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The New York Association for the Blind was organized in 1905. Switchboard operating, making bead shades for electric light globes and opera glass bags, making wire hat frames and trimmings, and shampooing are the new occupations due to this Association's efforts, which has a shop for men, and also a training shop for women (quite a distance apart, as are the shops at Cambridge). The New York Association is the development of the Committee on Tickets for the Blind formed by the Misses Edith and Winifred Holt, to whose generous, indefatigable efforts much of its success is due. The Association has performed a most valuable work, making a complete and accurate registration of the blind, which has been found to be 2,300 in the city of New York. The New York Commission for the Blind took up the work of making a census of the blind of the state, adopting the card used by the Association, giving age, birth, health, cause of blindness, earning capacity, family history, and conditions. The Massachusetts Commission has led the way in accurate statistical compilation, embracing complete information of every case. Their card is a model for all similar work. This excellent example should be followed by all the states of the Union, as full and accurate details concerning the condition of the blind must be known and individual needs learned before a wise course can be determined upon and proper action taken. Blindness has no specific for all its ills.

This beneficent work of increasing the practical breadwinning occupations open to the blind not only increases the confidence of the blind themselves, but has another most educative influence for the sighted public, in helping it to realize that the intelligent, alert, and capable blind person is not confined to the stereotyped occupations hitherto considered the blind man's specialties, but may engage in other occupations where his individual capabilities may find expression in the normal relations of the business and industrial order.

The schools have performed a beneficent work, not only in training hundreds of young blind to industrial skill in accepted lines, but in developing a confidence and a resourcefulness which lead the young graduate to forge into new fields of endeavor. It is impossible to mention all the schools and their graduates who are doing good work. One of the most efficient of these is the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind, at Overbrook. This magnificent plant is due to the wise planning and judicious forethought of Edward E. Allen, now director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind.

Out of ninety-seven graduates of the Overbrook school in the last twelve years, many of whom are successful as piano tuners, music and literary teachers, we find a cotton planter, politician, poultry raiser, evangelist, city missionary, custom laundress; seventy-five per cent are favorably accounted for. Among the ex-pupils, we find workers in box factory, tape factory, a phrenologist, a coal dealer, and a florist.

Among the occupations followed by pupils of the New York City school, we find the unusual ones of plumber's helper, electrician helper, helper in printing office, iron foundry man, bookbinder, professional checker player, postmaster, truck driver, and tax collector.

For six years a graduate of the Missouri School for the Blind has had the entire control of the telephone exchange for a small town, and has performed all the work with the help of one assistant. Another totally unsighted graduate has assisted his father and brother in loading and unloading freight, and has also tended two teams. One man, in Fulton, Mo., has carried the loaded molds in a pipe and tiling factory.

The greatest success in broom making by pupils of the Missouri school has been made by those who went to small towns and started shops of their own, and obtained the custom of the entire community. Two brothers, leaving last year, have all they can do to supply the demand of their neighborhood. One boy has the trade of a town of 3,000 inhabitants, and is raising his own corn. One boy has made nearly $30 per month by selling brooms to factories. One graduate of the school is traveling salesman for a broom factory, making $85 a month and his expenses. Bookbinding is taught in this school, the pupils sewing, backing, and making the covers of the Braille books used in the school. Out of fifty-nine graduates in the last eighteen years, forty are supporting themselves and doing well.

One graduate of the Tennessee School for the Blind has accumulated a fortune of $80,000 in real estate. One from the Pittsburg school has made a fortune in the coal business. These examples, who have bravely ventured forth to make a place in the world, with the far greater number from the schools who have been successful in the more usual occupations of piano tuning and teaching, church organists, broom making, etc., make a roster of brave spirits, who have obtained from the schools not only the technical training which enables them to follow these pursuits, but also the courage and confidence which make them treat blindness as an accident of circumstance -- an obstacle to overcome.