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about. One can often see more in such a visit than the district employee could possibly report, especially where it is very evident that the Indian and the district man are not getting along.
The purpose of stating this situation clearly is not to blame the men of advanced age for not doing things which physically they are unfit to do. An attempt to do them would in some cases be almost suicidal. The purpose is to show the reason for recommending that retirement in the Indian Service be made permissible at age sixty and compulsory at age sixty-five with permissive extensions in exceptional cases to seventy. The employee at sixty should have the privilege of saying “the time has come for me to quit, I am too old to do the work,” and the government should have the privilege of retiring him upon its own initiative. The adoption of this provision would materially raise the average level of the superintendents in the Service.
Retirement Allowances Should be Revised. In this connection it should be pointed out that a mere change in the ages of retirement will not be very effective in inducing voluntary retirement unless the retirement allowances for the higher paid employees in the government service are made more nearly adequate, and have some relationship to the salary of the position occupied. The superintendent occupying a position paying $3000 with a comfortable house, lighted and heated, is going to hesitate a long time before he voluntarily applies for retirement on $1200 with no allowances. It is a whole lot easier to degenerate into a swivel-chair superintendent. The administration, too, will be slow to act especially if the superintendent has a long record of good service, and if the decline is gradual and not marked by any bad breaks.
Higher Qualifications for New Employees. Future appointments to superintendencies should be made with more consideration of the technical requirements of the positions on the particular reservations and the qualifications possessed by the available candidates. On certain reservations the economic possibilities are of an outstanding type, such as farming under natural rainfall, farming under irrigation, stock raising, or forestry. Other things being anywhere nearly equal, a person with good fundamental training and experience in these fields is likely to prove superior to someone whose chief qualifications for the work are his knowledge of the