Mr. Wilbur's "Wards"
660 T H E COMMONWEAL October 30, 1929 m How does Dr. Sadler or anyone else know there is no such thing as Santa Claus?" Seriously, in spite of our diversion at the spectacle of two...
...Among these last the Committee of Fourteen occupies an honored place, not only because it has been at work during twenty-five years, but also because its concern is with a particularly malignant form of social vice...
...Santa Claus is as hardy an entity as you are likely to meet in a day's march through the human mind, but we cannot see how he is to keep his blood and bounce if he is labeled and ticketed as a specimen in the psychological museum...
...It is even difficult to prevent actual traffic in girls, although some of the cruder forms of this practice have disappeared...
...The idle adult Indians whom Secretary Wilbur speaks about are not uneducated tribesmen...
...Children have been herded into schools far away from their homes, often in uncongenial climates...
...WILBUR'S "WARDS" HE Lake Mohonk conference on Indian problems was notable chiefly for the memorandum submitted by the Secretary of the Interior...
...TWELVE O'CLOCK SHARP HE extent to which any large city is its own moral boss must remain unknowable...
...But it was not Mr...
...Will there continue to be if science takes him up in a really serious way...
...Yes, there is a Santa Claus--yet...
...660 T H E COMMONWEAL October 30, 1929 m How does Dr...
...The coupling of education with health here is significant...
...After ten years of schooling, Indian youths have been released ("released" is the word) to find that there is nothing on earth for them to do with themselves...
...Rhoades and Mr...
...and of course the visiting smalltowner, bent on a lark, begins to feel rubicund and energetic about midnight...
...Scattergood...
...They have been forced into a "civilized" way of living, but no help has been offered them to continue in that way of living...
...They are willing to work (all who really know the Indians testify to their efficiency as workers) but there has been no work for them to do...
...On the reservations, particularly in the Southwest, education and health have hardly been compatible so far...
...We think that the Indian himself must feel that the glory of future citizenship is mild stuff...
...Certainly his destiny has not before been at the disposal of men at once so sympathetic and so capable9 Habitually hungry, without control of his own tribal funds, deprived of his water rights, without a voice in selecting his children's place of education, it was high time that his friends appeared in official places...
...It is a fine tribute to the soundness of civic feeling that all such difficulties do not harden the urban conscience...
...Seriously, in spite of our diversion at the spectacle of two pedagogues invading Barrieland with heavy-footed tread, we confess to a certain uneasiness at all this...
...Their teachers have been handicapped by an unstable system which has shifted them about before they have been able to get their bearings...
...To it we probably owe the appointment of Mr...
...But the subject is especially interesting now because of the chance it affords to observe causative social influences at work...
...mittees which mount guard for one reason or another...
...This year the Committee's report calls attention to several startling facts...
...Secretary Wilbur shows that he has thought about these problems, and that he is willing to go all the way toward ending them...
...A long period of parsimony has been damaging...
...Rhoades and Mr...
...MR...
...New York, for instance, is accustomed to appreciative co6peration between its governing forces and various private com...
...The number of arraignments for prostitution in the Separate Court for Women...
...Trachoma and tuberculosis have gone with the A B C's...
...If they were hungry at home, at least they were amid familiar surroundings...
...It is very hard to stamp out prostitution, despite the fact that mankind universally realizes the degradation of the unfortunate women involved...
...Wilbur's statement of a policy to place "the Indian and his property upon the normal basis of contributing citizenship" within twenty-five years that makes his message of special importance...
...Successive migrations of work hunters, put on the move by changing industrial conditions, strain housing and police facilities to the utmost...
...Scattergood as Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs, it has been generally predicted that things would look up for the Indian...
...There would seem to be no obstacle in the way of immediate intensive campaigns looking to the procurement of work for these Indians9 9. . There is no reason why the attitude toward the educated young Indian should be different from that toward the white boy who has finished school," and particularly "The opportunity must be made for him...
...What the Indian will pay attention to in the Secretary's message is the statement that "the principal immediate problem is to do substantial justice to the Indian children of today so that they may have adequate educational and health opportunities...
...Wilbur as Secretary of the Interior, and with Mr...
...That devastating report on the Indian Administration by the Baltimore Institute of Government Research in 1928 revealed a system so inefficient and so unfair that it is almost a wonder the Indian has survived at all...
...With Mr...
...Most of them have had their ten years in the government schools...
...Sadler or anyone else know there is no such thing as Santa Claus...
...What counts is a satisfactory answer to his present needs...
...They have been as hungry at school as on the range, and unhappier...
...The responsibility for making that opportunity rests with the government, which is his guardian...
...Happily the report was not without effect...
...certainly it is the basis of the present administration's interest in and policy toward Indian affairs...
...Twenty-five years more of such bungling as has been going on, and there may be no Indian problem to speak of because there may be no Indians...
...He exists to fill stockings and drive reindeer, not to subserve some function of "dramatization...
Vol. 10 • October 1929 • No. 26
