promote public education about blindness. The federation in the Las Vegas area, in a joint effort with the organized parents of blind children, have by their mutual efforts succeeded in securing the establishment in our local school system of a program for the education of blind children.

This integration of blind children in the Clark County public school system began last September and it has been such a success that not only the parents of blind children but the public school officials are all very happy and are encouraged about the future of blind children's education.

In northern Nevada, Reno has also established a program of integrating blind children in the public school which is also very successful. Formerly blind children had to be sent out of the State to receive an education. Our center is operating every day and our new State programs of rehabilitation and home teaching are beginning to swing into full action.

The consultation between our organization and our State welfare department has been invaluable in the development of our programs. We think so, and the officials in our welfare department think so. The lack of consultation which existed under the old rehabilitation system, when our program was in the general agency, was one of the reasons why that program was so ineffective.

For these reasons, and because of our firsthand experience, we in Nevada feel that the legislation now before Congress to protect the right of the blind to organize and requiring that they be consulted about programs affecting them must be passed.

This proposed legislation merely requires agencies doing work for the blind to do those things which all of them ought to do anyway. It is hard to understand how anyone can oppose it whose objective is really to promote what is best for the blind.

Thank you, gentlemen. Are there any questions, Mr. Chairman? Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you very much, Mrs. Bascomb. I enjoyed your very fine testimony and I am sure the other members of the subcommittee did. You may be excused now.

Dr. ten Broek, who is your next witness that you particularly wanted to get on today?

Dr. TEN BROEK. Mrs. Eleanor Harrison of Minnesota.

Mr. ELLIOTT. We are happy to have you, Mrs. Harrison. You may proceed with your testimony.

STATEMENT OF MRS. ELEANOR HARRISON, PRESIDENT, MINNESOTA ORGANIZATION OF THE BLIND

Mrs. HARRISON. Thank you. For the record, my name is Eleanor Harrison. I was elected president of the Minnesota Organization of the Blind in 1955 and reelected in 1957. I have been a resident of the city of Minneapolis for almost 30 years. Before that time I was employed as a dictaphone typist in Milwaukee. Very soon after I came to Minnesota I was married and have been a wife and homemaker ever since. I have had defective vision from birth.

The Minnesota Organization of Blind was established in May of 1920. We were one of the original seven States represented at WilkesBarre, Pa., in 1940 when the National Federation of the Blind came into being. Our members are proud of the fact that they are part

of the national organized blind movement and as many of them as can do so attend the national conventions.

In my own case I have attended 9 of the 18 which have been held. In Minnesota we know from long experience how important an organization of the blind is, in assisting blind persons to achieve independence and self-support. At the present time our State organization has more than 350 members and we are constantly working to increase the number.

I think there are about 6,000 in Minnesota, but as Dr. ten Broek said, there are so many reasons why the others are not members. So many of them are inactive. The thing that caused their blindness, and probably there are other difficulties-they are ill in other ways, shut-ins you know, and cannot possibly get out no matter how anxious they might be to attend meetings.

We have found that in Minnesota, that that is the case, but we are working at it. One of our biggest projects on the State level has been the establishment of a boarding home for the blind people. This home, located midway between Minneapolis and St. Paul, was first opened for occupancy on October 19, 1929. It can accommodate 35 people at any one time and has always been filled to capacity, often with a waiting list.

You may wonder why we undertook such a project. It is certainly not that we feel the blind are incapable of living in the regular community in private homes and apartments as others do. Quite the contrary, our boarding home has been a major factor during the past 30 years in helping many blind persons to establish themselves as normal members of the community. It has been a factor in helping many of them to have homes of their own.

Let me explain. In the first place it is often easier for a blind person to find work in a city than in rural areas. As a result, many of the blind from other parts of the State have come to the MinneapolisSt. Paul area looking for a job. We have been able to provide temporary living quarters for such persons and often to help them find employment.

In more than one case this service has undoubtedly been the difference between success and failure. The encouragement and moral support have been almost as important as the room and board.

