On this date 100 years ago there was a flurry of petitions filed in McLean County. These petitions were for pensions for the blind. According to a monograph published by the American Red Cross for the Blind, Illinois had changed its act regarding pensions for the blind to make it compulsory for the county to pay pensions. (The pension was $150 per annum.) Prior to 1915, the Red Cross reported, 75 % of the counties in Illinois refused to pay pensions to the blind. McLean County was not named specifically, but prior to 1915 the only mention of pensions to the blind were reported from Lincoln and Iroquois County. A small notation in 1912 pointed out that Iroquois County had 30 blind people on pensions and the county was paying out $5000 to those people, and in Lincoln 13 people were on blind pensions. Such reports would have alarmed the taxpayers of McLean County.
A Pantagraph editorial in May of 1913 entitled "Ohio Progress" sounded a dubious note about the progressive laws being adopted in Ohio. Among those was a blind pension for $240 per annum. Ohio was also raising a levy to pay for a system of roads throughout the state, licensing purveyors of alcoholic liquors and enacting a mother's pension act.
Some these measures appear reasonable and practicable. Others represent a step far in advance of anything attempted in most of the states and the wisdom of their enactment will be determined by the test of experience. . . The people have not demanded a good deal of the so called progressive legislation enacted in their name, but the fact may be brought out under the test of the laws and so Ohio will furnish some valuable demonstations.
One of the people applying for the pension was Electa Orr (20) of Bloomington. Electa was the daughter of Calvin and Stella Orr, but does not appear in the census records until 1910, when she was living with her mother and her step father Thomas Rendell. In the Pantagraph we see that she was a talented musician and active in the musical community. Her wedding announcement in 1919 gives her history of attending school in Jacksonville, IL at the school for the blind. She also graduated from Illinois Wesleyan's School of Music. Her husband, Claus Mammenga, had also been a student at Jacksonville, which was where the couple met. He continued his studies at Wesleyan and graduated in 1917 as an attorney. They made their home in Oregon IL, Claus's home, but after his death in 1954 Electa returned to Bloomington to live. Why did Electa choose to apply for this pension? She had received the definite advantage of a specialized education in Jacksonville and IWU, and she lived with her mother and stepfather, who was a policeman. In the city directory she gave her occupation as musician. Was it a political statement for her? Her son Robert's work in later years was for Business Opportunities for the Blind, which may indicate that such a consciousness was passed on to her son. Electa died in Bloomington in 1976.