Stealing from the Blind
Boyd, Mariorie
Stealing from the Blind by Mariorie Boyd The subject of our tale is the Blind Vendors Program, which installs the little stands from which blind people sell candies and newspapers in...
...Maybe Brademas would In classic 1 1 th-hour fashion, Con- be a better hope...
...subpoena...
...For their part, the bureaucrats avoided qualms by viewing the vendors not as handicapped human beings, but as obstacles to their cutrate theatre tickets and office parties...
...One advantage was the nature of their enemy...
...At hearings in December, 1970, the virulent response by the employee associations startled Brademas (“There must be some real money involved here,” he said, getting the picture...
...If there is one cause that the government will predictably concede, it is the fight to save federal money...
...Amid the desert of wrecked and overblown government plans, this program has been one small oasis, a tiny but heartening reminder that sometimes government can actually do some good...
...Eventually this live-and-let-live spirit infected even the Comptroller General, who gave up his complaints as “useless and ineffectual...
...They face little reward for achievement and little punishment for sloth...
...Here the citizen may gape in amazement as a bureaucracy evolves from a small, paper-shuffling outfit into an enormous, organized force, moving with irresistible momentum to divert money into its own pockets and to resist all threats of control...
...You have no idea how hard it is for a blind person to find a job,” Parkman explained...
...Without overdramatizing, there may be a chilling harbinger for the public at large in the bureaucrats’ treatment of the blind vendors...
...Over the next few decades the program grew steadily...
...Ready to pick graduate of Harvard, and a Rhodes up the blind people’s cause in Con- scholar, he left his job as professor of gress were two quite different men: political science at Notre Dame to Jennings Randolph, now chairman of serve as Adlai Stevenson’s executive the Senate subcommittee on handi- assistant in the 1956 campaign...
...The blind men, not exactly the main beneficiaries of the sports center, all capitulatedexcept for one, James Parkman...
...and a post office in Birmingham, Alabama...
...When a vendor is sick, he must find someone to run the stand and pay him from his own pocket...
...Once, when asked to explain his resilience during war and depression, he said, “I spent two years flat on my back trying to wiggle my big toe...
...They defended their vending-machine racket with tactics ranging from melodrama to bareknuckled threats...
...In some western states, entire cafeterias were run by blind men and women...
...vacation and sickleave schemes provide for many weeks of annual leave, which the employees often sell back to the government for more money...
...If they don’t give me the information, why I’ll use the...
...These relocations have a predictable effect on sales volume...
...Depending on how you look at it, this money comes either from the taxpayers’ pockets or from the blind vendors...
...Because it had gone on far a long time...
...an Atomic Energy Commission installation in Oak Ridge, Tennessee...
...One was that they had no right to the money from the machines...
...The Blind Vendors legislation was sponsored in 1936 by Congressman Jennings Randolph of West Virginia...
...Randolph held hearings on the bill Since this was a day of general re- in June, 1970...
...in an Internal Revenue Service building in Colvington, Kentucky...
...But vending locations that have been pre- would this traditional old political emp ted by machines...
...The regional offices followed the Washington example: at an FAA installation in Oklahoma City, the employees reported $133,896.58 for 1970...
...From a group of employees in Minneapolis: Vending machines are the sole revenue for our welfare fund, which provides among other things, scholarships, flowers and visitation for the sick, lounge facilities, sports programs, recreational equipment, social events such as the post office picnic and employee recognition...
...If the bureaucrats cut corners or indulge in whims without realizing the effect on their far-flung clients, they may be understood, if not forgiven...
...Randolph has moved ahead gingerly without Brademas...
...The blind might well have deemed themselves safe behind such obstacles...
...A classic congressional fashion, they magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa failed to come through...
...With every passing year the employees see their skill rewarded as the vendors’ stands are dismantled and the rows of gleaming machines are trucked in...
...If the blind vendor had never set up shop, federal employees might not have recognized the lucrative potential of vending machines...
...It has, after all, been two years since Brademas asked for the figures...
...The Blind Leading the Greedy Meanwhile, not everyone was delighted with the spread of the stands...