There is still another reason why the home has been valuable. Many landlords, even today, will not rent to a blind tenant because they are afraid he might not be able to take care of himself or of their property, and blind persons sometimes have difficulty in locating living quarters. Here again our boarding home has filled the gap. There is still another consideration. We operate the home as a nonprofit enterprise and are thus able to provide room and board at far less than the going rate. To a blind person who has to try to get along on the meager allowance provided by the public assistance grant this is very important.

It is also important to the blind person who is just trying to start into business or who is still looking for a job. Again, it can mean the difference between success and failure.

Also, our home serves as headquarters and meeting place for our organization. In one way or another, directly or indirectly, it has been helpful to almost every blind person in our State.

The home is not our only project, of course. We carry on a year around program of public education about blindness and we are constantly working to stimulate the blind to greater efforts in their own behalf by providing them with information about what other blind people are doing throughout the country and by creating opportunities for the sharing of common problems and experiences. In this connection we print and circulate a Braille bulletin on a quarterly basis. It is sent out in ink print form.

Without an independent organization of their own the blind of our State would be greatly disadvantaged. They would not be able effectively to help each other in solving common problems, and they would not be able to pool their energies and resources for their own self-improvement.

We believe the blind of any State will be better off for having an organization such as ours. We also believe that the agencies doing work for the blind, in Minnesota and in other States, can do a better job if they consult with the blind about programs.

To us, it makes sense that the blind should know better than anyone else what their problems are. For these reasons we in Minnesota are supporting the legislation now before Congress protecting the right of the blind to organize and requiring that they be consulted about programs affecting them.

That completes my statement, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ELLIOTT. Thank you very much.

Dr. ten Broek, is there another witness that you would like to hear now?

Mr. TEN BROEK. No, sir, that is all we wish to present this afternoon. Mr. ELLIOTT. You may resume your testimony, then, at this point. Mr. TEN BROEK. Very well, Mr. Chairman.

STATEMENT OF JACOBUS tenBROEK, PRESIDENT OF NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND, BERKELEY, CALIF.-Resumed

Mr. TEN BROEK. I was beginning to state the elements in the attitude of blind people themselves toward blindness and their problems. I had already stated two. I will continue that statement now.

Three, the blind hold that their greatest handicap derives from the attitudes of the public and agencies toward the blind, rather than from lack of sight. Organizations of the blind seek to abolish all legal, economic, and social discriminations, based upon the false assumption that the blind are unable to care for and to support themselves. The organized blind seek to bring about an end of the stereotype of the helpless blind man. They seek to replace pity and compassion with understanding, tolerance with accepting, charity with opportunity, and dependence with independence.

Four, the blind hold the view that given an opportunity they are able to achieve complete integration into society on a basis of equality. This involves persuading agencies that sheltered employment is not the terminus to training. It involves educating the public and especially the employers to a new concept concerning blindness. It means hastening the time when the mass of the blind of employable age will be working along with their sighted fellows in the professions, trades, regular occupations, and common callings of the community. These, in brief, are the basic attitudes and tenets of the blind and of their

organizations. They differ both in kind and in degree from the prevailing attitudes of the public and of many of the agencies for the blind. These differences in attitude have brought about the conditions that make the bills before this committee necessary to advance the welfare of the blind.

The blind know that public attitudes are not immutable. We know from intimate experience that the sighted public wishes well of us, and that its misconceptions are rather the result of innocence and superstition than of deliberate cruelty and malice aforethought. There was a time in the days of Rome when blind infants were thrown to the wolves or sold into slavery. That time is no more. There was a time in the Middle Ages when blind beggars were the butts of amusement at county fairs, decked out in paper spectacles and donkey ears. That time is no more. There was a time, which still exists to a surprising extent, when parents of blind children regarded the child's disability as a divine judgment upon their own sins, but that time is now beginning to disappear, at least in the civilized world. The blind are no longer greeted by society with open hostility and frantic avoidance, but with compassion and sympathy. It is true that an open heart is no necessary guarantee of an open mind. It is true that good intentions are not enough. It is true that tolerance is a far cry from brotherhood and the protection and trusteeship are not the synonyms of equality and freedom. But the remarkable progress already made in the civilizing of brute impulses and the humanizing of social attitudes toward the blind is compelling evidence that there is nothing fixed or immutable about the social status quo for the blind, and that if the blind themselves are capable of independence and interdependence within society, society is capable of welcoming them. Our own experience as individuals and as members of the National Federation of the Blind, gives support at short range to what longrange history also makes plain. We have observed and experienced ourselves the gradual breakdown of legal obstacles and prejudicial attitudes. We have participated in the expansion of opportunities for the blind in virtually every phase of social life and economic livelihood, in Federal, State, and local civil service, in teaching and other professions, and the addition of a constructive element to public assist

