An almost equally high degree of success attended the efforts of 183 persons engaged in manufacturing and mechanical industries.
Owner aided by Rehabilitation Grant and money privately loaned
Hat maker aided by a Rehabilitation Grant
Business Rehabilitation
These were largely tailors, dressmakers, shoemakers, painters, and metal workers. In the group of 79 in which capital was under $300, the attempts at rehabilitation of 50, or less than two-thirds, were successful. In the group of 104 with more capital, the showing was higher. The 26 who had $1,000 or more were without exception successful.
There were 23 who started business and discontinued, and 14 who did not start. Among these 37 cases, 10 failures appear to be due principally to lack of capital, but the 27 remaining failures are to be attributed largely to other causes, among which unfortunate choice of location and ill health complicated with old age are uppermost. Two examples must suffice:
A shoemaker, aged sixty-six, presented a plan to Committee VI which definitely called for $400 to buy a half interest in a given shop. He was granted $250, but as he could make no satisfactory arrangements with his proposed partner he began working at wages. A younger man with that amount of cash might have started a shop of his own, but this was too much to expect of one of his age. Another, a much younger man, failed to make a success of his bakeshop. He leased a lot on which to build his shop and invested in equipment his capital of $500. When competition sprang up around him, he could neither afford to move nor to remodel his shop in order to rent it to some one else for another purpose.
Perhaps one-half of the foregoing 37 failures could have been averted or mitigated by intelligent oversight. As a rule, however, it is safe to assume that persons with the skill to do mechanical work require less supervision than do those of the groups we are to discuss in the following sections.