children in New York show how justifiable is this action of the society.
"Thousands of children," says Mr. Gerry, "die of diseases contracted in
these injurious employments; in this respect our nation is far behind
Europe in its means of affording protection to children. In France,
severe laws have been in operation since 1841. England has promptly
followed this example, and like the English legislation, that of France
expressly forbids the employment of children in the manufacture of
dangerous substances, of a nature poisonous or explosive. You have only
to visit our hospitals to see the little creatures with hand or fingers
mutilated, from being employed at too early an age in the operation of
machinery. Our negligence makes manifest the wisdom of the French law,
whose lesson is so necessary with us." This needed progress will
without doubt be made, and the society will continue with increased zeal
its charitable work. It gives to the legislator the benefit of a
practical experience in the work, to the child its powerful advocacy in
the courts, to justice the impartiality of prudent investigations, to
public opinion the assurance of the proper conduct of charitable
institutions and an impulse in the direction of improvement. It is thus
that in this land of enterprise, whose customs are adverse to permitting
affairs even of the gravest importance, like the prosecution of crimes
or the direction of works of benevolence, to be concentrated in the
hands of public officials, the consequences of _self-government_ have
been happily corrected in points where they would otherwise become
extreme, in regard to children. The New York society is therefore well
described by its worthy president, Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry, as "the Hand
of Protection." And this hand is too charitable for us to forbear to
give it a cordial pressure across the vast expanse of the Atlantic.

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