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Final decision on all these points of consideration will depend in large degree on the caliber of the men who as advisers are put in touch with the disabled soldiers. Personal strength and force are at a premium. The strong man will make a success of this preliminary work -- the average man will fail. If it should be asked what is the greatest need of the disabled soldier the answer would be -- not industrial school equipment, not elaborate courses, not splendid buildings -- but the finest men the country affords to help him in the critical period immediately following disablement. Where there is found exceptionally successful work with injured soldiers, there will be found a man of unusual qualifications. In Great Britain experience has shown the need for picking most carefully the executive secretary of local war pensions committees to deal with disabled soldiers and sailors, for upon the man chosen turns the success or failure of work in the district.

It is to be hoped that the one place where a re-educational organization will not economize is in the salaries of the men to become the friends and advisers of the disabled soldiers. No precedent, no existing scale of payment, no red tape must interfere with taking for this work the pick of our human resources. Such an injustice to the returning service men could never be condoned.

CHAPTER V
THE NEW SCHOOLHOUSE

Once the disabled soldier has made the decision to carry on, he should be given the advantage of a course of training wisely planned and capably executed.

The plan of re-education is to train a man for a job in which he can perform one hundred per cent, efficiently in spite of his handicap, to find a process in the performance of which the disability will be no drawback whatever. With the wide variety of industrial processes today, it is entirely possible, with care and ingenuity, to find specific jobs which men with all types of handicap can follow. For the man with serious leg injury, there is sought a seated job; for the man with arm injury, work which can be done with one hand only; for the man with lung difficulty, outdoor employment; for the blind man, work in which the senses of hearing and touch are the primary essentials.

For even the most seriously disabled cases, well-paid jobs can be found. The manner in which the problem is approached can best be illustrated by several specific instances. A man with both legs off, if trained thoroughly as a linotype operator, can hold down his job and deliver as much product as his fellow workman with sound legs. He comes to work in the morning, sits down on his chair, and need not get up from it until the close of the working day. The work is all done by his hands. In this job is such a man disabled?

A man with one arm is trained as a painter and given a job in a furniture factory striping chairs, for which work he would use only one hand, even if both were sound.

The man with lungs weakened by tubercular infection, gassing, or exposure, can be trained as a chauffeur and found a job at which he is in the open air all the time. In this way, his health is protected and his disability practically offset. The blind man can be trained to assemble the parts of small machinery. He is given the component parts on a bench at which he is seated and, beginning with the frame, adds part after part in regular sequence. Is this man at any disadvantage in comparison to his sighted colleague?

Yet all these jobs are well-paid, and disabled men can be trained for them without difficulty. Preparation for them restores self-respect in that the man does not have to ask favors in seeking employment of such skilled character.

It is not, of course, entirely easy to find just the job which men of different types of handicap should follow. Work of this kind is entirely new, and training in the highly skilled lines has not been attempted in the past by those who have been concerned in the education or placement of disabled men. Industry must therefore be examined in the most thorough and comprehensive manner in order that the jobs sought may be disclosed to the training and placement authorities.

One of the best means to this end is the conduct of industrial surveys with the aim of disclosing employment opportunities for the physically handicapped. In fact such surveys are essential to intelligent work for the disabled.

When the British Pensions Ministry took over the responsibility of training disabled soldiers for self-support, an arrangement was effected with the Department of Labor to make studies of openings in industry for disabled men. Each industry was considered by a committee which was familiar with its possibilities, and the findings of this committee were published for the benefit of local training officials.

Up to date these committee reports cover attendants at electricity sub-stations; employment . in picture theatres; custom tailoring; agricultural motor tractor work; furniture trade; leather goods trade; hand-sewn custom boot and shoe making and repairing; gold, silver, jewelry, watch and clock jobbing; dental mechanics; aircraft manufacture; wholesale tailoring; boot and shoe manufacture; basket-making trade; building trade; engineering; printing and kindred trades; picture frame making.