lieve that
religious prejudice has been a real misfortune to our people. General
Armstrong, in an address given at Lake Mohonk in 1890, expressed the
well-founded opinion that the industrial work of the Catholic schools is
as good as any, often superior; the academic work generally inferior,
while on the moral and religious side he found them at their best.

CARLISLE AND HAMPTON

The Carlisle School in Pennsylvania was the first non-reservation
boarding school to be established, a pioneer and a leader in this
important class of schools, of which there are now thirty-five,
scattered throughout the Middle and Western States. General R. H. Pratt
(then Lieutenant Pratt), while in charge of Indian prisoners of war at
Saint Augustine, Florida, made important reforms in their treatment,
which led in 1878, when their release was ordered by the War Department,
to a request on the part of twenty-two of the younger men for further
education. Seventeen of these were received at Hampton Institute,
Virginia, General Armstrong's celebrated school for freedmen, and the
next year an Indian department was organized at Hampton, while General
Pratt was authorized, at his own suggestion, to establish an Indian
school in the abandoned army barracks at Carlisle.

The school opened with 147 pupils. There were many difficulties and much
unintelligent opposition in the beginning, but wonderful success
attended General Pratt's administration. For many years Carlisle has
enrolled about 1,200 pupils each year, keeping almost half of them on
farms and in good homes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where they work
for board and wages in summer, while a smaller number attend the public
school during the colder months. They earn and save about thirty
thousand dollars annually. This "outing system" was devised by General
Pratt, and has been adopted elsewhere, though not always with equal
success.

Periodical attacks have been made upon the Carlisle school, usually from
political or purely selfish motives; but it has survived them all.
General Pratt's policy was to take the young Indian wholly out of his
environment and the motives as well as the habits of his former life,
and in support of it he has opposed some of the methods of the
missionaries. His advice to his graduates is to remain east and compete
in civilization. He has worked with tremendous energy and great
single-mindedness, and has often been undiplomatic in his criticisms,
thus incurr