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Show ~ , ' REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 8 points in the leased district to facilitate the movement of the crops of raw material to the factory; and procure from the steam railway . companies which traverse that general region such sidings and branch trackage as may be needed to bring the whole neighborhood'into transportation relations with the great world outside. It would be out of the question, obviously, to undertake an enterprise as extensive as this on no better foundation than the five-year leases now allowed by law; the lease period would have to be extended to twenty or ' twenty-five years in order to make the-project commercially practi- 1 cable; but, on the other hand, at the end of this longer period the capi-talists' are prepared to turn over to the Indians, as their own forever after, all the improvements put upon their premises. Let us see what this would mean to the Indians. The ordinary Indian male adult, able-bodied and in the prime of life, owning ~ ' 80 acres of land in an irrigation country,has at least 60 acres more than he knows what to do with, and in saying'this I am giving the Indian the benefit of a very liberal estimate of his competency. His wife and children are, of course, incapable of taking care of their farms, and would be unable to make effective use of their crops if thiy were. This leaves the head of the family with a large area'of unproductive farm land on his hands. If the Department says to him, '' You must farm 20 acres yourself, but may lease all the rest," he runs some pretty serious risks, even with the agent to help him, in finding tenants; for the chronic white '' leaser " is not the charac-ter of man who helps to build up the country-in which he settles, or who troubles his mind much about the futnre; he is without capital or other resources, and his one thought is to skim the cream of its productivity off the soil in five years, and then move on to the next newly opened neighborhood and repeat the performance. When he returns the land to its Indian owner its sod cover will have been broken and the best of its energies worked out of it, while the im-provements he leaves behind him in the way of buildings, fences, wells, etc., will barely su5ce to satisfy the technicalterms of his lease. Now, suppose that the Indian, instead of having to take his chances with tenants of this sort, could rent three, four or five hundred acres of his family's lands in excess of what he is competent to till him-self, to a company with large capital who has set up within a few miles. of his home a faciory for converting his crops into a com-mercial staple which is always in demand at good prices. .Suppose that the'company not only pays him rent, but improves and extends his irrigating facilities; puts his soil into rich condition and keeps it so by intensive farming; employs experts to show him how to do . the same thing with his 20 acres that it is doing with the surplus |
