industrial conditions in america—protection for animals—founding of the society for the prevention of cruelty to children—spread of the movement throughout the world—origin in new york city.
following the civil war, there began in the united states a humanitarian movement, an aftermath well becoming a unique and heartrending struggle. in that period, humane endeavour, like so many creepers, overran ordinary activities, and philanthropic movements unprecedented sprang up over the country.
labour conditions until this period were about the same in the united states as they were in england. the puritan idea had been that sin was in idleness, even for small children; “colonial records bear evidence that it was a matter of conscience to keep children at work.”457
children of two families—as the society for the prevention of cruelty to children found them
the same families—after attention from the society
in the latter half of the eighteenth century the development of manufactures, especially the cloth-making industry, impressed on the american mind, as it had impressed the english mind, that 333child labour was a national asset. when the first cotton factory was started at beverly, mass., it was stated that it would afford “employment to a great number of women and children many of whom will be otherwise useless, if not burdensome to society.”458
a special report was made by a committee to the massachusetts legislature in 1866 in which it was stated that representatives of the factories went about systematically canvassing for small children: “small help is scarce; a great deal of machinery has been stopped for want of small help, so that the overseers have been going around to draw the small children from schools into the mills; the same as a draft in the army.”
asked if there were “any limit on the part of the employers as to the age when they take children,” a witness replied: “they’ll take them at any age they can get them, if they are old enough to stand....”459
the same year that this report was made there was founded in new york a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, in imitation of a similar society that had been founded in england, in 1823. out of that movement in america there grew, in 1874, a movement to look after the rights of children, the first enunciation in terms of modernity of the fact that society must not only punish crimes against children, but that it must prevent334 them. following the formation of this society, the first special laws “known in the world were enacted specifically to protect and punish wrongs to children.”
the result of this development was that in 1880 frederick a. agnew visited america and after an examination of the work being done in new york and the methods employed, returned to liverpool, his home, and there in conjunction with samuel smith, m. p., founded the liverpool society for the prevention of cruelty to children, in 1883—the first society in europe to prevent wrongs against children. shortly after this the earl of shaftesbury organized a similar movement in london. then, under the auspices of the late m. jules simon, whose work in behalf of children has not yet been fully appreciated, the movement was taken up in france, m. paul nourisson and m. ernest nusse aiding greatly in bringing about a comprehensive law in relation to the prevention of cruelty to children.
with lieut.-gen. d. von pelet-narbonne as chairman, the “verein zum schutz der kinder vor ausnutzung und misshandlung” was formed in berlin. in 1899 fr?ulein lydia von wolfring aided in the organization of the “wiener kinder schutz und rettungs verein” with von krall, privy chancellor of austria, as chairman. count borromeo inaugurated the movement at milan in italy where the padrone system flourished to such an extent as to indicate that the old roman theory335 of the patria potestas was still alive, at least with the peasants. through the other countries of europe the interest in the new movement ran and the work was taken up; then into india, china, and south america, until today there is no quarter of the globe where there is not a society, organized for the purpose of assisting the law in preventing crimes against the helpless child.
nothing indicates better the seeming accidental and casual beginnings of large movements than the formation of this first society in america. like vincent of paul’s recognition of the horrible crimes that were being perpetrated in paris only when he came face to face with an ill-treated infant, so it was only when it was discovered that, with all the law, there was no legal way of protecting an american child, that the child-protection movement, with its many subsequent laws in behalf of children, sprang up.
a mission worker named mrs. etta a. wheeler had found in what was then the slums of new york that a child, famous after as mary ellen, was being cruelly beaten and ill-treated by a man and woman who had taken it when it was less than two years of age from a charitable institution. some idea of the condition among the slums of a large city of this time may be gained from the statement of a contemporary newspaper that “at least 10,000 young boys roamed the streets of new york by day and took shelter by night in any place that seemed to afford a safe retreat, while their older336 and more vicious confederates planned how they should succeed in pilfering and plundering the public. the crumbling and rotten wooden docks of the metropolis had been for years haunted by these young vagabonds, and as they were at that time inefficiently policed, they were excellent localities for the incubators of petty thievery.”
