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Show 28 REPORT OF THE DOMMISSIONEB OP INDIAN AFFAIRS. pupil in the boarding schools. In other words, we can give school privileges to four or five young Indians for what one costs us at a boarding school; or, to make a more sweeping caldation, we are spending to-day at least twice as much as could be be profitably spent to give our whole Indian school population the facilities they actually need, even keeping in mind the need of a few boarding schools still, and this in spite of the fact that at the larger part of our day schools we provide a hot noonday lunch for the little people and help out the parents in clothing them suitably for attendance. No taxpayer would begrudge the expenses, in itself considered, if it really accomplished any lasting good; but when the influence of the existing system in one direction is nullified or possibly reversed in another, the resultant shows that what started as a well-meant extravagance has degenerated into a pernicious waste. Although, as some of my incidental tests have discovered, public sentiment at large is ready for the application of common-sense principles to the Indian educational scheme, it must not be assumed that any disturbance of a well-rooted abuse can be accomplished without some trouble. The resistant force of error long persisted in is great. For example, the Government's original investment in the non-reservation schools would, if footed up, represent some $3,000,000. There are not a few prudent economists who would put forward the amount of this fixed capital, as an argument for continuing to spend an equal sum every two years on current expense account for some-thing we do not need. Again, there will come to the front the persons, either public men or prominent private citizens, who have promred the establishment of the nonreservation schools in or near their home towns, expecting that these institutions would stand forever as monuments to the authors of their being and as show places to attract visitors. The townspeople in many cases will doubtless object to any movement on the part of the Government calculated to alter the character, reduce the prestige, or imperil the local profitableness of their particular Indian school. '<Abandon all the rest, if you must," they will plead, "but spare ours." Yet again, there will come opposition from an element in the com-munity who are public-spirited in a general way but uninformed as to details and not much interested in them; who believe, as a fun-damental tenet in the creed of good citizenshig, in " education," without having considered the real meaning of the term; who, visiting a public institution of any sort, found their judgment of .its merits on the neatness of the lawns and the cleanliness of the buildings, the orderly way in which the inmates march to and from their meals or recite formulas in concert in the assembly hall. They |