A Response to an Urgent Testimony
By Doctor Charles Stewart
4
Workers are not to Sign A Contract
Testimony in General Conference Bulletin of 1893, pp. 162, 163:
"Before persons are admitted to our Missionary Training School, let there be a written agreement that after receiving their education they will give themselves to the work for a specified time. This is the only way our missions can be made what they should be."
In a testimony written in 1888 you (EGW) state:
"The Sanitarium at Battle Creek has been built up under a pressure of difficulties. There have had to be decisive measures taken, contracts signed by those who were engaged as helpers that they would remain a certain number of years. This has been a positive necessity. . . . Thus it has been necessary in the Sanitarium at Battle Creek to make contracts binding those who connect with it as helpers, so that after they have been educated and trained as nurses and as bath hands, they shall not leave because others present inducements to them "
Testimony to —, —, and —, St. Helena, Cal., Aug. 3, 1903, p. 4:
"No man or woman is to bind himself or herself to serve for a certain number of years under the control of a medical association, ... I know that some have thought it is advisable for the workers in our sanitarium to sign certain contracts. But I know also that it is not in accordance with God's Plan for the workers to sign these contracts."
Testimony to —, Elmshaven, San., Cal., Aug. 4, 1903:
"Yesterday I sent you a letter containing the warning that has been given again and again. The workers in our institutions are not to sign contracts binding themselves to an institution for a certain number of years."
For a number of years the managers of the Sanitarium Medical Missionary Training School, believing that they were working in harmony with the principles set forth in the above testimony which was printed in the General Conference Bulletin of 1893, and in the above testimony of 1888, which was published in a pamphlet entitled "Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Mrs. E. G. White," required that before persons were admitted to this school they should sign an agreement to give themselves to the work for a specified time. Later the managers were severely criticized for doing what the testimony of 1903 above quoted advised.
Under the circumstances what was the duty of the managers of the Sanitarium Medical Missionary Training School? Which instruction should they follow—that given in 1888 and that published in the General Conference Bulletin in 1893, or that given to Elders—, —,— in 1903?