The growth of our railway system is constantly increasing.  We have to-day probably 150,000 men employed in this service.  The boys attending public schools to-day in a few years will have to fill the ranks of these men.  How important for these boys to know that they have not this defect.  If the forty boys in every 1,000 are found, what is to be done with them?  The engraver, the wood cut engraver, the etcher, all wish apprentices.  I am also informed that these occupations pay well.  It requires talent to fill them, and here is an opening for the color blind.  Hear what a color blind writes:[4] “I beg to offer some particulars of my own case, trusting it may be of use to you.  I am an engraver, and strange as it may appear, my defective vision is, to a certain extent, a useful and valuable quality.  Thus, an engraver has two negative colors to deal with, i.e., white and black.  Now, when I look at a picture, I see it only in white and black, or light and shade, and any want of harmony in the coloring of a picture is immediately made manifest by a corresponding discord in the arrangement of its light and shade or, as artists term it, the effect.  I find at times many of my brother engravers in doubt how to translate certain colors of pictures which to me are matters of decided certainty and ease.  Thus, to me it is valuable.”  Having already spoken about the importance of having all boys undergo an examination for color blindness once in their school lives, we have two very good reasons for making this suggestion.

[Footnote 4:  Wilson, p. 27.]

First, prevent a boy following a trade or occupation where he is incapacitated, and, secondly, let him be trained for a certain trade or occupation when the defect exists.  The savage races possess the perception of color to a greater degree than do civilized races.  I have just concluded an examination of 250 Indian children; 100 were boys.  Had I selected 100 white boys from various parts of the United States I would have found at least five color blinds; among the Indian boys I did not find a single one.  Some years ago I examined 250 Indian boys and found two color blind, a very low percentage when compared with the whites.  Among the Indian girls I did not find any.  When we know that only two females in every 1,000 among whites are color blind, it is not surprising that I did not find any examples among the Indian girls.

The usual tests for color blindness are the matching of wools; the common error the color blind falls into is matching a bright scarlet with a green.  On one occasion, a color blind gentleman found fault with his wife for wearing, as he thought, a bright scarlet dress, when in point of fact she was wearing a bright green.  Another color blind who was very fond of drawing, once painted a red tree in a landscape without being aware that he had done so.

Among the whites it affects all classes.  It is found as relatively common among the intelligent as the illiterate, and unfortunately, up to the present, we have not discovered any remedy for this defect.