The Young Manhood of Newel Perry

The Young Manhood of Newel Perry

Braille Monitor
October 2012

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The Young Manhood of Newel Perry
An Interview Conducted by Willa Baum
From the Editor: Thanks to Federationist Bryan Bashin, we recently received a scanned copy of an in-depth interview with Newel Perry archived in the Bancroft Library of the University of California General Library, Regional Cultural History Project, which Miss Baum conducted in Berkeley, California, in 1956. The interview is so lengthy that we decided to serialize it. The first installment appeared in the July issue. This section of the interview covers graduate school in Europe and the New York years.
Raymond Henderson
Baum: By the time you had been in college four years and then did graduate work, were other blind students beginning to follow you?
Perry: Yes, not many.
Baum: Didn't Raymond Henderson and his brother go to the University here?
Perry: Well, they both went to the high school. I got them to go to the high school.
Baum: Were they younger than you were?
Perry: Yes. They were younger. By that time I was in a position to do more for them than I could have done earlier. I remember getting Raymond to go to the high school, and I remember that I used to have quite a hard time to get the blind boys to go out with the sighted boys more. You know, blind people are sensitive, most of them. Finally, after I got him down to the high school, I kept after him until he finally took part in athletics. He could see a little bit, so, when it came to running on a track, he could run as well as any of them. He'd have all sorts of excuses to stay away. He didn't have the costume. I remember buying one for him the day before I left for Europe. And I got him a sort of a scholarship up here at the school. He entered the University after I had gone to Europe. He graduated in the regular four-year term. Henderson was an able man, and he worked under great hardships. He had no money of his own and found it difficult to make money somehow. He was no salesman.
Baum: Raymond Henderson was an attorney, wasn't he?
Perry: Yes.
Baum: He was executive director of the National Federation for a while?
Perry: Henderson? No, I don't think so.
Baum: Was he active in the Council?
Perry: Yes. Not at the beginning. When I came back here in 1912 to take charge of the Blind Department of the Berkeley School for the Blind, Henderson, who was a graduate from the University then, was a very pessimistic, discouraged man. He said to me, "You're making an awful mistake.” You see, I had helped him get into college, through high school. He said, "It's all nonsense. No good. University isn't worth it. Best thing to do is burn it down." He said, "Your idea of sending these boys to college is ridiculous. You should make piano tuners out of some and teach some others to make brooms, but this higher education is nonsense." He was a great friend of mine, but he was just giving me his frank opinion. He came out and rang my bell a few years later. He said, "I'm here to apologize." He had become convinced, from what he saw happening to these boys, that I was doing just exactly the right thing.
Baum: Had he become a success himself?
Perry: In a way, but he was not a financial success. He became interested in the labor movement and would work for no pay for unemployed people. An idealist. Something of a socialist. He never gave himself a chance to make any money.
Baum: He was a smart enough lawyer, wasn't he?
Perry: Oh, very brilliant lawyer. Won his cases. But he was not sufficiently selfish to be a success; he was...well, loads of us do that. Get interested in helping people, and you forget to do things for yourself.
Baum: Did you and he have political arguments?
Perry: Oh yes. We didn't agree at all.
Baum: You said he was a socialist.
Perry: Yes. All sorts of theories that appeal to people. I don't know why he should fall for it, because he was a bright man, and he was sorry for me because I didn't have more sense. He said I had no understanding of social problems. Of course I never would argue with him, and I'd say, "Maybe you're right," and he'd go on. He thought capitalism was a wicked thing. I think in his last few years he lost some of his zeal for socialism.
Hugh Buckingham
Perry: Another one was Hugh Buckingham. He's a wonderful fellow. He doesn't have very good health now. He was idolized by everybody. Everyone likes him. They call him "Buck."
Baum: When did he start to college?
Perry: I think he graduated in 1907.
Baum: So he went after you had gone to Europe?
Perry: Yes, he remembered me when he had been a little boy.
Baum: He's the man who is going to write a biography of you.
Perry: Yes, he started to write one. I suppose he isn't well enough to put much energy into it. He's a beautiful writer, but he's not very energetic. His health has never been good. He tells me he remembers when I'd walk into the school up there, and he was a little child, six or seven years old. I had a big dog, and he likes to tell me that he knows all about that dog.
Baum: Were you rather a symbol of success to the students at the school?
Perry: Yes, I guess they all thought so. I was sort of lionized a great deal more than I had any occasion for. I suppose for being the first one to try going to college. I was doing something that people thought couldn't be done.
Baum: I understand you rode a bicycle around the Bay?
Perry: (laughter) Yes.
Baum: Was that later?
Perry: It was while I was in college. A fellow and I rode down to San José and back. He put a little bell so that when the spokes of his wheel struck it, it tingled, which enabled me to know where he was. I could guide myself by him. I could go alongside of him or behind him as I pleased, but that little bell told me where I was. I remember we rode down to San Jose on this side and back on the other side, up to San Francisco. Oh my, they thought I was as wonderful as Eisenhower. I don't know why it should have been harped on so much.
College Chums
Baum: Who were your special friends in college?
