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Show I REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIFCS. 9 A still larger field for increased coordination is to be found in the irrigation work which is going on now all over the West. Wit.hin the last ten years this subject has taken such strides in public inter-est as to astonish even those who are the most enthusiastic advocates of the artificial reclamation of our deserts. Irrigation has come to play so large a part in the agriculture of the West that it is almost impossible to separate the two ideas; and tracts of Indian country '' which were'turned into reservations a long time before there was any general knowledge of irrigation, and were then supposed to be com-paratively valueless except for grazing or mining, are now proving to be well adapted to general agriculture, even including some of. its more delicate forms, if water can be put upon the soil. The Indian Service has its own irrigation corps and system; but here again, as in matters affecting timber lands, the problems to be worked out on In-dian reservations are often so closely allied with problems involving large areas of country opencd to white settlement as to make the union of the Indian irrigation projects and the white irrigation projects really essential to the success of both. As far as possible, ' therefore, I am endeavoring to establish cooperative relations with the Reclamation ~'ervice. To that end, as described at length else-where, I am turning over to the Reclamation Service those proj-ects under my jurisdiction which involve a possible conflict between the interests of the Indians and those of white settlers in the neigh-borhood of Indian reservations, and in return the Reclamation Serv-ice has authorized the consultation of its expert engineers by the irrigation engineers of the Indian Service. Again, the Congress has responded during the.last year, in some measure, to a plan I have had in view of enabling Indians, under certain conditions which used to be considered fatal, to obtain the benefits of some of the great reclamation projects designed-primarily for whites, but actually including Indian lands in their broadest scope. By thus, in field after field, reversing the tendency toward differentiation, and starting a movement toward a closer unifica-tion of the Government's great developing forces, we can hope possibly to see in another generation a more perfect orga;ization of our national public enterprises, and a great deal less of the economic waste which has so long prevailed, through trro or three bureaus tramping practically over the same ground and maintain-ing separat6 sets of machinery for accomplishing a single purpose. 1 IMPROVEDIENTS IN OFFICE METHODS. When I entered upon the administration of my present office I found in operation there, intrenched by long usage, a system of au-thorizing expenditures in the open market which seemed to me to 1 offer an unusually promising field for improvement. Under Depart- |
