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The Orphan Train: That Time the US Auctioned Children Via Rail · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
0:28
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
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Speaker 1: Please pardon the slightly batman esque tone of my voice
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Speaker 1: here on the other side of some whether a big
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Speaker 1: shout out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
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Speaker 2: For a second time, the Batman of podcasting.
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Speaker 1: Thanks, you're an old brown. I'm Ben Bolan peak behind
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Speaker 1: the curtain here. We had some we had some plot twist,
0:55
Speaker 1: some shyamalan esque shenanigans. This is our second time. I'm
1:00
Speaker 1: starting a story that we think is endlessly fascinating. And Noel,
1:05
Speaker 1: before things went a little pair of shaped, you were
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Speaker 1: about to blow everybody's mind with a story about Roco's
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Speaker 1: The Modern Life.
1:13
Speaker 3: I don't remember how it came up, because it doesn't
1:14
Speaker 3: matter at this point. But did you guys know that Rocco,
1:18
Speaker 3: I believe he's a wallaby on the nineteen nineties Nickelodeon
1:22
Speaker 3: children's cartoon was in fact a phone sex operator.
1:27
Speaker 4: I did not, but I know that now because it's
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Speaker 4: the second time we've done this intro.
1:31
Speaker 5: But also it's a gig economy.
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Speaker 3: Well, you know the proof is in the cartoon Pudding.
1:37
Speaker 3: If you look at the evening, I mean I remember now.
1:40
Speaker 3: It's like remembering a dream or something. But it does
1:43
Speaker 3: play into the plot of the show. But even just
1:44
Speaker 3: in the opening titles of the cartoon, you can see
1:47
Speaker 3: Roco in his job as a specialty phone operator, and
1:51
Speaker 3: on the wall behind it it says hotline.
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Speaker 2: And there's a sign on the wall in his.
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Speaker 3: Little cubicle says remember, be hot, be naughty, be courteous. Yeah,
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Speaker 3: and you can find it online. There's memes about it,
2:06
Speaker 3: but there's subtitles of what he's says. Oh baby, oh baby,
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Speaker 3: oh baby. I just yeah, they really snug a lot
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Speaker 3: of pretty raunchy stuff back in those days. Ren and
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Speaker 3: Stimpy being one of the primary offenders.
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Speaker 1: Well, I would say, you know, rewatch some bugs Bunny
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Speaker 1: cartoons as well. Noel, what about today's episode brought to
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Speaker 1: mind phone sex operation, Rocko's modern life.
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Speaker 3: Absolutely nothing, I would almost I'm trying to think of
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Speaker 3: a clever tie in, but I don't know. It just
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Speaker 3: popped into my nogg and, as things tend to do.
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Speaker 3: But we are talking about a subject that has some
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Speaker 3: heaviness to it potentially, and Ben, you did the deep
2:49
Speaker 3: dive on this research, and I think you did a
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Speaker 3: fantastic job in emphasizing the ridiculousness and maybe not downplaying,
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Speaker 3: but some of the heaviness. We're certainly not gonna be
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Speaker 3: in trigger warning territory today, But we are talking about
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Speaker 3: children and orphans in particular, and the kind of epidemic
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Speaker 3: of you know, children that didn't have parents and it
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Speaker 3: didn't have a place to live back in the olden times,
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Speaker 3: back in the eighteen fifties into the early nineteen hundreds,
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Speaker 3: and what sounds like a WTF solution, what if we
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Speaker 3: just loaded them all onto trains and bust them out?
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Speaker 3: Might initially hit you in the way that you hear
3:35
Speaker 3: about cities busting out unhoused people when a big event
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Speaker 3: comes through, which is a pretty heartless.
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Speaker 2: Way, yeah, of dealing with the problem. But this is
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Speaker 2: not that at all.
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Speaker 3: No.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, according to one famously precocious musical redhead, being an
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Speaker 1: orphan is a hard knock life. Now, you know, pick
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Speaker 1: your poison. In a upcoming episode of Stuff they Don't
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Speaker 1: want you to know, we're discussing the dark sides of
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Speaker 1: the adoption industry, and as you said up NOL during
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Speaker 1: the course of this research, we came across a disturbing
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Speaker 1: and very true tale of ridiculous history.
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Speaker 5: This is a factual.
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Speaker 1: Event, folks, not an historical piece of apocrypha or a
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Speaker 1: legend or a myth. Once upon a time, the United
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Speaker 1: States government literally stole orphans and auctioned them from train stops,
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Speaker 1: from train depots across.
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Speaker 5: The United States.
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Speaker 1: And I love that you're pointing out the clear comparison
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Speaker 1: there between the idea of cities bussing out quote unquote undesirables.
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Speaker 5: Right.
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Speaker 1: We saw this in Atlanta when the Olympics visited. We
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Speaker 1: see this in we talked about several years ago, the
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Speaker 1: state of Hawaii once upon a time had a plan
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Speaker 1: to address their homeless population by shipping them off to
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Speaker 1: purpose built islands where they would be given a minimum
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Speaker 1: of shelter and food, of course a one way ticket
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Speaker 1: to the mainland exactly.
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Speaker 3: And we're seeing it right now with the Olympic Games
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Speaker 3: happening in Paris. They're cleaning up the sand so that
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Speaker 3: they can do their their swim the triathlon type things
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Speaker 3: in there. I'm not a sport person, but you.
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Speaker 2: Get the idea.
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Speaker 3: There was a big spectacle that was made with I
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Speaker 3: believe the mayor swimming in a wetsuit in the typically
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Speaker 3: quite polluted San River, showing that it's safe for all
5:39
Speaker 3: the Olympians to do their events there. But the city
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Speaker 3: of Paris is in fact busting out the unhoused population,
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Speaker 3: and it's pretty callous move.
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Speaker 2: And you know, Ben, you pointed.
