After consultation with the counsel of the Society, Elbridge T. Gerry, it was decided that “the child being an animal” the Society would act. Mr. Gerry after a careful examination of the evidence, sued out a writ _de homine replegiando_, the child was taken to court, complaints were made against the so-called guardians, and the woman who had cruelly beaten the child was afterwards sent to the penitentiary for one year. And so, for the first time by legal machinery, punishment was meted out for cruelty to children. [Illustration: THE “INSPIRATION” OF HENRY BERGH ON WHICH THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN WAS ORGANIZED] [Illustration: THE JUVENILE COURT, NEW YORK CITY; JUSTICE WYATT ON THE BENCH] When it became known that the Animal Society, as it was called, would interest itself in children who were being ill-treated, the complaints became numerous. It was decided that a separate society should be incorporated as a hand attached to the arm of the law. Of the various movements that grew out of the protection movement, none was more interesting or attracted more controversy than the endeavours to protect children of the stage. We have seen in the account of the elder Seneca and in the treatment by the mountebanks of children in Paris in the seventeenth century, how easily the unprotected child lent itself to the calling of the vagabond entertainer. While no such barbarities were practised in modern times, it was difficult for many people to realize that the child of five, undergoing training as an acrobat for long hours, was not being brought up in accordance with the modern theory of the obligations of the State toward the helpless. The importation of children that had been sold by their parents in Italy was also a matter that the Society took up, and in 1879, the white slave question, even now a live question, arose in an endeavour to stop the _padroni_ from bringing into America the minors they had gathered abroad. Probably the most important question that has come before the Society in recent years has been the proper treatment of those children who, for one reason or another, are brought into contact with the police. One of the first things that the New York Society did was to insist that the children who had to be taken to court should not be mixed with the really criminal. In 1892 an amendment to the Penal Code made the separation imperative, and out of this movement has grown the children’s court movement and the proper study of the so-called juvenile criminal.