board; farm-hands from $35 to $40 per month with board; and domestic servants from $20 to $30 per month and board. There is a great scarcity of private servants. Hundreds could find employment in the towns and on the ranches at good wages; our people being compelled to resort to Ch namen, who, at the best, are very unsatisfactory.

PUBLIC BUILDINGS.

All the public buildings in Arizona were erected and are owned by the Territory. They consist of the Territorial prison at Yuma, the insane asylum at Phoenix, the normal school at Tempe, and the university in process of construction at Tucson. Congress has never made an appropriation for any public buildings for this Territory. It has without stint appropriated liberally for rivers and harbors and public buildings for every imaginable place except Arizona. Why this young and prosperous Territory has failed to receive any recognition in this way, our people do not understand. They feel entitled to some consideration at the hands of Congress.

It would be but just, and certainly economical, for the Federal Government to erect a public building in Arizona. The Government is now paying a large rent for all the Federal offices, including the executive, judicial, and legislative branches, also public land, United States customs, internal-revenue, and post-offices. It probably aggregates $15,000 annually. It would certainly be wise economy in Congress to make a liberal appropriation for this purpose.

LEGISLATION.

I respectfully renew my recommendations of last year that Congress relieve our Territorial legislative assembly of the physical impossibility, now imposed by Federal statutes, of dispatching the business of the session with an inadequate clerical force. It should be increased by the addition of at least two clerks for each body. The present pay of $4 per diem is insufficient to cover necessary and actual expenses, and should be increased to $6 per diem. I also respectfully recommend that Congress be urged to make necessary apportionment for the survey of public lands in the Territory, so that the same may pass under private ownership and become taxable property.

PRIVATE LAND CLAIMS.

Surveyor-General Hise, of Arizona in his recent report to the Land Department, states there are Spanish and Mexican private land claims pending in his office covering 5,195,348 acres. The early settlement of these grants is in every way desirable in order that such claims, if any there be, as are just may be confirmed, and such as are fraudulent may be rejected, and the honest settler who in good faith located upon and paid the Government for his land may peacefully enjoy the same.

The proposition before Congress to transfer these claims to a special court created for this purpose, if passed, or any transfer of the settle. ment of these claims from the Interior Department and Congress to the judicial arm of the Government, can not fail to work incalculable hardship to our settlers, and consequent damage to the Territory. The people of Arizona most vitally interested are content to trust their rights where the law at present lodges them. It is only the land grabbers and their attorneys here who demand this legislation.

The Interior Department daily passes upon all the intricate questions affecting the rights of settlers and corporations upon the public lands. Why should claimants under alleged Spanish and Mexican grants be specially favored by the creation of a judicial tribunal whose exclusive jurisdiction extends only to the confirmation or rejection of their claims? The creation of such court would have the effect of placing the settler upon the defensive. He would be confronted with years of litigation and the endless expenses incident thereto, or be compelled to remove the cloud upon his title by paying the blood money exacted for a quitclaim deed. The history of a similar commission, created for California nearly forty years ago, is not of a character to inspire confidence in this mode of adjusting this class of claims, nor is there reason to believe the people of Arizona would fare any better under the operation of such a tribunal than did the early settlers in the Golden State. This court created, and the door is open to the unprincipled schemer to rob the people, which he would not be slow to enter. This character of claims would multiply until the entire Territory would be plastered over with them. Congress, in justice to the settlers of Arizona, who by honest toil have made her arid lands to bloom and blossom in productive fields, should force an early settlement of all these claims.

CONCLUSION.

I have at unusual length dwelt upon the subjects of agriculture and irrigation, believing them to be vital questions affecting this Territory. The source of Arizona's real greatness lies in her broad acres and their unquestioned ability to supply, abundantly, the necessaries of life. They will prove the impetus to her rapid development and become her crowning glory.

Very respectfully, yours,

C. MEYER ZULICK,

Governor.

Secretary of the Interior, Washington, D. C.

Hon. WM. F. VILAS,

REPORT

OF THE

GOVERNOR OF DAKOTA.

EXECUTIVE OFFICE, Bismarck, Dak., October 10, 1888.

DEAR SIR: Pursuant to request I have the honor to submit my report of the affairs and of the progress and development of the Territory of Dakota for the year ending June 30, 1888, as follows:

POPULATION.

The population of Dakota in 1860, according to the national census of that year, was less than 5,000; in 1870 it was 14,181, showing an increase during that decade of about 200 per cent.; in 1880 the number of inhabitants in the Territory amounted to 135,177, or an addition of 850 per cent. to the population of the previous census, and five years later this number had increased, as shown by a Federal census, to 415,610, a gain of more than 200 per cent. in the period between the years 1880 and 1885.

There has been no official count of the population since the Federal census of 1885, and the only figures available for the years 1886, 1887, and 1888 are estimates approximately correct, made by the Commissioner of Immigration, and based on the public land entries as reported by the ten United States land-offices within the Territory.

On June 30, 1886, the Commissioner estimated the number of Dakota's inhabitants to amount to 500,000 souls. A year later, June 30, 1887, the same authority gave the Territory a population of 568,477; and his estimate for the year ending June 30, 1888, indicates a gain, since the date of my last report, of 62,346, or a total population to-day of 640,823. This, of course, does not include Indians, Government employés, nor the other inhabitants of the numerous Indian and military reservations, which cover one-fifth of the entire area of the Territory. Add these, and the whole number of people within the boundaries of Dakota will approach closely to 700,000.

The proportion of foreign born to the entire population is about one in three, or at least that was the ratio in 1885, as shown by the Federal census, and there is no reason to suppose it has changed very much with the increase during the three years since that enumeration.

A majority of the settlers of foreign nativity are Scandinavians; next come the Germans, Canadians, Irish, and Russians in the order mentioned. One can scarcely name a foreign country which is unrepresented among the inhabitants of the Territory. Colonies of Jews from Poland, Mennonites from Russia, Turks from Roumelia, natives of Iceland, and representatives of nearly every clime, color, and religious sect upon the globe are here engaged side by side in that struggle for home and independence which marks the better civilization of the world.

But as the admixture of the brain and brawn of the world has produced in our nation a race which ranks in energy, intelligence, and all the distinguishing traits of civilization, just so has this commingling, in the settlement of Dakota, of the best elements of foreign and native ambition and enterprise yielded its return in a prosperous people, whose happy homes and well-tilled farms surround the thrifty villages, marked by towering spire of church and school.

SETTLEMENT OF LANDS.

PUBLIC-LAND ENTRIES IN DAKOTA.

Number of filings, etc., in each United States land district in Dakota for the year ending June 30, 1888.

Number of filings, etc., at the ten United States land offices in Dakota during each month for the year ending June 30, 1888.

There were 12,070 new filings under the general land laws during the year ending June 30, 1888, as follows: Homesteads, 3,828; pre-emptions, 4,208; and tree claims, 4,034.

The area newly filed on during this period was 1,838,142 acres.