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If a school for the blind has trained an organist who is capable of filling a church position, the agencies for the blind keep a lookout for a vacancy.

When the agent hears of one, he goes to the place and tells the church committee of a blind man who is competent to fill the position. The committee is probably very skeptical and very reluctant to try so doubtful an experiment. The agent, however, is eloquent, and persuades the committee to give the man a trial. The man comes, plays, and conquers.

In London there is a tea agency of which the managers are wholly or partially blind. Many blind agents are selling its teas, coffees, and cocoas in all parts of England.

Last June there was held in Edinburgh an exhibition of the work of the blind all over the world. A whole floor was devoted to weaving- machines and typewriters, and blind people demonstrated their skill as weavers, masseurs, carpenters, and musicians. At the Glasgow Asylum the blind have produced salable articles for eighty years, and in three recent years the average annual sales amounted to twenty-nine thousand pounds sterling.

In English cities from 6 to 13 per cent. of the blind are in workshops, while in America, of sixty-four thousand blind persons only six hundred, or 1 per cent., are employed in industrial establishments.

But a brighter day dawned for the blind in America when New York and Massachusetts awoke to the necessity of looking into the condition of the sightless. Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California, and Michigan are all active in the effort to make wage-earners of the blind. The nature of the work which has begun, and should be extended as rapidly as possible, is represented by the endeavours of the Massachusetts Association to Promote the Interests of the Adult Blind.

This association has opened an experiment station in Cambridge, to find and test industries that seem practicable for the sightless. The blind are sought out in their homes, and when possible they are taught trades, their work is brought to the notice of the public, and the capacity of blind men and women to operate certain automatic machines in factories is demonstrated to employers.

Hitherto the chief industries of the blind have been the manufacture of brooms, mattresses, baskets, brushes, and mats, not all of which are profitable in this country. The effort should be to increase the number of possible lucrative occupations for the sightless.

A young blind man was trained at the station in Cambridge in ten days to cut box corners in a paper and tag factory to the satisfaction of his employer. Another young man has succeeded in taking, by means of a shorthand writing machine, acceptable interviews for a newspaper. A young blind woman was taken from the poorhouse, where she had been for three years, and placed in a hairpin factory, where she has found work that she is capable of doing.

The experiment station is now at work on a patented mop invented by a blind man. This "Wonder mop" can be made entirely without sight, and the plan is to have blind agents from Maine to California sell it. If the mop proves as successful as it now promises to be, it will go a long way toward solving the industrial problem of the blind in this country.

What the blind workman needs is an industry that will enable him to produce something that people will buy, not out of pity for him, but because it is useful or beautiful. The blind will not lack for customers if their articles are of the best material, design, and workmanship.

The little group of workers at the experiment station have received more orders for their beautiful rugs, sofa pillows, and table covers than their limited means and inadequate space enable them to fill promptly. Workers for the blind have found both manufacturers and employers ready and glad to cooperate with them when they understand that it is opportunity and not charity that is asked.

There is no law on the statute-books compelling people to move up closer on the bench of life to make room for a blind brother; but there is a divine law written on the hearts of men constraining them to make a place for him, not only because he is unfortunate, but also because it is his right as a human being to share God's greatest gift, the privilege of man to go forth unto his work.