The problem that the deputy minister had noted in 1900, that parents resisted enrolling their children in the schools, coupled with the need to keep enrollment up to the maximum entitlement to garner as much revenue as possible, drove denominational partisans to take unhealthy students into the schools.

    The dictates of enforced economy also led the schools' officers to cram too many students into dormitories, seal up the schools to save heat in the cold months, and skimp on foods that would have helped to provide the children with a nourishing diet. The result was abominable health conditions and escalating death rates.

    Perhaps it was because the problem was systemic, rooted in the administrative structure that the government had developed, that Ottawa treated the horrific loss of life so coolly. The deputy superintendent general of Indian affairs wrote blandly of the effects of tuberculosis in the industrial and boarding schools: 'It is quite within the mark to say that fifty per cent of the children who passed through these schools did not live to benefit from the education which they had received therein.'