...And so, when the blind vendors heard the first patter of tramping feet as bureaucrats ran over them, they learned in particularly grotesque form one moral of modern government: civil servants watch out for themselves first...
...The American Postal Workers and the American Federation of Government Employees charge their members about $20 each year-compared to $72 for the Retail Clerks and $103 for the United Auto Workers...
...At the Kennedy Space Center, 11 blind vendors found themselves confronted with protection demands from the employees...
...gress seemed ready to come to the Young, handsome, brilliant, John vendors’ rescue in 1970...
...Increasing Complaints from Senate in 1958 and chairs the Public the vendors, pleas from the national Works Committee...
...It have lost a dear friend...
...He had taken up the cause of the blind as a Lions Club member back home, and he brought the issue with him to Washington...
...legislator...
...The agents of its change are government employees-whose tactics and power lend ominous significance to a story that would otherwise be merely pathetic...
...The returns are on file at the Internal Revenue Service, and they reveal some interesting figures...
...Despite the blemishes, the civil service and its employees are still assumed to have some concern with the public interest...
...The workers were attracted not only by the size of the jackpot (each vendor they could eliminate represented a potential $6,000), but by its delightful freedom from strings...
...five thousand of them, waiting for ever since the Lions Club days...
...How so...
...There are now four to ~~~ *Even lawenforcement agencies took the same light-hearted attitude to the GAO rules...
...For example, coffee is a big item for the blind vendors...
...and because the employees are the ones who put their dimes into the machines in the first place...
...Not Quite Perfect The bureaucrats would just as soon not mow down the blind, but the little blind stands happen to block the way to something they want...
...Randolph was ready to move the bill through the Senate once more, but Brademas sent over warnings early in 1972 that his committee “could not touch the bill in an election year” because of “too much political pressure...
...Latest census figures show that one out of seven American workers is a government employee...
...They paraded back and forth until another employee came up and reproached them...
...How could this hap pen...
...A sharper measure of the problem is the waiting list .of blind people eager to run stands...
...But most of the critics have taken Jefferson’s half-amused tone, as if speaking of a mischievous or clumsy child...
...In 1952 the FBI Recreation Association wrote the Comptroller General asking whether it could use vending-machine money...
...In the last 15 years, while governments have laid concrete and marble onto the earth at an unprecedented rate, the number of blind vendor stands has at best held constant...
...Randolph had caught the bureaucrats napping, and they weren’t about to make the same mistake in the House...
...In 1970, while J. Edgar Hoover was still in charge, the FBI took in $58,971.02 from the machines...
...Stealing from the Blind by Mariorie Boyd The subject of our tale is the Blind Vendors Program, which installs the little stands from which blind people sell candies and newspapers in post offices and other government buildings...
...In 1970, for example, the Department of Agriculture’s employees’ association in Washington had gross receipts of $1,863,980.99, and the State Department group took in $810,959.00...
...Similarly, if business at the employee cafeteria flags, the superintendent can ban all sandwiches, donuts, etc., from the stands...
...hamstring the bureaucrats...
...At heart, the problem is the same one I. F. Stone pointed out: “More important than evil men is the tremendous power of corrupting institutions that trap ordinary men...
...To talk about scholarship funds or flu shots or whatever and deprive people who suffer severe disability from employment is just abominable in my judgment,” he said...
...candies and newspapers to the captive audience in government buildings, the selling might as well be done by someone the government wants to help...
...the Brookings Institution has reported that government wages have been rising faster than general wages for several years now...
...This ploy has put many of the vendors out of business and has made inroads against others...
...The government unions are already an awesome political force, and they are trying to become more so by getting the Hatch Act repealed and thereby turning every federal office into a potential political headquarters...
...From a group of workers in Salem, Oregon: If this money is taken from us, it would mean taking a collection on the work room floor every time the need arises and needless to say, people do get tired of continually making donations...
...His hearings, from September to December, 1971, were much the same old show, with a few new highlights: After Randolph asked Francis Filbey, president of the Postal Workers, whether the program was legal, Filbey said, “I have some doubts in my mind concerning the legality . . . . I do not necessarily cherish or appreciate the fact that I have to be here today and make this kind of testimony...
