To Helen Keller and her campaign entourage criss-crossing the country, the American Foundation for the Blind during the Twenties must have seemed a bottomless purse, its wide-open clasp hungry for every coin that could be cajoled out of the citizenry. An utterly different image was held, however, by those whose efforts were directed at translating organizational goals into working realities. To trustees and staff, the new organization was more like a bushel of fertile seeds, each bursting with the promise of a rich harvest of benefit for blind men, women and children. The potential was prodigious, the problem one of priorities. But the selection of those priorities was not always within their control. Prudent planning might dictate one course of action, outside pressures might precipitate another, while the emergence of unexpected opportunity might cause both to be postponed in the interests of carpe diem.
Nevertheless, an astonishing number of basic programs took root during the early years. Before the Twenties were over:
Solid inroads had been made in the field of education through research on teaching methods and curricula, the initiation of teacher training programs, and sponsorship of an experimental school for the primary grades. There had also been an important breakthrough: the establishment, in Mississippi, of that state's first class for blind black children.
The groundwork had been laid for production and dissemination of a larger, cheaper, more efficiently produced, and more widely distributed supply of literature for blind adults.
An active field service had been established to assist local agencies in strengthening their programs, in obtaining needed legislation and appropriations, and in creating statewide commissions and associations to spearhead expansion and improvement of services for blind residents.
A start had been made in opening up vocational opportunities through surveys and studies of occupations in which blind people were functioning successfully. A consulting group of vocational specialists had been convened to determine the most effective methods of training and placement.
An engineering laboratory had been established to test, adapt, and improve mechanical devices that could be helpful to blind individuals and the organizations serving them, and a system initiated for distribution of aids and appliances specially adapted to the needs of blind persons.
Publication of Outlook for the Blind had been taken over and its circulation greatly expanded. A second periodical had been started for educators of blind children and a program begun of publishing original books, monographs, and other literature dealing with aspects of blindness and work for the blind.
Most exhilarating of all, the new organization had ventured into legislative waters and found the experience salutary and the results rewarding.
"Action is our watchword; action will bring results," the Foundation proclaimed in a ringing statement of purpose issued soon after it opened its doors. Even before it had a staff or an office, a satisfying opportunity arose to lend credibility to this watchword.
In the fall of 1922, M.C. Migel, accompanied by a committee of blinded World War I veterans, called at the White House to impress upon President Warren G. Harding the shocking paucity of books for the adult blind. Some 450 blinded American soldiers and sailors, the delegation pointed out, were now dependent on finger-reading. They had laboriously learned the system known as Revised Braille Grade 1½, but there were only about 300 titles available for adults in Grade 1½. As Migel later wrote President Harding in a summary of their discussion: "There is no endowment for printing books for the adult blind. When we consider that blind individuals are even more dependent upon reading … to profitably fill in otherwise idle and lonely hours, than are the seeing, the imperative necessity arises of satisfying their requirements by increasing the supply of embossed literature."
The federal government's subsidy to the American Printing House for the Blind (then at the rate of $50,000 a year) was restricted to the production of textbooks, and it was insufficient even for this purpose, allowing less than $7 per capita for blind school children. What the delegation asked for was an appropriation of $50,000 a year for three years for books for blinded veterans. The original idea was that this would cover the cost of producing 300 copies each of eight new titles a year, to become the personal possessions of braille-reading veterans. Later thinking revised this plan in favor of producing a greater number of titles in smaller quantities, using libraries for the blind and veterans' homes and hospitals as loan depositories.
