BLIND, CARE OF THE

Modern social welfare work has so ameliorated the condition of blind people that it can no longer be said that they are helple as a cla . Certainly few need resort to begging, the fate of many in former days. By the help of schools that provide elementary and higher education and vocational training in teaching music, piano tuning and a variety of occupations and handicrafts that can be followed by the blind, many of the sightle rank now side by side with their more fortunate fellow-creatures as_ self-supporting wage-earners. It is only since the latter part of the eighteenth century that any attention was paid to teaching the blind to utilize their capacities despite their lack of sight. A French man, Valentin Haiiy, started the first blind school in Paris in 1784, where the printing of raised or embo ed characters was first undertaken. Haiiy is counted the great apostle of the blind. Similar institutions later came into existence in Vienna, Berlin, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and_ every country in Europe duly supported residential schools for instructing the blind. In the United States the first care be-| stowed on the blind was due to private effort and private funds. Pioneer schools were started between 1829 and 1833 in Boston, New York and Philadelphia, and exist today. At their inception, public interest in educating the blind was stimulated by the succe with which the deaf and dumb had been taught and also by the gratifying results accomlished in Europe with blind pupils. ack of the movement, however, was a general recognition that all children of the state should be educated both as a matter of public policy and as a private right, including the physically defective. States established schools for the blind appropriated funds for their support, and the establishments in augur a ted as State institutions today number 44 throughout the country. Each State makes provision for its blind of school age. Industrial training is an e ential part of the school course. It embraces useful handicrafts for boys and young men like chair-caning, hammock -making, mattre renovating, and netting an dj mop-making; while girls and young women crocheting, fancy weaving, reed basketry, domestic science and simple housework. There have been few callings in which blind persons have not acquitted themselves well, given the opportunity. The Federal government subsidizes the American Printing House for the Blind at Louisville, Ky., which furnishes every blind school in the country with embo ed books free of expense. Most State libraries and a number of public and school libraries maintain departments where such books for the blind are available. The blind also have their ab peairare which the post office carries In 1910, of 7,975 blind males gainfully employed in the United States, 1,768 were farmers, 665 broom-makers, and 646 musicians and music teachers. The World War added to the number of the blind. As to their proportion to the population, the last available census figures (1910) enumerated the blind at 57,272 or 62 out of every 100,000 persons in the United States. Half were sixty and more years of age.