...Now and then a story appeared in the press, or an occasional vendor wrote to Senator Randolph...
...But that was all...
...What the civil servants are after is money to finance “employee recreation associations...
...Ever since Thomas Jefferson lamented of public employees, ‘.‘Few die and none resign,” Americans have collected a sizeable list of grievances against bureaucracies: they are wasteful, slow, lazy, inefficient, unimaginative...
...Randolph was more tenacious, however, and he introduced the same bill when the new Congress began...
...Randolph treated himself to a burst of stump oratory on behalf of the vendors, pointing out that they have none of the benefits that cushion the bureaucrats-no pensions, no vacations, no insurance, no sick leave...
...Government employees make up a bloc which dwarfs the Jews, the farm vote, assorted minorities, and other traditional groups...
...While money keeps going to highway projects and armaments, this one, successful, government program is being dismantled...
...Formerly a small- blind PeoPle’s iWUPS7 and the alarmtown newspaper editor and an orator ing statistics convinced him that he of local renown, Randolph is still an had to do something to keep his old-fashioned, spellbinding platform program from being wrecked...
...Given their choice, most politicians would stay miles away from claims like this...
...If they refuse...
...The two are a study in posturing liberal, but as an effective contrasts...
...That is still a long way off, and Randolph has spent his career avoiding such extreme acts...
...If the blind vendor, with more grit than perception, keeps his stand open anyway, trying to earn a living from the few mints and postcards he can still sell, the employees may turn to a more creative technique...
...The thinking behind it was simple: since someone is going to sell Marjorie Boyd is a Washington writer...
...These operations were bathed in the fertile broth of non-appropriated funds, and they spawned a whole system of personal enrichment, hidden luxury expenses, and good-natured graft...
...Knowing this, the employees could ignore the Comp troller General’s tedious reminders that the vending-machine money belonged to the public...
...Whatever harm the bureaucracy does is usually excused as the unfortunate side effect of well-intentioned bumbling...
...The blind vendors are slowly losing income and a bona fide Endangered Species-an effective government program-is being wiped out...
...On May 25, nine disgruntled Mint workers picketed Cheeseman’s stand, carrying placards reading “Price Increases Unfair” and “DO Not Patronize This Snack Bar...
...This involves putting vending machines in the most prominent parts of the building and moving the blind vendor to a closet, little-traveled hall, or back porch...
...He replied no, saying that the money was “required to be deposited into the Treasury of the United States...
...after that, everything else has seemed easy.’’ With Roosevelt’s support, the bill moved quickly to passage...
...It required that any vending-machine profit that There is speculation that Randolph didn’t go straight to the Treasury is more than he seems-speculation would have to be spent for the Blind home the night Drew Pearson died...
...The most troublesome obstaclethe raw illegality of what they were doing-was mastered only by the employees’ bone-deep instinct for the way government works...
...He raised the storm flag by asking the GAO to audit all concessions on federal property, but he knows the associations will not willingly turn their records over...
...It is easy to understand why the suburban counties next to the Nation’s CapitolMontgomery and Fairfax-are the top two names on the list of the country’s richest 50 counties...
...Since the program runs on the energy of the blind and supports its clients with money earned in free enterprise, it has cost almost nothing in public funds...
...This taught them a lesson: they stopped asking...
...The preferred method is to rig the competition...
...The bureaucrats’ designs are brought home to the vendors in varied ways, as Bill Cheeseman of San Francisco discovered...
...loosely administered funds pay cash rewards for “excellent” service to ridiculously large numbers of employees...
...After the war, more than 3,000 blind vendors were operating in federal buildings...
...A stout, 7O-year-old Southern But it was Randolph who made the gentleman, Randolph came to the first move...
...How could I do that...
...When politicians, press, and the public ridicule these badges or try to take them away, the bureaucrat becomes even more defensive and suspicious...
...More remarkable still is its economy of operation...
...A postal employee in Erie, Pennsylvania, wrote: It is sinful to deprive the employees and their families of these funds...
...Randolph could do it...
...But Randolph could run against Jesus Christ in West Virginia and beat him...
