their duties. The governor's salary is $2,600 as governor; the chief justice and associate justices are paid $3,000 each, and the secretary has a salary of $1,800 a year. The members of the Legislative Assembly receive $4 per day while in attendance at the session, and $4 for each twenty miles travelled going to and returning from the sessions.

A delegate to the House of Representatives of the United States is elected to serve during each Congress of the United States.

Sections sixteen and thirty-six in each township are reserved for public schools.

The regulations for the government of the other organized Territories of the United States, Arizona and New Mexico are essentially the same.

The unorganized Territories are Alaska and Indian Territory. In another class are the insular possessions, made up of Porto Rico, Hawaii, the Samoan Islands, Guam, and the Philippines.

The United States governs its unorganized territory according to the varying local needs. Its greatest Territory is Alaska. It has no general legislative body, but laws are passed by Congress for its government and the necessary officers are appointed by the President of the United States. The governor resides at Sitka. In 1884, the Territory constituted a civil and judicial district, and an act was passed by Congress for the organization and administration of its government. By this act the district judges have power to appoint commissioners throughout the Territory, who are practically the local authorities, acting as justices of the peace, recorders, probate judges, and attending to other duties relating to civil and criminal affairs.

The other unorganized Territory has peculiar problems which have not yet been satisfactorily solved. The five civilized tribes, Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and Seminoles, have their own government modelled after that of the State governments, but. the great increase in the white population of the Territory, which has no voice in

the government, has made this condition very unsatisfactory. Laws have been passed by Congress bringing this Territory into closer governmental agreement with the other lands controlled by Congress. An effort was made by the Curtis Law of 1898, to transfer the control of property from the tribes to the United States. By this law the President was given a veto over the acts of the tribal governments. It is only a question of time, although it may be a long time, before the lands will be assigned in severalty, and the Territory become organized like its neighbors New Mexico and Arizona, and then will be a demand for statehood, because its white population in 1900 was already more than three hundred thousand, and increasing with great rapidity.

With Oklahoma and Indian Territory we properly close our review of the process by which the Louisiana Purchase has, piece by piece, been amalgamated into the body politic of the United States. True, Oklahoma is not yet one of the States, and the future of Indian Territory is still on the knees of the gods; but before the close of the present decade it is probable that the last remnant of the vast territory ceded by France in the days of Napoleon will have gained statehood, either of itself or because of union with an existing State.

CHAPTER XXI

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF ADMITTING NEW STATES INTO THE UNION

A TERRITORIAL form of government is merely temporary; a State government takes its place as soon as circumstances make the change desirable. A request is generally presented to Congress by the delegate representing the Territory and this is referred to the Committee on Territories. If this reports favorably, an Enabling Act is introduced and passed. Delegates are elected to a convention in the Territory and this convention forms a constitution. This may be submitted to the people, and if it is accepted by them and found by Congress to fulfil the conditions of the Enabling Act, the State is admitted into the Union. This is the general and what might be called the normal course of action. There have been departures from it in almost every particular of its course in the admission of the different States.

The first State to unite with the original thirteen was Vermont. This had been practically an independent republic since 1777. On the 18th of February, 1791, an act was passed by Congress providing that on the fourth day of March, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-one, the said State, by the name and style of "the State of Vermont, shall be received and admitted into the Union, as a new and entire member of the United States of America."

Kentucky was under consideration at the same time for admission as a State of the Union. The District of Kentucky was a part of Virginia. The legislature of Virginia passed an act entitled: "An Act concerning the erection

of the District of Kentucky into an independent State," on December 18, 1789, by which consent was given to the erection of Kentucky into a separate State. A convention of delegates from the District of Kentucky petitioned Congress for admission into the Union as a new State under the title of the "State of Kentucky;" therefore that body enacted on the 4th of February, 1791, "That the Congress doth consent that the said District of Kentucky, within the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and according to its actual boundaries, on the eighteenth day of December, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, be formed into a new State, separate from, and independent of, the Commonwealth of Virginia." "And be it further enacted and declared, That upon the aforesaid first day of June, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two, the said new State, by the name and style of the State of Kentucky, shall be received and admitted into this Union as a new and entire member of the United States of America."

The third State to be admitted was Tennessee. This State was formed from the lands granted to the United States by the State of North Carolina on condition that one or more States should be made from this territory. The act for its admission contained some statements more definite than the earlier ones. The entire Territory was to form one State, and “the same is hereby declared to be one of the United States of America, on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, by the name and title of the State of Tennessee." It was to have one representative in the House of Representatives until the next census, and United States laws were to have the same force in that State as in the original thirteen States.

Congress was confronted by different conditions when an application for admission came from Ohio. Hitherto the States had been formed from land which had belonged to individual States, and they were regarded as belated members of the original group. With Ohio, Congress entered upon a definite policy in its admission of States which came