It was all very well to improve the quality and reduce the cost of braille literature through two-sided printing, efficient production equipment, and expansion of volunteer hand-copying, but none of these measures, beneficial as they were, solved the basic problem of a sufficiency of books and adequate channels for their distribution.
Very few blind people were affluent enough to own personal book collections of any size. For all but a few, cost and bulk dictated dependence on public library facilities. Around the turn of the century, when free public libraries were growing fast, collections for the blind were started in about 75 of them. Before long, however, the blind people in these communities had read everything on the local shelves and began writing to libraries in other cities in search of fresh material. This threatened to become too expensive a procedure for libraries and borrowers alike until the federal government, in 1904, amended the postal law to extend free mailing privileges to books loaned to blind readers. It was, incidentally, Canada and not the United States which took the leadership here; free mailing began in Canada in 1898.
The mailing privilege alleviated the problem but did not solve it. Libraries budgeting funds for purchases had to weigh the fact that a single copy of a finger-reading book cost fifteen or twenty times as much as an inkprint copy of the same book. They needed to decide whether this book for blind readers should be ordered in braille or in New York Point or in Moon type or in all three. They had to allot shelf space to the thick, oversized volumes. They had to have staff to service mail requests, which entailed more than simply taking a book off the shelf and shipping it out. Readers, knowing how little was available, did not always specify the books they wanted. Librarians had to keep records of which books the borrower had already received, and form some judgment as to each reader's tastes.
Library growth in the United States had been a haphazard process. Most libraries were freestanding institutions, spontaneously established and supported by states or municipalities or philanthropic organizations for the benefit of local residents. It was a real question whether such institutions were empowered, or could afford, to serve readers from faraway places. In the spirit of fellowship that exists among book lovers everywhere, a few did so unhesitatingly. Many schools for the blind also circulated their book collections, in some instances only to their own graduates, in others, to blind people anywhere. But in a good many cities, library collections of books in raised print gradually fell into disuse. In As I Saw It, Robert Irwin described what happened:
The library departments for the blind at first attracted much public attention. When, in time, they seemed neglected by sightless readers, who soon had read the entire collection, the library authorities gradually lost interest in these departments. Books which had first been displayed conspicuously in the front room of the library found their way gradually to a back room, then to the attic, and then to the furnace. New readers might drop into the library to borrow a book but could find no one readily available who even knew where the books were. … As a final irony, blind people were pronounced uninterested in library service.
Those libraries that did maintain a service were plagued by the differing forms of type in books for the blind. When, in 1917, braille Grade 1½ was adopted as the uniform type for all future instruction, it held out promise of relief in the future but, for the moment, merely meant one more type style. The libraries could not, and did not, scrap their collections in the earlier types, for these were still in demand by readers, not all of whom could be induced to master the new style of braille. Indeed, according to Lucille Goldthwaite, a considerable number of readers, "disgruntled by the loss of their favorite medium of reading … dropped from the [borrowers'] lists forever, constituting a sort of 'lost battalion' in the battle of the types."
There was great uneveness in the size of state and local library collections, in their circulation policies and in the services they rendered to borrowers, and even greater irregularity in their geographic positioning. Most of the active collections of books for finger-readers were clustered in the northeastern quarter of the country, with all but three or four east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio River.
This chaotic picture, distressing to blind people and librarians alike, led the American Association of Workers for the Blind at its 1927 convention to adopt a resolution asking the Foundation to join forces with the American Library Association in studying library conditions "with a view to developing a comprehensive plan for serving the blind readers of the country." In 1928 an extensive survey was begun.
All libraries for the blind in the United States and Canada were sent questionnaires designed to ascertain who their readers were: age, sex, occupation, kinds of reading matter borrowed. In order to discover the extent to which the same individuals used several libraries, the names and addresses of all readers were requested. The questionnaires also inquired into the methods used by the libraries in servicing reader requests.
The 34 American and 2 Canadian libraries that cooperated in this survey embraced all the important centers of reading matter for the blind. Analysis of the returns yielded statistical proof of the pattern that leaders of work for the blind had long suspected. No more than about 10,000 separate individuals used library services. Most southern and southwestern states had no reading resources for the blind; to the extent that readers in those areas obtained books at all, it was through long-distance mail service, the major burden of which fell on a few large collections.
