PERMISSIBLE AND DISQUALIFYING DISABILITIES FOR AGRICULTURAL OCCUPATIONS
If you determine that it shall be so, your disability, whatever it is, will become a serious handicap in farming, as well as in any other employment. But you do not need to make up your mind that way. If you determine that it shall not be a handicap, you can find employment in agriculture, in which you can become 100 per cent efficient.
Your disability is only one condition, and it is probably not the most important condition to be taken into account in making up your mind what branch of farming you can best take up. But considering the disability alone, without taking account of other things, such as, for example, past experience in farming or in other work, certain agricultural employments may be designated as difficult for men with certain disabilities.
Few, if any, disabilities are absolutely disqualifying for any given employment in all cases. Men with all sorts of disabilities have in fact undertaken successfully all sorts of work. It may nevertheless be helpful to designate for each of the principal agricultural employments those disabilities which seem generally to constitute serious handicaps.
With exception of a few disabilities, such as total blindness, loss of both arms at the shoulder, and serious paralysis, it will be found that disabilities do not generally disqualify men for any considerable number of agricultural occupations, and that without exception even of these serious disabilities there is suitable employment in agriculture for every disabled man.
To save space in making up the following table of disabilities, the so-called “disqualifying” rather than the “permissible” disabilities have been designated for each employment. It should be borne in mind that where one or two or a dozen disabilities are designated as “disqualifying” this designation by implication indicates all other disabilities as permissible, and that a list of permissible disabilities would in fact be interminable.
For convenience in making up the table of disqualifying disabilities, a “Key to Disabilities” has been prepared, in which the principal typical disabilities are classified as injuries to the head, body, arms and hands, legs and feet, and miscellaneous disabilities. By reference to the Key each disability is identified by a letter and a number. “A” disabilities, for example, are injuries to the head, and “B” disabilities injuries to the body; “A1” is blindness in one eye, “A2” blindness in both eyes, “B1” abdominal wound, “C1” amputation of one or more fingers, and other symbols are to be interpreted accordingly.
In the chart showing disqualifying disabilities agricultural employments in different branches of farming are listed, and for each employment certain disabilities are designated as disqualifying. In the case of the “general farmer,” for example, the disqualifying disabilities designated are “A2, 5, C9, D9, E12” which by reference to the Key are to be read “blindness in both eyes, deafness in both ears, amputation of both arms at shoulder, amputation of both legs at the hip, and serious paralysis.” As regards other occupations, a similar interpretation is to be given to the chart.
Neither the list of disabilities in the Key nor the list of occupations in the chart is exhaustive, but the lists are perhaps sufficiently detailed to serve as a general guide for the disabled man in choosing one or another branch of farming as most suitable for him.