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-two in area.  The people of these States are already well-trained, intelligent, and patriotic American citizens, having common interests and sympathies with those of the older States and a common purpose to defend the integrity and uphold the honor of the nation.

The attention of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been called to the urgent need of Congressional legislation for the better protection of the lives and limbs of those engaged in operating the great interstate freight lines of the country, and especially of the yardmen and brakemen.  A petition signed by nearly 10,000 railway brakemen was presented to the Commission asking that steps might be taken to bring about the use of automatic brakes and couplers on freight cars.

At a meeting of State railroad commissioners and their accredited representatives held at Washington in March last upon the invitation of the Interstate Commerce Commission a resolution was unanimously adopted urging the Commission “to consider what can be done to prevent the loss of life and limb in coupling and uncoupling freight cars and in handling the brakes of such cars.”  During the year ending June 30, 1888, over 2,000 railroad employees were killed in service and more than 20,000 injured.  It is competent, I think, for Congress to require uniformity in the construction of cars used in interstate commerce and the use of improved safety appliances upon such trains.  Time will be necessary to make the needed changes, but an earnest and intelligent beginning should be made at once.  It is a reproach to our civilization that any class of American workmen should in the pursuit of a necessary and useful vocation be subjected to a peril of life and limb as great as that of a soldier in time of war.