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nomic facts. The responsibility of the government is to bring the Indians to the point where they are fitted to be independent, reasonably competent citizens. If the government through its officers has declared them so to be when in truth they were not, the social and economic problem remains, regardless of the legalistic status of those Indians.
Constructive Remedies. Probably nothing is to be gained from a further, more detailed discussion of the needs for accurate and illuminating statistics and records in the Indian Service. No efficient private or public agency concerned with the promotion of public health, education, or social welfare would attempt to analyze its problems and direct, control, and finance its work with such a paucity of reliable quantitative and qualitative information. No commercial enterprise of any such magnitude could expect to succeed without far more data respecting its operations than are available regarding the Indian Service. The helpful course, however, is not to dwell at length upon the defects, but to indicate the positive actions that are needed to meet the situation.
The Need for an Experienced Administrative Statistician. The first most fundamental step is to secure for the Indian Service a well trained, experienced, administrative statistician, capable of developing and installing an adequate system of records and statistics. The position should be classified as in the senior professional grade with a salary of from $5200 to $6000. If a person fully qualified for this grade can be secured, he can easily save the government several times the cost of his salary by increasing the effectiveness of the Service.
Qualifications of Statistician. The person selected should have a thorough and fairly diversified knowledge of the social sciences, particularly economics and sociology. Such knowledge is ordinarily the product of several years of graduate study in these fields, carried on in one or more of the leading universities of the country with well developed departments of economics and sociology or in one of the special schools designed to give advanced training in these subjects, although some have gained it through years of experience working in organizations dealing with economic and social problems.