WEBVTT - Orphan Trains 0:00:00.960 --> 0:00:03.800 Welcome to you stuff you missed in history class from 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:13.960 how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.319 I'm Chacy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:21.560 are drawing straight from the listener requests again. So is 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:24.599 another one that has been requested many, many, many times. 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:28.120 It is orphan trains. If you have never heard of 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:32.280 orphan trains before, this probably sounds to you like trains 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:36.879 full of orphans being taken to new homes. Just kind 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:41.320 of correct. Between eighteen fifty four and ninety nine, about 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:45.200 two hundred and fifty thousand children were taken to new 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:49.239 families by train, except they weren't really called orphan trains 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:52.120 at all at the time. A lot of the children 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:55.400 were not actually orphans, and a lot of times these 0:00:55.480 --> 0:01:00.160 families who were taking them in were more like employers. 0:01:00.440 --> 0:01:04.200 So that is a story that we're going to tell today. Uh, 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:06.720 And to get kind of some groundwork, lad We're going 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.679 to start with the context of the situation. After the 0:01:09.800 --> 0:01:12.000 end of the War of eighteen twelve, the population of 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:15.720 the United States, and particularly in the eastern ports cities, 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:20.600 really exploded. For example, about forty thou people lived in 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:24.000 New York and eighteen hundred and by nineteen hundreds, of 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:26.360 just a hundred years later, it was close to a 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:30.360 million and a half. So many of these new residents 0:01:30.440 --> 0:01:35.280 were desperately poor and very sick, having arrived with basically 0:01:35.280 --> 0:01:38.959 nothing from wherever they were immigrating from. UH and depending 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.800 on where they were immigrating from, they often faced a 0:01:42.800 --> 0:01:45.960 lot of prejudice and discrimination, which made it harder for 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.360 them to find work and get on their feet. As 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:52.960 a consequence of this influx of people and poverty, the 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:57.080 US saw the rise of its first slums. Poverty has 0:01:57.080 --> 0:02:00.240 had always existed, but now there were entire neighborhood that 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:03.680 were really destitute. They had high crime rates, the buildings 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:08.440 were deteriorating, and the circumstances were just apparently hopeless. And 0:02:08.480 --> 0:02:11.799 that was the prevailing scenario, and an alarming number of 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.440 the people who lived in these neighborhoods were children. Some 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.960 of the children really were orphans uh some had at 0:02:19.040 --> 0:02:23.240 least one living parent who for whatever reason couldn't or 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:28.200 didn't support them, but regardless, by the mid eighteen hundreds, 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:32.440 there were somewhere between ten thousand and thirty thousand homeless 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:35.520 children living in the slums of New York City, which 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:38.440 at that point only had the whole city only had 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:42.720 a total population of five hundred thousand people, so that's 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:46.799 a pretty significant chunk of the population that are homeless 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:51.240 street children. In New York and other cities, children formed 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:54.560 gangs to try to keep themselves safe and supported themselves 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:57.920 through petty theft and other crime, or even through begging. 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.320 Others would find work in fact trees or as newsboys 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.680 or shoeshine boys, and some sold matches or rags on 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:10.080 street corners and in some cases became prostitutes because they 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:14.040 kind of wandered like nomads through the city. People referred 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:17.840 to these children often as street arabs, and this all 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:21.839 kind of calls up images of like scrooges, street urgins 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:24.519 or Oliver twist Um, and for a lot of children, 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:27.640 that's pretty much how it really was. And when then 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:31.720 were the resources to handle them, cities resorted to incarcerating 0:03:31.800 --> 0:03:35.560 children in workhouses and prisons that had been meant for adults, 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:40.320 but eventually they would build prisons and asylums for juveniles, 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:44.520 which were really not much better. The field of social 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:48.480 work also barely, if at all, existed at this point. 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.760 We've done a previous series of podcasts on Jane Adams, 0:03:52.760 --> 0:03:55.080 who thought of as the mother of social work. She 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:58.960 started doing her groundbreaking work kind of in the middle 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:01.640 of when all of this was going on. So there 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:05.040 was you know, if if law enforcement found a child 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:06.960 who was in danger, there it wasn't like there was 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:10.080 a social worker or a department of social services they 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:13.560 could call for help. There was also no foster care system. 