Other means of educating the deaf in addition to the oral should have a fair trial in modern conditions for the same length of time that the oral method has been in operation. To consider pupils taught manually in oral schools fair criteria of what can be done by the manual method or combined system, when those pupils have confessedly been relegated to the manual class because of "dulness" (as in the case of the C divisions in Denmark and Dresden), is obviously unfair. This division, moreover, assumes that the "pure" oral method is the best for the brightest pupils. The comparing of oral pupils privately taught by a tutor to themselves with manual pupils from an institution crippled and hampered by need of funds, where they had to take their chance in a class of twelve, and the comparison of oral pupils of twelve years' standing with combined system pupils of four years', are also obviously unfair. Reference may be made on this subject to Heidsiek's remarkable articles on the question of education, which appeared in the _American Annals of the Deaf_ from April 1899 to January 1900.
The opinions of the deaf themselves as to the relative merits of the methods of teaching also demand particular attention. The ignoring of their expressed sentiments by those in authority is remarkable. In the case of school children it might fairly be argued that they are too young to know what is good for them, but with the adult deaf who have had to learn the value of their education by bitter experience in the battle of life it is otherwise. In Germany, the home of the "pure" oral method, 800 deaf petitioned the emperor against that method. In 1903 no fewer than 2671 of the adult deaf of Great Britain and Ireland who had passed through the schools signed a petition in favour of the combined system. The figures are remarkable, for children under sixteen were excluded, those who had not been educated in schools for the deaf were excluded, and the education of the deaf has only lately been made compulsory, while many thousands who live scattered about the country in isolation probably never even heard of the petition, and so could not sign it. In America an overwhelming majority favour the combined system, and it is in America that by far the best results of education are to be seen. At the World's Congress of the Deaf at St Louis in 1904 the combined system was upheld, as it was at Liége. From France, Germany, Norway and Sweden, Finland, Italy, Russia, everywhere in fact where they are educated, the deaf crowd upon us with expressions of their emphatic conviction, repeated again and again, that the combined system is what meets their needs best and brings most happiness into their lives. The majority of deaf in every known country which is in favour of this means of education is so great that we venture to say that in no other section of the community could there be shown such an overwhelming preponderance of opinion on one side of any question which affects its well-being. In the case of the rare exceptions, the pupil has almost always been brought up in the strictest ignorance of the manual method, which he has been sedulously taught to regard as clumsy and objectionable.