BIRDS TO SAVE A BILLION

DOLLARS A YEAR

LOPPING a billion dollars a year off the nation's cost of living by the simple expedient of feeding the birds, is the plan of a Chicago man.

Charles E. White, grain broker during his business hours and bird protector during his leisure, is the head, shoulders, and, in many instances, the financial backer of the movement. His plan contemplates the saving of all insect-destroying birds-a move which, according to officials who have made a study of the subject, will result in the saving of one billion dollars' worth of foodstuffs that otherwise is destroyed each year.

Mr. White believes that many of the migratory birds that annually desert the North for sunnier lands, do not travel south solely because of the climate. Lack of food has starved them out. For this reason, he has sought to maintain a safe breeding place for all kinds of birds, and in furtherance of that plan has pro

GIVES THE LITTLE ONES A CHANCE

TO KEEP THE BIRDS AT HOME Many birds would not migrate to the South in the winter, if there were food enough in the North. These boxes are set out to provide food for birds that will remain.

The work of feeding the birds has necessitated the construction of a specially designed food box, that may be seen not only on the grounds of Mr. White's home, but in the city's parks as well. It was discovered that when suet was placed on the ground or the limbs of trees without protection, the bigger birds crowded out the smaller and weaker birds and took possession of the

"THE ANGEL'S FLIGHT"

this realm of plenty This inclined railway serves those who live on top of one

of the hills in Los Angeles. The height and the observation tower make the nickname rather appropriate.

until the return of
spring sends them
back to their old haunts.

This leads to the belief that once this feeding place has become thoroughly established, the feathered rovers will be

medium-sized kegs.

'HE motorcycle

THE

trailer will doubtless be welcomed by the business man who desires quick, cheap delivery, and who cannot afford to maintain an automobile. The new device is now being put to many practical uses, among which is the carrying of ice cream kegs. It consists. of a platform supported by an axle, at either end of which is a regular bicycle wheel with pneumatic tires. It is capable of accommodating one extra large ice cream keg, or four

B

LIND! An appalling affliction for the seeing person to contemplate; an affliction that, in others, arouses pity in the heart of him whose own eyesight is

unimpaired.

But is it proper to pity the blind? Would it not be more fitting to sympathize with the blind, and save pity for him whose affliction is an insurmountable obstacle? The latter is the blind man's view.

"In fitting the blind for the business of life, blindness is not so much the problem as is mentality. The mind is the vital thing. In fact, the mind is every

thing," said Robert Irwin, supervisor of the department for the blind in the Cleveland public schools, in speaking of educating the blind.

Mr. Irwin knows from his own experience what blindness means. Without eyesight he put himself through the University of Washington, at Seattle, where in 1906 he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Then, at Harvard University, he did research work in history and civil government for which he was awarded the degree of Master of Arts. Then he came to Cleveland as supervisor of the department for the blind, in the public schools. It was in this position

that he arrived at the conclusion that the real problem of equipping the blind for a life of usefulness is largely a matter of knowing the mental capability of each pupil.

"Blindness very often. is a manifestation of a serious general physical disorder," says Mr. Irwin. "Parents are likely to attribute backwardness to blindness, when the real difficulty lies much deeper. Mentally defective seeingpupils are readily recognized, and eventually the feeble-minded blind child is recognized as such; but the degree of the weakness is never proved. There are

schools for feebleminded, seeing-children; but these are closed to mentally defective blind children, because the

children are blind. The schools for the blind will not accept them, because they are mentally defective. Consequently, they go to the public schools, where they retard the normal pupils. Thus the public greatly increases the evil effects of blindness."

With the desire to correct this condition, at the close of the school year in June, 1914, Mr. Irwin went to Dr. H. H. Goddard, of the psychological research department of the Training School at Vineland, New Jersey, where exhaustive work in examining the mentality of feebleminded children has been done, to study the methods used there. He learned there were numerous tests for seeingchildren, to which the institution confines itself, but none for the blind; so he set out to adapt the tests to the needs of the educator of the blind.

The tests were those devised, after years of experimenting, by Alfred Binet, a French psychologist. The Binet tests consist of a series of examinations that the child of average normal intelligence should be able to pass. Natural intelligence, as opposed to training, is the basis of these tests, and observation is more frequently depended upon than anything else. It is the latter that makes the Binet tests impossible for use among the

Mr. Irwin spent two months at Vineland studying and applying the Binet tests to seeing-children in the clinical psychological laboratory. Those parts of the Binet method that depend upon memory and reasoning alone, such as repeating sentences or series of numbers, defining words, and the differences between objects that a blind child could feel, he left unchanged in devising his system. The normal child of three should be able, upon request, to point to his nose,