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Show 8 REPORT OR THE COMMISSIONER OR INDIAN AFFAIREI. would lift him above the level of a pauper and fit him to become a useful member of society. His manhood would be appealed to. An attempt would be made to teach him self-reliance and self-respect. He would be induced to acquire habits of industry and to forsake the ways of idleness. Necessity, and necessity alone, would do this. He must want before he would work; he must come to the bitter realiza-tion that idleness and hunger go hand in hand, and understand that he must put his hand to the plow if he wouldlive. Hb rations would therefore be stopped and he would be offered work instead; work that " he could do; not aimless work, but work with an object; not made to I dig a hole one day and fill it up the next simply for the sake of doing so; that would deprive labor of the very essence of its worth-a definite t purpose. He would be put at something which would give him not only a present living, but which he could see would bring him benefit in the future. He would be paid fairly and promptly for his work, and " then left to provide for himself. i Accordingly in the early part of January of the present year agents . I were advised that rations would no longer be issued to the able-bodied, + but that the money thus saved would be used to pay them in cmh for lsbor in building roads, dams, or reservoirs for storage of water, or any other work that would give them profitable occupation for the present and lead to their self-support in the future. Men were to only were the agents to employ the Indians to the fullest extent them- ,! be paid $1.1.25 a day of eight hours, and men with teamv $2.50. Not - selves, but they were to use all of their influence in finding employ-ment forthem in the surrounding country; and it was suggested to them that they should devote the greater part of their time to the civ-ilization of their Indians, leaving the minor details of administration . + to subordinates, and that an Indi'au agency should be a bureau for employment of Indians rather than a center for the gratuitous distri-bution of supplies. 1 As this has been the subject of considerable animadversion and been stigmatized as a plan for the encouragement of contract labor, it is proper that some particular notice should be taken of these strictures, and the false charges refuted. As to the assertion that the plan is to 9 hire out adult male Indians as contract laborers, nothing can be fur- . ' ther from the truth. In all the correspondence there is not even a > hint of such a thing. It wlts simply suggested to agents that they should circulate the information in the surrounding country that laborers could be obtained at their agencies, if such were the fact. If they could not give the Indianv work themselves, they were to find it " for them if they could: And that was their plain duty. If reference is made to the Black Hills Treaty, already quoted, it will be seen that. the Government obligates itself to aid the Sioux Indians in finding employment. The agents, therefore, in publishing the fact that there |