AMERICAN SUGAR REFINING COM PANY, The, an organization which, since 1900, holds a dominant position in the sugar industry. It was formed by the consolidation of the Havemeyer and other interests into one group. It operates five large refineries in the United States, at Chalmette, La., Brooklyn, N. Y., Jersey City, N. J., Boston, Mass., and Philadelphia, Pa. The firstPhiladelphia, three of these are the largest plants of their kind in the world. The real estate and plants, including refineries, warehouses, cooperage, railroads, tank cars, wharves and stables, with their machinery and equipment and timber and other lands owned in fee or through ownership of the entire cap ital stock of constituent companies, are valued at $47,246,442. The total assets of the company on Sil Dec. 1916 aggregated $129,979,775; the capital stock on the same date consisted of $45,000,000 preferred and $45,000,000 common. In 1916 the profit from its operations totalled the interest on loans and deposits 792,990, the income from investments reached ,905,737, and the total dividends declared during the year amounted to $6,299,972. AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, a religious association having for its object the organization and support of Sunday schools in needy neighborhoods, or those where religious sentiment is too divided to sustain denominational ones; the publication and cir culation of moral and religious publications and the dissemination of useful information. It is not a union of churches but of Christians of various denominations, requiring no common creed but a belief in the essential truths of Christianity held in common by all evangelical denominations and a desire to save souls and ((teach the truths that Christ taught as plainly as He taught them, The members of the society may be either clergymen or laymen, every citizen of the United States who con tributes $3 annually and is approved by the board being eligible, but its affairs are directed by a board of officers and 36 man gers, all of whom must be laymen. The managers are elected by the members and the former annually elect the officers. There are also four standing committees appointed by the board, namely, publication, missions, finance and executive. During 90 years of work it has had for presidents,—Alexander Henry, John McLean, John A. Brown, Robert L. Kennedy,
William Strong and Morris K. Jesup and the present president, Martin L. Finckel. Its head quarters are at Philadelphia, where it first came into being. Its germ was the First-Day Society, founded in 1791, whose managers peti tioned for free schools in Pennsylvania; this led to the formation of the Philadelphia Sunday and Adult School Union in 1817 which later united with similar societies and changed its name to the present title in 1824. The second year of its existence the Union printed an aver age of 90,000 pages per day besides periodicals and over 600,000 Scripture tickets; since then its progress in every field of endeavor has been very rapid. It introduced the first selected uniform lessons — for which graded instruction was later provided—and the sys tem known as aUnion Questions." It trained innumerable teachers and maintained mis sionaries to organize schools throughout the West and South, particularly in the Mississippi Valley, and later in foreign lands. To supply literature to these schools which became the nuclei of thousands of churches, it created the first juvenile literature of a moral and religious type; stimulating the use of music in Sunday schools; organized a $12,000 American Mission ary campaign; founded the first weekly Sunday School Teacher's Journal; proposed the first National Sunday School Convention in Amer ica; issued the first $10 libraries of 100 volumes for Sunday schools and distributed millions of dollars worth of literature including Bibles and Testaments. In the last 25 years (1890-1915) the society has organized 43,5N new schools, having 169,016 teachers and 1,503, 975 pupils besides reorganizing or reviving 9,000 other schools. Its missionaries have in creased forty-fold. By 1897 all debts had been paid and the society placed on a firm financial basis. Its income-bearing funds and property now amount to about $2,000,000. It expends $225,000 annually in missionary work. Publica tions are furnished at cost but several thousand dollars worth of free literature is annually distributed in homes, hospitals, reformatories, etc. Consult tEncyclopmdia of Sunday Schools' (New York 1915).