0:04:14.080 --> 0:04:16.440 Foster care itself did exist, but it was in a 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:20.799 very informal way, with individual families taking on children in need, 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:23.960 and in that sense, fostering has really existed for as 0:04:23.960 --> 0:04:27.200 long as families have. But there was no organized system 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:31.240 for placing children in foster families or for screening potential 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:36.200 foster parents. And there were also virtually no adoption laws 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:39.240 in the United States at this point. The first adoption 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.640 law passed in the US was in Massachusetts and that 0:04:42.720 --> 0:04:45.280 was past an eighteen fifty one. But other than that, 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:47.400 there was, you know, before that point, there was no 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:52.760 legal governance about how one made it official that this 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.080 child was now part of your family. So, as a 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:58.560 result of all of this and all of these sort 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.479 of gaps in uh a social way to deal with 0:05:02.520 --> 0:05:05.320 all these children. Homeless children were a huge issue in 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:09.720 many cities, particularly port cities, and the government's in question 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:12.599 just didn't have the resources or programs that they would 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:16.080 need to do much about it. This brings us to 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:20.920 Charles Loring Brace of Hartford, Connecticut. He was a Presbyterian 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:23.240 from a middle class family, and he moved to New 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:25.200 York City in eighteen forty eight so he could go 0:05:25.240 --> 0:05:29.600 to seminary. He was really horrified at this situation with 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:33.080 homeless and orphaned children. And it was not just because 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:36.479 what was happening to these children was horrifying. It was 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:40.240 also because he thought that these hordes of unsupervised, marauding 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:44.880 children were a threat to the social order. His opinion 0:05:45.120 --> 0:05:48.560 was that these kids who didn't have families and were 0:05:48.600 --> 0:05:50.520 kind of left up to their own devices and were 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:53.680 often making ends meet for themselves through petty theft and 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:56.400 other crime. Uh, he just thought they were gonna gonna 0:05:56.400 --> 0:06:00.440 grow up into hardened criminal adults, and he became really 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.440 fixated on them. He would go exploring through the city's 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:06.880 poorest neighborhoods and interview them and record their conversations in 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:09.839 a journal, and he became really motivated to try to 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.479 find some way to take care of this problem of 0:06:14.320 --> 0:06:19.039 homeless children left alone to do as they will. In 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:23.480 March of eighteen fifty three, he started the Children's Aid Society, 0:06:23.640 --> 0:06:26.719 and the first programs of the Children's Aid Society were 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:30.800 Sunday School and vocational training, and the society also started 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:35.120 the United States first home for runaways, the Newsboys Lodging House. 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:39.839 Almost immediately though, the Children's Aid Society was just overrun 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:43.480 with demand. There were not enough jobs or enough money 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:47.920 to provide the services that these children really needed. Um. 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.120 You know, at this point in history, it was pretty 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.839 normal for children to work in some way. And while 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:56.919 they were trying to match up children with jobs, the 0:06:57.080 --> 0:07:01.359 children vastly outnumbered the jobs. Uh. And they did not 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:05.559 have the funding to to do more to really help. 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:09.720 And Brace wanted to do more, But he didn't just 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:12.880 want to build more facilities to handle more children. He 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:17.320 thought prisons and asylums were the wrong approach. In his words, quote, 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:20.040 the best of all asylums for the outcast child is 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:22.960 the farmers home. The great duty is to get these 0:07:23.040 --> 0:07:26.760 children of unhappy fortune utterly out of their surroundings and 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.760 to send them away. To kind Christian homes in the country. 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:34.200 This is kind of alludes to the plan that Brace 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:38.000 came up with, which he called the Immigration Plan. This 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:40.880 was that they would gather up children from New York 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:45.200 who were homeless or whose parents couldn't care for them, 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:48.000 and they would send them west to work on farms. 0:07:48.040 --> 0:07:51.880 This became known as outplacement. So you're placing children out 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:56.560 versus placing them into an orphanage or an institution. He 0:07:56.640 --> 0:08:02.240 didn't exactly invent the idea of outplacement, uh. The This 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:06.800 act of like placing children out with other families existed before, 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:09.800 but the Children's Aid Society and Brace's influence on it 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:15.280 really became the biggest and most well known outplacement effort. 