are grateful that insular administration has not been an issue between political parties in the United States, and that the insular service has been placed upon a basis of principle and merit rather than upon one of politics. We urge that patriotism, good morals and good policy shall make this course permanent and strong.

The problems that still confront us in the insular dependencies are moral, educational and economic. While our Government enacts necessary and just legislation, the people of our country should recognize their duty to aid in the solution of these problems through those methods and agencies of Christian education and evangelization which contribute directly to the formation of that moral character upon which all stable society must rest.

By legislation which we regard as directly at variance with the moral duties we owe to the Philippine Islands, Congress has imposed upon them great and unmerited burdens. While all commodities coming to the United States from Porto Rico and Hawaii are admitted free of duty and those from Cuba at twenty per cent of the existing tariff, a tax of seventy-five per cent of said tariff continues to be imposed upon two of the principal products of the Islands, while a third product, produced there alone and therefore not in competition with products of the United States, is admitted free. This glaring inequality does not, we believe, reflect the prevailing spirit of the American people.

While Congress made provision for conferring Filipino citizenship upon persons resident in the Islands at the time of our occupation, no provision has since been made enabling persons to acquire citizenship who have come into the Islands since that time. Special naturalization laws for Filipino citizenship are urgently needed.

We respectfully call the attention of the President and Congress to the following recommendations:

I. We urge that our Government shall steadfastly adhere to the principle that a moral responsibility which we cannot neglect and which is higher than all commercial considerations requires us to legislate and to administer so as to promote the highest welfare of the people of these Islands.

We urge that Congress shall without delay legislate so as to effect a radical reduction of the duties now collected on products of the Philippine Islands.

3. We advise that the greatest educational emphasis be put upon the primary schools and the preparation of teachers therefor, and that such instruction shall have special reference to industrial training. The utmost effort should be made to secure the enrollment and attendance of all children. We maintain that it is the duty of Congress to provide adequately for such education even if the necessary money were to come from direct appropriation, but additional funds to those now raised in the Islands would become available there for educational purposes by the increased amount of taxable property which would be accumulated as a result of the reduction of existing duties.

4.

Education in the duties of citizenship is an essential element in social and political progress. So fast as the Filipinos demonstrate their political capacity, powers of self-government should be granted and enlarged.

5. We recommend Congressional enactment to enable a large number of persons in the Philippine Islands to be naturalized as citizens of said Islands. We believe that provision should be made by Congress whereby educated and duly qualified Porto Ricans may become citizens of the United States.

6. We urge upon Congress immediate legislation to protect the inhabitants of our insular possessions against the great evils of the opium traffic and the opium habit which already threaten them.

7. We recommend that the application of the Coastwise Shipping Act be permanently suspended with reference to the Philippines, and that Congress give serious attention to legislation necessary to relieve Hawaii from the disadvantages which this law imposes, and encourage the industrial development of Porto Rico.

8. With clear recognition of the ability shown in the administration of affairs in the Philippines and the conviction that we have a body of competent men trained in colonial administration, it still seems to us that the Bureau of Insular Affairs, whose functions are essentially civil, should be ultimately committed to some other department than the Department of War.

LAKE MOHONK CONFERENCE OF FRIENDS OF THE INDIAN AND OTHER DEPENDENT

PEOPLES

First Session

Wednesday Morning, October 23d, 1907

The Conference was called to order at 10 A. M. by MR. ALBERT K. SMILEY, who, in welcoming his guests, spoke as follows:

OPENING REMARKS OF MR. ALBERT K. SMILEY

I cannot begin to tell you, my dear friends, how delighted I am to welcome to this Conference the distinguished company I see before me.

This is the twenty-fifth Indian Conference. What a marvellous improvement in the Indian conditions has taken place since we first met! Then the Indians were being rapidly despoiled of ancestral homes, with no courts to which they could appeal, their hunting grounds were gone, and a hostile band of border whites was bent on their extermination. Now the gates of American citizenship are thrown wide open and opportunities for earning a living are afforded. Hereafter they are no longer to be fed and coddled, but are to be thrown on their own resources and must work or suffer hunger.

