so much to live as now, and that March 1, 1904, the average prices of breadstuffs were thirty per cent. higher than they were seven years ago. [85] Report of the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labour, 1903 [86] The Youth's Companion, October 29, 1903. In such circumstances, it is clearly out of the question for the Christians of the United States to meet these enlarged demands for the support of their own families and, in addition, meet them for the churches in China. If then, the problem of the increased cost of living in Asia cannot be solved by increased gifts from America, what other solutions are possible? As an experienced missionary says:-- ``To ask for more from America seems like a step backward; but to leave matters as they are is to see our churches seriously crippled.'' Four possible solutions may be mentioned. First:--Stop all expansion of the work and use any increase in receipts to raise salaries. This is undoubtedly worthy of thoughtful consideration. To what extent is it right to open new fields and enlarge old ones when the workers now employed are inadequately paid? Plainly, the mission boards should carefully consider this aspect of the question. As a matter of fact, many of them have already considered it. The Presbyterian Board has repeatedly declined urgent requests to establish new stations on the ground that it could not do so in justice to its existing work. But as a practicable solution, this method is open to serious difficulties. A living work must grow, and the living forces which govern that growth are more or less beyond the control of the boards. The boards are amenable to their constituencies and those constituencies sometimes imperatively demand the occupation of a new field, as, for example, they did in the case of the Philippine Islands, some boards which at first decided not to enter the Philippines being afterwards forced into them by a pressure of denominational opinion that they could not ignore. Moreover, the missionaries themselves are equally insistent in their demands for enlargement. Some boards are literally deluged with such appeals. The missionaries who have most strenuously insisted on the policy of no further expansion till the existing work is better sustained have sometimes been the very ones who have strongly urged that an exception should be made in their particular fields, without realizing that the argument from ``exceptions'' is so often pressed that it is really the rule and not the exception at all. And the churches and missionaries are usually right. God is calling His people to go forward. His voice is frequently very plain, and the boards, with all their care and conservatism, are then obliged to expand.