public aid, and it does not, in my judgment, consist with the national
honor that they shall continue to subsist upon the local relief given
indiscriminately to paupers instead of upon the special and generous
provision of the nation they served so gallantly and unselfishly. Our
people will, I am sure, very generally approve such legislation. And I
am equally sure that the survivors of the Union Army and Navy will feel
a grateful sense of relief when this worthy and suffering class of their
comrades is fairly cared for.

There are some manifest inequalities in the existing law that should be
remedied. To some of these the Secretary of the Interior has called
attention.

It is gratifying to be able to state that by the adoption of new and
better methods in the War Department the calls of the Pension Office for
information as to the military and hospital records of pension claimants
are now promptly answered and the injurious and vexatious delays that
have heretofore occurred are entirely avoided. This will greatly
facilitate the adjustment of all pending claims.

The advent of four new States--South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and
Washington--into the Union under the Constitution in the same month,
and the admission of their duly chosen representatives to our National
Congress at the same session, is an event as unexampled as it is
interesting.

The certification of the votes cast and of the constitutions adopted in
each of the States was filed with me, as required by the eighth section
of the act of February 22, 1889, by the governors of said Territories,
respectively. Having after a careful examination found that the several
constitutions and governments were republican in form and not repugnant
to the Constitution of the United States, that all the provisions of the
act of Congress had been complied with, and that a majority of the votes
cast in each of said proposed States was in favor of the adoption of
the constitution submitted therein, I did so declare by a separate
proclamation as to each--as to North Dakota and South Dakota on
Saturday, November 2;[4] as to Montana on Friday, November 8,[5] and as
to Washington on Monday, November 11.[6]

Each of these States has within it resources the development of which
will employ the energies of and yield a comfortable subsistence to a
great population. The smallest of these new States, Washington, stands
twelfth, and the largest, Montana, third, among the forty-