Introduction

Abstract

For well over a century, institutional peonage held individuals with a broad range of disabilities in thrall to the maintenance and operation of the nation’s public institutions. By 1972, residents accounted for 47,000 workers in the institutions for individuals with intellectual disabilities alone. Estimates of the number of patient workers in state-run mental hospitals ranged from 5 to 90 percent of the 235,000 total patient population (Pyle, 1978, p. 38). Resident and patient workers shoveled coal; labored in the fields; worked in the laundry; cooked and served meals in the dining halls; scrubbed and cleaned throughout the facilities; and provided direct care for fellow residents. Resident and patient workers drove tractors, ran machinery, and even fought forest fires. They did all these things and more—all unpaid—an invisible workforce that labored for 10–12 hours a day, seven days a week. But, in 1979, seven short years later, it all came to a sudden halt.