"The cost of printing and embossing books for the blind is very considerable," the Major's letter to Harding pointed out. "Heavy paper must be used for proper embossing, and the cost of making the brass plates is very large" when prorated to the limited number of finished books made from the plates. He cited some examples comparing the cost of inkprint editions of popular books with the braille versions of the same titles. Even without taking the cost of plate-making into account, the comparisons were startling:
Pilgrim's Progress —85¢ in ink, $21.15 in braille
Robinson Crusoe —85¢ in ink, $20.80 in braille
A Tale of Two Cities—85¢ in ink, $16.45 in braille
Huckleberry Finn—$1.75 in ink, $31.10 in braille
Vanity Fair—85¢ in ink, $55.95 in braille
To clinch the comparison, the Major enclosed a photograph showing the relative sizes and weights of the inkprint and braille editions of David Copperfield. The former measured 4½ × 7 inches and weighed a little over one pound. The latter required six volumes, 9 × 12 inches, each weighing 4 pounds, or 32 pounds in all; 30 inches of shelf space were needed for the six volumes.
It was a thoroughly successful intervention. The Veterans Bureau, to which Harding referred the matter, not only endorsed the delegation's request but went even further. "I recommend that $100,000 be added to the item 'Vocational Rehabilitation' in the appropriation for the United States Veterans Bureau for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1924, for the purchase of embossed literature in Revised Braille for the use of blinded ex-servicemen," the bureau's director wrote to the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee on January 11, 1923. Congress approved the appropriation and Migel wrote exultantly to Olin Burritt: "If the Foundation did not do another stroke for a whole year, I think this one thing would have justified its existence."
Asked by the Veterans Bureau to submit a proposed list of titles to be produced under this appropriation, Robert Irwin formed a committee of librarians and other specialists in literature to draw up the list while simultaneously canvassing the various braille printing houses to see how much of this work they could handle in the limited time before the appropriation lapsed. It soon became apparent that under no circumstances were the existing printing houses capable of producing $100,000 worth of new braille books within the time limit.
There was talk for a while of setting up a new non-profit corporation to manufacture the books, but this idea was dropped as being neither politic nor feasible. Ultimately, the American Printing House for the Blind, which had originally signified it could handle no more than $30,000 worth of the work, undertook to produce double that amount. It was given a contract and printed 68 titles, in editions of 15 copies each, at a cost of about $60,000. At least part of the disappointment at the loss of the balance of the appropriation was allayed when the Veterans Bureau was induced to allot a new grant of $15,000 for the production of 20 additional titles the following year.
What was thought to be significant about this venture was not so much the direct benefits to blinded veterans as the fact that the expensive brass plates, once made, could be used to produce additional copies of the same book for the much larger group of blind civilians. Early in 1927, Irwin essayed a delicate probe to ascertain whether the Veterans Bureau might finance additional books. The answer was negative. The bureau, wrote its director, Frank T. Hines, "is in no position to justify the need for additional Braille literature for blind ex-service men at this time considering … the limited number of blind veterans who have availed themselves of the loan of these books in the past."
The turndown came as no surprise to Irwin, who had accurately sized up the situation some time earlier. He had written to a colleague in mid-1925:
The truth is, our Veteran readers are not anything to brag about. In the first place they are inexperienced in Braille; in the second place they have had the new Government books only a few months, and in some cases only a few weeks; and in the third place many of them probably use their compensation to pay for readers.
The important thing is, [the veteran] must be made a habitual reader and unless he is given a considerable selection of books in which he is interested, he will never acquire the habit. Few sighted people would acquire the habit of reading if they had no more books available than did the blind.
If the Veterans Bureau was no longer a source for the printing of braille books, the only remaining recourse was to seek voluntary gifts for this purpose. The year 1927, as it happened, was one when Helen Keller was not on the road for the Foundation, so the dependable Ida Hirst-Gifford was available to initiate a campaign to secure underwriting of braille book production from organized groups and philanthropic individuals. It was a slow process; in three years she secured cash and pledges of close to $25,000 for the production of 70 titles requiring 131 volumes. These were printed in editions of 11 copies each, one for each of the nation's leading libraries for the blind.