Perry: One that was very close was a man who after graduation disappeared, and I've never heard of since. His name was Gilbert Walker. Nice fellow and rather brilliant, a little lazy, I think. I was very fond of him. He went east, and I've never heard of him since. I've tried to hunt him up. The Drews, two brothers. John Drew and Bill Drew. They were great friends of mine. Bill Drew became principal of one of the high schools in San Francisco. John Drew ran a private school of his own over in San Francisco. I had a chum by the name of Powell, Walter Powell. He and I went to high school together and were great chums all the way through high school and college. The one I was closest to of any was Charlie Delany. We were chums at high school and through college, and we've been very close all through life. He died maybe four years ago. He became an engineer, worked in the East and finally came here and worked for the P.G. and E. Oh, all the people I was chums with have passed away. In fact, I guess there are very few of the class of 1896 still living.
Mrs. Perry
Baum: When did you meet Mrs. Perry?
Perry: You mean the first time? We went to college together.
Baum: Oh, is that right?
Perry: We both belonged to the class of '96. I saw her in New York a lot. Her folks would go back and forth to Europe a good deal; her father had interests in New York, so they lived in New York for a good many years. But we weren't married till I came back to California.
Baum: What was her maiden name?
Perry: Her father, who died when she was a very young child, his name was Unna. Her mother remarried. My wife often went by her stepfather's name to please him, because they were very devoted.
Baum: What did she study at the University?
Perry: Languages, a great deal. She was quite interested in Greek.
Baum: Where did she live when she was at the University?
Perry: San Francisco.
Baum: What was her first name?
Perry: Lillian, called herself Lilly. I never could get her to stick to one name...Kalman was the other last name she used, her stepfather's name. Lilly Unna Kalman. She got an MA in '98.
Baum: Was that in languages too? Greek?
Perry: That was in languages. I've forgotten just what it was; might have been German, because I know Professor Putzker of the University was interested in her thesis. Putzker was head of the German Department.
Baum: What was Mr. Kalman's business?
Perry: He really was a wine merchant. He was always going to Paris and so on to buy the different wines. He had some men who could taste the wine and tell you what it's going to be like so many years hence. Once at the St. Louis Fair, 1903, someone gave Mr. Kalman some wine to taste, and he guessed within a mile where the grapes grew, on the Rhine River in Germany.
Baum: Did Mrs. Perry work before you were married? Teach languages?
Perry: Yes, she did some. I started a sort of private school in Berkeley while I was a student and while I was a graduate student. She joined me there and taught languages, mostly Latin. Later she, her mother and stepfather, all went to Europe a lot, and they lived in New York. Then in 1912 we were planning to get married, and I came back to California, and she came a couple of months later, and we were married in April, 1912. She passed away in '35.
Baum: Did you have any children?
Perry: No, no children.
Alumni Association of Self-Supporting Blind
Baum: In our last interview we got as far as your trip to Europe, but we didn't cover the organization of the Alumni Association of Self-Supporting Blind.
Perry: Do you want to hear about that?
Baum: Yes, that is what I'm especially interested in.
Perry: All right. While I was in college, of course I spent a good deal of time thinking about what I was going to do when I got through, and a great many of the boys who had been in the school would come to me to tell their stories and what they'd like to do and how they were unable to do it apparently and so forth.
Baum: Why did they come to you, Dr. Perry? Because you had gotten through college?
Perry: I don't know. They had gotten into the habit, I suppose, at the school. All the children at the school came to me for some reason or another. And the other people in the school, the people in authority, took it for granted. Some boy would come and want to know if he couldn't go downtown this afternoon, and I would hear them tell him, "Well, if you get Perry to go down with you, it's all right."
Baum: Was this when you were still a student at the school?
Perry: Yes, this was when I was a child myself, like they were.
Baum: People just naturally looked to you for advice?
Perry: Well, of course I had remarkable ability in getting about. I developed that ability to get about shortly after I went blind, on the old ranch. I was running around, and I usually went on a run instead of a walk. The people got used to it. At any rate, if they had a row, the children, if one bunch was bothering another, they would come to me in their complaints. They wanted me to stop those. They always had an idea...they assumed somehow that I had authority. I didn't.
Baum: So, when you were in college, boys came to you for advice?
Perry: Yes, those who had graduated and left school would come about and see me, really for advice. I don't know as I had very much to give them, but I got the idea from it that it was quite a problem, not only to myself, but evidently to all of them. That convinced me that it was very essential for blind people to get all the education they can get. I noticed those people who had left school and had no advanced education, and that was practically all of them, were at a loss. They would go home and sit around and hope something would happen, but it never does.
In most homes the blind person is discouraged from doing things. Well, my dad always wanted me to be careful. I mustn't go here or there. I must stay away from the well and all that sort of stuff. Of course, that stimulated me to go all the more. I think my chief merit was that I never felt bound to do what he told me. In a little while they gave it up; they quit telling me I shouldn't do this and the other because they saw me do it. After a while it got so they would tell me there were some horses out there in the barn [that] hadn't been curried this morning, and would I go out and curry them? At first they wouldn't have dared let me go to the barn alone around the horses.