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Speaker 3: Out this idea of the auctioning of it, which of
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Speaker 3: course brings to mind all kinds of horrific historical foot
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Speaker 3: notes landmarks throughout this country and beyond. But there is
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Speaker 3: a sort of not silver lining exactly. But their heart
6:08
Speaker 3: was in the right place aspects to this story, or
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Speaker 3: at least the person who kind of came up with
6:13
Speaker 3: the concept before it was derailed. Let's just say not
6:17
Speaker 3: to use a train pun, but also you know, to
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Speaker 3: use it nice.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: The Orphan Train movement was what we will call a
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Speaker 1: supervised welfare program, and the idea was you would transport children,
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Speaker 1: originally from New York but later from other crowded eastern
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Speaker 1: cities of the US, and you would take these kids
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Speaker 1: and via rail you would take them to foster homes,
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Speaker 1: largely in rural areas of the Midwest Midwestern United States.
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Speaker 1: These orphan trains, as we mentioned, operated between eighteen fifty
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Speaker 1: four and nineteen twenty nine, and look, like we just said, folks,
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Speaker 1: you can tell we're a little baffled by it when
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Speaker 1: you first hear this story, especially as we record in
6:59
Speaker 1: July twenty two, twenty four. So many news stories feature
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Speaker 1: lurid reports of human trafficking, and this might sound like
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Speaker 1: another one of those. But to that earlier point, we
7:10
Speaker 1: have to understand the context in which this emerged. New
7:14
Speaker 1: York City in the eighteen fifties was gross. It's this
7:19
Speaker 1: is not a political point, it's not a you know,
7:22
Speaker 1: it's not a holier than now point. It just kind
7:24
Speaker 1: of sucked for the majority of people. There was this
7:27
Speaker 1: huge influx of new immigrants, you know, picture of the
7:31
Speaker 1: classic Ellis Island moment they're crowded into the city. Add
7:34
Speaker 1: to that numerous financial panics and depression creating disastrous unemployment.
7:41
Speaker 1: This was pre the Great Depression, but things were still
7:44
Speaker 1: going bad. And then affordable housing.
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Speaker 5: Not really a thing, not really a.
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Speaker 3: Thing well, and certainly the kinds of public services that
7:55
Speaker 3: you know, even today still struggle to properly deal with
7:59
Speaker 3: these type of problems. You know, on a on an
8:02
Speaker 3: infrastructural I guess level just didn't even exist. You know,
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Speaker 3: public programs like proper you know, shelters and and food programs,
8:12
Speaker 3: food assistance programs. It was very much every man, woman,
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Speaker 3: and yes, child for themselves situation.
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Speaker 4: And you really think about the timeline wise. The assistance
8:23
Speaker 4: program in New York City right now is called Tammany Hall.
8:26
Speaker 4: So there's that whole giant bag of badgers, corruption, awful
8:31
Speaker 4: stuff there. It's like, you know, the flaunting your wealth
8:36
Speaker 4: at this point in time with having your own toilet.
8:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, look upon my look upon my poops. He
8:42
Speaker 1: mighty and despair.
8:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if I haven't gotten to go, And I
8:45
Speaker 3: think this is something we should maybe all organized. But
8:47
Speaker 3: the Tenement Museum in New York City really speaks to
8:51
Speaker 3: this period.
8:52
Speaker 2: And in a very powerful way.
8:54
Speaker 3: You know, these tenements were the closest thing to I
8:57
Speaker 3: guess public housing that exists did, but they were slums.
9:01
Speaker 3: They were basically for profits, and oftentimes you would be
9:06
Speaker 3: sharing a toilet or an outhouse type situation with at
9:10
Speaker 3: times hundreds of other people. So it was bad, smelly,
9:14
Speaker 3: inhumane times.
9:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, not to mention structurally unsound. So tenement fires, disease
9:21
Speaker 1: spread at a cartoonish rate. Tens of thousands of children
9:26
Speaker 1: due to these circumstances ended up on the street. We're
9:30
Speaker 1: talking very young children. We're talking about the kind of
9:34
Speaker 1: children that if you saw them in your local neighborhood today,
9:37
Speaker 1: you would be immediately concerned and wonder where their parents were.
9:42
Speaker 1: Because there was no social safety net, no welfare or
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Speaker 1: institutionalized social services. I want to say, outside a rich philanthropists,
9:53
Speaker 1: these kids were forced to roam the streets in search
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Speaker 1: of money, food, and shelter, and each of these children
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Speaker 1: was pray for disease and crime. This is where we
10:04
Speaker 1: see those old story tropes of selling matches or rags
10:09
Speaker 1: or junk or newspapers. Just to survive, they had to
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Speaker 1: form gangs to prevent themselves from being abused in unspeakable ways,
10:19
Speaker 1: and the police were not helping. The police were and look,
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Speaker 1: we know some folks in NYPD today, this is not
10:26
Speaker 1: those folks. The eighteen hundred's police were often arresting children
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Speaker 1: that might be as young as five years old and
10:34
Speaker 1: locking them up for extended periods of time in crowded
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Speaker 1: jails with adult criminals. And look, we said, we're Family show.
10:44
Speaker 1: We're not gonna spend a lot of time on the
10:46
Speaker 1: details of what happened to so many of these kids,
10:49
Speaker 1: but we will say pretty much every horrific thing you
10:52
Speaker 1: can imagine did in fact occur. This is not hyperbole.
10:56
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands of kids and luckily we're not there. No,
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Speaker 1: we have a hero or someone who is nobly intentioned
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Speaker 1: who sees this.
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Speaker 2: One hundred percent.
