While this is being done I invite the attention of Congress to another, though perhaps no less an evil—­the importation of Chinese women, but few of whom are brought to our shores to pursue honorable or useful occupations.

Observations while visiting the Territories of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado during the past autumn convinced me that existing laws regulating the disposition of public lands, timber, etc., and probably the mining laws themselves, are very defective and should be carefully amended, and at an early day.  Territory where cultivation of the soil can only be followed by irrigation, and where irrigation is not practicable the lands can only be used as pasturage, and this only where stock can reach water (to quench its thirst), can not be governed by the same laws as to entries as lands every acre of which is an independent estate by itself.

Land must be held in larger quantities to justify the expense of conducting water upon it to make it fruitful, or to justify utilizing it as pasturage.  The timber in most of the Territories is principally confined to the mountain regions, which are held for entry in small quantities only, and as mineral lands.  The timber is the property of the United States, for the disposal of which there is now no adequate law.  The settler must become a consumer of this timber, whether he lives upon the plain or engages in working the mines.  Hence every man becomes either a trespasser himself or knowingly a patron of trespassers.

My opportunities for observation were not sufficient to justify me in recommending specific legislation on these subjects, but I do recommend that a joint committee of the two Houses of Congress, sufficiently large to be divided into subcommittees, be organized to visit all the mining States and Territories during the coming summer, and that the committee shall report to Congress at the next session such laws or amendments to laws as it may deem necessary to secure the best interests of the Government and the people of these Territories, who are doing so much for their development.

I am sure the citizens occupying the territory described do not wish to be trespassers, nor will they be if legal ways are provided for them to become owners of these actual necessities of their position.

As this will be the last annual message which I shall have the honor of transmitting to Congress before my successor is chosen, I will repeat or recapitulate the questions which I deem of vital importance which may be legislated upon and settled at this session: 

First.  That the States shall be required to afford the opportunity of a good common-school education to every child within their limits.

Second.  No sectarian tenets shall ever be taught in any school supported in whole or in part by the State, nation, or by the proceeds of any tax levied upon any community.  Make education compulsory so far as to deprive all persons who can not read and write from becoming voters after the year 1890, disfranchising none, however, on grounds of illiteracy who may be voters at the time this amendment takes effect.