DOCUMENT A: FIRESIDE CHAT (ORIGINAL)
On A Sunday night a week after my Inauguration I used the radio to tell you
about the banking crisis and the measures we were taking to meet it. I think that
in that way I made clear to the country various facts that might otherwise have
been misunderstood and in general provided a means of understanding which
did much to restore confidence.
Tonight, eight weeks later, I come for the second time to give you my report; in
the same spirit and by the same means to tell you about what we have been
doing and what we are planning to do.
Two months ago we were facing serious problems. The country was dying by
inches. It was dying because trade and commerce had declined to dangerously
low levels; prices for basic commodities were such as to destroy the value of the
assets of national institutions such as banks, savings banks, insurance
companies, and others. These institutions, because of their great needs, were
foreclosing mortgages, calling loans, refusing credit. Thus there was actually in
process of destruction the property of millions of people who had borrowed
money on that property in terms of dollars which had had an entirely different
value from the level of March, 1933. That situation in that crisis did not call for
any complicated consideration of economic panaceas or fancy plans. We were
faced by a condition and not a theory.
There were just two alternatives: The first was to allow the foreclosures to
continue, credit to be withheld and money to go into hiding, thus forcing
liquidation and bankruptcy of banks, railroads and insurance companies and a
recapitalizing of all business and all property on a lower level. This alternative
meant a continuation of what is loosely called "deflation," the net result of which
would have been extraordinary hardships on all property owners and,
incidentally, extraordinary hardships on all persons working for wages through an
increase in unemployment and a further reduction of the wage scale.
It is easy to see that the result of this course would have not only economic
effects of a very serious nature, but social results that might bring incalculable
harm. Even before I was inaugurated I came to the conclusion that such a policy
was too much to ask the American people to bear. It involved not only a further
loss of homes, farms, savings and wages, but also a loss of spiritual values—the
loss of that sense of security for the present and the future so necessary to the
peace and contentment of the individual and of his family. When you destroy
these things you will find it difficult to establish confidence of any sort in the
future. It was clear that mere appeals from Washington for confidence and the
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mere lending of more money to shaky institutions could not stop this downward
course. A prompt program applied as quickly as possible seemed to me not only
justified but imperative to our national security. The Congress, and when I say
Congress I mean the members of both political parties, fully uderstood this and
gave me generous and intelligent support. The members of Congress realized
that the methods of normal times had to be replaced in the emergency by
measures which were suited to the serious and pressing requirements of the
moment. There was no actual surrender of power, Congress still retained its
constitutional authority, and no one has the slightest desire to change the
balance of these powers. The function of Congress is to decide what has to be
done and to select the appropriate agency to carry out its will. To this policy it has
strictly adhered. The only thing that has been happening has been to designate
the President as the agency to carry out certain of the purposes of the Congress.
This was constitutional and in keeping with the past American tradition.
The legislation which has been passed or is in the process of enactment can
properly be considered as part of a well-grounded plan.
First, we are giving opportunity of employment to one-quarter of a million of the
unemployed, especially the young men who have dependents, to go into the
forestry and flood-prevention work. This is a big task because it means feeding,
clothing and caring for nearly twice as many men as we have in the regular army
itself. In creating this civilian conservation corps we are killing two birds with one
stone. We are clearly enhancing the value of our natural resources, and we are
relieving an appreciable amount of actual distress. This great group of men has
entered upon its work on a purely voluntary basis; no military training is involved
and we are conserving not only our natural resources, but our human resources.
One of the great values to this work is the fact that it is direct and requires the
intervention of very little machinery.
Second, I have requested the Congress and have secured action upon a
proposal to put the great properties owned by our Government at Muscle Shoals
to work after long years of wasteful inaction, and with this a broad plan for the
improvement of a vast area in the Tennessee Valley. It will add to the comfort
and happiness of hundreds of thousands of people and the incident benefits will
reach the entire Nation.
Next, the Congress is about to pass legislation that will greatly ease the
mortgage distress among the farmers and the home owners of the Nation, by
providing for the easing of the burden of debt now bearing so heavily upon
millions of our people.
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Our next step in seeking immediate relief is a grant of half a billion dollars to help
the States, counties and municipalities in their duty to care for those who need
direct and immediate relief.
The Congress also passed legislation authorizing the sale of beer in such States
as desired it. This has already resulted in considerable reemployment and
incidentally has provided much needed tax revenue.
We are planning to ask the Congress for legislation to enable the Government to
undertake public works, thus stimulating directly and indirectly the employment of
many others in well-considered projects.
Further legislation has been taken up which goes much more fundamentally into
our economic problems. The Farm Relief Bill seeks by the use of several
methods, alone or together, to bring about an increased return to farmers for their
major farm products, seeking at the same time to prevent in the days to come
disastrous overproduction which so often in the past has kept farm commodity
prices far below a reasonable return. This measure provides wide powers for
emergencies. The extent of its use will depend entirely upon what the future has
in store.
