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Show 44 COMMIBSIOXER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. business in a small way when they have become expert mechanics. A few Indians occupy clerical positions in the factories. Indians of mechanical qualifications are to be placed in tractor factories to learn the construction and handling of @actors, that they may become important wage earners in the agricultural operations of the Weest. One nonreservation school alone at the close of the year entered a class of 18 in one of the leading motor factories, bringing its en-rolled number there up to 36. These young men on reaching the factory go into the "student corps," and besides working eight hours a day spend four nights a week on a factory course in mechanical drafting and technical auto-mobile engineering. Most of these Indian boys have made good. One of them upon completing his factory work had saved $750 in wages and was placed in charge of alocal branch. Another beat all rewrda in assembling a car and was given a western branch where his earnings approxi-mate $3,000 per year. Others have taken positions as branch man-agers and skilled laborers at excellent wages. A student from this school is in charge of a monotype on a New York paper. The Indian factory boys have furnished their full quota for mili-tary and naval service. A number of them are petty officers, one of this class receiving $71 a month on a United States torpedo-boat destroyer. Boys attending Indian schools of the Southwest, not needed at home to assist their parents during vacation, are provided with out-of-door work in the Arkansas Valley, from Rocky Ford, Colo., to Garden City, Hans., during the summer. Food, shelter, instruc-tion, the gratuities of school life, must be paid for at Rocky Ford, where Indians gain their first practical demonstration of the mone-tary value of service. The work is rapidly becoming self-supporting. The earning capacity of the boys has increased in such measure that the majority now pay transportation to and from school, and board while work-ing. Results have abundantly justified the effort put forth in carry-ing on the work. The earnings for 1916 by pupils from a group of five southwestern schools were approximately 623,000. Superintendents write that they have only a few Indians to recom-mend for employment off the reservations, as there is abundant work available. Fifty-six associations of returned students have sent in reports, showing them to be working for better babies, better homes, better farms, and many phases of social service. The mere enumeration of a few of the activities of the returned students gires but little idea of the importance of the work of Indians |