LITTLE MARY ELLEN'S LEGACY
On a thriving farm up in Central New York a happy young wife goes singing
about her household work to-day who once as a helpless, wretched waif in
the great city through her very helplessness and misery stirred up a
social revolution whose waves beat literally upon the farthest shores. The
story of little Mary Ellen moved New York eighteen years ago as it had
scarce ever been stirred by news of disaster or distress before. In the
simple but eloquent language of the public record it is thus told: "In the
summer of 1874 a poor woman lay dying in the last stages of consumption in
a miserable little room on the top floor of a big tenement in this city. A
Methodist missionary, visiting among the poor, found her there and asked
what she could do to soothe her sufferings. 'My time is short,' said the
sick woman, 'but I cannot die in peace while the miserable little girl
whom they call Mary Ellen is being beaten day and night by her step-mother
next door to my room.' She told how the screams of the child were heard at
all hours. She was locked in the room, she understood. It had been so for
months, while she had been lying ill there. Prompted by the natural
instinct of humanity, the missionary sought the aid of the police, but she
was told that it was necessary to furnish evidence before an arrest could
be made. 'Unless you can prove that an offence has been committed we
cannot interfere, and all you know is hearsay.' She next went to several
benevolent societies in the city whose object it was to care for children,
and asked their interference in behalf of the child. The reply was: 'If
the child is legally brought to us, and is a proper subject, we will take
it; otherwise we cannot act in the matter.' In turn then she consulted
several excellent charitable citizens as to what she should do. They
replied: 'It is a dangerous thing to interfere between parent and child,
and you might get yourself into trouble if you did so, as parents are
proverbially the best guardians of their own children.' Finally, in
despair, with the piteous appeals of the dying woman ringing in her ears,
she said: 'I will make one more effort to save this child. There is one
man in this city who has never turned a deaf ear to the cry of the
helpless, and who has spent his life in just this work for the benefit of
unoffending animals. I will go to Henry Bergh.'
"She went, and the great friend of the dumb brute found a way. 'The child
is an animal,' he said, 'if there is no justice for it as a human being,
it shall at least have the rights of the stray cur in the street. It shall
not be abused.' And thus was written the first bill of rights for the
friendless waif the world over. The appearance of the starved, half-naked,
and bruised child when it was brought into court wrapped in a
horse-blanket caused a sensation that stirred the public conscience to its
very depths. Complaints poured in upon Mr. Bergh; so many cases of
child-beating and fiendish cruelty came to light in a little while, so
many little savages were hauled forth from their dens of misery, that the
community stood aghast. A meeting of citizens was called and an
association for the defence of outraged childhood was formed, out of
which grew the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that was
formally incorporated in the following year. By that time Mary Ellen was
safe in a good home. She never saw her tormentor again. The woman, whose
name was Connolly, was not her mother. She steadily refused to tell where
she got the child, and the mystery of its descent was never solved. The
wretched woman was sent to the Island and forgotten.
John D. Wright, a venerable Quaker merchant, was chosen the first
President of the Society. Upon the original call for the first meeting,
preserved in the archives of the Society, may still be read a foot-note in
his handwriting, quaintly amending the date to read, Quaker fashion, "12th
mo. 15th 1874." A year later, in his first review of the work that was
before the young society, he wrote, "Ample laws have been passed by the
Legislature of this State for the protection of and prevention of cruelty
to little children. The trouble seems to be that it is nobody's business
to enforce them. Existing societies have as much, nay more to do than they
can attend to in providing for those entrusted to their care. The Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children proposes to enforce by lawful
means and with energy those laws, not vindictively, not to gain public
applause, but to convince those who cruelly ill-treat and shamefully
neglect little children that the time has passed when this can be done, in
this State at least, with impunity."
The promise has been faithfully kept. The old Quaker is dead, but his work
goes on. The good that he did lives after him, and will live forever. The
applause of the crowd his Society has not always won; but it has merited
the confidence and approval of all right-thinking and right-feeling men.
Its aggressive advocacy of defenceless childhood, always and everywhere,
is to-day reflected from the statute-books of every State in the American
Union, and well-nigh every civilized government abroad, in laws that
sprang directly from its fearless crusade.
