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The most serious problem confronting the workshop manager is to find a suitable product to manufacture. Workshops are influenced very much by tradition. Those who established the workshops for the blind in the country during the third and fourth quarters of the nineteenth century, discovered that the manufacture of brooms and the cane-seating of chairs offered fair opportunities for blind people to earn a living. Not too high a degree of skill was required, and it was not too difficult to find a market in the community for the products. During the twentieth century an effort has been made to get away from brooms and chair caning, if possible. Broom making seems to be a declining business, and cane-seated chairs are becoming obsolete. Still, today more blind people work at the manufacture of brooms in special workshops than at any other trade.

Experiments have been conducted with making coco-mats, pillowcases and doormats constructed of new rubber blocks and wire, or made from wornout automobile tires cut into small pieces and strung on wires. Experiments have also been made with rag-rug weaving, weaving of linen for table scarves, weaving of cloth from homespun wool, brush making, basket making and mop making. Basket making never became very popular, first because of the skill it required, and second, because of the competition with cheap foreign labor. At best, few blind people were able to earn reasonable wages. Rag-rug weaving lacked a sufficiently large market, and again, competition left little margin for the blind workman of average ability. Limited markets also kept coco-mat manufacture and other mat business from expanding sufficiently to employ many blind people.

Perhaps the greatest problem facing the special workshop manager is that of disposing of his product. In normal times most workshops for the blind have difficulty in selling enough of their output to keep the blind people who want work fully occupied. During recent years, the managers have given more attention to their sales departments. They have found that with a competent sales force travelling about calling on customers, as does the average factory salesman, the market could be expanded substantially.

Many workshops have tried selling brooms and other commodities direct to the consumer, from door to door, with a kind of Fuller Brush procedure. Some department stores have been induced to put in a special counter for commodities made by the blind, giving the entire proceeds to the local agencies for the blind. There have been cases when commodities made by the blind were sold at church bazaars and at counters in summer and winter resort hotels.

Where the homework done by the blind could be sufficiently standardized, products of blind labor have sometimes been sold to jobbers. Usually, however, this procedure has showed a substantial deficit, even under favorable conditions. Perhaps the most successful effort in this connection has been the selling to jobbers and retail stores of handwoven neckties manufactured by a workshop for the blind in Seattle, Washingon -sic-.

In some instances substantial quantities of brooms have been sold to railroads and steamship companies in satisfactory quantities and at prices which left room for fair wages to blind people without causing much of a deficit on the shop's books.

One of the largest outlets, though usually leaving little margin for wages and management, has been the sale of brooms and mops to federal and state governments. In this kind of business, however, very severe competition has had to be met. In the mop business, for instance, where there were only a few manufacturers, the bulk of the mops offered the government were made by workshops for the blind, who found that other workshops for the blind were their most severe competitors. In fact, they were all actually selling at a loss, to the Federal Government especially, even though the wages paid blind people were small and only sufficient profit was being sought to meet the cost of operation.

To relieve this situation it was decided to ask the American Foundation for the Blind to get a law enacted by Congress which would require the federal purchasing departments to buy from workshops for the blind brooms, mops and other suitable commodities which could be made by the blind. Congresswoman Mrs. Caroline O'Day and Senator Robert F. Wagner, both of New York, were interested in sponsoring such a bill. The commodities made by the blind were to be bought by the Federal Government at a fair market price, to be determined by a committee appointed by the President and containing representatives of the federal departments doing the most purchasing, such as the Army, Navy, Post Office, etc. In addition to the department representatives, the committee was to contain a representative of the general public familiar with the employment of the blind.

The bill was introduced, and in order that the reader may understand some of the difficulties of getting such a worthy measure through Congress, I am going into some detail regarding the efforts to obtain its passage.