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Other pupils were equally good types for a fair test of the work: one, a pupil of the music department in our state school, not finding opportunity to make profitable application of it, has proven one of the most exact and rapid at the loom.

Perhaps the best test is found in the case of one of the pupils, a man employed in a large dry goods store as stock keeper previous to his blindness. This man came into the shop directly from the hospital, where he had undergone an unsuccessful operation for regaining his sight. After several weeks of practice with an old-time carpet loom, he asked to be allowed to warp and thread the harness and reed on his loom; with few mistakes he accomplished this, and has since continued to prepare his own loom for each new warp. After frequent requests from his friends to weave old rags, sewn for hit-and-miss pattern, he asked for the use of his loom for one month to try independent weaving, and distributed cards among his friends soliciting their patronage. An item in the newspaper brought him his first order; then a carpet cleaning establishment turned over all its orders to him, and the venture has resulted in steady orders and a nearly independent business eight months after entering the school.

In speaking of the personnel of the school, I have assumed the transition from school to workshop. In order to show the development from an experimental school to a manufacturing workshop, let us return to the first plan for a three months' school for the adult blind. During this period there were five pupils, no one of whom was following a trade at the time of entering. Three additional looms were purchased, supplies bought -- largely on faith, as the venture depended entirely on subscriptions for its support a young woman was engaged as teacher, and we went to work to weave artistic and heavy rag tugs and fine linen and cotton scarfs and draperies, with good design and simple color combinations. Our friends were our first patrons, the newspapers our gratuitous advertisers. We found we had not overcome all the difficulties in equipping the school and starting its looms. We had to educate the public to the value of artistic hand work, and also to appreciate its apparent excessive cost in a large city where a woman's exchange had died an unregretted death and there exists no arts and crafts salesroom, no gift shop, and no art museum for the general display of arts and crafts products. At the end of the three months our sales had amounted to $150; our expenses had been $330, but we had on hand work for sale to the amount of $600, so that our venture was justified on a business basis in that our assets covered our liabilities.

The Experimental School was opened the 12th of June, 1906. The second week in November a public meeting was called in the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce; reports of the summer experiment were read, and there was organized to carry on the work the Society for Promoting the Interests of the Blind in Cleveland, with a president, secretary, and treasurer, and representatives of the original institutions constituting its board of directors. The policy of this society is fourfold: to carry on through the public library the educational work in the various types for the blind, and the ticket bureau; through the Associated Charities to compile a census of the blind of the city; through the Visiting Nurse Association to investigate the opportunity for massage and similar occupations, and through the settlement to carry on the workshop for weaving and develop other industrial opportunities for the adult blind.

Previous to the organization of the society the pupils upon being able to execute salable work were paid a nominal weekly wage, in most cases determined by sales; after the organization of the society our contributions were so generous that we were able to increase the equipment to eight looms, and the school was made a manufacturing workshop, with a scale of weekly wages based on the quality and amount of the work done.

Each worker has, or finds, his own home, and is supported in it by his wages. The workers come to the shop alone from their homes, and in every way individual effort toward every form of activity, in spite of their blindness, is encouraged.

To summarize as to the value and profit of hand weaving as an occupation for the blind:

1. No part of the whole operation of weaving is impossible to the average blind person.

2. A blind person may become so accurate in memorizing the design and so adept in the plain weaving as to earn a fair living wage.

3. Weaving, as a mechanically repeated process, may, and usually does, become an occupation of large interest and pleasure to the worker, a blind person getting a distinct sense of pleasure from feeling the contour and texture of the design.

4. As the value of any hand work as a permanent occupation must depend finally upon the demand in the market, it is essential to know that, in the estimation of those who have kept closely in touch with the movement for handicraft in various lines, the demand is steadily increasing for handmade articles, with a regularity which is not to be confused with the spasmodic fad for machine imitations of the same.