COMMANDER EDWARD J. DORN: Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: I do not think that I can contribute much to either the profit or the pleasure of this Conference by relating my experience in Samoa. I can, however, call to mind a fact which is very often forgotten, even in the post-office, that we have somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean, a colony of peaceful, kindly, lazy and very religious people, who welcomed annexation with great enthusiasm. I was sent down as one of the very first officers, and was in contact with the people for a period of about one year. I found in them all the characteristics that I have mentioned, and also a most intense desire on the part of all of them to learn the English language. The clamor seemed to be for schools. A London mission had sent its missionaries there some eighty years before, and most of the Samoans, at the time of our arrival, were quite able to read and write. They knew the Bible very thoroughly and were very punctilious in many of the outward observances which the Bible called for. They never sat down to a meal without chanting a grace, and they carried out some of the old customs of the Bible, which are to us at this present time interesting, if not laughable.

The desire of these people for education in English was markedly shown on all occasions. Once the natives got together a fund of several thousand dollars, which they collected from sales of copra, and in that way, the men doing the work themselves, and others pledging themselves to furnish the school with food. for a year, free of cost, they built a very creditable edifice at Leone Bay to which about one hundred girls were sent from the various districts and educated free of cost, including the living. It was unfortunate that in response to an application to the government to have some teachers sent down even at a very small expense, a reply came that there was no money available for that purpose, but I believe that since my departure, which was about three years ago, the government has sent down a chaplain, and has instituted some schools; of that, however, I am not quite certain. The great need seemed to be for medical missionaries. At the time I was there, the native children suffered from the usual diseases of children, but could have the services of a doctor only during the presence of the ship stationed in Pago Pago. When that ship went to Australia for coal, the natives were entirely without medical assistance. I think, therefore, that a medical missionary would probably be more successful than one who simply preaches.

These Islands have been constituted a naval station by order of the late President McKinley, comprising all the islands of the group which we took over at the time of the partition of Samoa, and the government of the islands and welfare of their people lies entirely in the naval department. Therefore, it would be very unbecoming for me either to praise or criticize its action

there. But I think everything is being done to make the people appreciate the blessings of having come under the American government. They had their laws established under the first commandant, which work very successfully, which have gone very far towards supplanting the native laws of the country which are simple and purely feudal in principle, towards establishing the marriage relation and descent of property and curtailing the arbitrary power of the chiefs.

REV. DR. WILLIAM ELLIOTT GRIFFIS, of Ithaca, N. Y., also spoke. His excellent address dealt largely with Japan, a subject without the scope of the Conference, and is therefore not printed in this report.

THE CHAIRMAN: We are now to have a report from the Committee appointed at the Conference last year to memorialize Congress in favor of national aid to education in our territories and dependencies. The report will be presented by Dr. Lyman Abbott.

REPORT OF COMMITTEE TO MEMORIALIZE CONGRESS IN FAVOR OF NATIONAL AID TO EDUCATION IN THE TERRITORIES.

DR. LYMAN ABBOTT: Your Committee appointed last year to memorialize Congress in favor of National Aid to Education in the Territories and Insular Possessions of the United States of America, respectfully reports:

That the memorial hereto attached was presented last winter to Congress. So far as your Committee knows, no action has been taken in either House on the Memorial, and in view of the pressure of other matters of immediate importance, probably no action could have been anticipated. Your Committee recommend that they be authorized by this Conference to communicate this Memorial to the President of the United States, and that Dr. Merrill E. Gates, who resides in Washington, be authorized, on behalf of the Conference, to urge it upon the attention of either or both Houses of Congress if at any time an opportunity should come which is, in his judgment, favorable for so doing. The attention of your Committee has been called to the facts that a bill is pending in Congress to return to Hawaii, in whole or in part, the revenue derived from tariff dues collected at the Island Custom Houses, and that this bill has been strongly endorsed by the President, and the action of this Conference has been invoked in behalf of this measure. Your Committee strongly recommends this request to the favorable consideration of the Conference. A bill has also passed both Houses of Congress, but at different Congresses, extending to Porto Rico the provisions of the Morrill-Hatch Acts which your Committee would be glad to see the Conference endorse.

October 18, 1906.

LYMAN ABBOTT,
CHAS. F. MEserve,

M. G. BRUMBAUGH,

SAMUEL MCCUNE LINDSAY,
MERRILL E. GATES,
AZEL AMES.

MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS.

The undersigned were appointed a Committee by the Lake Mohonk Indian Conference to memorialize Congress in favor of National Aid to education in the Territories and Insular possessions of the United States, wherever such aid is necessary to serve the present and future welfare of its people, and especially and specifically in the Island of Porto Rico. The undersigned, in the fulfillment of this duty, beg leave to lay before Congress for its consideration, the following facts and principles:

(1) At the time of the American occupation there had not been a single school-house constructed for school purposes and but one public building owned and used for school purposes in Porto Rico; (2) There are, in round numbers, seventy thousand children now in school; (3) There are three hundred thousand children of school age unprovided for; (4) Porto Rico is a part of the United States, and the United States ought in some way to make provision for those three hundred thousand children, providing, if necessary, for their education out of the Federal treasury.

