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CHARLES F. F. CAMPBELL
Superintendent Industrial Department Massachusetts Commission for the Blind

REMUNERATIVE employment for the blind may be divided roughly into three groups. First, occupations at home, i. e., home industries; second, employment in workshops adapted to the blind; and third, employments among the seeing.

The two examples of the first named class most commonly engaged in are chair caning and needle and fancy work. Recently cobbling has been tested as a possible home industry. The vending of small wares, and in some places the maintenance of tea and coffee agencies, are without doubt very good ways for blind men to earn a livelihood if the conditions are favorable. Whether such work should be included under the first or third head is immaterial. Housework for blind women might properly be called a home industry, and was commented on at some length by the speaker at the close of the first session. I feel that sympathetic study of the capabilities of the blind, coupled with a careful investigation of the home environment of each individual, would reveal possibilities of occupations hitherto untried. Here, as in other fields of employment for the sightless, the family and friends, through mistaken kindness in relieving the blind member of responsibility or through failure to understand his needs, rarely encourage in him independent effort in searching for new lines of work.

The more one has to do with finding employment for the blind the more evident it becomes that it is impossible to treat the applicants as a class. The possibilities and qualifications of each person are so diverse that no sweeping generalization can be made.

Much attention has been given to work-shops for the blind where conditions are especially adapted to their needs, and the previous papers deal at length with this subject. In the collective as in the home industries, greater variety of employment, I believe, may yet be found. There is certainly a need for some industry for the blind which requires little or no skill, inexpensive materials, and an assured market; something so simple and practical that the clumsy worker can be given employment within a few hours of the time that he applies for work.

Employment of the blind among the seeing, as a distinct means of self-support, has not been given as much attention as the two first mentioned groups of occupations, except as students in schools for the blind have been prepared for tuning or professional careers.

In 1903, when the Massachusetts Association for Promoting the Interests of the Blind was organized, it enabled me, as its agent, to visit a large number of factories in an effort to ascertain if persons with defective vision might not find employment in them on the same basis and under the same conditions as seeing operatives.

Probably we all agree that a blind person earning a living wage side by side with seeing workers is enjoying a more normal life than if he were earning more in a subsidized institution for the blind. I am not overlooking the fact that there are many blind men and women who lose their sight too late in life to adapt themselves to the strenuous conditions of modern factory life, and that many of those who are blind possessed but little initiative when they had their sight, and that for them the only hope is work in an institution under special supervision. Workshops for the blind most be fostered and are to be encouraged, but they should not be the only means of employment for a person who is suddenly bereft of sight. Work in factories may be available for but a comparatively small number of the blind or partially blind, and exactly the same kind of work is rarely available in the same shop for more than two or three individuals. Yet if every state would make a systematic search and find even twenty or thirty such opportunities, how great would be the gain to the present limited number of occupations open to the blind!

It has been said that the extensive introduction of machinery has made the possibility of blind labor in factories for the seeing more difficult. This is true in a measure, but in some instances machinery has simplified the problem, as its use has so subdivided the manufacture of certain articles that each process is made distinct in its performance, and payment by the piece is frequently found. In this detailed manufacture may be seen certain operations where the labor is so automatic that very little and sometimes no sight is necessary for exact and perfect execution.

In the operation of a machine like a box-corner cutter, the knife is protected by a guard for all operatives, and is set by the foreman of the department, who also apportions the work. The cards are brought to and taken from the workers, leaving the operative only the simple act of cutting by moving the handle of the machine back and forth with one hand and turning the card to insert each corner with the other. Three years ago we started a totally blind fellow in a well-known factory on a machine such as has just been described. Since that time three blind men have been employed at such work in the same factory.

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In a factory where hairpins are being made, two partially blind men found positions for themselves feeding hairpins into rounding machines. All that is required of the operative is to start the hairpin into the machine, and when the process is completed throw the hairpin into a receptacle. In this same shop a place was found for a partially blind woman in a detail of the manufacture known as "stringing hair-pins," that is to say, she took the rough pins and placed them side by side on a stick about eighteen inches long, which when filled was turned over to a polisher. That is all that was required of her, and it is evident that practically no sight was necessary for the work.

Tobacco stripping, namely, taking the stems from the leaves, is and probably always must be done by hand. This work, unfortunately, is poorly paid; but when a woman, such as the one we placed, is entirely without resources, it is better than nothing.