Not only was there a serious deficiency of touch literature, but much of what the libraries did have bore little relation to what the borrowers wanted to read. As Robert Irwin explained when he addressed the meeting of the American Library Association in May of 1929:
Most of the printing concerns for the blind in the United States are supported by agencies primarily interested in the education of the blind child. … As a result nearly all of the books published in this country are selected with their educational aspect in mind … selected because they form a part of the literature which blind people should read. … If our public libraries for the seeing were restricted to only the titles to be found in our braille libraries, many of our librarians would be looking for other jobs.
One can only guess at the reason why the Foundation's executive director, in that same speech, said: "We probably cannot count upon the government to assist in any large way in the publication of books for adults … the production of braille books for the mature readers must be left to philanthropy."
What was notable about this assertion was the fact that at this very point in time the Foundation had already begun conversations with the Library of Congress to probe avenues of action by means of which the federal government would, in fact, finance the publication of books for blind adults. It may be that Irwin was being canny in not wishing to raise premature hopes among his hearers. He himself may not have been overly sanguine about the outcome of the exploratory talks. Likelier still, he probably did not wish to dangle before the librarians any temptation to defer budgeting and buying books for the blind on the grounds that such books might soon be made available at federal expense.
However sound his motives may have been, it did not take long for events to make Robert Irwin wish he had been more open. A public declaration of what he had in mind in May of 1929 might have spared the Foundation, and Irwin personally, a good deal of unpleasantness in the next two years.
The findings of the library survey had made it abundantly clear that meeting the needs of blind readers would require both large amounts of money and a more equitable distribution pattern of reading resources. These were the twin objectives of the bill introduced into Congress on January 23, 1930, by Representative Ruth Baker Pratt of New York.
H.R. 9042, "a bill to provide books for the adult blind," was drafted by Irwin in consultation with library authorities in the autumn of 1929. It was taken to Washington by M.C. Migel, who discussed it with one of his intimate friends, Senator Reed Smoot of Utah. The latter agreed to sponsor the bill in the Senate but advised that it should first be introduced in the House of Representatives. The Foundation president then took the proposed legislation to Mrs. Pratt, a member of the House Committee on the Library. The Republican congresswoman from New York City, then serving her first term in the House, endorsed the idea so promptly and enthusiastically that the Foundation people were taken by surprise. Irwin later said he had not expected such speedy action, and would in fact have preferred enough of a delay for the bill to be reviewed by leaders in work for the blind before it was dropped into the legislative hopper.
The bill introduced by Mrs. Pratt was a briefly worded measure calling for a federal appropriation of $75,000 a year to be made to the Library of Congress "for the purchase and publication of books for the blind, such books to be loaned to blind residents of the United States."
It contained only one other provision:
In order to facilitate the prompt and economic circulation of books among the blind people of the United States, the Librarian of Congress may arrange with such local public libraries as he may judge appropriate to serve as local or regional centers for the circulation of such books, under such conditions and regulations as he may prescribe. In the lending of such books preference shall at all times be given to the needs of blind persons who have been honorably discharged from the United States military or naval service. [The last sentence was later dropped.]
Mrs. Pratt's bill was referred to the House Committee on the Library for consideration. On its face, it was hardly the kind of legislation to provoke a year-long controversy. But such proved to be the case, for on the very same day Congressman Joe Crail of California introduced a competitive measure, H.R. 9052, "a bill authorizing an annual appropriation to the Braille Institute of America (Incorporated), for the purpose of manufacturing and furnishing embossed books and periodicals for the blind and designating the conditions upon which the same may be used, and for other purposes." In addition to the direct appropriation of $100,000 a year to the Braille Institute of America, the major feature of H.R. 9052 was that books manufactured under the grant were to be distributed to libraries according to a pro rata formula based on their total number of blind borrowers.
The Braille Institute of America was a newly organized non-profit corporation located in Los Angeles. It had been created by J. Robert Atkinson in 1929 to provide a structure that would be better suited than his privately owned Universal Braille Press for competing with the non-profit American Printing House for the Blind. Under a quota system, the latter had been receiving federal funds for schoolbooks since 1879; the Crail bill was aimed at securing for the Braille Institute comparable grants for books for blind adults.
