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The workshops for the blind entered a period of unprecedented activity. Two or three shops which had formerly operated but three or four days a week were now running seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. The manufacture of pillowcases had long been one of the small activities of workshops for the blind. It was an industry which blind women could work at, but it had always been thought about in terms of a few dozen items rather than several millions. Ordinary sewing machines had been used and no one had been stimulated to find out his maximum productivity possibilities because the shops had had difficulty in selling the pillowcases they made. Now they were confronted with orders for millions of pillowcases. Few shops for the blind knew what their costs would be in quantity production and wanted to try out orders for ten thousand or so. Mr. Kleber realized that ten thousand was only a drop in the bucket against a million pillowcase order. He finally prevailed upon Mr. Edward S. Molineaux, manager of a workshop for the blind in Brooklyn, to undertake to make half a million pillowcases. Molineaux's shop had never made any pillowcases before, but fortunately he had a deep interest in the blind and something of the spirit of a gambler. He took the order for half a million, without any idea of how he was going to deliver the goods, or even purchase the raw material. His organization was not too interested in tackling such a job, but he prevailed upon it to allow him to use the organization's credit and purchase raw material sufficient to go forward with the job. Probably no one but Molineaux and Kleber realized the financial chances that were being taken. Certainly the jobber who extended the credit did not realize it until later. But it all worked out all right. The pillowcases were delivered on time, the creditors were paid. The blind workers got a lot of experience and the outlet was saved as a market for the product of hundreds of blind women workers.

On the basis of this experience, other workshops for the blind were willing to accept large orders for pillowcases. Had Molineaux not been willing to take the gamble, or had he failed to deliver, blind women of this country would never have had the opportunity to earn the hundreds of thousands of dollars in wages which eventually came to them from the government's pillowcase business.

In this case and in others the workshops for the blind did well in meeting the government specifications, both as to quality of workmanship and time of delivery. Three of them did so well that they received the Army and Navy "E" for excellence of service. They proudly flew their "E" flags, a privilege that less than five per cent of the industrial concerns of the country enjoyed.

The bulk of orders from the Federal Government are for brooms, mops and pillowcases. National Industries for the Blind and the Federal Procurement Department are constantly studying government requirements in an effort to find a greater variety of commodities which workshops for the blind can supply. One unfamiliar with government purchasing may be surprised to learn the variety of commodities purchased. It includes an amazing number of various items, and many of them may be produced by the blind.

THE IMPORTANCE OF POWER TO MOVE ABOUT AT WILL

Dr. Irwin became blind at the age of five. He developed a high skill in getting about on his own during his years at the school for the blind and during his periods of attendance at the University of Washington and at Harvard University. He preserved this skill through his active working years and commuted alone from his home in New Jersey to the offices of the American Foundation for the Blind in New York City. However, his descriptions of the blind man's feelings of humiliation at being dependent on others for getting about, and of the terrors that modern traffic holds for the blind man, are expressions of his own deep feelings on the matter.

HELEN KELLER once said that the heaviest burden on the blind is not blindness, but idleness. This has been quoted for a generation by advocates of remunerative employment for the blind. Idleness, however, has a much broader significance. Probably more important than earning one's own living is having the ability to move about at will.

It takes no great skill for a blind person to learn to get about his own home alone, but under modern traffic conditions in practically every community, it takes initiative and intestinal fortitude for a blind person to go for a walk beyond his own gate, or go to the neighborhood drugstore, grocer or barbershop unaccompanied. Those who lose their sight in later life, and who in number represent more than half of the blind population of the United States, are pretty likely to be homebound or at least dependent upon the kindness and generosity of relatives and friends for making even the shortest journeys away from home. The inability to go forth alone at will without accommodating oneself to the convenience of one's associates is perhaps the greatest affliction resulting from blindness. To have to ask a friend or a busy member of the family to go along on the simplest of errands is more humiliating than most seeing people realize and humiliation brings with it a deep resentment at one's lot.