OCR Text |
Show 66 COMMISSIONER' INDIAN AFFAIRS. This plan is carried further, and persons seeking transfers are re-quired to submit photographs bf themselves to be used in connection with the consideration of their requests. A large number of the em-ployees of the service are not personally known to the office, and a photograph is of immeasurable service in the consideration of any change involving the employee in question. INSPECTION. The Indian field service is one of the largest and most complex un-der any department of the Government. It comprehends the per-sonal and nlaterial interests of more than three hundred thou~and Indians, involving a billion dollars' worth of property. The vital and human interests of these Indians are in immediate charge of 6,000 employees Property and human rights are intimately corre-lated in the governmental uplift of a dependent people, and that this work should be thoroughly accomplished is the task of this bureau. It is highly essential that the closest possible touch should be main-tained between the office and the field service, which can only be done through confidential and dependable reports from men especially se-lected and equipped for the work. Conditions are constantly arising ~ h i e hstr ilce deep into the vitality of the service, and unless they are prompt!y and intelligently brought to the attention of the office, dire results may follow. This situation was early recognized in my administration, and I I have sought to meet it. This could best be done through confidential inspectors with whom I could sustain intimate relations, and from whom I could obtain reliable information, placing me in full posses-sion of all facts affecting the integrity of this vast body of men and women. The Congress, in the Indian appropriation act, 1915, recognized that evils had grown up in the Indian Service, and to afford a means to remedy them provided- For the employment of six Indian Service inspectors, exclusive of one chief inspector, nt salaries not to exceed $2,500 per annum each and actual traveling expenses, nnd $3 per diem in lieu of subsistence when actually employed on duty in the Eeld. Appreciating the wisdom and desirability of procuring the mem-bers of this corps of confidential men in such a way as would not violate the true principles of the civil-service laws, yet afford such a latitude of selection as would procure a strong body of inspectors disassociated from personal interests, the Civil Service Commission, at the request of the Secretary of the Interior and myself, recom-mended to the President that schedule B of the civil-service rules be amended by adding to the list of exemptions from the competitive class in the Interior Department the following: |