Springfield Weekly Republican

Deaf-Mute Communities.

The probable formation of a deaf variety of the human race, propounded for consideration by Alexander Graham Bell of telephone fame in a paper before the national academy of sciences, is now turned over as a burning question to Congress. Mr. Bell, it may be well to recall, is the son of Alexander Melville Bell, the inventor of "visible speech," who came to this country from London 50 years ago. "Visible speech" is the convenient name for a system of universal alphabets, or more definitely, of a system of symbols which represent in outline the position of the vocal organs in uttering every possible sound, and in which consequently any language could be written phonetically in characters indicating the pronunciation and how to produce it. The system, more or less modified, is in use in many institutions where articulation is taught. A. G. Bell has been a teacher of the deaf and dumb, although electricity has diverted his attention and made him rich, and his opinions command respect.

It is his opinion that the modern practice of educating the deaf and dumb actually tends to the result indicated in his paper. The attainable statistics are few, but they prove the confirmed tendency of deaf-mutes to select their partners in marriage among their kind, and the certainty that the proportion of deaf-mute offspring born to deaf-mute parents is many times greater than the general proportion. Mr. Bell relates past plans for deaf-mute communities, which it seems have been and still are entertained by the deaf-mutes themselves. The idea started with the action of Congress in endowing the American asylum at Hartford with a tract of western land. Laurent Clerc, the beloved teacher under whose care the Hartford asylum began, suggested the notion of keeping part of the land for a separate community of its graduates; but afterward, when the scheme of such a community was broached in a deaf-mute convention, his influence was against it. The notion is still cherished, however, and Mr. Bell states that a European philanthropist has begun to colonize a tract in Manitoba with deaf-mutes, and that 24 persons with their families (from Europe) have already settled there. Mr. Bell thinks this a mischievous business, and argues against "the segregation of deaf-mutes, the use of the sign language and the employment of deaf teachers." In short, he believes in teaching the deaf to speak and to read "visible speech;" in the Northampton rather than the Hartford method.