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Problem of Indian Administration

of the Indian country these employees furnish the chief contact which the Indians have with the government and with the white race. Some of the day schools, for example, are literally outposts of civilization, miles away from agency headquarters,[1] miles away from the nearest white neighbors. There is altogether too wide a variation between the best and the worst employees. A few were found surprisingly effective, but others unfortunately were pitifully weak and ineffective. All turns on the ability of the teacher and the housekeeper, usually a man and his wife, out by themselves, far beyond the possibility of any really effective supervision. High standards must be maintained for positions such as these. It is a waste of funds to have qualifications so low that persons can meet the requirements who could not satisfy those set up by many states for positions in an ordinary school where the work is done under direct supervision.

Agricultural Demonstration Agents. In the section on general economics,[2] are discussed at length the present qualifications and duties of the so-called farmers. With the salaries and the entrance qualifications as they have been the surprising fact is that there are actually some really good ones. One would really like to know why a former teacher, a graduate of a normal school, and a student of agriculture, with a wife and seven children to support, is content to work for a hundred dollars a month and his house in a fairly isolated station; how he maintains his contacts with and secures cooperation from the state experiment station and the county demonstration agents; how he has actually succeeded in stimulating his Indians to go into that combination of turkeys, Rhode Island Red chickens, and milk cows, with some crop-raising on the side; how he succeeds in cooperating effectively with the missionaries and the day school teacher; how in general he has done things in such a way that one leaves the jurisdiction with the feeling that here is a demonstration of what can be done. The explanation doubtless is that he is a born teacher, fairly well trained, with a passion for agricultural development and without much thought for the tangible rewards of effort. Suppose since the passage of the Dawes

  1. The distances between field headquarters and sub-units are given in the outline of organization of the Indian Service in Schmeckebier, pp. 334-02.
  2. Pages 540 to 541.