therefore, to watch the results of our own social experimentation. The thoughtful study of individual families will indicate the extent to which modern social institutions foster or destroy the proper functioning of human life. Through skilful observation of family problems we will find the sanest background for a developing social program.

CASE WORK AND THE FAMILY

There is need, moreover, that we recognize the elements in our communities which tend to break down this normal family life. That it has tremendous vitality is indicated by its survival through all the vicissitudes of history. But that in individual cases it does fail to function is too obvious to need stressing. Sickness, inadequate wages, bad housing, intemperance, immorality, all these and many other factors break down this finely adjusted institution. Some of these are factors outside the family itself, for which the community is responsible, and which must be removed by community action. More and more we recognize how many times. family breakdowns may ultimately be traced back to unwholesome external conditions such as these: a tenement so small that there is no place for real family gatherings; a father whose hours of work are so long that he cannot share his children's lives; an income too small to make joint recreation possible; these and many like factors nullify the truly educational possibilities of the home. It certainly is a task for those of us who believe in the value of this family unit to study ever more searchingly the conditions which tend to lessen its value in the development of the child and to endeavor to overcome them.

In addition there will always be the task of trying to help reestablish as nearly as may be, the homes where family life has failed to maintain itself either because of external conditions or because of an internal breakdown. Every home so reestablished means a sounder background, a better training for each child in it, so that our task has genuine social significance. It is, nevertheless, a task which will be approached in humility of spirit, if we realize of how varied and subtle strands normal family life is woven, and how delicate is the task of so readjusting them that they will form the perfect pattern.

OFFSETTING THE HANDICAP OF BLINDNESS

BY LUCY WRIGHT,

Associate Director, Boston School of Social Work.

The present stringency of the labor market has opened up opportunities for the present, at least, for use of handicapped labor, as never before. Among returned disabled soldiers it is so probable that there will be a certain number of blind men, that the government has already prepared a plan for their reception and special training. It is especially worth while, then, at this time, to try to formulate some fundamental principles of social case work in readjusting industrially men handicapped by blindness.

Foremost among these is the principle that all the work must be work with and not for the blind. If the "give and take" relation is the essential working basis of all good case work, it is doubly so in work for the physically handicapped. It is quite usual for blind men to ask: "Will you see what you think of my case?" A man of rare ability with oncoming blindness may put this to you: “I have a year, they say, before I shall be totally blind. I expect you people to tell me how to use that year to the best advantage." Another may say: "I am willing to do my part, but I cannot manage alone against such heavy odds. What will society do about my case?"

If we are to work intelligently with the blind we must first find the man behind the handicap. That is, I believe, the only hopeful basis on which it is possible to equalize his chances in such a way that he may make the contribution he has to make to society, be it small or great. To find the man behind the handicap is not, however, so simple a program as it may seem.

There are, first of all, certain obstacles in the minds of the rest of us. Blindness is a very obvious handicap. We who are relatively whole cannot help dwelling on what is gone rather than on what is left in others. It takes a blind person to say, as one cheerful, successful blind woman said to me, "Why, it's not the fact that you're blind that counts, but only how you take it!" We sighted ones even "speak up loud" to people who wear smoked glasses, so

vague is our concept of what may be going on behind those glasses in the mind of the person who simply cannot see with his eyes. We do not trust and understand the intellectual life without sight or the use of other senses as well as that of sight, and so we class together men who cannot be classed together in any other respect than that of the physical handicap they suffer in common.

The very existence of organized work with the blind from nursery to special work shop, encourages the tendency to lump the blind in a class. The best efforts of the best workers, blind and sighted; have not been able to offset the danger, and will not be unless, at this moment, when a share of the world's attention is turned to the physically handicapped, we succeed in "putting over" some such idea as I have suggested.

This idea will not be particularly pleasing to those among the blind and their sighted champions who believe that blindness is in itself a qualification for special consideration for it cuts right through the whole exploiting design. It removes the basis for either emotional or exclusively political handling of the industrial affairs of the blind. Without doubt the most serious obstacles to the devel-` opment of a plan of work with the blind, on what a blind man has called "the something for something" basis, as against the "something for nothing" basis, lie in tendencies of both blind and sighted supporters of this cause to exploit the situation of the blind for emotional and political values rather than to develop it on the basis of a reasonable efficiency. This is regrettable, not only on economic grounds, but because it puts the blind and work with the blind on a false, unstable and temporary basis, and cannot, in the long run, bring them happiness and usefulness. Emotional exploitation is usually the fault of the sighted. Political exploitation is more often the fault of the blind, and the measure of success or failure of work with adults depends very largely upon the leadership in this respect within these two groups.

