Finger Talkers

Last week at Buffalo 2,000 members of the National Association of the Deaf met to unveil a bronze and marble statue of Charles-Michel, Abbe de 1'Epee (1712-89), the man who codified the existing hand signs of his day, invented new ones and created the first intelligible means of communication for the deaf. He was a Roman Catholic priest, canon of the Cathedral of Troyes, son of Louis XIV's architect.

His church deprived him of his ecclesiastical functions because he was a Pansenist.* The Abbe developed his sign system in order to teach his two deaf sisters to communicate. His finger alphabet is still in use. Eugene E. Hannan, deaf sculptor of the Buffalo statue, reproduced the Epee alphabet on to the statue's base. Modeling the expressive fists was the hardest part of his work, said he last week. The statue itself represents the Abbe studying his clenched right hand for its possibilities in signs.

Many members of the National Association of the Deaf know how to read lips and to voice intelligible sounds. But they find communication by signs is more accurate. They talk with a single hand, as do the deaf of the rest of the Americas, of Ireland and Europe. English and Australian deaf use both hands. When W. W. McDougall of England addressed the Buffalo convention he required John Shilton of Toronto to interpret for him.

Foreign delegates to the convention envied U. S. facilities for teaching the deaf. The U. S. is the only country providing a high grade college for the deaf (Gallaudet College at Washington). Graduates have successfully followed advanced courses at Johns Hopkins, George Washington, McGill, Pennsylvania and California universities, have become teachers, home managers, printers, publishers, farmers, businessmen, chemists, ministers, athletic directors.

It used to be that deaf children, like idiots, were considered useless to the community and allowed to die. For less than 300 years has there been any systematic effort to educate them. In the U. S. every state except Delaware, New Hampshire, Nevada and Wyoming, supports schools for the deaf. Those four states send their deaf children at public expense to schools in other states. Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Vermont have compulsory school attendance laws for deaf children.

Getting jobs for the deaf was, besides the 1'Epee statue dedication, the main preoccupation of the convention. The association wants employers to realize that the deaf can work at every occupation except aviation. Their handicap in flying results, not from their inability to hear, but from deficiency of the organ of balance in the inner ear. President Arthur L. Roberts declared that not one insurance company discriminates against the deaf, that employers have found that accidents are rare among deaf workers because they are exceptionally careful. A recent Pennsylvania check-up of motorists revealed deaf drivers are best. Only Ohio, North Carolina and Minnesota have public employment bureaus for the deaf. Elsewhere the afflicted must depend on their own initiative.

*Cornelius Jansen Bishop of Ypres in his Augustinus suggested five heretical propopositions based on St. Augustine's Doctrine of Grace. One important group of still exists in Holland.

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