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.760 So the Children's Aid Society turned its focus to raising 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:22.920 money and working through all of the legal requirements involved 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:26.160 in finding new homes for children, and to finding the 0:08:26.240 --> 0:08:31.120 children to send, sometimes working directly with the birth parents themselves. 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.560 As the Children's Aid Society started sending the children out 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:36.920 on trains and the program really started to take off, 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:41.360 other agencies followed suit and they placed children from other 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:45.360 major cities in the Northeast elsewhere in the United States 0:08:45.360 --> 0:08:47.679 and Before we talk about what exactly was happening with 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:50.680 these trains, let's take a moment for a brief word 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:53.840 from a sponsor. So let's take a look at what 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:56.160 was going on with the orphans and the trains. So, 0:08:56.280 --> 0:08:59.920 before being put on the trains, these children would be 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:03.440 given new clothes or put into their best clothes if 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:06.000 they had clothes that were serviceable. Often this meant that 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:08.560 they were in a new outfit that had been provided 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:12.160 to them by charity. They were meant to look their best, 0:09:12.320 --> 0:09:14.760 but depending on how long and difficult the journey was, 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:18.040 sometimes what really happened was by the time they arrived 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:23.320 they were filthy and sick. Someone representing the agency usually 0:09:23.360 --> 0:09:26.320 went on the train with them, and often another agent 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:28.840 had gone ahead to spread the word and begin screening 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:32.360 potential parents and assembling a committee of local people, which 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.839 usually included doctors and clergy to help with the approvals. 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:40.920 Agencies would also distribute leaflets and place advertisements about the children. 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:43.880 Here's an example of an ad that ran in Nebraska. 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:48.960 In all children received under the care of this association 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:52.559 are of special promise in intelligence and health, and are 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.120 in age from one month to twelve years and are 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.280 sent free to those receiving them on ninety days trial 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:02.680 unless a special contract as otherwise made. Homes are wanted 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.080 for the following children. Eight boys, ages ten, six and 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:11.280 four years English parents. Blondes very promising two years old, blonde, 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:15.199 fine looking, healthy American, has had his foot straightened, walks 0:10:15.280 --> 0:10:19.000 now okay. Six years old, dark hair and eyes, good looking, 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:23.160 at intelligent American. Ten babies boys and girls from one 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:26.320 month to three months. One boy. Baby has fine head 0:10:26.360 --> 0:10:29.160 and face, black eyes and hair, fat and pretty three 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:33.880 months old. Agencies also had rules for the placements themselves. 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:37.680 Here's the Children's Aid Society rule for the placement of boys. 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:42.640 Applications must be endorsed by the local committee. Boys under 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.720 fifteen years of age, if not legally adopted, must be 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:48.240 retained as members of the family and sent to school 0:10:48.280 --> 0:10:51.120 according to the educational laws of the state until they 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.840 are eighteen years old. Suitable provisions must then be made 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.880 for their future. Boys between fifteen and sixteen years of 0:10:57.920 --> 0:11:00.240 age must be retained as members of the family and 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:03.360 sent to school during the winter months until they're seventeen 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:07.080 years old, when a mutual arrangement may be made. Boys 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:09.800 over sixteen years of age must be retained as members 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:12.360 of the family for one year, after which a mutual 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:16.040 arrangement may be made. Parties taking boys agree to write 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:18.720 to the society at least once a year, or to 0:11:18.800 --> 0:11:23.040 have the boys do so. Removals of boys providing unsatisfactory 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:25.760 can be arranged through the local committee or an agent 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:28.560 of the society, the party agreeing to retain the boy 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:31.840 a reasonable length of time after notifying the society of 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:36.280 the desired change. This kind of reminds me of, uh, 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:42.600 when you get a pet through pet rescue, Like yeah, yeah. 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.400 And obviously this particular set of rules is from after 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:49.000 states that started to pass abaction laws, which was actually 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:51.240 done in part to kind of curtail the more willy 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:57.520 nilly aspects of this placement of children that was going on. Um. 