July 25, 2024 • 43 mins
New York was a pretty terrible place in the late 1800s. The population was riddled with disease, crime, and terror -- things were especially bad for the virtual army of street urchins. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max learn how one man created an innovative (and imperfect) system to save New York's orphans: shipping them to the Midwest en masse, and auctioning them off to farmers.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:28):
Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
Please pardon the slightly batman esque tone of my voice
here on the other side of some whether a big
shout out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
For a second time, the Batman of podcasting.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Thanks, you're an old brown. I'm Ben Bolan peak behind
the curtain here. We had some we had some plot twist,
some shyamalan esque shenanigans. This is our second time. I'm
starting a story that we think is endlessly fascinating. And Noel,
before things went a little pair of shaped, you were
(01:08):
about to blow everybody's mind with a story about Roco's
The Modern Life.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I don't remember how it came up, because it doesn't
matter at this point. But did you guys know that Rocco,
I believe he's a wallaby on the nineteen nineties Nickelodeon
children's cartoon was in fact a phone sex operator.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
I did not, but I know that now because it's
the second time we've done this intro.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
But also it's a gig economy.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, you know the proof is in the cartoon Pudding.
If you look at the evening, I mean I remember now.
It's like remembering a dream or something. But it does
play into the plot of the show. But even just
in the opening titles of the cartoon, you can see
Roco in his job as a specialty phone operator, and
on the wall behind it it says hotline.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And there's a sign on the wall in his.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Little cubicle says remember, be hot, be naughty, be courteous. Yeah,
and you can find it online. There's memes about it,
but there's subtitles of what he's says. Oh baby, oh baby,
oh baby. I just yeah, they really snug a lot
of pretty raunchy stuff back in those days. Ren and
(02:17):
Stimpy being one of the primary offenders.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Well, I would say, you know, rewatch some bugs Bunny
cartoons as well. Noel, what about today's episode brought to
mind phone sex operation, Rocko's modern life.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Absolutely nothing, I would almost I'm trying to think of
a clever tie in, but I don't know. It just
popped into my nogg and, as things tend to do.
But we are talking about a subject that has some
heaviness to it potentially, and Ben, you did the deep
dive on this research, and I think you did a
fantastic job in emphasizing the ridiculousness and maybe not downplaying,
(02:57):
but some of the heaviness. We're certainly not gonna be
in trigger warning territory today, But we are talking about
children and orphans in particular, and the kind of epidemic
of you know, children that didn't have parents and it
didn't have a place to live back in the olden times,
(03:19):
back in the eighteen fifties into the early nineteen hundreds,
and what sounds like a WTF solution, what if we
just loaded them all onto trains and bust them out?
Might initially hit you in the way that you hear
about cities busting out unhoused people when a big event
comes through, which is a pretty heartless.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Way, yeah, of dealing with the problem. But this is
not that at all.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
No.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, according to one famously precocious musical redhead, being an
orphan is a hard knock life. Now, you know, pick
your poison. In a upcoming episode of Stuff they Don't
want you to know, we're discussing the dark sides of
the adoption industry, and as you said up NOL during
(04:15):
the course of this research, we came across a disturbing
and very true tale of ridiculous history.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
This is a factual.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Event, folks, not an historical piece of apocrypha or a
legend or a myth. Once upon a time, the United
States government literally stole orphans and auctioned them from train stops,
from train depots across.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
The United States.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And I love that you're pointing out the clear comparison
there between the idea of cities bussing out quote unquote undesirables.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
We saw this in Atlanta when the Olympics visited. We
see this in we talked about several years ago, the
state of Hawaii once upon a time had a plan
to address their homeless population by shipping them off to
purpose built islands where they would be given a minimum
of shelter and food, of course a one way ticket
(05:14):
to the mainland exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
And we're seeing it right now with the Olympic Games
happening in Paris. They're cleaning up the sand so that
they can do their their swim the triathlon type things
in there. I'm not a sport person, but you.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Get the idea.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
There was a big spectacle that was made with I
believe the mayor swimming in a wetsuit in the typically
quite polluted San River, showing that it's safe for all
the Olympians to do their events there. But the city
of Paris is in fact busting out the unhoused population,
(05:48):
and it's pretty callous move.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
And you know, Ben, you pointed.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Out this idea of the auctioning of it, which of
course brings to mind all kinds of horrific historical foot
notes landmarks throughout this country and beyond. But there is
a sort of not silver lining exactly. But their heart
was in the right place aspects to this story, or
at least the person who kind of came up with
the concept before it was derailed. Let's just say not
(06:17):
to use a train pun, but also you know, to
use it nice.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
The Orphan Train movement was what we will call a
supervised welfare program, and the idea was you would transport children,
originally from New York but later from other crowded eastern
cities of the US, and you would take these kids
and via rail you would take them to foster homes,
largely in rural areas of the Midwest Midwestern United States.
(06:44):
These orphan trains, as we mentioned, operated between eighteen fifty
four and nineteen twenty nine, and look, like we just said, folks,
you can tell we're a little baffled by it when
you first hear this story, especially as we record in
July twenty two, twenty four. So many news stories feature
lurid reports of human trafficking, and this might sound like
(07:06):
another one of those. But to that earlier point, we
have to understand the context in which this emerged. New
York City in the eighteen fifties was gross. It's this
is not a political point, it's not a you know,
it's not a holier than now point. It just kind
of sucked for the majority of people. There was this
(07:27):
huge influx of new immigrants, you know, picture of the
classic Ellis Island moment they're crowded into the city. Add
to that numerous financial panics and depression creating disastrous unemployment.
This was pre the Great Depression, but things were still
going bad. And then affordable housing.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
Not really a thing, not really a.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Thing well, and certainly the kinds of public services that
you know, even today still struggle to properly deal with
these type of problems. You know, on a on an
infrastructural I guess level just didn't even exist. You know,
public programs like proper you know, shelters and and food programs,
(08:12):
food assistance programs. It was very much every man, woman,
and yes, child for themselves situation.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
And you really think about the timeline wise. The assistance
program in New York City right now is called Tammany Hall.
So there's that whole giant bag of badgers, corruption, awful
stuff there. It's like, you know, the flaunting your wealth
at this point in time with having your own toilet.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, right, look upon my look upon my poops. He
mighty and despair.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, and if I haven't gotten to go, And I
think this is something we should maybe all organized. But
the Tenement Museum in New York City really speaks to
this period.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And in a very powerful way.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
You know, these tenements were the closest thing to I
guess public housing that exists did, but they were slums.
They were basically for profits, and oftentimes you would be
sharing a toilet or an outhouse type situation with at
times hundreds of other people. So it was bad, smelly,
inhumane times.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, not to mention structurally unsound. So tenement fires, disease
spread at a cartoonish rate. Tens of thousands of children
due to these circumstances ended up on the street. We're
talking very young children. We're talking about the kind of
children that if you saw them in your local neighborhood today,
(09:37):
you would be immediately concerned and wonder where their parents were.
Because there was no social safety net, no welfare or
institutionalized social services. I want to say, outside a rich philanthropists,
these kids were forced to roam the streets in search
of money, food, and shelter, and each of these children
(10:00):
was pray for disease and crime. This is where we
see those old story tropes of selling matches or rags
or junk or newspapers. Just to survive, they had to
form gangs to prevent themselves from being abused in unspeakable ways,
and the police were not helping. The police were and look,
(10:22):
we know some folks in NYPD today, this is not
those folks. The eighteen hundred's police were often arresting children
that might be as young as five years old and
locking them up for extended periods of time in crowded
jails with adult criminals. And look, we said, we're Family show.
(10:44):
We're not gonna spend a lot of time on the
details of what happened to so many of these kids,
but we will say pretty much every horrific thing you
can imagine did in fact occur. This is not hyperbole.
