Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/366

352 state of shameless debauchery, and thus very often return in a diseased state to their homes.

The condition of these people is in no sense bettered by endeavoring to teach them moral maxims or religious dogma. They do not appreciate the truth of the former, nor can they in their low mental state rightly understand the latter. To endeavor to do so is merely to imitate the procedure of the Indian shaman over the dying. If, on the contrary, you speak to them of means of improving their material condition, or deplore with them the rapid diminution of their tribe, the more thoughtful and mature listen with the greatest respect and attention. The problem is, fundamentally, an industrial one, and is to be attacked, if successfully, from that side. They are naturally industrious enough, and capable, though not so persistently laborious as the whites, and less easy to control than the Chinese. They obtain a certain amount of precarious employment in connection with the canneries and other nascent industries of the northern coast, but have not generally the offer of any permanent remunerative work.

It is thus primarily essential to establish industries among them which will remove the temptation now felt to drift to the larger settlements and towns. Improvement in mental and moral tone will then naturally follow.



HE recent progress made in the study of social and political science, in which the principles of evolution have played an important part, must aid us in gaining a better knowledge of the laws of industrial development, and more consistent views of the real objects and available methods of industrial education.

The recognition of the fact that in the social and industrial progress of peoples, as well as in the relations of natural phenomena, there are laws of growth and development, of universal application, under which the modifying influences of surrounding conditions are brought in harmony in determining results, has widened our methods of study and research, and thrown a light on the history of the world's progress that enables as to trace the relations of cause and effect in many cases that had before been involved in obscurity.

In agriculture there is pressing need of the application of principles and methods that have aided in the development of other industries, to enable the farmer to devise the best possible system for the profitable practice of his art under the world-wide 