Library Collections: Document: Full Text


The Disabled Soldier

Creator: Douglas C. McMurtrie (author)
Date: 1919
Publisher: The Macmillan Company, New York
Source: Available at selected libraries
Figures From This Artifact: Figure 2  Figure 3  Figure 4  Figure 5  Figure 6  Figure 7  Figure 8  Figure 9  Figure 10  Figure 11  Figure 12  Figure 13  Figure 14  Figure 15  Figure 16  Figure 17  Figure 18  Figure 19  Figure 20  Figure 21  Figure 22  Figure 23  Figure 24  Figure 25  Figure 26

Previous Page   Next Page   All Pages 


Page 54:

577  

Toy-making has been selected as a good trade to teach disabled soldiers for two reasons -- because there is a general wish to see an industry formerly monopolized by the Germans built up in France and because it contains openings for one-armed men. At the ecole Joffre in Lyons one-armed men cut out the flat toys by means of a band saw, turn others in the round at a lathe, and paint the droll faces and quaint costumes which make French toys a delight to old as well as young.

578  

One-armed men are also employed at the ecole Joffre in making paper boxes and paper bindings. Some processes in bookbinding are beyond their powers, but they can do all the work on notebooks, pads, and ledgers. They do not work as quickly as other men, but by specializing at one machine they can acquire sufficient proficiency to earn a fair wage. The school hopes to place many of them as foremen or examiners, positions which do not require constant manual effort.

579  

Work with a lathe or band saw, in the experience of several schools, yields a good return to men who have lost an arm. French varnishing has also been found to be suited to them. Pottery is another possible trade for men so handicapped. There are innumerable seated trades in which men with leg injuries can do a full day's work, but there are comparatively few in which the one-armed can compete with uninjured employees.

580  

Since so many of the manual trades are closed to them, the majority of the one-armed in French schools are being trained for office positions. They are taught bookkeeping and business usage, stenography and typewriting, and afterwards placed in banks, business houses, and government offices. Often common school subjects, such as writing, French composition, arithmetic, and geography, are included in the course, in order to supply the deficiencies of the soldier's previous education or to brush up long-forgotten learning. Some general schooling is also given to the men learning trades, usually for an hour after dinner in the evening.

581  

Another kind of office work in which badly disabled men have achieved real success in France is industrial design or drafting. Men who have lost the use of one arm, even those who have suffered amputation of the arm, have been able to acquire skill in the work and afterwards to obtain good positions as tracers or detailers. Many of these have had no previous training in work of the kind, often no technical background at all, though machinists and men in the building trades incapable of the activity and strength required in their old work have found it particularly interesting. In schools where the draughting course has been most successfully developed, several branches of design are taught, so that a pupil can specialize in that for which he has most talent. In the municipal school for disabled soldiers at Paris, for instance, the course includes draughting for machinery, building construction, furniture, architecture, and landscape gardening.

582  

Sometimes twenty or more different trades are taught in one school in order to meet the needs of men with all sorts of different injuries and from many different localities. Such a variety of opportunity is to be found in the larger schools of Paris and Bordeaux, where from two to three hundred pupils can be cared for at one time. There are, however, a number of smaller schools, situated in regions where there is a predominant local industry, which teach only the one trade. Thus at Saint-Claude, a small city in the Jura which is the center of the diamond-cutting industry of France, the school organized by the townspeople for disabled soldiers teaches nothing but diamond-cutting. The school at Oyonnax teaches only the different branches of the celluloid industry, thereby fitting men to go into the numerous celluloid factories in the vicinity. The national school of clock-making at Cluses near the Swiss border is adding to the number of renowned clock and watch-makers of that region. In Paris there are special schools for novelty jewelry-making, glass-blowing, tapestry-weaving.

583  

In the early days of the re-education movement, when schools to teach new trades to the disabled were springing up all over the country, the importance of training for the farm was not sufficiently recognized. A few schools taught truck gardening with perhaps poultry or rabbit raising, but there was no thorough-going effort to induce the wounded farmer to go back to his old useful work of producing wheat or milk or sugar beets to feed the nation. When it was seen, however, that the shortage of farm labor was one of the most serious problems facing the country, the need was clear for training which would enable a disabled man to work on a farm and to profit from owning a farm. This training is now being provided by the Minister of Agriculture in the existing agricultural schools and by some private associations in newly organized farm schools. An agricultural school for French mutiles is also being conducted by the American Red Cross, which has recognized the urgent need of fitting the wounded to return to the land.

Previous Page   Next Page

Pages:  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  33  34  35  36  37  38  39  40  41  42  43  44  45  46  47  48  49  50  51  52  53  54  55  56  57  58  59  60  61  62  63  64  65  66  67  68  69  70  71  72  73  74  75  76    All Pages