Library Collections: Document: Full Text

3. In connection, also, with the same institution a room is open on Boylston street, where the handiwork of between thirty and forty blind women of New England is kept for sale. By the disposal of such articles as they can make in their hornet, these women are in a measure able to contribute to their own support.

4. The graduates of Perkins Institution have been, in a quiet and unostentatious way, doing what they could for some of the adult blind by visiting them, giving their services as teachers and helpers, and relieving suffering when possible.

5. The State is now appropriating $5000 a year to pay the expenses and salaries of four teachers who travel throughout the Commonwealth, giving instruction to the adult blind In reading and writing, and such simple forms of industry as circumstances permit. Grateful as we may be for this beginning of what is known as "Home Teaching," when we think of the multitudes these four teachers are expected to serve, we say with Andrew of old, as he looked at the five barley loaves and two small fishes, "What are these among no many?" In the city of London, with a blind population smaller than that of our State, there are seven or eight home teaching societies, one of which employs twelve teachers whose salaries average from three to five hundred dollars a year.

Now leave out the four kinds of service rendered in connection with the Perkins Institution to the adult blind, all independent really of its distinctive work, and at the best reaching probably not more than a hundred people, and for the remaining 3700 you have an appropriation of $5000 expended in furnishing four home teachers. This is what Massachusetts is doing for the adult blind. And yet as far back as 1849 that great-hearted philanthropist, whom we still delight to honor, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, pleaded for this work. In the report of the Institution for that year he says:

It is found by experience that often sufferers present themselves and ask earnestly for help and solace, and work, for whose case the institution was not originally intended, but who are totally unprovided for elsewhere, and whose appeal is so touching as to be irresistible; we mean those who are suddenly struck blind in early manhood, by accident or by disease. The condition of such persons is more deplorable than that of those born blind, who know not what darkness is, because they never knew what light is. But to the man who has lived in an atmosphere of light, whose existence has been, as it were, enlarged and multiplied by the vast range of visible objects which the sense of sight seems to give its for his own, to incorporate, as it were with his very being, until light and life become one and the same -- to him there is something real, sensible and terrible in the darkness which suddenly covers him like a pall when his eyes are blasted. He is at first like one buried alive. All his thoughts, all his efforts, all his prayers are for deliverance from this thick gloom -- far some means of struggling out of it and back into light again. Little by little he becomes resigned; he even recovers his cheerfulness and his interest in life is reawakened: but soon his sky is clouded again by the discovery of his helplessness, and his dependence. The interest and the sympathy of others, so warmly excited at first by his terrible misfortune, gradually grow less, and if he has no parents to support him, he begins to be considered a burden. He has then before him the dreary prospect of a life of dependence upon relatives and friends, to be dragged on until they are weary of well-doing, or are dead; and beyond that lies the cheerless scene of an old age and a death-bed in the almshouse. Besides this, the rust of idleness soon begins to eat into his soul. He finds that it is not life merely to be alive and unemployed, and begins to pine for an occupation as much as he ever pined for recovery of his sight. He is not young enough to enter a school for the blind, and go through a course of study with the boys, but he is not too old to learn a trade and earn his own livelihood.

It is for the relief of such cases as the one thus described that further provision is necessary; and we recommend to the board the suggestions of the director respecting it.

It seems almost incredible, does it not, that the people of his State should to long have allowed the plea of this friend of all the blind to go practically unanswered.

In Russia there are thirty hospitals under Government patronage, established for the treatment of diseases of the eye, and more than that number of skilled oculists are employed to visit every hamlet of the empire to give such advice and treatment as may be demanded, even by the humblest. If an operation promises relief the patient is sent to the nearest hospital, all his expenses and those of his attendant being paid, if his own means are not sufficient. In Austro-Hungary a large educational and industrial school is supported directly by the State, while opposite this school is a home where several hundred blind people are cared for by the Government, and such work given them to do as they are competent to perform. In Germany nearly every town and city has its school for the blind. Its workshops and its home teaching societies. Belgium. Holland and Sweden have publishing houses where books for the blind are printed, both in Moon and Braille. type, and schools are maintained. In Saxony a system was adopted, still known the Saxon system, in which industrial schools are established, where the blind are taught many trades, and, having become proficient in some one, the sightless, individual is assisted to start some occupation in or near his or her native place and assisted as long as help is needed, and the unfortunate one does what he can for self-support. In England there are thirty-three industrial homes for the blind, and twenty-seven Government schools which have workshops attached. In addition, there is the Royal Normal College, which, while working chiefly for younger pupils, admits frequently those who have reached the age of twenty-five and even twenty-eight. One school fixes the age of admission at fifty-five, another at forty-five, but the most of them have no restrictions save such as would shut out those who are mentally or physically unfitted to profit by the instruction. Industrial as well as literary education is given in the majority of these schools. Then there is the Gardner Trust for tile blind, supported by the income from $1,500,000, part of the proceeds being paid.in pensions to indigent blind; part in furnishing books and literature to schools. and part in assisting worthy pupils to secure an education, either in school or college. There are also forty pension societies for the blind, which save a large number from the necessity of seeking the workhouse as their only refuge. One of these organizations has on its list of beneficiaries over eleven hundred names, and annually distributes more than $115,000. Besides all this, there are the eighty and more home teaching societies, forty-five of which were established by Dr. Moon and the Publishing Society, founded by him and still conducted by his daughter.