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Show 14 REPORT OB COMMISSIONEB or INDIAN AFBA~RS. belongs. If thc salary of the employee'does not then fall in the class appro-priate to his work, it will be proper to recommend that it be adjusted thereto on July 1. It is also desired that the clerks within each class be graded accord-ing to their merits and efiiciency. Very respectfully, JAMERS womn GAEF~LUB,e cretary. The COMMI~SIONEOBF IXDIAtT A%FAIBS. Under the orders 20 demotions and 27 promotions were made. By promotions based on rather than guided by seniority, many clerks had risen to salaries far higher than was justified by the class of work they were doing, so that the Indian Office, in common with many other bureaus of the Government, often had clerks drawing a $900 or $1,200 salary sitting beside and doing either more work or higher grade worlr than clerks drawing $300 or $400 more. Such in-equalities were steadily demoralizing the force; they created a lack-luster feeling in the office due to the belief that time rather than , merit was to decide questions of advancement. The demotions were made with the utmost care, and I firmly believe that the majority of the clerks demoted not only recognized the justice of the action but the very large degree of mercy with which in all cases it was tem-pered. On the other hand, the 27 promotions made possible by this rearrangement have unquestionably given the office a feeling that merit would henceforth count. As a suggestive rather than a complete summary of the economies in time and expense, I list here the following improvements which the three factors of the reorganization have together brought about: 1. The incoming mail now reaches the desk of the clerk who first acts on it in a maximum time of twenty-four hours--one working - day-instead of in a maximum time of a week. All mail except that in the last delivery reaches the clerk's desk the same day. 2. The location of a letter or a whole case is now known in the mails and files division throughout its entire course, and so can be found at once. Formerly the search often took hours in the case of a single document and days in the assembling of needed documents if the affair under consideration had covered much of a period. 3. The old files contain literally tons of documents whose value ended within six months of their receipt. In the new files all ephemeral matter is self-indexing and where it can not cumber the permanent files. 4. Formerly letters s i p ~ don e day were, unless made "special," often not mailed till the nest day. Now all letters are mailed on the day, and often within the hour, they are signed. 5. The entire system of bookkeeping has been put upon a modern business basis. To answer questions as to frnids is now a matter of minutes or hours instead of days or weeks, and to prepare elaborate |