POOR RELIEF IN THE UNITED STATES 159 



1893, and contains reports, with numerous illustrations, on all 

 American institutions; and the work of Fay, Marriages of the 

 Deaf in America, which shows astonishing industry. It grew 

 out of a proposition of Graham Bell, the celebrated inventor of 

 the telephone, who deserves great honor for his service in the 

 cause of deaf mutes in America, and who established a fund 

 for this purpose. The object of the investigation was to dis- 

 cover whether marriages of deaf persons contribute more than 

 other marriages to the increase of deaf mutes, and especially 

 whether this is true in a higher degree when both parties are 

 deaf than when only one is afflicted, and whether certain 

 classes of the deaf are predisposed to have deaf children. The 

 result is represented separately for each of the 4,471 persons 

 counted. The principal result is that marriages of the deaf 

 are more frequent in America than in Europe, and that mar- 

 riages of deaf persons there have increased in an extraordinary 

 degree, during the last ten years from 0.02 per cent to 2.27 per 

 cent. The increase is rightly ascribed to the establishment of 

 numerous schools for deaf mutes, which not only favor ac- 

 quaintance of defective persons with one another, but also 

 bring deaf mutes into nearer relations with society in general, 

 and so enable them to marry and rear a family. The majority 

 of married deaf mutes are married to the deaf, in the ratio of 

 72 to 28 compared to those who marry hearing persons. The 

 marriages of the first kind run a happier course than those of 

 the second, among which the number of divorces is greater. 

 Both works are to be strongly recommended to specialists, and 

 the book of Fay relating to marriage contains a complete 

 bibliography of the subject 



The pamphlet on Helen Keller reports an almost incredible 

 devotion, on the one side, and an extraordinary development 

 of faculties in a defective child. This remarkable girl who has 

 frequently been discussed in literature relating to the deaf and 

 the blind, although she is both blind and deaf, received a 

 complete scientific education, on the ground of which she was 

 admitted in 1899 to Radcliffe college. In this pamphlet one 

 may read by what a vivid and immeasurably patient method 

 this result, bordering on miracle, was reached. 



For crippled children, the Childrens' Aid society, moved by 



