| OCR Text |
Show "8 112 EEPOET OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. more than $16,000,000 annually : while the cost of the maintenance of the-public.school system of the States andTerri%ories of this country as a whole, according to the report of the Oommissioner of Education, is more than $115,000,000. The United States pays for the maintenance of a little army of about 25,000 men' nearly $25,000,000 annually; the appropriation for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1859, aggregated $24,574,700. In esti~uatingth e cost of maintaining an adequate school system for the Indiaus two great economiaal facts should steadily be bornein mind. The first is that by this sgstem of public education the India11 mill, at no distant day, be prepared not only for seif-support, but also . to take his place as a productive element in our social economy. The pupils at the Uarlisle Indian Training School earned last year by their labors among the Pennsylvania farmers more than $10,000, and this. year more than $12,000. From facts like these it can easily be demon-strated that, simply as a: matter of investment, the nation can agora to pay the amount requiredfor Indian education, with a view of having it speedily returned to the aggregate of national wealth by the increased productive capa,city of the youth who are to be eduoated. The second great economiaal fact is that the lands known as Indian reservations now set apart by the Government for Indianoccupancy aggregate nearly 190,000 square miles. This land, for the most part, . is uncultivated and unproductive. When the Indians shall have been properly educated they will utilize a sufficient quantity of those lands for their own support and will release tht?' remaiuder that it may be , restored to the public domaill to become'the foundation for innumer-able happy homes; and thus will be added to the national wealth im-mense tracts of farming land and va8t mineral resources which will repay the nation more than one hundred fold for the amount which it is proposer1 shall be expended in Indian education. TABLE7. -Annual appropriations made bg the Goumment since 1876 for support of Indicn sohools. From an iuspection of Table 7 it will be seen that the Government entered upon the present plan of educating Indians in 1876, by the ap- I |
