Library Collections: Document: Full Text

One school for the blind in the United States, and only one so far as I know, felt the need of this new point of view, and began to send out, in 1903. a field agent to bring the young blind more promptly to school and to follow up its graduates. That school was the school at Overbrook, Pa., and its director, Mr. Edward E. Allen, is today the director of the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts School for the Blind in South Boston.

Here in Massachusetts some such undercurrent of feeling as I have described, stirred in various ways, led to the investigations of a temporary commission and the practical experiments of the association for the blind, and finally to the establishment of a permanent state commission, authorized to develop work for the blind on a new and broad basis, which, roughly outlined, is "to provide a bureau of information and industrial aid, to assist blind persons in marketing their products, and to provide workshops and industrial training, and in general to ameliorate the condition of the blind by such other methods as it may deem expedient, provided that the commission shall not undertake the permanent support or maintenance of any blind person."

Mr. Campbell and Mr. Holmes, of the industrial department, could tell you far better than I about the industrial side of our work, to which our exhibit in the other room will give you some clew. (4) The main point which that exhibit should, to my mind, suggest is that the new movement for the blind, here as well as elsewhere, aims to give the blind man a share in producing things really desirable, useful, and beautiful; so that it shall not be necessary to ask the public to buy them only because they are made by the blind, but because they are beautiful and useful, and made by the blind. Other things being equal, it is right to ask patronage for work for the blind. The blind are your sisters and brothers and parents and children as well as ours. And if we are to give them "equal advantages wills the seeing, not more not less," as the representative of Japan so well described our aim at the recent international conference held in England, it must be through the effort and cooperation of the whole community, for only so far as the public wills can we so divide the labor as to give the blind man what he can do. We must ask the public to see and favor the things that are well made by the blind, to ask their dealers for the "Wundermop," when they need a mop. I believe in one of our cities the floors of all the public schools are mopped by the "Wundermop." At one time -- I hope it is still true -- the floors of both Yale and Harvard dining halls were mopped by the "Wundermop." Some hospitals use this mop only, but there are not enough wanted yet to keep busy half the men who could make them. So it is from mops to rugs, through dusters and mittens, and every product of shop and home work. The mop may represent the only thing which a man who has been an expert accountant can do to earn a living if he becomes totally blind at forty-five. The rug may be the only thing a young Italian, suddenly blinded in an explosion at a stone quarry, can do to support his wife and children. The machine-hemmed kitchen towel may be the only work a woman becoming blind at twenty-five can do in her own home, where she has an invalid mother to care for; but I must not go on, although these only suggest some of the people we come to know through field work.

This summer we had in a small salesroom at Manchester-by-the-Sea a beautiful illustration of what cooperation can do for the blind. A local business man gave rent-free a location for the venture; a friend of the blind who lived in Manchester fitted up the rooms, and gave her continued personal interest through the summer. The commission furnished supervision, bookkeeping, a loom for the blind weaver, etc., and employed two young blind women who belong in that town all summer, at a fair wage, one at weaving and one as saleswoman for the shop. As a result we had two busy, happy blind girls; sales averaging $too a week, about half of which went into the pockets of women and men who work in their homes, and half helped pay the wages of the blind workers who had made the rugs, etc., in the shops. In all, that fortunate Manchester enterprise benefited thirty or forty blind persons.