The Cordova daily times., 1918-07-11
TO REHABA|TATE THOSE WOUNDED
 AND DISABLED


 sell pencils. or shoe laccs to eke out an insufficient pension. or be i'm mured in a soldiers home to rust out the years until death comes to his relief
 The United States government has studied the whole subject of vocational rehabilitation of wounded and disabled soldiers. The experience Of all the belligerents has been gone over care fully, and the marvels of re-education accomplished by some of them are noted The federal board for voCa tiOnal education has been at work on the proposition since August, l9lI 1 The result is to be found in the smith Sears act. which passed Congress on June II. and provides COmprehen- sivc scheme of rehabilitation for the wounded and disabled men.
 Canada has been doing this work with great success and all of the i Canadian experience has been freely given to the United States The di rector of that work has been actively cooperating with the federal board for vocational education. and was sent by his government to appear before the Senate committee and testify at the hearings of the bill. which passed both Senate and House without a dis senting vote.
 It has been demonstrated In Europe and Canada, that no matter how badly a man may be wrecked physically, as generality he still has latent capa- bilities for something useful. If those capabilities may be specialized into some line of trade the wounded soldier already knew. that is done The ex- perience that he has had and his knowledge of the trade Is valuable | foundation to build upon
 If the trade he Is familiar with does not offer an opening then he Is in 
 ducted to enter an allied trade where his previous knowledge will be of value. In some cases the man is en- tirely re-educated and for an occupa- ton entirely different from that which he had previously followed. It is seldom that man is so badly shattered that he cannot be trained to something useful. which he can pursue in the consciousness that he is doing d mans work for mans pay and that he Is back in the current Of civil life, useful and happy citizen who asks no odds of anyone when l 1t comes to making q living.
 The task to be discharged by the | federal board for vocational education | Is a large one. Figures from the var | ious countries show that for each million men in the armies, there will | be one per cent, or ten thousand men to be re-educated This does not in clude the wounded who are able to and eventually do return to their oc- equations
 This does not necessarily mean that these are "dismemberment" cases. The general idea is of legless. arm in the minority. The figures, which have now got down to fairly accurate averages, show that of the 10000 half of them will be purely medical" as against surgical cases. And of the 5,UOOcases that are surgical" that is, which need the attention of sur geon as against that of physician, 500 will be cases of dismemberment, where the men have lost members Of the body Three hundred will be cases where Il leg has been lost and two hundred where arms have been lost. Iu 4l,OOO returned invalided Ca madam there were less than forty cases of blindness.
 The real problem Is the man who has suffered profound shocks to his system and perhaps rendered incapa- ble of standing the strain of his for mer occupation. boiermaker, for instance, comes out with shcll-shOCk and his nervous system in tatters. He could not stand the racket in q boiler factory, but he, with his knowl- edge ol iron and steel working could very easily be made into say-an eX- pert lathe operator where there Is no noise. And so on along the whole line of readjustments.
 The federal board for vocational education is the source of most of the war training courses and is going ahead with plans to begin the re-edu. cation work at an early date. It is proposed, instead of concentrating the