So I always advise blind children not to obey their parents because they never get anywhere if they do. The only ones that acquire the ability to get about are those who simply go and do it, which is always against the advice and instructions of their superiors.
Baum: These people you got together in the Alumni Association must have been the group who had more confidence.
Perry: They were out of school; they were graduated. I got what I could. Yes, they were mature people, and they didn't even take the thing seriously. In the first place they were afraid that, if they had an alumni association, the school authorities would object, which was true. School authorities were in those days afraid of the organized blind.
Baum: Oh, they were?
Perry: Well they were afraid they would spread criticism and would be a source of trouble, which wasn't altogether groundless. They probably would have, because the children, after they got out of school, began to wonder why they didn't do this or that and why someone didn't help them. There was no one to help them. The school wasn't equipped to help them as alumni. They probably should have been, but they weren't.
Baum: You called your association one of self-supporting blind. Were all the members earning their own livings?
Perry: They were all people who were trying to do something, that is, the principal ones. There was a man, Mr. Hull, a totally blind man who ran an express company. He had started it himself down here in Oakland. There was one boy who was quite a musician, in fact, quite a wonderful musician as a child. He taught the violin and piano and different things and also played at concerts. His name was Henry Foster.
There was a man, Daniel Weider, who was really employed at this home down in Oakland that had started, and he not only made brooms and all that, but he also kept the machinery in order. He was quite a mechanic, an ambitious fellow. He had wanted to go to college--that was before my time--but no one would help him. He was always bitter about that.
There was another fellow who had left school. He had some sight. He had ability as a dramatist, acting. He liked to do it, and he was a source of a great deal of pleasure to everybody. His name was George Calvert. He finally went ahead and joined theatrical groups and traveled around the country with the rest of them. He was very much liked, a very popular fellow.
But, when I came along and told them that I wanted them to form an organization, they at once had this fear that the school would object. I said, "Well, what could they do in their objection? How can they bother you? They don't know where you are or how you're living. They don't know anything about you."
Oh, they were afraid of that. They said, "Yes, the school, if they objected to it, they could hurt us." It's a strange idea, but they had that fear in their minds. And in fact the schools usually advised the children in those days, when they left school, not to see much of other blind people in any kind of club or organization. Keep away from them. So I had that to contend with. The general expression about my idea was, with perfect good nature but with considerable frankness, "That's one of Newel Perry's crazy ideas."
Of course, I contended that, if the blind were ever going to get anywhere, they'd have to do it themselves, and this sitting around waiting for Santa Claus to come doesn't work. But the idea was new to them, and they were very timid. However, they would come and we'd have a party and coffee and cake and argue about this, that, and the other thing, and they rather enjoyed it. So we started planning then.
In the first place we wanted higher education, which we didn't have anywhere. Next, we wanted opportunities for remunerative employment, which of course meant that it would require a great deal of state legislation. That meant we must think up what we wanted, put it in the form of a resolution or something, take it to a member of the legislature, and work for it.
Baum: Was there any state legislation at that time for the blind?
Perry: Well, none such as it is now. Of course, the State School was a state institution that was created way back in the [18]60's. But there was nothing done beyond the elementary education. The problem of a child's future when he left the school was a blank. Nobody had any idea or took any particular interest in it, largely because they simply didn't think it was practical or possible. That is still quite prevalent. This problem was before us, so we called a meeting in Oakland at one of their homes, and we had quite a crowd. Some came just out of curiosity, a few got interested in it, and the others came for a little social amusement. Then others began to talk about wanting to go to college, the younger people. I remember we got a good deal of advertising in the papers. A lady reporter, I think her name was Darling...she was a graduate of the university with very high honors, came and called on me and gave us a write-up in the Bulletin, I think a Saturday Bulletin, a few days after we had that meeting in Oakland. I imagine it was in 1898. Well, the thing grew quite a bit. I had quite a crowd.
Baum: Were you president of this association?
Perry: I guess so. I've kind of forgotten. At any rate, if I wasn't president nominally, I was anyhow because they'd all leave it to me. I was the only one who had such crazy ideas, and they weren't as crazy as I was.
Baum: About how many members were there then?
Perry: I think we had about 25 to 30.
Baum: And they were all self-supporting?
Perry: I wouldn't say they were all exactly self-supporting. They were all earning something, and some were quite successful, and others were not so much so.
Baum: That was a pretty good number, don't you think, for that day?
Perry: Well it was. Of course, others were people who had come along and were not particularly promising, and we didn't expect much of anything from them.
Europe and a PhD
Perry: In 1900 I left and went to Europe to get my PhD. I went to Göttingen and decided that wasn't what [I] wanted and went down to Zurich, Switzerland, and stayed there for one semester. Then I left and went to Munich and took one semester, and then I got my degree, my PhD in mathematics. I liked Munich very much.
Baum: Did you come into contact with any blind groups in Europe?
Perry: Yes, the only thing I could see that the [blind] were doing, some of them had studied music and could play, and some of them had positions playing the organ for churches. I saw quite a number of those in Switzerland and everywhere. The blind seemed to be able to fill those positions, and the people would accept it, but outside of that I didn't see them doing much of anything. Some of them had institutions where the adult blind could go, run perhaps by the government, sometimes by charity, but largely by the government. They would teach them how to make brooms and brushes and things of that kind, which is what they do down here in Oakland at this adult institution.
