THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT. How Its Great Bureaus Have Been Conducted by Secretary Noble. Reforms in Every Branch of the Service-The The Interior Department is a vast collection of business offices wherein the laws of the Government with regard to its Territories, the Public Lands, the Indian Service, Pensions, Patents and many other smaller concerns are put into execution. The census is taken under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, so that his duties since the Harrison Administration came into office have been even more varied and laborious than usual. Signal success has marked their performance. The eleventh census, dealing with a much greater number of public affairs than have heretofore been investigated by any census, has been taken three months earlier than any other. The work of enumeration began on June 1, and its result as to population was announced on October 30. The result of the next preceding census was not announced until January. In other words, although there was an increase of more than 12,000,000 of people to be counted, making the work 25 per cent. greater than before, the result was made out three months earlier. What this means in the handling of the enumerators is not easily appreciated. The publications of the eleventh census have been five times greater already than those of the tenth census, but there is no doubt that in the collection and arrangement of the finally completed statistics as much as two years will be gained over any preceding record. The new departments covered by the eleventh census are those of school and church statistics, Indian statistics, mines and mining and the general subject of mortgage indebtedness. These are matters of the highest value to the public, without which the real condition of the country would be but partially exhibited. It is an interesting fact, that while our population has been increasing from 50,000,000 to 62,000,000, that of the United Kingdom has grown from 35,000,000 to only 39,000,000. The force of this fact is most impressive in the story it tells of American development. Many attempts have been made by Democratic partisans to impeach the work of Superintendent Porter, but every such proceeding has ended in the humiliation of those engaged in it. The Congress investigation, carried on by Democratic Congressmen to inquire into Democratic charges, proved abundantly that Mr. Porter's work has been wonderfully fair, accurate and complete, and proved only that. The committee of investigation, ashamed to report that its libelous informants were false witnesses, unwilling, before election, to admit the truth, and unable to declare anything to the discredit of the Bureau, made no other report before Congress adjourned than to say it would report some time in the distant future! IN THE LAND OFFICE. The change of Administration when Cleveland went out and Harrison came in was to none more apparent than to that great body of the American people who had newly settled on the public domain in the great States and Territories west of the Mississippi River. For four years they had been treated almost barbarously. The Homestead laws of the United States, created by the Republican Party, were aimed to settle the West, to bring into cultivation the vast and wonderfully fertile plateaus and prairies that had been waiting for centuries the touch of plow and harrow. Beyond comparison and far beyond expectation had been the success of the Homestead policy. Millions of Americans from the Eastern States and millions more of immigrants from all the countries of Europe had settled, developed and brought into fellowship with the Union, Territory after Territory and State after State. But the Democratic party, as hungry after scandals as after spoils, when it came into power, proceeded, without investigation and without the slightest evidence, to denounce the settlers, whose thrift and industry had made the country great, and to vex and plunder them. Andrew Jackson Sparks, Commissioner of the General Land Office, under Mr. Cleveland, within a few days after he took office, declared that the great body of settlers in the West had acquired their lands dishonestly, and, in his first annual report, placed the falsehood on record, that at the outset of his administration he "was confronted with overwhelming evidences that the public domain was being made a prey of unscrupulous speculation and the worst forms of land monopoly, through systematic fraud carried on and consummated under the public land laws." SLANDERS AND WRONGS AGAINST THE WEST. He had the crazy audacity to declare, in the same report, that the proportion of fraudulent entries could be more nearly estimated at the whole number of such entries than in any other manner. At no time was Commissioner Sparks in possession of the slightest particle of proof in support of his statements. There is not on file in the Department, and there never has been, any statement of facts even suggestive of such proof. If the idea in his head was not purely chimerical, it was partisan and malicious. At this time large numbers of applications for final papers were before the Department. Claiming that the entries upon the public domain were in almost all instances fraudulent, and that the merchants and farmers who had created Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, the Dakotas, Montana and all the far West were unscrupulous speculators, Commissioner Sparks issued an order on April 3, 1885, suspending action on all entries in almost the entire country west of the Mississippi River. The spirit that prompted this order controlled the administration of the land laws for four years. Settlers were in all cases treated as suspicio characters, and the vaguest and most indefinite charges against them were enough to cause delays in the acquirement of their lands and expenses in the protection of their rights that rendered all their relations with the Government a source of vexation, reproach and loss. In thousands of cases farms that had been fully acquired were actually lost to their rightful owners by the unjust conduct of Commissioner Sparks. Naturally, when this Administration assumed the reins of government in 1889, it was confronted by a land system utterly demoralized in every branch and bureau. There were pending and awaiting consideration no less than 350,953 applications and entries. In the first year of the Cleveland Administration agricultural patents had been issued to over 11,000,000 acres, but in the three succeeding years the total number issued covered only 14,000,000 acres. REPUBLICANS DO THINGS BETTER. Secretary Noble, with the aid of Commissioners Groff and Carter, has in three years cleared up all these arrearages. In 1890, 117,247 agricultural patents were issued, covering 18,759,520 acres. In 1891, 114,360 patents were issued, covering 18,297,600 acres. In 1892, 96,380 