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Returning The Disabled Soldier To Economic Independence

Creator: Douglas C. McMurtrie (author)
Date: November 1918
Publication: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
Source: Available at selected libraries

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What is the course of the disabled man from the battlefield on which he is wounded, back to self-support? He passes through the mechanism of the medical corps at the front, through the clearing stations and base hospitals, and when it becomes evident that he is no longer needed for military service and can no longer be useful for duty at the front, or that he will be laid up for a considerable period of time, he is invalided home. He passes here through the reconstruction hospital, which differs from the ordinary hospital, in layman's parlance, only in the more intensive treatment given. He is retained just as long as he profits by treatment, and the endeavor is to restore the man to the best physical shape possible.

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While he is in the hospital, in addition to medical and surgical care, he is constantly under treatment of another character. In the first place he is there getting occupational therapy -- something that will keep the mind active, something to drive away the tedium of idleness and keep him from thinking about himself, something that gets him again interested in life. Occupational work of a very simple nature is sometimes carried on at the bedsides or in the wards and serves the double purpose of interesting him and being of permanent value. For example, if a man who is in business in a small way can be interested while in the hospital in learning some of the principles of accounting, it will enable him when he goes out, to run his business better, and yet at the same time serve the therapeutic purpose in view. It will leave him at the end of the treatment with some definite asset as a result of his stay in the hospital.

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One of the first necessities is to overcome the natural discouragement which comes when an able-bodied man -- and the men of our forces are more than able-bodied; they are the pick of the country -- when you take a man like that and strike him down from such full physical power and make him, as he thinks, a cripple for life, it is a very desperate experience. Our injustice to the disabled man in the past has made it even more of a despair than it should be, for he often happens to know of the man who used to work next to him in the factory and who lost an arm. Where is that man now? Well, the superintendent thought he would be good, and made a messenger's job for him. He is getting $12.00 a week now whereas he used to earn $30.00. The soldier also knows another man who was injured in the factory. What is he doing? Selling pencils on the main street. And so he could go on, practically without exception, thinking of case after case where disability meant practical hopelessness. That is what he visualizes as the future for himself, and in first dealing with him you have to grant that the deduction is theoretically correct and then simply endeavor to tell him that things have changed, that the matter is seen in a wiser way, and that much better provision is being made by the government to deal with his situation. At the earliest moment, men of high caliber should be brought in close, friendly, and confidential touch with the disabled man, to show him what there is ahead, and lead him to begin to think about his own plans.

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Now, when he has once gotten a little spirit back, when his ambition is aroused again and he begins to think he can do something, the next necessity is to find what he shall do, and that necessitates what is known in some of the countries as a vocational survey. We have found, let us presume, through industrial surveys and other means what jobs are possible to the disabled. We are asked again and again, and I suppose everybody who is interested in this work has been asked the same question: What are the jobs for the one-armed man, what are the jobs for the one-legged man? For answer we must say that there are none. Experience has shown that for five hundred one-armed men there are probably four hundred different jobs that they might most profitably fill, and the chief criterion that has been found effective in determining the choice is the past experience of the man. You are dealing with a man -- not with a boy who is making his first vocational choice. You are dealing with an adult who has had actual experience in jobs. That experience should not be wasted, but every effort made to conserve it. The principle may be illustrated by two superficial examples. Let us presume that we have a railroad hand, a brakeman, who has come home from the front with a leg off or a foot off. That is not a serious handicap in some senses but it would at least prevent him from hopping on and off freight cars. What are you going to train that man for? If you have found printing a good job for a man with a leg off, would you train that man to be a printer? The answer would be most decidedly negative, because such a course would waste all his past railroad experience. On the other hand, he might be trained to be a competent telegrapher and sent back to the railroad he worked for in the past. We can then say, "Here is John Jackson. He has worked for you for a number of years and you know him to be reputable, sober and steady. Although he cannot go back to his old job, he has been trained to be a competent telegrapher, and perhaps you can put him in the train, despatcher's office or in a switch-tower on the road." The minute he gets that job all his past experience as to rolling-stock, time schedules, and railroad practice in general immediately comes into play, and is saved rather than thrown away.

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