three children, whom he adopted and who might have become victims of humanity in the sense that they might have had to be supported by an orphan asylum and public funds. He is supporting a wife. He is supporting other people in his community, including public officials through the taxes that he is paying. If we are going to assume that people like Mr. Arnett are unemployable at the outset, if we are going to throw aside all those people, then we are not going to have any Steinmetz's, any Paul Strachans, we are not going to have any Mildred Scotts. If we are not going to encourage them, you are going to find that the very people who are at the core of successful business will not be doing business and stimulating profits so that we can have taxes, because without profits you cannot have any taxes. Who is going to be the one to determine which man has brains and which does not? Mr. Berinstein, who was here on Tuesday, does he carry his load? I would not hesitate to employ him as my lawyer, in New York. And I am a lawyer. Today, he is a lawyer's lawyer. And I do not admit that lawyers are not a necessary functionary in community life. I think they do produce, too. They are needed. I say to you that in any field of endeavor the physically handicapped can be used. Of course, as Mr. Archibald said, you do not use the blind to drive a truck. For a great many things you cannot use a man without two arms. But there are a great many other things that they can do, even if they are handicapped. A handicapped person can be a magnificent salesman. And if there is one thing that we need in this country more than anything else, it is good salesmanship, because if a person can sell, people will buy and industry keeps going. We have got to make people spend money. They have got to have good things. Handicapped people can be used for all kinds of selling jobs. And more of that could be done if those who employ people would recognize that the handicapped could be of benefit to their industry. Mr. Chairman, I am almost through, but I want to conclude by saying this to you. We do not consider this bill to be perfect. When the Constitution of the United States was written, its authors did not think that it was perfect. Paul Strachan has told you that he will be happy to consider any amendments personally and, of course, the committee has an inherent right to amend the bill in any respect it pleases. Dr. Brown this morning on behalf of the American Council on Education proposed certain amendments, particularly with respect to titles IV and V. We have had no opportunity to give consideration to that. As a matter of fact, I personally believe that the matters he complains of are already somewhat taken care of. We are not concerned, however, with those kind of amendments. If anything at all can be done to strengthen the purpose of this bill, we are for it. We know the attitude that the members of the committee have exhibited toward this type of legislation. We are anxious to see legislation adopted. We do not want to see this pigeonholed year after year after year. There is a morale factor that is involved above everything else that I wish to speak to very briefly. When I testified and had others testify before the Interstate Commerce Commission I pointed out to them that the worst blight on humanity in this country as a result of their ruling came not from the denial of job opportunities to amputees, but from the morale light of thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions of amputees, if you please, because they would say to themselves, "I never want to drive a truck, I never want to be engaged in interstate commerce, but I do not want any agency to prevent me from having the opportunity to do what I might be able to do, if I wanted to do it. What this bill does is to give opportunity. The morale-building feature of the bill is most important. It will once and for all place in the Federal Government a strong central agency whose sole duty will be to help these people to help themselves. No handicapped person henceforth will ever have to wonder where he can go for advice and counsel. No handicapped person will have to feel that there is no placefor him to go. There will be an agency to help these people help themselves for all time. That is the most important thing. There is one other thing that I meant to say earlier. Mr. Weir had brought out the need for training the physically handicapped people. That is the most serious situation in the country today. In our Foundation for the Physically Handicapped which we set up, we have tried to get institutes on a private, philanthropic basis, for that very purpose. There is not any place to which you can send prospective trainees who, in turn, will train the physically handicapped. That is exactly what needs to be done and which this bill would implement. We have got the greatest reservoir in the world, really, among the handicapped people. Who could better train the physically handicapped, as I ́indicated earlier, than the physically handicapped? And yet, strangely enough, our laws forbid it and our regulations forbid it. In the great city of New York, one of the great liberal cities of America and the largest city in the country, a blind man with five Phi Beta Kappa keys, cannot teach in the public schools of New York. If he is an amputee, he cannot; if he is physically handicapped in any respect he cannot. We have got to break down these discriminatory laws. The workmen's compensation laws all over the country discriminate against handicapped people, which make the employers reluctant to employ the handicapped, because an employer will say: "If this man has only one hand, and has an accident in my shop to the other hand, and becomes wholly nonfeasible, my insurance company must bear the full burden." Under those circumstances, of course, he says, "You cannot blame us for not wanting to employ this man even though he may do the job just as well as somebody else." We have got to drag this thing out into the open and it will never be done and it can never be done except through a strong Federal agency that has only this responsibility. Mr. Chairman, I have talked longer than I expected I would. I may have left unsaid some things