Southern California Conference
By G. W. Reaser
The third spring session of the Southern California Conference was held in Los Angeles, April 16-20. The total number of delegates in attendance was seventy, representing all but three of the twenty-seven churches of the conference. During this session, conference officers were elected, and the legal meetings of our various corporations were held, and boards of management for each institution were chosen. Few changes were made in the personnel of the various committees. A list of our institutions located in southern California would include three large sanitariums, an academy, a three-story building, centrally located in Los Angeles, wherein are operated a vegetarian café, treatment rooms, bakery, health food store, and in which our conference and tract society officers are located. The original cost of these properties was about four hundred thousand dollars. All of them, save the building located in Los Angeles, are owned by our people, and came into our possession at a cost, including improvements to date, of about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It will be apparent to all, that careful attention must be given to business details, where the volume of business requiring an expenditure of more than two hundred thousand dollars a year is essential to the maintenance of all departments of our work, including the foregoing institutions, our church-school system, embracing fourteen schools, and the support of our conference laborers, which includes fourteen ordained ministers, three licensed ministers, and three Bible workers. The total number of persons connected with our organized work and receiving salaries is above two hundred. The following extracts from reports presented to the conference, may be of interest to the readers of the Review:— At the beginning of the present conference year, July 1, 1905, we found our conference, tract society, second tithe and trust funds, in arrears to the amount of nearly eight thousand dollars. On the first day of April our books showed that all these indebtednesses were liquidated, that all current bills had been met each month, and we had cash on hand to the amount of $6,665.51 of conference and tract society funds, not including personal deposits. Our tithe for the past nine months reached the total of $22,115.51. The total second tithe which has come into the conference treasury (which is two thirds of the whole amount paid by our people) during the past nine months, is $5,161.15. Of this amount we have paid $3,909.35 for the support of our teachers, and have a surplus of $1,251.80 now in the conference treasury. Our total gain in first tithe, above expenses, in nine months, including the amount paid on debts, was $10,154.18, or enough to have supported double our corps of workers. Our total donations for nine months was $3,460.77, of which amount $2,800 has been forwarded to our general Mission Board. The indebtedness of Fernando Academy has been reduced in five months' effort from $24,170 to about $12,000. It is only fair to state that $7,170 of the amount of the Fernando debt was liquidated by the cancellation of its indebtedness to our conference association. Fernando Academy has been operated thus far this year with a net gain of about one hundred dollars a month. Its total enrolment in the academic department is fully one hundred students. Including the reduction of the Fernando Academy debt, the conference and tract society indebtedness, the erection of a conference warehouse in Los Angeles, the purchase of three large field tents, and about twelve family tents, we have met obligations amounting to over $21,000, besides meeting our current expenses, without borrowing. Ten months ago we were staggered at the thought of purchasing Loma Linda Sanitarium at a cost (including $5,000 for starting) of $45,000, so soon after securing the Fernando Academy property and the Paradise Valley and Glendale Sanitariums. But this institution, being urged upon us by the servant of the Lord, was purchased, and early in the month of February our willing-hearted people had advanced money in loans and donations, so that we made the last payment of $20,000, securing a rebate of $1,150 by making payments before they were due. For several months in the past Loma Linda has had an excellent patronage, being filled, much of the time, with patients. The receipts above expenditures at Loma Linda have run as high as eight hundred dollars a month, but this was prior to the date when full salaries were paid to its corps of workers. The patronage of Glendale Sanitarium has been fully equal to that of Loma Linda, considering the capacity of the two institutions, and the net earnings of Glendale have been even more encouraging than those of Loma Linda, but the latter institution has not become so well known as the former, as a sanitarium. We have made substantial gains on the indebtedness of our three sanitariums, by annuities and legacies, and in the case of the Paradise Valley Sanitarium by selling stock in the corporation. The last-named institution has made improvements costing about $16,000 in the past few months, which places it in equipment, at least on vantage-ground with any similar institution on the Pacific Coast, and it is now enjoying its portion of the prosperity with which the Lord has blessed our entire work in southern California. The net gain in the operation of our health work in Los Angeles for the past nine months has been $8,812.64, and this amount has been applied largely on our indebtedness. The total net gain on all departments of our work for the same period was $28,135.30. This does not include Loma Linda and Paradise Valley Sanitarium. The magnitude of