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Speaker 3: And if you want like a visual for this era,
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Speaker 3: the UK version would probably be Oliver Twists, you know,
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Speaker 3: I mean, that's older, but it is that type of
11:18
Speaker 3: vibe with these street gangs, and oftentimes street gangs that
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Speaker 3: are run by very predatory adults, you know, who are
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Speaker 3: like teaching these kids to pickpocket and using them as tools,
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Speaker 3: you know, for their particular criminal enterprise. An American example
11:35
Speaker 3: would be Newsy's if I believe, that takes place around
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Speaker 3: eighteen ninety nine, so kind of right in the midst
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Speaker 3: of this the story for its own episode, I believe
11:44
Speaker 3: because there was you know, with William Randolph Hurst and
11:47
Speaker 3: his newspaper organizations. This did create low paying yet there
11:52
Speaker 3: were opportunities, you know, for some of these kids, but
11:54
Speaker 3: they were also being used and abused in different ways,
11:58
Speaker 3: you know, by that type of organization. But think of
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Speaker 3: the term like street waifs, you know, the little urchin,
12:06
Speaker 3: you know, stuff like that.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, they called them in this time in New York,
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Speaker 1: they would call these kids street arabs because they were
12:16
Speaker 1: known to be wandering about. And look, if you've ever
12:19
Speaker 1: spent time in New York City, you know that the
12:24
Speaker 1: seasons can be rough. So some of these kids were
12:27
Speaker 1: freezing to death as well. In eighteen fifty three, there's
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Speaker 1: this young minister, his name Charles Loring Brace, and he
12:35
Speaker 1: gets obsessed with these kids, and he's looking around and
12:38
Speaker 1: he's saying, isn't this the greatest country on the planet.
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Speaker 1: Isn't this one of the best cities in one of
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Speaker 1: the greatest countries? Why is this happening? And he comes
12:48
Speaker 1: from a pretty well heeled Connecticut family. He's in New
12:52
Speaker 1: York as a seminary student, and he is not prepared
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Speaker 1: for this level of depravity in dystopia. So he says
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Speaker 1: there's only one way to help what he called children
13:04
Speaker 1: of unhappy fortune. He said, the great duty is to
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Speaker 1: get utterly out of their surroundings and to send them
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Speaker 1: away to kind Christian homes in the country because again,
13:14
Speaker 1: you know, he's a seminary student, so he's not sending
13:17
Speaker 1: them to the I guess the burgeoning atheist population of
13:22
Speaker 1: agricultural Minnesota.
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Speaker 2: Well, you know.
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Speaker 3: And the problem too is not only are these kids
13:27
Speaker 3: just left to their own devices without any assistance you know,
13:31
Speaker 3: from the government or from any you know, people that
13:34
Speaker 3: are offering a helping hand. They're basically growing up in
13:37
Speaker 3: a situation that is just going to reinforce the negative
13:42
Speaker 3: parts of this situation and put them on a path
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Speaker 3: to a life of crime because that's all they know,
13:48
Speaker 3: and no one was helping them, and there becomes this
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Speaker 3: resentment and this you know, like why should I follow
13:54
Speaker 3: the law if the law isn't helping me, you know.
13:57
Speaker 3: And that's a very understandable perspective, as as the perspective
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Speaker 3: of brace the idea of if we remove them from
14:04
Speaker 3: this element and put them outside of that, will that
14:08
Speaker 3: not ultimately be better for them, you know, in long
14:11
Speaker 3: term just in terms of their like experience, their upbringing,
14:14
Speaker 3: you know, what lessons they might learn and what kinds
14:16
Speaker 3: of adults they might become.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's well put Noel, and I really appreciate you
14:21
Speaker 1: saying that because Brace believed the city and these environments,
14:26
Speaker 1: these cycles of abuse and addiction and horror, they were
14:30
Speaker 1: inappropriate for kids. Again, it's heartbreaking to imagine a five
14:37
Speaker 1: year old stuck on the streets, homeless. And you know,
14:41
Speaker 1: here in the United States you might not see it
14:43
Speaker 1: as often, but if you've traveled, especially outside of the
14:48
Speaker 1: developed world, these kind of horrors are still a reality.
14:51
Speaker 1: So it's tough for us to disagree with what Brace
14:55
Speaker 1: is saying, and we can't blame him for taking a stand.
14:58
Speaker 1: He was trying to figure out us a lou right,
15:01
Speaker 1: because the typical charity stuff wasn't working. What would happen
15:05
Speaker 1: here is that the elite, whether that's religious elite or
15:09
Speaker 1: whether that's socio political elite of very corrupt New York
15:13
Speaker 1: at the time, they would have like a charity ball,
15:16
Speaker 1: or they'd have a benefit and they give all the
15:18
Speaker 1: kids in the neighborhood shoes on Christmas presence.
15:23
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
15:23
Speaker 5: Oh, it's.
15:26
Speaker 3: More so than things that would actually benefit them long term.
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Speaker 1: Right, It's more about the people doing this, it's more
15:34
Speaker 1: about themselves than it is about these innocents. And so
15:38
Speaker 1: Grace was trying to figure out an innovative solution to this.
15:43
Speaker 1: So he figured he landed on something quite clever. He said,
15:48
Speaker 1: there's another social issue here. There's another problem that these
15:52
Speaker 1: elite New Yorkers don't understand, which is out in the
15:56
Speaker 1: rest of America, which is largely agricultural. At this time,
16:00
Speaker 1: our industries, our farming industries, are expanding at an unprecedented pace,
16:05
Speaker 1: and they need labor.
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Speaker 5: And he said, you know.
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Speaker 1: What, a lot of families also can't have kids for
16:11
Speaker 1: one reason or another. So I bet you that these
16:14
Speaker 1: upstanding assaults of the earth families will welcome homeless children.
16:19
Speaker 1: They'll take them into their homes, they'll treat them as
16:22
Speaker 1: if they are their own kid. Pause for a second. Yes,
16:26
Speaker 1: in twenty four we know it sounds like it sounds
16:29
Speaker 1: like child labor, right, a little bit.
16:38
Speaker 2: It does.
16:38
Speaker 3: But also we do know that family farms very much
16:42
Speaker 3: a thing, and it is a trade, and it is something.
16:47
Speaker 2: That you know, is a way of learning how.
