OCR Text |
Show stipend; but what he is paid for, after all, and what he struggles to accomplish, is simply teaching-not producing concrete and profitable results. Onthe other hand, the boss hired by the beet-sugar company for the same purpose goes in to make his Indian gang produce crops of a certain weight and value, and he will not rest till he does it: because he knows that the solid dollars waiting for hi at the paymaster's office depend upon what he can show to his employers, on t.heir scales or in their balance sheet, as a substantial reason for their continuing him in their service. Sordid as the old saw may look at the first glance, it is money that moves the world-money, as interpreted into such elemental terms of living as food, clothing, shelter. What makes the capitalist invest in the corporation is the desire to .make his accumulated wealth earn him more of the comforts and luxuries of life; what the corporation works for is to keep itself alive by satis-fying the investor; wliat the boss works for is to support himself and his dependents by satisfying the, corporation that employs him, and what the laborer works for is to keep himself and his family fed and clad by satisfying the boss. That is where the Indian comes in when he is the Iaborer; and not all the governmental supervision, and all the schools, and all the philanthropic activities set afoot in his behalf by benevolent whites, if rolled- into one and continued for a century, would begin to compare in edncational value and efficiency with ten years of work under bosses whose own bread and butter depend upon their making him a success as a small farmer. What astonishes me in the indifference of some of our lawnlakers toward the project I have outlined here is its obvious relation to the upbuilding of the frontier country-the same great West for which the Congress has usually so kind s. side. That fact, however: spurs my courage to keep up the agitation in the face of obstacles; for I am bound to believe that the members who now regard it askance have not yet fully grasped its secondary significance, The proposi-tion is not simply one for t,he benefit of the Indians, but quite as much for the upbuilding of thestates concerned. Montana, for ex-ample, is far more sparsely settled than she ought to be; she is just emerging from the most primitive stage of her economic develop-ment- the occupation of her great plains by cattle companies. -Until the pastoral gives way to the wiculturd interest, the corporate lessee to the individual landowner, and the picturesque cowboy to the small farmer who tills the soil with his own hands, the State can not take the forward stride which would befit her territorial magnitude and her undoubted resources. For beet culture the agricultural ex-pe& s seem to agree that she has, in certain neighborhoods, almost ideal conditions as to soi1,and climate. The introduction of this industry, |