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Show the problem will mean the abolishment ofthe Office of Indian Affairs and the entire establishment dependent on it. But, passing from the moral point of view to the narrow one of personal interest, all the men and women who are doing good work will continue to be needed for a longer time to come than they will generally need their places or their pay. Theconcentration of the work means simply that, as workers drop out of the ranks through death or voluntary preference for other occupations, the vacancies they leave-will by degrees go unfilled, and the equilibrium between the amount that is still to be done and the number who are to do it ide thus maintained. , . I may here, in congluding my remarks on this subject, expand my suggestion in an earlier paragraph that the nonreservation schools might bet@ be abandoned by degrees than at one swoop, by adding that this gradual process would insure the survival for a number of years of a certain few of the schools which are still doing work of a value entitling them to special consideration. I have in mind one such in the interior of the country and one in the heart of the South-west, and one or two on the Pacific coast. For instance, at one of these is maintained an excellent business course, where ambitious young Indians can learn stenography, typewriting, bookkeeping, and other arts fitting them for clerical positions in which they not seldom excel; at another the boys of a mechanical bent--and of these there are a good many-learn enough about boilers and engines and the like to enable them to get work in the railroad roundhouses and the ma-chine shops which the rapid development of the West is bringing in its train; at another, great stress is laid upon the training of the girls for domestic ernploymenf, in homes wher; the quality of the service counts for more than its quantity. Moreover, a few of these , schools afford educational facilities to Indians so scattered as to put local groupings quite out of the question, yet tributary to commu-nities 'which either rule untaxed Indians entirely out of the com- . mon schools or give them a kind of reception more discouraging than flat exclusion. Is it too much to hope that the views here set forth may have your approval and be presented to the Congress in due season with a favorable recommendation, as outlining the positive policy of the' Department? LIQUOR TRAFmo IN m' INDm O O r n Y . The hope expressed in my last report that the sale of intoxicating liquors to Indians would be greatly diminished by the employment of special officers out of the fund appropriated for the suppression of the liquor traffic (34 Stat. L., 328) has been realized beyond all expectation. , |