unless these youngsters actually committed a crime, or unless someone collected evidence that they were leading an immoral life, they were free to do what they willed.
mrs. wheeler was unable to gather the evidence necessary to remove the child in which she had become interested, and as the stories of the cruelties continued, she went to the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, at the head of which was henry bergh, whose work in this direction was as notable in this country as was richard martin’s in england.
after consultation with the counsel of the society, elbridge t. gerry, it was decided that “the child being an animal” the society would act. mr. gerry after a careful examination of the evidence, sued out a writ de homine replegiando, the child was taken to court, complaints were made against the so-called guardians, and the woman who had cruelly beaten the child was afterwards sent to the penitentiary for one year.
and so, for the first time by legal machinery, punishment was meted out for cruelty to children.
the “inspiration” of henry bergh on which the society for the prevention of cruelty to children was organized
the juvenile court, new york city; justice wyatt on the bench
when it became known that the animal soci337ety, as it was called, would interest itself in children who were being ill-treated, the complaints became numerous. it was decided that a separate society should be incorporated as a hand attached to the arm of the law.
of the various movements that grew out of the protection movement, none was more interesting or attracted more controversy than the endeavours to protect children of the stage. we have seen in the account of the elder seneca and in the treatment by the mountebanks of children in paris in the seventeenth century, how easily the unprotected child lent itself to the calling of the vagabond entertainer. while no such barbarities were practised in modern times, it was difficult for many people to realize that the child of five, undergoing training as an acrobat for long hours, was not being brought up in accordance with the modern theory of the obligations of the state toward the helpless.
the importation of children that had been sold by their parents in italy was also a matter that the society took up, and in 1879, the white slave question, even now a live question, arose in an endeavour to stop the padroni from bringing into america the minors they had gathered abroad.
probably the most important question that has come before the society in recent years has been the proper treatment of those children who, for one reason or another, are brought into contact338 with the police. one of the first things that the new york society did was to insist that the children who had to be taken to court should not be mixed with the really criminal. in 1892 an amendment to the penal code made the separation imperative, and out of this movement has grown the children’s court movement and the proper study of the so-called juvenile criminal.
another important branch of the child-protection movement that had its beginning in new york city, was placing laws on the statute book, and then enforcing them, against the sale of injurious liquors to children. laws tending to protect the morality of children followed these, and in fact almost from the first year of its birth, every year has seen the protection society enlarging its field of action until today it hardly seems possible that it was only a few hundred years ago that the very life of a child itself was considered of no importance.
the general law laid down by spencer, in virtue of which everything passes “from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the indefinite to the definite, from the simple to the complex,” is evident in the history of the progress of the child as a factor in society.
when in neolithic times there was no moral instinct in man, the child’s only hope of life was the parental or rather the maternal instinct, of beings not yet risen to the plain of reasoning animals. in a higher stage of civilization one339 finds, where the matriarchal régime exists, children have a value, the value of chattels and live stock, though the maternal uncle has more rights over them than their own father.460 the patria potestas of the romans was not so strange or unusual as it seemed to gibbon, for the power of life and death (jus vit? ac necis) is found among the apaches, the botocodos, the bedouins, and the samoyedes and is a stage in the development and evolution of the family idea.
in the religious and philosophical stage the child takes on an importance of its own; it is humanely treated because it is now recognized as a human being, or it is protected because it is said to have, young and apparently unimportant as it seems to be, a soul of its own. from there on to the time when the child, as the father of the man, is a charge upon the state,—or on all men,—until it is able to take care of and protect itself, the murder of a child is theoretically as great a crime as the murder of an adult. in fact, the conditions of the past hold long after each recognized step of progress, the most primitive habits obtruding in the very midst of the most advanced knowledge and the most complete enlightenment.
it is for this that the story of the past is valuable. that we may know and understand and340 value rightly what is past, past for all time so far as intelligent and self-governing humanity is able to will—that is one of the surest steps to knowledge and truth.