...They called a lawyer, who assured them they were right, and then filed a complaint...
...Nobody over here can stand up to the government unions and open this can of worms...
...But such is the power of the unions that they extracted testimonial letters from several congressmen...
...We can’t pre-judge the situation...
...Why had the others given in...
...In its 36 years of operation, the program has directly employed many thousands of blind people and indirectly encouraged industries to hire countless thousands of others...
...State, county, and municipal employees add up to 13 million more, without even counting their relatives...
...When vending machines are put into a federal building, their take legally belongs to the building’s owners-the U. S. government and the taxpayers...
...It is,” one congressman said, “a government program that has re ally worked . ” We think of the blind vendors at Christmas time, because their program is coming to an end...
...They were afraid...
...One, from California’s Richard Hannah, said that the bill “strikes me as being grossly unfair to those non-blind persons now in possession of such concessions and dependent on the income so derived...
...Brademas never pushed it through the committee, and it died with the session...
...Operating costs are low...
...None of this worried the civil servants...
...The system was always defended as “necessary to boost morale,” and the bureaucrats were ready to apply the same uplift to the home front...
...survivor provoke the anger of millions of organized government workers merely to defend a few thousand Help on the Hill blind people...
...But with the vendors’ example before them, the employees just couldn’t resist...
...They caved in and signed a promise that none of the vendors would be harassed or asked for payoffs...
...But then, several years ago, they discovered another source of money: vending machines, whose proceeds could go straight into the clubhouse treasury...
...The most fascinating part of Brademas’ hearings was the display bureaucrats made of their oft-frustrated ingenuity...
...I went to a regular school instead of a blind school and grew up competing with people who could see...
...As individuals, civil servants are rarely monsters or menaces...
...His speaker-one of the best practitioners was to introduce a bill to of that vanishing art left in the Senate...
...The ruling was never questioned, but neither was it enforced...
...Moreover, installing the vending machines over the dismantled stands of blind vendors would mean stopping a successful, long-running program which still had congressional support...
...Parkman was unusual in his resistance...
...Such activities require money, of course, to pay for flowers for sick employees, wedding gifts, and other supplies...
...Where the government is not planning a new building, the employees may try to force the vendors out...
...Our members have tough races every two years...
...But as the stands become self-supporting, the vendors turn a share of their profits over to a revolving fund to set up new vending stands...
...Esprit de Corps The civil servants’ quick grasp of the non-appropriated funds’ potential was a happy legacy of our military traditions...
...Cheeseman’s introduction to the bureaucratic squeeze was noisier than most, but the same point has been made to other blind vendors...
...These letters provide a disquieting comment on what years in the civil service do to powers of reasoning and compassion...
...Federal employees, with their families and retired comrades, constitute a disciplined force of nine million voters...
...Fear...
...Blindness understandably produces few rebellious or demanding personalities...
...This is not always a sufficient deterrent...
...I haven’t seen people get so excited about anything of this sort...
...because government employees have been underpaid in the past...
...The blind vendor case makes that assumption seem fanciful...
...These are his only badges of honor...
...But when they organize into the mass known as The Bureaucracy, a frightening change takes place...
...For the time being, the bureaucrats’ lobbying has won...
...For 16 years Cheeseman has supported himself as a blind vendor...
...Inevitably, the civil servant discovers that whatever creativity or enthusiasm he brought to the job is withering away...
...The Blind Vendors Program began in 1936-no wild experiment, but a careful copy of a successful Canadian project...
...We do not deny the blind are a worthy group but believe it grossly unfair to rob one group of their rights to benefit another...
...Parkman’s family was particularly vulnerable at the time, as they were still opening bills from recent medical troubles, but Parkman and his wife decided to stand up to the threats...
...A staff member gave a more plausible explanation for the delay: The pressure was terrible...
...Many of the bureaucrats had spent time in the Army, where they observed the wondrous workings of the PXs and Officers’ Clubs...
...Since the blind were there before the vending machines, they have suffered the most immediate harm...
...There, Brademas found things slightly more complicated...
...With even their slight introduction to the workings of government, the blind people should have expected one kind of trouble from the civil servants: the out-of-sight, out-of-mind syndrome...
