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] [Illustration: CHILDREN OF TWO FAMILIES—AS THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN FOUND THEM] [Illustration: 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] 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 prevent 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.