I found hardly a factory which did not have at least one process which might be performed by an operative with little or no sight. But in some cases an obstacle presented itself, namely, that coupled with a simple task went inspection which requires full sight. For example, many articles like soap, chocolate, etc., have to be wrapped or packed in separate packages. Work requiring greater skill is done by blind children in their kindergartens, but in the factory the person who wraps the article must also detect flaws and cast out the imperfect pieces. Some factories employ people constantly labeling cans, bottles, small boxes, etc. Such work is possible for some of those with defective vision.

A particularly good instance of how a man's former training may help him is shown by Mr. X., who, previous to the loss of his sight, had been a wheelwright. When he was reported to the Massachusetts Association for the Blind there seemed to be nothing before him but idleness. We found him a position in a large factory where wooden packing cases were required in such quantities that one man was kept busy all the time assembling the parts. Our man was started on a piece basis and commenced by earning three dollars a week. The following letter from the superintendent of the factory tells its own story:

BOSTON, March 30, 1907.

The partially blind man whom you sent to us has been employed by us for nearly two years. His speed and skill have grown with his experience, and he is now doing his work in an entirely satisfactory manner. His pay averages about two dollars per day, and he does his work as well as any one could do it possessing full eyesight.

Since the Commission has become a permanent factor in the welfare of the blind in Massachusetts, my associate, Mr. Holmes, has been giving special attention to employment bureau work. His paper goes into further details with regard to this problem, and he will cite some excellent examples of how blind men have been placed.

One of the first things that the Massachusetts Association did four years ago was to encourage the operation of a private telephone exchange at the Massachusetts Reformatory by a partially blind boy, an inmate of the institution. Unfortunately the introduction of the use of light signals at the central telephone stations instead of the drop signals, which are distinguishable to both hearing and touch, put a damper for some years to telephone operating as a possible occupation for the blind. With the great increase in the use of the telephone, however, has come the multiplication of private branch exchanges, with the audible signals, and in the operation of these there ought to be opportunities for blind or partially blind operators. It is encouraging to hear of the work done along this line in New York, and of other instances in various parts of the country, where blind people have secured and are successfully filling positions as telephone operators.

Through the newspapers and correspondence we learn of individuals who, through their own exertions, are successfully engaged in some business or occupation ordinarily thought to be impossible of accomplishment without sight. These, when proven authentic, encourage one to look for similar opportunities for those among our applicants who have like qualifications.

In most of the cases mentioned above there has been a deliberate effort on the part of a friendly organization to find the position and to persuade the employer to give the blind man an opportunity to try the work. Convincing employers and the public that persons with defective vision can do certain work well under existing conditions is quite half our problem.

When urging the trial of a blind person among seeing workers I have always insisted that payment should be made strictly for service rendered, and not for charity's sake. If a blind worker is paid only that which he fairly earns, no criticism can be made by the seeing operatives. In the shops where piece work prevails, there can be no question as to the amount earned by the blind man. It is usually wise, when endeavoring to place a worker, to select a person with some sight, no that he or she will have no trouble in getting about the factory. Once such a worker is established, it will be easier, as a rule, to introduce a second person who is totally blind, although I may say that the first person for whom I secured a position in a factory was wholly without sight.

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In many schools for the blind there are pupils who certainly show before they have had many years of instruction that they have not the talent to pursue a rigorous musical or professional training which will enable them to compete with well-equipped seeing competitors. Would it not be well, earlier than is now the practice, to turn the attention of such pupils to some trade or business? Too many, perhaps, will follow the line of least resistance and drift into some collective industry maintained for the blind. But if these students are taken when they are young enough to adapt themselves to new conditions, might not more be found capable of filling positions side by side with their seeing brothers, and might not some of those who have aptitude for neither the professions nor the trades receive with profit agricultural training which would enable them to become helpers on a farm? I am aware that there are limitations to such work, but the fact that there are blind men successfully conducting farms in different parts of the country would seem to show that such work is not impossible. Several men are raising poultry with success. In such instances there is usually the cooperation of one of the seeing members of the family, either parents or children. Much of the work can be done with little or no sight, and the assistance required can be rendered in a few minutes each day on the parts of the work where vision is needed.

In seeking for employment for the blind, whether in workshops for the sightless, in factories for the seeing, or at home, it is an individual problem.