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Show as REPOET OF COMMIBSIO~R OF INDIAN AFFAIR^. supervisor of Indian employment, who fears that. the increased cost will cripple some of his most promising undertakings. He has found .. it very difficult to make the Indians appreciate the wisdom of paying for their transportation, as they can not understand why they should donow what they have never before been in the habit of doing; am3 like all ~r imi t ' i~peeo ple, they have only the vaguest comprehension of the need of putting out $1 to-day in order to getback $2 to-morrow. I t is equally hard to persuade the employers to assume this extra charge, as, ever since the hard times set in last fall, the supply of labor has been abundant all over the Southwest. A large number of Pimas. and Papagos and a few Maricopas went in January to Yuma, Ariz., and engaged in the construction work a'u the levee dong the Colorado River. Mr. Dagenett's report shows that their earnings when they returned home in March amounted to $10,641.70, of which $8.382.25 was paid them in cash after all commissary deductions. A good many Indians, mostly Apaches, have been employed on the various features of the Roosevelt reclamation project, and their earnings in each of the fiscal years 1906 and 1907 amounted to $&0,000; during the fiscal year just closed, in spite of handicaps aL ready mentioned, they amounted to $34,000. Arrangements are under way for the employment. of Indians on. the Two-Medicine irrigatipn project in the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, which is in charge of the Reclamation Service engineers. Mr. Dagenett reports that only 60 Pueblo Indians were sent ta the Colorado beet fields last fall, and that their earnings were about $3,000. Last spring 120 were sent; whose earnings amounted to $4,800. Althouih business conditions were somewhat depressing and labor plentiful in the Colorado beet districts, yet arrangements were made to give employment to all the Indians who could be ob-tained, owing to their satisfactory record of the year before. Requests were made of the bureau for the service of Indians 'during the cantaloupe season in the Imperial Valley in California and around Yuma and Phoenix, Ariz., but, owing to the difficulty con-cerning transportation, but little labor was furnished. About 100 Pima and Papago Indians were employed in the neighborhood of Phoenix during the cantaloupe picking season, at 20 cents an hour. The sheep industry has continued to furnish profitable occupation for many Indians, especially the Pueblos; and it keeps the Navahos so busy it home as to rob most outside offers of their tempting quality. The superintendent in charge of one of the great reclamation enter-prises in southern California has declared that his 500 Indian laborers were '<in the highest degree satisfactory " in the work of diverting the waters of the Colorado River into the Salton Sink, closing the break i r~th. e banks of the river and diverting its entire fall down its |