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Mr. Toastmaster, and I think that I am almost getting to the point where I will say Fellow-Workers. You are going to be very glad, I think, that I am taking a train tonight. I came here with the idea of having plenty of time to write out with some care my few remarks for this evening, and the result has been that I have made two speeches already. This isn't going to be a third; it is just going to be a heart-to-heart talk.

The topic on which I said I would speak some months ago -- "Why bother with the crippled child?" was intended to bring some ideas, not to this kind of an audience at all, but to the average audience that doesn't know anything about it. Here, I am very much of an amateur talking to a lot of people who know a great deal more about the subject than I do; but because of that, perhaps I can put it this way: you all know so much about the subject of the crippled child, as do the people in any given line of business or occupation, that you are very apt to forget that everybody else in the world doesn't know just as much about it as you do.

We workers have still got the task, in this nation, of selling our wares. We have still got the task of talking to the business men and women of the nation, to the taxpayers of the nation, proving our point as to why all this is worth while.

Sometimes we have to be business like. Sometimes we have to talk in terms of dollars and cents. It is a hard thing to do in a subject like this, and yet I find in talking to people throughout this country about the problem of the crippled child, and, I might add, of the crippled adult, too, they often do not see anything but the appeal to the heart. They get that. It is fine that they do, and it is right that we should emphasize that as well, but, back of it all, we have got to live in this day and generation, this time of practicality, and put things down in figures.

When you come down to that, there are many in our midst who want to know why; what good it is to spend all this time, and all these taxes, and all these gifts to bring back cripples. We have had figures presented at this gathering -- an estimate of 400,000 crippled children in North America. I take it that that is a fairly accurate guess. If there are that many crippled children, how many more crippled adults are there who are getting around a little, many of them still hidden, many of them still to be found.

I was talking to one of the government employees, a Washington statistician on the census last year, and he told that in his judgment there were three-quarters of a million Americans, men, and children, who were incapacitated, physically crippled and unable, from the economic point of view, to pull their own weight in the boat.

I said to him "If that is so, how many more people are out of useful production, to come back to the hard-hearted point of view of dollars and cents, people who are looking after this three-quarters of a million Americans?"

He said, "Well, at least one to every three. The total would come up to more than a million. It would be pretty nearly one per cent of the total population of the country, cripples or those caring for them."

We will take the next step. How much should the earning capacity be? Many of them are children not of earning age; others, and many of them, are capable of earning something. The older ones are capable of making a good return for their labor, and if you take a snap judgment figure of, say $1,000 a year earning capacity, and that isn't so very high in these days of so-called prosperity, a million people at a thousand dollars apiece a year works out at a billion dollars; that is $1,000,000,000 taken out of production. There is a figure for some of us to shoot at some of our rich friends -- $1,000,000,000. What is the interest on it? Well, at 5 per cent, it is $50,000,000 a year. Wouldn't it be nice if we people could have the spending of the interest on that billion dollars? Just think what could happen in our work if we So had the use of $50,000,000 a year.

Yes, we are young. As I said over the radio, we have only just begun our work. We still have to solve the problems of how and when and where. After we have done the principal part of restoring these people, we want to know how we can then go about making them into useful citizens. That is being solved as the days go by. We are finding new uses for people without arms, for people who can't walk with ease. The interesting thing to me about it is, and I think you will bear me out when I assert to the public of this country, that the mind, the mental capacity of the average cripple is not below the average. It isn't even just the average; I believe it is above the average.

What is the most important thing we can do outside of our own work? Education -- not education of the children, but education of the United States, and, heaven only knows, the United States needs education, and they need it not in one part of the country or another part of the country but all over. There is one man in this land who, next to "Daddy" Allen, has done more for crippled children than anybody else -- Henry Ford. He has brought the rural districts into touch with the rest of the world. It all ties in together. it isn't just one problem; it isn't the problem of the clinics and hospitals and all the other details of our work; it is a problem which is associated with all the other social problems of the country. The best way I can explain it is by telling you of a conference that I held down in Atlanta, Georgia, last year. It was a conference with some of the leading state officials, and the question before this group was two-fold, education and good roads. Curiously enough for Georgia, the conference came to a unanimous decision! Their decision was that before they could get a better system of education throughout the state, they would have to build their roads; they would have to get the people out of their own localities and mixing with rest of mankind.

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You know we use the word "farmer." Some of us think, as they did in so many parts of this country, north, south, east west, up to a very few years ago, that farmers were people who lived on those horrible things called country roads; in those small communities where it was almost impossible to get in or out; beyond buggy distance; and it was true. We thought in those days not so far past, of the man that we couldn't reach, by driving, and return within a day, as a man who was a farmer. He talked a different language. He might have had some common pride of the state with us, but he didn't have the same friends. He went to a different store. He had his own little circle, just as we had ours. It is only in the last fifty years that that definition of the farmer has been going out. We extended it, and we came to know people in neighboring communities. With the advent of the railroad, we began to travel farther from home.