ance.

Are the blind mentally inferior, emotionally adolescent, and psychologically disturbed? Or, on the contrary, are they normal and capable of social and economic integration?

The evidence that they are the latter can be drawn from many quarters, scientific, medical, historical, and theoretical. But the evidence which is most persuasive is that which is displayed in the lives and performance of average and ordinary blind men and women, such as many of the 40,000 members of the National Federation of the Blind. It is the evidence of their vocational accomplishments, their personal achievements, and the plain normality of their daily lives. To me, their record is more than an impressive demonstration. It is a clinching rebuttal. I can best document this thesis of the normality of the blind with a random sample of the occupations represented at our national convention a couple of years ago in San Francisco. Among the blind delegates in attendance there were: Three blind physicists engaged in experimental work for the U.S. Government.

There was one blind chemist, also doing experimental work for the National Government. There were two university instructors of the rank of professor, a number of other college instructors of various ranks, and several blind teachers of sighted students in primary and secondary grades in the public schools.

There were 13 lawyers, most in private practice, 2 employed as attorneys by the U.S. Government, 1 serving as the chairman of a State public service commission. He, incidentally, will testify before you tomorrow. And one serving as a clerk to a State chief justice.

There were 3 chiropractors, 1 osteopath, 10 secretaries, 17 factory workers, 1 shoemaker, 1 cab dispatcher, 1 bookmender, 1 appliance repairman, 4 telephone switchboard operators, numerous businessmen in various businesses, 5 musicians, 30 students, many directors and workers in programs for the blind, and 61 housewives.

May I call your attention in this connection to the tables contained in appendix 3 to chapter 1 of the volume which you have before you, and which is our written statement. You find there in detail the range and variety of occupations typically undertaken by blind people. In this appendix 3, you will find three tables, those showing occupations for rehabilitation placements in 1955, 1956, and 1957. I believe that you will be impressed not merely by the high level talents and achievements which are there suggested, but by the simple fact that this list is a roster of all the normal trades and callings, enterprises, and professions, commonly to be found in any ordinary community across the land.

Now if I may direct your attention to chapter 3 of our written statement, I will call your attention to some of the highlights of that and close my testimony for today.

In chapter 3 you will find a statement about organizations of the blind. This is a question that was raised this morning by Congressman Wainwright and discussed by Congressman Matthews. At the outset in that chapter, you will find some discussion about what is a very common problem in our organization, namely, how you keep them independent.

(Ch. 3, vol. 1, is filed with clerk, Subcommittee on Special Education, and is available for reference.)

Frequently, an organization of the blind will develop some pretty good leadership. The leadership will become employed by an agency for the blind. The loyalty of the employee will turn toward his agency and, gradually, the formerly free organization of the blind will be acting in accordance with all of the policies and wishes of the agency. So we have a problem not only in terms of what happens to our people in the organization, how they are started and so on, but also of keeping them independent. The basic point here is that we want to form organizations in which the blind themselves will bring their experience with blindness to bear on solving the problems of blindness. It is only through that method that anything like valuable constructive advice can be given to the agencies. It is only through that method that the blind, by participating in their own organizations, share in their own rehabilitation, as has been pointed out by Mrs. Bascom and Mrs. Harrison, this afternoon.

In 1940, a handful of delegates from statewide organizations of the blind met in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to form the National Federation of the Blind. Seven States were represented, California, Illinois, Minnesota,