The progress of Indian education and civilization began to be a real thing during Hayes's presidency. Most of the wars were over, permanency in residence could be relied on to a considerable degree, the Indians could better be counted, tabulated, and handled. In 1880, the last year of Schurz in the Interior Department, the Indian Office reported an Indian population of 256,127 for the United States, excluding Alaska. Of these, 138,642 were described as wearing citizen's dress, while 46,330 were able to read. Among them had been erected both boarding and day schools, 72 of the former and 321 of the latter. "Reports from the reservations" were "full of encouragement, showing an increased and more regular attendance of pupils and a growing interest in education on the part of parents." Interest in the problem of Indian education had been aroused in the East as well as among the tribes during the preceding year or two, because of the experiment with which the name of R. H. Pratt was closely connected. The non-resident boarding school, where the children could be taken away from the tribe and educated among whites, had become a factor in Carlisle, Hampton, and Forest Grove. Lieutenant Pratt had opened the first of these with 147 students in November, 1879. His design had been to give to the boys and girls the rudiments of education and training in farming and mechanic arts. His experience had already, in 1880, shown this to be entirely practicable. The boys, uniformed and drilled as soldiers, under their own sergeants and corporals, marched to the music of their own band. Both sexes had exhibited at the Cumberland County Agricultural Fair, where prizes were awarded to many of them for quilts, shirts, pantaloons, bread, harness, tinware, and penmanship. Many of the students had increased their knowledge of white customs by going out in the summers to work in the fields or kitchens of farmers in the East. Here, too, they had shown the capacity for education and development which their bitterest frontier enemies had denied. In 1906 there were twenty-five of these schools with more than 9000 students in attendance.