ment under the homestead law. But of the lands embraced in these purchases, being in the aggregate about five and a half million acres, three and a half million acres had already, under the terms of the treaty of 1866, been acquired by the United States for the purpose of settling other Indian tribes thereon, and had been appropriated to that purpose. The land remaining and available for settlement consisted of 1,887,796 acres, surrounded on all sides by lands in the occupancy of Indian tribes. Congress had provided no civil government for the people who were to be invited by my proclamation to settle upon these lands, except as the new court, which had been established at Muscogee, or the United States courts in some of the adjoining States, had power to enforce the general laws of the United States.

In this condition of things I was quite reluctant to open the lands to settlement. But in view of the fact that several thousand persons, many of them with their families, had gathered upon the borders of the Indian Territory, with a view to securing homesteads on the ceded lands, and that delay would involve them in much loss and suffering, I did, on the 23d day of March last, issue a proclamation declaring that the lands therein described would be open to settlement under the provisions of the law on the 22d day of April following, at 12 o'clock noon. Two land districts had been established and the offices were open for the transaction of business when the appointed time arrived.

It is much to the credit of the settlers that they very generally observed the limitation as to the time when they might enter the Territory. Care will be taken that those who entered in violation of the law do not secure the advantage they unfairly sought. There was a good deal of apprehension that the strife for locations would result in much violence and bloodshed, but happily these anticipations were not realized. It is estimated that there are now in the Territory about sixty thousand people; and several considerable towns have sprung up, for which temporary municipal governments have been organized. Guthrie is said to have now a population of almost eight thousand. Eleven schools and nine churches have been established, and three daily and five weekly newspapers are published in this city, whose charter and ordinances have only the sanction of the voluntary acquiescence of the people from day to day.

Oklahoma City has a population of about five thousand, and is proportionately as well provided as Guthrie with churches, schools, and newspapers. Other towns and villages having populations of from one hundred to a thousand are scattered over the Territory.

In order to secure the peace of this new community, in the absence of civil government, I directed General Merritt, commanding the Department of the Missouri, to act in conjunction with the marshals of the United States to preserve the peace, and upon their requisition to use the troops to aid them in executing warrants and in quieting any riots or breaches of the peace that might occur. He was further directed to use his influence to promote good order and to avoid any conflicts between or with the settlers. Believing that the introduction and sale of liquors, where no legal restraints or regulations existed, would endanger the public peace, and in view of the fact that such liquors must first be introduced into the Indian reservations before reaching the white settlements, I further directed the general commanding to enforce the laws relating to the introduction of ardent spirits into the Indian country.

The presence of the troops has given a sense of security to the well-disposed citizens, and has tended to restrain the lawless. In one instance the officer in immediate command of the troops went further than I deemed justifiable in supporting the de facto municipal government of Guthrie, and he was so informed and directed to limit the interference of the military to the support of the marshals on the lines indicated in the original order. I very urgently recommend that Congress at once provide a Territorial government for these people. Serious questions, which may at any time lead to violent. outbreaks, are awaiting the institution of courts for their peaceful adjustment. The American genius for self-government has been well illustrated in Oklahoma, but it is neither safe nor wise to leave these people longer to the expedients which have temporarily served them.

Provision should be made for the acquisition of title to town lots in the towns now established in Alaska, for locating town sites and for the establishment of municipal governments. Only the mining laws have been extended to that Territory, and no other form of title to lands can now be obtained. The general land laws were framed with reference to the disposition of agricultural lands, and it is doubtful if their operation in Alaska would be beneficial.

We have fortunately not extended to Alaska the mistaken policy of establishing reservations for the Indian tribes, and can deal with them from the beginning as individuals with, I am sure, better results. But any disposition of the public lands and any regulations relating to timber and to the fisheries should have a kindly regard to their interests. Having no power to levy taxes, the people of Alaska are wholly dependent upon the General Government, to

whose revenues the seal fisheries make a large annual contribution. An appropriation for education should neither be overlooked nor stinted.

The smallness of the population and the great distances between the settlements offer serious obstacles to the establishment of the usual Territorial form of government. Perhaps the organization of several subdistricts, with a small municipal council of limited powers for each, would be safe and useful.

Attention is called in this connection to the suggestions of the Secretary of the Treasury relating to the establishment of another port of entry in Alaska, and of other needed customs facilities and regulations.

In the administration of the land laws the policy of facilitating, in every proper way, the adjustment of the honest claims of individual settlers upon the public lands has been pursued. The number of pending cases had, during the preceding administration, been greatly increased under the operation of orders for a time suspending final action in a large part of the cases originating in the West and Northwest, and by the subsequent use of unusual methods of examination. Only those who are familiar with the conditions under which our agricultural lands have been settled can appreciate the serious and often fatal consequences to the settler of a policy that puts his title under suspicion, or delays the issuance of his patent. While care is taken to prevent and to expose fraud, it should not be imputed without reason.