Atkinson had announced the forthcoming creation of the Braille Institute at the AAWB convention in June 1929: "We have what we believe is a very feasible plan for raising an annual appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars a year." What that "very feasible plan" was, he refrained from saying. No doubt he had a federal appropriation in mind but, for reasons of his own, Atkinson was being just as cagy in addressing his fellow workers for the blind as Robert Irwin had been a month earlier in his talk to the librarians.
Unfortunately the Pratt and Crail bills were referred to different committees of the House of Representatives. The Committee on the Library was a small, five-member group with comparatively few measures to consider. The Pratt bill was thus scheduled for a relatively early hearing. The Crail bill had to wait two months longer before the broadly based Education Committee could hold a hearing on it. Complicating matters even further, Representative Lister Hill of Alabama introduced a third bill, calling for an appropriation of $100,000 to be expended under the direction of the American Library Association, although that organization's executive committee had already voted to endorse the Pratt bill. The Hill proposal was the brainchild of a few individual blind men who maintained that the Library of Congress was not sufficiently knowledgeable about blind people to be entrusted with selecting books for them. The Hill bill was also referred to the House Committee on Education.
The hearing on the Pratt bill before the Committee on the Library took place on March 27, 1930. The lead-off witness was M.C. Migel. The principal point in his brief, extemporaneous statement was that although the American Foundation for the Blind considered the Pratt bill to be the soundest of the three proposals, "all we want is books for the blind," and the particular bill which could produce that result was a secondary consideration.
The Major was followed by Robert Irwin, who made a formal presentation illustrated by several exhibits. One was a map showing the existing locations of libraries for the blind and identifying the 15 libraries whose volume was sufficient to employ one or more full-time staff members to handle processing of books for the blind. Also pinpointed were five locations in the under-served areas of the country where, in Irwin's opinion, regional library centers for the blind might logically be established.
Another exhibit was an inkprint edition of the Bible and the 22 oversized volumes that constituted its braille equivalent. Irwin's point was that the bulk and expense of producing braille books restricted their potential buyers to libraries, and that so limited a market offered no incentive to commercial publishers.
Representative Robert Luce of Massachusetts, the committee's chairman, asked Irwin: "Would you contemplate that the library [of Congress] itself would establish a printing plant, or that it would be better for it to contract with existing printing plants for the actual production of the books?"
The reply should have been reassuring to Atkinson and his supporters, were they in a mood to listen. Irwin said there were at least three very good printing plants, located respectively in Boston, Louisville, and Los Angeles, and that the Librarian of Congress "would save himself a lot of grief if he did not attempt to establish a new printing house but made contracts with these different printers. Let these organizations bid on them and give it to the man who could give him the best quality for the least amount of money."
Irwin was followed in the witness chair by several persons who spoke briefly in support of the Pratt bill: Charles F.F. Campbell, executive director of the Detroit League for the Handicapped; H. Randolph Latimer, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association for the Blind; Carl H. Milam, executive secretary of the American Library Association; and Adelia M. Hoyt, head of the service for the blind of the Library of Congress.
The committee chairman then called on Helen Keller. Although she had testified before many state legislatures, this was her first appearance before a committee of Congress. Her impact, as always, was memorable. In a short, unabashedly emotional speech, she declared:
Books are the eyes of the blind. They reveal to us the glories of the light-filled world, they keep us in touch with what people are thinking and doing, they help us to forget our limitations. With our hands plunged into an interesting book, we feel independent and happy.
Have you ever tried to imagine what it would be like not to see? Close your eyes for a moment. This room, the faces you have been looking at—where are they? Go to the window keeping your eyes shut. Everything out there is a blank—the street, the sky, the sun itself. Try to find your way back to your seat. Can you picture yourself sitting in that chair, day in and day out, always in the dark and only the dark gazing back at you? What you would not give to be able to read again! Wouldn't you give anything in the world for something to make you forget your misfortune for one hour? This bill affords you an opportunity to bestow this consolation upon thousands of blind men and women in the United States.
When you closed your eyes just now you were assuming the sable livery of the blind, knowing all the time how quickly you could fling it aside. You felt no heavier burden than a grateful sigh that your blindness was a mummery. We who face the reality know we cannot escape the shadow while life lasts. I ask you to show your gratitude to God for your sight by voting for this bill.
