City and State excerpt, March 16, 1899

City and State, March 16, 1899, p. 171, 1899.45029

Colonel Given, Superintendent of the Educational Home, is evidently under a misapprehension of the exact status of that institution. He recently stated in an interview published in the Philadelphia ‘Press” that—

“The school is not an industrial school at all and the Government does not require that it be conducted as those at Hampton and Carlisle. It is a contract school and is practically preparatory. . . . The boys are in school in the morning and in the afternoons they are in the workshops. The facilities here are not very good, and so they have to be divided in bands of three and four.”

The Commissioner of Indian Affairs, however, holds an entirely different view. In reply to a query as to the standing of the Educational Home he writes:

“The status of that school, so far as the contract with the Government is concerned, is precisely that of Hampton and other contract schools. Their contract provides specifically, among other things, to instruct male pupils in gardening, farming, and care of stock, or other industries as are suitable for the reservation to which they are to be returned; to instruct male pupils in mechanical trades, and female pupils in cookery, laundry, needle-work, dairy work, and in housewifery, to have school-room exercises on five days and industrial exercises on six days of each week, legal holidays excepted; a vacation not to exceed two months within the first quarter of the fiscal year, unless otherwise specifically agreed; during such vacation there need be no school-room exercises, and the pupils may, in the discretion of the party of the second part, be relieved from industrial work. ... I have always had the opinion, and it is held by this office, that it was to be conducted along the same lines as Hampton, for the reason that both contracts are identical so far as the provisions for industrial training are concerned.”

Document History

• Transcribed by HS 2025-08-06