16:50
Speaker 3: To contribute to an economy and all of that, and
16:53
Speaker 3: all of these things. A lot of these these businesses
16:56
Speaker 3: were family runs, so it would make sense that, you know,
16:58
Speaker 3: their kids would be working on the farm. And it's
17:00
Speaker 3: not like they were abused. I mean, certainly there was abuse,
17:03
Speaker 3: let's not. Can't get it twisted, But in general, just
17:07
Speaker 3: because you're doing a hard day's work and you're getting
17:11
Speaker 3: a nice meal and a place to stay, you know,
17:13
Speaker 3: that would be the way that the actual children of
17:16
Speaker 3: many of these farm families would have been treated as well.
17:19
Speaker 3: So the best of them would have been approaching it
17:21
Speaker 3: with that same attitude.
17:22
Speaker 5: Absolutely, you know what I mean.
17:24
Speaker 1: And most people are inherently good, right if they are
17:28
Speaker 1: given the opportunity to be so. Brief route, the best
17:32
Speaker 1: of all asylums for the outcast child is the farmer's home.
17:36
Speaker 1: And his sort of truism for this was the idea
17:40
Speaker 1: that quote, immigration is a cure for pouperism, the idea
17:45
Speaker 1: being that if you ship these kids away, then you
17:48
Speaker 1: will fix some of those deep intergenerational problems we're talking about.
17:52
Speaker 1: And the point still stands today. You know, farmers did
17:57
Speaker 1: and do need every set of hands they can find.
18:00
Speaker 1: And he said, look, the problems here in New York
18:03
Speaker 1: are things like living space and access to food, and
18:07
Speaker 1: the Midwest has a lot of that already, So maybe
18:11
Speaker 1: we can put the children in a position where they
18:14
Speaker 1: will benefit Society as well as benefit themselves. And with
18:18
Speaker 1: all this in mind, in eighteen fifty three he founds
18:22
Speaker 1: an organization called the Children's Aid Society, and their idea
18:26
Speaker 1: is to put his wild notion into action. They're going
18:30
Speaker 1: to arrange the trips. The Children's Aid Society, by the way,
18:34
Speaker 1: had a lot of wealthy elites behind it. So these
18:37
Speaker 1: wealthy folks are going to raise all the money through
18:40
Speaker 1: the charity balls and the fundraisers to pay for everything.
18:44
Speaker 1: They're going to get the paperwork they needed to relocate
18:47
Speaker 1: these children. And we'll get into where that gets sticky,
18:51
Speaker 1: but for right now, I guess to be completely fair,
18:54
Speaker 1: we should say the CIS was not just a child
18:59
Speaker 1: traffic gain operation. They also made trade schools. They built
19:04
Speaker 1: share houses we would call them in Australia, you know,
19:07
Speaker 1: like they built slightly better than tenement ten of group
19:09
Speaker 1: homes for kids. And they were also trying to teach
19:13
Speaker 1: kids how to read and to go to school and
19:16
Speaker 1: so on and so on.
19:17
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, Max, I mean, with your you know, research
19:20
Speaker 3: and expertise in the labor movement, do you have you
19:24
Speaker 3: run across these types of stories.
19:26
Speaker 4: I have not really, but like I don't know obviously
19:31
Speaker 4: putting a bunch of children on a train and shiving
19:33
Speaker 4: them across the country not great, but like we're really
19:36
Speaker 4: going into the story, just Machavelli in the side kicking
19:38
Speaker 4: in and me like, it's a lot better than what
19:40
Speaker 4: they had. Then it's like, not a great solution, but
19:43
Speaker 4: it's a better solution.
19:45
Speaker 5: It's a solution.
19:46
Speaker 4: You're giving them something other than nothing.
19:49
Speaker 3: I like the way you put it, Ben, or at
19:50
Speaker 3: least the way you kind of characterize bracist perspective as
19:53
Speaker 3: that being in the city was just grossly inappropriate, you
19:58
Speaker 3: know for what a child needs, which is you know,
20:02
Speaker 3: care and oversight and a a role model perhaps, And
20:09
Speaker 3: you know, the idea of this steadfast working American farm
20:13
Speaker 3: family at its best really is that thing and provides
20:17
Speaker 3: those things. So I really do see the like positive
20:22
Speaker 3: outlook version of this idea, but as we know, things
20:26
Speaker 3: can spiral in negative ways when too many cooks get
20:30
Speaker 3: in the kitchen.
20:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then as now, some of the coolest, most
20:38
Speaker 1: sincere people in the United States come from small towns.
20:43
Speaker 5: They're rural. You know, they're upfront with you.
20:45
Speaker 1: They have new need for guile or subterfuge. So this
20:50
Speaker 1: was he was kind of romanticizing the idea of these
20:54
Speaker 1: farming communities that he himself often had never visited. The
20:59
Speaker 1: concepts sold very well in New York. The first orphan train,
21:02
Speaker 1: as they would come to be called, was sent out
21:04
Speaker 1: by the Children's Aid Society or CIS in eighteen fifty four.
21:10
Speaker 1: To your early point, Max, they did have chapper. They
21:14
Speaker 1: had like one or two chaperones adults, kind of the
21:17
Speaker 1: way you have to have an adult on a long
21:19
Speaker 1: field trip. So this group, the first ones on the train,
21:23
Speaker 1: they're forty six kids. They have a wide age range.
21:27
Speaker 1: We're talking seven years old to fifteen years old. And
21:30
Speaker 1: they're sent to a place in Michigan. Doa gick do
21:35
Speaker 1: agiac the wag yak, the wag yak mission get in
21:41
Speaker 1: the nose between Midwest.
21:44
Speaker 4: It is support here pronunciation on the palm, so Michigan.
21:50
Speaker 5: Max is holding up the.
21:52
Speaker 1: Mitten hand of Michigan and pointing toward If you hold
21:57
Speaker 1: it palm to you, it's a it's a in the
22:00
Speaker 1: lower right, by the way.