When Congressman Crail appeared before the committee, he said that the Library of Congress was not the proper agency to handle books for the blind because it was not under the management of blind people, whereas the Braille Institute of America was the creation of a blind man. The California congressman seemed undeterred by the fact that he had just finished listening to testimony given for the Library of Congress by Adelia Hoyt, herself a blind woman. He then introduced, as part of his statement, a letter he had brought with him from the Braille Institute of America.
The letter made some stern accusations. It claimed that the Pratt bill was the product of "an entangling alliance" between the American Foundation for the Blind and the American Printing House for the Blind. In language reminiscent of his 1928 broadside, Atkinson asserted that the Printing House had had "a complete monopoly on embossed printing" until his firm entered the field, and that this monopoly came about through the Printing House's having been given a federal subsidy for books for blind children. This arrangement, he said, "jeopardizes initiative, restricts trade and impedes progress in the field of printing for the blind." In the very next paragraph, however, the letter said that the Printing House contract with the federal government constituted a precedent that could apply equally well to a contract subsidizing the Braille Institute to print books for blind adults. This agile use of both sides of every argument was a hallmark of Atkinson's forensic style. It had been seen in the past and was to become even more evident in the months to follow.
The librarian of the Cincinnati Library for the Blind, J.H. Ralls, testified next. He said he had drafted the Hill bill, which he was now willing to drop provided the legislation specified that the appropriation be spent exclusively for the publication of new books and that the Library of Congress be required to work in conjunction with the American Library Association's Committee for the Blind in making book selections. Since the Hill bill was subsequently withdrawn, Ralls' testimony would not be worth mentioning were it not for the fact that he said he had suggested to Robert Irwin the previous evening that a conference be held among the various factions, and that Irwin had refused to consider compromise because of "a certain tendency toward obstinacy." Atkinson was to make much of this statement later.
The final witness was Thomas P. Gore, a blind Oklahoman who had formerly served in the Senate. Gore put in a bid for the institution of which he was president, the National Library for the Blind. This was a quasi-public institution, organized in 1910 during a brief period when the Librarian of Congress took the position that the collection of books in its Reading Room for the Blind more properly belonged in a local public library. Although this viewpoint was soon reversed and the collection was brought back to the Library of Congress, the National Library for the Blind remained in existence, serving blind residents of the District of Columbia and maintaining a mail service for borrowers in other states. The burden of the ex-Senator's testimony was that it would be more efficient and economical if his institution were designated as the sole repository of books for the blind for national circulation, instead of allocating this function to a number of regional depositories.
On April 9, 1930, the Pratt bill was reported out by the Committee on the Library with the appropriation request upped to $100,000. On May 9, a companion bill introduced by Reed Smoot was favorably reported by the Senate Committee on Education and Labor; it was passed by the Senate without debate three days later. Mrs. Pratt then moved to have her bill called up on the House's unanimous consent calendar for passage, but her motion was automatically defeated when objection was raised by Congressman Crail on the grounds that the House Committee on Education had scheduled a hearing on his opposing measure for May 28.
The House Committee on Education was chaired by Representative Daniel A. Reed of New York. It had 20 other members, 6 of whom attended the hearing. Except for the chairman, who had some familiarity with the work of the New York City Lighthouse, none of the members apparently knew much about work for the blind. In the course of the day they received a concentrated but bewildering education.
The hearing opened with a statement by Congressman Crail in which he set forth and elaborated the same charges he had presented to the Committee on the Library. Congressman John C. Schafer of Wisconsin interrupted with a question: "Is there anything to prevent this Braille Institute from submitting to competitive bidding with the Louisville or any other institutions, should Congress enact the so-called Pratt bill?" Crail's answer: "No; there is not anything directly in the bill, but there is in practical effect, yes." He did not explain what he meant by "practical effect" other than to reiterate that the Printing House's federal appropriation for schoolbooks gave it a competitive advantage because "its overhead, equipment and salaries are being paid by the Government of the United States."
The chairman then called on John W. Barr, president of the American Printing House for the Blind, who had asked to be heard in order "to make an accurate statement of the past history" of his organization and to "correct the impression that it is a private institution." Following his account of how the Printing House had come into being, how it operated, and how it expended and accounted for its federal appropriation for schoolbooks, Barr was subjected to a good deal of confused cross-examination by members of the committee, who found it difficult to grasp the dual nature of the Printing House structure. It was in the course of some digressive, rapid-fire questioning that Crail asked: "Is it not true that your last annual report says that you made a profit of $30,000 on a contract which you had with the United States Veterans Bureau, and that you used that $30,000 for putting a third story on the building of your factory?"
