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THE provision of training for disabled men received a tremendous impetus at the opening of the present war. With the call of the able-bodied population to arms, the ensuing shortage of labor necessitated the draft into industry of women and old men. No potential productivity could be neglected, and the rehabilitation of the physically disabled became a national necessity. The dictates of national gratitude and national economy in this instance coincided, and in conjunction have stimulated extensive and vigorous activity.

The wounded soldier comes through the field and base hospital, and, finally, if his disability is such as to disqualify him from further military service, he is returned from overseas to a convalescent hospital at home. Certainly at this point, if not perhaps earlier, preparation for his social and economic rehabilitation should begin.

Before deciding what can best be done for him, the recent experience of the disabled soldier must be taken into account. In the first place, he has been away from home influence and environment for some time -- perhaps one year, perhaps three. During that period he has led a life in the open, free from the many routine responsibilities of the civilian. He has been provided automatically with every necessity of life -- his only reciprocal obligation being to obey the mandates of military discipline. After his injury he has been given every care which the medical corps and its auxiliaries have been able to provide. Every effort has been made to minimize worry or exertion on his part. These influences have the effect of deadening his initiative and his sense of social responsibility, and readjustment to civil life becomes in consequence more difficult.

The new handicap usually throws the man into a state of extreme discouragement. The loss of a hand, an arm, or a leg seems to the man formerly able-bodied an insuperable obstacle to his future economic activity. The prospective pension is the only mitigating feature of this depressing outlook, and he begins to calculate how he can exist on the meager stipend which will become his due. He has basis for this expectation, for has he not known in the past several men each of whom lost a limb through accident? It was necessary for them to eke out a living by selling pencils on the street, or in some similar enterprise of makeshift character. Again, life will hold no pleasure in the future; he will always feel sensitive about his missing limb. Besides, nobody has any use for a cripple.

REBIRTH OF AMBITION

Such a state of mind will be encountered in the convalescent soldier. It must be met and overcome. With returning health, initiative must be reawakened, responsibilities quickened, a heartened ambition must replace discouragement. We can go to him and truthfully say: "If you will yourself help to the best of your ability, we will so train you that your handicap will not prove a serious disadvantage; we will prepare you for a job at which you can earn as much as in your previous position. Meantime your family will be supported and maintained. You will be provided with a modern artificial limb so that a stranger would hardly know you are crippled. Finally, we will place you in a desirable job."

The first reaction to this program is fear that an increase of earning power will entail a reduction of pension. When re-education of the disabled was first begun in both France and Germany, it was found that many of the men were unwilling to undertake training, in apprehension of prejudicing their pension award. The solution of the difficulty was official announcement that such would not be the case, but that pensions would be based on degree of physical disability alone, without reference to earning power. In Canada, a placard to this effect is posted in all military hospitals and convalescent homes.

THE WISE CHOICE OF TRADES

The choice of trades in which disabled men may wisely be trained is of primary importance. In addition to considering whether men with certain types of physical disability can engage in a given trade, its present and prospective employment possibilities must be taken into account. If it is a seasonal trade, if the number of workers in any locality is so small as to make difficult the absorption of many newly-trained men, or if the industry is on the wane rather than enjoying a healthy growth, the indications are negative. The ideal trade is one in which the wage standards are high, the employment steady, and the demand for labor constantly increasing. In picking trades the present boom conditions should be discounted. Machinists are now earning fabulous wages, but it should be considered whether there will not be an extreme reaction after the war.

A VOLUNTARY ENLISTMENT

It is the general consensus of experience that the decision by the man to undertake a course of training must be voluntary. Of course, he may be retained in the military organization and detailed to trade classes in the same way as he is detailed to guard duty, but this would not make for successful results. The unwilling and rebellious pupil learns but little; the earnest and ambitious one makes rapid progress. The man must be persuaded, therefore, to take up instruction; the future advantages of being a trained workman in some skilled trade should be pointed out, and the practical arrangements to be made for him during the course of instruction carefully explained. There is no royal road to success in this effort, but after gaining the soldier's friendship and confidence, a patient persistence will win the battle. If a competent visitor has been in touch with the man's family during his absence at the front, the members of the home circle can be easily convinced of the wisdom of his reeducation; this will make all the simpler persuasion of the man himself.

INSPIRATION OF FELLOWS

A great aid in helping a soldier to decide about his future is acquaintance with the records of other men with similar physical handicaps who have made good -- men who have been trained and who are now holding jobs at attractive wages. In addition, such practical results lend plausibility to the expectations in prospect which are being held out to him. A difficulty, however, is found in the abnormal premium on industrial labor in war time. Even a disabled man may be able to go out and earn seven dollars a day in a munitions factory. This constitutes a very potent counter-attraction to representations of modest but permanent employment after a course of training. If he makes the opportunist choice he will, upon the return of employment conditions to normal, be reduced to the status of a casual laborer, perilously near the verge of mendicancy. No pains should be spared to avert this eventuality.