patents were issued, covering 15,420,800 acres. The total number of patents issued from 1885 to 1888 was 162,754. The total number issued from 1888 to 1892 was 398,128. The total number of acres handed to those who had earned them in the first period amounted to only 26,040,640, while in the second period they amounted to 63,700,480. The docket is now clear, and when Commissioner Carter resigned office on July 1, 1892, he left a bureau free to attend to current business as it arose. The brave and hardy people who had said, with Tennyson, "more life and fuller that I want," who had turned the wilderness into a garden, and had dug millions in metal from the hills, are no longer treated as if their business was a disgrace and an injury to the Nation. The Government's assumption in dealing with them is not that they are frauds seeking to swindle the public, but honorable Americans seeking to give homes to their children and wealth and strength to the country. THE INDIAN BUREAU. The Bureau of Indian Affairs is one of the most difficult and perplexing offices in the Government. It has to do with the oversight of 250,000 Indians, ranging all the way from the lowest savagery up to complete civilization. It deals with their lands, their offences, their education, etc., etc. It disburses every year many millions of dollars, purchases and distributes large quantities of provisions, clothing, agricultural implements, stock, etc., and has to contend with great difficulties. During the three years, from July 1, 1885, to June 30, 1888, the total appropriations for the Indian service amounted to $16,993,265.48; while for the three years, from July 1, 1889, to June 30, 1892, the total appropriations amounted to $38,831,355.16. During the first three years mentioned above, there was paid for lands purchased from the Indians nothing; while during the last three years there was paid for lands purchased from Indians $16,808,692.49. INDIAN LANDS THROWN OPEN. The relinquishment to the Government of large tracts of land held by Indians in common, and their accepting of small individual allotments for farming purposes during the past two or three years, while of great good to the Indian, was also a pecuniary benefit to the Government; as although considerable cash had to be paid to the Indians, which swelled the annual appropriations greatly in the end by the disposal of the land to actual white settlers, the Government will be fully reimbursed. That which distinguishes the present admistration of Indian affairs more than any one thing is the policy of reducing the Indian reservations and allotting lands to the Indians in severalty. During the three years of Harrison's Administration, more than twenty-four millions of acres of Indian lands have been restored to the public domain, to become the residence of pioneer settlers. During the first three years of the last administration there were 4,125 individual allotments of land made to Indians; while during the three years of Harrison's Administration, 12,273 Indian allotments were made. During the first three years of the last administration there were 690 patents issued to Indians for lands, while during the three years of the Harrison Administration there have been 7,248 delivered. vast amount of labor is involved in this matter of reducing the reservations, and especially in the matter of making allotments. INDIAN REFORMS. The object of making Indians successful farmers has been kept constantly and prominently in view for the last four years, and the results have been very gratifying, as, owing to great numbers having taken allotments of lands in severalty, and now feeling a personal interest and ownership in their land, they have more inducement to fence, break and cultivate it, and a very decided advance may be expected in the next few years. They are being assisted by training schools, where farming, gardening and care of stock, especially milch cows, are taught to the young men. Great numbers of stock for breeding purposes have been issued to them under such provisions and restrictions as will insure their proper care and the care of the increase for sufficient length of time to supply each thrifty farmer with a small herd of his own. Practical farmers are located amongst them, so as to be constantly with them to instruct and encourage them. INDIAN EDUCATION. The educational work of the Indian Bureau for the fiscal years 1886-7-8-90-92 may be summarized as follows: During the last three fiscal years new reservation boarding schools have been established among the White Mountain Apaches, Arizona; at Fort Belknap, Montana; Fort Totten, North Dakota; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Seger Colony, Oklahoma; Okanagan, Washington. New reservation boarding schools will soon be opened in the southwestern part of the Kiowa Reservation, at Hoopa Valley, California; Ouray, Utah; Oneida, Wisconsin, and Western Shoshone, Nevada. Large training schools have already been established at Fort Mojave, and Phoenix, Arizona, and Fort Lewis, Colorado, near the Southern Ute Reservation, and a similar school will immediately be opened at Fort Shaw, Montana. Building operations are already under way which will result in a few months in the opening of training schools at Mount Pleasant, Michigan; Tomah, Wisconsin; Pipestone, Minnesota; Flandreau, South Dakota, and Perris, California. The total capacity of these new schools is 2,340. REFORMS IN SCHOOL METHODS. Some other important matters which have occurred during the last three fiscal years are the following: The repairing, enlarging, remodeling, and furnishing with a better and fuller equipment schools already in existence. By means of these agencies, the enrollment and average attendance has been largely increased. The service has been greatly aided by the adoption of a new course of study, based upon the latest researches in educational science; a list of text books by modern authors; the promulgation of uniform rules for the government of schools; the enactment by Congress of a compulsory law for the education of Indian youth; the adoption of a more complete and extended system of supervision, whereby careful and critical inspection can be made of the whole field of Indian-school work; the extension of the contract system to public schools by means of which Indian youth can be educated in company with their white brethren, and the extension of the regulations of the Civil Service Law to the more important positions in the Indian school service. THE PENSION BUREAU. No bureau of the whole Government is more jealously watched or ardently hated by the Democratic party than that which deals with pensions. The best answer to slander is found in the two tables following, comparing the work done under Grover Cleveland with that done under Benjamin Harrison. The record for Cleveland's Administration from March 1, 1885, to June 30, 1888, is as follows: |