Barr, who had earlier indicated he had a train to catch, gave a hurried and inadequate answer: "We did make a profit, but it was under competitive bidding and that all inured ultimately to the benefit of making at a lower cost the books which we distributed to these various States for the student blind of those States."
The Printing House president had not been prepared for a question which bore so little relation to the issue before the committee and even less relation to reality. The "last" annual report referred to was for 1926; there was, in fact, no $30,000 figure in it; the sum could only have been hypothesized by putting together a number of unrelated figures. But Barr either did not remember the details or was unable to take the time to go into them. This was regrettable, for even though its existence was eventually disproved, the charge of a $30,000 profit was to be repeated many times in the course of the day and in the months ahead.
Crail was quick to capitalize on what Barr had said.
I am very glad we have had this chance to cross examine Mr. Barr because it has developed that $30,000 profit in that one line was made possible because of the fact that they used government money in equipment, printing presses, type, paper, pay roll, to compete with other people in the same business.
By this time Congressman Schafer had begun to wonder if all this smoke might not betray the presence of fire. He raised the question of whether Congress ought not to repeal the Printing House's long-standing schoolbook appropriation and place all printing for the blind, children and adults alike, under the direct jurisdiction of a governmental agency such as the Library of Congress. Since this was the very last thing the California group wanted to see happen, Crail. hastened to demur:
We do not come here to split or destroy the Louisville institution. They have done good work within their appropriation, but our people have set up an exactly identical institution as theirs for the adult blind. Now, if this committee … thinks that the whole policy of the government has been wrong and that there should not be any private institution entrusted with this work, and will put every institution on a par, it would be agreeable to us, but if the policy of the government is to maintain the Louisville institution subsidized, we would like to have the bill come through as it is.
Then he moved to attack on another front:
There is one other point I would bring to the attention of the committee, and that is that the Librarian of Congress has declared that he was no proper person to carry on work for the blind, and in a report which he made to Congress some years ago he stated that he wanted to get out of the Library of Congress this work of distributing books to the blind, as it was no part of his duties or functions, and, that being so, evidently he is not the person who should be intrusted with this great responsibility.
What Crail did not tell the committee (perhaps he himself had not been accurately briefed) was that the statement referred to had been made 20 years earlier, in 1910, and that it had dealt not with nationwide distribution of books but with the use then made by blind residents of the District of Columbia of the reading room on the Library's premises. (It was this action, later revoked, that had led to the establishment of Senator Gore's institution.)
Crail then introduced a new letter from the Braille Institute of America, 10,000 words in length, expounding the arguments in favor of having a federal appropriation allocated to itself. There were some extravagant claims:
That the Universal Braille Press has contributed more toward facilitating the production of Braille printing in America in 10 years than has any other institution in this country over a period of 50 years; and that to it belongs the credit for introducing in America and perfecting the method of printing Braille books on both sides of the paper …
And there were some extraordinary gratuitous disparagements of the Foundation, without whose help, as Atkinson had freely acknowledged in the past, he might have had to close the doors of his business:
Its knowledge on this subject [of printing books for the blind] is acquired through its bureau of research, which bureau obtains its information secondhand through the experience of executive heads in charge of printing plants for the blind. Mr. Atkinson has been very generous in supplying this bureau with technical data growing out of his varied experience. We think it unethical, to say the least, for a junior organization with no first-hand experience in the publishing business to criticize or belittle the work of a senior organization which has demonstrated its resourcefulness, and whose benevolence is felt in a wide field of benefaction.
Although every member of the Committee on Education had received a copy of this massive missive in advance of the hearing, J. Robert Atkinson, who was then called upon to testify, repeated most of its substance in his statement.
"Fully 90 percent of the blind readers of the United States are behind this bill," he then went on to say, offering as proof a number of petitions in support of the Crail bill his organization had circulated throughout the country. He echoed Crail's allegation that the Pratt bill had "originated overnight, as it were" as a copy-cat measure. He accused his opponents of strong-arm methods to intimidate blind readers and librarians.
