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106
Problem of Indian Administration

doing work in the several fields comparable with that of the Indian Service.

The recommendations contained in this report if carried into effect will involve a substantial immediate increase in appropriations for the Indian Service. The aggregate annual appropriations for this service for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1928, are approximately fifteen million dollars of which more than two million dollars are from tribal funds not the property of the government and more than two million more are reimbursable expenditures, mainly for irrigation and water supplies.[1] The survey staff has not had the time nor the facilities to estimate closely the amount that will be required for additional positions, for raising the salaries and qualifications of existing positions, for outlays for new construction, for bringing existing plant and equipment up to a reasonable standard and for materially improving the quantity, quality and variety of the food furnished the Indian children in boarding schools. The best available evidence, however, suggests that for a number of years at least ten million dollars additional will be required, if the Indian Service is to be raised to a standard approximating that of the Department of Agriculture, the United States Public Health Service and the efficient private agencies doing comparable work.

The position taken in making these recommendations is that it would be sound business policy for the national government to expend enough on the Indian Service to bring it to a reasonably high state of efficiency in order greatly to accelerate the rate at which the Indians may be absorbed into the dominant white civilization or be fitted to maintain themselves adequately in the presence of that civilization. The country apparently has its choice of alternatives; the first, comparatively small expenditures from national, state, local, or charitable funds spread over a very long period with a resulting slow rate of progress in winding up the Indian problem; the second, heavier expenditures over a much briefer period with greatly accelerated rate of progress and a much more rapid elimination of the distinctively Indian problem. The situation may

  1. For a statement of the finances of the Indian Service for 1903, 1913, 1923 and 1928, see Schmeckebier, Appendix 6, pages 509-36. The three brief summary tables from his monograph are presented as appendices to the present report, pages 183 to 186.