Some of the books were produced as memorials. Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, one of the earliest subscribers, gave $1,140 for the brailling of her husband's autobiography in six volumes. Rodman Wanamaker paid for the brailling of two books in memory of his father, the founder of the John Wanamaker department store chain. Now and again, an author generously financed the brailling of his own work. One such was former New York State Governor Alfred E. Smith, who contributed the cost of brailling his autobiography, Up to Now.
By far the largest number of books were underwritten by Lions Clubs and Junior League groups. These were mostly popular new novels, ranging from John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga to Willa Cather's O Pioneers to Warwick Deeping's Sorrell and Son and Zane Grey's The Thundering Herd. There was a refreshing absence of the kind of "inspirational" literature that had traditionally constituted the bulk of brailled works, presumably on the theory that blind people were either more spiritual than others or more in need of uplift. For once, blind people were reading the same best sellers as their sighted friends.
Gratifying as this campaign may have been, it by no means represented a satisfactory solution to the overall problem of literature for blind adults. But as will be seen in the next chapter, the Foundation was simultaneously moving in several other directions in an effort to introduce a degree of order into what it described as "the more or less chaotic condition of library work for the blind in the United States."
When Migel informed President Harding in 1922 that reading was the principal way in which blind individuals could "fill in otherwise idle and lonely hours," he—along with most others—was oblivious of the towering potential of that brand-new invention known as radio. In less than two years, the ability of this new form of communication to open up undreamed-of worlds of information and diversion became vividly apparent. For the blind, radio represented a special boon. Once they turned the dial and adjusted the earphones or the loudspeaker, they were at full parity with the sighted.
The idea of mounting a campaign to furnish radios to blind people was the brainchild of a burgeoning industry and of several enterprising newspapers which saw promotional possibilities in supporting a drive with such unmistakable human interest. But neither the American Radio Association nor the cooperating newspapers were in a position to select recipients for the sets to be purchased with the funds they raised. To take care of the sifting of applications and actual distribution, they turned to a natural outlet, the new national organization established for assistance to blind people.
A Foundation report in 1925 noted that it "was asked to act as trustee of this money, and to see to it that the receiving sets were distributed where they would do the greatest amount of good." This it agreed to do "with some misgivings." Announcement of the campaign, which began in November of 1924, stipulated that the Foundation would depend on local agencies "for allotment to proper persons, also for assisting in installation" of the sets, which in those early days involved assembly of the receiving apparatus, the tubes and the loudspeakers, all of which came as separate units.
Radios were given free to those blind persons certified by local agencies as being unable to defray any part of the cost; they were available for purchase by others at discounts of 40 percent or more. By the end of 1925, the $62,000 raised in the newspaper campaign made possible the distribution of 2,550 sets. This was an impressive number, but it could not begin to satisfy the demand. What was to be done with the waiting list of those whose requests were still unmet?
The Foundation turned for help to the radio manufacturers. In 1926 and 1927, Powel Crosley, Jr., president of the Crosley Radio Corporation, Cincinnati, came to the rescue by donating 1,000 receiving sets, while the Radio Corporation of America donated the tubes. The funds to defray the costs of processing, shipping, and record-keeping had to be found elsewhere. In January 1928 the Foundation's financial secretary reported to the executive committee that Crosley "had been prevailed upon to donate 500 additional radios, and the Radio Corporation, 1,000 tubes, bringing the cost of equipment and distribution down to $2,500, of which Mr. Migel has generously consented to bear $2,000."
The following year, Powel Crosley was replaced by A. Atwater Kent of Philadelphia, who supplied 250 fully equipped radios at nominal cost in response to a letter from Helen Keller. In succeeding years, radios were contributed by other benefactors. One of the most consistent was Robert W. Jameson, who was president of United Cigar Stores when he made his initial gift of 100 radios in 1931. In the course of the next ten years, he donated another 800 sets. By the time wartime conditions halted civilian radio production, the Foundation had distributed free radios to 6,200 blind people. Jameson resumed his devotion to this particular form of philanthropy after the war; from 1949 until he died four years later, he contributed an additional $7,500 for radio purchases.