Atkinson's testimony also dwelt at length on his personal life history and his efforts to overcome the handicap of blindness. Through his brailling of the works of Mary Baker Eddy, he said, "I really became the pioneer in the field of hand-transcribing." At the same time he claimed, "the Universal Braille Press is today the most modernly equipped printing plant for the blind in the world" and "we also have the distinction of publishing the first, and as yet the only secular braille magazine in the United States, whose postal entry permits the printing of advertisements." The qualifying clause in the latter statement allowed him to ignore the existence of the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind, continuously published since 1907 and with a circulation at least fifty times greater than that of Atkinson's Braille Mirror.
When the committee reconvened following a luncheon recess, Atkinson, who was due to resume his testimony, was late in returning. The chairman therefore called on the next scheduled witness, Robert Irwin, who made a brief statement describing the findings of the library survey and recapitulating the reasons for the Foundation's belief that the Pratt bill offered the most viable solution to the problem of securing and distributing books for blind adults. "Leaving aside the question of working out a comprehensive library system," said Irwin, "it resolves itself down to a question of whether or not it is good public policy to have the purchase of books handled by a government agency or by a private agency. … Some of us who have given quite a bit of study to the subject feel rather strongly that it should be handled by a government agency."
He also challenged the assertion that 90 percent of blind people were for the Crail bill and called the committee's attention to the desirability of a "more businesslike relationship" between Atkinson's two corporations. But while he did try to put some of Atkinson's boasts into perspective, Irwin gave him a generous measure of credit for what he had accomplished in braille printing, particularly in interpointing, which he "took to … more quickly and with more enthusiasm than any of the other braille publishers."
In concluding his statement he voiced the hope that the issues raised concerning the American Printing House's contract for the printing of children's books would not result in holding up action on books for blind adults. He urged the committee to do what it could to "expedite some bill which will correct the present situation."
One of the questions asked by committee members following Irwin's statement came from Congressman Paul J. Kvale of Minnesota. Kvale had received a letter from a blind constituent complaining about the "extremely narrow" moralistic viewpoint of the superintendents of schools for the blind in relation to literature. The letter said, "They are self-constituted bulwarks of our morals. Nothing but what they conceive to be the cleanest literature, no matter how insipid, can come under our fingers. … at one time it was seriously contemplated giving us an expurgated edition of the Bible."
What, the Congressman asked, was Irwin's opinion as to who should be entrusted with selection of books for blind adults? The response satisfied Kvale.
I do not believe books for the adult blind should be selected by educators who were thinking of the needs of their children. … My suggestion has always been the Librarian of Congress should appoint a committee consisting of three librarians and two laymen to select those books.
Congressman Crail then tried to assail Irwin's credibility as an impartial witness in a machine-gun interrogation that was soon halted by the chairman's sharp reminder to Crail that "this is not a criminal proceeding."
Atkinson then resumed his testimony, focusing now on a direct attack on the American Printing House. He alleged that the Printing House had engaged in a form of commercial espionage by sending an ostensible job-seeker to Atkinson's plant for the purpose of spying out its equipment and production methods. He accused the Printing House of price juggling and other unfair methods of competition, of extravagance, of careless management, of indifference to the welfare of blind people. He insisted that the Pratt bill was designed to favor the Printing House because of the "coalition" and "interlocking" interests of the Printing House trustees and the American Foundation for the Blind, choosing to ignore the fact that neither was mentioned in the Pratt bill, which specified only that appropriations were to be allocated to the Library of Congress.
In the course of a long and tedious afternoon, testimony was taken from two blind men who supported the Crail bill on the grounds that blind people had to be given a greater voice in the selection of books for their use as well as in all other work conducted on their behalf. Finally George S. Wilson, superintendent of the Indiana School for the Blind, made an attempt to clarify once and for all the nature and operations of the American Printing House for the Blind, of which he had been a trustee for the 33 years he had headed a school for the blind. His explanations were cogent, but they came too late to be of help. By 5:45 p.m. the committee was thoroughly befuddled over how the Printing House could administer a government-subsidized grant for schoolbooks and simultaneously operate as a non-profit publisher of other books for the blind. Members of the committee were not only confused but concerned. Some grave accusations had been leveled at the Printing House and these, they felt, could not in good conscience be passed by without intensive scrutiny.
