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man is notoriously indifferent about his right to vote, so citizenship has seemed a burden to many an Indian, and exemption from taxation a much more tangible good than the right to cast a vote. Many Indians quite capable of managing their property have resisted the proposal to give them certificates of competency and patents in fee to their land.

All this story of allotment and citizenship indicates in what-direction Congress hopes to have the Indian go. It is the "white man's road"-just the way of the ordinary self-respecting and self-supporting citizen who needs no special treatment from his country. Special laws for the Indian indicate the belief that he is not yet ready to go unaided.

A body of well-meaning people protest most bitterly against this whole assumption. We must not deprive the Indian, they say, of his ancient heritage of tradition and custom, nor interfere with his primitive mode of living. We must preserve his arts and his industries, his ancient culture and beautiful ceremonial.

It is true, indeed, that primitive life has many beautiful features one regrets to lose. Our thought is the richer for them, our sense of beauty the keener. But a race cannot be kept in its infancy any more than an individual child. Inexorable time is our adversary.

The sound of the first Spanish gun upon the shores of a West Indian island marked the vanishing of a great era. From that day to this there has been no possibility of keeping the Indian untouched by the ways of the white man; there has only been the question of the degree of his assimilation of those ways. As weeds spread faster than flowers, it would be beyond human power to withhold from the Indian the ills of our civilization, though we might be able to deny him the benefits. We must act, not in the hope of restoring him his old wild life, but in the hope of giving him the best of the new mode of living. This is the theory upon which the bounty of food and implements, lands, schools, and hospitals has been bestowed.

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'VERY Indian tribe has its conservative party which would cling to the old wild life, and its progressives who are ready to adopt the white man's ideas of education and industry and sanitation. There are the Cherokees who went with the other tribes to the Indian Territory and those still immured in a remote spot in North Carolina who refused to move. In the same way a remnant of the Seminoles still lingers in the Florida swamps, savage and yet inevitably dependent. The two branches of the Kickapoo tribe, one settling down half a century ago to agri

culture on the Kansas prairie, the other AND what have fifty years or more of

clinging to a marauding existence along the Mexican border-these stories illustrate the variety of the problems. Is there any occasion for wonder that the settlers or soldiers or administrators who dealt with these questions in their earlier, acuter stages made many a mistake and perpetrated many an injustice? Or that Comanche or Apache or Cheyenne, no longer on the war-path or hunting the buffalo, still has a long way to travel before the effects of the days of strife shall pass?

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UST as among the Indian tribes, so among their white friends are those who would have them go forward and those who would have them go back. But they are less clear in mind as to the matter than is the Indian himself. They often ask for him freedom and continued protection in the same breath. We are besought to leave the Pueblo undisturbed in his ancient culture and at the same moment to surround him with a higher degree of education and sanitation, improved farm machinery, and systems of irrigation. We seem vaguely to expect that an Indian lad will come back from Johns Hopkins Medical School to dance in the kiva and pray for rain; or that his sister will specialize in domestic science at Simmons and return to the trampling out of grain on a dirt floor. It is such muddy pseudo-thinking as this that gave the spectacle, not long ago, of peaceful Pueblo Indians, decked out in Sioux warbonnets and wrapped in machine-made

Government tutelage done for the tribes? Have we given full measure of good for the old ways that are bound to disappear?

Largest among the influences that have been thrown about the Indian is the Government school system. Three types have developed through these years of experiment to meet three different sets of conditions. Among Indians of settled habitation the day school, with its direct contact with both the child and his home, adds to the teaching of any public school the instruction in simple housekeeping and industry that is so marked a need. Among tribes of a more nomadic way of life the reservation boarding-school grew up; here children are fed and taught and cared for nine or ten months of the year, spending half the day in the school-room and half in the industrial processes of the school. This work is less easy of adaptation to their camp life, to which they return in the summer; it is on a larger. more mechanical scale. But some effects cannot fail to remain; those who lament that the educated Indian "goes back to the blanket" present only part of the story.

The system culminates in the big nonreservation boarding-school, where several hundred boys and girls in their teens follow a rigidly supervised routine as different from the aimlessness of camp life as can well be. Here the boy becomes painter or printer or mechanic; here the girl learns housekeeping and sewing and typewriting and nursing.