The manifest purpose of the homestead and pre-emption laws was to promote the settlement of the public domain by persons having a bona-fide intent to make a home upon the selected lands. Where this intent is well established and the requirements of the law have been substantially complied with, the claimant is entitled to a prompt and friendly consideration of his case. But where there is reason to believe that the claimant is the mere agent of another, who is seeking to evade a law intended to promote small holdings, and to secure by fraudulent methods large tracts of timber and other lands, both principal and agent should not only be thwarted in their fraudulent purpose, but should be made to feel the full penalties of our criminal statutes. The laws should be so administered as not to confound these two classes, and to visit penalties only upon the latter.

The unsettled state of the titles to large bodies of lands in the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona has greatly retarded the development of those Territories. Provision should be made by

It

law for the prompt trial and final adjustment, before a judicial tribunal or commission, of all claims based upon Mexican grants. is not just to an intelligent and enterprising people that their peace should be disturbed and their prosperity retarded by these old contentions. I express the hope that differences of opinion as to methods may yield to the urgency of the case.

The law now provides a pension for every soldier and sailor who was mustered into the service of the United States during the civil war and is now suffering from wounds or disease having an origin in the service and in the line of duty. Two of the three necessary facts, viz, muster and disability, are usually susceptible of easy proof; but the third, origin in the service, is often difficult, and in many deserving cases impossible to establish. That very many of those who endured the hardships of our most bloody and arduous campaigns are now disabled from diseases that had a real but not traceable origin in the service I do not doubt. Besides these there is another class composed of men many of whom served an enlistment of three full years, and of re-enlisted veterans who added a fourth year of service, who escaped the casualties of battle and the assaults of disease, who were always ready for any detail, who were in every battle line of their command, and were mustered out in sound health, and have, since the close of the war, while fighting with the same indomitable and independent spirit the contests of civil life, been overcome by disease or casualty.

I am not unaware that the pension-roll already involves a very large annual expenditure, neither am I deterred by that fact from recommending that Congress grant a pension to such honorably discharged soldiers and sailors of the civil war as having rendered substantial service during the war are now dependent upon their own labor for a maintenance, and by disease or casualty are incapacitated from earning it. Many of the men who would be included in this form of relief are now dependent upon public aid, and it does not, in my judgment, consist with the national honor that they shall continue to subsist upon the local relief given indiscriminately to paupers instead of upon the special and generous provision of the nation they served so gallantly and unselfishly. Our people will, I am sure, very generally approve such legislation. And I am equally sure that the survivors of the Union Army and Navy will feel a grateful sense of relief when this worthy and suffering class of their comrades is fairly cared for.

There are some manifest inequalities in the existing law that should be remedied. To some of these the Secretary of the Interior

has called attention.

It is gratifying to be able to state that by the adoption of new and better methods in the War Department the calls of the Pension Office for information as to the military and hospital records of pension claimants are now promptly answered, and the injurious and vexatious delays that have heretofore occurred are entirely avoided. This will greatly facilitate the adjustment of all pending claims.

The advent of four new States, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington, into the Union under the Constitution, in the same month, and the admission of their duly chosen representatives to our National Congress at the same session, is an event as unexampled as it is interesting.

The certification of the votes cast and of the constitutions adopted in each of the States was filed with me as required by the eighth section of the act of February 22, 1889, by the governors of said Territories respectively. Having, after a careful examination, found that the several constitutions and governments were republican in form and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, that all the provisions of the act of Congress had been complied with, and that a majority of the votes cast in each of said proposed States was in favor of the adoption of the constitution submitted therein, I did so declare by a separate proclamation as to each; as to North Dakota and South Dakota on Saturday, November 2; as to Montana on Friday, November 8, and as to Washington on Monday, November II.

Each of these States has within it resources the development of which will employ the energies of, and yield a comfortable subsistence to, a great population. The smallest of these new States, Washington, stands twelfth, and the largest, Montana, third, among the forty-two in area. The people of these States are already well trained, intelligent, and patriotic American citizens, having common interests and sympathies with those of the older States, and a common purpose to defend the integrity and uphold the honor of the

nation.

The attention of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been called to the urgent need of Congressional legislation for the better protection of the lives and limbs of those engaged in operating the great interstate freight lines of the country, and especially of the yard-men and brakemen. A petition, signed by nearly ten thousand railway brakemen, was presented to the Commission, asking that steps might be taken to bring about the use of automatic brakes. and couplers on freight cars.