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

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584  

The first purpose of the instruction given is to show the unhappy, often hopeless farmer that he is still capable of hard outdoor work. Practice in the management of his artificial limb and in new ways of handling his old tools will do this for him and at the same time give him back his courage and revive his old interests. Some men go back to their homes after these first few weeks of readaptation, but others are persuaded to stay for a longer period. They are then taught modern methods of general farming, including scientific fertilizing, the prevention of pests, and the use of labor-saving machinery, or they take up the study of some branch of farming, such as butter and cheese making, sheep raising, or bee keeping. It is hoped that after this instruction men who before the war were but farm hands will have the requisite knowledge for managing a small farm of their own. The means of acquiring a small piece of land have been put within their reach by the recent passage of a law which enables disabled soldiers to borrow money from the agricultural banks at a very low rate of interest for the purpose of buying or improving agricultural property. The sum is small, being limited to ten thousand francs, but holdings are also small in France, and much can be raised on them by the intensive industry of the French farmer. Returned soldiers who are already proprietors will perhaps derive even greater benefit from the law, in that they will be able to re-stock their farms and buy new machinery, and so begin their new life with perhaps a fairer start than before.

585  

Mayor Herriot of Lyons -- to whom can be attributed so much that is good in the French measures for the disabled -- decided to provide free board and lodging for his pupils while they were learning their new trades, and most of the other schools followed his example. The re-education school in France is therefore usually a boarding-school with dormitories and dining-halls as well as classrooms and shops. Whether trade training given under these conditions would appeal to our soldiers on their return from overseas is open to discussion, but the system is apparently admirably suited to the necessities and disposition of the French mutile. By living in the boarding-school the pupil from outside the city enjoys cleaner quarters and a better chosen diet than he could obtain in the usual working-man's boarding-house; he is less tempted to cut his classes or his shop work; and he comes into closer relations with his instructors. These through their more intimate acquaintance with his problems are better able to help him over the difficulties and discouragements which are bound to beset him during the early period of his training.

586  

The discipline in the schools, though not military, is fairly strict, but the pupils seem to submit to it with entire good grace. They are usually required to wear a special uniform and they are in many places allowed to leave the grounds only on Sundays and the Thursday half-holidays. If a pupil breaks the rules, he may be warned and deprived of his leaves, but if he continues to show a bad spirit, he is simply sent away from the institution. The authorities want only sober, industrious men who will make the most of the opportunities offered to them. A man who imagines that he is there for anything but work soon finds that his place is needed for some more earnest pupil.

587  

While the boarding-school principle generally prevails in France, there are numerous day schools, the guild schools in Paris for instance, which have been very successful in their teaching, and there has been some use of the apprenticeship system. The apprenticeship system trains men by placing them as learners in shops and factories. It has some obvious advantages over the school method -- it is more economical in that new workshops do not have to be fitted out; it offers the choice of an almost infinite variety of trades; and it allows the men to work and live under more normal conditions -- but there is always danger that the instruction will not be so good. Too often an apprentice is treated simply as cheap labor and gets no chance to learn the different processes of the trade. At Tours, however, where the system has been put into practice rather more extensively than elsewhere in France, it has had excellent results. The director of the work at Tours, a citizen who gives his time, is a man of rare judgment in placing men and of untiring devotion in watching over their progress, by force of which qualities he has been able to overcome many of the usual obstacles to successful apprenticeship. Other dangers which everywhere lie in wait for the disabled man when he is first thrown on his own resources -- discouragement, gambling, and drunkenness -- have been guarded against at Tours by housing and boarding together all apprentices without homes in the city. Many of the advantages of the boarding-school are in this way secured to the men, and there can be some supervision over their habits and leisure hours.

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