Mexican blankets, appearing in Washing-CAN they, do they, carry all this back

ton to plead for the preservation of their own tribal ways. The gods must have laughed at this-even the Tesuque rain gods.

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The Indian himself sees through these pretenses. His reticences often hide a deep comprehension and a shrewd appraisal. If the white man would have him play at council, he will do so gravely enough, concealing his amusement. once saw an old Indian of the pueblos reproduce in caricature his own performance as an outside attraction, a "barker," at a moving-picture show. There was a world of meaning in his pantomime. One gathered, too, his opinion of his audiences-falling somewhat short of adula

tion.

It would be well worth while to know the real Indian under his politic mask. The old Indian has a fine inscrutability; the younger generation is schooled in the white man's way and approximates much more nearly the white man's processes of thought. The old Indian fights against this change, but recognizes its inevitability none the less.

to their homes? Not all, of course; but the new generation knows a little more, does a little better, than the one preceding. We shall have cause for congratulation if this is true of the white race too.

At Carlisle, once the largest of the Indian schools, General Pratt's "outing system" involved the placing of Indian boys and girls in the homes of the whites for a portion of each year, that personal contact might teach its invaluable lessons of thrift and industry. To-day Carlisle as an Indian school is no more and the era of letting the Indian go is well upon us. But the closing of boarding-schools is bringing about the necessary contact through Indian attendance upon public schools. The pendulum has swung all the way around and has returned to its original position.

Schools were to train the children; landholding was expected to civilize the adult Indian. At first his friends anticipated that every Indian would become a farmer. But a human being is not a counter on a checker-board, and whole

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sale solutions do not solve. Some have, indeed, become farmers. Many have become owners of valuable oil lands, their business administered for them by the United States. Many others have in the same way become landlords-landlords without a care, with a Government agent to manage their properties and collect

their rentals. That the Indian is now lacking in initiative, in industry, in the sense of responsibility, is a direct result of this leasing system, which, with the best of motives, has proved a serious hindrance to development.

What incentive is there for the student returned from boarding-school to practice what he has learned? There is enough to support him without exertion; the Great White Father in Washington will not let him come to actual want.

So we teach the Indian to labor and encourage him to be idle; we thrust responsibilities upon him, see with dismay the effects, and remove them summarily. We meet his problems, not with intelli. gence, but with incoherent emotion. We are directing the course of three hundred

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thousand people without chart or compass. We are swept along by continued waves of popular sentiment. To-day we ride on the crest of a great wave of feeling; to-morrow we collapse feebly into the trough of indifference.

IT is easy to draw up a stirring indict

ment; recently a tempest was raging about the Indian Bureau and the epithets "bureaucratic" and "oppressive" were on every one's tongue. But the Indian Bureau and Congress are merely the instruments through which we, the people, do our will; and it is we who are at fault-you and I and the man down the street and the woman on the next block. We don't know what the Indian is, what he does, what he needs, where he is now, or where he is going. Yet every once in a while we work up a great popular movement, upset something in frantic haste, then forget all about the matter.

It is not that mysterious "they" to whom we love to ascribe all our troubles who have brought this about. There are no sinister rings, no malicious hidden

forces; merely an unromantic story of our own unwillingness to give sustained thought and effort. We would rather sob over the Indian than study him. We would rather read picturesque propaganda than learn simple facts. We have an Indian problem because we have no permanent policy. And we have no permanent policy because we haven't the knowledge necessary to create one.

We applaud the orator who says "Let my people go!" without reflecting whether they will go to the Legislature, the poorhouse, the penitentiary, or even -it's remotely conceivable-to work. But it's a fine phrase and we like the sound of it. We like to have our emotions played upon. We like the fine virtuous feeling that comes from making vigorous protests about something we don't in the least understand. We don't, we must admit, like to work; in that we can own our kinship to the Indian. Honest investigation, calm consideration, clear thinking, unemotional, untrumpeted study and effort these are what the situation demands. Can we supply them?

Why Complicate Business?

