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J. PERRINE HAMILTON (1)
Ex-Superintendent Michigan Employment Institution for the Blind

THE opportunity of discussing the necessity of public provision for the employment of the blind before such an assembly as this is one for which I feel profoundly grateful.

For years the juvenile blind in this country and Europe have had wonderful advantages for acquiring a literary and musical education placed at their disposal by the state. How inadequate such an education is to make blind people self-respecting, self-supporting citizens of the community is shown by a glance at general results attained. In Michigan, my home state, where conditions and opportunities for blind or sighted will average with other states of the Union, our school at Lansing has turned out about five hundred blind people during the past twenty-five years. Of this five hundred, less than five per cent have become self-supporting. A careful study of statistics would show as low a percentage elsewhere. Now consider the further fact that only about five per cent of the blind of this country attend the schools at all, and you will see that the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent every year in the education of the blind make only one-fourth of one per cent of them self-maintaining citizens. This is not a criticism of the schools, nor would I be understood as gauging the results of their work by the standard of dollars and cents alone. The point I wish to make is this: Schools for the literary and musical education of the young blind, which are about all we have had up to date, do a very small part of the work which should be done for our blind population.

Educating blind children is easy and comparatively inexpensive; making blind adults wholly or partially self-supporting is hard -- only those who have tried it know how hard.

Up to date, nearly all the millions spent in behalf of the blind have been expended along lines of the least resistance. Only three years ago, when I was entering this work, a superintendent of one of the largest and oldest and best schools for the blind in America said to me: "We take blind children in the kindergarten and lead them to the gates of Harvard College, and then we wash our hands of them. No one can do more for them; it is no use to try. You are wasting your time." One of the most pitiable things of which I ever knew was a graduate of that superintendent's school and of Harvard taking his place on the New York City pier to get his share of the city's alms doled out once a year to the blind. I have yet to be convinced that blind people educated for poorhouses are happier than those sent to them without college education; and the selfish egotism of literary and musical educators of the blind who discourage work along practical, industrial lines, because they are too lazy or too indifferent or too jealous to wish to see such work succeed, has done much to keep willing philanthropists from trying, and fair trials from being made.

I shall not try in this discussion to make any sentimental appeal for the blind, but I do wish to get clearly before you a few facts and statements which carefully gathered statistics and painstaking experiments will prove and verify. In the United States there are between ninety and one hundred thousand blind people. Of these, fully ten per cent are capable of working and being taught. At present there is public provision for the training and employment of less than seven hundred of these nine or ten thousand capable blind citizens. The few experiments made up to the present time have proven beyond a doubt that these blind people can be made wholly or partially self-supporting if trained and employed at public cost. The per capita cost to the commonwealth for so training and employing all the blind capable of taking training and employment would be from a half cent to a cent and a half per annum. In Michigan it is costing one cent per year, and I believe we have passed the most expensive period of our history.

What blindness means to an intelligent, capable man or woman is something which only the Lord and the devil and those who endure it know anything about; in their blackest nightmares those with sight cannot even faintly imagine it, and unemployed blindness is as much worse as despair is worse than hope. The world is so busy, and most blind people are so poor, that reading, entertainment, and amusement are out of reach. Employment, then, is the only solace and diversion left, and certainly this is as little as this unfortunate class has a right to ask and expect of a generous and enlightened public. Employed blind people may sometimes forget that they are blind; perhaps only for a few minutes, but these minutes to them are worth more than the happiest days, or months, or years you have ever known.

At present we take good care of blind children and give most of them all the literary and musical education they need, and many of them more than they can possibly use; but if a man or woman loses sight after becoming eighteen or twenty years of age -- at this period when help is needed most, when blindness seems a thousand times more insurmountable than it does to children growing up accustomed to it -- in most parts of our country little or no provision is made to lend the helping hand so much required, or to furnish training or employment, the only things which can possibly bring any permanent solace or relief.

