National Republican., 1882-12-21

stay for about an hour and look over the pic
lures and then they charged them all as
scholars
Senator Logan's plan of educating Indians
is to give them sheep or Cattle-malIe herders
of them etthem learn pastoral pursuits first,
and how to live in houses, instead Of sending
off to schools to be educated and then returned
to barbarian and vicious associations He also
wanted them to be soldiers.
The observations of Senators Logan and
Plumb throw considerable needed light on this
vexed question of civilizing the Indians, and
Indicate where and in what way money ap-
propriated for their education has been squan-
dered. 1t may be possible that
THE SALE PUPILS
who are given as enrolled in the educational
chapter of the last annual report of the COM
missioner of Indian affairs, will be found on
investigation to be as intangible as the sew
enty-fve invisible pupils alluded to by SEN
ator Logan, and that this feature of red
skinned statistical information is not alto
gether reliable. The whole number of Indian
youths to be educated is estimated by the
commissioner to be about 5000, and the aver
age annual cost to the government of attempt
ing to educate them will not fall much under
$1OOO,000, including treaty gratuities and ex-
traordinary or specific tribal annuities, but
not including the expense Of rations and cloth
ing used by pupils at agencies where rations
and goods are regularly issued to all the In
dians on the reservations. According to the
reports made to the Indian commissioner, the
average attendance upon all the Indian
schools approximates 5000, and as the amount
to be appropriated for aboriginal education
next year is $660000, it will be seen that the
government is paying about $50 year for
every Indian pupil reported as q regular
school attendant. If the attendance is as
regular at all the agencies as il is at those
fn1 lNxyG atn I IN
some that the government is paying an ex-
travagant price for nothing, and that it is be-
ing shamefully cheated in this matter.
In addition to the sum donated by the gen.
eral government for the education of the
rising redslSin generation,
RELIGIOUS AND BENEVOLENT SOCIETIES
contribute from 5000, 900 to $3.50, 600 year for
the same purpose. The experimental Indian
industrial schools at Carlisle, Pa, Hampton,
Va, and Forest Grove, Oregon, which are
maintained at an annual cost to the national
guardian of $4,000 or $115,000, have been at
tended by 4T5 pupils, representing about 90
tribes and 30 agencies.
While the government is spending enormous
sums of money in failing to educatea and civil
ize its $4,000 Indian youths it is doing prac-
tically nothing for the educational eleva-
tion of
THE 4,75O,OO0 ILLITERATE PEOPLE
upONo tHc aye VI leu year llNllB III tuG ldUtly
slave state" large percentage of whom are
negroes. The total amount raised by taxation,
and expended for the support of schools in all
the states and territories, is $75, 900 900 year,
and of this amount only $9,500000 is raised in
the late slave holding states, where the stand
ard Of education among the masses is lowest.
Yet, owing to the lliteracy of the people of that
section there is urgent need of the expenditure
of more money for educational purposes than
in the. north. The house committee on edu-
cation and labor went into this subject ex-
haustively in its report to congress last sum-
mer, and found that the people in many parts
of the south are poor and utterly unable to
support or maintain schools for any length
of time; that their condition consequently
grows worse instead of better with time
that there is great need of school houses
throughout the south that the exist
ing state of things is q serious menace to
the government, invite social and political
disorder and in times of business depression
might lead to infinite mischief and lasting
disaster to property, and that the needs of the
people are urgent and beyond the power of
local or state authorities to adequately deal
with. The committee, it will be remembered,
recommended governmental assistance in the
shape of annual appropriations of $10,000O00
for five years, and that as soon as the states
are able to support its own schools that all
national aid should be withdrawn.
The question of extending
GOVERNMENTAL ASSISTANCE TO THE ILLIT-
ERATE
is one which is bound to force itself upon con-
gress for several years. and it may strike the
capitol that while they are making preten-
tious failure of educating few thousand In
diansat $3.50 per capita per annum they might
try the experiment of doing something prac-
in the way of educating the millions of black
boys and girls in the south to become useful
and intelligent men and women. According
to the census Of 1880 there are 1854 ,9H males
of 81 years of age and upward in the sixteen
saveholding states who can neither read nor
write, of whom 944 ,424 are colored and no.
$50 white.