Tens of thousands of kids and luckily we're not there. No,
we have a hero or someone who is nobly intentioned
(11:06):
who sees this.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
And if you want like a visual for this era,
the UK version would probably be Oliver Twists, you know,
I mean, that's older, but it is that type of
vibe with these street gangs, and oftentimes street gangs that
are run by very predatory adults, you know, who are
like teaching these kids to pickpocket and using them as tools,
(11:30):
you know, for their particular criminal enterprise. An American example
would be Newsy's if I believe, that takes place around
eighteen ninety nine, so kind of right in the midst
of this the story for its own episode, I believe
because there was you know, with William Randolph Hurst and
his newspaper organizations. This did create low paying yet there
(11:52):
were opportunities, you know, for some of these kids, but
they were also being used and abused in different ways,
you know, by that type of organization. But think of
the term like street waifs, you know, the little urchin,
you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, they called them in this time in New York,
they would call these kids street arabs because they were
known to be wandering about. And look, if you've ever
spent time in New York City, you know that the
seasons can be rough. So some of these kids were
freezing to death as well. In eighteen fifty three, there's
(12:31):
this young minister, his name Charles Loring Brace, and he
gets obsessed with these kids, and he's looking around and
he's saying, isn't this the greatest country on the planet.
Isn't this one of the best cities in one of
the greatest countries? Why is this happening? And he comes
from a pretty well heeled Connecticut family. He's in New
(12:52):
York as a seminary student, and he is not prepared
for this level of depravity in dystopia. So he says
there's only one way to help what he called children
of unhappy fortune. He said, the great duty is to
get utterly out of their surroundings and to send them
away to kind Christian homes in the country because again,
(13:14):
you know, he's a seminary student, so he's not sending
them to the I guess the burgeoning atheist population of
agricultural Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Well, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And the problem too is not only are these kids
just left to their own devices without any assistance you know,
from the government or from any you know, people that
are offering a helping hand. They're basically growing up in
a situation that is just going to reinforce the negative
parts of this situation and put them on a path
(13:45):
to a life of crime because that's all they know,
and no one was helping them, and there becomes this
resentment and this you know, like why should I follow
the law if the law isn't helping me, you know.
And that's a very understandable perspective, as as the perspective
of brace the idea of if we remove them from
this element and put them outside of that, will that
(14:08):
not ultimately be better for them, you know, in long
term just in terms of their like experience, their upbringing,
you know, what lessons they might learn and what kinds
of adults they might become.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, that's well put Noel, and I really appreciate you
saying that because Brace believed the city and these environments,
these cycles of abuse and addiction and horror, they were
inappropriate for kids. Again, it's heartbreaking to imagine a five
year old stuck on the streets, homeless. And you know,
(14:41):
here in the United States you might not see it
as often, but if you've traveled, especially outside of the
developed world, these kind of horrors are still a reality.
So it's tough for us to disagree with what Brace
is saying, and we can't blame him for taking a stand.
He was trying to figure out us a lou right,
because the typical charity stuff wasn't working. What would happen
(15:05):
here is that the elite, whether that's religious elite or
whether that's socio political elite of very corrupt New York
at the time, they would have like a charity ball,
or they'd have a benefit and they give all the
kids in the neighborhood shoes on Christmas presence.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
Oh, it's.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
More so than things that would actually benefit them long term.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Right, It's more about the people doing this, it's more
about themselves than it is about these innocents. And so
Grace was trying to figure out an innovative solution to this.
So he figured he landed on something quite clever. He said,
there's another social issue here. There's another problem that these
(15:52):
elite New Yorkers don't understand, which is out in the
rest of America, which is largely agricultural. At this time,
our industries, our farming industries, are expanding at an unprecedented pace,
and they need labor.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
And he said, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
What, a lot of families also can't have kids for
one reason or another. So I bet you that these
upstanding assaults of the earth families will welcome homeless children.
They'll take them into their homes, they'll treat them as
if they are their own kid. Pause for a second. Yes,
in twenty four we know it sounds like it sounds
(16:29):
like child labor, right, a little bit.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
It does.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
But also we do know that family farms very much
a thing, and it is a trade, and it is something.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
That you know, is a way of learning how.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
To contribute to an economy and all of that, and
all of these things. A lot of these these businesses
were family runs, so it would make sense that, you know,
their kids would be working on the farm. And it's
not like they were abused. I mean, certainly there was abuse,
let's not. Can't get it twisted, But in general, just
because you're doing a hard day's work and you're getting
(17:11):
a nice meal and a place to stay, you know,
that would be the way that the actual children of
many of these farm families would have been treated as well.
So the best of them would have been approaching it
with that same attitude.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Absolutely, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And most people are inherently good, right if they are
given the opportunity to be so. Brief route, the best
of all asylums for the outcast child is the farmer's home.
And his sort of truism for this was the idea
that quote, immigration is a cure for pouperism, the idea
(17:45):
being that if you ship these kids away, then you
will fix some of those deep intergenerational problems we're talking about.
And the point still stands today. You know, farmers did
and do need every set of hands they can find.
And he said, look, the problems here in New York
are things like living space and access to food, and
(18:07):
the Midwest has a lot of that already, So maybe
we can put the children in a position where they
will benefit Society as well as benefit themselves. And with
all this in mind, in eighteen fifty three he founds
an organization called the Children's Aid Society, and their idea
is to put his wild notion into action. They're going
(18:30):
to arrange the trips. The Children's Aid Society, by the way,
had a lot of wealthy elites behind it. So these
wealthy folks are going to raise all the money through
the charity balls and the fundraisers to pay for everything.
They're going to get the paperwork they needed to relocate
these children. And we'll get into where that gets sticky,
(18:51):
but for right now, I guess to be completely fair,
we should say the CIS was not just a child
traffic gain operation. They also made trade schools. They built
share houses we would call them in Australia, you know,
like they built slightly better than tenement ten of group
homes for kids. And they were also trying to teach
(19:13):
kids how to read and to go to school and
so on and so on.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Well, yeah, Max, I mean, with your you know, research
and expertise in the labor movement, do you have you
run across these types of stories.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
I have not really, but like I don't know obviously
putting a bunch of children on a train and shiving
them across the country not great, but like we're really
going into the story, just Machavelli in the side kicking
in and me like, it's a lot better than what
they had. Then it's like, not a great solution, but
it's a better solution.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
It's a solution.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
You're giving them something other than nothing.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I like the way you put it, Ben, or at
least the way you kind of characterize bracist perspective as
that being in the city was just grossly inappropriate, you
know for what a child needs, which is you know,
care and oversight and a a role model perhaps, And
you know, the idea of this steadfast working American farm
(20:13):
family at its best really is that thing and provides
those things. So I really do see the like positive
outlook version of this idea, but as we know, things
can spiral in negative ways when too many cooks get
in the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah, and then as now, some of the coolest, most
sincere people in the United States come from small towns.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
They're rural. You know, they're upfront with you.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
They have new need for guile or subterfuge. So this
was he was kind of romanticizing the idea of these
farming communities that he himself often had never visited. The
concepts sold very well in New York. The first orphan train,
as they would come to be called, was sent out
by the Children's Aid Society or CIS in eighteen fifty four.
(21:10):
To your early point, Max, they did have chapper. They
had like one or two chaperones adults, kind of the
way you have to have an adult on a long
field trip. So this group, the first ones on the train,
they're forty six kids. They have a wide age range.
