Manuscript/Mixed Material
Letter from Fred H. Wines to Alexander Graham Bell, November 21, 1899

7—001. TWELFTH CENSUS OF THE United States DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, M CENSUS OFFICE, Washington, D. C., November 21, 1899. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, 1331 Connecticut Avenue, Washington, D. C. Dear Sir:

I am sorry that it will not be possible for me to meet with your Committee at the Gilsey House in New York next Thursday morning, but I really do not regard my presence as of any importance.

With reference to Wm. Wade, of Oakmont, Pa., I received a letter from him dated November 14, in which he says that he is much interested in the deaf-blind as a class, and realizing the lack of special interest in them, and realizing the astonishing ignorance of even professional educators as to the comparative ease with which they may be taught, he, prepared a list of both educated and uneducated, which he says is very incomplete and which, it seems to him, will always remain so. He informs me that the census reports of 1890 are said to gave given over 250 cases, which he regards as excessive. I have thus far been unable to find any reference to the deaf-blind in the census reports of that year. It certainly is not in the tabulation, nor in the index.

Mr. Wade applies the term “deaf-blind” to only those normal in general intelligence who have neither sense sufficiently developed to be of any practical use. It appears to me that