The great advance made in every department of social work in the direction of tests and estimates of individuals has greatly improved the quality of social case work with the blind.

This is illustrated in the department of education of blind children, by the work of Robert W. Irwin in the public schools of Cleveland, Ohio. Here we see the prospect of equalizing chances in life for physically handicapped children, not only by giving them

equal opportunities with sighted children, but by sifting within the group the sub-normal from the sound and training them appropriately. These are first steps. The principle needs only to be carried further in work with adults, and made to cover character as well as mental and physical tests, until we acquire a basis for and skill in estimating the possibilities of individuals, in time to be of service to them and to the community. One example of a move in the direction of this testing-out principle is illustrated in work for adults, under the Massachusetts Commission for the Blind, by the effort to use home-teaching of the blind as a preliminary try-out before shop training. This plan makes occupation therapy a test, if not a step, in pre-vocational training of blinded adults.

The need for securing a real basis for social case treatment of employment problems of blind men by coördinating the various lines of effort in adult work through some such central agency as state commissions or federal boards has been forcibly illustrated in the plans worked out for disabled soldiers in various countries since the war. The program includes orderly use of curative occupations, vocational reëducation if necessary, and placement in accordance with ability, whether in competitive industry, home occupation, or subsidized shop. Such an orderly technique presupposes coördination of forces in the industrial service of the blind, not on a basis of philanthropy, but of public educational and vocational service.

It must never be imagined that the principle of "finding the man behind the handicap" will minimize the amount or expense of work to be done. It is only a means of finding out what are a person's potentialities for the sake of reasonable economy, efficiency and, most important of all, for the happiness of the handicapped. This plan for individualizing may, on the one hand, be regarded as a protest against the unnecessary and harmful expedient of "trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." A thinker with a scientific mind points out that this attempt, too common among social workers in what are still pioneer days, not only taxes the worker and defeats its own purpose, but too often destroys the possibility of a perfectly good pig-skin purse. It may, on the other hand, be regarded as a protest against the waste and unhappiness resulting from misuse of fine minds and natures in inappropriate work. This is felt most keenly in observing the lives of well-trained, intellectual blind people, for whose good energies society with its prejudices furnishes no outlet in effective work.

Individualization of the handicapped involves continuous recognition of the difference between those who are and those who are not capable of industrial aid. It involves distinctions among the forms of industrial aid, but requires always the same underlying principle. Society says to the handicapped man, "You keep up your end in proportion as you can,-we will keep up ours in proportion as is necessary, in order that you may make the contribution that is in you, be it little or much." This is the "something for something proposition" which must lie behind every form of industrial aid for the blind. To carry it out we need (1) to work out an orderly technique of social case work that is as acceptable and understandable to a handicapped man as to the sighted worker with the blind; (2) to provide by way of background a campaign of education reaching family, neighbors and employers in every community to which disabled men return, whether they are the victims of disease, industrial accident or war.

The difficulties of finding the man behind the handicap are many and various. It may be that he can be discovered early by some very simple touch. On the other hand it may take years to find the man behind the handicap, and then his contribution may be so slight that the subsidized shop may be obliged to meet him not only half-way, but more, if he is to "do his bit."

The fact that a physically handicapped man finds himself in the almshouse is no proof that he lacks skill and character. But it is well to try by actual test whether he has skill with his hands, as well as to make sure whether he has the force of character to stand up in the community. Raising of false hopes is one of the unkindnesses to be guarded against in all work with the handicapped. The temptation is great. For the almshouse population, the visiting home teacher who by actual try-out can test the mind and skill of hand of the individual, and form a just estimate of his character, is an essential part of a safeguarding plan. Through such a worker we make occupation therapy and pre-vocational testing a reality in work with adults. Massachusetts has been especially fortunate in her state home teachers (blind), and one among them has an especial gift for finding the good human qualities that lie behind the handicap of blindness, as well as the ability to read with the fingers and learn simple manual processes such as netting and basketry. The following is her own account of such an instance: