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I want this afternoon to line up, as far as possible, the arguments for and against pensions. I may not do it very well for, as you already know, I believe there is something better than pensions, but I shall try, and I claim the right to an opinion, for I have been for ten years working with others no get things done for blind people. I have known something in that time of the life-stories of more than 8000 blind people. I have known much more closely between 2500 and 3000 people without sight, and I have always a continuous and close personal acquaintance with hundreds of people who are blind. I have the disadvantage, in speaking to you of having had only the experience of seeing, but I have had my share of being twitted, scolded and blamed, as well as befriended. helped and encouraged by blind people for ten years. I know what it is to make appeals to sighted people on behalf of the blind as individuals, or in groups, and to be stared at as understandingly as though I were speaking Choctaw; and I know what it is, too, to make appeals that are warmly received and answered. I claim experience as a background for what I have to say to you, both with the blind, and with relief problems.

The arguments for pensions as I get them are somewhat as follows:

1. A pension bill of the type submitted to this legislature and operative in Ohio provides immediate relief, without "red tape" to a group of people who need it.

2. Ohio and Illinois have pensions for the needy blind.

3. Public relief in general as at present administered is often inadequate; is not available to all who need it or the conditions on which it is given are often not acceptable to applicants.

4. Private relief is entirely inadequate and is often especially conditional.

5. The things pensions would cover that are not now adequately provided for are as follows

(1) Pensions would aid some blind people industrially, and industrial aid through the Commission for the Blind reaches only a limited number and is usually given on special conditions.

(2) Pensions would help compensate for the double expense most blind individuals are put to in securing guidance, and providing car fares whenever they go abroad for business or pleasure.

(3) Pensions would provide that small regular income which would "make many aged or otherwise inefficient blind persons welcome in the homes of friends or relatives who would otherwise be very unceremoniously pushed about from family to family until they filially land in the county infirm.

(4) Pensions would help provide for the "extra services about the house which all but the cleverest blind housewives must hire others to do" or they would supplement the small earnings of a blind bread-winner.

I want to know every single argument in favor of pensions for the needy blind, and I shall be grateful to any one who will help me complete this list. I have one argument of my own in addition, which I think a very important one and rarely mentioned; but it applies only to people with consciences, -- that is the serious effect of worry over the uncertainties of income when, for example, a self-respecting bread-winner, with dependent children, is overtaken by blindness, or when self-respecting aged people who have struggled all their lives for independence, are condemned to live in uncertainty as to their support during their remaining years. The factor of anxiety of this kind has been entirely underestimated, but it does not apply to all, for some among the blind, as among the sighted, have no consciences.

1. In reply to the first argument for pensions, let as consider the Pension Bill for the Needy Blind as presented in Massachusetts last year or as recently enacted in Illinois. It seems simple and direct, and only experience warns us there are underlying questions yet to be answered.

(1) What is the principle of pensions? How does it apply to the blind?

(2) Who are the needy blind? It is necessary, as the experience of Ohio has shown so clearly, to define very closely both needy and blind.

(3) Why do people object to "red tape" and why is it necessary?

I will try briefly to outline my answer to these difficult questions.

(1) Pensions -- a pension is "a stated allowance to a person in consideration of past service." I know of one or two groups of the blind only to whom pensions or compensation in this sense rightfully belong: Soldiers blinded in the service of their country and men and women blinded through no fault of their own, in industry. Both these groups are already recognized in Massachusetts; the first, as is well known, through U. S. pensions and state aid, and the second is the Workmen's Compensation Act of this state, perhaps not adequately as yet, but the principle is accepted and being worked out case by case, of compensation for various degrees of eye impairment from total blindness to and including loss of 1-10 vision. In addition, it should be noted that the Ohio law does not, as a matter of fact, allow pensions, this being declared unconstitutional under their state laws, -- but the regular aid is granted as relief in lieu of all other forms of public relief and so reported. This is not in the least understood. I think, when the Ohio work is quoted here, but it is made very clear by Dr. Stricker in his recent detailed report: "As has already been indicated, the constitutionality of the present law rests on the need, and when two disinterested persons swear 'that unless relieved under this act, the applicant will become a charge on the public or those who by law are not required to support him' by this declaration are practically taking a pauper's oath, and places the beneficiary in the same category as those accepting 'outdoor relief.'"