(Brings over a clothes brush to show.)
Perry: When I was in Munich, a blind man in an institution made this for me.
Baum: You mean this brush is over fifty years old?
Perry: He made that in 1901.
Baum: That's a good brush.
Perry: Yes, he gave it to me as a present, sort of. I had no idea it would last as long as it has.
Baum: Were there any organized blind groups in Europe? Had the blind people thought of getting together for their own benefit?
Perry: No. Once in awhile the government would hold a sort of convention, an international one sometimes. While I was in Zurich they had a convention in Paris. The blind went to it. Of course they didn't get it up; the teachers in institutions and so forth got it up. The blind people could come.
Baum: Was it mainly just social?
Perry: Well, largely. The different superintendents of the different institutions would tell what they were doing and so forth. There was nothing very constructive coming out of it, due to the fact that the blind people didn't have much to do with it. They weren't encouraged to have much to do with it. Timidity holds blind people back. It did more then than now. They've rather outgrown that timidity, many of them at least, so we now have blind people who can do their own talking.
Baum: Did you think at that time that Europe was ahead or behind the United States in opportunities for the blind?
Perry: Well, really, neither of them had any opportunities for the blind. There had been a history of the development of the blind which had been developed in Europe, but I think we had passed them by my time.
When I was in Germany, I had a friend who had a chemist shop. He asked me about myself and my life, and I told him how I had been brought up in California, how my family lost their money and was broken up, how I went to the blind school, how I got to go to Germany to study. He was very quiet when I finished; then he said, "It couldn't happen in Germany." He didn't quite dare say he didn't believe me, or maybe he was too polite. After that he quit meeting me for dinner. I began to wonder what was wrong. Then it dawned on me that he was insulted; I had insulted his intelligence by telling him seriously an unbelievable yarn that you might tell as a bedtime story to children. I don't blame him; any other German would have felt the same way. Even without the blindness element, it was quite a story because of the special American conditions. A boy born in poverty in Germany has no way of getting out of it. Well, they're improving now, but they didn't have. I should have stopped to think.
Baum: You just told him the truth without thinking.
Perry: What a fool I was! I don't blame him at all for not believing me.
Tutoring in New York
Perry: When I came back from Europe, I was very much impressed with New York. It's such a wonderful city, and, financially speaking, it was the center of the country; now it's the financial center of the world. They can do so many things so easily. They could go out and collect $100,000 where we would collect $100 in those days. So I decided that, instead of coming back here, I would stop and try my luck in New York. I tutored people for entrance to the universities, boys who had not been good students when they were in the high schools, and they found, when they got to be seniors, they weren't equipped to go to college, and they wanted to go to college. They'd want a private tutor. I also tutored the students at Columbia, the engineering students who had not been properly trained before entering college.
Baum: Was that mainly in mathematics?
Perry: Mathematics, yes.
Baum: I heard you also tried the insurance business.
Perry: I sold insurance, personal insurance, and then I tried insuring livestock.
Baum: Insuring livestock!
Perry: Started a little company on it, in fact. And sold it out. I didn't do very much on either of them; I was principally interested in tutoring.
Baum: So the insurance business wasn't very much?
Perry: No. I made some money at it, but I was not primarily interested in it. It tended to take my time away from tutoring.
Baum: Also I heard you had a mail-order fortune-telling business, where you could tell if an unborn child was going to be a boy or a girl.
Perry: Oh no! That was sprung on me as a joke by somebody. We talked a lot about it and Columbia law students used to argue about it.
Baum: Argue about whether it could be done?
Perry: About whether it was legal. Everyone I've spoken to thinks it would be. I've told about it as a joke very often.
We thought of advertising, sending letters to people, enclosing a questionnaire, and charging a dollar for a prediction. If we were wrong, we would refund the dollar. The questionnaire was to make it more mysterious. One would be bound to be right some of the time, and that would be a dollar earned.
Baum: Did you think it was legal?
Perry: No, but the law students thought it would be. I think the Postmaster General has the authority to stop undesirable mail. It was just a lot of fun to discuss it.
Baum: Did you ever take any courses at Columbia?
Perry: No.
American Association of Workers for the Blind
Baum: I was told that you had taken part in the organization of the American Association of Workers for the Blind back in 1905. Could you tell me about that?
Perry: Yes. I'm a life member of that organization now.
Baum: That split off from the American Association of Instructors for the Blind, didn't it?
Perry: No, I don't think it had much to do with the Instructors, or at least, it never did in my mind. I never took much interest in the Instructors. The Instructors were chiefly state officials of the schools, and they really had very little, as far as I could see, to contribute. My impression has always been that the teachers in the schools know very little about the real problems of the blind and take little interest.
Baum: What was the purpose of this Association of Workers for the Blind?
Perry: It was intended to be an organization largely of the blind, a realization that they should solve their own problems and not wait for state agencies. All our progress has been in spite of the opposition of the state agencies.
Baum: Was this association made up mainly of blind persons?