During his later years, Jameson was chairman of the executive committee of the McCrory Stores Corporation. A few months before his death, some of his business associates decided to honor his seventy-seventh birthday by establishing a revolving fund to make interest-free loans to blind persons wishing to start a business, complete an education, or pursue other productive ends. The Jameson Loan Fund, which was later augmented by a $10,000 bequest from Jameson himself, remained in operation until the Foundation made a policy decision in the early Sixties to discontinue direct assistance programs for individuals. The fund's principal was subsequently used for professional fellowships.
Reactivated in 1947, the radio campaign remained in force until 1964, by which time the total number of radios given to blind men and women was close to 25,000. It, too, was dropped as a result of the new policy of discontinuing services for individuals that could now be furnished through local voluntary or tax-supported sources.
The situation had been quite different, of course, when the bedrock national welfare programs and social insurances were not yet in existence and, even in those few states which provided pensions or other financial help to the blind, the level was pathetically low. Thus, when Robert Jameson's friend, John D. Burger, president of the Reiss-Premier Pipe Company, made it a practice to contribute a thousand or more smoking pipes annually, the Foundation gladly distributed them to blind men through local agencies. By the time he died in 1943, Burger had donated 24,000 briars. The warm expressions of pleasure and appreciation from the recipients prompted his widow to continue her husband's practice for another 15 years. The Burgers sought no public recognition of these benefactions; the pipes were distributed as gifts of an anonymous friend.
The radio campaign was the Foundation's first direct service for blind individuals. It was soon followed by another, growing out of the Foundation's pivotal role in securing and administering the one-fare law, a badly needed economic boon for blind people who were unable to travel without a sighted companion and had to pay fares for two persons.
For some years, certain railroads had made rate concessions to blind travelers and their guides under a "charity" classification, which was the only loophole open under the existing Interstate Commerce Act. The Foundation set about getting an amendment to the Act that would stipulate blindness as a separate classification without the demeaning aspect of "charity." The amendment, Public Law 69-655, went through in February 1927. The problem now was getting the railroads to agree to its provisions.
The first road to go along by allowing a blind person and his guide to travel for a single fare was the Baltimore & Ohio. Other lines proved more difficult to persuade. A report to the executive committee in January 1928 noted that the Foundation's president had been in personal touch with 30 railroad officials in an effort to secure favorable action. The power of decision, he discovered, rested with the six trunk line associations into which the nation's railroads were divided. A year later, the Eastern Trunk Line Association agreed to a plan under which the Foundation would assume responsibility for certifying that persons given this one-fare concession were entitled to it. This was the crucial breakthrough; the other trunk line associations followed in swift order, and four years after the initiation of the one-fare service the Foundation was able to report, "more than $21,000 has been saved to blind travelers in this country by tickets bought through the Foundation alone."
A new dimension was added to this transportation service once dog guides had been introduced in the United States. A news item in the December 1931 Outlook reported:
The Pennsylvania Railroad has recently announced that it will permit blind persons to travel in the regular day coaches accompanied by their guide dogs without any extra charge. The passenger traveling with such a dog must present an identification certificate issued by the American Foundation for the Blind, which will certify the dog as having been trained by a recognized training agency.
In due course, this action was formalized through a further amendment to the Interstate Commerce Act. The transportation effort did not stop with railroads. In succeeding years, several interstate and interurban bus lines were persuaded to extend travel concession privileges to blind riders; transatlantic steamship companies made a partial concession by allowing a blind person and his guide to travel for one and one-half fares. However, efforts to induce the airlines to adopt similar practices proved unavailing. Bills introduced into Congress to gain this privilege were successfully resisted by the Air Transport Association on the grounds that airlines provided enough by way of personal service to passengers to obviate the need for sighted escorts.
