unexampled increase of export
trade. Your early attention is solicited to this important matter.

The Commissioner of Education reports a continued increase of public
interest in educational affairs, and that the public schools generally
throughout the country are well sustained. Industrial training
is attracting deserved attention, and colleges for instruction,
theoretical and practical, in agriculture and mechanic arts, including
the Government schools recently established for the instruction
of Indian youth, are gaining steadily in public estimation. The
Commissioner asks special attention to the depredations committed on
the lands reserved for the future support of public instruction, and
to the very great need of help from the nation for schools in the
Territories and in the Southern States. The recommendation heretofore
made is repeated and urged, that an educational fund be set apart from
the net proceeds of the sales of the public lands annually, the
income of which and the remainder of the net annual proceeds to
be distributed on some satisfactory plan to the States and the
Territories and the District of Columbia.

The success of the public schools of the District of Columbia, and
the progress made, under the intelligent direction of the board
of education and the superintendent, in supplying the educational
requirements of the District with thoroughly trained and efficient
teachers, is very gratifying. The acts of Congress, from time to time,
donating public lands to the several States and Territories in aid
of educational interests have proved to be wise measures of public
policy, resulting in great and lasting benefit. It would seem to be a
matter of simple justice to extend the benefits of this legislation,
the wisdom of which has been so fully vindicated by experience, to the
District of Columbia.

I again commend the general interests of the District of Columbia
to the favorable consideration of Congress. The affairs of the
District, as shown by the report of the Commissioners, are in a very
satisfactory condition.

In my annual messages heretofore and in my special message of December
19, 1879, I have urged upon the attention of Congress the necessity of
reclaiming the marshes of the Potomac adjacent to the capital, and I
am constrained by its importance to advert again to the subject. These
flats embrace an area of several hundred acres. They are an impediment
to the drainage of the city and serio