We're talking seven years old to fifteen years old. And
(21:30):
they're sent to a place in Michigan. Doa gick do
agiac the wag yak, the wag yak mission get in
the nose between Midwest.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
It is support here pronunciation on the palm, so Michigan.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
Max is holding up the.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Mitten hand of Michigan and pointing toward If you hold
it palm to you, it's a it's a in the
lower right, by the way.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Some really great resources if you're interested in the visual
another like a documentary, not a not a musical depiction
of this. The American Experience series on PBS has a
fantastic documentary segment on the orphan trains, and there's a
great write up that Ben and I believe you referred
to for this research brief, as well as a fabulous
(22:25):
piece by Aaron Blakemore Orphan trains brought homeless NYC children
to work on farms out west on history dot com.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Yeah, and thank you for citing those. Let's also give
a big shout out to Orphan Train deepot dot org,
which is one of the best scholarly resources to learn
more about this. There are also several specific books regarding
this because it affected a lot of people. Now back
to our first orphan train. Before this trip, something like
(22:54):
this did exist. There were orphanages in New York that
have been sending individi jewel kids like your orphan Annies
per Se, or small groups of children to other foster
homes within the larger state of New York, but none
of them ever sent a group this large, nor they
sent a group this far away. It was a heck
(23:15):
of a gamble because they were literally playing with children's lives,
but it paid off. By the end of just one week,
all forty six children had found homes. This was an
unspeakable success, in Brace's opinion, and it began the orphan
train movement. However, you do have to note they were
(23:37):
auctioning the kids woolf Yeah, that's a wolf for me dog.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
It's a wolf for me to dog.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
They did, however, view this as a smashing success. So
the CIS used this as an opportunity to expand their program.
It was, I guess a term developed in the parlance
of the time called place out, which I guess it
makes sense to the idea it's.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Better than sell a child.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
But yes, but even now, the idea of finding placement
for even like an adopted child, you know, that's that's
still a term that is used in this type of
circle today.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, that's a really great point there. And again there
were there were groups of children that were paired out
with adult chaperones, and these chaperones would ride with these
kids on the train from New York to these various
rural destinations. Before the end of this program, over one
hundred thousand children were sent via these orphan trains to
(24:39):
new homes and farm country. And other organizations picked.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
Up on this.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
They said, look, this system works, We're going to adopt it.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
We're we're not.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
We're going to follow the lead of the CS. So
other notable child's care and philanthropic organizations did the same.
Some of them organize their own groups, you know, just
sending on different trains. Others would dare I say, farm
out their supply of children to the CS, and they
would add them onto the next round. Ultimately, more than
(25:13):
thirty orphanages in New York City have participated in these
placing out programs. A few of the notables New York
Foundling Hospital. I love the word Foundling. It's done right,
but it's an interesting word. New York Juvenile Asylum, and
the Female Guardian Society. Folks, You'll notice we keep pointing
(25:35):
out that this ended in nineteen twenty nine. So right now,
if you have a kid who needs a home in
New York City, they're not going to be shipped off
on a train to you know, Davenport, Iowa or something.
And that's because the orphan train was, as I think
(25:55):
we've established, well intentioned, but as we foreshadowed, it was
far from perfect.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Not all of these kids were orphans.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Yeah, I mean, the Children's Aid Society being the largest
and kind of og organization in this program or in
this type of program, they received the brunt of of,
you know, kind of criticism around this method, you know,
of kind of moving moving kids out into the sticks
(26:26):
for the purposes of placing them in farm homes and
family farms. A lot of the people that were the
loudest kind of voices were from other sort of maybe
even competing you know, philanthropic organizations or communities, and they
had some very understandable critiques of some issues that maybe
(26:47):
were not the intention of this, but things that kind
of were byproducts, I guess, or you know, children who
kind of fell between the cracks, because as you mentioned, Ben,
some of these kids were not orphans at all. They
were essentially the children of immigrants who had not been
(27:07):
assimilated into American culture, perhaps did not speak the language.
And I wouldn't go so far as to say we're
easily taken advantage of, but perhaps we're just so down
on their luck that there just wasn't good communication going on,
and maybe the kids were for all into purposes seemed
as though they didn't have parents because they were kind
of out on their own, trying to hustle up a living,
(27:28):
you know, to help their family, but then they were
just sort of lumped in to this program.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, it's heartbreaking because and I hate to use the
same word twice there, but we have to realize this
occurs in other parts of the world today. It definitely
occurred in the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution. There
are also there are cases of families this happened in
the US Greek Depression as well, wherein the parents literally
(27:54):
cannot afford to take care of their children and so
they're desperate. Hope is that by consigning them to a
program like this, or by gifting them, for lack of
a better word, to another socioeconomic situation, they're giving that
kid a chance at life the kid would not otherwise have.
(28:14):
But yeah, to your point, less than half of the
children who rode these trains were actual facts orphans shout
out to Laura and Vogelbaum. As ever, with actual facts,
as many as one out of four these kids had
two living parents and some of the criticism, I don't know.
(28:37):
One of the criticisms that really bothers me still is
there were people in some of the rural communities who
would say, you're shipping us criminal foreign agitators.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
You know what I mean. Or this kid is.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Sickly or disabled, you gave us a defective kid.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Well, it just reminds me.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
I'm not to get political about it or anything, but
some of the rhetoric around immigration now, the idea that
you're sending murderers and rapists and drugs brailers over the border,
it's it's rhetoric that is based in xenophobia and other
ring and it is It's not cool. And while there
certainly may be, it's even worse when you're talking about kids,
(29:18):
because yeah, you're you're they're in We talked about it.
They're in the situation where maybe their only lot in
life is to be in these gangs, or is to
you know, pickpocket or or do petty crimes. But their children,
you can't really call them criminals, vagabonds or waifs or
whatever without that just having like a real, a real
(29:38):
nasty hyperbolics thing to it.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, I could tell this eight year old is a
papist operative.
Speaker 5 (29:44):
I see it. It is Catholic eyes.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, there were there were kids who read like you said,
whose parents were illiterate or did not speak English, were
not in the best of circumstances. But we're still making
a good home for their child, and their child was abducted,
kidnapped from them. Some kids were born out of wedlock,
which was a very big deal. Back then there was
not always the right focus on paperwork. So you could
(30:11):
argue as well that some of these kids ended up
what we would call stateless. They didn't have ideas, they
didn't have any you know, anything like a birth certificate,
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I mean, today, so many of these social programs are
woefully behind in terms of their ability to like digitize
records and to have you know, some sort of network,
you know, where these things are actually very effectively stored
and communicated. And it's just we know that there's just
a lack of social service workers, you know, because it's
(30:45):
a low paying job and you have to just really
be passionate about it. Can you imagine, guys, like what
it would have been like back in these days where
it was all on paper. I talk about losing the
paper work or things falling through the cracks when you
didn't have enough people feeling it out in the first place,
or barely even any of these programs to speak of,
you know. So I still do stand by this was
(31:07):
an effort to try to create some infrastructure to do
some good. But within that because of the lack of
oversight by actual government, you know, entities that.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Still struggle to keep an eye on this stuff. Today,
bad things happened and.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
To jump in to double down on what you said, Noel,
and bring back a Tammany hall. The people filling whatever
jobs like that. There were definitely like you know, favoritism
jobs like it was your guy, it was it was
your cousin who showed up once a month and got
paid for all the time. So it was it was
a terrible time to greet your points. It's like, this
is at least doing something.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, but working within a system that is broken will
inevitably emulate some of the flaws of that system. It's
the same issue you run into with artificial intelligence quote
unquote today. In some cases, these children were being used
(32:09):
as straight up slaves. In some cases they were being
abused by bad faith actors who picked them up at
the auction. Another criticism is that there was no follow up.
There was no organized system to check in on the kids,
you know, a month or six months or a year later,
to see how they were doing. Also, there was a
(32:32):
big religious Not for nothing was I making that Catholic joke.