The original arrangements for validation of one-fare applications involved a great deal of clerical detail and also meant that the applicant had to anticipate his trip well in advance in order to secure the necessary letter of authorization from the Foundation. In 1938 a more efficient system went into effect: the Foundation issued annual coupon books which enabled holders to buy their tickets from local ticket agents on presentation of a voucher. This system remained basically unchanged in 1972, when qualified blind persons were first issued laminated photo identification cards and began paying a nominal annual fee of two dollars to cover as many coupon books as they required during the year.
Also initiated during the Twenties was the distribution of watches and other timepieces adapted for use by blind persons. This service, which had originally been handled by the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind as an accommodation for its readers, was taken over by the Foundation in 1926 at the magazine's suggestion. The arrangement, initially with the Waltham Watch Company, which enabled blind people to obtain reliable timepieces at low cost became the nucleus of the Foundation's Aids and Appliances Division, whose mail-order and over-the-counter sales in 1972 embraced 300 items including 30 different styles of brailled pocket and wrist watches, seven styles of clocks and a dozen types of timers.
Over and above the tuition and living costs common to all students, blind aspirants to higher education needed readers. As early as 1907 a brilliant young graduate of the California School for the Blind, Newel Perry, who was taking postgraduate work at Columbia University, persuaded the State of New York to institute annual stipends that would defray the cost of reader service for blind college students. The amount was modest, initially only $300 a year, but it was a start. Other states followed, but it was not until the federal Vocational Rehabilitation Act was amended some decades later that the practice became universal.
Because scholarships were a popular philanthropic tradition, some of the earliest monies contributed to the Foundation were earmarked for this purpose. A Committee on Scholarship Awards was established in 1924 and announced a few months later that for the academic year beginning September 1925 four scholarships of $250 each would be granted "for professional, vocational or definitely pre-vocational study of any sort, at any approved school, college or university … to capable and worthy blind students" who showed "satisfactory certification of exceptional merit covering character, ability and promise." A fifth scholarship was added almost immediately through a gift from the New York banker, Felix M. Warburg; the following year, several additional benefactors made it possible to expand the program to 9 students. By 1928, the number had been further enlarged to 15.
Three men and two women were the first scholarship recipients. Two, a man and a woman, enrolled in schools of osteopathy, then considered one of the most promising fields of work for blind persons. The other two men studied philosophy at Harvard and journalism at Johns Hopkins respectively, while the second woman enrolled at a music conservatory. All five did well enough in their studies for their grants to be renewed in succeeding years. In 1929, when the Outlook published an article about blind people who were successfully functioning as teachers of the sighted, the Scholarship Committee was gratified to read a tribute by the head of a school in the Appalachian Mountains to the excellent performance as a music teacher of the young woman who had been one of the first five scholarship grantees.
The scholarship program never reached large proportions, although the cumulative amounts added up to a respectable total. In 1951, when the program was 25 years old, the Foundation calculated that its grants had benefited 220 individuals at a total cost of $101,000. When, a dozen years later, the scholarship program was discontinued, the overall number of recipients exceeded 300 and the dollar figure came to $600,000. The latter embraced not only the regular academic and vocational scholarships but also a fellowship program begun in 1951 and the practice, begun much earlier, of granting special summer study stipends for blind or sighted students taking special courses in work for the blind, and for qualified teachers of the deaf preparing to specialize in the education of deaf-blind children. Grant amounts went up gradually over the years; they were upped to $300 in 1944, to $500 in 1956, and to $800 in 1958 when eligibility was restricted to persons doing graduate work. The fellowship stipends, which ranged up to $2,000 a year, went to graduate students preparing for professional careers in agencies serving blind persons. Scholarship awards were discontinued by the Foundation in 1963 because of the flood of federal money available for higher education in the Sixties, but fellowships, research grants, special summer study stipends, and a limited number of undergraduate scholarships for deaf-blind students continued to be awarded for some years thereafter.
