nt 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
MON