Medicine: Discontented Mutes

Preparing for a six-day convention of 2,000 delegates, factotums of Chicago’s Hotel Sherman last week installed the usual facilities: a microphone and loudspeaker in the convention hall, a glittering screen behind the speakers’ platform. All this unfortunately was not evidence of tact and foresight. The delegates were members of the National Association of the Deaf. The microphone was useless and the glittering screen had to be replaced by a black one before the audience could see what the speakers were saying.

Almost as inappropriate as the hall’s equipment in the alert eyes of the deaf-mutes, was the message from President Roosevelt read off to them on his nimble fingers by the N. A. D.’s dapper President Marcus Levi Kenner of Manhattan. Deaf-mutes applaud by waving their hands in the air, but the President’s hope “that the present great activity in those branches of physics affecting acoustics may result in the development of vastly improved aids to hearing” caused only perfunctory gesticulations. Fact is that the nation’s 100,000 stone deaf who are also mutes never expect or hope to hear a sound. Their problem is not acoustics but ameliorating the disadvantages of deafness, most serious of which is difficulty in getting jobs.

The deaf-mutes who attended the convention of the 57-year-old organization last week danced to the music of a five-piece band, which they felt through their feet. They learned that the only “impostor” (a person of sound hearing who poses as deaf to cadge charitable upkeep) to appear during the past three years, one Charles Burton of Altoona. Pa., had been punished by law, then killed by a motorcar. They pointed with pride to the deaf-mutes who make high mark in the world today—Sculptor Elmer A. Hannon, Poet Howard Leslie Terry, blind Pianist Helen May Martin, Dancers Charlotte & Charles Lamberton, Dentist A. H. Clancy of Cincinnati, Broker Samuel Frankenheim of Manhattan, Research Librarian Elizabeth McLeod of the New York Public Library, President Arthur Lawrence Roberts of the National Fraternal Society of the Deaf (a $2,000,000 insurance company exclusively for deaf-mutes), N. A. D.’s President Kenner who owns a Manhattan printing establishment and insurance bureau. In general, nonetheless, discontent ruled the convention. Scarcely a finger was crooked concerning the causes of deaf-mutism (chiefly whooping cough, scarlet fever, various types of meningitis, severe falls). But knuckles bent, palms flipped, wrists twisted over many grievances:

¶ The talkies fail to print subtitles throughout the films. Hence deaf-mutes who dislike reading lips cannot understand all of the action.

¶ Many states do not permit deaf-mutes to drive cars, unless they secure liability insurance. But insurance companies in some cases refuse to issue policies to deaf-mutes. Motioned President Kenner, quoting a National Safety Council decision: “There is no evidence that deaf people cannot drive safely; therefore our only object is to determine whether they know how to do so.”

¶ Half the adult deaf-mutes of the U. S. cannot get work. Experience proves them specially capable as farmers, bookbinders, cabinetmakers, carpenters, compositors, Linotype operators, typesetters, electrotypers, seamstresses, milliners, typists, bookkeepers, accountants, machinists, painters, shoemakers, tailors. Testified deaf President Kenner: “As an employer, for the past 20 years, [I have] had occasion to utilize the services of hearing and deaf persons and found the latter equally satisfactory.” He announced that the Federal Government will hire deaf operators of office machines, file clerks, copyists, typists.

¶ Only 10% of the teachers in schools for the deaf are deaf. Others hear and compel their pupils to try to speak. Those who learn, with few exceptions like President Kenner, enunciate in flat, dead tones. Gesticulated Rev. Warren M. Smaltz of Lebanon, Pa.: “One could wish that the thousand and one weird English dialects now imparted to deaf-mutes in school could, by some magic, be transformed into as many vocational skills. Certainly it is more socially desirable for deaf people to write their way through the world, than for them to be without means of livelihood.”

¶ Last week’s gloomy N. A. D. convention finally closed on a note of cheer, when all 2,000 delegates waved approval of this lyrical resolution: “Whereas, some of our schools for the deaf, which should lead in the preservation and use of the facile, beautiful, expressive Sign Language of the Deaf have on the contrary attempted to abridge or suppress it in favor of an uncertain awkward method of communication known as ‘lipreading’ and whereas, the educated deaf bear witness overwhelmingly to the truth that the Sign Language and Manual Alphabet are the most practical, convenient and dependable medium of expression for those bereft of hearing, be it resolved that this Association unhesitatingly reaffirms its historical allegiance to and support of the beautiful Sign Language and Manual Alphabet, and commends all efforts made for its preservation and extension to the end that it may be passed on as a precious heritage to enlighten and inspire coming generations of the deaf.”