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The Matter of Organization
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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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