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Reconstructing The Public

Creator: Arthur H. Samuels (author)
Date: June 1918
Publication: Carry On: Magazine on the Reconstruction of Disabled Soldiers and Sailors
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 1


Introduction

Taken from the advice magazine for disabled veterans, Carry On, this excerpt stresses the crucial role of the public in veterans’ rehabilitation. Rehabilitators believed that veterans were extremely fragile psychologically; their reintegration into mainstream society as productive citizens could easily be disrupted if the public was discouraging or dismissive of their efforts. Many members of the public believed that all disabled people were lazy and could not work; therefore, they might be dismissive of disabled veterans’ efforts to return to work and self-support. Others might only offer charity or pity, and thereby squelch veterans’ ambitions.

To some degree, this document shares present-day attitudes that disability is created, in part, by prejudicial attitudes and discrimination, rather than just by a person’s actual impairment.



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"AFTER the war, if a cripple stops me on the street and asks for help," said a philanthropic business man in New York recently, "how can I tell whether he is a real veteran or just an impostor? Of course, I always want to give something to the boys who went over the top. Will they wear a button to show that they've been soldiers?"

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And the answer was this: "Any man who stops you and asks for alms is a beggar whether he was in the war or not. No buttons or insignia will be necessary."

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This New Yorker had naïvely got at the very roots of reconstruction. Thousands of men and women everywhere are puzzled over the same thing, for the public does not yet understand the distinction between the cripple who can make good it he wants to, and the beggar who could make good but doesn't want to.

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The gap is wide; and one of the most difficult and vital tasks confronting the Government and the other forces involved in the problem is to reconstruct the public attitude: to destroy utterly the worn-out notion about the cripple and to teach the new.

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Picture a soldier who has lost both legs walking -- he will walk -- into the president's office of an industrial plant, where he is received cordially and with honor.

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"It happened in the Toul sector," he says "about a year and a half ago and it was nine months before I was discharged from the hospital with these artificial legs. But early in the game I made up my mind to make good. I couldn't go back to railroading -- I used to be a conductor -- so I decided to take up stenography and typewriting. The Government gave me a fine course, everything I needed. I am qualified to hold down a secretarial job and I need one right now. I can't afford to be idle."

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The president who really admired his caller, listened politely. He liked the man's personality. He reached for his check book.

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"We are proud of men like you," he said as he wrote, "and you deserve to succeed. Here's fifty dollars. I'm sorry I haven't a position open. Good luck to you. You deserve success."

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Now the ex-soldier was human and he accepted the money. He shouldn't have done so. But he is not the one to be blamed. The president, unwittingly, did a vicious thing by offering it to him and every man or woman who gives alms but not opportunity to the disabled man -- soldier, sailor, or civilian -- is an enemy of reconstruction. One gift of money that is not actually earned may utterly stifle the ambition of a handicapped man.

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Business men must be told this again and again. The American public must know that their Government has provided a fair compensation and insurance for the wounded, which, with vocational training, provide our returned soldiers and sailors with adequate means to re-enter civil life. There is a general appreciation of the fact that our men will not be turned loose and allowed to drift as after former wars, but it is natural that a subject so new and complicated has got to be explained, iterated, and reiterated.

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This is being done today in an infinite number of ways. The various forces that create and guide public opinion in America are at work enthusiastically and wholeheartedly, offering every possible means of cooperation. For after all, reconstruction is not a matter of propaganda to be jammed through; it is news -- one of the biggest pieces of news that has yet found its way into the channels of national publicity.

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Newspapers, magazines, motion pictures, pamphlets, speeches -- these and other mediums are bringing reconstruction and its significance into the American home and American industry. The Office of the Surgeon General, the American Red Cross, and the Federal Board for Vocational Education are a small portion of the factors making it known.

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The success of this great plan will depend on the attitude of the public. Public opinion is a pretty loose term as it is generally applied. In this instance, however, it is pat, because it represents several very definite and concrete elements -- the man himself, his family, his friends, and his employers. Sympathy and encouragement are plentiful these days while we are in the throes of the conflict, but they will be difficult to maintain when the thrill of battle has passed and the nation has settled down to its normal activities. And after the war -- long after -- they will be needed most.

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Men and women of America by word-of-mouth, house-to-house publicity based on what they read and hear are rapidly developing a new psychology toward the handicapped. Gradually they are reconstructing themselves. And the more thoughtful are beginning to comprehend that physical reconstruction and vocational training will not stop with the coming of peace, but will become powerful and permanent factors in American society and industry.

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