Figure 3. Photographed by the U.S. Office of War Information in 1942, Belva Fletcher, on the left, and Henriette Furley painted airplane engine parts at the Maryland League for Crippled Children. The original caption noted Fletcher’s progressive paralysis and Furley’s need to stand at work because of arthritis. Photograph by Ann Rosener. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Farm Security Administration—Office of War Information Photograph Collection.

      Indeed, labor shortages, the increased visibility of disability, pressure from disabled veterans for greater employment opportunities, and the need to provide rehabilitation for injured soldiers from the present conflict had pushed Congress into action. Members of both the House and Senate introduced numerous bills, ranging from initiatives to expand Social Security to increased appropriations for the rehabilitation program in 1941 and 1942.⁷⁷

      In 1941, Representative Graham Barden (D-NC) had introduced rehabilitation legislation promoted by the National Rehabilitation Association. Founded in 1923, the National Rehabilitation Association, a professional society that represented the interests of workers within civilian rehabilitation, had struggled to keep the program on sure financial footing. While the civilian rehabilitation program had remained small, the organization had grown and positioned itself to play an increasingly important role on the federal legislative front in the 1940s. In 1941, the organization hired an executive director and set up a national office, allowing the National Rehabilitation Association to advocate for growth of the rehabilitation program. Barden’s bill would have increased federal funding for rehabilitation, established a federal office for the program in the FSA, provided rehabilitation for disabled soldiers, expanded the range of services the program could provide, and eased the financial burden on states by reducing states’ matching responsibilities to one dollar for every two spent by the federal government and making the federal government responsible for costs incurred in rehabilitating soldiers and federal employees. While nothing came of his first rehabilitation bill, Barden would continue working on the rehabilitation question, and his initial thoughts on rehabilitation had been shaped by professionals in the field.⁷⁸

      Barden’s next rehabilitation bill was the product of the conferences, research, and planning led by the FSA following the president’s request that the agency develop a plan to expand rehabilitation. In August 1942, Barden and Senator Robert La Follette, Jr. (PRG-WI) introduced identical rehabilitation bills in the House and Senate. La Follette, a member of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, had sponsored with Barden legislation to increase rehabilitation appropriations earlier in the year.⁷⁹

      In proposing that the FSA be in charge of veterans and civilians vocational rehabilitation, Barden’s second rehabilitation bill, in line with McNutt’s plans for expanding rehabilitation, ruffled feathers in the VA and did not gain the Bureau of the Budget’s approval. In early October 1942, General Frank T. Hines, head of the VA, weighed in on the Barden and La Follette bills, arguing that the VA handled all services for veterans, ranging from hospital care to pensions and other benefits, except employment placement. He told the Senate subcommittee, chaired by La Follette, that the La Follette bill did not have the official backing of the administration and that veterans’ organizations wanted veterans’ rehabilitation to be handled by the VA. Hines agreed with the veterans’ organizations, noting that the VA already assessed veterans’ disabilities and had the necessary information about disabled veterans to develop a training plan. He concluded, “We also know his history pretty well and we should be in a position to at least guide him to the right place for training.” Hines, however, danced a fine line in the hearing, as it was clear that the broader Roosevelt administration favored a plan that would prevent duplication and waste. Despite Hines’s call for VA authority in veterans’ matters, he argued that the federal government “should not, under any circumstances, duplicate training facilities that now exist.” Instead, he maintained that the VA should have the authority to determine whether existing rehabilitation programs were appropriate for individual veterans, “rather than to have some other agency decide that,” the other agency, of course, being the FSA. Essentially, Hines argued that the VA should certify a veteran’s disability and eligibility for services, develop a plan for rehabilitation, but utilize existing rehabilitation and vocational programs to carry out the actual training.⁸⁰

      Disabled veterans were more direct. Millard W. Rice, national service director of the DAV, expressed concerns that having disabled veterans rehabilitated by the FSA would set a dangerous precedent of veterans receiving medical care and vocational assistance outside of the VA, arguing that “it might well be the first step in a gradual and logical absorption of the VA into the Federal Security Agency.” Rice maintained that war-disabled individuals should “be kept in a class separate and apart and that they should be treated separate and apart through the Federal agency, which has been designated by Congress to attend to veterans’ matters.” He referenced “the chaos and confusion that existed following the First World War,” prior to the establishment of the VA when five different federal agencies administered some element of veterans’ benefits. Indeed, he argued that the very conditions that La Follette’s bill would re-create had spurred the founding of the DAV. Rice maintained, “The war-disabled veterans should be required to go to only one Federal agency to find out what they are entitled to, as to all benefits, from the Government, on the basis of their status as war-disabled veterans with serviceconnected disabilities.” Moreover, returning veterans, he pointed out, may not wish to return to their home states, that they would be a more mobile group, moving in search of opportunities. The VA would be better equipped to handle a population no longer rooted in a single place.⁸¹

      On the other side of the coin, McNutt argued for a single rehabilitation program for all disabled citizens. He maintained that one of the central difficulties of expanding rehabilitation to meet wartime needs would be in recruiting trained rehabilitation counselors. “This shortage,” he concluded, “will be particularly serious if two agencies are separately established.” McNutt suggested that no proposal for rehabilitation, whether for civilians and veterans or veterans alone, would establish new training facilities. Instead, rehabilitation programs would use existing training schools and programs. He noted, “It is, of course, a matter of judgment for the Congress as to whether there shall be an integration of training facilities by one Federal agency or by two Federal agencies.” Downplaying the degree to which a universal rehabilitation program would dispense veterans’ benefits, McNutt suggested, such a program would merely be guaranteeing veterans access to a program open to all disabled citizens even if a veteran’s home state had exhausted annual appropriations or lacked appropriate facilities for the individual’s training plan. But he conceded that the VA should determine eligibility for veterans with service-connected disabilities to “do away with any argument that might come afterward” and noted that training allowances legislated for these disabled veterans would be handled by the VA. Finally, McNutt argued that establishing separate programs for veterans and civilians would “unquestionably hamper the rapid and effective development of the general rehabilitation program which is today so vital.”⁸²

      While they were not on the same page about the particulars, McNutt and Hines agreed that the need to expand rehabilitation was a pressing problem. McNutt argued that the need for labor on the home front demanded the “immediate expansion” of the national rehabilitation program, “not as a social gain, but as a wartime necessity.” He referenced the “startling increase in disability”—the threat of civilian casualties in a total war and the reality that the army was discharging thirty-five hundred soldiers a month for disability and that industrial accidents on the home front were mounting in the war economy. Finally, he asserted that rehabilitation, in expanding the nation’s manpower, represented “a direct contribution to wartime activity.”⁸³ Unlike McNutt, Hines’s commitment to rehabilitation focused on the nation’s responsibility to its soldiers and the need to incentivize work over pensions. He maintained that the nation needed a program “to fit [disabled veterans] for gainful employment” and that the lure of a pension should not be greater than the incentive “to complete training and get into employment.”⁸⁴