Just about the only thing that was clear to the House Committee on Education at the end of an exhausting day was that blind men could be strong individualists, imbued with as much ambitious drive as anyone else, and that they could be hard fighters in pursuing their ends. If the committee had ever held any vague notion of "the blind" as a homogeneous group of resigned and helpless people, that notion had been dispelled.
The 152-page printed record of the May 28 hearing contained a number of supplemental statements filed in ensuing weeks. Among them was one from Irwin, which observed that the Foundation
has for the past two years secured competitive bids from the American Printing House for the Blind and the Universal Braille Press and our records have shown that when the same quality of material and workmanship was required, the Universal Braille Press has underbid the American Printing House quite as often as the reverse has been the case.
The main thrust of Irwin's statement, however, was that "the adult blind people of America have waited all too long for their books." In urging the Committee on Education to recommend immediate passage of the Pratt bill, he pointed out that this need not stop an investigation into the total operations of the Printing House: "If the American Printing House subsidy is a mistake, it will require legislation, and the Pratt Bill can be amended at the same time if necessary."
A communication from John Barr, the Printing House president, was also among the supplemental statements. Accompanying it was a letter from public accountants who audited the Louisville organization's books. Both documents explained how the Printing House accounts were kept and convincingly disproved the allegation that there had been a $30,000 profit on the Veterans Bureau contract. Much the same ground was covered in a statement filed by Representative Maurice H. Thatcher of Kentucky.
None of this availed in getting the 71st Congress to act before adjournment. A final effort by Mrs. Pratt to get her bill through on the unanimous consent calendar was defeated when Congressman Schafer objected on the grounds that no action should be taken until the Committee on Education had had an opportunity to consider all of the controversial issues raised at the May 28 hearing.
During the months before Congress reconvened, the communication wires in work for the blind hummed ceaselessly. A newsletter, the Braille Trumpeter, was launched as the official organ of the Braille Institute of America. In its first issue it rehearsed and embroidered all of Atkinson's charges and urged readers to write members of Congress expressing their support for the Crail bill and their opposition to the "circumventive and secondary" Pratt measure. The latter's sponsors were scornfully dismissed as "a negligible group." The Crail bill, proclaimed the Braille Trumpeter, was sure to receive "an overwhelming majority of votes in both houses."
The proponents of the Pratt bill were not idle during the Congressional recess, but they refrained from broadsides and concentrated instead on lining up support from the nation's legislators. The Crail bill died in committee, and in December 1930 the Pratt and Smoot bills were reintroduced in the House and Senate respectively. The Senate bill passed without debate in January. The House measure would come up for action on the last day of February.
M.C. Migel, who had never taken his eye off the main target—to get books for the blind as soon as possible and in whatever way had a chance of legislative passage—sought to reach an accommodation with the California group, fearing that continued in-fighting would kill all chances for any bill. On January 9, 1931, he had a conference with Congressman Crail in Washington. That same evening, without informing or consulting Robert Irwin, who was in New York, the Major sent Atkinson a telegram. According to a typewritten draft in the Foundation's files, dated and annotated in what appears to be the Major's handwriting, that telegram read:
to atkinson
have had conference with congressman crail who will wire you. in my opinion unless opposition is withdrawn, there is very little chance of securing any legislation whatsoever. the blind of the united states suffering thereby. library of congress assures me they have absolutely no leaning or commitment towards louisville plant or any other and i am personally and absolutely confident that you will secure your share or more of all printing. for the sake of all the blind of the country, in which we are both whole-heartedly interested, i suggest you withdraw opposition.
Whether this is the wire that was actually sent cannot be ascertained. In later years Atkinson claimed that Migel had wired guaranteeing him half of the Library of Congress business if he would withdraw, but he never produced the document to substantiate his claim. In any event, Migel's attempt at intervention failed. It was to be a fight to the finish.
When the Pratt bill came up on the floor of the House on Saturday, February 28, Congressman Crail let fly. This bill, he said, "would be vicious in its operation" unless amended. Although he did not specify what sort of amendment he had in mind and never actually introduced one, it appeared from a remark made by Congressman Kvale during the ensuing debate that an amendment would be offered to limit the percentage of the total work under the appropriation that could go to any one printing house.