There was a big religious concern about the idea they
would take a kid from their birth family and put
them with a foster family that forced a different religion
upon them. And people investigated these claims. Again, can't say
enough about Orphan Traindepot dot org. We're getting a lot
(32:56):
of this information from People started to nose around and
look into this. In particular, in eighteen eighty four, there
was a childcare activist named Hastings Hornell Hart who looked
into the results of orphan training placements in Minnesota specifically,
and he said, you know what, most of the placements
(33:17):
ended up well, they ended up working. This brace's wild
idea is a good thing. However, there were cases that
ended badly, and when abuse occurred and the CIS found
out about it, they did something.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
But he said.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
The primary issue was actually the end receivers, the local
committees that were running this from the train depot. Sometimes
they would be afraid to turn down applications because they
live in small towns and they didn't want to make enemies,
you know, and maybe like the deputy is a real pill,
(33:58):
a real pos but has a lot of pool in town,
so you don't want to make the deputy angry.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Guys, we still today hear so many horror stories about
kids falling into abusive situations through the foster care system
that is, you know, overseen and you know, organized by
the government again because of understaffing, because of there's just
not enough case workers to properly vet this stuff and
(34:28):
to properly you know, check in. And you know, I
haven't heard stories as this heartbreaking of recent years, maybe
in the last ten years, but I remember in the
nineties there were cases of foster kids getting beaten to death, you.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Know, like in the in the nineties.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
And again I'm not saying that hasn't happened, since I'm
sure it has. I just remember a few I can't
quite recall the exact details. But when I was in college,
and like I believe it was like a sociology class,
we studied some cases where foster children were you know,
there there was abuse that was noted and practically ignored.
(35:02):
So I think this program is well ahead of its time.
And I think this investigation by the person you're talking about,
Ben Hastings hornell Hart indicated as much that this ultimately,
you know, for a program of this size and scale,
was doing good work.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, and let's not forget that many of those children
who were shipped off, they would have had very hard, brutal,
and short lives. I've had experience with some of this stuff,
so I don't know about you guys probably take it
at an intensely personal level. We also know we have
to be careful not to romanticize this. That's one of
(35:41):
the big takeaways from this episode, because there have been
all these books written talking about how successful the orphan
trained placements were. There have been these documentaries lauding this
American idea, even though brace got it from an earlier
German program. There's a lot of orphan trained nostalgia out there.
(36:03):
To be frank and I would say, the Box Car Kids, it's.
Speaker 5 (36:07):
Literally just googled, Ben, I've got it.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Are you looking at my screen? Wow?
Speaker 3 (36:11):
I literally The Box Card Children, the series of Young Adults.
I guess it was, you know, very popular when we
were kids. You know, it was the kind of thing
you find in your local library shelf or in your
English classroom. Right, it wasn't this was more it wasn't
it more about like kind of trained kids.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It wasn't this program specifically, No, no, I think it.
I think it is thematically descended from it. But if
I recall The Box Card Children, they're like solving mysteries.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Yeah, yeah, each book was sort of a Monster of
the Week book or like, yeah, the.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Very Hardy Boys Nancy Drew kind of vibes.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
The Boxcar Children idea is perhaps a symptom of this romanticization,
because you'll see these kind of manipulative before and after pictures,
the way you might see memes of dogs getting adopted, right,
or discover it's like before, here's this desperate kid selling
(37:10):
loose matches or cigarettes one at a time on some
brutal street corner in New York. And now here they
are in brand new coveralls, right, happy their own course, shraps.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
There's a really cool New Yorker article I just found
that I want to dig into, called The Box Car
Children and the Spirit of Capitalism. And just a quick
quote from it, it says, the nineteen twenty four narrator allows
the children some interiority and a few memories along with
that upsetting backstory. The nineteen forty two version does away
with all of this orphaned and alone, say for each other.
The kids seldom discuss their parents or their past. So
(37:46):
there's two kind of versions of this story, And the
original one was that kind of romanticization, and then the
forties one, I think was a little bit more of
the kind of downtrodden, sort of like darker version.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I think, I think I'm getting there.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
I feel you, yeah, because there is that dichotomy. Orphan
trains ran during a period of American history when so
many see changes occurred, like a lot of stuff happened
between the eighteen forties and the nineteen twenties right or
the nineteen thirties. So it gets associated, maybe in the
(38:23):
modern zeitgeist with somehow causing changes in laws about children
and child labor and the foster care system, but it
doesn't the literature doesn't support that. What seems to be
the case is that the orphan training movement and this
(38:44):
auctioning of children, it wasn't the driving force for modern
adoption laws. Instead, a lot of those reforms to things
like foster care practice, child welfare, child labor it came
about in a way to specifically oppose orphan train practices.
One of the things we have to leave you with here, folks,
(39:07):
is that it is entirely possible, depending on where you
are from, that this may affect your own ancestry because
think about this. You know, a kid gets auctioned off
when they're seven years old, they get raised in a
good family in insert here in Michigan, and then they
(39:27):
go a kids you know, in their neck of the woods,
and that kid has a kid, and that kid is you.
And you may not really know the entirety of your
personal truth and your providence, so you can go to
fantastic resources like the National Orphan Train Complex out in Concordia,
(39:47):
Kansas to learn more. It's just nuts, man. The US
really did ship and in some cases of duct children
by rail, and they did it because it was better
than the current situation. That's the kicker to me, Man,
I can understand evil, but well intentioned, imperfect stuff is
(40:07):
so much more complicated one.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
And and again, Ben, I want to just thank you
for the thought that you put into, you know, getting
these resources together, and sort of I do think we've
you and and all of us have done a good
job of sort of balancing between the intention.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
And the ultimate outcome.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
And you know, all the things in between without being
a little too doom and gloom about it, but also
without romanticizing or sort of like painting too rosy a picture,
because there was good, there was bad, and there was
a lot in between. But I would argue that that
that investigation does seem to indicate that this was largely
a success.
Speaker 5 (40:46):
Overall good, right I think, I think so.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I don't know, let us know what you think, ridiculous historians,
if anyone has any more background with this or has
you know, done deeper research into this. This very interesting
period because you know, we take for granted the social
services that we do have that are all still very
grossly underfunded and understaffed, but at least they exist. This
(41:10):
was a time where none of that stuff was even around,
and somebody had to just take the reins and figure
out some creative solution, which oftentimes required a need to
be filled. Otherwise there's not going to be any money,
it's not going to be any interest in it. So
while this idea of staffing farms with these children that
have been neglected does on the surface feel a little
(41:34):
potentially problematic, I think it's a little less problematic than
leaving them to their own devices. In the cruel, brutal
streets of New York City of the time, which would
have been unrecognizable. You know, as much as New York
still has a unhoused problem today, you don't really see
children wandering around, you know, on their own without any
(41:56):
supervision or opportunity.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
And we say that as fans New York do check
out the Tenement Museum. Thanks for tuning in Ridiculous Historians.
Thanks as always to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Alex Williams, thank you as well. He's the guy who
composed this track. Big, big thanks to our own little
orphan Annie, Jonathan Strickland ak the Quist.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
And our own Daddy Warbucks A J. Bahamas Jacobs. I
guess although I don't know, Jonathan's a little more what's
the word here suited their lack thereof to be Daddy Warbucks.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
I don't know. You let us know what you think.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Thanks as well to Christopher Osiotis, he's Jeffcoat here in spirit.
