Camphor served so ably as president for twelve years.  Within recent years it has recognized the importance of industrial work and has had in all departments an average annual enrollment of 300.  Not quite so prominent within the last few years, but with more tradition and theoretically at the head of the educational system of the Republic is the Liberia College.  In 1848 Simon Greenleaf of Boston, received from John Payne, a missionary at Cape Palmas, a request for his assistance in building a theological school.  Out of this suggestion grew the Board of Trustees of Donations for Education in Liberia incorporated in Massachusetts in March, 1850.  The next year the Liberia legislature incorporated the Liberia College, it being understood that the institution would emphasize academic as well as theological subjects.  In 1857 Ex-President J.J.  Roberts was elected president; he superintended the erection of a large building; and in 1862 the college was opened for work.  Since then it has had a very uneven existence, sometimes enrolling, aside from its preparatory department, twenty or thirty college students, then again having no college students at all.  Within the last few years, as the old building was completely out of repair, the school has had to seek temporary quarters.  It is too vital to the country to be allowed to languish, however, and it is to be hoped that it may soon be well started upon a new career of usefulness.  In the course of its history the Liberia College has had connected with it some very distinguished men.  Famous as teacher and lecturer, and president from 1881 to 1885, was Edward Wilmot Blyden, generally regarded as the foremost scholar that Western Africa has given to the world.  Closely associated with him in the early years, and well known in America as in Africa, was Alexander Crummell, who brought to his teaching the richness of English university training.  A trustee for a number of years was Samuel David Ferguson, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who served with great dignity and resource as missionary bishop of the country from 1884 until his death in 1916.  A new president of the college, Rev. Nathaniel H.B.  Cassell, was elected in 1918, and it is expected that under his efficient direction the school will go forward to still greater years of service.

Important in connection with the study of the social conditions in Liberia is that of health and living conditions.  One who lives in America and knows that Africa is a land of unbounded riches can hardly understand the extent to which the West Coast has been exploited, or the suffering that is there just now.  The distress is most acute in the English colonies, and as Liberia is so close to Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, much of the same situation prevails there.  In Monrovia the only bank is the branch of the Bank of British West Africa.  In the branches of this great institution all along the coast, as a result of the war, gold disappeared, silver became very scarce,