The next step was to electrotype the pages and secure duplicate plates that would insure its preservation forever, and that long and costy labour, which involved probably the hardest task of proof-reading ever undertaken, has recently been completed by Dr. Franklin P. Hoskins of Beirut.
The mission press of Beirut, under Dr. Hoskins's direction, had already issued 1,535,266 copies of the Arabic Bible up to December 31, 1909, which have been distributed among the Mohammedan races from the Adriatic to the Yellow Seas. Thousands of copies have gone to our Mohammedan wards in the Philippines. They are to be found in Yucatan, in Brazil, in the Argentine Republic, and at the Cape of Good Hope. There is a regular demand from every section of Asia and Africa, where most of the followers of Mohammed live. They generally accept the Old Testament as history and claim the patriarchs and the prophets as their own.
Next in importance to the publication of the Bible, has been the work of producing text-books for the schools in the] East. Like the general literature, they are mostly reprints and translations of American editions, but they have to be adapted in a measure to local conditions. The courses in the American colleges in Turkey are conducted in English, but French, German, Turkish, and other languages are taught. For these American text-books are used, the same as in our own colleges, but for the common schools of the Turkish Empire an entire set of school books had to be created by the American missionaries, which have since been adopted by the government for local use.
No geography, or history, or arithmetic, or anything else in Turkish or the other ten languages in common use in that empire existed when the Americans undertook their campaign of education seventy-five years ago. They had to be prepared and printed with the sultan's stupid and malicious censors looking over the shoulders of the writers and the printers and the proof-readers to prevent the publication of anything that might reflect upon the benign policy of "the great assassin," as Mr. Gladstone called him, or suggest to the people ideas inconsistent with their poverty and retrogression. Many amusing stories are told of the ridiculous rules and corrections made by these censors. Even the text of the Bible had to be changed^and certain passages omitted because they taught the doctrine of human rights and referred to penalties visited upon unjust rulers by God and man. The word Armenia, the name of one of the largest provinces of the Ottoman Empire, was forbidden, and the name of Macedonia, another, was also placed upon the list of terms that could not be used.
The same rules that were applied by the censors to daily newspapers were applied to the Bible and all other books, but nevertheless the presses have never been stopped and the influence of the literature they have issued is incalculable.
For two generations the two publishing houses of the American missions have issued newspapers in Armenian, Greek, Bulgarian, Arabic, and other languages used in the Turkish Empire, which have had a wide circulation and a permanent influence among all classes. These papers contain reviews of current events, religious intelligence, stories and poetry, miscellaneous information, and have been the only newspapers that have been allowed to circulate in certain portions of the empire.
The Orient, a weekly founded by Herbert Allen and published by the Bible House in Constantinople, for example, contains items of interest to the native Christian communities all over the empire. Among other things I have found in it the best reports of the proceedings of the Turkish Parliament I have seen anywhere.
Monthly magazines containing religious and general literature are issued regularly and have a large circulation. Theological and scientific discussions and the news of the scientific world are published for the benefit of professional readers. In other words, the missionary presses have been putting out for circulation throughout the Turkish Empire the same sort of literature that is expected from our own first-class publishing houses in the United States, to supply the needs of people whose intellects are gradually awakening, to develop native writers, and to create a demand for their writings, so that they may live by their pens.