Out of the Horrors of War. Audra Jennings

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СКАЧАТЬ was done. Anderson replied, “The utter impossibility of our expecting to come together in a common understanding of all the angles presented by the project you ask the NAD to sponsor, by mail, grows more and more apparent with each slap you choose to deal out to me and my responsible associates when we attempt to exercise a reasonable degree of restraint, or present our viewpoint.” The correspondence continued for another month, but it was clear that Strachan and the NAD were on radically different pages.⁵⁶

      Strachan’s communication with the NAD hinted at the strategies he would employ in the AFPH and revealed the temper that would get him, and his organization, into trouble. The experience also shaped his opinion that people with disabilities lacked “the means and the leadership to come forward and properly present their cases for public consideration.” His opinion notwithstanding, a number of organizations had long represented disabled constituents, including the NAD.⁵⁷ New Deal, wartime, and postwar politics grew that number.

      Another long-standing organization was the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), founded in 1920 by disabled World War I veterans, who were troubled by the lack of available services and the inefficiency, lack of coordination, and confusing mountains of paperwork required for the services that did exist.⁵⁸ During World War II, the organization aimed to “preserve America’s freedoms,” “equalize burdens and profits of war,” and improve the lives of “America’s disabled defenders.” DAV leaders sought to do this by pushing for growth of the military, efficient mobilization of labor on the home front, limits on wartime profits, greater pay for servicemen and women during and after service, disability insurance, and more thorough medical record keeping by the various branches of the armed services. Disabled veterans, the DAV maintained, needed the organization. It sought to expand what would count as a service-connected disability, increase the benefits disabled veterans received, soften VA guidelines for determining disability, harshen the punishment for feigning disability to gain benefits, expand vocational training and job placement programs for disabled veterans, extend hospital care for individuals with service- and nonservice-connected disabilities, expand the number of VA facilities, and provide greater financial support to the dependents and widows of disabled veterans.⁵⁹

      Growth of the New Deal state spurred the organization of the NFB in 1940. At the state level, blind activists had fought for pensions and other aid programs for blind citizens throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These successes, in part, led New Deal policymakers to include Aid to the Blind in the Social Security Act of 1935. Moreover, Congress passed a series of laws that aimed to create employment opportunities for blind citizens. Blind activists, whose efforts had been focused at the state level, shifted strategy to the national level. The new organization’s president, Jacobus tenBroek, criticized the “intolerable authoritarian arrogance” of the Social Security Board and insisted blind people had to organize nationally to protect blind people’s interests. The NFB objected to nonblind professionals’ authority over programs for blind Americans and demanded representation for blind people. The organization also fought against employment discrimination.⁶⁰

      These disparate organizations would push for a broad range of goals during World War II and the immediate postwar years, but greater employment opportunities, particularly amid the war-fueled job boom, would be a shared priority for disability activists. These organizations would also all demand a role for disabled people in the development and administration of disability policy. Taken together, these organizations would seek to channel the promise of the war moment to gain access to full citizenship.

       Wartime Federal Disability Policy

      As disability rights activists responded to the changing political landscape, policymakers confronted new realities that would make disability more visible and the problems that activists sought to address more pressing. In March 1942, John J. Corson, director of the Employment Service, declared that recruiting and placing the 10.5 million additional workers who would be necessary to meet the production demands of the war that year was “the biggest job of its kind ever imposed on a democracy.”⁶¹

      By early 1942, the nation faced the difficult dilemma of growing the size and strength of the armed forces and meeting the ever-increasing production demands to outfit these new soldiers, sailors, and marines and our Allies with the tools of war. Before Pearl Harbor, the navy and marine corps relied on recruits, and the army had nearly drafted the 900,000 men it sought for preparedness. Overnight, military needs exploded and Selective Service, or draft, calls followed suit. Indeed, the army had called for 20,000 men in December 1941, but by December 1942 the monthly call came in at almost 500,000. Roughly a year after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt ended voluntary enlistment to allow local Selective Serve boards to determine where best a man might serve the nation—in the military or on the home front. In 1943, the Selective Service aimed to bring the size of the army to 7.7 million, the navy to 3.6 million, and the marine corps to 500,000. The process of drawing millions of men into the armed forces—hundreds of thousands of women also volunteered—shrank the labor pool, compounding the complex problem of making the materials of war. Indeed, even before Pearl Harbor, the demands of producing for the Allies and preparing for the possibility of war had created labor difficulties. As early as May 1940, FSA official Wayne Coy warned President Roosevelt, “The expansion of war industries is already creating local shortages of skilled labor.” By 1942, Corson emphasized the need for workers on the nation’s farms and in defense production. He also outlined the need for new thinking—drawing older and disabled individuals and people of color into the workforce, for example. So acute was the need for defense workers, Corson explained, that people would be shifted away from unnecessary jobs into war production.⁶²

      The process of drafting men for military service also brought the extent of disability in the nation into focus. In September 1941, Lewis B. Hershey, director of the Selective Service System, wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt, “The operation of Selective Service during the past twelve months has uncovered certain practical problems that are matters of the gravest concern to our Nation.” He noted that members of the Selective Service System had “been deeply concerned because of the numbers of men who do not meet the physical and mental standards prescribed by the Army.” Hershey felt that many could be rehabilitated for military service while “undoubtedly many of the others can be brought to a physical standard which would make them far more efficient as citizens of this nation.”⁶³ As Hershey’s letter suggests, the draft made disability more visible and imbued it with greater consequence.

      The need for labor on the home front and soldiers on the frontlines, many of whom would become disabled at work or in combat, shaped the federal government’s response to disability during the war. Within days of the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt wrote to FSA head Paul McNutt, instructing him to work with various federal agencies to develop a plan for expanding vocational rehabilitation. Roosevelt hoped that the rehabilitation program could be retooled to both meet the needs of the disabled soldiers the war was sure to create and contribute to solving the nation’s man- and womanpower crisis.⁶⁴ McNutt responded quickly, meeting with officials from the military, VA, Selective Service System, War Production Board, DOL, Public Health Service, Office of Education and Division of Rehabilitation, and American Red Cross, among other agencies and groups. By February 1942, he had developed a plan to intensify the use of disabled workers in war industry and put some of it in motion.⁶⁵

      The slow pace of the rehabilitation process, the fact that officials did not know the extent of disability in the nation, the rehabilitation program’s reliance on matching dollars from the states, and the lack of trained rehabilitation caseworkers made McNutt’s task all the more difficult. In 1941 and 1942, the service rehabilitated only 15,000 to 20,000 persons each year and placed just one in three clients in a job. Furthermore, McNutt recognized that the lack of knowledge about U.S. disabled citizens contributed to the difficulty of developing an effective plan. He admitted that he could not estimate “with any degree of accuracy” the number of disabled individuals of appropriate age who could benefit from rehabilitation. The Employment Service estimated that СКАЧАТЬ