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Book, page 221 / 259 them. He had seen some of them in Canada, and talked with them. What he thought of first for them was brooms, and basket-weaving and chair- caning, same as everybody does. But he found they had a perfect horror of those things. They said nobody bought such things except out of pity--they'd rather have the machine-made kind. And these men didn't want things bought of them out of pity. You see, they were big, well, strong, young fellows, like John McGuire here; and they were groping around, trying to find a way to live all those long years of darkness that they knew were ahead of them. They didn't have any especial talent. But they wanted to work,--do something that was necessary--not be charity folks, as they called it." "I know," responded Susan sympathetically. "Well, this Mr. Wilson is at the head of a big electrical machinery manufacturing company near Chicago, like Mr. Sanborn's here, you know. And suddenly one day it came to him that he had the very thing right in his own shop--a necessary kind of work that the blind could be taught to do." "My lan', what was it? Think of blind folks goin' to work in a big shop like Tom Sanborn's!" "I know it. But there was something. It was wrapping the coils of wire with tape. Mr. Wilson said they used hundreds of thousands of these coils all the time, and they had to be wrapped to insulate them. It was this work that he believed the blind could learn to do. Anyhow, he determined to try it. And try it he did. He sent for those soldiers he had talked with in Canada, and he took two or three of father's patients, and opened a little winding-room with a good electrical engineer in charge. And, do you know? it was wonderful, the way those poor fellows took hold of that work! Why, they got really skillful in no time, and they learned to do it swiftly, too." "My lan'!" breathed Susan again. "They did. He took me in to see them one day. It was just a big room on the ground floor of an office building. He didn't put them in his shop. He said he wanted to keep them separate, for the present, anyway. It had two or three long tables, and the superintendent moved
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