City and State excerpt February 23, 1899, p. 121

1899.45029, City and State excerpt February 23, 1899, p. 12

A Washington dispatch to the Philadelphia “Inquirer” states that, after a thorough examination of the operations of the Lincoln Institution of this city, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs restored the appropriation of 433,400 for its support, the House committee having omitted the item. It refers to the fact that a report was made by a committee of the Indian Rights Association condemning the present management of the school, and concludes by saying that:

“Senator Penrose and representatives Bingham and Adams appeared before the member of the Conference Committee and showed conclusively that the statements and allegations of the Indian Rights Association and others were without any foundation in fact.”

In relation to the above dispatch, it may be stated that so many complaints had come to the officers of the Indian Rights Association from various sources concerning the condition of affairs at the Educational Home that it was deemed advisable to have the matter looked into by a special committee appointed for that purpose. This committee submitted a report to the Association, signed by Messrs. N. Dubois Miller, Charles Chauncey, and Charles E. Pancoast, a copy of which was presented to the Indian Committees of the House and Senate. According to the report, the committee visited and inspected the Home, and examined pupils of the institution and other witnesses, including a former manager. Others whose testimony was requested declined to make any statement. The report continues:

“The history of the Institution is not such as to create a prejudice in its favor. About the year 1885 or 1886 the Board of Public Charities of the State of Pennsylvania made an investigation into the management at that time, and reported in the strongest terms against it, and, we are informed, were met with no assistance from the managers in remedying the abuses then found to exist. Subsequently, charges having been preferred against the Institution before the Society to Protect Children from Cruelty, a committee of that society made an investigation which resulted in the resignation of the Superintendent then in office, and no further publicity ensued. In the present investigation, your committee has had the full cooperation of the Committee of the Board of Council, but that committee has apparently been hindered and obstructed by the managers of the Home in obtaining the desired information. This fact has not only limited to some extend our sources of information, but indicates a lack of frankness on the part of the managers, which, to say the least, is unfortunate.”

The report then recites in detail the unsystematic educational methods of the Home and the lack of facilities for industrial training, which has, in some instances, resulted in keeping boys who have come to the institution to learn trades in idleness for a year or eighteen months. Attention is also called to the inadequate library and to the poor facilities and encouragement for reading.

The conclusions reached by the committee are as follows:

“First, the management of the Institution is left entirely too much to the care of one of the Board of Managers, styled Managing Directress, without the necessary and proper supervision and sharing of responsibility by the other managers.

“Second, the salary paid the superintendent is wholly inadequate to secure the services of a man competent to fill the position. As a consequence, the former superintendent was compelled to resign because of gross misbehavior, and the present superintendent is, in our opinion, not qualified, either by education, training, or temperament to fill the place.

“Third, the system employed does not secure industrial education to more than a very limited number of boys, and can not compare in efficiency with that employed at other institutions where the Government pays exactly the same amount per capita.

“Fourth, unless radical changes were made at once in the several points to which we have called attention, we should consider it most unfair to send Indian boys to the Educational Home if they can be provided for at any one of the other institutions where they can receive regular systematic industrial training in conjunction with an ordinary English education. We believe the system sought to be employed at the Educational Home to be practically impossible.”

Document History

• Transcribed by HS 2025-08-06