Hare: A Study of Handicapped Children 51 



ally result from such placements that the reconstruction de- 

 partment of the army has not only offered but compelled dis- 

 abled men to accept a vocational training course before dis- 

 charging them from the army. The message which everyone 

 who is interested in the welfare of the cripples should at- 

 tempt to impress on the employer is that *'the positive duty 

 of the employer is to find for the disabled man a constructive 

 job which he can hold on the basis of competence alone". ^ 

 The special trades adapted to cripples include a longer 

 list than would on first thought be imagined. A cripple dis- 

 abled in the feet or legs has of course a larger choice of occu- 

 pations than the one who has lost the use of his hands or arms. 

 Among the children's industrial schools, the commonest occu- 

 pations taught are sewing, basketry, pottery, etc., for the 

 girls; wood carving, carpentry, cobbling, etc., for the boys. 

 Toy manufacture has recently been suggested as an excellent 

 trade to teach these crippled children, both on account of the 

 enthusiastic hiterest it would arouse among the children and 

 on account of the demand for toys in the market since the 

 usual large supply from Germany has been cut off. Other 

 trades can be learned by cripples, the most important of 

 which have been included in the training school shop of the 

 Red Cross Institute for Cripples, where their efhcacy and 

 success have been tested. These include type-setting and 

 printing, manufacture of artificial limbs, mechanical drawing 

 and drafting, acetyline Avelding, jewelry making, and cyne- 

 matograph operation. In connection with the vocational 

 training school, the Red Cross Institute Supports a special 

 employment bureau for cripples, which keeps in touch with 

 all the other employment bureaus in New York City, and also 

 is doing a bit of unostentatious pioneer work in educating the 

 employers to a realization of the cripples' value in certain 

 lines. The Red Cross Institute has discovered that in con- 

 nection vrith the industrial cripple, the workmen's compensa- 

 tion law as it is now interpreted is more of a detriment than a 

 benefit to the victim it is intended to help ; for it makes no 

 provision for a man's rehabilitation training in a new field of 

 labor other than the one shut off from him by his acquired 

 disability; and the tendency is for a man to loaf while the 

 compensation is being paid out to him. When the term of 



'^American Journal of Care for Cripples, Vol. VI, No. 1, p. 146. 



