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Working Americans Vol. 4: Their Children

1914 News Feature

“Light through Work, The Dawn of New Hope for the Blind,” by Ethel M. Colson, Today’s Housewife, January 1914:

“Please tell the mayor that I have six blind babies outside. I am going to hit them in the head with a sledge hammer and drop them over Brooklyn Bridge and I want him to take some responsibility for it.”

Mrs. Cynthia Westover Alden didn’t look like a murderous crank on the morning that she sent in this gentle message to the mayor of New York seven years ago, but in less than three minutes she had gained that difficult thing, access to the mayor’s private office. “It would be better to put them out of their misery with one blow,” she told the city’s chief executive calmly, “than to continue letting them die by inches as is now the case.”

Then Mrs. Alden, sure of a startled and attentive listener, communicated her discovery to the mayor, that nowhere in the city or in the United States was there a place for a blind orphan baby under eight years old.

Sick babies, well babies, crippled babies, orphan babies, feeble-minded babies, cats, dogs, birds, for every other kind, shape and variety of helpless little animal, it would seem, human love and charity had provided havens; but of blind babies no one, apparently, had thought.

Yet the earliest years of the blind child are the most important. Time lost then can never be regained.

In a tiny flat that cost but three dollars a week, the International Sunshine Branch for the Blind started. From the county poorhouse, where the blind babies of the very poor were classed with the feeble-minded, since no other provision or classification had been arranged, were “borrowed” six tiny creatures for six months. Almost at once it was seen that miracles could be accomplished in their behalf, but when the time was up, the children were “called back” by the county officials.

Mrs. Alden, the moving spirit, had realized that unless something radical was done, the hard, good work would go for naught, but the mayor of New York, upon whom the situation depended, was a busy man, difficult to secure speech with. At last the earnest woman had hit upon the plan that brought her into his presence.

The shocked and startled mayor promised all the help in his power, and four years later redeemed the promise by signing the bill appropriating funds for the care of dependent blind babies. A similar bill is now pending in Illinois, having its object the “care, maintenance and education of blind babies in the state of Illinois from the day they are blinded.” Similar bills should be passed in every state, since proper care in infancy means independence later. It is a shortsighted policy that neglects the blind babies, then passes appropriations—frequently, too, quite inadequate—for the assistance of the adult blind.

The “light-hunger” of a blind baby is so great that instead of sucking its thumb like the seeing baby, it rubs and digs and pokes at its poor closed eyes until the eyes are injured and the baby often dies of blood poisoning. And even if it lives, it usually comes to the worse fate of imbecility because nobody understands how to treat it.

The brains and physical development of blind children are often normal at birth; but, receiving no exercise or training, the little wits become stupid; not seeing the light the little heads droop; helpless and timid, the poor little blind sufferers become unreasonably shy and retiring, huddle away in corners and shrink against the wall. Properly taught, they acquire confidence, learn to be much as other children, grow properly, stand erect.

The establishment of the first Blind Babies’ Home—Mrs. Alden raised almost $100,000 to render the work properly effective—was followed by a winning fight to have the Home Kindergarten made a part of the public school system. This was a long step in advance, since blind children, in the opinion of those who know most about them, should be treated as much like normal children as possible, right from the start. Then came work for proper state support of the Home, now, after various moves and vicissitudes, established in a beautiful house in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn. At last the desired law went through Albany without one opposing vote.

This law, which provides for the maintenance of blind children in the International Sunshine Home for the Blind at a rate of $1 a day, should be duplicated in every state in the Union, substituting, of course, local institutions for the Sunshine Home whenever advisable. New Jersey already has a law committing the New Jersey blind babies to the Arthur Sunshine Home at Summit, New Jersey, at the rate of $330 a year for each child. Children from other states are joyously admitted to the Brooklyn Home at the rate of $1 a day, the Sunshine Society frequently, as in the case of a little blind lad from Peoria, Illinois, making up any necessary deficit. For the child mentioned the county pays $10 monthly toward his support, the Sunshine Society contributing the monthly deficit of $20. This is done in order to keep the little ones under the necessary training until they are old enough to attend the blind schools of their various states.

The children of the rich are welcome, because, under the most promising of ordinary conditions, they are as helpless and needy as those of the poor. The blind denizen of a luxurious nursery learns little more, unless supplied with a specially trained attendant, than the child of the poor mother who must leave it alone during long working hours daily.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"1914 News Feature." Working Americans Vol. 4: Their Children, edited by Scott Derks, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=WA4_0034.
APA 7th
1914 News Feature. Working Americans Vol. 4: Their Children, In S. Derks (Ed.), Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=WA4_0034.
CMOS 17th
"1914 News Feature." Working Americans Vol. 4: Their Children, Edited by Scott Derks. Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=WA4_0034.