisconsin on September 1st, 1886.

NORTH WISCONSIN AFTER THE BOOM.

REV. G. A. HOOD, SUPERINTENDENT.

WHAT can you do in a booming country after the boom is gone? Ah, then the real basis of its worth appears and the growth is sure to be solid, There has been no boom anywhere in North Wisconsin since April, 1887.

Not one town has decreased in size except that the roughs and the desperate classes have left the mining towns; the prominent places have continued to grow with scarcely diminished rapidity, till the hard times of last winter.

Ashland, since the boom, has added a single-blast furnace, said to be the largest in the country, pouring out eighty tons per day of pig-iron, a large iron foundry and machine shops moved from Minneapolis, street cars, streets and avenues planked and sewers laid, fine brick blocks, coal docks and commercial docks begun and finished. West Superior has added new railroad yards and terminal facilities, a $150,000 hotel at Fourteenth Street, three elevators with a capacity of 5,000,000 bushels, and the Steel Works Company are laying out an immense plant. Four towns have introduced water-works.

The seven railroads operating in North Wisconsin during the boom have increased to eleven. A gridiron of nine covers the whole north country, and two more run into West Superior. Six roads connect Lake Superior with Milwaukee or Chicago; three bind North Wisconsin and North Michigan together, east and west, into one large natural lumber and mining State, with stock farms in the future. Two of them are the famous "Soo" roads, to extend to the Atlantic. Round-houses and shops, yards and junctions, spur-tracks and connecting branches have been built to get hold of the riches above and below ground, and still there are plans for enlargement, new railroad companies incorporated, surveys incomplete, or branches sticking out into the woods, expecting to go somewhere sometime.

The Suez has for three years been surpassed by the "Soo." The increase of tonnage through this Sault Ste. Marie shows the government canal alarmingly too small, and the "Waterways Convention" of 1887 sent up a cry of terror to the government, so that a $7,000,000 canal is now being built. The Invincible Armada of 1588 with 130 boats is outdone by that of 1888 with 183 big vessels waiting at one time to pass through this canal. Most of this commerce goes to the west end of Lake Superior. So you see the material progress continues.

Our home missionary work has been carefully managed so as neither to be entangled in any boom, nor to miss any of the work we ought to do. In two years the number of churches has grown from five American and three Swede, to eleven American with five stations, and eight Swede with nine stations, a total of thirty-three points occupied and worked. Three of these eleven churches have built houses of worship; one is trying to build; one has built, and another has raised the money for a parsonage. Principally for lack of parsonages, the right kind of ministers. has been so hard to get that these fields have averaged half the time vacant. The number of ministers has increased from three to sixteen in two years.

The work of the churches has been blessed more than would seem possible under such circumstances. The Swedish brethren have led the list of conversions; one has added forty by profession in less than two years, another has had twenty-eight conversions in six months. One of our churches has secured more spiritual results in eighteen months than in six years before. Others have been divided by other denominations coming in without regard to comity. One, which has been divided three times, has a Sunday-school and congregation larger than ever; another, which was nearly killed by the invasion of a brother and sister denomination, has recovered, and the church is said to be full inside and outside, so that they must enlarge.

The Y. P. S. C. E. is gaining ground and greatly helping in the work. Our recent N. W. District Convention at New Richmond was uplifting, and the 100 young delegates went home pledged to stir the other 500 members to do all possible personal work in saving souls. Ought not this to be a powerful help in saving North Wisconsin? Our councils for organization of churches have been precious seasons, spiritually. One of our ministers, lately from the East, wrote me, "It does one good to go. A North Wisconsin convention or council is as good as a revival.” We thank God and expect North Wisconsin for Christ!

A CLASS LETTER.