Well-considered and conservative measures will likewise be proposed which will
attempt to give to the industrial workers of the country a more fair wage return,
prevent cut-throat competition and unduly long hours for labor, and at the same
time encourage each industry to prevent overproduction.
Our Railroad Bill falls into the same class because it seeks to provide and make
certain definite planning by the railroads themselves, with the assistance of the
Government, to eliminate the duplication and waste that is now resulting in
railroad receiverships and continuing operating deficits.
I am certain that the people of this country understand and approve the broad
purposes behind these new governmental policies relating to agriculture and
industry and transportation. We found ourselves faced with more agricultural
products than we could possibly consume ourselves and with surpluses which
other Nations did not have the cash to buy from us except at prices ruinously low.
We found our factories able to turn out more goods than we could possibly
consume, and at the same time we were faced with a falling export demand. We
found ourselves with more facilities to transport goods and crops than there were
goods and crops to be transported. All of this has been caused in large part by a
complete lack of planning and a complete failure to understand the danger
signals that have been flying ever since the close of the World War. The people
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of this country have been erroneously encouraged to believe that they could
keep on increasing the output of farm and factory indefinitely and that some
magician would find ways and means for that increased output to be consumed
with reasonable profit to the producer.
Today we have reason to believe that things are a little better than they were two
months ago. Industry has picked up, railroads are carrying more freight, farm
prices are better, but I am not going to indulge in issuing proclamations of overenthusiastic assurance. We cannot ballyhoo ourselves back to prosperity. I am
going to be honest at all times with the people of the country. I do not want the
people of this country to take the foolish course of letting this improvement come
back on another speculative wave. I do not want the people to believe that
because of unjustified optimism we can resume the ruinous practice of increasing
our crop output and our factory output in the hope that a kind Providence will find
buyers at high prices. Such a course may bring us immediate and false
prosperity but it will be the kind of prosperity that will lead us into another tailspin.
It is wholly wrong to call the measures that we have taken Government control of
farming, industry, and transportation. It is rather a partnership between
Government and farming and industry and transportation, not partnership in
profits, for the profits still go to the citizens, but rather a partnership in planning,
and a partnership to see that the plans are carried out.
Let me illustrate with an example. Take the cotton-goods industry. It is probably
true that 90 percent of the cotton manufacturers would agree to eliminate
starvation wages, would agree to stop long hours of employment, would agree to
stop child labor, would agree to prevent an overproduction that would result in
unsalable surpluses. But, what good is such an agreement if the other 10 percent
of cotton manufacturers pay starvation wages, require long hours, employ
children in their mills and turn out burdensome surpluses? The unfair 10 percent
could produce goods so cheaply that the fair 90 percent would be compelled to
meet the unfair conditions. Here is where Government comes in. Government
ought to have the right and will have the right, after surveying and planning for an
industry, to prevent, with the assistance of the overwhelming majority of that
industry, unfair practices and to enforce this agreement by the authority of
Government. The so-called anti-trust laws were intended to prevent the creation
of monopolies and to forbid unreasonable profits to those monopolies. That
purpose of the antitrust laws must be continued, but these laws were never
intended to encourage the kind of unfair competition that results in long hours,
starvation wages and overproduction.
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The same principle applies to farm products and to transportation and every
other field of organized private industry.
We are working toward a definite goal, which is to prevent the return of
conditions which came very close to destroying what we call modern civilization.
The actual accomplishment of our purpose cannot be attained in a day. Our
policies are wholly within purposes for which our American Constitutional
Government was established 150 years ago.
I know that the people of this country will understand this and will also
understand the spirit in which we are undertaking this policy. I do not deny that
we may make mistakes of procedure as we carry out the policy. I have no
expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest
possible batting average, not only for myself but for the team. Theodore
Roosevelt once said to me: "If I can be right 75 percent of the time I shall come
up to the fullest measure of my hopes."
Much has been said of late about Federal finances and inflation, the gold
standard, etc. Let me make the facts very simple and my policy very clear. In the
first place, Government credit and Government currency are really one and the
same thing. Behind Government bonds there is only a promise to pay. Behind
Government currency we have, in addition to the promise to pay, a reserve of
gold and a small reserve of silver. In this connection it is worth while
remembering that in the past the Government has agreed to redeem nearly thirty
billions of its debts and its currency in gold, and private corporations in this
country have agreed to redeem another sixty or seventy billions of securities and
mortgages in gold. The Government and private corporations were making these
agreements when they knew full well that all of the gold in the United States
amounted to only between three and four billions and that all of the gold in all of
the world amounted to only about eleven billions.
