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Show l a R E P ~ TOF COMMISSIONBE f l M~D IAN DABS. to group the units of work of the Indian Office into three divisions and two offices. The land and accounts divisions are now running in what I believe to be their best form. The work shown on the education section of the chart still reports to the commissioner along three separate lines. The personnel, the general administration of schools and agencies, the buildings in which we house the children and employees, ihe food and clothes we buy for the children and the tools and machinery for their instruction and use, are all a part of the educational organism of the 4 service. The farmer, the trader' a?d even the agent are as much teachers as the persons in charge of the sclioolrooms. All persons and things on or about a reservation, in or out of the service, are educa-tional factors to be given their full weight in preparing the Indians to take a place in the civilized body. The proposed new education division, which will group three of the present divisions of the office into one, will lead to quicker and better results in the field along the lines of its several activities. - As to tbe law office, I have already intimated its equal relation to the legal questions continually arising in' the three divisions. The office of chief clerk is one which will even more be of increasing value to the service, and contains in its machinery the principal means by which the Indian establishment will go out of existence in the way most effective for good. On the one side is the routine of office and service organization, endeavoring always to make the office a lighter and more flexible machine for the benefit of the mas$ impor-tant side of the Indian establishment--the field service. The chief improvement in this section in the last year has been the complete reorganization of the mails and files division. The old folded fling and the cumbersome letter books have been abolished. The mastery of any one case used to mean consulting perhaps seven or eight letter boolrs for letters sent out and going to a distant part of the office where incoming letters had been filed; now, all the papers in a case are filed together, and the clerk who has to write a new letter con-cerning i b is able to lreep the whole case clearly in mind. The second section of the chief clerk's office handles mark which the Indian service is now doing in cooperation with other bureaus of the Government. In another part of the present report I have discussed at some length this important phase of our operations. It is to officer properly this organization that I wish I could have $5,000 more for salaries of present positions. I am happy to say that the improvement of quality is coming far more largely frank rrithin the office than from outside. In some cases me have brouglit in new men for higher positions with conspicuously good results; but even more conspicuons is the improvement in the office's own person- |