In theory it had always been the duty of the State to protect the child
"in person, and property, and in its opportunity for life, liberty, and
happiness," even against a worthless parent; in practice it held to the
convenient view that, after all, the parent had the first right to the
child and knew what was best for it. The result in many cases was thus
described in the tenth annual report of the Society by President Elbridge
T. Gerry, who in 1879 had succeeded Mr. Wright and has ever since been so
closely identified with its work that it is as often spoken of nowadays as
Mr. Gerry's Society as under its corporate name:
"Impecunious parents drove them from their miserable homes at all
hours of the day and night to beg and steal. They were trained as
acrobats at the risk of life and limb, and beaten cruelly if they
failed. They were sent at night to procure liquor for parents too
drunk to venture themselves into the streets. They were drilled in
juvenile operas and song-and-dance variety business until their
voices were cracked, their growth stunted, and their health
permanently ruined by exposure and want of rest. Numbers of young
Italians were imported by _padroni_ under promises of a speedy
return, and then sent out on the streets to play on musical
instruments, to peddle flowers and small wares to the passers-by, and
too often as a cover for immorality. Their surroundings were those of
vice, profanity, and obscenity. Their only amusements were the
dance-halls, the cheap theatres and museums, and the saloons. Their
acquaintances were those hardened in sin, and both boys and girls
soon became adepts in crime, and entered unhesitatingly on the
downward path. Beaten and abused at home, treated worse than
animals, no other result could be expected. In the prisons, to which
sooner or later these unhappy children gravitated, there was no
separation of them from hardened criminals. Their previous education
in vice rendered them apt scholars in the school of crime, and they
ripened into criminals as they advanced in years."
[Illustration: CASE NO. 25,745 ON THE SOCIETY BLOTTER: ANNIE WOLFF, AGED
SEVEN YEARS, AS SHE WAS DRIVEN FORTH BY HER CRUEL STEP-MOTHER, BEATEN AND
STARVED, WITH HER ARMS TIED UPON HER BACK; AND AS SHE APPEARED AFTER SIX
MONTHS IN THE SOCIETY'S CARE.]
All that has not been changed in the seventeen years that have passed; to
remodel depraved human nature has been beyond the power of the Society;
but step by step under its prompting the law has been changed and
strengthened; step by step life has been breathed into its dead letter,
until now it is as able and willing to protect the child against violence
or absolute cruelty as the Society is to enforce its protection. There is
work enough for it to do yet. I have outlined some in the preceding
chapters. In the past year (1891) it investigated 7,695 complaints and
rescued 3,683 children from pernicious surroundings, some of them from a
worse fate than death. "But let it not be supposed from this," writes the
Superintendent, "that crimes of and against children are on the increase.
As a matter of fact wrongs to children have been materially lessened in
New York by the Society's action and influence during the past seventeen
years. Some have entirely disappeared, having been eradicated root and
branch from New York life, and an influence for good has been felt by the
children themselves, as shown by the great diminution in juvenile
delinquency from 1875, when the Society was first organized, to 1891, the
figures indicating a decrease of fully fifty per cent."[18]
Other charitable efforts, working along the same line, contributed their
share, perhaps the greater, to the latter result, but the Society's
influence upon the environment that shapes the childish mind and
character, as well as upon the child itself, is undoubted. It is seen in
the hot haste with which a general cleaning up and setting to rights is
begun in a block of tenement barracks the moment the "cruelty man" heaves
in sight; in the "holy horror" the child-beater has of him and his
mission, and in the altered attitude of his victim, who not rarely
nowadays confronts his tormentor with the threat, "if you do that I will
go to the Children's Society," always effective except when drink blinds
the wretch to consequences.
The Society had hardly been in existence four years when it came into
collision with the padrone and his abominable system of child slavery.
These traders in human misery, adventurers of the worst type, made a
practice of hiring the children of the poorest peasants in the Neapolitan
mountain districts, to serve them begging, singing, and playing in the
streets of American cities. The contract was for a term of years at the
end of which they were to return the child and pay a fixed sum, a
miserable pittance, to the parents for its use, but, practically, the
bargain amounted to a sale, except that the money was never paid. The
children left their homes never to return. They were shipped from Naples
to Marseilles, and made to walk all the way through France, singing,
playing, and dancing in the towns and villages through which they passed,
to a seaport where they embarked for America. Upon their arrival here they
were brought to a rendezvous in some out-of-the-way slum and taken in hand
by the padrone, the partner of the one who had hired them abroad. He sent
them out to play in the streets by day, singing and dancing in tune to
their alleged music, and by night made them perform in the lowest dens in
the city. All the money they made the padrone took from them, beating and
starving them if they did not bring home enough. None of it ever reached
their parents. Under this treatment the boys grew up thieves--the girls
worse. The life soon wore them out, and the Potter's Field claimed them
before their term of slavery was at an end, according to the contract. In
far-off Italy the simple peasants waited anxiously for the return of
little Tomaso or Antonia with the coveted American gold. No word ever came
of them.