Thanks for our pals Aaron and Elizabeth over at Ridiculous
Crime and mister Brown, Thanks to you.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
To you as well, Ben, Thanks for again on the
excellent work on this research.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Breath We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:28):
Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
Please pardon the slightly batman esque tone of my voice
here on the other side of some whether a big
shout out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
For a second time, the Batman of podcasting.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Thanks, you're an old brown. I'm Ben Bolan peak behind
the curtain here. We had some we had some plot twist,
some shyamalan esque shenanigans. This is our second time. I'm
starting a story that we think is endlessly fascinating. And Noel,
before things went a little pair of shaped, you were
(01:08):
about to blow everybody's mind with a story about Roco's
The Modern Life.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
I don't remember how it came up, because it doesn't
matter at this point. But did you guys know that Rocco,
I believe he's a wallaby on the nineteen nineties Nickelodeon
children's cartoon was in fact a phone sex operator.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
I did not, but I know that now because it's
the second time we've done this intro.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
But also it's a gig economy.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, you know the proof is in the cartoon Pudding.
If you look at the evening, I mean I remember now.
It's like remembering a dream or something. But it does
play into the plot of the show. But even just
in the opening titles of the cartoon, you can see
Roco in his job as a specialty phone operator, and
on the wall behind it it says hotline.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And there's a sign on the wall in his.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Little cubicle says remember, be hot, be naughty, be courteous. Yeah,
and you can find it online. There's memes about it,
but there's subtitles of what he's says. Oh baby, oh baby,
oh baby. I just yeah, they really snug a lot
of pretty raunchy stuff back in those days. Ren and
(02:17):
Stimpy being one of the primary offenders.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Well, I would say, you know, rewatch some bugs Bunny
cartoons as well. Noel, what about today's episode brought to
mind phone sex operation, Rocko's modern life.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
Absolutely nothing, I would almost I'm trying to think of
a clever tie in, but I don't know. It just
popped into my nogg and, as things tend to do.
But we are talking about a subject that has some
heaviness to it potentially, and Ben, you did the deep
dive on this research, and I think you did a
fantastic job in emphasizing the ridiculousness and maybe not downplaying,
(02:57):
but some of the heaviness. We're certainly not gonna be
in trigger warning territory today, But we are talking about
children and orphans in particular, and the kind of epidemic
of you know, children that didn't have parents and it
didn't have a place to live back in the olden times,
(03:19):
back in the eighteen fifties into the early nineteen hundreds,
and what sounds like a WTF solution, what if we
just loaded them all onto trains and bust them out?
Might initially hit you in the way that you hear
about cities busting out unhoused people when a big event
comes through, which is a pretty heartless.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Way, yeah, of dealing with the problem. But this is
not that at all.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
No.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Yeah, according to one famously precocious musical redhead, being an
orphan is a hard knock life. Now, you know, pick
your poison. In a upcoming episode of Stuff they Don't
want you to know, we're discussing the dark sides of
the adoption industry, and as you said up NOL during
(04:15):
the course of this research, we came across a disturbing
and very true tale of ridiculous history.
Speaker 5 (04:21):
This is a factual.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Event, folks, not an historical piece of apocrypha or a
legend or a myth. Once upon a time, the United
States government literally stole orphans and auctioned them from train stops,
from train depots across.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
The United States.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And I love that you're pointing out the clear comparison
there between the idea of cities bussing out quote unquote undesirables.
Speaker 5 (04:51):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
We saw this in Atlanta when the Olympics visited. We
see this in we talked about several years ago, the
state of Hawaii once upon a time had a plan
to address their homeless population by shipping them off to
purpose built islands where they would be given a minimum
of shelter and food, of course a one way ticket
(05:14):
to the mainland exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
And we're seeing it right now with the Olympic Games
happening in Paris. They're cleaning up the sand so that
they can do their their swim the triathlon type things
in there. I'm not a sport person, but you.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Get the idea.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
There was a big spectacle that was made with I
believe the mayor swimming in a wetsuit in the typically
quite polluted San River, showing that it's safe for all
the Olympians to do their events there. But the city
of Paris is in fact busting out the unhoused population,
(05:48):
and it's pretty callous move.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
And you know, Ben, you pointed.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Out this idea of the auctioning of it, which of
course brings to mind all kinds of horrific historical foot
notes landmarks throughout this country and beyond. But there is
a sort of not silver lining exactly. But their heart
was in the right place aspects to this story, or
at least the person who kind of came up with
the concept before it was derailed. Let's just say not
(06:17):
to use a train pun, but also you know, to
use it nice.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
The Orphan Train movement was what we will call a
supervised welfare program, and the idea was you would transport children,
originally from New York but later from other crowded eastern
cities of the US, and you would take these kids
and via rail you would take them to foster homes,
largely in rural areas of the Midwest Midwestern United States.
(06:44):
These orphan trains, as we mentioned, operated between eighteen fifty
four and nineteen twenty nine, and look, like we just said, folks,
you can tell we're a little baffled by it when
you first hear this story, especially as we record in
July twenty two, twenty four. So many news stories feature
lurid reports of human trafficking, and this might sound like
(07:06):
another one of those. But to that earlier point, we
have to understand the context in which this emerged. New
York City in the eighteen fifties was gross. It's this
is not a political point, it's not a you know,
it's not a holier than now point. It just kind
of sucked for the majority of people. There was this
(07:27):
huge influx of new immigrants, you know, picture of the
classic Ellis Island moment they're crowded into the city. Add
to that numerous financial panics and depression creating disastrous unemployment.
This was pre the Great Depression, but things were still
going bad. And then affordable housing.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
Not really a thing, not really a.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Thing well, and certainly the kinds of public services that
you know, even today still struggle to properly deal with
these type of problems. You know, on a on an
infrastructural I guess level just didn't even exist. You know,
public programs like proper you know, shelters and and food programs,
(08:12):
food assistance programs. It was very much every man, woman,
and yes, child for themselves situation.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
And you really think about the timeline wise. The assistance
program in New York City right now is called Tammany Hall.
So there's that whole giant bag of badgers, corruption, awful
stuff there. It's like, you know, the flaunting your wealth
at this point in time with having your own toilet.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, right, look upon my look upon my poops. He
mighty and despair.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, and if I haven't gotten to go, And I
think this is something we should maybe all organized. But
the Tenement Museum in New York City really speaks to
this period.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And in a very powerful way.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
You know, these tenements were the closest thing to I
guess public housing that exists did, but they were slums.
They were basically for profits, and oftentimes you would be
sharing a toilet or an outhouse type situation with at
times hundreds of other people. So it was bad, smelly,
inhumane times.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, not to mention structurally unsound. So tenement fires, disease
spread at a cartoonish rate. Tens of thousands of children
due to these circumstances ended up on the street. We're
talking very young children. We're talking about the kind of
children that if you saw them in your local neighborhood today,
(09:37):
you would be immediately concerned and wonder where their parents were.
Because there was no social safety net, no welfare or
institutionalized social services. I want to say, outside a rich philanthropists,
these kids were forced to roam the streets in search
of money, food, and shelter, and each of these children
(10:00):
was pray for disease and crime. This is where we
see those old story tropes of selling matches or rags
or junk or newspapers. Just to survive, they had to
form gangs to prevent themselves from being abused in unspeakable ways,
and the police were not helping. The police were and look,
(10:22):
we know some folks in NYPD today, this is not
those folks. The eighteen hundred's police were often arresting children
that might be as young as five years old and
locking them up for extended periods of time in crowded
jails with adult criminals. And look, we said, we're Family show.
(10:44):
We're not gonna spend a lot of time on the
details of what happened to so many of these kids,
but we will say pretty much every horrific thing you
can imagine did in fact occur. This is not hyperbole.
