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 child 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]