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As I Saw It

Creator: Robert Irwin (author)
Date: 1955
Publisher: American Foundation for the Blind
Source: American Printing House for the Blind, Inc., M. C. Migel Library
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 2

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414  

Though Charles F. F. Campbell, for several years executive head of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, seems to have been the first to conceive and put into operation the placement of blind people in regular factories, side by side with the seeing, some of his fellow workers for the blind were pessimistic about the future of this method of employment. Miss Florence Birchard, his successor in placement work with the commission, followed Mr. Campbell in finding employment for many blind individuals in factories with seeing people and in other kinds of jobs not usually considered available as outlets for blind labor, such as domestic service. Charles W. Holmes, a fellow member of the staff of the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, however, felt that some workers for the blind had become too optimistic about factory employment as an opening for blind labor, and he issued a rather pessimistic report on the subject in 1919.

415  

Later, a new man came into the picture, who had unbounded faith in the opportunities which the regular factory held for blind people. He was so enthusiastic upon the subject and such a good salesman of blind workmen that one foreman said that to hear Mr. Clunk talk you would almost believe that blindness was an asset in a factory worker. When Joseph F. Clunk became Chief of the Services for the Blind in the Federal Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, he not only had the opportunity to demonstrate personally his ability to place blind people in factories, but also had a chance to train many placement agents in the technique of finding locations for sightless workmen.

416  

In addition to the movement to place blind people in regular factories doing certain kinds of repetitive work requiring little or no training, efforts were made to place blind people in offices on clerical jobs usually performed by seeing people. The Dictaphone, Ediphone, and similar dictating machines have given many blind women, and some men, an opportunity to earn their daily bread. They have been trained for such clerical work, sometimes by associations and schools for the blind, sometimes in regular business colleges cooperating with agencies for the blind. Many of these blind men and women have been extremely successful. Montgomery Ward & Company has employed one or more blind women for twenty-five years or more, and hundreds of blind Dictaphone operators have found very satisfactory jobs not only in commercial concerns but in state and federal offices.

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However, the placement of blind people in commercial and manufacturing concerns has not removed the necessity of the special workshop for the blind. Special workshops were established in the United States as far back as 1841. In the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth quite a wave of establishing employment institutions for the blind spread over the country. These institutions were combination workshops, vocational schools and boardinghouses. They were usually maintained by the state and at state expense. Board was provided either free or at a very low rate. Wages were ordinarily low. The institutions usually showed a substantial deficit at the end of the year, which was made up from state appropriations. In some instances those entering the institutions came with the understanding that they would remain for only two or three years, while they were learning their trades. But when the training period was over, their home connection has often been broken and there was no place for them to go except to the county poor farms. Often they were permitted to remain in the institution for many years, so that it became difficult eventually to say whether the institution was a training school, a working home, or just a refuge for aged blind people.

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During the first decade of the twentieth century questions began to be raised as to the wisdom of having a boardinghouse feature connected with the special employment establishments for the blind. In certain places like Perkins Institution, day workshops had been conducted for half a century but for the most part the boardinghouse feature was an integral part of the plan. Men like Charles W. Holmes, Eben P. Morford and others began urging the establishment, on at least a trial basis, of special day workshops where blind people could live in their own homes, or board in private families, and come to work in the special shop for the blind just as their seeing friends might go to work each day in a regular industrial establishment. The objectionable characteristics of the boardinghouse feature became so conspicuous that such institutions have ceased to be established in this country. Some institutions have retained the boardinghouse for a few of their older employees, or as a rehabilitation center where newly blinded men and women can be helped with their adjustment to the lack of sight. The best workshop managers scrutinize their boardinghouse departments with the greatest of care, to see that they do not become permanent residences if it is possible to make other arrangements.

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