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Show 1 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. 27 I by wagon across the open country from the railroad, sometimes over mountain divides and across treacherous water courses, it will be understood that mere subsistence makes a serious drain on slender purses. I am trying now to marshal the statistics of living expenses st the several points where the conditions are thus difficult, with:a view to differentiating their salary lists, even for the same classes of work, from the lists at points with a normal environment. I t may be argued that at the remote places there are fewer demands upon I an employee for indulgence in small luxuries--social enjoyments, I and the like-and that this fact must be held to compensate for some ! of the harder features of the situation; but, on the other hand, when ! it is remembered that in order to reach a dentist's chair, or do an ' hour's business a t a bank, or consult a lawyer, it'may cost $25 or $30 to reach the nearest town and as much more to return, one begins to glean some real sense of what is meant by expensive isolation. OBTAINING EMPLOYMENT FOR INDIANS. The Indian employment bureau, which was the first new feature ' ! established after I became commissioner, st3 ibntinues its task, under the management of Supervisor Dagenett, of finding work and wages for Indians who are willing to leave the reservirtions and stay even temporarily among white people. The advantages gained by the ! Indian who embraces such opportunities are not confined to the pecu- ~ niary profits; he acquires some understanding of the need of regu-larity and method in the prosecution of any line of labor-a con-sideration wholly alien to the mind of the most industrious Indian who is thrown into contact only with. people of hi? own race; and there is no other means of teaching him this principle so effectively as by bringing him bodily into the atmosphere of competitive activ-ity developed in a white community. As soon as an Indian has grasped the conditions and shown a disposition to hunt up work for himself, the bureau takes its hands off him and does all it can' in .other ways to encourage his new-born spirit of independence. Heretofore considerable employment has been found for the South-western tribes of Indians on projects of various sorts along the line I of the Southern Pacific Railway, as they enjoyed the privilege of free ~ transportation over that road in going to or coming from any work I in which the Southern Pacific Company was interested; but in Feh. ' n a r y last the privilege was withdrawn in obedience to the recentll. enacted "rate law." The railroad managers said that they would 1 . gladly reestablish free transportation for the Indians if permitted to do so by the Interstate Commerce Commission, hut the commission: when the case was laid before it, construed the law as forbidding such special privilege. The cheapness with which he could move his Indian laborers from point to point was of great assistance to the 6326849-3 I |
