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Show XXXVIII REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. mudition. Seven new dapschool buildings have been completed and another commeuced. Four boardingr-school bnildiugs have been burlled. The pupils of those schools will have to be crowded into barns, bakeries, outbuildings, and such other stri~cturesa s can be extemporized into school-buildings until new quarters can be provided. The want of suitable commodious buildings continues. Eleveu uem ones are needed immediately and ten others should be so enlarged aa to double their capacity; c t t he whole amount appropriated for erec-tion and repair of school buildings this year is but $25,000, less than the cost of one building erected by private contributions at Hampton for the use of fifty girls. I wil! not repeat what has been reiterated before as to the impossibility of condncting creditable schools in ill-arranged, ill-ventilated, dilapidated, overcrowded buildings. The act passed by the first session of the last Congress anthorizing the use of unoccupied military barracks as training schools for Iudian youtha h s given to this office buildings at Fort Stevenson, Dak., Fort Hall, Idaho, Cantonment, Iud. T., and Fort Bipley, &Xinu. At two of these posts much-needed Indian boarding-schools have already ben opened, and at the other two it is hoped that schools will soon be in operation. The expenditure of several thousand dollars over what the buildings would have brought at public sale has thus been saved the Government. Owing to their unfavorable location, the number of vacated military buildings which can now be utilized for Indian schools is small, but the number will gradually increase as garrisons are removed from close proximity to Indian reservations. The .schoolboy will theu take the place of the soldier, and the sword will give way to the spelling-book. Appropriatwns.-The appropriations for edu~ationm ade by the last session of Congress are $445,000 for purposes, including build-ings; $115,000 for Carlisle, Hampton, and Forest Grove; $40,000 for the Genoa and Chilocco schools, %nd $75,000 for placing pupils in schools iu the States ; a total of $675,000 out of $917,000 asked in the aunuaj estimate. As compared with the previous year this gives a slight iu-crease to the three established trainiug schools, an increase of $145,000 for general edocation, and $58,000 additional for sending pupils to schools in the States. Much better use could be made of this fund if it were not for the e-strictions of law and regulations, by which the office is hampered and harassed, and which often defeat the rery ends sought by legislation. For instance, there is a general construction of law which decides that when money is appropriated for a specific purpose no other fund can be used for that purpose. The $2b,000 for school-buildings-jusS oue-tbird of the amount asked for-would not suffice to replace burned buildings. Though the office has $400,000 for educatiou, yet not one cent of that can be applied on a building, because there is a specifio thongh absurdly inadequate appropriation for that pnrpose. It ulay happen, because certain buildings cannot be erected or completed, that some of the schools which the $400,000 was intended to support can- |