The vile traffic had been broken up in England only to be transferred to
America. The Italian government had protested. Congress had passed an act
making it a felony for anyone knowingly to bring into the United States
any person inveigled or forcibly kidnapped in any other country, with the
intent to hold him here in involuntary service. But these children were
not only unable to either speak or understand English, they were
compelled, under horrible threats, to tell anyone who asked that the
padrone was their father, brother, or other near relative. To get the
evidence upon which to proceed against the padrone was a task of exceeding
difficulty, but it was finally accomplished by co-operation of the Italian
government with the Society's agents in the case of the padrone Ancarola,
who, in November, 1879, brought over from Italy seven boy slaves, between
nine and thirteen years old, with their outfit of harps and violins. They
were seized, and the padrone, who escaped from the steamer, was arrested
in a Crosby Street groggery five days later. Before a jury in the United
States Court the whole vile scheme was laid bare. One of the boys
testified that Ancarola had paid his mother 20 lire (about four dollars)
and his uncle 60 lire. For this sum he was to serve the padrone four
years. Ancarola was convicted and sent to the penitentiary. The children
were returned to their homes.
The news travelled slowly on the other side. For years the padrone's
victims kept coming at intervals, but the society's agents were on the
watch, and when the last of the kidnappers was sent to prison in 1885
there was an end of the business. The excitement attending the trial and
the vigor with which the society had pushed its pursuit of the rascally
padrone drew increased attention to its work. At the end of the following
year twenty-four societies had been organized in other States upon its
plan, and half the governments of Europe were enacting laws patterned
after those of New York State. To-day there are a hundred societies for
the prevention of cruelty to children in this country, independent of each
other but owning the New York Society as their common parent, and nearly
twice as many abroad, in England, France, Italy, Spain, the West Indies,
South America, Canada, Australia, etc. The old link that bound the dumb
brute with the helpless child in a common bond of humane sympathy has
never been broken. Many of them include both in their efforts, and all the
American societies, whether their care be children or animals, are united
in an association for annual conference and co-operation, called the
American Humane Association.
In seventeen years the Society has investigated 61,749 complaints of
cruelly to children, involving 185,247 children, prosecuted 21,282
offenders, and obtained 20,697 convictions. The children it has saved and
released numbered at the end of the year 1891 no less than 32,633.
Whenever it has been charged with erring it has been on the side of mercy
for the helpless child. It follows its charges into the police courts,
seeing to it that, if possible, no record of crime is made against the
offending child and that it is placed at once where better environment may
help bring out the better side of its nature. It follows them into the
institutions to which they are committed through its care, and fights
their battles there, if need be, or the battles of their guardians under
the law, against the greed of parents that would sacrifice the child's
prospects in life for the sake of the few pennies it could earn at home.
And it generally wins the fight.
The Society has never received any financial support from the city, but
has depended entirely upon private benevolence. Ample means have always
been at its disposal. Last year it sheltered, fed, and clothed 1,697
children in its rooms. Most of them were the victims of drunken parents.
With the Society they found safe shelter. "Sometimes," Superintendent
Jenkins says, "the children cry when they are brought here. They always
cry when they go away."
"Lastly," so ran the old Quaker merchant's address in his first annual
report, "this Society, so far from interfering with the numerous societies
and institutions already existing, is intended to aid them in their noble
work. It proposes to labor in the interest of no one religious
denomination, and to keep entirely free from political influences of every
kind. Its duties toward the children whom it may rescue will be discharged
when the future custody of them is decided by the courts of justice."
Before the faithful adherence to that plan all factious or sectarian
opposition that impedes and obstructs so many other charities has fallen
away entirely. Humanity is the religion of the Children's Society. In its
Board of Directors are men of all nationalities and of every creed. Its
fundamental doctrine is that every rescued child must be given finally
into the keeping of those of its own faith who will carry on the work
begun in its rescue. Beyond that point the Society does not go. It has
once refused the gift of a sea-side home lest it become a rival in a field
where it would render only friendly counsel and aid.
In the case of the little John Does a doubt arises which the Society
settles by passing them on to the best institution available for each
particular child, quite irrespective of sect. There are thirteen of them
by this time, waifs found in the street by the Society's agents or friends
and never claimed by anybody. Though passed on, in the plan of the Society
from which it never deviates, to be cared for by others, they are never
lost sight of but always considered its special charges, for whom it bears
a peculiar responsibility.
Poor little Carmen, of whom I spoke in the chapter about Italian children,
was one of the Society's wards. Its footprints may be found all through
these pages. To its printed reports, with their array of revolting cruelty
and neglect, the reader is referred who would fully understand what a gap
in a Christian community it bridges over.
[Illustration: CLUB WITH WHICH A FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILD WAS BRUTALLY
BEATEN.]