Perry: Yes, largely.
Baum: It's not any more, is it?
Perry: It has a great many sighted in it; it includes anyone who works for the blind. The elected officers are blind. The A.A.W.B. was a good effort and has accomplished a great deal. They are very active now, and they rather resent the efforts of the National Federation of the Blind. I think they are a little jealous; all the agencies are. The governmental agencies, either federal or state, like to advertise themselves as doing so much for the blind, but they really do very little progressive. The fact that they are government officials intimidates them, and they hesitate to go to the legislatures and Congress harping on new legislation.
No one in the California Council or in the National Federation gets any remuneration, so the only people we get are those who are genuinely interested and who are willing to go out and campaign and propagandize. I think the A.A.W.B. has improved because of our National Federation and our state councils, and they have gotten over some of their initial opposition to us. In many ways they are doing the same things the state councils are doing, except they don't like to encourage the blind to express themselves. The agencies like to take all the credit, but they can't do that so much anymore because there's propaganda being published by the blind that calls their bluff, so they are now taking an interest in legislation.
Baum: Are most of the A.A.W.B. members sighted?
Perry: Oh, about half, but the leaders are blind.
Baum: You'd think they'd go right along with the Federation then and be members of it.
Perry: No. They are largely employees of the agencies or hope they will be, and the state agencies discourage progressive things. So they were utterly amazed that any blind people had the courage to get up and say what they wanted. Of course, it is our assumption that the only people who really understand blindness are blind people.
Winifred Holt and the Lighthouse
Perry: During the time I was in New York, I became associated with the Lighthouse. There was a movement started in New York to help the blind get employment. The idea was to build a shop and have the blind people work in the shop, same as we have in California. Here we have these shops run by the state. New York, for some reason or another, is very backward about those things, though she thinks she's way up. You've read the name of the publisher of many books, Henry Holt and Company?
Baum: Oh yes.
Perry: Well his daughter Winifred was a very prominent social figure in New York City, and she became very enthusiastic about helping the blind adults. She heard of me in some way, and she'd have me go down there, and I'd sit and talk by the hour with her. The next day she'd ring again. It kept me away from my tutoring.
Baum: Did she want you to advise her?
Perry: Yes, she wanted me to talk about it. She wanted it, I think, for propaganda purposes also. I think she wanted to write up a lot of stuff, and she thought she could make a story out of it. I don't know. They started a broom shop for the blind and so forth. So I at once said, "We ought to have an organization of these blind." That frightened her a little.
Baum: It did?
Perry: Finally she said all right. So I wrote up a constitution for them. We called a meeting and had a club formed. They called it...
Baum: Was that the New York Association for the Blind?
Perry: No, that was Miss Holt's organization. You mean the Lighthouse on 59th Street?
Baum: Yes.
Perry: Well, she was the founder of that, and she was doing it then. They didn't have that building on 59th Street then. Of course, my association would be in connection with that. I think we called it the Blindmen's Self-Improvement Club. I had the "self" in it because I wanted the blind to do something themselves.
Baum: This was similar to the club you started here?
Perry: Yes. The word "self" made trouble. You see, Miss Holt wanted to talk about what they were doing for the blind and not what the blind were doing for themselves. Socially Miss Holt was high in society, and she had the ear of endless wealthy people, so she could do a lot, and I was glad to encourage her. But of course she couldn't see that "self" business at all. At any rate we formed the organization, and she used to come to it. Eventually I told her I couldn't give the time any more. We had a big booming society of about 100 people. I've formed, I guess, dozens of organizations for the blind around in different places, but, as soon as I left, they usually died out. That society is still running now. They call themselves the Blindmen's Improvement Club. They took the "self" out after I left New York.
Baum: Did they accomplish much?
Perry: Well not very much because they don't run it. You see, they are workers in that shop, and the attitude of the agencies for the blind, not of the blind--they intimidate the blind. The blind all have the feeling, and I guess there must be some foundation for it, that, if they express ideas that don't happen to agree with the people in charge of the agency, it will be to their great disadvantage. And it works that way. Of course in New York generally the agencies for helping the poor and so forth are very strongly entrenched, and any poor fellow who has indulged in criticism will very soon wish he hadn't said anything. That is still true.
And Miss Holt took that same attitude, and she wanted it to be a part of the association. She wanted to sort of dictate what they should do and what they shouldn't do, and all the little programs were to be her programs, not theirs.
Baum: Do you think Winifred Holt really understood the problems of the blind?
Perry: Well, she thought she did. No, she knew that the blind were in great need, and she wanted to help them. Of course, like a great many people, she wanted to get a little glory. She would get the papers to write up things she had done. Expressions antagonistic to what she had said also got into the papers.
Baum: Made by blind people?
Perry: By blind people and friends of blind people who expressed the ideas of blind people. The editor of the Matilda Ziegler magazine wrote a long article criticizing Miss Holt, and it made quite a stir.
Baum: My goodness. Well, there wasn't any profit made on this shop, was there?
Perry: You mean for her?
Baum: Yes, or for anybody?
