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The convention consisted of men and women of whom perhaps half were blind, and all of them were deeply interested in problems of vital concern to the sightless. Practically all of them were in very modest circumstances -- some were teachers, some were broommakers, some were home teachers, some were small businessmen, some were dependent upon small pensions of one kind or another. However, this group represented the rank and file of blind people as well as of workers for the blind. Whatever decision they arrived at, while not binding upon anyone, would have a great moral influence on the thinking of those in control of agencies for the blind.

It was to this group that Mr. Campbell pleaded for funds to carry on the scientific study of a field in which thousands of dollars were wasted every year through duplication. Everybody agreed that duplication was wrong, but no one had enough data on which to base an argument for any one type which would be convincing to those predisposed to another.

Mr. Campbell made an impassioned appeal to this group for moral support, but, more importantly, for financial support. No evangelist ever made a more heartfelt plea. That little group of 330 men and women was thoroughly aroused. Charles W. Holmes, Chairman of the Uniform Type Committee, who then held a position in work for the blind in Massachusetts, announced that he would start the fund with $100.00, one month's salary. Others followed with smaller amounts. One man, who many present knew was living on a pension of $150.00 a year, pledged $5.00. Finally the Director of Perkins Institution for the Blind, an old advocate of American braille who felt that so far as he was concerned the question had been settled for twenty years, pledged $200.00 from the Howe Memorial Press, an organization affiliated with Perkins Institution. No million dollar pledge of a Rockefeller brought forth more enthusiastic cheers. At the end of an hour it was announced that $1500.00 had been pledged. The committee then felt that with this show of confidence it could go forth and raise, from the general public, the additional $1800.00 it had pledged itself to collect. Before the next meeting a total of $4,133.60 was raised. With the funds now in sight the committee could proceed with some real research.

Word of this meeting and its results spread over the entire community of the blind of the United States. It now looked as if the end of the type dispute was in sight. How little most of them realized that it would be another five years before anything even resembling uniformity would be found in the United States and that more than twenty-one years would elapse before they had a uniform type for the English-speaking world.

About this time Mr. M. C. Migel, a wealthy, retired silk manufacturer in New York City, who had long been interested in blind people, heard of the Uniform Type Committee's work. For twelve years he had given one evening a week to reading to blind men and women residents of the Society for the Relief of the Destitute Blind in New York City. He became very fond of many of the people who attended his reading circle, and one time brought back from England a braille book for one of the girls in the institution. Much to his amazement he found that she could not read it, not because she was illiterate, but because the book was in British braille and she was a reader of New York Point.

When he heard of the Uniform Type Committee and its efforts to bring some solution to the problem, he stopped in the reading room for the blind at the Library of Congress and asked Mrs. Gertrude T. Rider, the librarian in charge, if she thought money contributed to the Uniform Type Committee would bear fruit. A few days later Miss L. Pearl Howard and Mrs. Elwyn H. Fowler, representatives of the Uniform Type Committee, visited the library. While she felt that she could not expose Mr. Migel to a direct appeal from the committee, Mrs. Rider promised these representatives that she would suggest to Mr. Migel that he get in touch with them or with the chairman of the committee. A little later Mr. Migel called on Walter G. Holmes, managing editor of the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind, and learned that it was a source of great distress to him that he had to issue the magazine in two editions, one for those who read New York Point and one for those who read braille. He begrudged the waste of precious money. However, he had some doubts about the ultimate success of the efforts of the Uniform Type Committee. He had seen too much bitter controversy to allow himself to believe wholeheartedly that the committee could settle the question.

Mr. Migel posed this query to Mr. Holmes; would it be worthwhile for him to give a thousand dollars to the committee? Mr. Holmes said it depended on how much "one thousand dollars" meant to him, to which Mr. Migel replied that really a thousand dollars did not mean too much to him.

With the funds raised at Overbrook and with some additional money which had come in from other sources, the committee was able to employ Miss Howard and Mrs. Fowler on very modest salaries. This pair of devoted representatives travelled about the country conducting tests in thirty-six states. Everyone was eager to know what these tests were showing. Was New York Point showing up better than it had originally, or was braille still in the ascendancy?