$128.00 expense during one year for irrigating ten acres (3) $250.00 for cultivation 128.00 for irrigation $378.00 cost of care for land in one year Q. How are oranges picked off the trees? A. They are clipped with one-fourth of an inch of the stem left on the fruit; if not they are culls. (Pupil showed oranges as picked [in crude shape] with stem.) Q. Why are the stems left on the oranges? A. To preserve the fruit from rotting. Q. How much would be the profit for oranges from a ten-acre grove, fifteen years old, ten boxes to each tree, 108 trees to the acre, if it costs 30 cents per box to grow them besides the following expenses for each box; 7 cents to pick and haul to packing house, 43 cents free on board the cars; 17 cents for icing; 90 cents for freight; 20 cents to commission merchant; and 3 cents for cartage, if we sold the box in New York for $3.40? (The problem had been previously written on the black board and solved by the pupil, and at this point in the lessons pupil explained it.) Q. When fruit is gathered how is it cared for before shipping? A. It is placed in boxes and hauled in orange wagons to the packing-house, where it is cleaned, sorted, and packed, then placed in cars ready for shipment. Q. Where is the fruit shipped in order to get the highest prices? A. That depends on the market, and prices vary according to demand. of the fruit from California is shipped to Chicago, New York, and Boston. Q. What are the prices per box in eastern markets. The most A. That cannot be determined definitely. Prices for navels range from $1.75 to $6 per box. Valencias sometimes from $3 to $11 per box. Q. What is the shipping season from here? A. The shipping season for navels is from October to May; for Valencias from June to September, and seedlings from April to July. Q. How many cases of oranges were shipped from Riverside Valley during the past season and what were the returns? A. In 1906, 28,000 car-loads of oranges were shipped from Southern California, bringing $30,000,000. Growers got $12,000,000. Riverside growers $3,500,000. Railway company and other expenses absorbed the remainder. The following business letter was written by one of the pupils during the recitation. Mr. W. W. Watson, Chicago, Ill. DEAR SIR: I am shipping you today by A. T. & S. F. Ry. car No. 3029, 384 boxes of navel oranges, which are of first-class quality and were grown in San Jacinto section. Will you please endeavor to secure the highest market price, and when sold, remit to me the proceeds less your commission, which, I believe, is 7 per cent. of the gross receipts. Upon receipt of your bill of sale, if the markets are satisfactory, I will be glad to ship you more oranges. Very respectfully, Q. What is the value of full-grown orange trees? will pay a large interest on $100. The profits in one year Q. What is the value of some orange groves in Riverside Valley? A. They are valued at from $1,000 to $1,800 per acre according to localities as well as kinds and condition of trees. Valencias are as high as $2,000 an acre. Q. What are the diseases of orange trees and how are they treated? For A. For the insects which infect orange trees, fumigate at night or on dull days for red, white, and purple scales, as fumigating in the bright sunlight would burn the leaves. black scale the trees should be sprayed. Diseases rarely occur in orange groves that are well cared for. In gum disease the parts should be well scraped with a knife, then apply coal tar and ashes. For die back, cut the tree back and give a good dressing of barnyard fertilizer to stimulate the growth. (This answer was written on the blackboard by a pupil.) ROUND-TABLE CONFERENCE CHAIRMAN HON. FRANCIS E. LEUPP, COMMISSIONER OF INDIAN AFFAIRS WASHINGTON, D. C. Nearly everybody else has had a demonstration here, and now I want one of my own. These two boys (calling two pupils to the front) are from Oraibi, where the old hostile chief, 'Yukeoma, told me last year that his followers were not going to let us have any children from their Pueblo. I ventured to disagree with him: I thought we should continue to have Oraibi pupils in our schools. These two boys are here, as you see, and have been showing you what they have learned during the last year. (Quod erat demonstrandum.) These boys, like the others at Sherman Institute, are learning not simply the lessons taught in books, but more valuable things-how to carry responsibility, how to take care of themselves, how to hold their own against the whites. I am glad to see that monogram on the Sherman Institute banner (pointing to the Sherman flag containing a monogram composed of the letters S. I.). It comes pretty near being a dollar mark. Sordid as it may sound, it is the dollar that makes the world go around, and we have to teach the Indians at the outset of their careers what a dollar means. That is, in some respects, the most important part of their education. We are doing it everywhere. Last year we sent about forty boys from Fort Defiance-Navajo boys-into the beet fields of Colorado. They came back a month or two afterward with some $1,600 jingling in their pockets. Every one of these boys learned a valuable lesson. Moreover, every one of those dollars has been invested in sheep; and when those boys come to make their homes they will have something to start on-something they own themselves, and something that they got by their own labor. That is the reason we are trying to teach these Indians such practical lessons as we have had here today. When I want to say just a word about Miss Angel De Cora's address. it is printed I hope you will all read it, because Miss De Cora could not speak