the business of the thirteen departments of our conference seemed to demand the making of monthly statements by each department, and submitting the same at regular monthly meetings of the conference committee and business managers of institutions. This plan, which has been in operation about eight months, works admirably, bringing to bear the united counsel of our business talent on all matters of major importance, also providing a regular day in each month for committee work. Our conference is well adapted for the convening of these monthly meetings, as the institution the most remote from the conference office in Los Angeles is only one hundred and twenty-eight miles distant. Knowing the true financial standing of each of our institutions and departments monthly, may avoid some unpleasant surprises at the end of the year. The creating of a purchasing department, known as the Sanitarium Mercantile Agency, which has been operating for several months, gives us business prestige in the commercial world, and enables us to get special discounts and reduced prices on nearly all commodities required for the various departments of our work. The liberal and unbounded confidence of our people in supplying funds for carrying on the work, and for the reduction of our indebtedness, places the conference management and the managers of our institutions under the highest bonds of sacred honor not to abuse this confidence in spending money for improvements and accessories not positively essential for the comfort and prosperity18of our institutions, which is a natural tendency where the loan of money is freely offered. Southern California, on account of its equable winter climate, attracts a tourist population each year which is said to more than equal the resident population. This fact doubtless makes this conference one of the most favorable places for the promulgation of the message, as well as one of the principal sanitarium centers of America. Our metropolis, with its suburbs, has a population of fully two hundred and thirty thousand, and is growing at a rate which would double its present number of residents in eight years. Our force of medical workers has been augmented by the arrival of Dr. Julia A. White, late of Battle Creek, Mich., who is now a member of our medical staff at Loma Linda, and Dr. M. M. Kay, recently from Chicago, who has a place on the medical staff of Glendale. Dr. F. Zelinsky has closed his private practise in Los Angeles, and is connected with Glendale Sanitarium, but just at present is taking post-graduate work in New York City. Since the last session of our conference, the following churches have been organized: Vernon, Edendale, Loma Linda, Glendale, and Corona, making twenty-seven organized churches in all. With this list of churches, nine companies of Sabbath-keepers, and such an excellent field for missionary operations, we have had, until recently, but three ordained ministers and one licentiate for evangelistic field work. Our force of evangelical workers has been much strengthened by the arrival of Elder S. N. Haskell and his wife, Elder B. E. Fulmer, of Wichita, Kan., and Elder G. W. Rine, from the California-Nevada Conference. During the months of October, November, and December, Elder W. W. Simpson, assisted by Elder Healey to some extent, and two Bible workers, Brethren Hoare and Rawson, held a series of meetings in San Diego, with the result that seventy souls accepted the truth. Special contributions from individuals and churches in our conference enable us to support seven native workers at mission stations in South Africa, and to partially maintain one in India. Our conference owns fourteen church-school buildings, all except three of which are free from indebtedness. The total enrolment of these schools is three hundred and twenty students. It has been a source of much satisfaction to those connected with the disbursement of funds, to have money in hand to meet the salaries of all our workers at a moment's notice, and we have also been in a position to satisfy at sight all bills presented. This gives financial prestige to the cause, and enables us to secure better rates in purchasing, as well as discounts in paying bills. The delegates came to the conference with instructions from their respective churches to vote our surplus funds to the Mission Board; but while the conference was in session, news came that the most destructive earthquake in the history of the Pacific Coast had visited San Francisco, and the conference voted to send two thousand dollars of our surplus to assist our institutions in the California-Nevada Conference which sustained such heavy loss by the disaster. It was also voted that a tithe of our second tithe, amounting to $398.36, be forwarded to the Mission Board. Other actions of the conference included recommendations for the organization of a nurses' bureau, the continuance of the plan for the liquidation of the indebtedness of Fernando Academy by the payment of one dollar a month from each church-member in the conference; the payment of nineteen per cent of our first tithe to the Pacific Union Conference, the organization of an advanced nurses' training-school at Loma Linda, and that our conference officers correspond with the general Mission Board with a view of securing the establishment of a mission station on the west coast of Mexico. Mrs. E. G. White and Elder W. C. White were with us during the conference, and added interest to the occasion. An excellent spirit of harmony prevailed during the meeting, and all who attended seemed to be inspired with courage and confidence in the early triumph of the cause of God in the earth, to culminate in the glorious coming of the King of kings. G. W. REASER.