SUMMARY. Expenses paid as follows for Delegates and General Con ference Officials: Foreign traveling expenses: thirty-five delegates and two Home traveling expenses.. Missionary Bishops.. Hotels and boarding. Total. $18,359 29 11,279 55 29,628 30 $59,267 14 MISCELLANEOUS EXPENSES. Balance expenses Omaha General Conference.... $51 25 370 44 Secretaries General Conference, for stationery, etc. 93 29 1,245 36 226 51 Committee entertainment of General Conference, traveling and hotel expenses during quadrennium.. 23 00 Your Committee on the location of the General Conference of 1900 begs leave to report that it is in receipt of invitations from Chicago, Kansas City, Ocean Grove, and Saratoga Springs; that it finds it impossible from the facts before it to arrive at any definite conclusion as to the most desirable place at which the next General Conference should be held. There being many facts which should be determined before any definite conclusion can be intelligently reached, and there not being sufficient time to determine such facts before this General Conference shall have adjourned, your committee recommends the following: Resolved, 1. That the Book Committee shall constitute a permanent commission which shall have power and is hereby directed to make careful investigation of all the facts in connection with each place inviting the General Conference, and to determine which place shall be selected. 2. The Book Committee shall estimate the amount required for the expense of the General Conference, including traveling expenses and board, and shall apportion the same among the Annual Conferences at as early a day as practicable; it being understood that no place shall be selected that does not guarantee to furnish suitable auditorium and committee rooms, and to pay all local expenses.-Journal, 1896. ¶ 40. Assignment of Seats. Where the delegates to any General Conference shall have been chosen, the Secretary of the Annual Conference shall report the number of its delegates, ministers and laymen, to the Secretary of the preceding General Conference, and shall state whether the laymen have elected to sit in a body apart from the ministerial delegates or to occupy seats contiguous to those of the ministerial delegates from the same Annual Confer ence. At a date within two days of the session of the General Con、 ference a committee consisting of the Secretary of the preceding General Conference and the Book Committee, or a committee appointed thereby, with a Bishop presiding, shall make the assignment of seats in a manner as follows: A plan of the audience room having been constructed, two blocks of con tiguous seats, each in number equal to the number of lay del, egates who have been elected to sit in the body, shall be desig nated, the one block on the extreme right and the other on the extreme left hand of the chair of the presiding officer; and by lot, in such manner as the Committee shall determine, one of · these blocks shall be assigned to the body of laymen who have elected to sit apart from the ministerial delegates. The contiguous seats for separate delegations of these lay men shall then be assigned as follows: The names of the Conferences by them represented shall be placed in a box or other receptacle, and, after being thoroughly mixed, the Secretary of the General Conference shall draw the same. The delegation first drawn shall occupy contiguous seats in the row nearest the chair of the presiding officer, and the seats shall be filled by lot in regular order, from this row first designated, as the remaining delegations of laymen are drawn. The rest of the delegates, clerical and lay, shall then, by lot, in a similar manner, by Conferences, be assigned to the seats that remain unoccupied. The result of the drawing shall be presented to the Chairman of each Conference delegation, and the delegates shall occupy seats as designated. This order shall be printed in the Appendix to the Discipline. -Journal, 1896. ¶ 41. Standing Committees. The Standing Committees of the General Conference shall hold their meetings on the days of the week as follows: The Committees on Episcopacy, on Itinerancy, on Boundaries, on Revisals, on Temporal Economy, on the State of the Church, and on Temperance, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The Committees on the Book Concern, on Missions, on Education, on Church Extension, on Sunday Schools and Tracts, and on Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The Committee on Epworth League, Tuesday and Friday. On the day following the election of delegates, the chairman of the delegation from each Annual Conference shall furnish the Secretary of the last General Conference with the names of the several Standing Committees, as chosen by the members of his delegation, and from these returns the Secretary shall construct, so far as possible, the roll of the Standing Committees in advance of the opening of the session of the ensuing General Conference.-Journal, 1896. 347 CHAPTER V. MISCELLANEOUS. ¶ 42. Temperance and the Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic. I. Maintaining the high position in respect to temperance and prohibition that the Methodist Episcopal Church has so long occupied, we emphasize as indicating our attitude as a Church the following DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES. 1. That total abstinence from intoxicating beverages is the duty of every individual. 2. That the liquor traffic is a business at once injurious, immoral, and antagonistic to every interest of the Church of God. 3. We condemn the license feature of all statutes by which money is accepted for the legal protection of an immoral traffic. 4. In accepting money for such a purpose the government, whether National, State, County, or Municipal, becomes a partner in a business justly declared to be an enemy of God and of man. 5. That the Christian's only proper attitude toward the liquor traffic is that of relentless hostility, and that all members of the Methodist Episcopal Church who enjoy the elective franchise should so use that solemn trust as to promote the rescue of our country from the guilt and dishonor which has been brought upon it by a criminal complicity with the liquor traffic. THE SALOON AND CIVIC RIGHTEOUSNESS. Civic righteousness, which now claims and receives so large a share of public attention, demands the extirpation of a traffic so fruitful of corruption in every department of civil govern ment. |