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:01.440 When the train arrived at a town, the children would 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.120 be taken to a playhouse or a theater or some 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:08.320 other suitable gathering place that had places for spectators and 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:11.640 places to display the children, and the children will be 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.600 paraded across the stage for the families to inspect. And 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:18.920 so the term up for adoption purportedly comes from this 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:23.080 practice of literally putting the children up on stage, and 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:25.920 often the whole town would come to watch whether they 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:30.280 wanted a child or not. Sometimes the children would be 0:12:30.320 --> 0:12:33.360 asked to say something or perform in some way, and 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:36.439 the prospective families would ask questions of them and sometimes 0:12:36.880 --> 0:12:39.520 inspect them in a way that was more reminiscent of 0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:43.600 buying a horse or a slave. In some towns, demand 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:47.319 for these children was really huge, and families would almost 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.320 come to blows over who could pick from the limited 0:12:51.400 --> 0:12:55.600 number of children. Foster families were supposed to have references 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:58.679 from their pastor or the justice of the peace attesting 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:01.680 to their character, but if none was available, the agent 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:04.439 in charge would often just judge based on their appearance, 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.400 their dress, and their demeanor. Children who couldn't find a 0:13:07.400 --> 0:13:09.560 placement would be put back on the train to be 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:12.240 sent on to the next town, or, failing that, would 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.000 wind up in a local orphanage or some other local 0:13:15.040 --> 0:13:20.360 facility for homeless children. For most agencies, the record keeping 0:13:20.440 --> 0:13:24.840 was pretty lax um, The screening was pretty minimal, and 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:28.040 depending on who you asked, these people taking in children 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.120 could be considered parents or they could be considered more 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.080 like employers. There was also not a lot of follow 0:13:34.160 --> 0:13:37.960 up after the facts. Travel was really difficult and expensive 0:13:38.000 --> 0:13:40.800 at this point, which became a big deterrent against sending 0:13:41.240 --> 0:13:44.360 representatives from the agencies to check up on people. Uh. 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:46.960 Some of them, like the Children's Aid Society, had planned 0:13:47.000 --> 0:13:51.040 initially to do in person follow ups on a regular basis, 0:13:51.120 --> 0:13:56.120 but that never really came to fruition uh. And that 0:13:56.200 --> 0:13:59.480 pretty much meant that they were relying on the families 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:01.720 or the childre are in to send letters back to 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:05.640 the agency, which also sometimes happened and sometimes not. And 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:09.160 although most of the agencies that were kind of doing 0:14:09.559 --> 0:14:14.240 these sorts of projects of out placing children followed similar methods, 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:18.000 the Children's Aid Society really got some particular criticisms, and 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:20.200 we're going to talk about those after we have a 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.720 quick word from our sponsor. So a lot of agencies, 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:27.760 not just the Children's Aid Society, got involved in sending 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:32.480 children out west or to some other place by train. Um. 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:36.040 Charles Loring Brace in particular, though, had some aspects to 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:38.160 what he was doing in his philosophy that are kind 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:41.520 of problematic. He was really sure that farms were the 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:45.680 best places for New York's impoverished children. They would get 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:49.119 used to doing honest work there, and they would ideally 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:53.800 have the affection and support of a family. And this 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:57.080 I mean it sounds like an at least well meaning 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:01.200 plan on the surface, but there are aspects of it 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:05.160 that are pretty problematic. Fewer than half of the children 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:07.240 that were sent on the trains by the Children's Aid 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:11.640 Society were actually orphans. Roughly a quarter of them had 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:15.000 one living parent, and about a quarter had both parents 0:15:15.000 --> 0:15:18.520 still living, so fifty of them had some parents in 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:22.520 the mix. Arguably the living parents couldn't afford to or 0:15:22.600 --> 0:15:25.680 didn't want to raise their children, or the children were 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:30.200 being abused, neglected, or mishandled in some way. Some were 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:33.000 also teenagers who were making the step to leave home 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.800 themselves with the aid of this free passage and clothing 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:39.800 and work help that would come without placements. Yeah. I 0:15:39.840 --> 0:15:46.000 did not find horror stories of like children being taken 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:48.400 with no regard to their parents, but I did find 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:52.520 ones where the parents were pressured pretty extensively to give 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:55.880 up their children for their better good, you know, based 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:59.480 on the person who was speaking to them's idea of 0:15:59.520 --> 0:16:05.000 what would be best for them. Um. His critics argued 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:07.760 that Brace was really taking it upon himself to dictate 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:10.880 