The churches cannot educate these children, because they have not the means. For the same reason, Porto Rico cannot educate them. Its poverty makes this impossible. Only very slowly can the people of Porto Rico hope to acquire the means which will enable them to provide and equip a public school system. Their poverty will keep them ignorant; their ignorance will keep them poor. These people are, if not citizens of the United States, subjects of the United States. Having taken them under our guardianship, we do not fulfill our whole duty toward them by simply protecting their civil rights from domestic violence or foreign assault. It is our duty to equip them for self-government at the earliest practicable moment. Popular education is the basis of popular government, and the United States ought to frame and carry out some systematic plan for laying the foundation of popular government, by popular education, in Porto Rico.

The same principles apply with equal force to the Indian Territory. If the Federal Government prohibits taxation of Indian lands, it should provide either out of the Federal treasury or out of the tribal funds, an equivalent for that taxation. It is not right that the local community should bear the burden of the Indians in their neighborhood. That would be a national, not a local, burden.

The same principle which demands that the rich people in a school district should pay taxes to support schools for all the people, demands that the nation should, if necessary, tax itself to secure schools for acquired territory like that of Porto Rico, and schools for the United States Territories which have not yet reached such a stage of self-support and self-government that they are able to provide and administer their own schools. It should be counted as a National disgrace that in any part of this land, under the American flag, children should be growing up in enforced ignorance, to become waifs and strays in childhood, and in later life tramps, vagabonds, and criminals.

Whether National aid to education in the Territories should be given by providing adequate Normal schools for the education of teachers, or by the maintenance of equipment for industrial education, which is always expensive and yet is of the first economic importance, or by appropriations proportioned to the amount raised by the people of the Territory, and left to be expended as the people of the Territory shall think best, we do not here discuss. We simply urge upon Congress the two principles: first, that universal education is the basis of Republican institutions, and therefore, second, wherever the Nation is responsible for the government of a Territory and its preparation to be ultimately a self-governing community, it ought to see to it that the Ter

ritory is equipped with a system adequate for the education of all children

of school age in the Territory.

February, 1906.

The report presented by Dr. Abbott was referred to the Business Committee of the Conference.

DR. MERRILL E. GATES, of Washington, D. C., called attention to the fact that there was being held at Brussels an international conference on the question of prohibiting the sale of intoxicants and opium to uncivilized peoples, and suggested that the Conference send a cablegram of approval to Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, one of the American delegates to that Conference. Rev. Dr. Francis E. Clark, President of the Christian Endeavor Society, also spoke along the same line.

After a brief discussion, the Conference voted to send the following cablegram:

"CRAFTS, Brussels:

Mohonk Conference, emphatically condemning use of and traffic in opium and intoxicants, most cordially endorses Senate Resolution of January 4th, 1906."

The Senate resolution referred to in the cablegram reads as follows:

"In the opinion of this body (the United States Senate) the time has come when the principle, twice affirmed in international treaties for Central Africa, that native races should be prevented against the destructive traffic in intoxicants, should be extended to all uncivilized peoples by the enactment of such laws and the making of such treaties as will effectually prohibit the sale by the signatory powers to aboriginal tribes and uncivilized races of opium and intoxicating beverages."

The Conference then adjourned until 8 P. M.

Fourth Session.

Thursday evening, October 18, 1906.

THE CHAIRMAN: We are to-night to discuss the Hawaiian Islands. The first speaker will be HoN. F. M. HATCH, one of Honolulu's leading lawyers, who was Secretary of State of, and United States Minister from, the Republic of Hawaii, and later a Justice of the Hawaiian Supreme Court.

CONDITIONS IN HAWAII.

ADDRESS OF HON. F. M. HATCH.

The problems of the day in Hawaii are industrial only. No political questions, other than of a purely local nature, exist. Hawaii has accomplished her politcal destiny to the point of having become a part of the Union as an organized territory, to which the Constitution has been formally extended by Act of Congress.

The story of Hawaii is most interesting. It is too well known to justify taking your time to repeat. Certain features, however, stand out with prominence being uncommon in the history of the contact of civilization with an aboriginal race, and are worthy of passing mention. First, it may be noted that the Hawaiian ranked high in intelligence among the primitive races. He possessed an adaptability to civilization and had, in fact, achieved a certain degree of civilization himself. He was not a nomad. He practised agriculture and that of a high order, his principal crop being cultivated with irrigation. He developed water leads and irrigation ditches. These he conducted with such a degree of accuracy that many of them are in use to this day. He also established a minute and detailed system of water rights, dividing water for irrigation by hours, according to the area of the land entitled to it, which is also in use to-day. From the water right he evolved both the idea of, and name for, law.

The Hawaiian would undoubtedly have made further progress towards civilization, had his intellectual development not been held in check by a most dismal and cruel religion which prevented independence of thought and enslaved him with innumerable superstitions. When freed from this blight by the introduction of Christianity, many fine traits of character developed. The early Kings and Chiefs were notably worthy and self-respecting men who sought enlightenment, and strove to build up their race