If the holders of these promises to pay started in to demand gold the first comers
would get gold for a few days and they would amount to about one-twenty-fifth of
the holders of the securities and the currency. The other twenty-four people out
of twenty-five, who did not happen to be at the top of the line, would be told
politely that there was no more gold left. We have decided to treat all twenty-five
in the same way in the interest of justice and the exercise of the constitutional
powers of this Government. We have placed everyone on the same basis in
order that the general good may be preserved.
Nevertheless, gold, and to a partial extent silver, are perfectly good bases for
currency, and that is why I decided not to let any of the gold now in the country
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go out of it.
A series of conditions arose three weeks ago which very readily might have
meant, first, a drain on our gold by foreign countries, and second, as a result of
that, a flight of American capital, in the form of gold, out of our country. It is not
exaggerating the possibility to tell you that such an occurrence might well have
taken from us the major part of our gold reserve and resulted in such a further
weakening of our Government and private credit as to bring on actual panic
conditions and the complete stoppage of the wheels of industry.
The Administration has the definite objective of raising commodity prices to such
an extent that those who have borrowed money will, on the average, be able to
repay that money in the same kind of dollar which they borrowed. We do not
seek to let them get such a cheap dollar that they will be able to pay back a great
deal less than they borrowed. In other words, we seek to correct a wrong and not
to create another wrong in the opposite direction. That is why powers are being
given to the Administration to provide, if necessary, for an enlargement of credit,
in order to correct the existing wrong. These powers will be used when, as, and if
it may be necessary to accomplish the purpose.
Hand in hand with the domestic situation which, of course, is our first concern is
the world situation, and I want to emphasize to you that the domestic situation is
inevitably and deeply tied in with the conditions in all of the other Nations of the
world. In other words, we can get, in all probability, a fair measure of prosperity to
return in the United States, but it will not be permanent unless we get a return to
prosperity all over the world.
In the conferences which we have held and are holding with the leaders of other
Nations, we are seeking four great objectives: first, a general reduction of
armaments and through this the removal of the fear of invasion and armed
attack, and, at the same time, a reduction in armament costs, in order to help in
the balancing of Government budgets and the reduction of taxation; second, a
cutting down of the trade barriers, in order to restart the flow of exchange of
crops and goods between Nations; third, the setting up of a stabilization of
currencies, in order that trade can make contracts ahead; fourth, the
reestablishment of friendly relations and greater confidence between all Nations.
Our foreign visitors these past three weeks have responded to these purposes in
a very helpful way. All of the Nations have suffered alike in this great depression.
They have all reached the conclusion that each can best be helped by the
common action of all. It is in this spirit that our visitors have met with us and
discussed our common problems. The international conference that lies before
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us must succeed. The future of the world demands it and we have each of us
pledged ourselves to the best joint efforts to this end.
To you, the people of this country, all of us, the members of the Congress and
the members of this Administration, owe a profound debt of gratitude.
Throughout the depression you have been patient. You have granted us wide
powers; you have encouraged us with a widespread approval of our purposes.
Every ounce of strength and every resource at our command we have devoted to
the end of justifying your confidence. We are encouraged to believe that a wise
and sensible beginning has been made. In the present spirit of mutual confidence
and mutual encouragement we go forward.
Source: President Roosevelt’s “fireside chat,” May 7, 1933.
New Deal
DOCUMENT D: HOT LUNCHES FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN (ORIGINAL)
One million undernourished children have benefited by the Works Progress
Administration's school lunch program. In the past year and a half 80,000,000 hot
well-balanced meals have been served at the rate of 500,000 daily in 10,000
schools throughout the country.
This work of rehabilitating underprivileged children is supervised in all instances
by competent WPA workers, who while earning money with which to clothe and
feed their own families, are given an opportunity for wider training to equip them
to take their places in private employment when the opportunity arises. On March
31, 1937, the projects employed nearly 12,000 needy economic heads of
families.
The School Lunch Program, like all other WPA projects, must be sponsored by
tax-supported public bodies. Boards of Education usually are the official
sponsors of the school lunch programs. Many civic organizations and individual
patrons, however, may, and often do, render very valuable assistance by
cooperating unofficially with the legitimate sponsors. The active interest of
Parent-Teacher Associations all over the country, has been an important factor in
the universal success with which these projects have met.
School lunch projects have aroused such community interest that in some
instances, South Carolina, for example, members of various civic organizations
and other responsible citizens have formed Advisory Councils, which actively
support this work by contributions of food, equipment, and sometimes money.
The school lunch projects were originally intended to serve only children from
relief families, but experience taught that growing children need a hot mid-day
meal irrespective of their financial condition. It was found also that many children
from homes where there was an adequate supply of certain kinds of food, were
not receiving the proper kind of diet. It has become the policy in many
communities, therefore, to serve a hot lunch to all the school children who care to
partake. Parent-Teacher Associations have been largely responsible for making
arrangements in many instances, whereby parents of children, who can afford it,
contribute food supplies. This, however, is generally voluntary, and in no case is
any distinction made in the lunch rooms between those who do and those who
do not make a contribution.