what was best for these children, regardless of the parents 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:15.400 feelings or their actual situation. And as a side note, 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.360 the existence of parents for about half of these children 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:21.960 is one reason why the phrase orphan trains wasn't really 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:24.840 used at the time. The more common terms for the 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.880 setup were mercy trains and even baby trains. So one 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:32.920 of brace's actual stated goals was also to provide labor 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:36.800 and the less popular populated regions of the United States 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:41.000 where people were moving. Uh you know, there were new 0:16:41.080 --> 0:16:44.000 families who were getting out to somewhere in the West, 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:48.600 and uh, you know, in a typical situation, they probably 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:51.080 would eventually have children, and the children were eventually helped 0:16:51.080 --> 0:16:54.080 them on the fire. But they needed that child like 0:16:54.160 --> 0:16:59.000 that child help now. Um. So for this reason, most 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.200 of the Children's Eights Society's children were between six and fourteen, 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:04.800 so they were old enough to do work, but young 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.840 enough to still be like trained and educated and maybe 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:10.680 not so said in their ways and and obstinate as 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:16.640 to cause problems for their new families. BRACE also definitely 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:20.119 had some monetary motivations, pointing out how much cheaper it 0:17:20.200 --> 0:17:23.840 was to place children out than to put them into institutions. 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:27.760 And the last one is something that he denied, but 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:30.199 a lot of people pointed out a lot of the 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:34.120 children who went on Children's Aid Society trains were Catholic 0:17:34.280 --> 0:17:36.960 or Jewish, and a lot of them were also Italian, 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:39.840 Polish or Irish, and these were all groups who faced 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:44.159 massive amounts of prejudice and discrimination. Um, Italian, Polish and 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:47.239 Irish people were all viewed as like second class and 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:52.879 inferior citizens. The families who received these children were mostly Protestant, 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:56.600 and they were mostly not Italian or Polish or Irish, 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.760 and so critics argued that Brace was trying to kind 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.320 of strip these children of their religion and their heritage 0:18:03.320 --> 0:18:05.879 and to force them to assimilate to the culture that 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:10.200 he thought was the best one. Um. His like this 0:18:10.240 --> 0:18:13.080 was sort of the response of him being like nah, 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:18.360 and his critics being like, yuh huh, Like it does 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:22.199 seem a little uh, a little problematic. That that was 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:25.560 that was generally how it went. He would say, well, 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:28.200 but they're they're just aren't as many you know, non 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:32.720 Protestant people out west, That's why. And people would say, 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:36.159 I don't really buy your argument. It definitely, like the 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:40.399 data set does sort of support a certain prejudice going 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:44.160 into it. The Children's Aid Society also did not work 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.840 with African American children, although exactly why this is the 0:18:47.840 --> 0:18:51.919 case is not really clear. There were definitely fewer African 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:55.000 American homes in the West that could have taken the children. 0:18:55.359 --> 0:18:58.200 But it's also possible that this whole exercise looked way 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:01.679 too much like slavery for anybody to be comfortable sending 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:05.280 black children. Or it's also very possible that racists did 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:08.680 not want that to be part of the system. Yeah, 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.800 nobody really clearly said why they were not working with 0:19:11.840 --> 0:19:16.399 African American children. Some of the other outplacement organizations, seeing 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:19.520 what Brace was doing and seeing the flaws that people 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:22.159 were pointing out in his plan, tried to avoid the 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:24.959 controversies that he was generating. So, for example, the New 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:29.280 York Foundling Hospital was a Catholic organization, and it's since children, 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.600 including babies and toddlers, a lot of babies and toddler's 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:36.440 actually exclusively to Catholic homes. The Boston Home for a 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.840 Little Wanderers also claims that it's screening and follow up 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:44.160 processes were much more exact and stringent than BRACES. Were 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.840 so um. While the Children's Aid Society was the most 0:19:47.880 --> 0:19:50.040 well known, there were a lot of other organizations that 0:19:50.119 --> 0:19:53.480 were into this whole practice, and some of them, either 0:19:53.760 --> 0:19:57.080 by their own claims or by actual documentation, seemed to 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:02.440 have taken more deliberate care with the whole process. Yeah, 0:20:02.480 --> 0:20:05.960 and while the Children's Aid Society was mostly sending children 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:09.280 out to rural farming communities, the New York Foundling