Reconstruction

3944

Recorder

 

Bank, agricultural credit corporation, life
stock corporation, organized under the laws
of any State or of the United States, includ-
ing loans on the assets of any closed banks;
also with the approval of the Interstate Com-
merce Commission, to railroad companies and
railroad receivers. Loans were to be 'fully
and adequately secured.' Especially to facili-
tate its assistance to the smaller banks, the
Corporation soon created regional commit-
tees to collaborate with it. Popular demand
grew that the Federal Government should do
for State and local governments, for indivi-
dual distress and for unemployment relief
what the R. F. C. was doing for the banks
and railroads. Accordingly altered, and signed
on July 21, the Emergency Relief act au-
thorized the Corporation to increase its capi-
tal by $1,800,000,000, its resources thus con-
sisting of its original $500,000,000 subscrip-
tion by the government and the receipts from
sales of debentures that might total 63-5
limes this amount, or $3,300,000,000. Of the
tdditional $1,800,000,000, $300.000,000 was to
be lent to States, at 3 per cent, interest, for
immediate urgent relief, with or without sec-
urity. The act also provided for the removal
from the Corporation's directorate of the
Governor of the Federal Reserve Board and
:he Farm Loan Commissioner.
Loans by the Corporation to banks and
railroads were of great, though of course in-
calculable, aid in averting bankruptcies and
receiverships. In August, following a provi-
sion of the Emergency Relief act, the first
list of borrowers from the Corporation was
made public, and monthly thereafter, In
May, 1933, President Roosevelt appointed
Jesse Holman Jones of Texas as chairman of
the board of the R. F. C. Under the Roose-
velt Administration many of the powers of
the Corporation were curbed, and it became
the fiscal agent rather than the administrator
for new relief measures, as under the Wagner
Act for aid to States, the Farm Credit Ad-
ministration, and the National Recovery Act.
See U. S. history, new deal.
Reconstruction, Surgical. As a result of
the World War (1914-18), there returned to
various communities, all over the world, men
who had received injuries in battle, resulting
in disabilities which might remain perma-
nent or be improved by surgical interference
and subsequent training.
Surgical reconstruction upon soldiers and
sailors presents few problems differing from
die same work upon civilians, except that

the disabilities of the former are due to
shrapnel and gunshot wounds, and the vast
majority of their wounds are severely in-
fected, a condition which frequently influ-
ences the surgeon to wait months before at-
tempting to operate upon the deformed or
disabled part because of the danger of stirring
up the old septic condition.
Experience with the physical treatment in
distinction to the purely surgical or operative
treatment of the vast numbers of wounded
in the World War has led to the technical
subdivision of the subject into three parts as
follows: (a) Functional Re-education, by
which is meant not alone the re-training of
partially injured muscles and nerves, but the
heightening of function in normal limbs, as
where a man whose right arm has been shot
off is trained to use the left arm through a
much wider range of functions than it was
formerly accustomed to exercise, (b) Occu-
pational Therapy, by which the convalescent
is given useful employment with his hands,
as basket making, leather stamping, toy mak-
ing, plasterine modelling, etc.; fc) Vocational
Training, which consists in tho adaptation of
the disabled patient to a new trade or voca-
tion, or in his restoration to the trade or vo-
cation which he originallv followed.
It is the policy of the U S. Government
that no member of the military service dis-
abled in line of duty shall be discharged
from- service until he has attained as com-
plete a recovery as is possible in view of
the nature of his disability. In order to at-
tain this object certain army hospitals have
been especially designated as reconstruction
hospitals and have been equipped and staffed,
either throughout or as to one or more
wards, for special work in cardiovascular
diseases; tuberculosis; neurological and other
head surgery cases, orthopedics; amputa-
tion; insane cases; war neurosis (and other
neurological cases); blind, deaf, and speech-
defect cases; general medicine; general
surgery; and other specialties.
Record, in law, may be briefly defined as
an official statement or narrative of a public
act or proceeding, e.g. of a constitutional or
legislative measure, a judicial suit or a trans-
mission of real property.
Recorder. In England, a judge of the
court of quarter sessions. In the United
States the term is applied to judges of cer-
tain criminal courts and in some States to
the public official who has custody of records
of title and other public records, and attends