|
F.D. Roosevelt Speech Text
Radio Address on a Program of Assistance for the Crippled.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
February 18, 1931
Reprinted courtesy of The New Deal Network
I believe it was announced that I was going to talk today on why it pays
to do things for crippled children and, I might add to that, other kinds
of cripples--grown-up cripples as well. I want to talk, of course, about
the big human side of relieving distress and helping people to get on
their feet, but at the same time I think there is another phase of the
broad question of looking after cripples to which some people have never
given much thought--the financial side. For instance, I am told that there
are somewhere between three and four hundred thousand cripples in this
country today--I mean cripples who are pretty thoroughly put out of
business, who cannot get around, who cannot perform any useful
task--people, in other words, most of them children, who have to be looked
after by other people. Think of it, three or four hundred thousand people
out of our total population. This is a tremendous percentage.
Now let us figure for a minute in simple terms. Suppose for the sake of
argument that three hundred thousand people are out of useful work when
they grow to be older and that each one of them, if he could work, could
produce one thousand dollars' worth of new products every year. In other
words, if the productive value were one thousand dollars a year apiece,
three hundred thousand of them would mean three hundred million dollars
added to the annual productive capacity of the United States. That is
worth thinking about from the purely money end of things. If we could
restore every cripple in this country to some kind of useful occupation it
would do much to help the general wealth and well-being of the United
States.
People know well that restoring one of us cripples--because as some of you
know, I walk around with a cane and with the aid of somebody's arm
myself--to useful occupation costs money. Being crippled is not like many
other diseases, contagious and otherwise, where the cure can be made in a
comparatively short time; not like the medical operation where one goes to
the hospital and at the end of a few weeks goes out made over again and
ready to resume life. People who are crippled take a long time to be put
back on their feet--sometimes years, as we all know. Take it from that
angle. Suppose for the sake of argument it costs one thousand dollars a
year for a crippled child to be put back on his feet and that it takes
five years to do it. The cost to the community--because it has to be
community effort in most cases, for most families cannot afford it--is
five thousand dollars to put that one individual back on his feet.
Remember that most of the cripples can in some shape, manner or form be
brought back to useful life. Suppose they are brought back so that at the
time they are 20 or 21 they have before them the expectation of a long and
useful life, perhaps at least 40 years more. During those 40 years each
one of them ought to be able to earn one thousand dollars a year. There is
forty thousand dollars added to the country's wealth, at a cost of only
five thousand dollars. So the net saving or profit to the State or country
as a whole is thirty-five thousand dollars. That shows it pays from the
money point of view, if from no other.
At the present time in the United States, they tell me, there are about
thirty thousand new cases every year of people who become crippled for one
reason or another. The first thing we are trying to do everywhere is to
cut down that number of new cases; and I have a letter from my old friend
Daddy Allen, whom a great many people all over the United States know as
the man who started the International Society for Crippled Children which
has branches in every civilized country of the world. He tells me that
work is going on in every State in this Union to prevent people from
getting crippled, and he hopes that as a result, within a short time,
instead of having thirty thousand cases, we shall be able to cut it down
to 20,000. It would be a tremendous saving if by preventive measures we
can keep ten thousand children every year from becoming crippled.
Of course, modern medical science is trying to prevent diseases and
troubles of all kinds just as much as it is trying to make cures. This
calls for better understanding on the part of the people, for better
education on the part especially of the parents, for better conditions
surrounding the birth of children, better care in the home, and, equally
important, prevention of many unnecessary accidents of all
kinds--automobile accidents, train accidents, and so on. So the first step
is to work for the prevention of crippling. This covers the great advances
that have been made in preventing industrial accidents--unnecessary
injuries that come to people who are at work not only in factories, but
also in the field, in nearly every State of the Union. The United States
now is working hard and spending much money to prevent these industrial
accidents. They are far too common, but much has been accomplished and
more will be accomplished in the years to come.
Now for the second step--the work of finding cripples all over the United
States. We in the State of New York have had surveys made not only in the
cities, but also in the country districts and even out to the remote farms
that are not reached by R.F.D. carriers. We have had surveys made and have
found literally thousands of children and grown-ups who were crippled and
had no medical care of the right kind. There are probably today not only
hidden away in the big cities, but also in the agricultural and
mountainous parts of the United States, other thousands and thousands of
crippled children who have never had any proper care, who have never been
to a doctor, who have never been to a hospital or been looked over to see
whether they could be brought back to useful life. That second step of
finding the cripples is gradually being carried out.
Then the third step--the matter of diagnosing what the trouble is. This
step is primarily for the doctors; and yet it is true that our good
doctors--even the general practitioners--cannot in many cases consider
themselves experienced in what is really orthopedic work. In other words,
the average practitioner has to go to a specialist when it comes to
treating certain types of patients. All over the United States we are
establishing, more and more, clinics run by cities, schools, counties or
the State, clinics that are within reasonable travel distance of every
home, clinics to which the crippled children can be taken. After they have
become crippled or after the people in search of them have found them they
are taken to the clinic and the case is diagnosed. Great strides have been
made in the past few years in providing facilities for the operations that
are essential in some cases. But the medical profession is also realizing
that many operations can be avoided through a system of plaster casts,
massage exercise and other forms of treatment. The main point is to get
the case properly diagnosed by the right kind of doctor in the first
instance. Then comes the treatment.
The next medical step, which up to this time has not been developed far in
this country, is "after care." After the cause of the trouble is known and
the first remedies for it have been applied and the child is able to go
home, the treatment must not stop; the parents must be taught what to do.
Visiting nurses go in occasionally to see how the child is getting on, and
furthermore we are developing new methods by which "after care" is being
given in schools for crippled children. We do not want to take the
children away from their education, of course, and many schools are
putting in special facilities for crippled children where along with their
education they can be given the right kind of medical treatment. The point
to remember is that the overwhelming majority of children who become
crippled can with proper treatment be restored to a useful, active life in
the community. It seems to me from somewhat wide experience not only of my
own, but of other people, the average cripple in this country has about
the finest natural disposition of anyone in the community. There is
something that comes to crippled children that gives to them happier,
better dispositions. They are seldom cross, they are seldom fretful; we
nearly always find them ready to cooperate; we find that they turn out
well as scholars and that they are ready to assist in every way in the
treatment provided for them.
I want to repeat that we owe to every crippled child in the United States
a chance to come back, not merely from the big, broad point of view of
humanity. I want to emphasize again that by restoring all of these tens of
thousands of children to useful, normal lives, we shall be doing a fine
thing, carrying out a great objective for the Nation. I know that we shall
have your cooperation. From you who are crippled and you who are
absolutely normal we shall have help in furthering this great purpose; we
must search out the cripples from every nook and corner of the land; we
must do through education everything possible to prevent crippling; we
must provide the right medical care; we must spread "after care" to the
homes throughout the land.
I am glad to have had this opportunity to say these few words today. We
are enlisted in a great cause, one of the greatest causes of humanity that
exists in America today.
|