I CAME to Ashland the 6th of July. The following Sunday I preached in the Ashland Theater, a great, barn-like building, capable of holding 1,300 people. As my audiences have never been over 125, we have not been over-crowded. We continued in the theater until the last of September, when we changed to the Y. M. C. A. building, as the former edifice cannot easily be heated. The first of September, our church was organized with twenty-one members. The next communion two more joined, so that we now have twenty-three. Ashland is a city of perhaps 12,000 inhabitants, more than half of whom, I think, have come within the past two years. Five years ago, there were probably not over 1,000

people here. They have unlimited faith that Ashland is to be a large city in the near future. But whether it is to be a large city or not, I think it is probably the wickedest city that has existed on the earth since Sodom and Gomorrah suffered the catastrophe recorded in the book called Genesis. Probably not more than five per cent. of the people attend regularly the Protestant churches. In this I include, of course, the German and Scandinavian, as well as the English-speaking churches. There is no Sabbath to speak of. Paul would not have had to reprove the citizens of Ashland for "observing days." We have sixty-five saloons, each of which pays $500 license. They are open on Sundays and running at full blast. I suppose that there are 1,500 men on the streets every night, and the saloons are not only brilliantly lighted, but pianos and other musical instruments are kept going, and singing and other attractions draw the crowds within. This is such a new town that the boarding-houses and homes of these men are very primitive, uncomfortable, and uninviting. The saloon is the only place where men can find. a pleasant place to spend their evenings. It makes one's heart fail when he sees how the saloons have every thing their own way here.

The churches have no control whatever over the town. We have not succeeded as yet in influencing public sentiment at all in favor of what is good. I think I know from experience how a foreign missionary must feel, surrounded by heathen. One of the largest and most conspicuous and well-known buildings here, is a house of ill-repute; and other places, smaller but of the same character, are thickly scattered all over the city. Prize-fights are common, and a great dog-fight is billed to come off very soon, on which $1,500 are staked.

Our congregations are small, compared with what they ought to be, but I am trying to preach as plainly and as forcibly as I can. If any one is inclined to doubt the need of missionary work in this country, he would better come to Ashland and see what a hell can exist above-ground when the masses of the people are not under the influence of the Gospel. I have thought that the Home Missionary Society would do well to get a New England saloon-keeper to come here. A saloon such as the people of the East are accustomed to would be so much better than these desperate places in Ashland, that it would exert a refining, uplifting influence; in comparison with what we now have it would be a light shining in darkness. The twenty-third of June, I went to Frederick, Md., and completed an arrangement that I had made with a young lady friend of mine some time before. The consequence of this trip was that I did not come to Ashland alone. We are now keeping house, having at last secured a home, after three months' waiting. Houses are so in demand here that it is almost impossible to get one.-Ashland, Wis., Oct. 20.

FROM A GERMAN MISSIONARY.

THIS is the report of my third year with this church. I was able by the grace of God to preach regularly every Sabbath and to lead the Sunday-school, and during the week I instructed a class of young people. I feel more and more that the young people among the Germans need good religious instruction or they are lost, if their parents do not care for the church. If the children of German parents are sent to American Sunday-schools, they get there a knowledge of religion; but on account of prejudice against American churches many German children grow up irreligious. Sometimes, where the temperance question is brought up in mission schools, German children are taken out of Sunday-school by their parents. During this last quarter not much of importance has occurred in our church, except that our neat building was dedicated, and so much money was raised and is now paid in, that not one dollar of debt remains on the property. Superintendent Eversz was here. He seems to be the right man in his place, and with the experience he has himself in pastoral work he combines modesty and love. Our church building was the first German sanctuary in this city, and our society was for years the only German church, but since a few months we have another society, and since last week a building for that class of Germans who belong to the Saenger and Turner Society. Since the local option agitation a portion of my church and a number of families connected with the Sængerbund, who wish to have some kind of religion, with which they could also have Sabbath picnicking and other irreligious practices, formed a new society and built a small hall which they can use for other purposes. All those Germans who wish to lead a godly life attend our church and those who have been here before our church was organized and have hindered every effort, join in one way or another the new society, whose minister has no standing in any denomination, and favors drinking and other ungodly ways. It is true many Germans who never found time to attend service attend now every Sabbath the service of the new church, or the minister would have no congregation. Some of our members who were indifferent are now interested more in their own church, and a separation of the moral and immoral classes takes place. Some members who had attended our church, but who were insincere, and were in the habit of frequenting saloons, have discovered that they belong to the other society and left us. We have not as large an audience as before, because the other society tries by all means to break up our church, expecting by-and-by to get possession of our sanctuary. But, God be praised, He has sustained us and strengthened and comforted us, and He will carry on his good work. Several young people and families have stood by us although their nearest relatives have tried hard to convince them that we are no German Evangelical church. They see with their own eyes that