76 ALASKA FISHERIES AND FUR INDUSTRIES IN 1915, 
of manual training. While facilities are limited as compared with 
those available in the States, it is hoped that the efforts put forth may 
in time bring results well worth while. 
St. Paul Island.—The 1914-15 session on this island was continued 
through May and limited work was continued by the junior teacher 
into July. The 1915-16 session was begun in September. 
The extended use of English by the adults, particularly the men, 
who have found its use increasingly necessary in the performance 
of their daily tasks, has had a gratifying effect upon the children, stim- 
ulating them to greater efforts. The policy of requiring every child 
old enough and strong enough to play about the village streets to 
attend school has been adhered to strictly. It has not been possible, 
however, to instruct the younger children for more than half a day 
at a time, owing to limited classroom facilities. With the parents 
using English to a greater extent than ever before, and with the 
encouragement for its extension in the playing of games among the 
people generally, as at croquet and baseball, a desire to learn the 
language has been rapidly developed by the children. 
Formerly the natives were inclined to be ashamed to speak English, 
though proud of such Russian as they might know. Not many of 
them really knew very much of the latter tongue, but a parish school 
kept by the local priest, at which the Russian language was the prin- 
cipal topic of study, was attended by every child in the village. The 
result was that such mental effort as was expended in language study 
was much more likely to be devoted to Russian than to English. 
This school was abolished in the summer of 1914, and it has not since 
been reopened. 
The women of the village, who usually represent their families in 
the purchase of supplies at the store, have been encouraged to write 
their weekly orders in English. 
The boy-scout movement was inaugurated among the schoolboys 
in the spring of 1915. It was enthusiastically taken up and will be 
extended and developed as rapidly as circumstances permit. The 
written reports submitted by the older boys in regard to their obser- 
vations on the seals, sea lions, foxes, birds, and other life of the island 
were corrected in the classroom by the teacher, then rewritten and 
submitted to the agent to form part of the island records. The fact 
that the agent received these reports stimulated the boys to their 
utmost efforts both in the matter of closer and keener observations 
and in their composition and preparation. 
The abolition of the use of interpreters by the officers of the station 
in their relations with the natives, both individually and collectively, 
has been of great benefit. Each person now exerts every effort to 
understand as many English words as possible, and the extension of 
the vocabularies of many of the adult natives has been remarkable. 
