The Federal Board is (Section 7)

authorized and empowered to receive such gifts and donations from either public or private sources as may be offered unconditionally. All moneys received as gifts or donations shall be paid into the Treasury of the United States, and shall constitute a permanent fund, to be called the "Special fund for vocational rehabilitation," to be used under the direction of the said Board, in connection with the appropriations hereby made or hereafter to be made, to defray the expenses of providing and maintaining courses of vocational rehabilitation; and a full report of all gifts and donations offered and accepted, and all disbursements therefrom, shall be submitted annually to Congress by said Board.

The object of the gift fund is to provide a means for interested persons to help in the work, from which perhaps they are debarred by lack of training to assist otherwise. It is also to provide the Federal Board with a fund that can be used as circumstances and particular cases justify. It is quite conceivable that there will arise cases of men being trained in a trade and having no capital to provide the necessary tools. The gift fund will cover such cases as this and other meritorious projects of relief or help.

The Act carried an initial appropriation of $2,000,000 to start the work. Congress prescribed reports of the progress of the work every three months, to be filed with the Secretary of the Senate and Clerk of the House of Representatives for the information of Congress, and also an annual report. The Act provided that no person of draft age should be exempted from draft by reason of employment by the Board.

The Act gives the Federal Board the widest powers and latitude. Under its provisions the Board may

exercise a very wide discretion; in fact, amazingly few restrictions are placed upon it. The work of organizing for its new duties was taken up vigorously, yet cautiously, by the Board, and by September 1, 1918, it was ready and had begun the rehabilitation of disabled soldiers and sailors, offering them a fair chance to become self-supporting, self-respecting members of society.

Illustrative of the many national elements making up the population of the United States and its Army was the first man placed for reeducation Louis Theodore, born on the island of Patras, Greece. He was a baker, disabled by sudden transitions from hot bakerooms to the severe weather of the winter of 1917-1918, and was discharged for chronic sciatic. rheumatism. He desired a business course and was placed in a business college in Washington, where he made excellent progress and obtained high marks in all his studies and in the English language. He also completed his American naturalization; he is inordinately proud of being an American citizen, and overwhelmingly grateful for the opporunity which, through his disability, was given to him.

The Board has announced that thorough training is to be its main object-such preparation that the graduated student will be able to go directly from his final class into a workshop or trade or profession and do the things he has been taught in such a manner as to compare favorably with men who have long been engaged in doing those very things as a means of livelihood.

The length of time required to graduate a man. depends upon his mental quickness, the nature of his

injury, and the application he puts into his study. In the simpler trades and processes, judging by the experience of other countries, notably Canada, it may be said that six months of training is about the general average. This presupposes, of course, the student to be faithful and diligent, and to have some knowledge of the subject in some other branch before he takes up specialized training.

The impression must not be gained that all of the instruction is necessarily in manual trades and industrial processes. There are many men who have no inclination, talent or taste for such a means of livelihood, and whose previous education is such that they are not at all inclined toward any but a semi-profession or a profession. It is quite within the bounds of reason, for instance, to suppose the case of a lawyer who returns shot through the lungs and with perhaps incipient tuberculosis, arrested it is true, but which makes it imperative that if he is to live and have health, he must be out in the open and mainly in a high, dry atmosphere. Such a case could be educated as a forestry expert for use in the Government forest reserves in the West, or as an irrigation specialist for the semi-arid regions. Or again, some skilled manual worker with good fundamental education may lose a hand. He may be strongly inclined toward the law. There is no reason why, if he is especially suited for development in that line, he should not be accorded it; but in such a case there must be some overwhelmingly good reason for the large expenditure necessary thus to reeducate a man, and not merely his whim or his notion that he would like to be a lawyer.

The underlying principle of the whole reeducational

programme is justice to the man. The Government desires to restore the disabled to civil life in as good condition, if not better, as regards making a living, as they enjoyed at the time they were called to the colors. The Government bears the expense of retraining and placement in the trade or calling for which they are reeducated, and also assumes a continuing monetary consideration for injury, paid regardless of the earning capacity of the retrained man.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PROCESS OF RESTORATION: CURE BY WORK

An improved therapy of restoration a beneficent by-product of the war-Hope the greatest restorative and work its ablest assistant-Hospital training-Physical processes of restoration contributory to vocational rehabilitation Coöperation of medical authorities and the Federal Board for Vocational Education Three stages in restoration The first stage, acute illness, passed abroad-The stage of convalescence Occupational therapy-"Invalid" or "bedside occupations'- The "curative workshop"The final stage of vocational reëducation.

One of the few beneficent by-products of the Great War is the knowledge gained regarding influence of the mind, exerted through occupation, upon physical recuperation. A great stride forward in therapy has been registered, and in the coming years the new paths in restorative methods which now lead in short cuts directly to amazing results will have become main highways in medical science. It is not longer open to question that a new and greatly improved method of handling convalescents has been evolved. The experience of every belligerent country in dealing with its wounded has been the same. The general verdict is that a wonderfully effective system of restoration has been developed; the thousands of cases in which it has been used with entire success attest its worth beyond the peradventure of a doubt.

Briefly stated, it consists primarily in impressing upon the patient that, notwithstanding his injuries, he is not incapacitated for civil usefulness, that his