authorizing the sale of certain railroads of Oklahoma companies to railroad companies of other states owning connecting lines; made the usual appropriations for the expenses and salaries of the territorial officials; prohibited the territorial legislative assembly from considering any proposition or passing any bill to remove the seat of government from its present location at Guthrie and from making any appropriation or entering into any contract for a capitol building or any other building; and opened to public entry certain lands ceded to the government by the Indians-the Cheyennes and Arapahoes.

The Indian Territory has no organized territorial government and is practically governed by the United States courts and marshals and the Interior Department of the United States and as between the Indians themselves by Indian tribal officials. During the year there has been much congressional legislation affecting this territory.

Congress passed an act appropriating $100,000 for enlarg ing the tribal Indian schools and providing for the attendance therein of the children of others than Indians. This is the first aid Congress has given to the education of the non-Indian children in the Indian Territory.

Congress also appropriated $25,000 for the care and support of insane persons (Indian citizens and non-Indian citizens) in the territory, and this is the first provision made affording the federal officers of the territory means to care for the insane.

Four additional United States judges were authorized, one for each of the present districts, making two judges in each district, but the judges last appointed are not made members of the territorial Court of Appeals.

Defendants in criminal cases have been permitted to give bail pending appeal. Heretofore they have been compelled to lie in jail, a condition simply disgraceful to our jurisprudence.

Acts were passed by Congress regulating the practice of medicine and surgery and establishing a board of pharmacy and the qualification of pharmacists in the territory.

Provisions have also been made for the closing of the work of establishing town sites and allotting lands in the territory.

The Secretary of the Interior has been authorized to sell at public sale in not exceeding 160-acre tracts the overplus of Creek lands after allotment.

Perhaps the most important act in its effect upon titles to lands and the development of the territory is that providing for the removal of all restrictions upon the sale of lands (not homesteads) of allottees of age and not of Indian blood and further providing for the removal of the restrictions except as to homesteads on all Indian allottees of age by the Indian agent of the United States upon the approval of the Secretary of the Interior. Since the passage of this act a great many of the allottees in the territory have taken advantage of it and have sold portions of their allotments.

An act was also passed authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to grant rights of way for pipe lines through the Indian Territory, the necessity for this measure arising from the discovery there of large fields of oil and gas.

Oklahoma and the Indian Territory are the only portions of the Louisiana purchase which have not been admitted to statehood. In the treaty of Paris of April 30, 1803, concluded by Napoleon and Jefferson, whereby the colony or province of Louisiana was ceded by the French republic to the United States, it was expressly covenanted by our republic: "The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the union of the states and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal Constitution, to all the rights, advantages and immunities of citizens of the United States, and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property and the religion which they profess." The time for the fulfillment of that promise is at hand. During the year the lower house of Congress passed a bill, which is now pending in the Senate, providing for the admission of Oklahoma and Indian Territory into the union as one state bearing the name of Oklahoma.

The great national political parties are committed in favor of single statehood for the two territories. If the new state is created, it will be about as large in area as Missouri, and with a population at the start approximating that of Kansas. It will be in the number of its inhabitants and the value of their property holdings at the time of its admission, much greater than any other state which has ever been admitted to the union since the adoption of the federal Constitution. The new state will be rich in agricultural and mineral resources, with almost unequaled railroad facilities, and worth more to the people of our country than all of the archipelagoes lying in the tropics of the eastern seas.

NEW MEXICO AND ARIZONA.

The treaties with Mexico under which the United States acquired these territories promised ultimate statehood, the time to be determined by Congress, and bills are pending in Congress for their admission as a state or states of the union. The division in the opinion of Congress now is whether two states shall be made or only one. They are regularly organized territories, and no sessions of their territorial legislatures were held within the last year.

During the year Congress passed an act creating an additional district judge for New Mexico; and provided that the trial judges, which there constitute the supreme court, shall not sit in the appellate court in any cases tried by them in the lower court. Congress made the usual appropriations for these territories, and passed other acts of local application not of sufficient interest to notice.

When statehood is provided for Oklahoma and Indian Territory, New Mexico and Arizona there will be no other territory of the United States to which Congress is obligated by treaty to grant statehood.

HAWAII.

Hawaii is equipped with a regular territorial form of government, including executive, legislative and judicial departments. During the year there was an extra session of the legislature of this territory, which was called to meet an exigency arising from the failure of the appropriations made at the session of 1903. The supreme court of the territory had pronounced the county government bill to be unconstitutional on the ground that it included territorial taxation as well as county taxation. The exigency seems to have been met by the passage of a joint resolution appointing a committee of five to draft a county act, the members to serve without pay. The legislature also amended a former act for the payment of current accounts, by authorizing the treasurer to arrange with any of the banks for an overdraft not to exceed $500,000.

The only important congressional legislation of the year affecting Hawaii is an act appointing a superintendent of public instruction; and directing the United States Commissioner of Labor to collect, assort and present in reports in 1905, and every five years thereafter, statistical details relating to the departments of labor in the territory of Hawaii, especially in relation to the commercial, industrial, social and sanitary condition of the laboring classes, and charging the commissioner to ascertain the highest, lowest and average number of employees engaged in the various industries in the territory, to be classified as to nativity, sex, hours of labor and conditions of employment, and report the same to Congress.

PORTO RICO.

Porto Rico has a civil government established by act of Congress effective May 1, 1900. It has a governor and legislature, the latter consisting of the Executive Council, or "Upper House," composed of the governor, secretary, attorney general, treasurer, commissioner of interior and commissioner of education and five native Porto Ricans appointed

by the President, and the House of Delegates, or the "Lower House," consisting of thirty-five members elected by the people. The island is represented near the Congress of the United States by a resident commissioner at Washington.

The second session of the Second Legislative Assembly was held during the year and many laws were passed, among them what seems to be a very excellent code of civil procedure, which enumerates the courts of justice of the island as a supreme court, district court, municipal and justice courts, and makes general provisions respecting such courts and the judges thereof, provides for the time of commencing civil actions, for the parties to them, the place of their trial, change of venue, pleadings, judgments, executions, proceedings supplemental to execution, bills of exception and appeals. It provides that the pleadings may be in the English language, but those in writing must be accompanied by copies in the Spanish language and oral pleadings made through an interpreter. Other acts were passed preventing cruelty to animals, providing elaborately for oxen drawing ox-carts and requiring the driver to walk in front of the oxen; incorporating trustees of the Carnegie Free Public Library of Porto Rico; preventing and punishing the desecration of the flag of the United States by placing any mark or advertising thereon or publicly mutilating, defacing, defiling, trampling upon or casting contempt thereon either by word or act; creating an Insular Loan Commission and authorizing it to negotiate for loans; providing for marriages by regularly licensed or ordained priests or other ministers of the gospel, Jewish rabbis and judges of the supreme, district and municipal courts and justices of the peace, and the registration and recording of the certificates of marriage; making an additional appropriation for the Porto Rican exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition; elaborately amending the original law providing for the raising of revenues by direct taxation upon the real and personal property of the island.