...In perhaps his most remarkable achievement, Randolph produced one federal employee, Vincent Connery of the National Association of Internal Revenue Employees, to defend the blind vendors...
...If any of them had been able to see movies like The Treasure of the Sierra Mudre, the blind people would have known that their predicament was not unique...
...By letting blind people do the selling, the government could not only help them earn their own livings, but it could also demonstrate to private employers that blind people were employable...
...Brademas’ formal explanation is that “we are still trying to obtain accurate information on just how much revenue we are talking about...
...by the sixties they were earning average incomes of $6,000 per year...
...They set up straight business fronts, calling themselves “corporations” and filing non-profit corporation income-tax returns...
...Now 70 years old and his state’s senior senator, Randolph was then a young newcomer to Congress...
...The unstated economic reasons center on savings for the unions: because the recreational favors are financed by union dues in private industry, the vending machines have helped government unions keep their dues quite low...
...There was a time when the employees had to pay for these things themselves...
...Early this year, Cheeseman, like every other small businessman in California, had to raise some prices a few cents because of an increase in state sales tax...
...Why do they feel they have some right to the money I work so hard for...
...After listening to test& joicing on Capitol Hill, Randolph’s many from the blind men and finding presence surprised the assembled no spokesmen for the other side, mourners, who stared in amazement Randolph guided the bill through the when he said in his sonorous voice, “I committee and the full Senate...
...because it raised morale...
...The machines had the regrettable by-product of driving the blind people out of business, but then, no plan is ever perfect...
...Since they were sitting in the very halls and cafeterias the bureaucrats stalked through, the vendors thought, they could hardly be overlooked...
...The blind could be forgiven for thinking they had this problem licked...
...they have interests, passions, hobbies, even sensitivities...
...Two years after Randolph first introduced his bill, nothing has changed...
...Bris36 tling at public resentment, disappointed by the vacuum of his own work, This stow would be literally he elevates the importance of the only rewards he has: his comfortable salary and generous benefits...
...If the Executive departments would not intervene, slapping down their employees for taking public money, then Congress would surely rally to take care of its blind constituents...
...If they started to suffer from some administrative decision, what better display case could they find to call attention to their troubles...
...This tactic has been used all over the country-at a post office in Des Moines...
...To reduce the vendors’ edge, the building superintendent can simply forbid the blind man to sell coffee...
...The bureaucrats also demonstrated their logical legerdemain in giving economic and moral justifications for vending machines...
...As it turned out, the blind people had only figured out half the problem...
...I buy Danish rolls for 15 cents and sell them for 16...
...Still, the bureaucrats faced a few obstacles...
...All of these tactics work against one of the few New Deal programs which is still doing what it was supposed to...
...A more direct approach-extorting kickbacks-is usually rejected as declasse because of its Mob overtones...
...In this they were like other silent punching bags of the federal bureaucracy-the elderly, for example-who learn not to make noise...
...Even when they must compete with machines the vendors usually win, since most people prefer coffee brewed in a large urn to the tasteless stuff that squirts from the machines...
...Since the vending-machine funds would be classified as “non-appropriated” money, the General Accounting Office (GAO) would not be able to check on their use...
...This technique’s recorded successes include a post office in San Antonio...
...and in federal office buildings in Arlington, Virginia, and Sacramento, California...
...passed on September 28 without Representatives of the blind had opposition or debate, and moved to long relied on Randolph’s support, the House...
...In Baltimore one stand was moved to a corner on the third floor, and in an Oklahoma City post office, the vendor was put behind closed doors in a side corridor...
...That would buy a turkey for the Holiday...
...John Griner of the American Federation of Government Employees made $77,237 in 1970...
...Changing in Their Cocoons -were it not for thk special bureaucratic setting that produced it...
...He stood there until the security police entered and ended the demonstration...
...They were visible, all right, but they’d forgotten that the bureaucrats could still ignore them...
...Federal bureaucrats are stashed in Washington, miles from the people who actually have to live with the rules they make...
...The technique varies with the setting: The easiest technique is keeping blind vendors from finding their way into new federal buildings...
