Illusions of Equality: Deaf Americans in School and Factory, 1850-1950

4. ‘‘For the Deaf by the Deaf ’’: Advocating Labor Bureaus

4 ‘‘For the Deaf by the Deaf’’ Advocating Labor Bureaus The pivotal conflicts in education and the workplace of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not merely contests of ideas but clashes over power and influence. In the varied struggles chronicled in chapters 1 through 3—struggles over vocational instruction, sign language, oralism, and workplace discrimination—deaf activists advanced substantive, even persuasive arguments. Few in number and dispersed across the country, they typically lacked the power to implement their ideas. No one understood this systemic shortcoming better than Minnesota’s Anson Rudolph Spear, a visionary and versatile lobbyist , school superintendent, and former civil servant. These ongoing conflicts erupted in Minnesota shortly after the turn of the century, as Spear and other deaf leaders charged that the apparent abandonment of sign language for speech and lipreading at the state residential school threatened deaf students and workers alike. Spear sought to establish an independent source of power to resist these changes, to provide students and workers greater control over their education and employment, and to elevate the standing of deaf adults in Minnesota. Spurred by him and national deaf leaders, the legislature established a labor bureau in 1913 that Spear hoped would establish vigorous new rights and powers for deaf people.1 Although the bureau fell short of Spear’s ambitious vision, it aided deaf workers in the state and also served as a model for activists across the nation, who worked to establish comparable bureaus designed to provide deaf adults greater power over their education and their working lives. F Anson Spear’s efforts grew out of a long-standing consensus among deaf leaders that the hearing world needed to be educated sys52 Advocating Labor Bureaus 53 tematically about deafness and the skills of deaf workers. Antebellumera deaf leaders and hearing teachers had argued without success for school administrators to mediate with employers on behalf of their former students.2 With the energies of most deaf leaders diverted to the ongoing struggle over oral- and manual-based approaches, however , the issue fell from sight until the close of the century, when worrisome reports of urban unemployment sparked new efforts. In the 1890s, at local and national forums, deaf leaders again began to promote initiatives to aid deaf workers. At the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) conventions in 1896 and 1899, Gallaudet ’s Amos Draper and Minnesota’s Olof Hanson urged workers to pool information regarding employers and pressed the NAD to distribute educational materials to managers.3 Outside the NAD conventions, Edward Hodgson used the editorial column of the Deaf Mute’s Journal (DMJ) to remind readers of the ongoing need to educate the public and employers. ‘‘Argument and example alike,’’ he explained, were necessary to impress upon employers and the public that deaf individuals were able laborers and citizens. ‘‘The enlightenment of one generation,’’ he pointed out, Through his advocacy of statesponsored , independent labor bureaus led by deaf officials, Anson Spear sought to educate hearing employers about deaf workers. Spear hoped the bureaus would also oversee hearing school administrators who favored oral communication methods. 54 ‘‘For the Deaf by the Deaf’’ ‘‘does not descend like a legacy, to the generation that comes after it.’’4 Deaf leaders unfortunately had few resources to fund a national campaign to assist workers. The NAD was little more than a skeleton organization led by unpaid officers whose operating budget paled before the ambitious visions of its members. Although members supported entreaties made by Hodgson, Hanson, and others for further action, deaf leaders were forced to ask for assistance from outside their community.5 School administrators continued to thwart renewed efforts to broaden the responsibility of school officials to assist deaf adults in finding work. At the turn of the century, Warren Robinson, chairman of both the Convention of American Instructors of the Deaf (CAID) Industrial Department and the NAD Committee on Industrial Status, called upon his colleagues at the Conference of Executives and Administrators of Schools for the Deaf (CEASD) to establish labor bureaus at their schools.6 The administrators rejected the proposal, however . Francis Clarke, superintendent of the Michigan School for the Deaf and a consistent proponent of advanced industrial training, conceded that deaf workers might not initially be accepted by hearing coworkers, but he also scoffed at the charge that employers habitually excluded deaf candidates. Ironically, drawing upon the arguments of deaf leaders from earlier decades, he...