The end of the scholarship program also saw the end of the annual award of the Captain Charles W. Brown Memorial Medal to the recipient whose work was deemed to be most outstanding during the academic year. The man in whose memory the medal was given, one of the first supporters of the Foundation's scholarships, was a colorful personality who had begun life as a sea captain but later turned to land-based occupations and eventually became president of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company. When Captain Brown died in 1928 at the age of seventy, M.C. Migel donated a gold medal for scholastic achievement in his honor. A review of 20 medal recipients, which appeared in the October 1954 issue of New Outlook for the Blind, noted that almost all had been successful in their chosen vocations: law, social work, teaching, osteopathy, writing, and business occupations. The 1948–49 medallist, incidentally, was Kenneth Jernigan, then a graduate student in education at George Peabody College for Teachers. In 1972 Jernigan was director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind and also president of the National Federation of the Blind, in which capacity he will be encountered in a later chapter.
Another educational effort which had its beginning in the fertile early years was the initiation of summer study programs for teachers of the blind. Robert Irwin gave the first—for home teachers of blind adults—in 1924. It was an improvised, homespun effort, but it set a significant precedent for continuing use of Foundation staff in undergraduate, graduate and in-service educational programs.
This first course was a cooperative effort of the Foundation and a committee representing the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind, the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities, and the New Jersey Commission for the Blind. The teamwork was along practical lines: "The Foundation furnished the director of the course and the classroom. The cooperating committee provided the secretary of the course and the industrial instructor and met the various other incidental expenses. The New York Public Library very kindly loaned … the necessary books."
With a substantial array of projects under way, and an even larger body of work clamoring to be begun, the Foundation quickly outgrew its original small quarters on Union Square. A search for larger offices was in progress in late 1924 when Robert M. Catts, owner of the Grand Central Palace Building on East 46th Street, offered a two-year rent-free lease on office space there. The gift was accepted with gratitude, and the move took place in the summer of 1925. Two years later, the allotted quarters had also grown too crowded and it was necessary to rent additional space on another floor.
As early as 1928 the Major began to speak of the desirability of erecting a permanent headquarters building for the Foundation, and a committee was appointed to look into the matter. A few months later, however, second thoughts prevailed and it was decided that it would be prudent to defer this kind of capital expenditure until the endowment fund had been completed.
There were high hopes, at this time, that the $2 million goal might be met. Expectations had been given an invigorating boost by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s agreement in late 1926, to contribute $50,000 outright. He said he would consider an additional gift once the endowment total, which then stood at $300,000, reached the half-million-dollar mark. Spurred by this powerful incentive, the Foundation's trustees signed up for a total of $160,000, led by a $50,000 contribution from Felix M. Warburg, a similar amount from the Major, and $10,000 from William Ziegler, Jr. To raise the remaining $40,000, a letter appeal written and signed by Helen Keller was sent broadside, explaining the circumstances and beseeching a swift and generous response from friends of the blind. It came. In June 1928 the Outlook boxed a full-page statement under the jubilant headline, "The First Fulfilment," announcing the attainment of the half-million dollar figure. Rockefeller promptly made good on his offer of an additional gift; he sent a second (and unconditional) check for $50,000 to propel the fund toward its next milestone, a full million. With the advent of the depression years, this goal proved elusive. It was largely through bequests rather than contributions that the million-dollar mark was finally reached in April of 1934, and it took an additional 14 years before the original target of $2 million was achieved.
The endowment gifts were not the first Rockefeller money to come to the Foundation. Beginning in 1924, badly needed budgetary funds had been contributed by the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial: $15,000 toward the 1924 budget, $12,500 for 1925, and $10,000 for 1926, each grant contingent on the Foundation's raising successively higher multiples from outside sources. It was the availability of this seed money, among other factors, that prompted the decision to aim the 1925 and 1926 campaigns at raising operating income through memberships.