that I wanted to say, because I am speaking only from notes and not reading any prepared statement. But we want to leave you with this final impression, that this bill has not had its last "i" dotted or its last "t" crossed. We know the caliber of men who serve on this committee, with its distinguished chairman who has perhaps as much, if not more than any other man in Congress dealt with this problem, for many years, and is thoroughly familiar with the needs of the handicapped, will bring forth at this session a bill that will carry in it most, if not all, of those things which we believe are necessary, recognizing that ultimately you are going to come to the conclusions that we have reached in every respect. But let us do something now for these millions of physically handicapped; and whether the number is 20 million or 28 million or 45 million is relatively unimportant. We know that the number is so great that even if we started today it will take us years to catch up. There is what was called the other day the backlog of the physically handicapped. Let us in the years to come be able to say that there is no backlog, that we are meeting this problem from day to day as it occurs; that as people become handicapped, or if they are born handicapped, we are going to meet that problem and solve it and make it part of the normal day-to-day living in our community. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. KELLEY. I have no questions, except to say that you have made a very fine presentation and I am sure the committee appreciates it. We have gotten a great deal of information that the committee did not have before. Mr. STRACHAN. Mr. Chairman, I ask permission to insert a letter from William E. Miller, vice president and general attorney of the Westinghouse Electric Corp. in Pittsburgh. Mr. KELLEY. Without objection, it will be incorporated in the record. (The letter referred to is as follows:) Mr. PAUL A. STRACHAN, WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC CORP. President, American Federation of the Physically Handicapped, Inc., DEAR MR. STRACHAN: Referring to your letter of June 14, 1949, I am herewith enclosing a statement which you may use in connection with the hearings on the bills in question H. R. 3905, S. 1066, etc. Very truly yours, To Whom It May Concern: WILLIAM E. MILLER, I am glad to go on record as favoring the pending legislation for the physically handicapped. I am in full sympathy with the purposes of this legislation and believe that same has considerable merit. Further, I am hopeful that favorable action will be taken in this connection. WILLIAM E. MILLER. Vice President and General Attorney. Mr. STRACHAN. Also, I should like to offer for the record a statement of Howard F. Nolan, president, Philadelphia Lodge No. 117, American Federation of the Physically Handicapped; a man who has been confined to a wheelchair for 32 years. Mr. KELLEY. Without objection, it will be received for the record. (The statement referred to is as follows:) STATEMENT OF HOWARD F. NOLAN, PRESIDENT, PHILADELPHIA, PA., LODGE No. 117, AMERICAN FEDERATION OF THE PHYSICALLY HANDICAPPED Mr. Chairman, my name is Howard F. Nolan. I am a member of the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped and am president of Lodge No. 117 of the federation. When I first heard about this legislation, in February 1946, I was so excited about it that I could scarcely wait to see it in print. It sounded too good to be true. I had been in a wheel chair, because of arthritis, for 28 years. I had spent my life in hospitals and in a home for incurables, since I was 14. And, from 1932 to 1935, I had published a small magazine, of which I was editor, to try to do some of the educational work that the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped has been doing so well, since 1940. I had given up the attempt because of my health and a sense of frustration. It was too big a job for me, and I felt that only with the active support of organized labor would the handicapped ever have the slightest chance of getting the over-all program of services that I dreamed of. After reading the bill carefully, I was sure that it was a practical bill. It was a good beginning, and nobody else seemed to care enough even to begin to tackle a problem, the existence and urgency of which everybody admitted, and, as Mr. Strachan said at that time, "The way to begin is to begin!" And yet, more than 3 years have passed and the beginning hasn't been made. Sometimes I wonder if it's going to be necessary to build a pile of reports up to the very gates of heaven, before these much needed and overdue services will be given to the handicapped. I never had an opportunity to go to high school or college. After my fourteenth year such education as I acquired was self-taught, as I lay in bed or in my chair. I read all kinds of books. I liked English writers like Charles Dickens, and the behavior of the Federal and State governments, and the public, towards the mentally and physically handicapped, reminds me of one of Dickens' characters, who spent all her time and money on an African mission, while her home and children were almost completely ignored and neglected. If this bill, H. R. 3095, and similar bills, had been enacted in 1920, title V could have given me more of an education. This title, providing education for shut-ins, is very necessary, and I hope that it will be left in the bill. Title IV is another one which could have meant salvation for me, personally, as well as for millions of others. Title IV promises $60 a month for cases unfeasible for rehabilitation. If I could have had that $60 a month when I was in my twenties, I think I could have proven that I wasn't so unfeasible. When I was 26, I had $25. That's all I had, and no prospect of getting any more. But, with that small sum I began to edit and publish my magazine, and I continued publication, in one form or another, for 9 years. In spite of all the hearings and reports, I do not think that Congress has ever been given the complete, dramatic, and tragic picture behind the bare acknowledgment of 7,000,000 or so unfeasible cases. These are human beings, these cases, and they are born and live and die in the midst of a