Last year, in speaking to this Convention, I said something against Civil Service. About the same time, I was also saying something against Civil Service in the "Redman", the paper we print at the School. Some weeks afterwards, an official of the Indian Bureau was sent to Carlisle to investigate, find out and report what I said. It was alleged that I had said worse things in public and before my employes and the Indian children than I had said in the "Redman". It finally came out that "the worse things" I had said against Civil Service were said before this County Convention. I wish to be fairly and fully understood on this subject. Without recalling what I said before, I will say now that a system which absolutely deprives the official, responsible for the work to be done, of all voice in selecting his subordinates; which disfranchises the judgment of every official of the Government in regard to the qualities and qualifications of the people who shall be employed to do Government work; which makes it an offense to take into consideration the opinions of Senators and Members of Congress in regard to the people who live in their districts when seeking persons to fill Government places; which makes it practicable to place a man, entirely ignorant of all Indian work, of all Indian schools, over me, who may be an enemy to me and my work, and gives to him the power to select and send to me the most incompetent of the elegibles from the Civil Service lists, and to send to another superintendent, whom he may favor, the best from these lists; a system which makes it impossible for me to know anything, whatever, of the character or qualifications of any employe selected to serve under me until they report to me as having been appointed; a system which makes it impossible for me to go among the teachers of the country and select, or indicate to my

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superiors in any way, those whom I think suitable and proper to
help me in my work and which foists on me people rejected for the
general school service of the country, and, therefore, more or less
in the incompetent class, is an enemy to me and my work and an impo-
sition on our Government. It is a system built upon the presumption
that every official of the Government is a rascal, and that his ras-
cality has got to be suppressed by law. It is a system which sooner
or later will get greater rascality and fraud in the lines it is
alleged to prevent, than was the system it superceded. It is a
system which is calculated to drive out of the Public Service, hon-
orable self respecting men and women, because it places upon them
annoyances and hinderances in their work which will eventually wear
out their patience, and become too grievous to be borne. It creates
a Government of clerks and by clerks perpetually in office, making it
impossible for new officials of another party to get at the books,
and leaves such officials in the hands of their political enemies.
My observation is that the men who hound the system are no less pol-
iticians, no less spoilsmen, than the people they belabor. With
these few expressions of my regard for Civil Service, I
briefly, and in my lines, take up a subject more in keeping with the
interests of this Convention.

Sixteen years ago, from the platform of a great church in the
city of Brooklyn, in the course of a few remarks on the Indian ques-
tion, I said that from two to three years preparation in an Indian
school was sufficient to prepare a young Indian to go out into the
public schools of the country, and if, thereafter, such young Indian
could be kept in the public schools and in the associations of civil-
ized life, such Indian would develope on an average as good and use-

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ful a citizen of the United States as any of the foreigners who come
to our shores. There were other speakers, among them, Mr. Beecher.
His opening remark was, "Well, if as Capt. Pratt says, we can in two
or three years in our Indian schools give to the young Indian suffi-
cient English, cleanliness, industry and ambition, to enable him to
go into our public schools successfully, that is the end of it." Not
many weeks after, I saw this sentiment floating about the country as
coming from Mr. Beecher. "The public schools are the stomach of the
country, in which all peoples are assimilated in a generation. When
a lion eats an ox, the lion does not become an ox, but the ox be-
comes lion." In my judgment, no greater tribute to the public
schools, and no higher exemplification of their real place and util-
ity could be given. When we study the expression, we find that the
public schools of our country are one of the grandest expositions and
results of the teachings of the great Nazarene which this day and age
present. In their unhindered and properly directed efforts, the
public schools are, indeed, "no respector of persons," and therein
lies their strength and their greatest utility.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Cumberland County public schools,
fellow school associates, I join with you in the exultant honor
and the high manhood and womanhood of our calling. Our ambition
should be paramount to maintain in its highest and fullest sense,
the purposes and aims of the wise and great public school system
established by our inspired forefathers, and to see to it that no
unity of our country, grow up to hinder the
other stomachs, inimical to the interests and <u>unity</u> and assimilation
of our people. I have labored for more than eighteen years to build
up the Carlisle School, created to help one particular class of our

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people, and in all these years, I have persistently and always pushed out into the public schools, as many of my pupils as I could, and although I have worked so much for this particular people, and built up a school which has a name of such prominence, and although we nearly double the next largest school in the Service, and although we are far better located for the purposes of civilizing and educating, and bringing into relations with our own people, the young people under my care, I say to you here today, from the depths of my deepest conviction that I have no sympathy with Indian schools, as such, except in so far as they are to be the means of pushing out into the public and higher general schools of our land the young hail of the Indian race, and that I shall with delight the day when all young Indians have passed into such schools, and the Carlisle School and all Indian schools can be closed out as institutions for their special uses. Indian schools keep young Indians away from the life of the nation, and from the competition and experiences which would develop and enable them to rise and join in affairs with the rest of us; and especially is this the case where the schools are located on reservations, and filled with children of the same tribe. Can you not see that a special system of schools for the Germans and another system for the Italians emigrating to our country would hinder and probably defeat their assimilation and citizenizing and would build a Germany and an Italy within our country, and that especially would this be the case if all Germans and Italians were relegated each to special localities. Why then expect that Indian schools, and especially reservation Indian schools, will citizenize and help to assimilate the Indians? Indian schools beyond a certain point, are, therefore, a hindrance to proper Indian education, to right Indian

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civilization, to the fullest development of Indian manhood, and I am
not omitting from this statement the Carlisle School, itself, in
so far as it keeps its pupils within its own immediate influences.