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Beginning one month after admission to the classes or shops the workers were paid a small stipend, and if they persevered and remained over six months they received pay for the first month as well.

This pioneer experiment proved successful and the institution flourished.

In 1897 there was established in Petrograd, in connection with the Maximilian Hospital, a shop for the manufacture of orthopedic apparatus and for the training of cripples in this trade. Later other equipment was acquired, and in 1901 residential facilities were established. Training has been given in the making of orthopedic appliances, rug-making, shoemaking, cabinet-making, turning, brush-making, willow work, weaving and needlework, saddlery, and tailoring. Cripples between the ages of fourteen and thirty are received for instruction, and the average course of training is four years in length. During the Russo-Japanese War the workshop was considerably enlarged.

After the South African War there were established in Great Britain by the Incorporated Soldiers and Sailors' Help Society workshops for the employment of disabled soldiers.

There were established in France in 1899 by M. Marsoulan, under the auspices of the Department of the Seine, subsidized workshops for cripples and incurables of both sexes. The occupations carried on are the making of grass carpet, chair-caning, toy-making, and the like. These shops are more in the nature of relief agencies than training schools.

A school similar in character to the one at Charleroi was organized by the Belgian province of Brabant just prior to the outbreak of the present war. Its plans were completely drawn and its equipment acquired, when the German invasion interrupted the enterprise.

The advent of a new era for the disabled man, however, was marked by the establishment in Lyons, France, in December 1914 by Edouard Herriot, mayor of the city, of the first training school for invalided soldiers. M. Herriot found it difficult to reconcile the number of disabled men, strong and well with the exception of their specific handicap, who were sunning themselves in the streets and public squares in the city, with the desperate need for labor in the local munition factories. His first impulse was to find jobs for these men, but he soon learned that the men who were unemployed were those so handicapped as to be disqualified from returning to their former occupation. Before they could be restored to employment they must needs be trained in some trade compatible with their handicap.

But a few months after the declaration of war -- to be specific on November 30, 1914 -- Mayor Herriot asked consent from the municipal council of Lyons to establish a training school for the mutiles de la guerre. On December 16, a little over two weeks later, the school opened its doors and in the picturesque statement of French origin, "The Mayor welcomed the first three pupils, grasping them by their three hands." The school was housed in an eighteenth century building which belonged to the city. The pupils registered in ever increasing numbers and so great was the need that before long the old building in the Rue Rachais was outgrown. An annex to the school was therefore established on a farm property at the outskirts of the city. Soon after its foundation, the original school was christened the ecole JofTre and the new branch was designated as the ficole de Tourvielle. Both schools soon outgrew their accommodations. By October of the first year of operation, it was necessary to turn applicants away. There was faced either the necessity of further enlarging the plant or saying to the men injured in the recent combats in Artois and Flanders: "We are sorry but you were wounded too late." The authorities at Lyons decided that they would not submit this excuse and at once decided to build new pavilions and open new courses.

The schools are open to soldiers whose disability is such as to entitle them to pension. Men from any part of France, from the colonies, and from the allied nations are accepted as pupils, but preference is given to those residing in the vicinity of Lyons or in the invaded sections of France.

The length of course ranges from six to eighteen months. Instruction, board, lodging, and clothing are furnished without charge and no deduction is made from any pension which may have been awarded. Pupils not receiving pensions or allowances are paid by the school twenty cents a day for pocket money. The proceeds from the sale of work produced by the shops is discounted fifteen per cent, for running expenses and the balance divided among the pupil workers according to their productive capacity.

At the school in the city are taught clerical work, which comprises bookkeeping, stenography, and typewriting; paper-box-making and bookbinding; toy-making, and beadwork. At the suburban branch are taught shoe-making, galoche-making, tailoring, carpentry and cabinet-making, fur work, manufacture of artificial limbs and orthopedic appliances, wireless telegraphy, and horticulture. Instruction in shop work in the manufacture of artificial limbs has been found most successful. The shop renders services which are considered indispensable. It studies the needs of the workmen in the different trades, designs useful appliances for them, and produces any special device needed for a given purpose. The trade is appropriate for men who have worked with either wood, metal, or leather, and has recruited its pupils from the ranks of men who were mechanics, blacksmiths, wood and metal turners, harness-makers, plaster workers, and shoemakers before the war.