Hospital 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.320 and other agencies replacing children much closer to home. So 0:20:13.400 --> 0:20:15.400 many of the children who were placed during this time 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.439 actually stayed in New York, contrary to the perception that 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:21.560 they all went west. And some of the other agencies 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:25.520 were definitely more oriented towards children's welfare and not so 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:29.400 much with the providing labor aspect of it. So this 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:34.159 whole phenomenon of the trains and outplacement it really hinged 0:20:34.240 --> 0:20:37.640 upon assuming the best in people. So everybody was assuming 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.360 that the parents who were surrendering their children generally were 0:20:41.440 --> 0:20:43.480 doing so because they thought it was in the children's 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.480 best interests uh. And everybody sort of assumed that the 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:49.560 parents who were taking in these children really were doing 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:51.679 so out of love and charity and not just to 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.840 get free labor. But in reality, of course, people are 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.800 not always doing their best, and when it comes to 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:00.480 what happened to the children that were involved, it's really 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:03.960 something of a mixed bag. Some found themselves genuinely in 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:06.600 happy homes, when they were loved and cared for, as 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:09.840 though they were a member of the family, working alongside 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:14.240 other siblings on farms or in family businesses. The whole 0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:17.280 practice had its share of horror stories too, though they 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:21.200 were definitely children who were abused, one whose foster families 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:24.359 took them on strictly to act as unpaid manual labor. 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:28.120 There were family members who were separated one another, separated 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:31.399 from one another, and and the like. There are lots 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:35.080 and lots of surviving letters and diaries that tell of 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.840 children whose parents sent of a way with notes that 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:41.320 contained their names and their addresses so that they could 0:21:41.359 --> 0:21:44.840 come back home eventually and stay in touch, only for 0:21:44.880 --> 0:21:47.440 these notes to be taken away from the children by 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:52.480 placement agents as they slept on the trains. That's so heartbreaking, uh. 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:55.280 There are also many, many first person accounts of children 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:58.320 who just did not know or understand what was happening 0:21:58.320 --> 0:22:01.919 to them. Some were too young to really grasp the situation, 0:22:02.080 --> 0:22:04.360 and others were simply never told what was going on, 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:07.560 and in at least some cases, parents seem to have 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:11.199 been pressured, as Tracy mentioned earlier, into surrendering their children 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:14.000 when they didn't really want or possibly even need to. 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:19.520 Outplaced children also did not necessarily get a warm welcome 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:22.600 in their new communities. A lot of people viewed the 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:26.640 trained children as they were called, with suspicions. Surely they 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:29.480 must have been of poor character or have come from 0:22:29.560 --> 0:22:33.960 bad families. There were also religious and cultural tensions as 0:22:34.000 --> 0:22:37.040 Catholic children were placed with Protestant families, and as we 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:41.560 were speaking earlier speaking about earlier ethnic tensions with Irish 0:22:41.640 --> 0:22:44.879 and Polish and Italian children who were placed into communities 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:49.359 that carried prejudices against all of these people, all of 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:55.040 these nationalities. So sometimes, you know, somebody, a child would 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:57.159 leave a situation where they were homeless and begging out 0:22:57.200 --> 0:22:59.160 the streets, and they would wind up in the situation 0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:02.480 where they had food and shelter, but were outcast and 0:23:02.920 --> 0:23:06.320 faced derision from the community. And there were also cases 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:09.520 where foster parents had taken in these children and they 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.760 truly loved them and you know, raised them as their own, 0:23:13.040 --> 0:23:15.399 and they lived in this sort of constant fear that 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:17.640 someone was going to come and take their child away 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:22.520 from them someday. There was finally an independent investigation of 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:25.680 the Children's Aid Society in eighteen eighty three, and it 0:23:25.800 --> 0:23:29.080 found that there was very little screening of the prospective 0:23:29.119 --> 0:23:33.040 parents and very little supervision of the overall process. A 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:36.359 significant number of the older boys who had been outplaced 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:40.159 had later run away from home, But overall, the investigators 0:23:40.160 --> 0:23:43.359 found that for the most part, the children under the 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:46.320 age of fourteen who had been outplaced by the Children's 0:23:46.359 --> 0:23:51.359 Aid Society we're doing okay. Outplaced as a child. Andrew 0:23:51.400 --> 0:23:55.119 Burke became governor of North Dakota and John Brady became 0:23:55.160 --> 0:23:57.919 governor of Alaska. They had both been sent to the 0:23:57.960 --> 0:24:00.720