The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-08-31
CRIPPLED HANDS
ny GEnTRuDE WE'LL

After a typical summers luncheon of salad and ice cream and watermelon and pie. I generally have sometime of my own to dispose of as I please This aft ernoon l walked through street where they were building another entrance to an enormous bridge, and having learned my lessons well when Rus<ln was my silent teacher, l stopped to watch the work and know the work people.
 A cosmopolitan group of laborers such as one only finds in this country. was the centre of interest for number of idlers like myself. One man heated an iron rivet until it was red hot, tossed 1t to another man perhaps eight feet away, who caught it In pail It was then properly placed in one of the solid steel erders and drilled through until nothing of the 12-inch rivet was visible except the small round head. l was not near enough to see the rlvet being drilled Into the steel. but 1t painfully resembled the sound your dentist makes with his ma chine tonly loudeD when operating on your molars.
 The men who do this hazardous and exacting work are just laborers. entirely out of cur social caste as are the other useful working members of society who happen to use their hands and muscles to earn their livelihood instead of what some others choose to call their brains. This vast army of manual laborers is looked down upon by those who wear clean linen collar at their work each day and by those who employ them. The employer sees only so much human labor power out Of which he will make a comfortable profit. As social being. as human being as possible entrant into the realms of polite society, through the channels of marriage, perhaps, the day laborer's chances are nil.
 Dr. Charles M. Sheldon has written q powerful book on this very important sub ject. He calls 1t "The Great Catastro- phe." In it he draws staggering. com polling picture of huge commercial world crippled by disease which attacks the hands of it's laboring people.
 The trouble starts when a laborer, show cling coal into the furnace of machine shop In New York, feels a queer sensa- ton in his hands. followed by absolute inability to open or close them. There Is no pain or numbness, merely an absolute uselessness of these members. In great fear he rushes to the nearest doctor. Be- fore long every clinic. every hospital and sanitarium was beseiged with work people whose hands had refused to work. Emil nent physicians held consultations, but could find no pdiallel in the history of the world. The disease was unknown and attacked only those who were compelled to earn living by the labor of their hands.
 About the third day every newspaper had become hysterical over the trouble. It was spreading. Industry was at a standstill. Not wheel was turning. Cars stood idle on the streets where their con ductors had left them Frantic men and women In the big mansions and hotels rushed madly about with an awful name less fear at their hearts. At another time the picture of these wealthy idlers trying to cook their own meals and clean their own homes and run their own shops and mills would have been ludicrous. even mirth- begetttng. But at this time if was tragic. No cure was ever found for the workers whose hands would no longer work. And the world rolled on to ex- tinction! Just think of It.. The world rolled on to extinction! Exaggerated? Perhaps. But not impossible
 Of course the actual possibility of . dis ease attacking the hands of all the work