Perry: Well they employed people. They had a manager, and he was paid a salary. Of course it was the beginning of an organization, and naturally they didn't have a lot of money yet. These blind people were not making a living at all, but on the other hand, if they didn't do that, they'd sit home, so some of them would go down and work, but they weren't real employees. They mixed up a good deal of chatter with their work.
Oh, I never questioned her motives myself. She would have liked to have done something for the blind, and she had an idea she knew how to do it, which wasn't any too well founded, I guess. My own idea was that advanced education was the thing to help the blind. That's why I thought so much of a reader bill. The blind had schools to go to, and, when they got through with the school, they couldn't go to college, and then they were lost. However, the point was that she got me mingling in, helping her there, and of course the blind people got to coming to me. I wanted to get rid of that because I had to make a living myself. There was nothing in it except taking my time, and, when I spent my time on them, I wasn't making anything. So I tried to get out of it. But that's one thing about working for the blind--you start working for the blind and you can't get out of it. It keeps growing.
Baum: Do you mean you don't want to get out of it, really, after you've started?
Perry: Well you don't want to, but, if you did want to, you'd find it almost impossible. They keep coming, and, if you're really genuinely interested in helping them, and I guess we generally are, you spend your time on it when you should be thinking of yourself. Of course, if I'd been a millionaire or something of that kind, it wouldn't have mattered, but I had to jump around pretty lively to keep myself alive.
Baum: I understand Carl Schurz was an advisor of Winifred Holt.
Perry: I don't know. He might have been. I didn't come in contact with him, or I've forgotten it. That was a long time ago, you know.
Baum: Mark Twain was in this New York Association for the Blind too.
Perry: Well, yes. When they would try to have a meeting preparatory to collecting a lot of money, and in New York wealth is unlimited apparently, Miss Holt got up a meeting, spent several months advertising it. Of course, she was very, very prominent in society. They jumped at the opportunity of getting Mark Twain to come down and be one of the principal speakers at this big affair. I don't know that he ever took any great, particular interest in the blind. He made a delightful talk.
Baum: They got a lot of money at that meeting, didn't they?
Perry: Yes, they got a lot of money.
Baum: He didn't really work in the Association? He was just a big name.
Perry: Oh no, he was a big man brought in for his big name.
New York Reader Bill for Blind College Students
Perry: Well, I kept thinking about a reader bill for the blind, so one day I said to myself, "I'm just going to write a bill, and see if I can get somebody to introduce it in the legislature in Albany and see what happens." It's funny, because I wrote the bill, and then I didn't know where to find an assemblyman. It occurred to me then that the only place I could think of where they would probably know would be to go down to the saloon, so I went down and asked the saloonkeeper, "Who's your assemblyman around here?" He said, oh yes, he knew all about it and told me. If I had gone up to the University and asked any professor who the assemblyman was, he wouldn't have known.
I went and rang up the assemblyman. I told him my name and where I was and that I had a bill I wanted to have introduced and would he have time for me to see him. He said, "Why yes, yes. I can come anytime. Do you want me to come up now?" I said, "No, I think I'll put it off. How about Sunday?" He said, "Yes."
So Sunday he walked in, and I showed him the bill and explained what it was. He said, "Why, it's fine. I think we can get that through." He introduced my bill in the Assembly.
Baum: Had you talked to any other blind people about this?
Perry: There, you mean?
Baum: Yes, in New York.
Perry: Not many. I had thought of it, and I had plenty of opportunity to, but I knew that, if I had advanced it, there would have been opposition, and I thought I could get along better without saying anything about it at all. After all, the question was to get it through the legislature.
Baum: So you started this all alone.
Perry: Oh yes, entirely alone. I did make one move, and I think I made a mistake; I went to the head of the …, an organization of lawyers who give legal advice to the poor.
Baum: The Legal Aid Society?
Perry: Yes. I went to the head of the Legal Aid Society, after I got the bill introduced, and wanted him to write to the legislature or the governor. I gave him the number of the bill and so forth. He said, oh yes, he'd do it, and I guess he did. He said he did.
Later on I spoke to this same attorney that I'd asked to write to the governor, and he said, "Well I think, Dr. Perry, that I've done all that I think [I] should...I think what you should do now is to see if you can't get an association interested in it."
Well, without his knowing what he was doing, he was telling me that Miss Holt had gotten in touch with him. That was after I had quit going down to her place. I knew right away that she would have opposed my idea of higher education. She would think that was a fancy because there'd be only one blind man in several thousand who could go to college. So I didn't say anything. I just acted dumb and went out. I don't think he could have done anything for me anyhow.
Everybody whom I spoke to about the bill said, "Why, it's unconstitutional. It's class legislation. Appropriating money for blind college students; why should they give it to blind people and not to other people?" Well, I was pretty sure that wasn't the case, and I knew lots of lawyers. In fact, a lawyer and I sat together every day at dinner, and he said, "Oh, it's class legislation." Then the members of the legislature would write me that they thought it was unconstitutional, or they'd been told it was unconstitutional. It was very evident that I'd have to do something.