Many of the children, who are fed on WPA projects, come from homes where
milk is a luxury. In some instances, teachers have reported that nearly all their
pupils who partake of the school lunch, have no meal during the 24 hours of the
day other than that furnished on the project. For many children, who are required
to leave home early in the morning and travel long distances after school hours
to reach their homes, the WPA lunch constitutes the only hot meal of the day. In
an even greater number of cases, children come to school with either no
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breakfast at all or a meager one at best.
Only those who have had occasion to witness the type of lunch that many of the
children were bringing to school before the inauguration of the WPA, can fully
understand or appreciate the value of those projects.
Insufficient or improper food takes not only a physical toll, but a mental toll as
well. Children after all are sensitive beings. In some instances, children, from
underprivileged families have been known to slip away along to eat their lunches
in some secluded spot--ashamed to have the other school children witness their
meager fare.
In some of the poorer communities of Georgia, for example, many of the children
brought only cold bread or baked sweet potatoes. Sometimes a child's lunch
consisted of a biscuit and a piece of fried fish. If any meat at all was included, it
was usually fat white meat. Prior to the inauguration of the WPA school lunch
projects, a cold sweet potato or a poorly cooked biscuit spread with fat
constituted the usual lunch of many children in the rural communities of South
Carolina.
Before the institution of the WPA projects, many children, in certain sections of
Colorado, were reported to be bringing for lunch a piece of corn bread with
molasses or a cold pancake. The common kind of meat found in the children's
lunches--when there was meat--was salt pork. In many of the rural districts the
lunches which were brought, were frozen or half-frozen by noon.
Even after the establishment of the WPA project, an effort was made to have
each child in certain Colorado communities bring his or her own bread from
home to supplement the hot dishes. This had to be discontinued because the
bread that the children brought was not fit to eat. It was dirty, dry and even
mouldy.
South Carolina, which feeds more than 77,000 children daily in over 2300 public
schools, has the largest WPA school lunch program of all the states, except New
York State, in which New York City along foods a daily average of 37,230
children.
All school children, who desire the hot lunch in South Carolina, are permitted to
partake. Sponsors and co-sponsors make contributions of everything from
money to beef on the hoof, and the parents of children, who can afford to do so,
also contribute small amounts of food or money. Parents' weekly contribution for
a child may be a box of cocoa, a can of tomatoes, a quart of milk--or if they
contribute money, it is usually 10 cents--2 cents a day.
School attendance has increased and classroom work has improved in every
school in South Carolina where the school lunch project operates. Satisfactory
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gains in weight have been noted in previously undernourished school children. In
Greenville County, for example, children, who were weighed at the beginning of
the project, have been weighed again at the end of each five-week period. The
records showed an average gain in weight of from three to eight pounds per child
for the first five-week period.
Teachers in Decatur County, Georgia, declare that the school attendance for
children, who are fed on three WPA school lunch projects, has increased 80
percent as a result of the wholesome, well-balanced, nourishing noonday meals
which are served daily in the schools.
Through the cooperation of the Decatur County Health Commissioners, a weight
chart was made for each child, and records have been taken at regular intervals.
The average increase in weight has been shown to be from two to five pounds
per month. Higher marks also have been made, some children being promoted to
A--or high section of their classes--for the first time since they entered school.
Greater general alertness, better deportment, and an improved attitude toward
teachers and classmates are among the many manifested gains.
A school lunch project in Bryan County, Georgia, employed three WPA workers
to prepare and serve hot mid-day meals to 200 children. The food was furnished
by the local community through donations, supplemented by supplies from the
Surplus Commodities Division.
Henry Ford, who has displayed an active interest in the health and welfare of his
neighbors in Bryan County where he has an estate, has taken over on his own
payrolls the three workers formerly paid by the WPA. He also has supplied the
school lunch project with seventeen dozen each of certain dishes, spoons, and
other tableware and has furnished tables and chairs, so that all the children may
sit down together for their noonday meal.
In many Vermont towns, responsible groups of people, including the ParentTeacher Associations and service and civic clubs, have cooperated with the
WPA to provide a valuable hot lunch project and have been rewarded by
watching the steady mental and physical development of the children fed.
Weight records on Vermont projects taken at the beginning of the school lunch
project and again at the close, show an average gain of from two to four pounds
per child. Teachers also report an increase in energy, greater accomplishment in
school work, and a marked improvement in the general appearance of the pupils.
Educators, health officers and state officials in Minnesota agree that increased.
weight, great concentration in the classroom and fewer absences from school are
some of the immediate gains resulting to children who are being fed on the WPA
school lunch projects. They state that the hot lunch is of particular value to the
children of unemployed parents whose food budget has been reduced to a
minimum, or below the amount required for proper growth and health protection.
