WORK FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN


Chicago and New York. Just at present, the Public School System
of Manhattan is taking charge of the educational department of a few
schools for cripples, in an experimental way, leaving the physical
department to the managers who have hitherto had charge.
   One of the greatest problems of these schools is that of trans-
portation. Very few of the children are able to walk, and a stage
must be sent to their homes to bring them to school. Dinner is
furnished them, and at the close of the afternoon the stage takes
them home, from fifteen to twenty-five at a time. Now this stage
alone is a great expense,-a good one costs about fifteen hundred
dollars and is even then unheated. Every school ought to have a
rubber-tired, heated stage, as in going on the long drive from door
to door the children often get very tired. In the winter it is long
after dark when the last ones get home. With the financial pros-
perity of the schools these conditions will be improved.
   It would be interesting to compare our schools with those of
Europe, but the limits of this article forbid more than a mention of
the work done by the Guild for the Crippled Children of the Poor
of New York City,-of which the Davis School, described in a former
issue of THE CRAFTSMEN, was auxiliary number one,-and those of
the Children's Aid Society, and various other organizations. One of
the most interesting phases of work with cripples is that of aiving
them amusement, and the Crippled Children's Driving Association
does this by taking a group to the park once a week in a big 'bus, a
different group going each day from several centers. I should like
to suggest to the reader, whether he lives in Greater New York or
some far corner of Australia, to consider whether he is doing his own
individual duty to any crippled children that there may be in his
community. Wherever poverty and crowded quarters exist, there
are cripples. Wherever there are any number of them there should
be a school, a home, or some sort of organization in which they may
have a chance to recover their health and learn a trade. If any one
of THE CRAFrSMAN readers is so fortunate as to live where there are
no crippled children he must, indeed, be from a city of the rich, and
can well afford to help the work in one of the great cities of the poor.


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