In an able article published in Charities and The Commons, October 20, 1906, occurs the following sentence: "We will be greatly assisted in our study if we keep in mind that the question is the economic, commercial practicability of working in darkness, and not the question of the desirability of employment for the adult blind." Had this sentence been published during the Dark Ages rather than the twentieth century, and in Tibet or Manchuria rather than the United States, it would have been more in keeping, both as to time and place. From the viewpoint of "economic, commercial practicability," the insane and idiots, epileptics and the helpless old, and a very large percentage of the blind, should be put out of the way in the easiest, quickest, most inexpensive manner possible. But, thank God, I believe we have reached a stage in racial development where "economic, commercial practicability" is not the only determining factor in deciding such questions as are constantly forcing themselves on the attention of the American people during the twentieth century.

As far as I can learn, there has scarce ever been an objection raised to spending the millions which have been spent in educating the youthful blind. Blind children are not unattractive; blind adults are. Blind children can read and speak and sing before legislatures; blind adults cannot. Ninety per cent of our population, in passing, will stop and speak to a blind child; ninety per cent of the same population will go out of its way, if necessary, to avoid being compelled to speak to a blind adult. Teaching blind children is agreeable and pleasant; teaching blind adults is disagreeable and unpleasant. I do not make these statements as criticisms, but merely as facts which explain in part why training and employment for the adult blind have not been provided long ago.

The ground which I take, briefly stated, is this: If the public education of blind children is necessary and advisable, and I believe no one will question this, the public training of all adult blind needing and wishing such training, and the public employment of that portion of them who cannot be made entirely self-supporting, are just as necessary and just as advisable. In short, I believe that, considered from a combined humanitarian and economic standpoint, the necessity for public provision for the employment of the adult blind does exist.

Deplorable as it may seem, blindness, like insanity and many other evils, is increasing in this country, both absolutely and relatively. At present we have thousands of blind people who are willing and able to earn part, and many of them all, of their support. Unless public provision is made for the training of all of these thousands and the employment of part of them, there is no way in which they can even get the chance to work. That such training and employment can be given at a very small per capita cost to the public has been clearly demonstrated by every institution where this kind of work has been given a fair trial.

What trades, handicrafts, or professions are best adapted for the use of blind people are questions which a little time and a small amount of experimenting have gone far to solve. Among educators of the blind are found narrow as well as broad-minded men, and the man who advocates willow work, and willow work alone, as the only practical work for blind adults, is about as far from a solution of the problem as the other fellow who argues that all blind people should be taught portrait painting, or the use of astronomical instruments, or how to play pipe organs, because competition is limited in these fields. Fairly stated, the question is many times a local one. What will pay in Switzerland or Scotland might not in Minnesota or California. I earned $1,500 one year tuning pianos in Michigan, but I couldn't have done this located in a small town in a sparsely settled region; and I could make a good living in any small town mending shoes.

A blind person with good mechanical ability can learn to repair shoes and can work fast enough to compete with sighted workmen. Any four corners will support a cobbling shop, so that those learning can return to their homes and start a small shop of their own, with the added advantage that the work is always brought and called for.

Perhaps this is not the place to discuss possible occupations for the blind; but it may be briefly stated that willow work, chair caning, broom making, copper and brass pounding, shoe mending, and piano tuning can be taught adult blind people and can be followed with more or less profit, depending on the locality partly, and the person himself very largely. Aside from these trades, many of the professions are open to blind people, but those able to make their way in the professions will usually make their way unaided, so they do not need public help. From our institution we have turned out some very good salesmen, and in this field they do well. (2)

In conclusion I will say that above all things, pity is not what blind people need or want. A kind-hearted lady once said to me: "I wouldn't think of risking letting you tune my piano, but I just want you to know that you have my heart's sympathy." And I lost her heart's sympathy for a lifetime by asking her to take a day off some time and figure how many bushels of potatoes and how many tons of coal her pity would buy. A chance to learn and earn is what the blind of America ask and expect; and asking less, could the public consider them worthy the name of self-respecting American citizens?