By WILLIAM ATHERTON DU PUY

HERE was a chain of drug stores that got the idea of simplified practice, of eliminating unnecessary varieties in its stock. It put it into operation. The first result was its ability to abandon seven of its nine warehouses. Employees were reduced 30 per cent. It saved a whole $5,000 a year that it had formerly spent for night work of people looking after stock. Loss from, unsold stock went down from $263,000 a year to $100,000. The number of stores went up from 143 to 216; the volume of business from $19,000,000 to $33,000,000. These stores made much more money.

The hat industry made a study of the field from the standpoint of the chapeaux men pull down on their heads, thus shutting off blood circulation to their scalps and making them bald. It showed that there were 3,684 styles and colors. Ninety per cent of all men who bought hats, however, made their selection from seven styles and ten colors.

Ten per

cent of novelty business necessitated the manufacture and maintenance of 3,614 styles and colors. Producing a distinct. type of hat costs money at the factory; stocking up on it at the wholesalers' and retailers' is expensive and takes lots of space. Millions were left over every

season to fade and die. There were acres of these hats scattered all over the country. The users of conservative hard-boiled lids have to pay high prices to carry the losses and all these unnecessary styles. Effort is being made to eliminate at least three-fourths of the varieties.

The International Harvester Company in 1918 made 876 types of two-horse wagons. Four years later, 16 types. The 16 do everything the 876 could do. The user gets at least a part of the saving from the elimination of the 860 varieties. The task of maintaining stock is vastly simplified at the factory and in Babbitt Brothers' general store in Flagstaff, Arizona. And when the user needs a brakeblock bolt it is much more likely to be standard.

It used to be that when mother bought a piano for purposes of development of the family embryo Paderewskis there were 103 kinds of stools to go with it, from which she might select. Mother was certainly not a connoisseur in piano stools, and it is doubtful if she appreciated the consideration that was thus being shown her. Finally, the industry. decided to try an experiment. It would allow its own experts who really knew piano stools to settle on the seven best

types. There is no evidence anywhere that anybody has missed the other 96.

A certain great shoe manufacturer was making three grades of shoes and 2,500 styles of each. He got to studying simplification, and decided to reduce his output to one grade with 100 styles. This cut the cost of production 31 per cent, increased production and the turnover 50 per cent, and made three dollars go as far as four had gone when John Consumer, urged on by the Missus, went to the shoe store just before school opened in the autumn.

A manufacturer of cutlery in Newark, New Jersey, took a cross-section of his business and found that he was making 3,000 styles. He got the simplification idea, and cut these to 250 styles. He found he could sell these so much more cheaply, due to greater economy of operation, that more boys were able to buy jack-knives, and his business was increased 200 per cent.

A survey of the waste in six of the major industries of the United States led to the conclusion that the average of preventable loss was about 40 per cent.

In one year preventable waste in industry, according to estimates of our own Department of Commerce, was about ten billion dollars. It all came out of the

pockets of the people, because it was added to the price of goods sold.

Now if this money had been saved, it would have been sufficient to pay everybody's taxes, Federal, State, and municipal, would have paid for all the automobiles bought that year in the United States and for the gas to run them, for all the homes built between Canada and Mexico. The annual loss by fire in the United States, so great that it appals the world, is less than five per cent of the annual loss from waste in industry.

The first organized impetus toward saving in industry and business was given during the war, when the War Industries Board made studies, pointed out certain wastes, induced industrials to get together for the elimination of unnecessary varieties, even went so far in the allocation of raw materials over which it had authority as to refuse them to manufacturers who failed to abandon wasteful practices.

After the war the Federated American Engineering Societies appointed a committee, of which Herbert Hoover was chairman, to attempt to save for the Nation these lessons of the war, to make a survey, and set down the facts with relation to the waste in industry. Thus was a record made.

In all this a certain important fact was developing. This was the fact that everybody profited by simplification. The infinite problems of the manufacturers were lessened by it. The wholesaler and retailer both found that most vexing detail, the keeping in stock of an infinite variety of materials, greatly lessened. Father saved on shoes and son on jack-knives. Everybody was putting more money in the bank. Everybody was for simplification. The problem was how to bring it about.

Mr. Hoover knew this situation very thoroughly when he became Secretary of Commerce. He knew that industry, the middleman, the consumer, wanted simplification. He evolved a plan for making it possible for them to get it.

