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Allow me very briefly to answer these questions to you. Like many other good things which bless and brighten this world of ours, this Institution was "born of a woman." In the Autumn of 1888, Mrs. E.W. Foster of Hartford, while passing through a dark passage of a tenement house stumbled over a child. This proved to be a little blind Italian boy about seven years of age. She became interested in him, and found that he was not only blind but somewhat deformed. It became very fond of her and she would frequently take him to her home for several days at a time. Her interest in him naturally led her to take an interest in other blind people of all ages and conditions and in a very short time she had discovered more than fifty of them in her own city; the result was that almost before she herself was aware of the fact her whole heart, time and purse were enlisted in the work. Through her efforts Mr. F.E. Cleaveland, a lawyer in Hartford, who had been blind from early manhood, became interested with her, and from that humble beginning has grown the work of which Connecticut is justly proud. The General Assembly in 1893 passed an act creating a State Board of Education for the Blind, which consisted of the Governor, Chief Justice and two other persons to be appointed by the Governor. This board was charged with the educational interests of the Blind of the State, both children and adults. They were empowered to make such rules as they deemed advisable in order to carry out the object of their creation. A per capita appropriation of three hundred dollars per annum was made for such blind persons as the State Board should consider eligible as State pupils, and in cases where parents or guardians were unable to provide suitable clothing or to pay transportation expenses an additional appropriation of thirty dollars per capita was made. Thus the project was launched and the problem presented.

These early workers had no model by which they might be guided. They simply knew in a general way what they wished to accomplish. With very limited financial resources and with no practical experience the task undertaken was great and perplexing. The first duty confronting them was to ascertain as nearly as possible the number and condition of the blind people in the State. This number was discovered to be much larger than was previously supposed and the condition of many was extremely wretched. For the twenty-seven years prior to the establishment of the State Board only fifty-seven blind people, all children, had received instruction as State pupils; for the nine years following its establishment 225 were enrolled, of which 105 were pupils at the Industrial Institution. This verifies the old proverb, "that what is everybody's business is nobody's." Some one must be made responsible if we expect work to be performed. I cannot refrain from expressing at this point my admiration for the work of the State Board during these formative years. To their wisdom, farsightedness, patience and conscientious faithfulness in the discharge of their trying and perplexing duties, the State of Connecticut owes the success of this philanthropy. Not only have they been wonderfully successful in searching out cases of blindness, but their indefatigable efforts to prevent blindness by disseminating information therefor, have been invaluable. In looking forward to the establishment of a similar work in any other state I recommend the creation of a State Board of Education for the Blind or a Commission exercising similar powers, as the first essential to success.

So much for our origin. Our aim is to make all who come to us self-supporting, or as nearly so as possible. In order to do this we not only instruct them in the different handicrafts they may elect to follow, but we endeavor to instruct also in business principles, familiarizing them with the cost of the raw material and the best markets for their finished products; impressing upon them above all else the importance of strict honesty in the manufacture and representation of all their commodities.

We discourage everything that has the least appearance of an attempt to gain any advantage of any kind through the sympathy of others. We endeavor to treat all the blind as nearly as possible as we do seeing people, never doing anything for them that we believe them capable of doing for themselves. Many common matters incident to daily life that at first blind people think they can never do, become very easy and simple to them after a little practice. With the blind, as with the seeing, difficulties vanish before a resolute will to accomplish. In this connection allow me to say that seeing people through mistaken kindness frequently work great injury to their blind friends by treating them as though they were helpless and waiting upon them as they would upon infants.

As to the presence scope of the institution. We manufacture brooms of all kinds from a light whisk to the heaviest stable; re-cane chairs, manufacture and renovate mattresses, tune and repair pianos and organs, run a printing office where we print anything from a visiting card to a newspaper; carry on the making of mattress ticks, sewing these both by hand and on a machine; knitting, crocheting, basket-making, both splint and rattan, raffia, bead and other forms of fancy work, besides simple mending of the clothes, and ordinary housework. In addition to these some of our girls have taken full courses in massage and shampooing and are just commencing to practice these. Those that have never learned to read and write braille are given the opportunity to do so if they wish. Most of our people both men and women learn to use an ordinary typewriter for correspondence with seeing friends. What results have been accomplished? It is difficult to give absolute results. Much of the good will be apparent years hence than now. But of what we can see out of the whole number of pupils who have been at the Institution during the eleven years of its existence, we have 45 that are actually self-supporting and several of these are not only supporting themselves but they are also supporting families. Five have died, two of whom were self-supporting and two more who could have been having lived. A few who are not self-supporting are capable of being, but opium or intoxicants prevent; another few are capable of making a comfortable living for themselves, but having been robbed of their manhood or womanhood by years of dependence upon others before coming to us, they find it easier to receive either public or private charity than to work for what they need. In other words, they are lazy and as adversed to work as some seeing people afflicted with the same disease. Of the others who are still living, many, while not strictly self-supporting, have been so much benefited by the instruction received at the institution that they are able appreciably to lighten the burdens of those with whom they make their homes. In fact we believe the proportion of those among the blind who may be reckoned as failures so far as self-support is concerned, is no greater, to say the least, than among seeing people.