22:02
Speaker 3: Some really great resources if you're interested in the visual
22:05
Speaker 3: another like a documentary, not a not a musical depiction
22:09
Speaker 3: of this. The American Experience series on PBS has a
22:13
Speaker 3: fantastic documentary segment on the orphan trains, and there's a
22:18
Speaker 3: great write up that Ben and I believe you referred
22:21
Speaker 3: to for this research brief, as well as a fabulous
22:25
Speaker 3: piece by Aaron Blakemore Orphan trains brought homeless NYC children
22:29
Speaker 3: to work on farms out west on history dot com.
22:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, and thank you for citing those. Let's also give
22:35
Speaker 1: a big shout out to Orphan Train deepot dot org,
22:39
Speaker 1: which is one of the best scholarly resources to learn
22:42
Speaker 1: more about this. There are also several specific books regarding
22:47
Speaker 1: this because it affected a lot of people. Now back
22:50
Speaker 1: to our first orphan train. Before this trip, something like
22:54
Speaker 1: this did exist. There were orphanages in New York that
22:58
Speaker 1: have been sending individi jewel kids like your orphan Annies
23:02
Speaker 1: per Se, or small groups of children to other foster
23:05
Speaker 1: homes within the larger state of New York, but none
23:09
Speaker 1: of them ever sent a group this large, nor they
23:13
Speaker 1: sent a group this far away. It was a heck
23:15
Speaker 1: of a gamble because they were literally playing with children's lives,
23:18
Speaker 1: but it paid off. By the end of just one week,
23:22
Speaker 1: all forty six children had found homes. This was an
23:27
Speaker 1: unspeakable success, in Brace's opinion, and it began the orphan
23:32
Speaker 1: train movement. However, you do have to note they were
23:37
Speaker 1: auctioning the kids woolf Yeah, that's a wolf for me dog.
23:43
Speaker 2: It's a wolf for me to dog.
23:46
Speaker 3: They did, however, view this as a smashing success. So
23:49
Speaker 3: the CIS used this as an opportunity to expand their program.
23:54
Speaker 3: It was, I guess a term developed in the parlance
23:58
Speaker 3: of the time called place out, which I guess it
24:01
Speaker 3: makes sense to the idea it's.
24:03
Speaker 5: Better than sell a child.
24:04
Speaker 1: Yeah.
24:04
Speaker 3: But yes, but even now, the idea of finding placement
24:09
Speaker 3: for even like an adopted child, you know, that's that's
24:12
Speaker 3: still a term that is used in this type of
24:17
Speaker 3: circle today.
24:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really great point there. And again there
24:21
Speaker 1: were there were groups of children that were paired out
24:24
Speaker 1: with adult chaperones, and these chaperones would ride with these
24:28
Speaker 1: kids on the train from New York to these various
24:31
Speaker 1: rural destinations. Before the end of this program, over one
24:36
Speaker 1: hundred thousand children were sent via these orphan trains to
24:39
Speaker 1: new homes and farm country. And other organizations picked.
24:44
Speaker 5: Up on this.
24:44
Speaker 1: They said, look, this system works, We're going to adopt it.
24:48
Speaker 5: We're we're not.
24:50
Speaker 1: We're going to follow the lead of the CS. So
24:53
Speaker 1: other notable child's care and philanthropic organizations did the same.
24:57
Speaker 1: Some of them organize their own groups, you know, just
25:00
Speaker 1: sending on different trains. Others would dare I say, farm
25:05
Speaker 1: out their supply of children to the CS, and they
25:09
Speaker 1: would add them onto the next round. Ultimately, more than
25:13
Speaker 1: thirty orphanages in New York City have participated in these
25:17
Speaker 1: placing out programs. A few of the notables New York
25:22
Speaker 1: Foundling Hospital. I love the word Foundling. It's done right,
25:27
Speaker 1: but it's an interesting word. New York Juvenile Asylum, and
25:31
Speaker 1: the Female Guardian Society. Folks, You'll notice we keep pointing
25:35
Speaker 1: out that this ended in nineteen twenty nine. So right now,
25:41
Speaker 1: if you have a kid who needs a home in
25:45
Speaker 1: New York City, they're not going to be shipped off
25:48
Speaker 1: on a train to you know, Davenport, Iowa or something.
25:52
Speaker 1: And that's because the orphan train was, as I think
25:55
Speaker 1: we've established, well intentioned, but as we foreshadowed, it was
26:00
Speaker 1: far from perfect.
26:02
Speaker 5: Not all of these kids were orphans.
26:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, the Children's Aid Society being the largest
26:08
Speaker 3: and kind of og organization in this program or in
26:13
Speaker 3: this type of program, they received the brunt of of,
26:19
Speaker 3: you know, kind of criticism around this method, you know,
26:23
Speaker 3: of kind of moving moving kids out into the sticks
26:26
Speaker 3: for the purposes of placing them in farm homes and
26:31
Speaker 3: family farms. A lot of the people that were the
26:34
Speaker 3: loudest kind of voices were from other sort of maybe
26:38
Speaker 3: even competing you know, philanthropic organizations or communities, and they
26:42
Speaker 3: had some very understandable critiques of some issues that maybe
26:47
Speaker 3: were not the intention of this, but things that kind
26:50
Speaker 3: of were byproducts, I guess, or you know, children who
26:54
Speaker 3: kind of fell between the cracks, because as you mentioned, Ben,
26:58
Speaker 3: some of these kids were not orphans at all. They
27:01
Speaker 3: were essentially the children of immigrants who had not been
27:07
Speaker 3: assimilated into American culture, perhaps did not speak the language.
27:11
Speaker 3: And I wouldn't go so far as to say we're
27:13
Speaker 3: easily taken advantage of, but perhaps we're just so down
27:16
Speaker 3: on their luck that there just wasn't good communication going on,
27:19
Speaker 3: and maybe the kids were for all into purposes seemed
27:22
Speaker 3: as though they didn't have parents because they were kind
27:24
Speaker 3: of out on their own, trying to hustle up a living,
27:28
Speaker 3: you know, to help their family, but then they were
27:30
Speaker 3: just sort of lumped in to this program.
27:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's heartbreaking because and I hate to use the
27:37
Speaker 1: same word twice there, but we have to realize this
27:40
Speaker 1: occurs in other parts of the world today. It definitely
27:43
Speaker 1: occurred in the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution. There
27:47
Speaker 1: are also there are cases of families this happened in
27:50
Speaker 1: the US Greek Depression as well, wherein the parents literally
27:54
Speaker 1: cannot afford to take care of their children and so
27:59
Speaker 1: they're desperate. Hope is that by consigning them to a
28:03
Speaker 1: program like this, or by gifting them, for lack of
28:06
Speaker 1: a better word, to another socioeconomic situation, they're giving that
28:11
Speaker 1: kid a chance at life the kid would not otherwise have.
28:14
Speaker 1: But yeah, to your point, less than half of the
28:18
Speaker 1: children who rode these trains were actual facts orphans shout
28:23
Speaker 1: out to Laura and Vogelbaum. As ever, with actual facts,
28:27
Speaker 1: as many as one out of four these kids had
28:32
Speaker 1: two living parents and some of the criticism, I don't know.
28:37
Speaker 1: One of the criticisms that really bothers me still is
28:40
Speaker 1: there were people in some of the rural communities who
28:44
Speaker 1: would say, you're shipping us criminal foreign agitators.
28:48
Speaker 5: You know what I mean. Or this kid is.
28:51
Speaker 1: Sickly or disabled, you gave us a defective kid.
28:54
Speaker 2: Well, it just reminds me.
28:55
Speaker 3: I'm not to get political about it or anything, but
28:58
Speaker 3: some of the rhetoric around immigration now, the idea that
29:02
Speaker 3: you're sending murderers and rapists and drugs brailers over the border,
29:08
Speaker 3: it's it's rhetoric that is based in xenophobia and other
29:11
Speaker 3: ring and it is It's not cool. And while there
29:15
Speaker 3: certainly may be, it's even worse when you're talking about kids,
29:18
Speaker 3: because yeah, you're you're they're in We talked about it.
29:21
Speaker 3: They're in the situation where maybe their only lot in
29:23
Speaker 3: life is to be in these gangs, or is to
29:26
Speaker 3: you know, pickpocket or or do petty crimes. But their children,
29:30
Speaker 3: you can't really call them criminals, vagabonds or waifs or
29:35
Speaker 3: whatever without that just having like a real, a real
29:38
Speaker 3: nasty hyperbolics thing to it.
29:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, I could tell this eight year old is a
29:43
Speaker 1: papist operative.
29:44
Speaker 5: I see it. It is Catholic eyes.
29:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were there were kids who read like you said,
29:50
Speaker 1: whose parents were illiterate or did not speak English, were
29:53
Speaker 1: not in the best of circumstances. But we're still making
29:56
Speaker 1: a good home for their child, and their child was abducted,
30:00
Speaker 1: kidnapped from them. Some kids were born out of wedlock,
30:02
Speaker 1: which was a very big deal. Back then there was
30:06
Speaker 1: not always the right focus on paperwork. So you could
30:11
Speaker 1: argue as well that some of these kids ended up
30:14
Speaker 1: what we would call stateless. They didn't have ideas, they
30:19
Speaker 1: didn't have any you know, anything like a birth certificate,
30:22
Speaker 1: et cetera.
30:22
Speaker 3: I mean, today, so many of these social programs are
30:27
Speaker 3: woefully behind in terms of their ability to like digitize
30:31
Speaker 3: records and to have you know, some sort of network,
30:35
Speaker 3: you know, where these things are actually very effectively stored
30:39
Speaker 3: and communicated. And it's just we know that there's just
30:42
Speaker 3: a lack of social service workers, you know, because it's
30:45
Speaker 3: a low paying job and you have to just really
30:48
Speaker 3: be passionate about it. Can you imagine, guys, like what
30:51
Speaker 3: it would have been like back in these days where
30:53
Speaker 3: it was all on paper. I talk about losing the
30:56
Speaker 3: paper work or things falling through the cracks when you
30:58
Speaker 3: didn't have enough people feeling it out in the first place,
31:01
Speaker 3: or barely even any of these programs to speak of,
31:04
Speaker 3: you know. So I still do stand by this was
31:07
Speaker 3: an effort to try to create some infrastructure to do
31:12
Speaker 3: some good. But within that because of the lack of
31:15
Speaker 3: oversight by actual government, you know, entities that.
31:19
Speaker 2: Still struggle to keep an eye on this stuff. Today,
31:22
Speaker 2: bad things happened and.
31:23
Speaker 4: To jump in to double down on what you said, Noel,
31:27
Speaker 4: and bring back a Tammany hall. The people filling whatever
31:29
Speaker 4: jobs like that. There were definitely like you know, favoritism
31:33
Speaker 4: jobs like it was your guy, it was it was
31:36
Speaker 4: your cousin who showed up once a month and got
31:38
Speaker 4: paid for all the time. So it was it was
31:41
Speaker 4: a terrible time to greet your points. It's like, this
31:43
Speaker 4: is at least doing something.
31:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, but working within a system that is broken will
31:50
Speaker 1: inevitably emulate some of the flaws of that system. It's
31:55
Speaker 1: the same issue you run into with artificial intelligence quote
31:58
Speaker 1: unquote today. In some cases, these children were being used
32:09
Speaker 1: as straight up slaves. In some cases they were being
32:12
Speaker 1: abused by bad faith actors who picked them up at
32:16
Speaker 1: the auction. Another criticism is that there was no follow up.
32:21
Speaker 1: There was no organized system to check in on the kids,
32:25
Speaker 1: you know, a month or six months or a year later,
32:28
Speaker 1: to see how they were doing. Also, there was a
32:32
Speaker 1: big religious Not for nothing was I making that Catholic joke.
