The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram., 1919-05-03
Ms,MDER OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Changed Attitude Toward the Cripple
By Elizabeth G. Upham

By Elizabeth G. Upham.
1t generally takes the force of some personal
experience to bring an individual to understand
ing or sympathy. In the same way it has taken
the experience of war to make the public regard
the crippled in sane light. Before the world
began to be filled with disabled men who COM
manded respect and gratitude, and who in many
cases were personal friends of the man who was
wont to ig1tore cripples generally, the public
looked on the handicapped with an attitude of un-
concern. In an unconscious way the normal man
set up a barrier between himself and the cripple
and this attitude was noticed and exaggerated
by the sensitive mind of the disabled until it
stopped him from trying to be like other men and
became a real factor in his isolation.
The public has proven itself not only quick
to sympathy when awakened but intelligent, for
the most part, in its ways of sympathizing. The
disabled soldier has been received home with the
warmest welcome, and he has not been turned
over to the transient gratitude of a nation that
spoils its heroes. wiser and more far-sighted
gratefulness has insisted on the disabled soldier
being put through training and made efficient
enough to insure him against inevitable de-
cline in sentiment. Is it preposterous to hope
that the good will and good sense displayed by
the public in the treatment of the disabled sol
dier will be again applied in the case of the in
dustrial cripple?
Up to this time the chances for cripple to
support himself have arisen either from super
human and dynamic spirit of enterprise on his
own part, or from an appeal to the sentimental
element among the normal. He might succeed
by energy against odds, or he might exist by
trading on the weakness of the susceptible. In
the cases where a man succeeded in spite of
handicap and filled the place of normal worker,
his achievements were greeted with extreme ad-
miration by the public which had done nothing
to make his way easier. People are never weary
and indeed it is not strange-of exclaming
over the cleverness of industrial workers who
keep their jobs by means of appliances of their
own invention, or of appraising the enterprise of
men like Judge Moylan of the municipal court
of Cleveland, who wrote his bar examinations
holding the pencil between his teeth, and Michael
Bowling, president of the Olivia State Bank in
Minnesota, who educated himself after losing
both legs, his left arm, and the fingers of his
right hand when he was 15 years old. Such mer
have overcome more than physical handicap
they have defeated the Encouragement that is
natural to men who are actually expected to live
by beggary. Those that yield, and do as the pub
lie expects them to do end by selling shoestrings
the street, or exhibiting their deformities ir
the hope of remuneration.
All this is unnecessary-both the unnatura
effort required for success and the easy doom Of
dependency. These conditions arise from the
fact that the public has exercised neither gooc
will nor good sense toward the industrial cripple
The disabled man needs to feel that he is regarded
as other men-an economic asset and a usefu
member of society. He must be treated as maj
with responsibility, and expected to fill it. Th
good will of the public should regard him as ;
fellow worker, and good sense should see that h
has chance to make himself worth norma
workers wage. The patronizing approval of hi
success and the sentimental commseration of hi
distress should be equally prescribed.