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For many of the children in Minnesota and elsewhere, the school lunch is not
only the best, but sometimes the only adequate meal of the day.
To further this work of overcoming malnutrition and preventing its further
progress, certain public tax-supported bodies in Minnesota have sponsored allied
projects for which the WPA has supplied the labor. In some instances, milk
stations provide mid-morning lunches for the needy; and in several poor districts,
where children are known to leave home on almost empty stomachs milk and
graham crackers are served at school before the beginning of classes.
In New York City alone, one WPA project employs 2,346 persons who serve free
lunches to thousands of pupils in over 1,000 schools. Health records show
uniformly marked improvement in the children's physical condition, and scholastic
records show a parallel upward trend. Teachers state that pupils, who once
exhibited sullen unresponsiveness, have become alert, interested, and in many
cases, above the average in intelligence.
Dr. Louise Stanley, Chief of the Bureau of Home Economics, U. S. Department of
Agriculture, expressing, in a recent letter to the Director of the Division of
Women's and Professional Projects, her appreciation of the work performed
under the school lunch program, declared:
I have been very much impressed with what this has meant in making available
to school children much-needed food .... The meals, where I have seen them,
have been attractive, well-served, and palatable, and have contributed much in
setting food standards and good food habits for the children.
Through the daily service of warm, nourishing food, prepared by qualified, needy
women workers, the WPA is making it possible for many underprivileged children
of the present to grow into useful, healthy citizens of the future.
Source: Speech by Ellen S. Woodward, Assistant Administrator; Works Progress
Administration.
New Deal
DOCUMENT G: WITHER THE AMERICAN INDIAN? (ORIGINAL)
Congress is authorized to appropriate $10 million as a revolving fund from which
loans may be made to these chartered corporations for the purpose of promoting
the economic development of the tribes. Repayments are credited to the
revolving fund and are available for new loans. It was this fund which made
possible the fresh start of the Mescalero Apache tribe. The record of collections
on these loans has been very good.
About seventy-five of the tribal corporations are now functioning, with varying
degrees of success, and the number continues to grow. The Jicarillas have
bought their trading post and are running it; the Chippewas as run a tourist camp;
the Northern Cheyennes have a very successful livestock cooperative: the
Swinomish of Washington have a tribal fishing business. There are plenty of
others to prove these corporations can be made to work
So far, however. it has shown up best where a small, close-knit group is involved,
but less satisfactorily on such large reservations as those of the Sioux, where
distances are great and there is a certain amount of mutual distrust and jealousy
between communities. Smaller cooperatives, at least for the present, may be
indicated. In the case of the Blackfeet, the tribal council, when elected, proved to
be predominantly Indians of mixed blood, and the full bloods of the reservation,
amounting to about 22 percent of the population, complained that their interests
were being subordinated and neglected wherever they conflicted with those of
the mixed bloods.
The election system was adjusted later to insure fair representation of the
minority group. The difficulty about the system is that so many Indians on large
reservations—and some on small—do not have a sense of common interest. The
nine Hopi villages in Arizona have a long tradition of independent action as city
states, with very little cooperation or friendly feeling between them. In other
cases the desperately poor circumstances prevailing and the lack of resources to
start with have caught tribes simply too run down and discouraged to put their
shoulders to the wheel.
But all this new machinery gives Indians for the first time an opportunity to run
their own affairs, to a limited extent it is true, but previously everything was
handled by the government, and the Indians had to take it or leave it. Now a
tribe, as a corporation, may purchase, operate and dispose of property, may hire
counsel, engage in business enterprises of nearly any sort, and generally enjoy
the legal privileges of a corporation. Management by the elected council is not
always good, but at least it is management by Indians through democratic
processes, and a nod of adjustment to the new way must be expected to produce
mistakes and failures as well as successes. It has all been thrust upon the tribes
very suddenly as such things go—too suddenly, say critics of the administration,
and they may be right.
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Indian families are definitely in the lower third of the American population, so far
as income is concerned. The average for a family of four during 1937 was $600
or its equivalent in subsistence. Work relief and direct relief made up much too
large a proportion of this. Only some of the families getting oil royalties and a
very few others are in the tenth of the United States population with family
incomes of more than $2500.
Indians at Work
About 40 PERCENT OF ALL INDIANS OVER TEN YEARS OLD ARE engaged
for at least a part of the year in pursuits which bring in cash. Half of these are
unskilled laborers, the other half do various types of semi-skilled and skilled
work. Fishing brings in sizable amounts to some tribes in the Pacific Northwest.
