12 OKN. R. H. PRATT: 



Reservations for Indians mean now, and always have 

 meant, reservation from experiences and from opportunities 

 for right education and civilized industrial development. 



The policy is wrong. 



We should not only be willing but helpful to get the 

 Indians, and especially the children, out into the active life of 

 the nation. Help them less in tribal education and help them 

 more to come into individual relations with our general indus- 

 trial and educational systems. 



We do not hesitate to take a million foreigners into our 

 country in one year, and at once disperse and citizenize them. 

 We count it righteousness to invite and persuade the boys 

 and girls of all countries to abandon their homes and lan- 

 guages and come here to become a very part of our population. 



We give opportunity for the boys and girls in the slums of 

 New York to escape from their surroundings of ignorance 

 and vice, and enter the well-to-do homes of our people all 

 over the country. 



A recent Governor of Alaska as a boy went out from the 

 slums of New York to a family in Indiana, who took him 

 into their good home, educated and trained him into proper 

 manhood, and he became what he is. A distinguished 

 member of Congress, now chairman of one of its most import- 

 ant committees, had the same experience. 



Left in the slums of New York they would probably never 

 have reached any such usefulness or distinction. 



Taken into better influences, they become great and good 

 men. 



We compelled the Negro, and invite the Huns, the Italians 

 and every one else, to come and live with us. Why hesitate 

 to be equally generous and invite the Indians to full enjoy- 

 ment of the same chances ? 



We have only 270,000 Indians outside of Alaska. If 

 instead of forcibly holding them together on reservations 

 and in tribes, our every influence helped them to oppor- 

 tunities away from the reservations, their interests and 



