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In 1909 when plans were being made for the new day school classes for the blind in the New York Public Schools the thorny question of what tactile type to use in these classes came up for decision. There was so much feeling on the subject, especially in the city of New York where New York Point had its birth, that the Board of Education wisely decided to hold a public hearing and let the advocates of the two systems present their cases before a committee of the Board.

There were two hearings held, the first on March 24, the second on May 18th. The time allotted to the first hearing was two and a half hours and was equally divided between the factions, New York Pointists having the first half. This gave the Point people no time for rebuttal and the protests were so violent that a second hearing was held.

William Bell Wait marshalled his witnesses in behalf of New York Point while Miss Winifred Holt, founder of the New York Association for the Blind, rallied the American braille forces. Behind this hearing, as the initiated realized, was a background of a long-standing feud between Miss Holt and Mr. Wait which had little or nothing to do with blind people's reading. Mr. Wait objected to Miss Holt's publicity methods, and Miss Holt was very critical of Mr. Wait's school for not taking more interest in the vocational prospects of its pupils.

Such authorities as Mr. Wait himself, Mr. John F. Bledsoe, Superintendent of the Maryland School for the Blind, Benjamin Berinstein who was then a young blind college student, and other New York Point stalwarts testified passionately in favor of New York Point.

Miss Holt persuaded such braillists as Frank H. Hall, inventor of the braillewriter, who long since had left work for the blind, to come to New York to testify. With him were such well-known personalities as George W. Jones, then superintendent of the Illinois School braille printing department and braille member of the Uniform Type Committee of the American Association of Workers for the Blind; Olin H. Burritt, then superintendent of the Pennsylvania Institution for the Instruction of the Blind; John B. Curtis, sightless supervisor of classes for the blind in the Chicago Public Schools, and others. Edward E. Allen, then director of Perkins Institution, was absent in Europe or he would doubtless have been one of the star witnesses.

Helen Keller, who has always avoided needlessly involving herself in controversies which might prove acrimonious, was not present, but she did write a letter to A. Emerson Palmer, Secretary of the New York Board of Education, which was read at the hearing.

The hall in which the hearing was held was packed to overflowing with backers of the two systems. Charles F. F. Campbell, son of the famous Sir Francis Campbell of the Royal Normal College for the Blind in London, England, and editor of the Outlook for the Blind, came down from Massachusetts with several others to witness the spectacle. A whole delegation came from Philadelphia, another from Baltimore, and local braille and New York Point fans listened eagerly. The author well remembers the breathless silence with which the audience hung on the words of the witnesses.

Backers of the respective systems burst into applause as telling points were made for their favorite type. The committee on types of the Board of Education must have been puzzled over the manifest public interest in this highly technical subject.

Both sides stressed for the most part the economy and flexibility of their systems. In New York Point a given number of words occupies substantially less space than in American braille. Mr. Wait made the most of the space saving qualities of this type even to the point of exaggeration. He also directed attention to the fact that the available library of New York Point books was much larger than that in braille.

The advocates of American braille made a rather impressive showing by recounting the schools for the blind which had abandoned use of New York Point in favor of American braille indicating a strong trend toward the newer system. One of their strongest arguments was that, as New York Point publishers made little or no use of their cumbersome capitals or their four-dot long hyphens and apostrophes, most books were published without using any of these signs.

Studies based on tests made with a very few subjects claimed evidence in favor of braille, which was used effectively at the second hearing. However, the most telling blow that was given New York Point occurred at the first hearing. It was an exhibit offered by Frank Hall which showed two copies of a title page of a book in ink type, one entirely without caps as it would appear in New York Point and one correctly capitalized as it would appear in American braille.

Mr. Hall also showed an exhibit in ink type with apostrophes and hyphens omitted. Much was heard in those days of what was termed the "illiteracy" of New York Point which, when translated into ink type, made New York Point books look like very poor models of English to place in the hands of blind children.