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of their positions, but the employees generally are as good as could be expected for the salaries paid. Frequently the number of positions is too small for the work to be done. The survey staff estimates roughly that it would take almost twice the present appropriations for the Indian Service if each of its major activities were brought abreast of the better if not the best practice of other organizations doing like work for the general population. In many, if not most cases, the survey is not revealing to responsible officers and employees conditions they do not already know. Their administrative task is to do the best they can with such funds as they are able to secure. The function of the Institute was conceived to be to compare their achievements with the practicable ideal.
In the report the effort has been made to explain the difficulties under which the Indian Service has labored. These explanations are given not in an attempt to evaluate the personnel but to show what changes must be made if the Service is to be raised to the plane of efficiency necessary to accelerate the progress of the Indians.
The members of the survey staff wish me to say clearly in this letter that in almost every activity of the Indian Service they found wide variation between the best and the worst. The best at times approaches the ideal; frequently the survey staff has been able to take as their standard for comparison the attainments of the Indian Service itself. The worst often falls far below the normal.
Inevitably where the variations between the best and the worst are wide, illustrative examples cannot be interpreted as applicable to the Service as a whole. Illustrations have been given both from the better and the poorer jurisdictions, and the effort has generally been made to give some indication as to which the example refers. It follows, therefore, that no fair-minded person will select the best in an effort to commend the Indian Service or the poorest in an effort to condemn it. The object of the survey has been not to take sides for or against the Indian Office, but to endeavor through constructive criticism to aid insofar as possible in pointing the way toward marked improvement in this important activity of the national government. That was our understanding of your request. We hope that our work may be of service to you in the difficult