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of the Saint Francis Mission School at Rosebud and the Glee Club at Haskell, are demonstrations of their capacity in music. They have the capacity to make real contributions to our American civilization; and as their humorists frequently remind us, they are after all the nearest approach to the hundred per cent American. With intelligent cooperative educational aid, there is every reason to look for a rich return for efforts expended in behalf of the Indians.
More adequate expenditures properly directed would not only tend to relieve fairly promptly the present suffering and distress. They would tend to raise permanently the economic efficiency of the Indians and thus remove many of the fundamental causes of ill health and poverty. The material return for this expense would come in the increased productivity of this element of the population. They would take their place in our American civilization with its high productivity and its correspondingly high standard of living. Already several far sighted merchants in the Southwest are showing their appreciation of the economic and commercial importance of increasing the productivity of the Indians. Here selfish and altruistic motives combine, because no section can be really prosperous if a large body of its population lacks the ability to produce and the resulting ability to consume. Markets for goods cannot be found unless the people produce enough to pay for them. This fundamental fact of economics is becoming increasingly apparent in the Southwest.
In favor of heavier immediate expenditures for the economic advancement of the Indians, the further fact should be cited that failure to seek much more rapid advancement for the Indians will speedily result in the development of difficulties more serious and less easily corrected than those which now confront the nation.
The white population in the Indian country is coming into closer and closer contact with the Indians. This movement appears inevitable and unescapable. As a consequence the Indians will have less and less opportunity to carry on a moderately independent existence. It is becoming more and more essential for them economically and socially to rise more nearly to white standards. Unfortunately the trend of American industrial development, as has been pointed out, makes it increasingly difficult for the Indians to make this transition as the country is more and more demanding fairly skilled and reliable workers and affords fewer openings for the illiterate, the unskilled, and particularly the casual.