solemn, slow procession of reports admitting that they might just possibly be there, somewhere; and in dire need. I wasn't able to attend the hearings before the House Labor Subcommittee on Aid to the Physically Handicapped, in April and May 1946, but I have read and reread the book of the hearings published by the committee. There were honest differences of opinion, but it seems to me that not one of those people who gave testimony unfavorable to the 1946 version of this bill, had really studied the bill, or understood it. And, above all, they didn't even begin to understand the implications of their stand against the handicapped-for that's where their stand against the bill put them. The bill, and all its titles, was a simple act of belated justice to a large segment of our society. And, it wasn't discussing pawns on a chessboard, but, flesh and blood human beings-like me! In 1920 the Board of Vocational Education was established and Paul A. Strachan had helped Mr. N. P. Alifas, and the late Arthur Holder, to put it on the books. That, like ours of 1946, was a compromise bill. Even so, the arguments raised against it were loud and bitter. There is a certain class of people who never fail to raise objections when any proposal is made with the intention of carrying us a step forward. Now, the same never-fail-to objectors were at it again, and the man who had helped to provide them with jobs was their target. He wanted to take us still another step into a brighter future. "But no," they cry. "We haven't give the old way a fair trial yet, we only had 30 years in which to do the job, and only 3 of these years were under somewhat improved conditions. Let us wait 3 or 5 more years, before we try anything new." If the Fathers of our Country had listened to people like those do-not-dare-not officerholders, the American Revolution would not have been fought yet. Title IV is a very important one. All 11 titles of this comprehensive bill are important; and I don't think its an honorable thing for anybody to object to any one of them, unless he has studied all of them thoroughly, and knows, in his own mind and heart just what the meaning of what he is saying may be to millions of people: To people like my friend E. Albert Bauman, who wanted to be a lawyer. He was intelligent, charming and witty, and he could have been a successful lawyer. But there were many times when he didn't even have the price of a pack of cigarettes. He has muscular atrophy, and he died at the age of 32. Another friend, who meant even more to me, died last April a year ago, at the age of 49. Her name was Anna Mulligan, and she was a born businesswoman. If this bill had been in force 15 years ago, we would have been able to marry, and to have a home and a business of our own. That's something I'm very, very sorry we couldn't have had. We both wanted it and talked about it, and I'm sure we could have made a success of it. My friends and I were only three, but many volumes could be filled with the names of others like us, and their needs and frustrations. But, even if I could I wouldn't fill them with the names of shut-ins. We are an important group, or I hope we will be so considered, but by far the largest number of the handicapped can be rehabilitated, and can be employed. This is just as definitely labor's problem as it is the problem of the Congress, and of the people. It's a problem in democracy. Four years ago, Great Britain, in spite of being close to bankrupty, because of the war, was not bankrupt in democracy or true charity. The British were providing services, jobs, and/or pensions for their handicapped. But here, in these great United States, our Congress had deemed it inexpedient to pass this simple act of justice and good economics. We refuse to believe that our democracy is not as good as Britain's, and we hope that it won't be necessary to have to try again, and again and again, after these hearings. But, if we must, we shall do so. It is well known to many Membors of Congress that we have a tenacious leader, who has studied these problems for 35 years, and this organization, the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped, that he founded, holds a great promise of democracy and its benefits for the handicapped and the Nation, and we shall never rest until it is as important to the handicapped, and to the people, as unions are to labor, and to all the people. Mr. STRACHAN. I want to thank the committee very kindly for the courtesies you have shown me and my associates. Mr. KELLEY. The committee thanks you and your associates very much. The committee will stand adjourned to meet at the call of the Chair. Mr. WENDER. May I just add these few words, Mr. Chairman? Mr. Bailey has asked about a census of the physically handicapped. We heartily endorse the absolute necessity for a census of the physically handicapped. It is impossible for us to see how the Congress or anybody else can deal with a problem until we know exactly what the problem is. We believe that you will use your influence and this committee's great strength with the Bureau of the Census which, at very small cost, could get this information in the next census, if they wish to do so. Mr. KELLEY. Thank you. I wish to offer for the record a number of statements and letters by interested parties. (The statements and letters are as follows:) STATEMENT OF THOMAS G. PULLEN, JR., STATE SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS OF MARYLAND I wish to express my appreciation for the privilege of presenting this statement of my views concerning the proposed legislation now being considered by your committee. In beginning my testimony, may I refer to my testimony before the Subcommittee of the House Labor Committee to Investigate Aid to the Physically Handicapped on May 7, 1946, in which I made the following statement: "I would like to say that my testimony is actuated by deep interest in the handicapped and the belief that the present plan is satisfactory. Further, that there is no assurance that the changes (in administration) proposed in this bill will bring any better results. "My frank opinion is that the States and the Federal Government, cooperating as they are now, in the course of time will satisfy the needs." |