Industry, he said, should simplify itself. The Government would assume no authority in the matter, but it would provide a means for co-ordinated action wherever groups wanted to solve their own problems. Nearly every important industry had a National association, which was a very handy agency through which it might work. The Department created its division of simplified practice. Were there any industries now desiring to work with the Government on simplification?

Here entered the manufacturers of paving brick, some 44 companies bound

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together in a National association. They went down to Washington to meet with this division of simplified practice of the Department of Commerce. Mr. Hoover addressed them, expounded his theory of the duty of the Government to furnish a center point of communication and discussion, of its duty also to exercise no authority, no compulsion.

These manufacturers talked about the 66 sizes of paving brick they were making. There was a chat around the table in the morning, and another in the afternoon. As a result of these, by the time evening came on the 66 sizes had been reduced to 6. In the future they would make but 6 sizes. An industry had thus easily made itself over, simplified its product, much to its profit. The public stood to benefit because paving brick would be cheaper, and most paving brick is paid for out of the tax money of the people.

Another group which appeared represented the manufacturers of bedsteads,

springs, and mattresses. (Did you ever springs, and mattresses. try to change the springs from one bed to another?) They were flanked by the Wholesale Furniture Association and the Retail Furniture Association, the Bedding Manufacturers' Association, and the National Council of Furniture Associations.

All these people knew that a bedstead of nominal four-feet-and-a-half width was almost never exactly that wide. They knew that there was no standard length, but fluctuations between 72 and 76 inches. The inconvenience to manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers in juggling all these sizes, keeping them in stock, finally getting them fitted together with mattresses and bedding to fit, was infinite. It was expensive. It was unnecessary. It resulted in the rendering a worse, and not a better, service to the

consumer,

So they talked the situation over at the National capital and reached a conclusion. They would eliminate all odd types of bedsteads, springs, and mattresses and manufacture just four widths, all of which should be exactly the same length. And he who cares to spread out the map of a nation and surmise on the detail that this one cut will eliminate between Maine and Catalina in the next

THE F. H. SMITH CO. fifty years may find ample exercise for

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his imagination.

There is the matter of bottles of milk left sitting on the doorsteps of the Nation along about daylight every morning. These bottles look pretty much alike wherever you see them. When the industry made a survey of itself, under the inspiration of the division of simplified practice, it found, however, that there

were twelve sizes of quart bottles, thirteen sizes of pint bottles, fourteen sizes of half-pint bottles, and ten sizes of quarter-pint bottles. Likewise there were ten sizes of pasteboard bottle caps. The manufacturers of bottles and the users, represented by the milk users' associations, held a conference. They decided that it would be better for all concerned if there were but three types of quart bottles, three types of pints, three types of half-pints, and no quarter-pints at all. These should be so made that the same caps would fit into all of them. The ten types of caps formerly made would be reduced to one. The whole problem of bottles and caps for milk would become about one-fifth as complicated as it used to be.

These are but examples of the sort of thing that is being done and can be done. The customary method is for the association representing the industry to make the study and report on unnecessary varieties. The manufacturers have the facts. Then the associations representing the distributers and the consumers are called in. So are all the interested parties brought together. The division of simplified practice is the co-ordinating agency, lends the weight of the Government to this thing which is in the interest of all parties concerned. Agreements are reached which are mutually beneficial to all.

In this way the bankers are reducing the number of sizes of checks, the builders the sizes of doors, the railways the types of engines, the makers the types of tacks, traveling bags, dinner plates, mowing machines, candy boxes, the diameters of macaroni, the dimensions of union suits.

Every venture leads toward the removal of complications from a none too simple twentieth-century existence. It is a stupendous task, however, to bring about changes in the established order, to secure the introduction of changes in so involved a thing as the modern commèrcial structure. Results do not come fast. In this campaign, however, there is one fundamental advantage. Simplification saves money all along the lineto the maker, the distributer, the consumer. It touches the pocket nerve. That fact exerts unrelenting pressure.

Individual American industry,' says Mr. Hoover, is remarkably efficient, but collective American industry is very considerably inefficient. Industry is, in fact, a Topsy. It has grown up of itself. It requires a survey, particularly from the collective standpoint. It should survey itself. This campaign for simplicity is little more than the presentation to it of an opportunity to do so.

In writing to the above advertiser, please mention The Outlook

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