Lumbering is carried on in Oregon, Montana, Arizona, Wisconsin and other
states. The sustained yield management of timber reserves now almost
universally applied should insure an income indefinitely for the relatively small
number of Indians with commercial forests. Nearly all Indians are farmers or
stockbreeders, and as such raise at least a part of their own food supply. The
cooperatives which are springing up all over the Indian country help with
marketing and do much to improve farming methods and increase production of
saleable crops.
A growing source of income has been the sale of arts and crafts. This has long
brought in sizable sums to the southwest tribes, and everyone is familiar with
Navajo blankets and jewelry and with Pueblo pottery. In fact, the popularity of
these products has brought out a flood of inferior factory-made imitations which
has hurt the sale of authentic items.
The Indian Arts and Crafts Board was set up by Congress in 1936 to give aid in
marketing, and to keep up quality by setting standards for each type of object.
Rene d'Harnoncourt, manager of the board, was responsible for the magnificent
show of Indian products and Indian culture at the Golden Gate International
Exposition in 1939, which was one of the really outstanding features of Treasure
Island. New uses for Indian material in interior decoration were suggested to
show the many attractive home furnishings, so thoroughly American, which
Indians produce. The board is a promotional and advisory organization, working
on a small budget. It has met opposition from traders and commercial firms—
some of these are more friendly now—so that its influence is not yet widely felt.
The publicity value of the exhibits at San Francisco, at Gallup, N.M., and
elsewhere, together with marketing cooperatives the board has 'helped Indians
establish on a number of reservations, has undoubtedly had a stimulating effect.
Arts and crafts will never be one of the most important income sources except
locally, but an increasing number of Indians are finding that there is money in it.
New Deal
Homes and Health
HOUSING HAS BEEN FOR YEARS AS SERIOUS A PROBLEM ON THE Indian
reservations as in city slums. Best housed are the Pueblos of New Mexico and
Arizona, who escaped the destructive effects of the allotment act and early white
penetration of their traditional homeland. Since they live in a mild climate, and
have plenty of building materials—stone and adobe—they have managed well,
and still do. On the plains it has been a different story. Nearly land: less,
penniless, with no way to make a living, and no satisfactory natural building
materials at hand, such tribes as the Sioux, Winnebago, Cheyenne and Arapaho
have lived through the cold winters in dirt hovels, tarpaper shacks, ancient tents
and other makeshift dwellings for many years.
The Mescalero and some of the plains tribes have accomplished a limited
amount of rehousing with the aid of loans from the revolving fund set up under
the Reorganization Act. Some Farm Security Administration money has been
made available for housing planned by the Indian Office, most of the work being
done by the Indians themselves. The general improvement in Indian income is
reflected in repairs on old houses and in the building of some new ones by the
Indians themselves. But it is still true, and will be for a long time, that these
efforts merely scratch the surface. Indian housing remains woefully inadequate.
Health, so closely related to housing, is also still far from satisfactory, though
probably better today than it has ever been before. Somewhat better food and
shelter have made a difference, particularly in the greatest Indian scourge,
tuberculosis. There is some indication that Indian resistance to disease is
increasing, and certainly Indian resistance to white medicine is decreasing. When
the new Navajo-Hopi health center was opened last year at Fort Defiance some
of the prominent Navajo medicine men participated in the ceremonies with
chants, speeches and offers of cooperation—evidence of an entirely new attitude
toward the Indian Service, and one which has been brought about by the new
attitude of the service itself toward the Indian.
Trachoma, a serious and persistent Indian disease, has been tackled with new
vigor. Cooperative research with Columbia University at the Trachoma School on
the Fort Apache Reservation in Arizona has definitely established the cause of
trachoma as a filterable virus, and experiments with sulfanilamide give promise of
an effective new treatment.
Educational About-Face
THE PROBLEM OF EDUCATION, SO VITAL TO THE SUCCESS OF any
government program, has been a sore spot for more than a century, and the
present administration has characteristically applied to it a fresh viewpoint; at the
same time building on the work done by the previous administration under
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Commissioner Rhoads, who was one of the first to recognize the hopeless
inadequacy of traditional policies.
The original colonies showed little concern for Indian education, although several
colleges, including Dartmouth and Harvard, made provision for tuition-free
admission of Indians, and the Continental Congress in 1775 employed a
schoolmaster for the Delaware and made motions toward doing something for
other tribes. The Revolution interrupted, and until 1819 Indian education was left
entirely to a few missionary societies. From that year to 1873, $10,000 was
appropriated annually for the work, and most of this was turned over to the
missions. From 1873 on, the appropriations increased fairly regularly, until 1932,
when $11,224,000 was set aside. The next few years saw slight reductions; the
budget for 1939-1940 allow $10,523,745. (However, most post-1933 building
was done with emerge funds not included in the departmental budget.) Until
1929, Indian education was pretty much a hodgepodge. More Indians attended
public schools than other kind—this is still true. Large number were in mission
schools. Many attended boarding schools both on and off the reservation These
were established late in the last century when the accepted theory of Indian
education called for remove the children from their parents and home life as
much as possible so that they might be "civilized." Often the children were taken
by force from their homes and subjected in the schools to a rigid discipline and a
standardized, outmoded course of study. Half their time was devoted to school
work, the other half to doing routine institutional tasks such as laundering,
cleaning, wood-chopping and food preparation. Often this work was too hard and
too many hours per day were devoted to it, so that it had a serious effect on
health. Insufficient opera funds made the school and living standards
dangerously low.
