The per capita system, in short, placed an already inadequate system under severe financial pressure.

    The resulting stresses manifested themselves in several ways: coercion, disease, and strife. Compulsion, regrettably, had generally been the way that both government and churches reacted to Indians' refusal to respond to new programs.

    Eventually, continuing missionary pressure on Ottawa led to the introduction of legislated compulsory attendance in Indian schools. Amendments to the Indian Act that were passed in 1894 and came into effect in 1895 authorized the government to require attendance by order in council.

    From the earliest days of the new industrial schools of the 1880s, parents had uneasily observed the unhealthy conditions in residential schools. Serious health problems placed an intolerable load on already overburdened staff at the schools.

    What led missionaries and doctors to create a situation that endangered schoolchildren's health were denominational rivalry and the competition for students, especially on the prairies. 'Is it not possible,' the head of Presbyterian missions asked the deputy minister, 'that behind all this lies the difficulty of getting pupils in order to secure the necessary grant for maintenance? The existence of the school is made to depend on the Government Grant, and if the healthy children cannot be secured then the unhealthy are taken in to the destruction of all.'