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Indiana University Studies 



and really amount to something. Once ambition is conceived, 

 the rest of the task of encouraging the individual to work 

 is an easy one. Even the most limited variety of occupa- 

 tion offers some choice so that the individual's taste and 

 interest can be consulted. The crippled child should be 

 taught that he is a normal human being and not altogether 

 an alien on account of his physical difference. 



Potentially he is a normal child, full of creative ability, energy, and 

 affection. Neglected he becomes mentally and abnormally deficient. 

 . . . Give the crippled boy a chance and two results follow: free- 

 ing a child's soul from a false sense of inefficiency, and society from a 

 bur den. - 



Efficiency can and is attained by the crippled worker as 

 well as the normal, provided the former has had training and 

 has chosen work suitable to his capacity. It has been sug- 

 gested that skilled occupations where quality of production 

 is of more importance than quantity are best adapted to crip- 

 ples; but this limitation would not necessarily hold good, as 

 in some occupations a cripple, if adapted to his work, can work 

 just as rapidly as his average competitor. 



The education of employers to a true realization of the 

 cripple's situation and capabilities is an important part of the 

 great work of transforming the cripple from a beggar and 

 misanthrope into a self-respecting, self-supporting citizen. 

 Most of the employers have always been too busy and unsym- 

 pathetic even to give a crippled worker a chance to prove his 

 ability; and a few have given jobs purely out of a sense of 

 philanthrophy, in the days when the cripple did not have a 

 chance to receive vocational training. Now, however, the 

 purpose of broad-minded, socially-wise people is first to secure 

 vocational training for the disabled, and then to prove to the 

 employers that the work offered by these people is just as 

 competent as that of any average man or woman. With the 

 readjustment of soldiers from military to civilian and indus- 

 trial life, every effort has been made to prevent the wholesale 

 placement of the crippled man in jobs offered to them thru 

 a spirit of patriotism and sympathy, and which they could 

 never hold in equal competency against trained and experi- 

 enced men. Such jobs could not be permanent, and it is to 

 prevent the future chaotic readjustment which would natur- 



- A. L. Lewis, "The Toy Industry", in American Journal of Care for Cripples, Vol. 

 VII, No. 2, p. 152. 