As that income grew, annual budgets moved upward in a steep line. Expenditures went from $45,000 in 1925 to $63,000 in 1926 to $100,000 in 1927 to $116,000 in 1928 to $126,000 in 1929. Budgetary controls were strict, especially during the period when the Foundation's president was simultaneously functioning as administrator. Migel examined each month's figures with an eye that overlooked nothing. In November of 1925, for example, he addressed a stern letter to the two department heads, Hayes and Irwin, noting that in the previous month several minor expenditures had been made and several small salary increases granted without specific authorization from the executive committee. This would not do. It would be desirable, the Major stipulated,
to establish the following rule, which must be rigidly adhered to, i.e.
That no expenditures of any kind or character be made, excepting for trifling petty cash items, without the same being submitted to the Executive Committee previous to arranging for said expenditures—
That no advance in salaries be granted by anyone, excepting under the above condition—
That no additions to the force of any kind or character be made excepting under the above condition.
Irwin raised an immediate protest. "I do not see how we could function under a plan by which all purchases were approved in advance by our Executive Committee, which meets but four times a year," he wrote Migel the following day. He proposed an alternative: that the annual budget be divided into 12 monthly parts, and that he and Hayes be permitted to operate within these monthly allotments, shifting items within them if need be, and turning to the executive committee for permission only in exceptional instances.
Bright as he was, Robert Irwin had not yet learned that the fiscal area was one in which there was little hope of winning an argument with M.C. Migel. At its next meeting, the executive committee solemnly proceeded to discuss salary increases ranging from $2 a week for the switchboard operator to $5 a week for the bookkeeper. (All were approved.) To spare itself the awkwardness of dealing with such trivia at each meeting, the committee then voted that all staff salaries should be reviewed at a stipulated time each year. Presumably this was done through a subcommittee, if at all; subsequent minutes recorded no further discussions of clerical salaries, although wage adjustments for major staff members did come up for consideration from time to time.
Once the Foundation was operating at a six-figure level, with a steadily expanding staff and an increasingly complex service program, it was time to reconsider the question of centralizing administrative control in the hands of an executive director. The issue was first precipitated in mid-1927, when Migel suggested to the trustees that they begin seeking a new president. He conveyed the message through Irwin, who reported to Henry Latimer: "He says that he will continue as a trustee for a while, and will help some financially, but he thinks that the Foundation is now on its feet, and he wishes to withdraw. Have you any suggestions?"
Latimer did have a suggestion, and it was succinct: persuade the Major to stay on another year and then keep him as a member of the executive committee. Irwin agreed with the former, but was dubious about the latter because of Migel's dominating personality: "It makes little difference where he is on the executive committee, he would still be the leader."
Latimer made a personal effort to cajole the Major into continuing and Migel yielded to this and to similar entreaties from other trustees on the proviso that less of his time would be demanded in the future.
The trustees, having agreed that the time had come for the Foundation to have a full-time executive director, appointed a subcommittee to seek the proper man. Apparently little action was taken on this, and in May of 1928 Latimer, who was a member of the subcommittee, sought to expedite a decision. He addressed a lengthy communication to the executive committee in which he defined the qualities he considered essential in an executive director: knowledge and experience in work for the blind, ability to delegate responsibility and coordinate staff, experience in handling budgets and in formulating fund-raising plans, an analytic turn of mind, acceptable levels of scholarship, tact, generosity, and approachability. After setting forth these criteria, he went on:
In my opinion Mr. Robert B. Irwin possesses the foregoing qualifications … plus an intimate acquaintance with the aims and operations of the Foundation, a wide acquaintance among men of affairs, and likewise an acquaintance among workers for the Blind both here and abroad, which will stand the Foundation in good stead.
Anticipating some of the objections that might be raised against his nominee, Latimer continued:
In the event that Mr. Irwin's physical blindness is offered as an obstacle to the proper exercise of the duties of this office, I submit that such an objection, in light of his manifest ability and success, is wholly unworthy of consideration by those who, like ourselves, are constantly teaching, preaching and professing to believe in the capabilities of blind people.
Should it be objected that Mr. Irwin is not a financial man, I again submit that he is as much such a man as is presently needed by the Foundation, and as is presently available.