Forbidden to speak their own language in school, out of touch with family and
tribal life, denied the normal experience and education needed to prepare them
for life as Indians, the children would return home from school dissatisfied misfits,
unable to readapt themselves to reservation life and equally unable to find a
place in a white community. They had learned to read and write, but they were
unfamiliar with the customs and language of own people, and found their
schooling of little use in making a living.
The problem was a hard one, and perhaps the earlier officials should not be too
harshly criticized for their failure to solve it. Indians are very diverse; they
represent hundreds of cultures vastly different one from another. More than two
hundred mutually unintelligible languages are spoken in the United States. The
school program must be carefully fitted to each group since the needs vary so
much. And undoubtedly the success of the present program rests partly on a
study of previous failures.
The "about-face" in Indian education is designed to mesh with the "about-face" in
general policy. Recognizing attempts to drag children from their families and
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"civilize" them as a total failure, the aim now is to give a basic education in the
three R's without detaching them from their families, to teach hygiene and such
mechanical skills as will be useful to each group. This is accomplished to an
increasing extent in day schools, which are being established on as many
reservations as possible. The children live at home and walk or ride to school.
Native tongues are not forbidden, and an increasing number of Indians are on
the teaching staffs. In the past ten years the Indian day school population (in allIndian schools distinct from public schools) has risen from 4532 to 14,087. There
are still over 10,000 in boarding schools on and off the reservations, and about
7000 in schools run by signs, states and private agencies.
The fact that facilities for education were so limited has made it impossible to
abandon entirely the boarding schools, but the emphasis in these has been
changed radically, and they are now used principally as vocational and trade
schools. The boarding school at Flandreau, S.D., specializes in dairying; Haskell
Institute (a high school) at Lawrence, Kan., gives business and commercial
courses and shop work; that at Santa Fe, N.M., is for rents who wish to learn arts
and crafts. Sherman Institute, at Riverside, Calif., teaches agriculture and
industrial work. Thus it is possible for those who show aptitude and want training
in trades to get it.
Some of these schools are accredited by higher institutions, and an educational
loan fund of $250,000 enables young Indians to attend advanced trade and
vocational schools as well as colleges. About 220 Indians are now receiving
higher education, most of them in state universities.
Indian education is still much less complete than it should be. At least 10,000
children of school age are not oiled in any school. But never has an educational
prom been so well adapted to the Indian's problem, and never have there been
as many school-age children in school as there are today. The importance of
education reflected in the fact that more than half the total staff the Office of
Indian Affairs is engaged in this work.
Of 86,747 Indians between six and eighteen, 33,645 attend public schools not
operated by the Office of Indian Affairs These are mostly in such states as
California, Minnesota, and Oklahoma, where a certain fount of assimilation is
actually taking place. The arrangement does not work badly; and some
educators feel that Indian children who attend public schools are better adapted
to meet their problems as adults for the contacts made there. Since Indian land is
exempt from taxation, the government pays a small tuition to the school district
for each Indian pupil.
For the first time adult Indians are taking a real interest the education of their
children d in the possibilities of the fool as a community center. the Rosebud
reservation (Sioux, S.D.) a vegetable canning project by the women with some
help from the school teacher was so successful that for the first time in many
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years a winter was passed without relief rations being sent into the area. There is
an awakening of interest which has resulted in some rather astonishing initiative
on the part of the Indians. In the Kallihoma district of Oklahoma some twenty-five
children were without school facilities, but their parents got together, bought an
abandoned hotel, remodeled it themselves, set up an Indian and his wife as
teachers, and started a day school and community center which has been a most
successful enterprise.
The Indian Administration
NO DISCUSSION OF COLLIER S POLICIES WOULD BE COMPLETE without
mention of an important trend within the Office of Indian Affairs. The
Reorganization Act is designed to set up mechanisms within the tribe which will
perform the social services now provided by the government bureau. The result
should be a gradual withering of the bureau as the new tribal machinery takes
over the load. This withering process cannot be said to have begun as yet, but
perhaps that would be expecting too much. Complete elimination of the bureau
cannot be accomplished for many years, if ever, and meanwhile Indians are
being trained and encouraged to seek government positions in it. About half the
employee today are Indians, and the proportion is increasing. Nearly a hundred
are in the Washington office—there were eleven there in 1933—and not a few
are in highly responsible positions. The rest are scattered over the country; many
are teaching in the new schools. These men and women are getting valuable
experience in public administration, and as the office decreases in size many of
them will be prepared to step into tribal government and perform there the
greatest possible service to their people.
