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Show 10 REPORT OF THE COM3IIESIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. ment rules specific authority had to be obtained from the Secretary of the Interior for every purchase of any kind or amount. This routine necessitated the writing of at least four letters for each au-thority granted. First, the agent or superintendent gave a detailed statement of just what was wanted, with its price, purpose, an& necessity; second, the Office transmitted this to the Department, re-peating iI1 substance what the agent had said and recommending that the authority be granted; third, the Department answered, re-peating for the most part the language used by the Office; and, fourth, the Office in, turn notified the agent that authority had been granted, again using the language of the agent's original requegt- I t was found, on examination, that more than 4,000 of the requests. . , for authority which came in each year were for expenditures of les;. than $500; and, of this 4,000, three-fifths were for sums less than $100, and two-fifths for less than $50 each. So few of the requests were ever denied by the Department that sending them over for ap-proval amounted to little more than mere formality. Accordingly it was recommended, on March 11, 1905, that power to authorize ex-penditures in open market, not exceeding $500 in value at any one . time, be delegated to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. The Department recognized at once the cumbersomeness of the ex-isting system and admitted its power to delegate the desired au-thority, but was not ready to approve so sweeping a change. How-ever, to afford some relief, on April l, 1905, authority was delegated to the Commissioner to make and authorize expenditures in the open market not exceeding $100 at any one time, with the understanding that all requests for expenditures should be carefully scrutinized an3 all authority limited to the actual necessities of the Service. The results of two years of trial of this plan proved so satisfactory that the Department on March 9, 1907, extended the authority so as. to make it cover amounts up to $500, as I had originally recom-mended. .As work on open market expenditures increases at the rate of 10 per cent each year, it could hardly have been disposed of by the lim-ited clerical force of the Office without the relief given by these two authorities. Another change which will cut off considerable work both in this Office and the Treasury is connected with payments for supplies. Hitherto supplies purchased annuany by contract for delivery at the several agencies and schools--such as beef, oats, wrn, hay, ice, eggs, vegetables, wood, etc.-have been paid for on papers issued by the respective agents and superintendents. Therefore, after delivery of his goods, a contractor must wait f6r his money until the papers issued for them had reached Washiigton, been examined by the In-dian Office and allowed by the Treasury and a draft returned to him. |