The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-06-19
EDUCATING WARDS
 OF GREAT NATION
What America Has Done for
 Indians and Negroes
BEGINNING OF THE WORK
Hawaiians, FIIipIn0s and Porto Ricans Are Also Reaping Benefits of Great Paternal Educa-
 ton Systems.
BY FREDERIC j. HAsKlN.

BY FREDERIC j. HASKlN.
 As a people we early assumed the re- sponslbility of educating the Indian Many charters granted to companies colonizing the new world bore the provision that he be instructed in the Christian doc Urine. The Catholic priests in the mis- sions of New Mexico, Arizona and Cali fornia taught him the industrial arts and simple branches of learning. John Eliot s work in New England bore fruit in l674, when fourteen villages of praying 1n- dians' were counted, with a school and church in each village. In 1892 the first state appropriation for Indian education was that of the colony of Virginia arrang- ing for the tuition of two Indian boys at William and Mary college.
 In 1873 Congres appropriated $100O0 for Indian schools, this was later made an annual appropriation and until 1873 the schools were conducted by missionary bodies aided by national funds. As early in 1S4S there were sixteen manual train ing school scattered Aamong the Indian reservations. Now the system is under government control. It embraces day schools, reservation boarding schools, non- reservation boarding schools and normal training schools. The one aim and ambi- ton of the nation and the instructors 1t employs is to so train the brain and hand of these wards that each may be as useful, helpful citizen, able to care for himself and earn a white mans wages
 The most successful day schools for the Indians are in North and South Dakota and Wisconsin, the least successful are said to be among the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico Kindergartens have been introduced in the past few years with most gratifying results, despite the racial characteristic of shyness among the little pupils. Industrial training is the greatest factor in the development of the people. In 1878 seventeen young Indian prisoners of war were brought up from Florida and placed in Hampton institute Vir- g1nia, school originally intended for the education of negroes. The success of the venture Is verified by the fac that the director of manual training work in that institution today is an Onondaga Indian. At Carlisle Pa, Col. R. II. Pratt founded a school for Indians in 1880, the Haskell institute at Lawrence Kan, folio wed In 1884 Other schools of note are at Che mawa near Salem, Ore; Chitoco Okla; Albuquerque. N. NJ; Phoenix, Ariz., and Santa Fe, N. M.
 Believing that the earlier the Indian learned the ways of the white man, the quicker would be his civilization, the pro motors of Hampton and Carlisle intro- duced the outing system, so popular in many industrial schools. This was the placing of each child with a good white family for so many months each year so he could learn the work of the farm as well as certain social customs and graces. So effective has been the educational sys- tenn in it's thirty-one years existence that of the 2S4,000 Indians outside Alaska only 260OO are now blanket Indians. One h. dian out of every six in the United States proper is in school. Over HOO of these are in Haskell institute, and every one is given a chance sooner or later of learning industrial arts, elementary and advanced English branches and to fit himself for any college or university he may choose.
 When the civil war closed In April, 1865, it left scattered throughout the country, mostly in the south, vast uneducated negro population, bewildered with the un- usual condition of freedom, and intox- cated with the prospect of leading an ir- responsible life. In the Joy of liberation
 
 farm, and with a perverted idea of edu- cation demanded that which books alone might give. and tried in most instances to promptly ignore any effort to learn or revive the arts of manual training and in- dustrlal science. Having freed them, the people of the north turned courageously toward educating them, though 1t had only been In 1883 that Connecticut citi- zens had burned Miss Prudence Crandalls negro school, and the legislature had en- acted a law forbidding the opening of school for negroes not residents of that state.
 There was much be done, for only one in many hundreds could read or write. some favorite slave having been taught by his master, or some free-born having picked up a little learning. Edu- catione of the negro had been prohibited as the wisest means of keeping him m satisfied bondage. Georgia in 1929 pro- hibited the teaching of any negro, slave or free, within her borders, the penalty being $500
 As soon as provisional governments were established in the former slave states teachers from the north were sent out by the Freedmens bureau, and by the various churches and philanthropes interested in the work. As early as 1861 a school was opened at Fortress Monroe, and by the close of the war Gen. Samuel b. Armstrong nau perIecteu ms plans TOT Hampton institute. In 1868 he began work with the old barracks as his building, and with only two teachers and fifteen pupils Now the property at Hampton in- stitute is valued at over S500,000 and the enrolment is 1000 yeaN In the first five years the Freedman's bureau spent nearly S7,000,000 in Its educational woik. Under the direction of the general gov enment it established over 40oO schools, installed 5000 teachers and started nearly 300,000 children on the road to learning. With the readjustment of the south came the building of the present system of so- ciety on the wreck of the old aristocratic semi-feudal system With absolute im- partiality provision was made for tHe negro children as well as the white, and at present the educational rights are the same for black and white.
 Long before the negro was free, and before there was much discussion of the matter, Thomas Jefferson proposed that slaves be emancipated and taught the things that would give them industrial freedom. Frances Wright, philanthropist, free-thinker, lecturer and member of the famous New Harmony settlement, looked down the years and saw that If the negro