loud enough for all of you to hear, on account of the condition of her throat. Somebody came to me this morning and wanted to know if I had seen an article in the local press in which doubt was expressed whether she would have the support of the authorities in such work as she is doing. As the idea of reviving, or perpetuating, Indian art and its ideals was one of my earliest aspirations, and as I had to struggle hard with Miss De Cora to induce her to leave the private practice of her profession and come in with us and take up this task because I thought her better fitted for it than anyone else I knew, I feel that I am reasonably safe in prophesying that, thru this administration at least, she will have "the authorities" behind her. Now I shall be very much pleased to hear from anyone who has any critical or other thought to express, or any inquiry to make; and I hope you will forget all about our relative official rank, and treat me with perfect freedom. We are all here together as fellow-workers, standing on the same footing, trying to do something for our Indian people; and if we can help each other in an out-and-out talk in this way, it certainly will be a very well spent time for me and I trust will be for you. Question from the audience.-For how long a time has this idea of teaching the Indians to take care of themselves been agitated? Answer by Commissioner Leupp.—In a theoretical way, it has been worked on for a long time, but we have been trying lately to carry it out in a more practical fashion. For example, instead of herding the Indians together and keeping them away from the whites, we have tried to get them mixed in with the white people, in the hope that they will absorb a good deal of valuable knowledge from experience—not always the best that the whites have, but something of importance to their lifework. Instead of shutting them up in a hot house and trying to train them artificially by furnishing them with special implements and teachers and everything else, we are trying to make them learn right out in the open, as people of other races do. We sent last year a thousand or more Indians away from the reservations and into the world to tackle all branches of labor; we sent them into the Colorado beet fields; we sent them to dig on the irrigation ditches; we sent them where they could work at building railroad embankments, and in all those ways tried to accustom them to the working-habits of the white man. It does the boys and girls good to go out to work away from the schools even during the school months. I am perfectly willing to credit a school with all their children put out in this way, because it is quite as essential a part of their education as anything they can learn from books. My policy includes not only the sending of Indians out among the whites to learn their ways and break away from reservation life, but I have procured from Congress, as probably some of you do not know, two or three pieces of legislation covering other phases of the subject, but all pointing in the same general direction. One, for instance, permits us to give an Indian, as soon as we are satisfied of his capacity for taking care of his own affairs, his patent to his land in fee; another, to give any Indian, when we are satisfied of his ability to care for himself, his share of the tribal fund. In that way we are trying, just as fast as we can, to take each Indian out of the mass and set him on his feet as an individual citizen just as soon as he is able to take care of himself. We should do for the Indian precisely what we are doing for the white man-give him the rudiments of an education, teach him what money is, teach him the value of things, and then let him dig out his own future. Of course it means that a considerable number will go to the wall, but those who survive will be well worth saving. Q. What is being done in the schools and on the reservations in the way of temperance work? A. Only the general teaching of temperance. I think perhaps the most valuable work for temperance is to get hold of a conscienceless dramseller here and there and put him in the penitentiary. That is a more practical lesson, as a rule, than teaching what are the ingredients of alcohol and what effect it has on the human system. We were beaten in one big legal fight on this subject in the spring of 1905. But altho the dramseller in that case won, the Government had at least the satisfaction of learning that it had put him out of business and left him $1,500 in debt. If we could simply break up the trade of every one of these fellows, I think we could keep them from debauching the Indians with impunity. Q. I was reading an article the other day in which it was said that the present idea was to transfer the Indian schools from the jurisdiction of the United States Government to the care of the different states. Is that so? A. That is in a measure true, but of course no such sweeping statement should go unchallenged. What I am aiming to do is to take the non-reservation schools—which, as I said a day or two ago, are on the road leading downward-and turn them over to the state or local authorities. A plan I should like to pursue is this; to get the states to take any of the non-reservation schools which we can spare (and there are about twenty of these) with the understanding that they shall be preserved as educational institutions by the state or local authorities, and that for, say, the next ninety-nine years, any Indian who wants an education there shall have his tuition free-he to furnish his own board and clothing, books, etc. If I could induce the states to take them in this way, and the United States Government to give them up, I should achieve something I have been looking forward to for a long time. Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, started as an Indian school, and I believe it has in its charter as a college a provision that any Indian who wishes an education there can have his tuition free. That was what gave me my idea many years ago, for I saw that in that way we could get out of the tangle into which we have fallen. The non-reservation schools, most of them, are simply kept in existence by sending out runners in every direction to gather the children in by main strength, if they have to be half-torn to pieces in the process when two or more emissaries get after them at the same time. I want to get rid of that sort of thing as quickly as I can, and bring our work down to the point where every school will stand on its own two feet, and derive its support from the fact that it is actually needed and fills the want. The resolution of nineteen or twenty of our non-reservation schools into state schools for whites and Indians indiscriminately would tend to the same end as the labor program already described, of mingling the races together. With regard to the schools on the reservations, they will gradually merge into State and local institutions also. In time we shall put one reservation boarding-school after another out of commission. Then will come the question: "What shall be done with it ?" The local authorities will probably say, “We would like this for such-and-such an institution," and the Government will simply sell it for that purpose; or, if it is to be continued as an educational institution with such proviso as I spoke of, the Government would doubtless be willing to make a present of it to the state. Finally our little day schools, which are at the foundation of our whole system will in all probability merge, in the course of twenty or twenty-five years, into little village schools, continued by the local white government, but conducted for all the people alike; they will become a part of the great commonschool system of the United States, which has done so much to make our country what it is today. Q. You spoke of putting the Indian upon his own feet so that he can take care of himself and children. When we give the Indians land and tell them to work for themselves, it seems to me there should be someone to look after them and see that they progress in the right direction-someone to look after the old Indians. It seems to me that there should be white people on the reservation from whom the Indians can learn how to live, and do things properly not because they are forced to. A. If I understand you correctly, you have struck the right note. It is good, sound sense to let the Indians do their own self-improvement, just as far as it can be done. Bring in among them the whites who will guide them and steer them, withdrawing the guidance and steering as it becomes less and less necessary, and the Indians will learn in that way that they must take care of themselves. There is nothing in the world that does a boy or a girl, an Indian or anyone else, so much good as taking care of himself. The Indians will never get one step further up while someone else is taking care of them. My notion is to put them on their feet and let them do for themselves, with only a little encouragement— as we hold out a finger before the tottering child that cannot quite walk. Let them get on in that way instead of being tied to the apron strings of the Government. Q. If the government physician on a reservation could be made a health officer, authorized by law to see that things are kept clean and make the Indians understand that his sanitary rules come from the Government, I think the question of sanitation would be greatly improved. I find that the Indians on our reservation think that everything that comes from the Government is the thing to do. Often when I ask them to do things, they say, "Maybe Washington not like it." If the physician can be made a health officer, then he can go further, with the aid of the field matron or missionary, toward helping the Indian. A. That is a good idea. I shall be glad to have you write me a letter about it when I get back to Washington, and I will take it up at once. The agency physician is already, by virtue of his office, the health officer of the reservation, and ought to be so understood and respected; but if it be necessary to clothe him with more of the insignia of authority, I will give every physician a large parchment with a broad blue ribbon and a big red seal attached to it, and if that does not impress our red brother I do not know what will. Q. You spoke about giving over certain schools to other authority. Did you mean that the Indian pupils must furnish their own books, board, and clothes? A. I meant just that. The present practice of feeding and clothing and lodging an Indian free in order to make it easier for us to force upon him a degree of learning which he does not wish, and of which in most cases he can and will make no use, is all folly It only cultivates the spirit of pauperism in him. A grounding in the rudiments he should have, whether he seeks it or not; but everything above that he should aspire to, and be willing to work for, just as the white youth does. Q. Now in regard to the allotment question: Do you think the Indian ought to have been made to earn his own land just like others in this country? A. Most assuredly. I don't mean the old Indians but the able-bodied ones. We began all wrong, by giving the Indian his home whether he wished it or not, and then telling him |