...Cheeseman could hear the shouts that followed and the sounds of scuffling around him, but of course, he could neither see the men nor read their signs...
...The coalition that formed to edge out the vendors was made up of federal workers and their union representatives, the supervisors who dealt with the employees and liked to avoid conflicts, and the enthusiasts of dancing clubs and sports leagues...
...I had a different background from the average blind man...
...They had pointed out the treasure lode, but they were bowled over by claim-jumpers who rushed in to grab a share...
...The unions’ mail campaign and --pressure destroyed any chance of moving the bill through the House...
...Considering that each blind vendor represents a person removed from the welfare rolls, the program actually may have saved the government money...
...recently, he has run a snack bar at the U. S. Mint...
...and slowed down the bill...
...Randolph’s proposal that blind men and women run stands in federal buildings appealed to President Franklin Roosevelt, no stranger to working with physical handicaps...
...After a time, it began to look like Randolph and Connery against the world...
...So, when the vendors were squeezed out, not many complained...
...They knew what they had on their side...
...Parkman soon understood that if he did not sign, his stand would be wheeled off to some obscure location and his income might disappear...
...a U. S. Customs office in Philadelphia...
...We just can’t do that over here in the House...
...They are average men and women, devoted to family and community...
...Consider the indications: the public work force grows steadily in size, through recession and boom, as though directed by some inner force...
...When a giant post office building was opened in Houston several years ago, the postmaster refused to let a single blind person set up shop inside, even though four blind vendors had run stands in the old building for years...
...With the blind submitting and the GAO giving up, the employees settled down to consolidate their gains...
...Grateful government employees have shown their thanks by voting generous salaries and expense accounts to their leaders...
...Few visible results emerge from their work...
...The Comptroller General made this clear in 1952, when he said, “funds derived from the installation and operation of vending machines on govern m e n t-owned or controlled property are required to be deposited into the Treasury of the United States...
...This Marxian logic intrigued Brademas and made him comment that although he was a patron of the House Restaurant, he did not feel entitled to a share of the profits...
...Sinful and Unfair The hearings ended in confusion, amid an organized avalanche of letters from employees...
...From an Indiana civil servant: We are solidly against passage of this bill which would kill free enterprise and completely stop our welfare funds...
...When vending machines first appeared, blind men were trained to service them, using special, braillecoded equipment...
...As long as he remains in the job, the bureaucrat faces strange, divided loyalties...
...For each new stand that has opened another has closed because of rigged competition or poor location...
...Private industries took blind vendors into their buildings, as did state and city governments...
...They were asked to sign papers turning over 10 per cent of their incomes to the employees’ recreation association...
...And, in more Brademas is Super-congressman...
...The union men also offered creative reasoning to show that their use of the money was legal...
...These groups keep the bureaucracy humming by financing entertainments ranging from bowling leagues to office picnics...
...They work in large, dreary cocoons where pettiness, boredom, and confusion predominate...
...Each witness made it a point to remind Brademas of this...
...A few of the duller, less experienced employee groups actually asked permission to use the funds, and were of course turned down...
...They know my prices are at a rock bottom...
...Initially, some state and federal money goes to train the vendors and to equip their stands...
...Soon capped workers, and his House coun- thereafter he came to the House, terpart, Congressman John Brademas where he was known not just as a of Indiana...
...If there is a Christmas moral in this tale of government employees taking pennies from the blind, it may be that the bureaucrats’ self-absorption is even more dangerous than Scrooge’s, since there seems to be no one to play the role of Marley’s ghost and confront them...
...From a California postal clerk: In Los Angeles we were able to give a check in the amount of $5.05 to each and every employee just before Thanksgiving last week...
...In a perceptive flash, the bureaucrats realized how the case might look once the press got hold of it...
...The money was needed, the civil servants explained, to pay for upkeep on an elaborate swimming, tennis, and picnic complex they had built at the Center...
...Privately he may have bitter words for the sterile life of government service, but in public he can only resent his profession’s notoriety as the butt of political rhetoric...
...Later, when someone told him what had happened, he said, “They thought I should absorb the sales tax increase...
Vol. 4 • December 1972 • No. 10