32:36
Speaker 1: There was a big religious concern about the idea they
32:41
Speaker 1: would take a kid from their birth family and put
32:43
Speaker 1: them with a foster family that forced a different religion
32:47
Speaker 1: upon them. And people investigated these claims. Again, can't say
32:52
Speaker 1: enough about Orphan Traindepot dot org. We're getting a lot
32:56
Speaker 1: of this information from People started to nose around and
33:00
Speaker 1: look into this. In particular, in eighteen eighty four, there
33:04
Speaker 1: was a childcare activist named Hastings Hornell Hart who looked
33:09
Speaker 1: into the results of orphan training placements in Minnesota specifically,
33:14
Speaker 1: and he said, you know what, most of the placements
33:17
Speaker 1: ended up well, they ended up working. This brace's wild
33:22
Speaker 1: idea is a good thing. However, there were cases that
33:27
Speaker 1: ended badly, and when abuse occurred and the CIS found
33:31
Speaker 1: out about it, they did something.
33:33
Speaker 5: But he said.
33:35
Speaker 1: The primary issue was actually the end receivers, the local
33:41
Speaker 1: committees that were running this from the train depot. Sometimes
33:46
Speaker 1: they would be afraid to turn down applications because they
33:50
Speaker 1: live in small towns and they didn't want to make enemies,
33:53
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe like the deputy is a real pill,
33:58
Speaker 1: a real pos but has a lot of pool in town,
34:02
Speaker 1: so you don't want to make the deputy angry.
34:05
Speaker 3: Guys, we still today hear so many horror stories about
34:10
Speaker 3: kids falling into abusive situations through the foster care system
34:15
Speaker 3: that is, you know, overseen and you know, organized by
34:20
Speaker 3: the government again because of understaffing, because of there's just
34:24
Speaker 3: not enough case workers to properly vet this stuff and
34:28
Speaker 3: to properly you know, check in. And you know, I
34:30
Speaker 3: haven't heard stories as this heartbreaking of recent years, maybe
34:35
Speaker 3: in the last ten years, but I remember in the
34:36
Speaker 3: nineties there were cases of foster kids getting beaten to death, you.
34:39
Speaker 2: Know, like in the in the nineties.
34:41
Speaker 3: And again I'm not saying that hasn't happened, since I'm
34:43
Speaker 3: sure it has. I just remember a few I can't
34:46
Speaker 3: quite recall the exact details. But when I was in college,
34:49
Speaker 3: and like I believe it was like a sociology class,
34:52
Speaker 3: we studied some cases where foster children were you know,
34:57
Speaker 3: there there was abuse that was noted and practically ignored.
35:02
Speaker 3: So I think this program is well ahead of its time.
35:06
Speaker 3: And I think this investigation by the person you're talking about,
35:10
Speaker 3: Ben Hastings hornell Hart indicated as much that this ultimately,
35:15
Speaker 3: you know, for a program of this size and scale,
35:19
Speaker 3: was doing good work.
35:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, and let's not forget that many of those children
35:24
Speaker 1: who were shipped off, they would have had very hard, brutal,
35:29
Speaker 1: and short lives. I've had experience with some of this stuff,
35:32
Speaker 1: so I don't know about you guys probably take it
35:34
Speaker 1: at an intensely personal level. We also know we have
35:38
Speaker 1: to be careful not to romanticize this. That's one of
35:41
Speaker 1: the big takeaways from this episode, because there have been
35:44
Speaker 1: all these books written talking about how successful the orphan
35:48
Speaker 1: trained placements were. There have been these documentaries lauding this
35:53
Speaker 1: American idea, even though brace got it from an earlier
35:59
Speaker 1: German program. There's a lot of orphan trained nostalgia out there.
36:03
Speaker 1: To be frank and I would say, the Box Car Kids, it's.
36:07
Speaker 5: Literally just googled, Ben, I've got it.
36:09
Speaker 2: Are you looking at my screen? Wow?
36:11
Speaker 3: I literally The Box Card Children, the series of Young Adults.
36:15
Speaker 3: I guess it was, you know, very popular when we
36:17
Speaker 3: were kids. You know, it was the kind of thing
36:19
Speaker 3: you find in your local library shelf or in your
36:23
Speaker 3: English classroom. Right, it wasn't this was more it wasn't
36:26
Speaker 3: it more about like kind of trained kids.
36:30
Speaker 1: It wasn't this program specifically, No, no, I think it.
36:33
Speaker 1: I think it is thematically descended from it. But if
36:36
Speaker 1: I recall The Box Card Children, they're like solving mysteries.
36:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, each book was sort of a Monster of
36:44
Speaker 3: the Week book or like, yeah, the.
36:46
Speaker 2: Very Hardy Boys Nancy Drew kind of vibes.
36:50
Speaker 1: The Boxcar Children idea is perhaps a symptom of this romanticization,
36:57
Speaker 1: because you'll see these kind of manipulative before and after pictures,
37:02
Speaker 1: the way you might see memes of dogs getting adopted, right,
37:06
Speaker 1: or discover it's like before, here's this desperate kid selling
37:10
Speaker 1: loose matches or cigarettes one at a time on some
37:13
Speaker 1: brutal street corner in New York. And now here they
37:17
Speaker 1: are in brand new coveralls, right, happy their own course, shraps.
37:22
Speaker 2: Right.
37:23
Speaker 3: There's a really cool New Yorker article I just found
37:26
Speaker 3: that I want to dig into, called The Box Car
37:28
Speaker 3: Children and the Spirit of Capitalism. And just a quick
37:31
Speaker 3: quote from it, it says, the nineteen twenty four narrator allows
37:33
Speaker 3: the children some interiority and a few memories along with
37:36
Speaker 3: that upsetting backstory. The nineteen forty two version does away
37:40
Speaker 3: with all of this orphaned and alone, say for each other.
