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239 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1945)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0239 and id is 1 raw text is: The Task Before the Veteran and Society By WILMA T. DONAHUE and CLARK TIBBITTS PRIOR to the onset of World War II, the United States had 23 mil- lion persons disabled in some degree from disease, accident, or earlier wars. Of these, 6.5 million were males be- tween the ages of 15 and 64 years, nor- mally breadwinners or income-produc- ing units who needed help of one kind or another to be satisfactorily em- ployed.1 Another significant part of the 23 million were disabled women who were in the labor market or who would have been but for the nature of the disability. Present techniques of inquiry prohibit the making of an ade- quate estimate of the number of such women. Each year some 350,000 persons are being disabled, without the increment from military duty. It is estimated that the latter source alone will add 1.5 million persons to the total number, the size of the addition being determined, of course, by unpredictable factors such as the length and the nature of the war. It is safe to assume, however, that the end of the war will find the United States with at least 8 million working- age males and an undetermined number of females who are disabled to the ex- tent of requiring physical or vocational rehabilitation or special placement aids if they are to be adequately employed. Eight million is a significant number. It represents one person in sixteen of the general population and at least one in seven of the working population. On the average, every fifth family will include a disabled worker-more often than not, the one who would normally be the chief breadwinner. Similar ratios calculated on the basis of all dis- 1 See the article by Michael J. Shortley in this volume. 1 abled persons are still more striking. More than half of all families, for ex- ample, would include one or more such persons. Contact with disabled persons will be a common experience to all. American people will have the experi- ence at home, on the street, in school, at work, in short, wherever they may go or be. It becomes necessary, there- fore, for everyone to recognize the need for adapting certain aspects of the en- vironment to the disabled and to de- velop appropriate attitudes toward them. Although the present volume is con- cerned with the disabled veteran, the veteran is no different from any indi- vidual with a similar condition. Once he has shed his uniform, the disabled veteran looks and acts essentially the same as any other handicapped person. Much that is said, therefore, in the following chapters applies with equal force to all the disabled. This is as it should be, for the identification of special population classes on artificial grounds gives rise to inefficiency through group rivalry for benefits, duplication of administrative functions, and mush- rooming of overlapping service agen- cies. It is traditional, of course, to make some special provision for the veteran because of the particular na- ture of his contribution on behalf of the community. There is ample evidence that the people of the United States have con- siderable realization of the importance of providing rehabilitative services for the disabled veterans, and others too. At least two motivating forces are observable. Primarily, there is recog- nition of the objective of social well- being, or the right of every individual to enjoy the fullest measure of health

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