Care should be taken, however, that representations to the man, while encouraging, should in the main be accurate. Workers with wounded soldiers should not be misled by reports of extraordinary success in isolated cases. The men will, sooner or later, learn the truth, which will thus tend to discredit the veracity of the vocational officials.

BUILD ON FORMER EXPERIENCE

In deciding which of the available courses an individual disabled soldier should pursue, the first effort should be to fit him for an occupation related as closely as possible to his former job. His past experience -- far from being discarded -- should be built upon. A competent journeyman bricklayer who has lost an arm may be prepared by a suitable course in architectural drafting and the interpretation of plans, to take a position as construction foreman of a bricklaying gang. It were idle to give such a man a course in telegraphy. But a train hand who has been all his life familiar with railroad work may most wisely be trained as a telegraph operator, with a little commercial instruction on the side. This man will then be fitted to obtain employment as station agent at some minor point on the road. There is an additional advantage in instances such as the two mentioned in that the former employer will be willing to engage again a man with whose record and character he is familiar -- once there is assured the competence of the ex-soldier in his new capacity.

WHAT OF THE UNSKILLED?

This rule applies, however, only to men who were, previous to their enlistment, operatives in the skilled trades. Their problems are the simplest of solution. But in the present war, when not only professional soldiers, but whole nations are in arms, there will return disabled many young men who had not yet attained a permanent industrial status. Some will have entered the army direct from high school or college; others will have been migratory workers who had not yet found a permanent niche and whose experience has been too varied to be of much value, still others will have been drawn from unskilled and ill-paid occupations which hold little future opportunity for the able-bodied worker, and almost none for the physically handicapped. Among the latter will be found those who have been forced to leave school and go to work at too early an age, and to whom society has not given a fair chance. When they now return from the front crippled for life and having made a great patriotic sacrifice, it is surely the duty of the state to repair so far as practicable the former inequality of opportunity, and provide for them the best possible training. It would be a cause for national pride if, in the future, such men could date their economic success from the amputation of their limb lost in their country's service. And this is entirely within the realm of probability.

With these latter classes there is, therefore, no former experience of value to serve as a guide in the choice of a trade in which the war cripple is to be trained. We must then fall back on the general principles of vocational guidance. The more important factors will be natural talent, personal preference or taste, habits of work, temperament, and the general character of the individual. Advice in each case should be given by an expert vocational counselor, a man familiar at once with trade education, with the requirements of the various industries themselves, and with the current status of the labor market. His opinion should take into account the report and prognosis of the medical officer, and also the past record of the individual.

THE SOLDIER'S OWN CHOICE

As the decision to undertake training at all must be voluntary, so must the choice of particular trade meet with the full approval of the soldier himself. And if, after beginning the course, the subject proves definitely distasteful, the opportunity to change to another trade should -- within reasonable limitation -- be permitted. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the unwilling pupil is a poor learner indeed.

SPECIALIZED MACHINES UNWISE

It would seem inadvisable to train a man for an occupation which he can pursue only by use of specialized apparatus adapted to the individual motor limitations imposed by his deformity. While a badly crippled man may be taught to operate a lathe with special treadles or to run a typewriter with special paper feed and shifting mechanism, his employment opportunities will be precarious. It may be possible to secure for him one specific job which may be arranged for at the time he starts training. But if he cannot get along personally with his employer, if his family must move to another city, if his wages are not advanced as his product increases -- for these and a myriad other reasons, he may become practically unable to obtain other employment, and the value of his training will be thus nullified. Ingenuity should be directed rather to fitting crippled men to meet the demands of standard trades, in which there will be, not one or a dozen possible jobs, but thousands. Only thus can the man be made actually independent.

It is absolutely essential that training, if provided at all, be thorough. The pupils are men, not boys, and they cannot go out in the apprenticeship category, as do the graduates of regular trade schools -- and even in these the present-day standards of proficiency are high. If ill-trained men are graduated from the classes the results will not be fortuitous. Employers will be convinced that the theory of re-educating returned soldiers is unsound; the men will come to distrust the representations of prospective success which have been made to them. There will be, further, an unjustified disturbance of the labor market and its wage standards if a school turns out into a trade as professedly skilled operatives a crowd of undertrained and inexperienced men. Schools of re-education must not contribute to difficulties of this character.

In fact, in every respect, we must give the disabled soldier the best possible preparation for self-support. Let us discharge, to the highest degree, the nation's obligation to our wounded. Let us so act in this greatest of all wars as to mitigate the shame of their treatment in the past.