Indian civil liberties are in better shape than ever, though still rather restricted.
Indians are citizens, but in some states. for a variety of reasons. they do not vote.
Early in 1934 Congress repealed twelve old laws limiting Indian freedom of
meeting, organization and communication, authorizing the Indian office to
remove "undesirable persons', from reservations, permitting rather arbitrary
action by the superintendents and approving repressive military measures. It is
true that most of these laws had not been in use for many years, but it is good
that they have been repealed. Bans on the use of Indian languages by children in
school and restrictions on native religious ceremonies have been lifted.
An improved system of administration of justice to Indians was deleted from the
Wheeler-Howard bill before passage. However, the judicial power of the
reservation superintendents, once almost unlimited, has been sharply reduced,
and the government has much less control over individual lives and activities
than it formerly had.
The administration has come in for its share of criticism, much of it aimed at the
Navajo service. The Navajo range was in extremely bad condition even before
1933, and by that year it was obvious that strong action was necessary if there
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was going to be any range left. It is a complicated story with, no doubt, much to
be said on both sides, but the net result has been that in drastically reducing the
Indian stock and instituting controls aimed at saving the range from destruction
by erosion, a great deal of opposition was stirred up. There were claims of
injustice, arbitrary seizure and more or less dictatorial methods. The Navajos
expressed their displeasure by rejecting the Indian Reorganization Act, though by
a fairly close margin. Last fall, when 'drought swept the West and crops
everywhere were bad, critics pointed out thee if the administration hadn't been in
such a rush to cut down the number of horses and get rid of the goats, the
Navajos could now be eating them. On the other hand, feed for the remaining
animals had to be brought onto the reservation because of the lack of grass, and
had even more been destroyed this would not have been necessary.
Many sober observers have charged that Collier's program has been jammed
through much too fast, and that this speed has brought about more trouble and
resentment than it was worth. The Indian Rights Association, which has worked
tirelessly for Indians since 1882, points to the good work of the previous
administration as proof that it is not necessary to go so fast, and that order
progress following careful experiment may result in more permanent reform with
less upsetting opposition. There is evidence that the pace has now slowed down.
The administration has been publicized masterfully—perhaps too much so. One
might gather from reading Indian Office releases that the Indian had never had a
friend before, and that now every problem of the red man has been solved, or is
on its way to a quick solution. Nothing has stirred up as much antagonism in the
Indian country as the driving passion for immediate and complete reform, the
impatience with criticism and the too enthusiastic press notices which have been
characteristic since Collier took over.
Other critics have called Collier visionary, and his policies communistic. Some
say Indians do not want to and are not competent to govern themselves.
Occasionally, on the other hand, we hear that Collier is a sentimentalist, trying to
hold the Indian back for the benefit of tourists and anthropologists, to keep him
out of the main stream of American life. These groups, however, apparently have
nothing to suggest but a return to the old assimilation policy which gave no
promise of success and every evidence of complete and tragic failure during the
long years of its history. Then there are many individual complaints against
superintendents, physicians and other officials. There always have been these,
and there always will be. "Too much education and not enough practical
experience," says one New Mexico observer about local Indian office employee.
THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT INDEPENDENT ORGANIZATIONS working for
the good of the Indian are the Indian Rights Association and the American
Association on Indian Affairs. Both are friendly to the administration, the latter
perhaps more so than the former. Each makes reports and suggestions,
publicizes Indian needs, investigates complaints, and points out individual cases
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of bad administration. Although the Indian Rights Association is in sympathy with
most of Collier's broad aims, it has taken some pretty energetic pot-shots in the
past, and still takes every opportunity to point out that while good work is being
done, there is still plenty left to do.
It has been a terrific problem. Hopelessly tangled in obsolete laws, nearly
landless, poverty stricken, uneducated, prey to white interests everywhere,
unable to defend themselves, and finally saddled with an administrative policy
which regarded them as a dying people more in need of race euthanasia than
anything else, the Indians could hardly have been worse off. As far back as 1862
Abraham Lincoln said, "If we get through this war, and I live, this Indian system
shall be reformed." But it is only now that this is really taking place.
The truth is that the New Deal Indian administration is neither as successful as its
publicity says it is, nor as black and vicious a failure as the severest critics would
have us believe. Many Indian problems remain unsolved, but every one has been
attacked. If eddies have been stirred up, there is still a powerful current in Indian
affairs, and it seems to be in a direction which gives this splendid race an
opportunity to shape its own destiny.
Source: Alden Stevens, “Whither the American Indian,” Survey Magazine of
Social Interpretation, March 1, 1940.
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