Tens of thousands of kids and luckily we're not there. No,
we have a hero or someone who is nobly intentioned
(11:06):
who sees this.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (11:08):
And if you want like a visual for this era,
the UK version would probably be Oliver Twists, you know,
I mean, that's older, but it is that type of
vibe with these street gangs, and oftentimes street gangs that
are run by very predatory adults, you know, who are
like teaching these kids to pickpocket and using them as tools,
(11:30):
you know, for their particular criminal enterprise. An American example
would be Newsy's if I believe, that takes place around
eighteen ninety nine, so kind of right in the midst
of this the story for its own episode, I believe
because there was you know, with William Randolph Hurst and
his newspaper organizations. This did create low paying yet there
(11:52):
were opportunities, you know, for some of these kids, but
they were also being used and abused in different ways,
you know, by that type of organization. But think of
the term like street waifs, you know, the little urchin,
you know, stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, they called them in this time in New York,
they would call these kids street arabs because they were
known to be wandering about. And look, if you've ever
spent time in New York City, you know that the
seasons can be rough. So some of these kids were
freezing to death as well. In eighteen fifty three, there's
(12:31):
this young minister, his name Charles Loring Brace, and he
gets obsessed with these kids, and he's looking around and
he's saying, isn't this the greatest country on the planet.
Isn't this one of the best cities in one of
the greatest countries? Why is this happening? And he comes
from a pretty well heeled Connecticut family. He's in New
(12:52):
York as a seminary student, and he is not prepared
for this level of depravity in dystopia. So he says
there's only one way to help what he called children
of unhappy fortune. He said, the great duty is to
get utterly out of their surroundings and to send them
away to kind Christian homes in the country because again,
(13:14):
you know, he's a seminary student, so he's not sending
them to the I guess the burgeoning atheist population of
agricultural Minnesota.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Well, you know.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
And the problem too is not only are these kids
just left to their own devices without any assistance you know,
from the government or from any you know, people that
are offering a helping hand. They're basically growing up in
a situation that is just going to reinforce the negative
parts of this situation and put them on a path
(13:45):
to a life of crime because that's all they know,
and no one was helping them, and there becomes this
resentment and this you know, like why should I follow
the law if the law isn't helping me, you know.
And that's a very understandable perspective, as as the perspective
of brace the idea of if we remove them from
this element and put them outside of that, will that
(14:08):
not ultimately be better for them, you know, in long
term just in terms of their like experience, their upbringing,
you know, what lessons they might learn and what kinds
of adults they might become.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Yeah, that's well put Noel, and I really appreciate you
saying that because Brace believed the city and these environments,
these cycles of abuse and addiction and horror, they were
inappropriate for kids. Again, it's heartbreaking to imagine a five
year old stuck on the streets, homeless. And you know,
(14:41):
here in the United States you might not see it
as often, but if you've traveled, especially outside of the
developed world, these kind of horrors are still a reality.
So it's tough for us to disagree with what Brace
is saying, and we can't blame him for taking a stand.
He was trying to figure out us a lou right,
because the typical charity stuff wasn't working. What would happen
(15:05):
here is that the elite, whether that's religious elite or
whether that's socio political elite of very corrupt New York
at the time, they would have like a charity ball,
or they'd have a benefit and they give all the
kids in the neighborhood shoes on Christmas presence.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
Oh, it's.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
More so than things that would actually benefit them long term.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Right, It's more about the people doing this, it's more
about themselves than it is about these innocents. And so
Grace was trying to figure out an innovative solution to this.
So he figured he landed on something quite clever. He said,
there's another social issue here. There's another problem that these
(15:52):
elite New Yorkers don't understand, which is out in the
rest of America, which is largely agricultural. At this time,
our industries, our farming industries, are expanding at an unprecedented pace,
and they need labor.
Speaker 5 (16:07):
And he said, you know.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
What, a lot of families also can't have kids for
one reason or another. So I bet you that these
upstanding assaults of the earth families will welcome homeless children.
They'll take them into their homes, they'll treat them as
if they are their own kid. Pause for a second. Yes,
in twenty four we know it sounds like it sounds
(16:29):
like child labor, right, a little bit.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
It does.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
But also we do know that family farms very much
a thing, and it is a trade, and it is something.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
That you know, is a way of learning how.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
To contribute to an economy and all of that, and
all of these things. A lot of these these businesses
were family runs, so it would make sense that, you know,
their kids would be working on the farm. And it's
not like they were abused. I mean, certainly there was abuse,
let's not. Can't get it twisted, But in general, just
because you're doing a hard day's work and you're getting
(17:11):
a nice meal and a place to stay, you know,
that would be the way that the actual children of
many of these farm families would have been treated as well.
So the best of them would have been approaching it
with that same attitude.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Absolutely, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
And most people are inherently good, right if they are
given the opportunity to be so. Brief route, the best
of all asylums for the outcast child is the farmer's home.
And his sort of truism for this was the idea
that quote, immigration is a cure for pouperism, the idea
(17:45):
being that if you ship these kids away, then you
will fix some of those deep intergenerational problems we're talking about.
And the point still stands today. You know, farmers did
and do need every set of hands they can find.
And he said, look, the problems here in New York
are things like living space and access to food, and
(18:07):
the Midwest has a lot of that already, So maybe
we can put the children in a position where they
will benefit Society as well as benefit themselves. And with
all this in mind, in eighteen fifty three he founds
an organization called the Children's Aid Society, and their idea
is to put his wild notion into action. They're going
(18:30):
to arrange the trips. The Children's Aid Society, by the way,
had a lot of wealthy elites behind it. So these
wealthy folks are going to raise all the money through
the charity balls and the fundraisers to pay for everything.
They're going to get the paperwork they needed to relocate
these children. And we'll get into where that gets sticky,
(18:51):
but for right now, I guess to be completely fair,
we should say the CIS was not just a child
traffic gain operation. They also made trade schools. They built
share houses we would call them in Australia, you know,
like they built slightly better than tenement ten of group
homes for kids. And they were also trying to teach
(19:13):
kids how to read and to go to school and
so on and so on.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Well, yeah, Max, I mean, with your you know, research
and expertise in the labor movement, do you have you
run across these types of stories.
Speaker 4 (19:26):
I have not really, but like I don't know obviously
putting a bunch of children on a train and shiving
them across the country not great, but like we're really
going into the story, just Machavelli in the side kicking
in and me like, it's a lot better than what
they had. Then it's like, not a great solution, but
it's a better solution.
Speaker 5 (19:45):
It's a solution.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
You're giving them something other than nothing.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
I like the way you put it, Ben, or at
least the way you kind of characterize bracist perspective as
that being in the city was just grossly inappropriate, you
know for what a child needs, which is you know,
care and oversight and a a role model perhaps, And
you know, the idea of this steadfast working American farm
(20:13):
family at its best really is that thing and provides
those things. So I really do see the like positive
outlook version of this idea, but as we know, things
can spiral in negative ways when too many cooks get
in the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah, and then as now, some of the coolest, most
sincere people in the United States come from small towns.
Speaker 5 (20:43):
They're rural. You know, they're upfront with you.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
They have new need for guile or subterfuge. So this
was he was kind of romanticizing the idea of these
farming communities that he himself often had never visited. The
concepts sold very well in New York. The first orphan train,
as they would come to be called, was sent out
by the Children's Aid Society or CIS in eighteen fifty four.
(21:10):
To your early point, Max, they did have chapper. They
had like one or two chaperones adults, kind of the
way you have to have an adult on a long
field trip. So this group, the first ones on the train,
they're forty six kids. They have a wide age range.
