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Life Sketches of Ellen G. White
“It would necessarily follow that in starting a school of that kind,
in a field where the constituency was small, and where the people
had been passing through serious difficulty financially, there would
be a large indebtedness of about $23,000 on the school. It was about
this time that the plan of selling the book ‘Christ’s Object Lessons’
was launched, and our brethren in that country took hold of this work
with an earnest purpose to carry out the instruction regarding it. As a
result of their efforts, up to the present time, something over $20,000
has been received from the sale of ‘Christ’s Object Lessons’ for the
school. The indebtedness being $23,000 when we started, practically
all the original indebtedness has been liquidated by the sale of ‘Christ’s
Object Lessons.’...
“At the beginning of the ‘Object Lessons’ campaign, the present
worth of the Avondale School was about $23,000. The present worth
of the school today [1909] is about $67,000. Adding $20,000, the
amount that has been received, to the $23,000 present worth, makes
$43,000. Subtract this from $67,000, the present worth, and you will
notice that the school has made, during the past eight years, about
$24,000. This proves that industrial schools can be made to pay.
“When we began our work at this school, eight years ago, the
students were earning about $2,000 a year in the industrial work;
that is, they were working sufficient to receive a credit of $2,000
a year. That work has steadily grown from that day to this, until,
when our last statement was drawn, September 30, 1908, it was shown
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that the students, during the preceding year, had earned $20,000 on
their education.” [
Note.—At the 1913 general conference, Professor
Machlan reported continued prosperity in the industrial departments
at Avondale. “The industrial feature of the college,” he declared, “is a
most interesting as well as a most valuable one. Last year fifty-five per
cent of the students paid their entire expenses in labor, thirty-five per
cent paid one half their school fees, while only ten per cent were full-
paying students.”
] (
Church and Sabbath School Bulletin, 1913, 154
.)
... Since the inauguration of the ‘Christ’s Object Lessons’ work, we
have never called for a penny of donations from the field. We believe
that when the Lord says that an industrial school can be conducted
successfully, financially as well as otherwise, the only thing for us to
do is to take hold and prove that what He has said is true.