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Insofar as practicable the local units or districts in an agency should be developed so that they can render well rounded service for the Indians of the district. They should become social centers to which the Indians will naturally come, and from which they may be effectively reached. The superintendents should, as a rule, work through these units and not directly with the individual Indian. The success of such a program will depend in no small measure on the capacity of the district or local people, notably the agricultural demonstration or other economic leader, the field public health nurse and home demonstration worker, the local teachers, and others who are stationed there.
The missionary boards or other officials of missionary projects
who are responsible for the activities of their local representatives
should exercise greater supervision over them, and should visit
them more frequently. They should be especially prompt to make
first hand investigations in the field upon receipt of complaints
from their local people regarding the misconduct of government
employees, and their failure to cooperate. The governing boards
should bear in mind the old adage that it takes two to make a
quarrel, and that the chances are perhaps even that the missionaries
are themselves as much responsible for the situation as are the
government employees. Such friction where it develops seriously
handicaps both the government and the missionaries. Rarely are
both sides broad enough and wise enough to keep their difficulties
to themselves. It is much more human for one or the other and
generally both, to talk to the Indians, who frequently take sides.
If the missionaries are of one faith or sect and the officers are of
another, and if the Indians are adherents of different denominations, it is possible, if action is not promptly taken, for most
regrettable factionalism to arise. Constructive work may be laid
aside for the sake of the fight. In isolated communities with few
contacts with the outside, the difficulties may reach an intensity
which seems almost psychopathic. The missionary boards should
first calmly and dispassionately make sure of the rightness of their
own representative, preferably by a first hand visit, and should
not back him to the limit on his ex parte statements. They may
discover that the difficulty had its origin in the fact that the missionary does not approve of the prevailing fashion in women’s
dress and thinks that the superintendent should prescribe the styles
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