During the twenty-eight years of my membership on the Board of Indian Commissioners, there have been at least ten persons holding the position of Commissioner of Indian Affairs, all of them able and honest men, each held responsible for the proper conduct of Indian affairs, but almost shorn of power, which was held by the Secretary of the Interior. Most fortunate for the Indian, the office is now held by one who is not only able, honest, resourceful and of long acquaintance with the Indian problem, but who is also an intimate friend of the President, who has given him almost unlimited authority. I earnestly hope this Commissioner will hold his office till the whole Indian question becomes ancient history.

He is with us this morning and will fill a prominent place in our discussions.

These Indian Conferences had their real origin in Dakota Territory twenty-five years ago. General Whittlesey and I were sent to Dakota to investigate charges made against a powerful organization trying to dispossess the Sioux Indians of large tracts of valuable land. By a remarkable coincidence nearly all the religious and philanthropic societies interested in the Sioux Indians had prominent representatives there at the same time. At someone's suggestion we all met in conference for three days and settled upon a uniform line of policy which eliminated all the interference heretofore prevailing and brought harmony out of discord.

At the close of the meeting I invited the whole body to come to Lake Mohonk the ensuing autumn and spend a week as my guests, promising to invite prominent Indian experts and able philanthropists to discuss the Indian problem. A goodly company assembled here, all invited for a week, but against my wishes they decided to cut down the week to three days.

At that Dakota conference there was one man of strong common sense, a warm philanthropist, an earnest Christian, who took a leading part in our discussions. He had already established a number of very successful schools for the Christian training of Indians, one or two of which I visited. He has since greatly increased his grand work till his name. has become a household word with the Indian and the friends of the Indian. I have tried for twenty-five years to bring him here without success. To my delight he came last evening and will at some session of this conference give us a chapter of his large experience. I refer to Rt. Rev. William H. Hare, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of South Dakota.

There are other important matters besides the Indians that claim our attention. Porto Rico, one of the fairest islands in the West Indies, has a delightful climate, a fertile soil and abundant resources. Were there no California, I should like nothing better than to build a winter home there, in sight of the sea, with fine forests and well cultivated grounds around me, and the charming, courteous natives as my neighbors, to show the world that Porto Rico can raise almost everything under the sun. Then I would pester Congress for more liberal treatment.

Then there are the Hawaiian Islands, one of the beauty spots of the world. Isn't it about time to awake to the fact that in the near future Honolulu is to be one of the leading

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harbors of the world? Hawaii is the key to the commerce of the Pacific and should at once have large appropriations. And the Philippines - there is the knotty question of the Conference. The fight is on, whether we shall keep and develop them, or sell them, or give them away, or drop them. I hope the members of Congress who are present and a score of other experts will lead us to a right decision.

Will you allow a novice, whose opinions are likely to change during the next three days, to venture a suggestion?

When Alaska was purchased for seven millions, what a howl of indignant protest was made against such a sum for a barren tract of ice-bound rocks and mountains, where no white man could ever live. Such was the general dissatisfaction that soon after the purchase a majority vote of the people could have been had to sell them for half their cost. and now, suppose England should offer two hundred millions, would we sell? Would any of you vote for it?

Every one of our acquisitions have met with bitter opposition: The purchase of Louisiana from France, Florida from Spain, the Gadsden purchase from Mexico, Alaska, Porto Rico, Hawaii, and Panama. All of these most valuable additions to our country, except the Louisiana and Florida purchases, have been made in my lifetime. So I am used to dissatisfaction and denunciation. Possibly-nay, probably-in twenty years, when the Pacific has twice the commerce of the Atlantic, chiefly under the control of the richest and most enterprising nation on the globe; when Congress has lifted that heavy and inexcusible tariff from the Philippines, and the inexhaustible resources of forests, mines and agricultural products have been fitly encouraged and developed, and Manila has become one of the great seaports of the world; then the cry will be what a fortunate thing for America that the Philippines fell so unexpectedly into our lap! I admit that the Philippine problem is a knotty one, full of difficulties. We have spent immense sums for their benefit, but why not more, on one of our youngest children?

Our Country has in the last few years done many noble acts. Liberating Cuba from Spanish oppression cost us untold millions. We (or one of us) stopped the Russo-Japanese war. We prevented the partition of China. We have been of the greatest service to South America by securing more cordial relations between themselves and us. We are now, with Mexico's help, trying to secure peaceful relations between the Republics of Central America. We have for the first time in history taught the nations how to use plain truthful talk instead of lying diplomacy. At the Hague our representatives