37:43
Speaker 3: The kids seldom discuss their parents or their past. So
37:46
Speaker 3: there's two kind of versions of this story, And the
37:50
Speaker 3: original one was that kind of romanticization, and then the
37:53
Speaker 3: forties one, I think was a little bit more of
37:56
Speaker 3: the kind of downtrodden, sort of like darker version.
37:59
Speaker 2: I think, I think I'm getting there.
38:01
Speaker 1: I feel you, yeah, because there is that dichotomy. Orphan
38:04
Speaker 1: trains ran during a period of American history when so
38:08
Speaker 1: many see changes occurred, like a lot of stuff happened
38:13
Speaker 1: between the eighteen forties and the nineteen twenties right or
38:18
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. So it gets associated, maybe in the
38:23
Speaker 1: modern zeitgeist with somehow causing changes in laws about children
38:31
Speaker 1: and child labor and the foster care system, but it
38:35
Speaker 1: doesn't the literature doesn't support that. What seems to be
38:40
Speaker 1: the case is that the orphan training movement and this
38:44
Speaker 1: auctioning of children, it wasn't the driving force for modern
38:47
Speaker 1: adoption laws. Instead, a lot of those reforms to things
38:52
Speaker 1: like foster care practice, child welfare, child labor it came
38:56
Speaker 1: about in a way to specifically oppose orphan train practices.
39:03
Speaker 1: One of the things we have to leave you with here, folks,
39:07
Speaker 1: is that it is entirely possible, depending on where you
39:12
Speaker 1: are from, that this may affect your own ancestry because
39:17
Speaker 1: think about this. You know, a kid gets auctioned off
39:20
Speaker 1: when they're seven years old, they get raised in a
39:23
Speaker 1: good family in insert here in Michigan, and then they
39:27
Speaker 1: go a kids you know, in their neck of the woods,
39:29
Speaker 1: and that kid has a kid, and that kid is you.
39:32
Speaker 1: And you may not really know the entirety of your
39:37
Speaker 1: personal truth and your providence, so you can go to
39:41
Speaker 1: fantastic resources like the National Orphan Train Complex out in Concordia,
39:47
Speaker 1: Kansas to learn more. It's just nuts, man. The US
39:51
Speaker 1: really did ship and in some cases of duct children
39:54
Speaker 1: by rail, and they did it because it was better
39:58
Speaker 1: than the current situation. That's the kicker to me, Man,
40:02
Speaker 1: I can understand evil, but well intentioned, imperfect stuff is
40:07
Speaker 1: so much more complicated one.
40:11
Speaker 3: And and again, Ben, I want to just thank you
40:12
Speaker 3: for the thought that you put into, you know, getting
40:16
Speaker 3: these resources together, and sort of I do think we've
40:20
Speaker 3: you and and all of us have done a good
40:22
Speaker 3: job of sort of balancing between the intention.
40:25
Speaker 2: And the ultimate outcome.
40:27
Speaker 3: And you know, all the things in between without being
40:30
Speaker 3: a little too doom and gloom about it, but also
40:31
Speaker 3: without romanticizing or sort of like painting too rosy a picture,
40:35
Speaker 3: because there was good, there was bad, and there was
40:38
Speaker 3: a lot in between. But I would argue that that
40:41
Speaker 3: that investigation does seem to indicate that this was largely
40:45
Speaker 3: a success.
40:46
Speaker 5: Overall good, right I think, I think so.
40:49
Speaker 3: I don't know, let us know what you think, ridiculous historians,
40:52
Speaker 3: if anyone has any more background with this or has
40:54
Speaker 3: you know, done deeper research into this. This very interesting
40:57
Speaker 3: period because you know, we take for granted the social
41:01
Speaker 3: services that we do have that are all still very
41:05
Speaker 3: grossly underfunded and understaffed, but at least they exist. This
41:10
Speaker 3: was a time where none of that stuff was even around,
41:11
Speaker 3: and somebody had to just take the reins and figure
41:15
Speaker 3: out some creative solution, which oftentimes required a need to
41:21
Speaker 3: be filled. Otherwise there's not going to be any money,
41:24
Speaker 3: it's not going to be any interest in it. So
41:26
Speaker 3: while this idea of staffing farms with these children that
41:30
Speaker 3: have been neglected does on the surface feel a little
41:34
Speaker 3: potentially problematic, I think it's a little less problematic than
41:37
Speaker 3: leaving them to their own devices. In the cruel, brutal
41:41
Speaker 3: streets of New York City of the time, which would
41:43
Speaker 3: have been unrecognizable. You know, as much as New York
41:48
Speaker 3: still has a unhoused problem today, you don't really see
41:51
Speaker 3: children wandering around, you know, on their own without any
41:56
Speaker 3: supervision or opportunity.
41:58
Speaker 1: And we say that as fans New York do check
42:01
Speaker 1: out the Tenement Museum. Thanks for tuning in Ridiculous Historians.
42:05
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our super producer mister Max Williams.
42:08
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, thank you as well. He's the guy who
42:10
Speaker 1: composed this track. Big, big thanks to our own little
42:13
Speaker 1: orphan Annie, Jonathan Strickland ak the Quist.
42:17
Speaker 3: And our own Daddy Warbucks A J. Bahamas Jacobs. I
42:22
Speaker 3: guess although I don't know, Jonathan's a little more what's
42:27
Speaker 3: the word here suited their lack thereof to be Daddy Warbucks.
42:32
Speaker 2: I don't know. You let us know what you think.
42:34
Speaker 1: Thanks as well to Christopher Osiotis, he's Jeffcoat here in spirit.
42:39
Speaker 1: Thanks for our pals Aaron and Elizabeth over at Ridiculous
42:42
Speaker 1: Crime and mister Brown, Thanks to you.
42:45
Speaker 3: To you as well, Ben, Thanks for again on the
42:47
Speaker 3: excellent work on this research.
42:49
Speaker 2: Breath We'll see you next time, folks.
42:58
Speaker 3: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
43:01
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.