Page:LewisMeriam-TheProblemOfIndianAdministration.djvu/177

problems confronting the Indian Service. The fact is recognized that in several instances the rules and regulations promulgated by the Indian Service and the controlling agencies are made necessary by acts of Congress, some of them passed years ago when conditions were fundamentally different. The committee in studying purchasing should proceed on the assumption that Congress will be prepared to adopt such new legislation as is necessary to modernize the purchasing system, and it should draft such amendments and new legislation as it believes necessary. If the committee can present to Congress a well considered plan acceptable to the Indian Service, the Budget Bureau and the General Accounting Office, it seems entirely reasonable to assume that the approval of Congress for a more economical plan will be readily secured.

The present survey has not had time to make a detailed study of the purchasing system and the laws and regulations governing it, but it has repeatedly encountered evidence that the present system is defective. For example, at some boarding schools no dried fruit was available from the opening of school in September to late in the winter or early in the spring, and then the entire supply for the school year was received. At one school which is entirely dependent on irrigation for its farming and at which the main ditch from the river had not been kept in a reasonable condition of efficiency, the children were being fed mainly on meat, beans and potatoes, and poor bread. The poor quality of the bread the officers attributed to the ovens, surplus army or navy property. To difficulties incident to purchasing was attributed the failure to secure promptly a supply of vegetables necessary to balance the diet. Here the dairy herd had also run down so that the milk supply was extremely deficient. To lack of available appropriations was attributed the failure to secure dried or canned milk. All this was on a reservation where the tuberculosis rate is high and where the officers commented on the fact that, for some reason to them unknown, girls and boys who had previously seemed well suddenly declined rapidly from tuberculosis at adolescence.

On one reservation where stock raising is the dominant industry, the superintendent and the chief livestock man, both capable and energetic, asked the survey staff how to draw written specifications for the purchase of breeding bulls in such a way that the contract could safely be let to the lowest bidder. They did not want the