After a while there came the automobile, of all shapes, sizes and prices, and they came into the hands of the average citizen, and the average citizen began, first, to know his own state, and then to slip over the border into another state.

Now we are beginning to think of people all over this country as neighbors, and, after a while, perhaps -- we are still quite far from it; but not as far as some of us imagine -- the people of other lands, are going to seem less foreign to us. Some day most of this world is going to be kin, as the people in this nation have become kin after so long a time.

In that spirit of learning to know our neighbor, we are bringing out the cripple. We are extending our rural nursing. What has happened to the medical profession itself? Somebody in Boston discovers something, and every doctor in this whole, broad land knows it within a month. Or somebody discovers a new cure, like the man who discovered insulin, how long ago? three or four years, or something like that. Today insulin exists in almost every community throughout the United States. It is because we are kin.

This thought of state responsibility I am perfectly convinced is sound, not only economically, but constitutionally. We have recognized from the earliest days in all the states, that the education of the young is a matter for state concern. If that be true, if that be accepted as a recognized principle of American government, we must take the next step. We have already taken one step. Practically all the schools, practically all the states of the nation are recognizing physical education as well as mental. If that be so, if the states today in their physical and mental educational work, are recognizing, and they are doing it increasingly, that they must attend to the individual needs of the individual child, then the next step which is going to be a part of our government is the recognition of the duty of the state to bring these children, physically handicapped, back to a more normal life.

We don't want to institutionalize ourselves. We don't want to make ourselves the slaves of a bureaucracy. Today a large part of the work is being conducted, I believe, by private organizations. It is being carried on by private gifts. That must not stop, but at the same time, we, as citizens of our several states, have the right to go to the law-makers and to the executives of our state, and insist that the state fails to perform one of its functions of government, if it fails to aid in this kind of work.

Fifty million dollars a year, the interest on what the cripples might make every year -- well, we are accustomed to high taxes. We are accustomed to cheerful giving, and the best part that has come to me at this great gathering is the fact that we are all working together. I have in mind the preparation of figures, of facts which can go out to the communities.

I was talking to one of the eminent surgeons who was at this gathering yesterday, and he brought that point out to me very clearly. He was talking about the practical business man, about the need for figures to show how much work was necessary on the average child, on some system of information, of charting our results. Today you and I are familiar with this lack of figures. When a man comes to me to talk about our work down at Warm Springs in Georgia, it is very difficult to tell him how long such-and-such a case will take, how much it will cost, and of the experience in other places. We need figures and facts. Each of you in your own particular line of work knows your figures. How much are we finding out about our associate's figures in other places? That is a work for the future, for the immediate future, I hope -- a comparison, a testing, a charting of our results. We hear that such-and-such a hospital or such-and-such a state system is working splendidly. We hear that they have taken so many children, that they have done this, that or the other work, but that is information for us, for us specialists. It isn't for the average layman.

Another thing, when I think of the great areas of this country where the cripple is not receiving any attention; when I think of the very large proportion of that 400,000 who haven't the facilities, who don't know where to go; when I think that every day, not of the one letter but the ten coming from all parts of the nation, and from foreign countries as well asking what can be done, asking, in most cases, for free treatment or practically free treatment, -- people without the means to pay the cost -- then it is felt more forcible than ever, that, in a large measure, this problem is a concern of the government; it is concern of the average taxpayer. They are going to realize in this generation the economic value of paying taxes for work. We tax ourselves for public parks; we tax ourselves for national reservations; we tax ourselves for the work of destroying the animal pests that infect our crops and our forests. We are willing by Federal Government and by state government to pour millions into the eradication of the animal pests that prey upon our pocketbooks, because we can feel what the boll weevil does to them; we can't feel, in the same way, what the germ of anterior poliomyelitis does to our pocketbooks; but it is there just the same, and it is just as real, and it is hurting our pocketbooks in the same way.

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Those are things for the practical business man. Those are things for the practical politicians who send our legislators to the capitol, who send our governors to their seats

Education of the public, the dear, good, old, long-suffering public, which if you keep on driving at, and telling facts to, will come around to your point of view every time, if you tell the truth, and, heaven only knows, we have the truth.

I am very happy to have had this chance to be with you. I hope that you will let me come to other gatherings next year, and that I will be able to attend some of the section meetings that I missed this year, because there is a lot to learn. May your work go on. May it go on as it deserves to, and as it is bound to go on. You can have the feeling of the pioneer. You can have the feeling of the people who are starting something that is going to live and grow in the years to come.

May the Almighty bless you and your work, and give more strength to your good, right arms.