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Show 14 REPORT OF THE OOMDIISSIONE& OF INDIAN A F F A ~ . State and Territorial public schools, contract day and boarding schools, and mission day and boarding schools. INDUSTRIAL !CRAININQ. The Indian school system aims to provide a training which will prepare the Indian boy or girl for the everyday life of the average American citizen. It does not contemplate, as some have supposed on a superficial examination, an elaborate preparation for a collegiate course through an extended high-school curriculum. The course of instruction in these schools is limited to that usually taught in the common schools of the country. Shoe and harness making, tailoring, blacksmithing, masonry work, plastering, brick making and laying, etc., are taught at the larger nonreservation schools, not, it is true, with the elaborateness of special training as at the great polytechnic institutions of the country, but on a scale suited to the ability and future environment of the Indian. There are special cases, however, where Indian boys are, and have been, trained so thoroughly that their work compares favorably with that of the white mechanic. Specialized training, however, is not always desirable, for the reason that opportunities for following such vocations profitably on Indian reservations are not of the best; yet, on the other hand, the time frequently comes when the use of tools learned in school enables the returned pupil to shoe his own horse as well as the village smith, or repair a broken wagon as well as the agency mechanic. That Indian boys are capable of -becoming excellent mechanics and workmen is an indisputable fact. For illustration, in the harness shop of Hampton the pupils have completed en order for upward of $2,000 worth of fine harness for John Wanemaker, of New York and Phila-delphia, and have sbipped $500 worth to Washington. Fifty trucks have been furnished a Richmond house, and fifty more to the Sea-board Air Line Railway Company. Carlisle has for years supplied the Indian service a most superior farm wagon, while Hasbell vies with the prodncts of this school in excelleuce of workmanship. The school at Salem has turned out finished harness which competes succeasfully at the same price with regular custom work. The prodncts of the shops at Phoenix, Haskell, Chilocco, and other schools display a ehar-acter of workmanship and artistic skill which disposes of the theory that the Indian is not a mechanic and not a finished workman. He can, and will, after a proper course of instruction, and with equal opportunities, hold his own with the average workman in the useful trades. This is the objective point of his industrial training in the schools established for his benefit. It is not considered the province of the Government to provide either its wards or citizens with what is known as "higher education." That is the proper function of the individual himself. The Indian boy or |