We're talking seven years old to fifteen years old. And
(21:30):
they're sent to a place in Michigan. Doa gick do
agiac the wag yak, the wag yak mission get in
the nose between Midwest.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
It is support here pronunciation on the palm, so Michigan.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
Max is holding up the.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Mitten hand of Michigan and pointing toward If you hold
it palm to you, it's a it's a in the
lower right, by the way.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Some really great resources if you're interested in the visual
another like a documentary, not a not a musical depiction
of this. The American Experience series on PBS has a
fantastic documentary segment on the orphan trains, and there's a
great write up that Ben and I believe you referred
to for this research brief, as well as a fabulous
(22:25):
piece by Aaron Blakemore Orphan trains brought homeless NYC children
to work on farms out west on history dot com.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Yeah, and thank you for citing those. Let's also give
a big shout out to Orphan Train deepot dot org,
which is one of the best scholarly resources to learn
more about this. There are also several specific books regarding
this because it affected a lot of people. Now back
to our first orphan train. Before this trip, something like
(22:54):
this did exist. There were orphanages in New York that
have been sending individi jewel kids like your orphan Annies
per Se, or small groups of children to other foster
homes within the larger state of New York, but none
of them ever sent a group this large, nor they
sent a group this far away. It was a heck
(23:15):
of a gamble because they were literally playing with children's lives,
but it paid off. By the end of just one week,
all forty six children had found homes. This was an
unspeakable success, in Brace's opinion, and it began the orphan
train movement. However, you do have to note they were
(23:37):
auctioning the kids woolf Yeah, that's a wolf for me dog.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
It's a wolf for me to dog.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
They did, however, view this as a smashing success. So
the CIS used this as an opportunity to expand their program.
It was, I guess a term developed in the parlance
of the time called place out, which I guess it
makes sense to the idea it's.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Better than sell a child.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
But yes, but even now, the idea of finding placement
for even like an adopted child, you know, that's that's
still a term that is used in this type of
circle today.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, that's a really great point there. And again there
were there were groups of children that were paired out
with adult chaperones, and these chaperones would ride with these
kids on the train from New York to these various
rural destinations. Before the end of this program, over one
hundred thousand children were sent via these orphan trains to
(24:39):
new homes and farm country. And other organizations picked.
Speaker 5 (24:44):
Up on this.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
They said, look, this system works, We're going to adopt it.
Speaker 5 (24:48):
We're we're not.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
We're going to follow the lead of the CS. So
other notable child's care and philanthropic organizations did the same.
Some of them organize their own groups, you know, just
sending on different trains. Others would dare I say, farm
out their supply of children to the CS, and they
would add them onto the next round. Ultimately, more than
(25:13):
thirty orphanages in New York City have participated in these
placing out programs. A few of the notables New York
Foundling Hospital. I love the word Foundling. It's done right,
but it's an interesting word. New York Juvenile Asylum, and
the Female Guardian Society. Folks, You'll notice we keep pointing
(25:35):
out that this ended in nineteen twenty nine. So right now,
if you have a kid who needs a home in
New York City, they're not going to be shipped off
on a train to you know, Davenport, Iowa or something.
And that's because the orphan train was, as I think
(25:55):
we've established, well intentioned, but as we foreshadowed, it was
far from perfect.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Not all of these kids were orphans.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Yeah, I mean, the Children's Aid Society being the largest
and kind of og organization in this program or in
this type of program, they received the brunt of of,
you know, kind of criticism around this method, you know,
of kind of moving moving kids out into the sticks
(26:26):
for the purposes of placing them in farm homes and
family farms. A lot of the people that were the
loudest kind of voices were from other sort of maybe
even competing you know, philanthropic organizations or communities, and they
had some very understandable critiques of some issues that maybe
(26:47):
were not the intention of this, but things that kind
of were byproducts, I guess, or you know, children who
kind of fell between the cracks, because as you mentioned, Ben,
some of these kids were not orphans at all. They
were essentially the children of immigrants who had not been
(27:07):
assimilated into American culture, perhaps did not speak the language.
And I wouldn't go so far as to say we're
easily taken advantage of, but perhaps we're just so down
on their luck that there just wasn't good communication going on,
and maybe the kids were for all into purposes seemed
as though they didn't have parents because they were kind
of out on their own, trying to hustle up a living,
(27:28):
you know, to help their family, but then they were
just sort of lumped in to this program.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Yeah, it's heartbreaking because and I hate to use the
same word twice there, but we have to realize this
occurs in other parts of the world today. It definitely
occurred in the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution. There
are also there are cases of families this happened in
the US Greek Depression as well, wherein the parents literally
(27:54):
cannot afford to take care of their children and so
they're desperate. Hope is that by consigning them to a
program like this, or by gifting them, for lack of
a better word, to another socioeconomic situation, they're giving that
kid a chance at life the kid would not otherwise have.
(28:14):
But yeah, to your point, less than half of the
children who rode these trains were actual facts orphans shout
out to Laura and Vogelbaum. As ever, with actual facts,
as many as one out of four these kids had
two living parents and some of the criticism, I don't know.
(28:37):
One of the criticisms that really bothers me still is
there were people in some of the rural communities who
would say, you're shipping us criminal foreign agitators.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
You know what I mean. Or this kid is.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Sickly or disabled, you gave us a defective kid.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Well, it just reminds me.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
I'm not to get political about it or anything, but
some of the rhetoric around immigration now, the idea that
you're sending murderers and rapists and drugs brailers over the border,
it's it's rhetoric that is based in xenophobia and other
ring and it is It's not cool. And while there
certainly may be, it's even worse when you're talking about kids,
(29:18):
because yeah, you're you're they're in We talked about it.
They're in the situation where maybe their only lot in
life is to be in these gangs, or is to
you know, pickpocket or or do petty crimes. But their children,
you can't really call them criminals, vagabonds or waifs or
whatever without that just having like a real, a real
(29:38):
nasty hyperbolics thing to it.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Yeah, I could tell this eight year old is a
papist operative.
Speaker 5 (29:44):
I see it. It is Catholic eyes.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, there were there were kids who read like you said,
whose parents were illiterate or did not speak English, were
not in the best of circumstances. But we're still making
a good home for their child, and their child was abducted,
kidnapped from them. Some kids were born out of wedlock,
which was a very big deal. Back then there was
not always the right focus on paperwork. So you could
(30:11):
argue as well that some of these kids ended up
what we would call stateless. They didn't have ideas, they
didn't have any you know, anything like a birth certificate,
et cetera.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
I mean, today, so many of these social programs are
woefully behind in terms of their ability to like digitize
records and to have you know, some sort of network,
you know, where these things are actually very effectively stored
and communicated. And it's just we know that there's just
a lack of social service workers, you know, because it's
(30:45):
a low paying job and you have to just really
be passionate about it. Can you imagine, guys, like what
it would have been like back in these days where
it was all on paper. I talk about losing the
paper work or things falling through the cracks when you
didn't have enough people feeling it out in the first place,
or barely even any of these programs to speak of,
you know. So I still do stand by this was
(31:07):
an effort to try to create some infrastructure to do
some good. But within that because of the lack of
oversight by actual government, you know, entities that.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
Still struggle to keep an eye on this stuff. Today,
bad things happened and.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
To jump in to double down on what you said, Noel,
and bring back a Tammany hall. The people filling whatever
jobs like that. There were definitely like you know, favoritism
jobs like it was your guy, it was it was
your cousin who showed up once a month and got
paid for all the time. So it was it was
a terrible time to greet your points. It's like, this
is at least doing something.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, but working within a system that is broken will
inevitably emulate some of the flaws of that system. It's
the same issue you run into with artificial intelligence quote
unquote today. In some cases, these children were being used
(32:09):
as straight up slaves. In some cases they were being
abused by bad faith actors who picked them up at
the auction. Another criticism is that there was no follow up.
There was no organized system to check in on the kids,
you know, a month or six months or a year later,
to see how they were doing. Also, there was a
(32:32):
big religious Not for nothing was I making that Catholic joke.
