The sun., 1919-02-23
By FRANK P. SToCKBRIDGE.

n NUN lInle luLnclnofldi the cTlppleu VI
Il deformed human being has been an
object of pity, when, indeed, he has not
tecn an object of ioathing or of supersti-
iious fear. Oriental peoples turned forth
their cripples to wander in the wilderness.
The inhabitants of India cast them into
the Ganges. The Spartans hurled them
from a precipice. The Hebrews banished
them from their cities and barred them
from their sanctuaries. 1t was not until
Athenian civilization had reached its high
est stage of perfection that any race or
nation recognized a public duty toward
the cripple; citizens of Athens who were
unable to earn a livelihood because of
bodily defects and infrmities, were
awarded pension of two obols day.
1t was not until the coming of Christ
that the duty of mankind to aid these un-
forturates by healing their injuries and
restoring them to usefulness was recog-
niEed. But despite the efforts of the Chris-
tian councils and the laws of the Christian
emperors, directed against the ancient GUS
tom of exposing or abandoning defOrmed
infants, the custom survived. Undef the
influence Of Christianity hospitals and
asylums for the blind, the deaf and other
wise defective developed, but the recog-
nized mode Of providing for the disabled
remained in general what II had been in
MISUNDERSTANDING il ponse to beg
cling. Indeed the laws o. e Roman EN-
pire, of Elizabeth In England, and of some
modern states, directed against vagabond-
age and public begging, differentiate by
implication or by direct statement be-
tween able bodied beggars of aims and
those who are driven TO beggary by reason
of their determines.
Nor has the cripple whose disabilities
were incurred in war Jared much better
until very recently than the unfortunate
victims Of disease and accident. Even
nfter nations became sufficiently humane
10 pension their war cripples the pension
Was usually inadequate to the injured
mans comfortable support and there was
no organized or national effort to- change
the status of the war cripple from that of
a pensioner TO thu. self-sustaining
civilian. Our own Government, at the close
of the civil war, established liberal pen
sion system, enacted legislation providing
that every soldier who had lost an arm or
q leg should be provided at public ex-
pense with an artificial member renewable
every five years, and established soldiers
homes where veterans, unable TO support
themselves, would be housed and fed; all
this, how ever, did not remove the war Grip
pie from the category of objects of char
ity. Except for one or two small and in
Cividually promoted enterprises for the
occupational training of cripples, estab-
lished within the last twenty years, there
las not been any intelligent scientific or
comprehensive effort 70 train disabled
Inen for self-suppOrt. The one exception
is the many excellent schools for the blind,
the form of whose disability appeals more
strongly to the sympathies of the multi
tude and occasions less revulsion than the
loss of other faculties.
II.
About nine years ago young Ameri-
can printer, Douglas c. McMurtrie, direc-
tor of the Columbia University Press, be-
came interested in the subject of the
restoration of disabled men to industrial
independence. Some young women asked
him TO assist them in raising funds for
hospital for the treatment of cripples.
Being of a practical turn of mind he
wanted 10 know what became of the Grip
pies after they got out of the hospital. He
discovered an amazing lack Of infOrma-
ton on the subject. He began to collect
data from every available source in Amer
lea and Europe and he found cripples
who had accomplished wonderful things