TABLE No. 79.-Statement of operating expense, by object, United States veterans' hospitals, fiscal year 1924-Continued. NOTE.-Credits under laundry represent portion of deductions for quarters, subsistence, and laundry, which are included as salaries. Positive expenses entered in this column represent contract service. TABLE No. 80.-Comparative statement showing monthly per diem of operating expenses, fiscal year 1923-24 (Including out-patient service) TABLE NO. 80.-Comparative statement showing monthly per diem of operating expenses, fiscal year 1923-24-Continued NOTE.-Hospitals having an exorbitant per diem on account of operating under unnatural conditions not included in computing per diem. REHABILITATION DIVISION The vocational rehabilitation of eligible persons discharged from the armed forces of the United States and providing for their return to civil employment, so far has been effected under three principal acts of Congress with amendments. 1. Public No. 178, Sixty-fifth Congress. approved June 27, 1918.This act, known as the vocational rehabilitation act, established the service and placed the responsibility for its administration with the Federal Board for Vocational Education. 2. Public No. 47, Sixty-seventh Congress, approved August 9, 1921.— This act provided for a needed administrative consolidation of all ex-service measures, un der one agency, the United States Veterans' Bureau. Previous responsibility had been divided between the United States Public Health Service of the Treasury Department, the Bureau of War Risk Insurance also of the Treasury Department, and the Federal Board for Vocational Education, an extra departmental executive board. 3. Public No. 242, Sixty-eighth Congress, approved June 7, 1924.This act, known as the World War veterans' act, provides for a liberalizing of the several bureau services and determines the date, June 30, 1926, when all benefits in vocational rehabilitation shall cease. As provided in these acts, the operation of the rehabilitation service has fallen roughly into three periods. The period under the first act and its amendments was one of establishment, organization, and an attempt to cope with a situation that developed faster than could the means for relieving it. By October 1, 1919, more beneficiaries had actually entered training than were provided for in the original estimate for the entire period of operation of the service. It had been decided to utilize existing training agencies rather than develop new and independent ones. This involved a mobilization of all of the educational institutions of the Nation, public and private. Previously developed in large part to provide academic training of only indirect occupational application and adapted for training youthful groups of standard preparation, these institutions had to be transformed into a service for rehabilitating disabled adults, mostly of inadequate and nonstandard preparation, through highly individualized training to meet conditions of actual employment in every known occupation. It usually involved training the institution as a preliminary step in utilization and often required a complete reversal of its previous philosophy and policies. This was demanded in the face of what was known to be work of short duration and, by many, believed to be of uncertain promise. The manner in which 3,500 institutions answered the call and cooperated in the development of 1,145 courses of instruction, including many courses for nonstandard and substandard men, warrants the highest praise and argues most forcibly for the ability of the United States to adapt itself to or cope with any emergency of an educational nature that may arise. |