Page:LewisMeriam-TheProblemOfIndianAdministration.djvu/170

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The Matter of Organization
143

a determined effort should be made toward further decentralization. Two different possible courses have been given careful consideration by the survey staff, which may be briefly stated as follows:

  1. To develop district offices under district superintendents, and to place these district offices in the administrative line between school and agency superintendents and the Washington office. This course is not recommended.
  2. To increase the authority and responsibility of agency and school superintendents, and to control them not through minute rules and regulations but through the establishment of definite programs for their jurisdictions, and through periodical visits and reports from specialists in the several lines of activity involved. This course seems wise.

Objections to the District System. The field work of the survey tended to bring out the objections that lie against the establishment of district offices.

Although distances would thus be lessened, the factor of distances and the absence of district superintendents from their headquarters would still be important causes of delay.

Unless the districts were to be fairly small and hence numerous, they would have to embrace jurisdictions with widely different social and economic conditions, thus rendering the position of district superintendent an extremely difficult one to fill adequately because of the diversity of the requirements.

District offices would radically complicate the relationship between the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and the superintendents of large or difficult agencies or schools where big or serious problems are being attacked. The Commissioner would be under obligation to deal with these reservation or school superintendents through the district superintendents instead of directly, or else run the risk of undermining the whole district system.

Friction might easily develop between district superintendents and local superintendents leading to situations difficult of solution without transferring one or the other. The more resourceful, able, and vigorous the local superintendent the greater chance for conflict unless the district superintendent was either himself big and able or was content to let his local superintendents run their own affairs. In several instances the reservation superintendent would of neces-

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