There was a big religious concern about the idea they
would take a kid from their birth family and put
them with a foster family that forced a different religion
upon them. And people investigated these claims. Again, can't say
enough about Orphan Traindepot dot org. We're getting a lot
(32:56):
of this information from People started to nose around and
look into this. In particular, in eighteen eighty four, there
was a childcare activist named Hastings Hornell Hart who looked
into the results of orphan training placements in Minnesota specifically,
and he said, you know what, most of the placements
(33:17):
ended up well, they ended up working. This brace's wild
idea is a good thing. However, there were cases that
ended badly, and when abuse occurred and the CIS found
out about it, they did something.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
But he said.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
The primary issue was actually the end receivers, the local
committees that were running this from the train depot. Sometimes
they would be afraid to turn down applications because they
live in small towns and they didn't want to make enemies,
you know, and maybe like the deputy is a real pill,
(33:58):
a real pos but has a lot of pool in town,
so you don't want to make the deputy angry.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
Guys, we still today hear so many horror stories about
kids falling into abusive situations through the foster care system
that is, you know, overseen and you know, organized by
the government again because of understaffing, because of there's just
not enough case workers to properly vet this stuff and
(34:28):
to properly you know, check in. And you know, I
haven't heard stories as this heartbreaking of recent years, maybe
in the last ten years, but I remember in the
nineties there were cases of foster kids getting beaten to death, you.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Know, like in the in the nineties.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
And again I'm not saying that hasn't happened, since I'm
sure it has. I just remember a few I can't
quite recall the exact details. But when I was in college,
and like I believe it was like a sociology class,
we studied some cases where foster children were you know,
there there was abuse that was noted and practically ignored.
(35:02):
So I think this program is well ahead of its time.
And I think this investigation by the person you're talking about,
Ben Hastings hornell Hart indicated as much that this ultimately,
you know, for a program of this size and scale,
was doing good work.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
Yeah, and let's not forget that many of those children
who were shipped off, they would have had very hard, brutal,
and short lives. I've had experience with some of this stuff,
so I don't know about you guys probably take it
at an intensely personal level. We also know we have
to be careful not to romanticize this. That's one of
(35:41):
the big takeaways from this episode, because there have been
all these books written talking about how successful the orphan
trained placements were. There have been these documentaries lauding this
American idea, even though brace got it from an earlier
German program. There's a lot of orphan trained nostalgia out there.
(36:03):
To be frank and I would say, the Box Car Kids, it's.
Speaker 5 (36:07):
Literally just googled, Ben, I've got it.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Are you looking at my screen? Wow?
Speaker 3 (36:11):
I literally The Box Card Children, the series of Young Adults.
I guess it was, you know, very popular when we
were kids. You know, it was the kind of thing
you find in your local library shelf or in your
English classroom. Right, it wasn't this was more it wasn't
it more about like kind of trained kids.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It wasn't this program specifically, No, no, I think it.
I think it is thematically descended from it. But if
I recall The Box Card Children, they're like solving mysteries.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Yeah, yeah, each book was sort of a Monster of
the Week book or like, yeah, the.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
Very Hardy Boys Nancy Drew kind of vibes.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
The Boxcar Children idea is perhaps a symptom of this romanticization,
because you'll see these kind of manipulative before and after pictures,
the way you might see memes of dogs getting adopted, right,
or discover it's like before, here's this desperate kid selling
(37:10):
loose matches or cigarettes one at a time on some
brutal street corner in New York. And now here they
are in brand new coveralls, right, happy their own course, shraps.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
Right.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
There's a really cool New Yorker article I just found
that I want to dig into, called The Box Car
Children and the Spirit of Capitalism. And just a quick
quote from it, it says, the nineteen twenty four narrator allows
the children some interiority and a few memories along with
that upsetting backstory. The nineteen forty two version does away
with all of this orphaned and alone, say for each other.
The kids seldom discuss their parents or their past. So
(37:46):
there's two kind of versions of this story, And the
original one was that kind of romanticization, and then the
forties one, I think was a little bit more of
the kind of downtrodden, sort of like darker version.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
I think, I think I'm getting there.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
I feel you, yeah, because there is that dichotomy. Orphan
trains ran during a period of American history when so
many see changes occurred, like a lot of stuff happened
between the eighteen forties and the nineteen twenties right or
the nineteen thirties. So it gets associated, maybe in the
(38:23):
modern zeitgeist with somehow causing changes in laws about children
and child labor and the foster care system, but it
doesn't the literature doesn't support that. What seems to be
the case is that the orphan training movement and this
(38:44):
auctioning of children, it wasn't the driving force for modern
adoption laws. Instead, a lot of those reforms to things
like foster care practice, child welfare, child labor it came
about in a way to specifically oppose orphan train practices.
One of the things we have to leave you with here, folks,
(39:07):
is that it is entirely possible, depending on where you
are from, that this may affect your own ancestry because
think about this. You know, a kid gets auctioned off
when they're seven years old, they get raised in a
good family in insert here in Michigan, and then they
(39:27):
go a kids you know, in their neck of the woods,
and that kid has a kid, and that kid is you.
And you may not really know the entirety of your
personal truth and your providence, so you can go to
fantastic resources like the National Orphan Train Complex out in Concordia,
(39:47):
Kansas to learn more. It's just nuts, man. The US
really did ship and in some cases of duct children
by rail, and they did it because it was better
than the current situation. That's the kicker to me, Man,
I can understand evil, but well intentioned, imperfect stuff is
(40:07):
so much more complicated one.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
And and again, Ben, I want to just thank you
for the thought that you put into, you know, getting
these resources together, and sort of I do think we've
you and and all of us have done a good
job of sort of balancing between the intention.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
And the ultimate outcome.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
And you know, all the things in between without being
a little too doom and gloom about it, but also
without romanticizing or sort of like painting too rosy a picture,
because there was good, there was bad, and there was
a lot in between. But I would argue that that
that investigation does seem to indicate that this was largely
a success.
Speaker 5 (40:46):
Overall good, right I think, I think so.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
I don't know, let us know what you think, ridiculous historians,
if anyone has any more background with this or has
you know, done deeper research into this. This very interesting
period because you know, we take for granted the social
services that we do have that are all still very
grossly underfunded and understaffed, but at least they exist. This
(41:10):
was a time where none of that stuff was even around,
and somebody had to just take the reins and figure
out some creative solution, which oftentimes required a need to
be filled. Otherwise there's not going to be any money,
it's not going to be any interest in it. So
while this idea of staffing farms with these children that
have been neglected does on the surface feel a little
(41:34):
potentially problematic, I think it's a little less problematic than
leaving them to their own devices. In the cruel, brutal
streets of New York City of the time, which would
have been unrecognizable. You know, as much as New York
still has a unhoused problem today, you don't really see
children wandering around, you know, on their own without any
(41:56):
supervision or opportunity.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
And we say that as fans New York do check
out the Tenement Museum. Thanks for tuning in Ridiculous Historians.
Thanks as always to our super producer mister Max Williams.
Alex Williams, thank you as well. He's the guy who
composed this track. Big, big thanks to our own little
orphan Annie, Jonathan Strickland ak the Quist.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
And our own Daddy Warbucks A J. Bahamas Jacobs. I
guess although I don't know, Jonathan's a little more what's
the word here suited their lack thereof to be Daddy Warbucks.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
I don't know. You let us know what you think.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Thanks as well to Christopher Osiotis, he's Jeffcoat here in spirit.
Thanks for our pals Aaron and Elizabeth over at Ridiculous
Crime and mister Brown, Thanks to you.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
To you as well, Ben, Thanks for again on the
excellent work on this research.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Breath We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.