it is imperative that the settlers should be allowed to cut timber, under proper regulations, for their own use.  Laws should be enacted to protect the Alaskan salmon fisheries against the greed which would destroy them.  They should be preserved as a permanent industry and food supply.  Their management and control should be turned over to the Commission of Fish and Fisheries.  Alaska should have a Delegate in the Congress.  It would be well if a Congressional committee could visit Alaska and investigate its needs on the ground.

In dealing with the Indians our aim should be their ultimate absorption into the body of our people.  But in many cases this absorption must and should be very slow.  In portions of the Indian Territory the mixture of blood has gone on at the same time with progress in wealth and education, so that there are plenty of men with varying degrees of purity of Indian blood who are absolutely indistinguishable in point of social, political, and economic ability from their white associates.  There are other tribes which have as yet made no perceptible advance toward such equality.  To try to force such tribes too fast is to prevent their going forward at all.  Moreover, the tribes live under widely different conditions.  Where a tribe has made considerable advance and lives on fertile farming soil it is possible to allot the members lands in severalty much as is the case with white settlers.  There are other tribes where such a course is not desirable.  On the arid prairie lands the effort should be to induce the Indians to lead pastoral rather than agricultural lives, and to permit them to settle in villages rather than to force them into isolation.

The large Indian schools situated remote from any Indian reservation do a special and peculiar work of great importance.  But, excellent though these are, an immense amount of additional work must be done on the reservations themselves among the old, and above all among the young, Indians.

The first and most important step toward the absorption of the Indian is to teach him to earn his living; yet it is not necessarily to be assumed that in each community all Indians must become either tillers of the soil or stock raisers.  Their industries may properly be diversified, and those who show special desire or adaptability for industrial or even commercial pursuits should be encouraged so far as practicable to follow out each his own bent.

Every effort should be made to develop the Indian along the lines of natural aptitude, and to encourage the existing native industries peculiar to certain tribes, such as the various kinds of basket weaving, canoe building, smith work, and blanket work.  Above all, the Indian boys and girls should be given confident command of colloquial English, and should ordinarily be prepared for a vigorous struggle with the conditions under which their people live, rather than for immediate absorption into some more highly developed community.