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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636  

While the preparation of disabled men to enter into competition with their normal fellows seems to promise the best results on the whole, still it must be recognized that many men with severe physical limitations must be provided for in special institutions under favorable work conditions. Specialized machinery and carefully planned team work can make productive units of badly handicapped men with whom the average employer is not willing to bother. Large provision for this class of men has been made by the Lord Roberts' Workshops, which are being multiplied in different parts of the country. Some ten years before the war the Soldiers' and Sailors' Help Society opened workshops in London to provide employment for disabled ex-service men for whom It was extremely difficult to find work. The work has been greatly expanded since the war, and the enterprise has taken the name of the nation's military idol, who was greatly interested in the project. Toy-making, with the many processes Involved, has been found a suitable industry for many types of disability, and the enterprise has been successfully conducted on a sound commercial basis. The plans of the society contemplate facilities in the eleven workshops in different parts of the country for the accommodation of between four and five thousand men.

637  

Great Britain's colonies have, one by one, followed the trail blazed by the pioneers of re-education and are now admirably equipped to offer training and employment to the disabled soldiers of their own forces. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India all are now prepared to receive from the battlefields those whom they sent forth, to fit again for civilian pursuits those whom war has maimed.

638  

Great credit is due our neighbor on the north for her promptness in making provision for her disabled men. When the ambulance transports landed the first few bands of disabled Canadians at the clearing depots in Halifax, St. John, or Quebec, there were medical boards to examine them, and hospitals on wheels to carry them comfortably to their military districts. After a short stay at home the soldiers are expected to report back to the military convalescent hospitals named in their passes. Then their physical rehabilitation begins.

639  

In the hands of the Invalided Soldiers' Commission, an outgrowth of the Military Hospitals' Commission, are the duties of re-educational work and vocational training in Canada, whether provided for men undergoing treatment in military hospitals or after discharge.

640  

Those Canadians who have given an arm or a leg in service are fitted with artificial limbs in Toronto, where a government limb factory has been established. The fitting of limbs is done in a branch of the Military Orthopedic Hospital at North Toronto, and local branches for fitting have recently been established at several points. The leg made in Canada is of the standard American type. For men who have been discharged from the hospitals, artificial limbs are provided free, and arrangements have been made by which the government will keep them in repair.

641  

To those of her men who are prevented by their disabilities from resuming their former occupations, Canada offers special training in a new trade at the expense of the Invalided Soldiers' Commission. While the soldier is still in the hospital, his future is discussed with him by a vocational officer, and a plan of action is decided upon. The man comes up before the Disabled Soldiers' Training Board, which consists of the district vocational officer, a special medical officer, and a representative of the local employment organization dealing with the problem of placing returned men in industry. This board determines the man's eligibility for training under the regulations and the occupation for which the man is to be trained. The place of training, length of course, method, and cost are determined by professional members of the staff of the Invalided Soldiers' Commission. The plan is then recommended to the authorities of the commission at Ottawa. Should there be no objection, the man's re-education is begun.

642  

The disabled soldier is given an opportunity to change his course of training, if it is found that the original choice was unhappy. The man approved for re-educational training is given a pension and a vocational allowance, also an allowance for his dependents, so that he is relieved of financial worry while he is undergoing instruction.

643  

At a typical Canadian school of re-education, the men attend as day pupils, receiving instruction in machine-shop practice, gas-engine operation, automobile mechanics, electric power station practice, railroad or commercial telegraphy, surveying, architectural drafting, the manufacture and repair of artificial limbs, shoe-repairing, moving picture operating, steam engineering, heating plant operation, electrical work, civil service, commercial courses -- bookkeeping, accountancy, stenography, type-writing, secretarial work for municipalities -- cabinet-making, sanitary inspection, meat and food inspection, to be instructors in vocational subjects, wood-working, and machine operation. On a prairie, several miles out from the school, men are taught to operate gas tractors, with which they plow up virgin soil, and do a hard day's work as they would under actual employment. There are also classes in mathematics, English, and civics.

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