Decentralization begun.-The new Navajo and Pueblo agencies afford the extreme example of local administrative autonomy and likewise of the regionalization of planning and administration into large areas where homogeneous conditions or common imperatives exist. Each has a staff organization that duplicates, in effect, the division director and supervisory set-up of the Washington office. The superintendent of each of these regions is charged with the responsibility for program making, for controlling the shift of personnel, and, aside from budgetary limitations and within broadly defined policies, for operating with the utmost possible freedom from Washington office intervention. In the Navajo case there are involved some 46,000 Indians (including the Hopis) and a 20,000-square-mile area, and the social-economic program is complex as well as urgent. In the Pueblo case 17 tribes, cultures, and more or less distinct civilizations are involved. Regionalization in this area is the means not merely, nor principally, to a more autonomous and better manned regional service, but rather, and principally, to a localization of program and of community action tribe by tribe, village by village. In California and in the Lake States of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan regional coordinators have been designated during the past year. These men act as advisers to the superintendents in their respective territories, assist them on problems of planning and administration, and serve as liaison officers between the office and the superintendents. While attention this year might seem to have been centered unduly on problems of organization and administration, it must be recognized that these matters are fundamental to the building of an im proved personnel and service. No organization can amount to anything worthwhile without the right kind of personnel, especially in. the subordinate positions of a wide-spread service; it cannot do itself justice in the absence of a right organization that operates on sound principles of human relationships and is conducted on a clearly defined business basis. At best, any Government service confronts a new employee with a bewildering maze of restrictive hurdles; at worst, it stifles initiative, breeds inertia, and serves as a refuge for the mediocre. In the past, and up to the present even, the Indian Office has tried to improve its personnel service by creating new activities and adding new personnel with little regard to the fundamentals of organization and administration. The recognition of superintendents as responsible administrators and the partly realized functioning of jurisdiction staffs with defined lines of delegated administrative responsibilities and authorities assume, therefore, a spe 20481-35- -9 cial significance in relation to Indian Service personnel policies of the future. Employees.-On July 1, 1935, there were 5,463 "regular" positions in the Indian Field Service carrying gross salaries in the amount of $8,600,088. This does not include the 293 positions set up for Alaska, organization chart positions in our irrigation service, nor any of the emergency activities. INDIAN EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES PLACEMENTS OF INDIANS Through local personnel committees on each jurisdiction, an inventory of Indians qualified for employment in the Indian Service has been set under way this year. Two hundred and eighty-six Indians have been appointed to regular permanent positions in the field, and the number of Indian employees in the Washington office has been increased to 32. Of a total of 5,463 regular classified positions in the field service, 2,037 are filled by Indians (Jan. 24, 1935). One man of Indian blood is serving as supervising coordinator of all Indian activities in three States. More than a dozen are serving as reservation superintendents, school superintendents, and principals. All of the field agents of the new Indian reorganization unit are Indians. Exact data are not available as to the number of Indians employed on various Public Works and Emergency Conservation Work projects, but approximately 90 percent of the total personnel employed are Indians. In-service opportunities through Indian assistantships now include positions in clerical work, education, extension, and forestry branches of the Service. The Health Division set up the new position of junior nurse to give employment as nurses to Indian women immediately upon completion of hospital training. At selected nospitals in the Service, 1-year employment in attendant positions is designed to give Indian girls, who expect to enter training, advance experience in hospital routine and the opportunity of earning money to meet their expenses during the period of their hospital training. This showing is perhaps a modest and an insufficient one; but it is believed that the procedure set up, when reinforced by the changes in the educational system later reported on, will shift upward, with yearly acceleration, the curve of Indian employment, while convincingly lifting the level of the personnel without regard to Indian and white distinctions. Placement of Indians.-The total number of Indians for whom employment was obtained through the Employment Division during the fiscal year 1935 was 11,568, or 21.7 percent more than in the previous year. Of this number, 7,750 were employed within the Indian Service and 3,818 were placed outside the Service, 2,016 with private employers and 1,802 on Government projects. Of the latter, 1,517 placements were effected directly through the offices of the National Reemployment Service to which employment officials of the Indian Service referred applicants. Indian Service placements increase.