rapidly mounted from approximately $7,500 to nearly three times that sum; the maximum was $27,000 in 1842. In addition to actual operating costs, which had reached about $15,000 by 1845, annual outlays also included the purchase of capital assets, such as real estate and equipment, and interest on money borrowed. Income, meanwhile, fell behind to such an extent that by 1842 unpaid obligations aggregated $29,000. Until 1829 the Trustees had been able to keep expenses within bounds but thereafter the steady increase in enrollment necessitated additional buildings, equipment, and faculty, for all of which funds were not in hand. By 1842 the assets of the Society, however, were inventoried at approximately $108,000.
To satisfy themselves and other friends of the Institution that its fiscal affairs were economically managed, the Trustees reviewed at intervals expenditures and income and investigated the possibilities of retrenchment, only to decide against such a policy. The Education Society itself at the annual meeting in 1844, elected a committee to look into expenditures. Though recommending a few minor economies, the committee could find no fault with the Board’s management, whereupon the Society at its next meeting gave the Trustees a unanimous vote of confidence.
In defense of the Board, Dr. Kendrick pointed out that they might have limited expenditures to income and thus have avoided many perplexities. Yet, in his opinion, they had been eminently justified in not doing so in view of the imperative demand for trained preachers at home and abroad. He maintained that the “necessities of the rising ministry” were such that the Board could not make decisions “on the same principles that should govern the agricultural, mechanical, and mercantile business of the community.” The accumulated debt he regarded not as a loss but as an investment in “the kingdom.” With Dr. Kendrick’s views the investigating committee seems to have agreed.
The Annual Reports of the Education Society and the columns of the Baptist Register repeatedly carried lengthy appeals for money. The editor of the Register informed his readers in 1835 that the Institution was “in great want” and its professors “actually straitened for means to get along with their necessary family expenditures.” He asked the churches if they would stand idly by and let the Seminary, which had sent out men like the missionaries, Wade and Kincaid, languish and “see the conductors of it put to their wits end, and tasked