I had written to the governor (Charles Evans Hughes) and asked if I could see him. That was before it had been introduced. So he very kindly told me that he'd be at a certain office at a certain date and would be glad to see me at a certain time. I went down that day and told him what I wanted. He was a very remarkable man. His mind went so fast that you couldn't keep up with it. He came back at me immediately, "Well, that sounds fine. Now, can you show me how in doing that, which would be a good thing for the blind, you're not opening up an opportunity for its wide extension over other classes. Here's a poor widow down the street here and she has to make a living for her children. She's got a boy, and, if he could go to college, he'd be a better man and have greater opportunities. Why not give him some money? When they come forward with that plan, how can the legislature defend itself?"
Of course that was the very thing I had been worrying about, but I didn't know the answer. But I saw that he practically gave me to understand that he'd be very glad to help me and thought it was a fine thing if I could get around that obstacle. So I thanked him and said, "Well, you'll have to give me a little time, but I think I can do it."
I went down and bought a constitution of New York State and looked through it. Now, you know most all constitutions have, after they've put down what you can and cannot do, a section of exceptions and they say that notwithstanding anything stated elsewhere in this constitution, nothing in this constitution shall be interpreted to prevent this, that and the other thing. In all constitutions it is unlawful for the legislature to give money to any individual. They can pay you a salary for working for the state, but they can't present you with some money out of the state treasury.
I thought to myself, "I'll bet, if I can find that section with the exceptions in it, we'll see if I won't find something." Well I finally found the section, and I think there were twenty-some-odd exceptions and way down, I remember it was number eighteen, it said, "Nothing elsewhere stated in this constitution shall prevent the appropriation of state money for the education of the blind."
Well I couldn't have asked for anything any better. Of course the men who put that in there were undoubtedly thinking about the state school for the blind. They didn't say anything about adults or children, but I don't suppose the question of helping adult blind had ever been thought about. But that didn't make any difference. It did say for the education of the blind, and my bill was for nothing else but the education of the blind. I quickly wrote to the Governor and told him just where to find it and quoted it and also to these legislators who had expressed their doubts as to its constitutionality.
Well the assembly passed the bill in no time and got it into the senate. Finally the head of the committee on appropriations, the financial committee, wrote me a letter and said they'd probably take up this bill on a certain day, and he thought it might be a very good thing if I were present. So I had to leave and go up to Albany.
I was short of change. It was quite a joke how I got there. I'd have to run up to Albany and be there all day and maybe stay overnight. So I went down to the saloon on the corner again. There was a nice bunch of fellows who came there. Many of them were faculty members at Columbia, almost like a club.
I sprang it on them. I told them what my situation was and that I wanted to go up there tomorrow morning, and I wanted to know if they wanted to pass the hat around and see that I could get up there and get back. Well there was silence all over. That kind of surprised me because I thought they'd be tickled to death. And then they came up with the question, "Well I'd do it, sure, if it were going to help you. Will it be of any assistance to you in any way?" Well I couldn't say "Yes." I didn't want to go to college. So I said, "No, it won't, not that I know of." They said, "Well, if you don't get anything out of it, what's the good of bothering about it?"
I gave them a talk about what it would accomplish, so they did pass the hat. I think they gave me twelve or fifteen dollars.
Next morning I went down and got an early train and got to Albany. I went over to see my representative, who had introduced my bill. He said he'd go up with me to the meeting of the committee that afternoon.
Baum: Do you remember what the name of this assemblyman was?
Perry: I think it was Brough. I remember asking him...he called himself "Bruff" and I said, "Where do you get your 'gh' in there?" He said, "Well, how do you spell 'rough'?" I walked in to see the chairman of the senate committee and he said, "You go right up to our room. We're just adjourning our session, and our committee will all be there in a few minutes." So I went in there and took a seat, and they came in and held their meeting, one bill after another, one bill after another, didn't say a word about my bill. They kept on; the time got later, four o'clock, after four, after five. I thought, "Well, my heavens, they'll adjourn in a minute. I wonder if he's forgotten me." Then it occurred to me that he was doing that deliberately. He was waiting until they all wanted to adjourn and were all in a hurry and he would say something about the bill, and bingo, it would pass. I was taking a chance, but I bet that was what he was doing.
Sure enough, at the very end he said, "Well now we've got a little matter here." It was only for a small amount of money. Three thousand dollars I was asking for. "I think we're all interested in it and Dr. Perry is here. I'll ask him to speak on it. We want to get it out today if we can." He showed his hand right away to all of them that he wanted the bill out.
So I got up and told them what the plan was. There was only one man who I had thought would not fall for it. The chairman said, "Well, what's your decision, gentlemen? We'll have to adjourn." And they all voted, and the thing went out unanimously.
Then, I was so tickled I went home and wrote a long letter to the governor. The governor in New York had thirty days to sign the bill, and, if he didn't sign it, it was vetoed.
Baum: You said that you thought Winifred Holt would be against it.
Perry: Well, she was. She opposed it.
Baum: I was wondering if any other agencies opposed it.
Perry: They didn't know about it. I wanted to keep it as quiet as I could, because I'd rather concentrate on the people in the legislature. After the governor had signed it, they could make all the noise about it they wanted to. There was no pronounced opposition. Some people didn't care for it, but they didn't do anything about opposing it because they thought it wouldn't get anywhere anyhow, that it was a crazy idea.