-Comparison of these figures with those for the previous year shows a decrease of 44.3 percent in placements outside the Indian Service and an increase of 116.3 percent, or 4,116, in the number placed by the Employment Division within the Service. This shift in relative volume of "outside" and "inside" placements was due principally to the greater opportunities for employment of Indians on reservations and at agencies, but was influenced by diminished opportunities for Indians elsewhere, due partly to preference shown non-Indians in some sections because of a popular belief that the Government was providing adequately for all Indians. In certain other areas, in contradistinction, it is probable that several hundred Indians were placed by offices of the National Reemployment Service without the fact being reported to the Indian Service. During the previous year employment agents familiarized Indians in many communities with the facilities of the Reemployment Service and of State and municipal employment services accustoming many Indians to utilize such agencies. Household work placements decrease.-In some of the urban districts, where placements have been mainly those of women and girls in household occupations, the demand for Indians at times during the year 1934-35, has exceeded the available supply, and placements have fallen off in consequence. This situation may be attributed largely to the increased opportunity for employment on reservations, which has given jobs to many Indian women and girls at agencies, schools, and hospitals, and has made it unnecessary for others to earn their own living away from home. A further important reason for a decline in the number of household placements is that definite efforts have been made by social workers attached to the Employment Division to raise the standards of such employment and to stabilize it; this has meant fewer placements but more continuous employment. Individualized placement work sought.-The various conditions described have required of employment officials more of selective individualized placements and less of mass recruiting of labor than heretofore. The employment of large numbers of Indians within the Service is making possible the compiling of individual records which will be valuable when employment opportunities on the reservations diminish or when labor demands of private business increase. Employment officials are assisting recently established local employment committees at each agency and nonreservation boarding school, in building from such data accurate lists of available Indians and their qualifications. EXTENSION AND INDUSTRY This division seeks to raise living standards among Indians by helping them to make wise use of their resources-which are often meager. Programs are based on physical inventories of reservation resources, and they are worked out locally in cooperation with the Indians. Indians lost ground in the extension-work field in 1934-35 because of the drought; on the other hand, some Indians gained, unexpectedly, through receiving drought cattle, bought by the Government in drought-stricken areas, and redistributed on 48 reservations where there was still feed. Of general benefit, as yet unrealized, will be the revolving loan fund under the Indian Reorganization Act, authorized but unappropriated for in 1934, and finally included in the appropriation act of 1935. Studies regarding the use of the fund were initiated, and rules and regulations under which loans are to be made are already being drawn up. FARMING The majority of the Indian reservations lay within the emergency drought areas during 1934. The acreage cultivated showed a decrease of approximately 15 percent since 1933, and the number of farms operated decreased from 30,278 in 1933 to 29,025 in 1934. The acreage planted in cereal crops showed a decrease of 7.92 percent, while yields decreased 38.7 percent. Other field crops showed a decrease of 18.8 percent. Cotton production showed a decline from 1933 of 56 percent, and sugar beets, 60 percent. The acreage in forage crops decreased 3,405 acres, and yields, 37.9 percent. A total of 25,840 acres was planted to gardens by 26,854 Indian families. Horticultural projects were the only farming activities showing an increase in spite of the drought, due to the fact that reservations on which such projects play a large role are either under irrigation or in areas outside the drought section. LIVESTOCK Cattle. The Indian cattle industry has been given a real impetus through the allocation of $800,000 to the Indian Service by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration for the purchase of purebred cattle from distressed breeders in the designated drought areas. Arrangements were also made with the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation whereby cattle were turned over to the Indians for the purpose of establishing foundation herds. The income from cattle. enterprises increased, some of which was due to sales made to the A. A. A. under its drought-relief program. The number of Indians owning dairy cattle increased during the year by 44 percent. The number of animals owned increased 57 percent. It is estimated that 28,538,622 pounds of milk were produced by Indian-owned animals and that 443,620 pounds of butter and 21,925 pounds of cheese were made. In the beef-cattle project an increase of 60 percent in the number of Indians owning cattle was shown. Their holdings increased 62,030 head, or 37 percent. Total income received from cattle: 1933, $266,698; 1934, $659,143. Sheep and goats.-Sheep and goats are important in the economy of large numbers of Indian people, especially in the Southwest. In the Navajo country the desperately overgrazed condition of the range was accentuated by drought, and as a relief measure $250,000 was secured from the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, with which 49,052 sheep and 147,787 goats were purchased. The drought also forced Indians on other reservations to sell sheep. In the following table a decrease will be noted from 1933, largely due to efforts of extension workers to bring the number of stock owned by the Indians more nearly within the carrying capacity of their Amount received from wool and mohair sales: 1933, $460,635; 1934, $505,919. |