H. Burke, former congressman from South Dakota and author of the Burke Act which chilled Native American citizenship hopes and emasculated the trust features of allotment in severalty by making access to restricted allotments a matter of administrative discretion. The New York Times described Burke as a "rugged individualist" with a "frontiersman’s" attitude toward Indians. Hubert Work, Fall's successor in 1923, was as honest as Fall was corrupt but just as ethnocentric. Along with Christian missionaries he sought to stamp out Indian culture, particularly native religion and the peyote cult. He bent to reformers’ demands only after they applied great pressure upon him. Fall, Burke, and Work had strong support from the Indian bureau which at the time had over 200 employees in Washington and 5,000 field workers (teachers, vocational instructors, and general agents), a high ratio of personnel to the 250,000 Indians living on reservations. The move for reform of Indian policy threatened their jobs, and they closed ranks behind their administrative superiors. More and more, public opinion was formed by mass-circulation national periodicals and newspapers. Shrewd obscurantists resorted to magazine and newspaper interviews to justify their positions. The Saturday Evening Post, School Life, and Good Housekeeping regularly carried articles antagonistic to the emerging Indian reform movement. In addition, the obscurantists were backed by several church publications including the Missionary Review, which carried articles written by missionaries working among the Indian tribes. They called Indians "pagan worshippers in desperate need of Christianity" and described the difficult task they faced in attempting to overthrow native religion and the peyote cult. Obscurantists were particularly concerned with Indian dances which they thought showed Indian recalcitrance, defiance, and ethnic corruption. Those who defended ethnic pluralism and the Indians right to worship as they chose, including dancing, were denounced as "anti-American, and subversive... agents of Moscow." It was charged that they encouraged the persistence of "Indian paganism" and heathen cults which were "horrible, sadistic, and obscene." Further, they were accused of attempting to weaken and discredit the United States's government. Edith M. Dabb, national director of YWCA work among Indian girls, joined the Native American detractors, charging that native dances were a waste of time and that "sentimentalists who dwell on the beauties of the quaint and primitive world do well to remember that primitive beauty is frequently found in close company with primitive cruelty and primitive ugliness." During an inspection of New Mexico