The State of New York had two residential schools for the blind, has still. The superintendent of one of them heard about the bill, and he wrote me a courteous, nice note urging that I withdraw the bill for the present so that they could all consider it and perhaps put it through next year. That simply meant that they didn't want anybody to take too much interest in what they were doing. They had a kind of isolated position in the schools; no one knows anything about them. They're not particularly anxious that people should take any interest in reforms or anything of that kind. I knew enough about blind schools to know that. So I wrote him a polite letter and said that I would consider what he said. I phrased it in such a way that he would conclude that I wasn't going to go ahead with it. So he didn't bother me anymore.
Time passed, and I began to get worried. Two days before the expiration of the time for the governor to sign, I rang Miss Holt up. I said, "My bill is in the governor's hands; has been for some time; passed both houses unanimously; I want to have him sign it at least by tomorrow; if you wish to have your organization write to the governor advocating it, that would be fine." She said, "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" I wasn't looking for an argument, so I let that go by. But, when she realized that the thing was going to be a law, of course she wanted to be in on it. She said she would hold a committee meeting that night and endorse it and write a letter to the governor. Apparently they did. Finally, the last day came. If he didn't sign it that day, it was gone. I said, "Well, I've done my best. I'll just sit down and take my medicine if I have to. I'll have to try next year again."
Around five o' clock the kids came out with their newspapers, yelling and shouting, and they were making an awful noise. "Governor signs reader bill for blind college students." I rushed out and got a newspaper. He had signed it the last day. That was in, I guess, August. The university started up shortly and eleven blind people entered college in New York.
I thought all the other states would just copy that. I was disappointed. They are doing so, but very slowly. Some did it after a year or so, and some haven't done it yet. Then I came out to California in 1912, so I introduced it here right away. In fact I introduced two forms of it, and the governor signed both of them. Now it's prevalent in pretty much all the states.
Of course we've increased the amount from year to year. The last session the California legislature raised the amount. Graduate students can spend $1,200 reader money per year and undergraduates $1,000. The New York bill, when it started, was $300 a year. It's been a wonderful thing. Now, there is nothing to prevent a blind person, no matter what his situation is; if he's an orphan and lives in an almshouse, there is nothing to prevent his going to college and getting his PhD degree now in California, except his lack of brains and lack of ambition. We now have in California in our different colleges over seventy blind people. The other states have some, but not so many.
Baum: It sounds as if the New York bill was a singlehanded accomplishment by you. You did it all alone.
Perry: Well, I was afraid. If you started an argument about it with the public, you would find some opposition, and I didn't see that you needed it. You had to present your case to the legislature; they're the ones who do the voting. You've got to get their consent. It looked very simple because the amount that I asked for was very small. My experience with legislatures--and I've been working with them all my life--is that that doesn't count as much as I thought it did. It's just as hard to get a bill appropriating $3,000 through the legislature as it is for $300,000. You have to do the same things, and there's apt to be not very much enthusiasm because it looks like a trifling bill.
Baum: When you and Miss Holt disagreed on the reader's bill, did that damage your friendship?
Perry: Oh, it didn't do it much good. No...she was very, very friendly with me, but she was a woman who always wanted her way, very intolerantly, and I never had any discussion with her. But she did say, and talked around a good deal, about how unfair it was to have a reader bill, money for the few who were getting educated. She was going to put in a shop that was going to make a living for, I guess, all the blind in New York, she thought. Of course it never does.
No, the people who know nothing about it at once think of a shop. Get the blind together, put them in, teach them to do one thing, and they'll all make a good living and be happy the rest of their lives. But in the first place the blind people wouldn't want to do it. They vary in their tastes like anybody else. They would dislike the job.
Of course what you can't get people to understand is why to educate the blind is so expensive. You spend so much money on one person instead of taking the same money and helping a whole lot of people. That's their argument. The fact is that, if you'll educate a few blind people, it brings about a great change. The great interest in the blind now is due to the fact that a few blind people have had an education.
I helped a boy, Ernest Crowley, get into the legislature in Sacramento, and he became possibly the most popular man in the legislature. He was a lawyer. Everybody in the state knew him or knew of him, practically, and knew that he was totally blind. It stopped all the talk about how helpless the blind were, that there was nothing they could do. He could get bills through the legislature when no one else could...He died a few years ago, and it seemed as if the whole county was at his funeral. It has done away with most of that talk about how you can pity the blind but you mustn't expect anything of them.
Baum: Apparently Governor Hughes was able to see your point of view rather than Miss Holt's view.
Perry: Well, fundamentally my point was very simple. If you educate a man, you increase his opportunities of doing things. I think Hughes saw at once that it was a more serious problem for the blind than for the others and that an education would reduce his difficulties. He saw that in the time you could snap your finger.
Baum: It sounds as if you thought he was a very bright man.
Perry: Hughes? Oh he was, a very brilliant man.
Baum: Did you vote for him for governor?
Perry: Yes, I did.
Baum: You thought he was a good governor?
Perry: He was a remarkably good governor. Of course he was a very, very upright man, very brilliant. [To be continued.]

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