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In addition to the blind who are working in factories with the seeing and in special workshops, there are thousands of blind people -- no one knows how many -- who have found jobs for themselves in regular factories, or who have set up independent business establishments. Probably blind people have operated small stores and other business ventures for centuries. Certainly during the present century hundreds of blind men, and some blind women, have set up small shops of one kind or another. Many of them employ seeing people to do much of the work, the blind men supplying the capital and business management. One elderly blind man who had been very successful in business once said to the author, "Sight is the cheapest thing in the world, it's brains that cost money." If the blind man has the brains and a little money, and the right kind of special abilities, he may find plenty of precedents for operating banks, loan agencies, grocery stores, taverns, book stores, music stores, phonograph record stores, newspapers, yacht building yards, trucking businesses, restaurants, hotels, etc.

However, it is the special workshop which forms the most characteristic opportunity for the average blind man or woman to earn his living. These workshops are usually organized as corporations not for profit. In a few instances, workshops have been set up as profit ventures by persons interested in the blind, the management hoping to employ a majority of seeing workmen. These men have worked on the theory that they could make sufficient profit from the product of seeing labor to offset any possible loss on their blind employees. These factories have seldom, if ever, been a success. Sometimes they have fallen into ill repute by employing a minimum of blind people though making an appeal to the public for patronage on the grounds that they were employing the blind.

The special workshop operating frankly not for profit usually selects its employees from among those who for some reason cannot be satisfactorily placed in industry. Either there is no factory in the community which can or is willing to absorb this labor or, which is quite as often the case, the special workshop employs blind people whose lack of sight has reduced their productive ability to such an extent that they cannot carry their own weight in competition with the sighted. Or it may be that they have never been able to sufficiently adjust themselves to the loss of sight to enable them to get about with enough independence to work in a regular factory.

A special workshop has many policy questions to decide. There is no accepted principle which governs the management of all. Some workshops try to select workmen with a high degree of productivity but who, for personal reasons or for some other reasons, cannot be employed in regular concerns. The managements of such establishments try to operate without a deficit, even though they pay good wages. They very rarely succeed in keeping out of the red, however, and therefore they must depend upon a generous public to make up the deficit.

Blindness varies greatly in its effect upon the capacity of blind people to work. For this reason it is usually good policy to place the workmen on a piece rate basis. When this is done, the piece rate is usually high enough to enable a workman of average ability to earn wages equal to those that are prescribed by the labor union in the locality, and sometimes the rate is higher than that paid seeing people for their output in corresponding industrial concerns. Therefore, many of these blind people earn good wages but some, even at a high piece rate, are able to earn only a few dollars a week. The question then arises, does the man produce a sufficient amount to justify retaining him in the shop where he takes the place of a more productive worker? If he is kept and does not earn enough to meet his living expenses, what shall the shop do about it? Usually some plan is evolved by which the amount of earned wages is augmented by an amount sufficient to enable the worker to live decently. Usually the blind relief authorities operating under the Federal Social Security Act cooperate in a case of this kind. But the workshop frequently has to raise money from private sources to make up this augmentation fund.

The question always arises, how to augment wages and at the same time encourage the workman not only to put forth his best efforts but to try to improve his skill. The workshop management usually meets this situation by handling the supplementary pay of the blind worker in such a way that the more he produces, the more take-home pay he has. For example, if it is decided that a blind man must have $25 a week on which to live, but is able to earn only $10, he is paid $15 augmentation pay. If by increasing his efficiency and putting forth more effort, he is able to produce enough so that his real earnings are $11, his augmentation is increased by 50 cents. He then has an income of $26.50. If he earns still another dollar, his pay is augmented by another 5o cents and his total income is $28. The management, however, usually decides upon a certain top weekly income above which the workshop will not participate with augumentation -sic- money.