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Sixth. It is not strange that the amendments provided by Sections 9 and 10 should have been sought early in the Commission's history. No business can be operated without some capital, and this is preeminently true of a business which is conducted upon so small a margin of profit or, more generally, at a positive loss, as is the case where the artisans are laboring under the handicap imposed by blindness.

Seventh. The writer believes that the transfer by Chapter 201 of the Acts of 1916 of the supervision of the instruction of the adult blind at their homes from the Director of the Perkins Institution, to the Commission will result in an increase in efficiency and in a decrease of the per capita cost of such instruction. While this instruction is educational work, it is educational work for adults, and as such it is a prerogative of the Commission, and not of a school for the education of the young blind. Under the present plan, better supervision will be possible, and the method in vogue in the assignment of cases will undoubtedly save the time and traveling expenses of the home teachers, while it will insure a more exact definition of the needs of the adult blind of the State.

From all that I could learn in the time at my disposal while in Boston, and from a careful study of the Acts creating the Commission and defining its powers, I conclude that the legislature has clothed the Commission with authority adequate for the accomplishment of the purposes for which it was created.

APPROPRIATION

In the nine-year period for which figures are available, the appropria-, don has been increased from $40,000 in 1906-1907 to $68,000 in 1914-1915. This increase of 671 per cent in the appropriation has made possible an increase of 165 per cent in the number of blind persons reached, of 72 per cent in the number materially benefited, of 66 per cent in the number regularly employed in the Commission's shops, and of 439 per cent in the earnings of the blind people employed in the Commission's shops, salesroom, and staff. Stated another way, in approximate figures, by, increasing its appropriation two-thirds, the State has multiplied the number of blind people reached 2 2/3 times, the number materially benefited 1 3/4 the number regularly employed by 1 2/3, and the earnings of the blind by 5 2/5.

To state that the extent of the work to be undertaken is determined by the amount of the appropriation is axiomatic. With its appropriation of $67,000 for the year 1914-1915, the Commission gave material assistance to approximately 800 blind persons at a per capita expenditure of $83.75. While some of this number might have received greater financial assistance by a pension system, it is a matter of very grave doubt whether equal benefit could have been conferred upon 800 blind people by the distribution of $83.75 in cash to each individual. Under a pension system it is not easy to vary the amount of assistance according to the need of the individual. The Ohio plan is the only form of public pension known to the writer that admits of any adjustment of the amount of assistance in accordance with the need and the desert of the individual, a principle which is fundamental in the administration of the pension of the Gardner's Trust Fund in England.

If the cost to the State of a pension system for the blind be compared with that of the various lines of activity of the Commission, it will be wholly in favor of the latter method. The usual amount of annual pension to a blind person in the few states that have provided them is $150. If each of the 800 blind persons materially benefited last year through the Commission's activities had received an annual pension of $150, the cost to the State would have been $120,000. But the moment a pension system is inaugurated by the State, experience proves that the number of blind people applying for aid will increase enormously. The United States cen-sus of 1910 gives the number of blind in Ohio as 3,740. With reports missing from nine counties, the records of the County Commissioners in June, 1914, showed 3,578 names on the pension rolls to whom had been paid the sum of $299,595. It is generally agreed that the United States census figures of 1910 err in returning too small numbers of blind people. One estimate is that Ohio in 1910 had at least 4,500 blind. The same census enumerates 2,046 blind persons in Massachusetts. Increasing this number in/the same ratio, Massachusetts would have 2,500 blind. As the proportion of suitable applicants for a pension would be approximately the same in Massachusetts as in Ohio, about 1,920 would have to be provided for, which, at an annual rate of $150, would require $288,000, or about 4.1 times the amount appropriated in 1914-1915. But the investigations of the Commission lead it to believe that there are in Massachusetts at least 4,000 blind persons, in which case the number of probable pensioners must be increased accordingly. A conservative estimate of the annual cost of a pension system for the blind of Massachusetts is $400,000, and it might easily reach $500,000.