Crail's speech to the House recited once again the charges that the Pratt bill would unduly favor the American Printing House for the Blind, that it would "absolutely shut out" the best-equipped printing house in the world, etc., etc. Once again he raised the spectre of the "$30,000 profit" and even though Congressman Thatcher promptly rose to point out that this had been factually disproven, Crail refused to give ground.
Unexpectedly, it was Representative Schafer who finally dispelled this particular myth. The Wisconsin congressman said:
I did most of the cross-examining during that hearing, and my cross-examination was based on the gentleman's [Crail's] statement indicating a $30,000 profit on the Veterans Bureau contract. … I have been unable to find anywhere in that or any other record the report of this Louisville concern where they indicated they made $30,000 on the Veterans Bureau contract. The cross-examination was very rapid, and it may have been that the words were put into the witness' mouth and he did not deny them, but he also did not affirm them. … I will very frankly state that I was led off the trail, as was the Committee on Education, with a statement which I have not been able to substantiate.
Not even this direct challenge fazed the headstrong California congressman. He went on with his argument and it began to look as though the floor of Congress was fated to witness a complete playback of the events of May 28, 1930, until Representative Frederick Lehlbach of New Jersey, another member of the Committee on Education, observed dryly: "If we, after the hearings, had desired to report out the bill sponsored by the gentleman from California, we were perfectly able to do so; but we concluded not to do so, because the committee is for the Pratt bill."
The final blow to Crail's and Atkinson's aspirations came when Education Committee chairman Reed put himself on record as favoring the Pratt bill "because no service would be rendered to the blind by entering into any controversy at this time as to just what we should do." A few minutes later the House passed the bill. The Pratt-Smoot Act, Public Law 71-787, was signed by President Hoover on the following Tuesday, March 3, 1931.
Ironically, later the same year, when the Library of Congress was letting its first contracts for braille printing under the federal appropriation, Atkinson wrote Migel that he had been awarded contracts for 6 out of the first 16 books, "which is as much if not more than we really could expect. … we feel well satisfied."
But that contented state of mind was not to last very long and, as will be seen in the next chapter, Atkinson soon found a new issue over which to launch a public quarrel. Where braille printing was concerned, the Braille Institute of America gradually fell behind the competition. Once the Printing House had upgraded its production equipment, Atkinson found himself losing most bids for Library of Congress work and once again raised the cry of "monopoly." At least these subsequent laments were merely intramural; the U.S. Congress was never again to provide a public stage for so virulent a squabble among blind people and those striving to serve them.
The Pratt-Smoot Act underwent a series of amendments in succeeding years, and library service for blind readers came to achieve proportions undreamed of in 1931. The original number of 19 regional distributing libraries was steadily expanded; in 1972 there were 51. For that fiscal year Congress approved a total of $8,572,000 for this program, which embraced not only books in braille but in recorded form. It served blind children as well as adults and extended to music scores and instructional texts on music. In addition to blind people, the bill embraced physically handicapped individuals who were unable to read or handle normal printed material, and it reached out to the libraries of state institutions such as residential schools and hospitals for the disabled.
Library of Congress statistics for fiscal 1972 showed nearly 300,000 readers enrolled in the books for the blind program. Only about 18,000 of these, however, were finger-readers; the overwhelming majority received their literature through the medium of the ear. Probably no more than 10 percent of the nation's legally blind persons are still active readers of braille. Most of those who do depend on finger-reading were born blind or were blinded at an early age. For them, a knowledge of braille remains fundamental to securing an education. Understanding Braille, one of the Foundation's most widely distributed public information booklets, explains why:
Without the opportunity of actual reading experience, blind persons never would be able to conceptualize spelling, the sentence, the paragraph, the use of punctuation marks, methods of numeric computations, the arrangement of information into charts and tables, the use of footnotes, the use of the dictionary, and other aspects of written information that are so familiar to the literate sighted. The benefits inherent in direct visual or tactual reading experiences cannot be replaced by listening to the printed word through someone else's voice.
If, in the Seventies, all visually handicapped people, young and old, have ready access to a respectable volume of literature in whatever form or forms appeal to them, it should not be forgotten that the 40-year flowering of modern library service for the blind grew from the single seed of the Pratt-Smoot Act of 1931. In retrospect, the punishing struggle entailed in planting that seed was clearly worth it.
