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The Representation of Child Care Institutions
in The New York Times in the Early Progressive Era
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ... 3
Historiography ... 5
Importance of Research, Sources and Method ... 8
Overview of Chapters ... 11
Chapter 2: Institutions, its Children and Methods ... 12
Children in Institutions ... 12
Placing Out West ... 17
Chapter 3: Education & Immigration ... 21
Education ... 21
Immigration & Americanization ... 30
Chapter 4: Religion & Funding ... 34
Religion ... 34
Funding ... 37
Chapter 5: Conclusion - Progressive Tone? ... 42
6. Bibliography ... 45
The New York Times ... 45
Primary Sources ... 46
1. Introduction
The youths of neglect, the dependent and defective, have destructive characteristics, it is true, but essentially they are like all children, creatures of social impulses, tendencies both egoistic and altruistic. They have similar social and moral susceptibilities, though less pronounced. Yet their personal histories may be unlike those of the class of average school children, largely because they have not been so closely allied to the better social and moral activities of life.
- C.M. Harrison, Superintendent of the Newark City Home, 18981
In the last decade of the nineteenth century, New York had to deal with a rapidly growing number of the above descripted children in child care institutions and on the streets. Due to industrialization, urbanization, and particularly immigration, a large part of the city’s population struggled with poverty, despair, sickness, and death. A situation that hit children the hardest. In 1890, every thirty-fifth child in New York City lived in an institution.2 As a
result, each institution had to deal with more and more children, some even caring for a few hundred, and many had to expand their buildings to enlarge their capacities. Thus, historian Matthew Crenson calls New York City “the orphanage capital of the United States.”3 However,
the title is slightly misleading as many of the children living in these institutions were not necessarily orphans but had one or both parents who were alive, yet unable to take care of their children anymore for various reasons.4
Moreover, C.M. Harrison’s liberal view on children and childhood was not shared by many. Timothy Gilfoyle encapsulates the common derogatory opinion of these children, citing as the reason “the absence of parental authority, the rejection of formal schooling and legitimate employment, the disregard for law and order.”5 In the eyes of the upper classes, this constituted
1 C.M. Harrison, Superintendent of the Newark City Home, at the National Conference of Charities and
Corrections quoted in “Conference of Charity,” The New York Times, May 24, 1889.
2 Matthew Crenson, Building the Invisible – A Prehistory of the American Welfare System (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1998), 49-50. This came approximately close to 30.000 children in total as the Eleventh Census, Vol. 3 (Report on Crime, Pauperism and Benevolence in the United States) reports that in 1890, New York State had nearly 36.700 living in institutions. It stands to reason that most of them lived in New York City and only a minority in the countryside. See: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Eleventh Census: “Report on Crime, Pauperism and Benevolence in the United States,” Vol.3 Part I, 322. ftp://ftp2.census.gov/library/publications/ decennial/1890/volume-3/1890a_v3p1-04.pdf.
3 Crenson, Building the Invisible, 50.
4 For further details see chapter two “Raising Orphans: The Child Care Dilemma of Families in Crisis,”32-65 in
Jessie B. Ramey, Child Care in Black and White – Working Parents and the History of Orphanages (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2012).,
an alarming and untenable situation. Yet, the rapid increase of children being dependent on institutional care entailed a slip in standards, creating an environment which was not seen fit for a healthy development of a child. “The growing child welfare crisis” encouraged progressive thinkers to increasingly question the existing forms and methods of child care and led to a reconsideration of older and initiation of new ones. A point which was often stressed by child care reformers who “excoriated institutional life for its tendency to warp a child’s initiative and individuality,”6 as historian E. Wayne Carp points out, who specializes in
children and family in American history.
Most of the institutions were run by religious denominations that were partly subsidized by the State. Since 1874, new laws regulated that institutions were paid a certain amount per child.7 An approach that led to a strategy of keeping children in the institutions longer than
necessary instead of finding a family or, if older, a workplace for them. Nonetheless, child care institutions were still largely depended on donations and private funding.
A popular method to make space for new children was to place them out to farms and families in rural areas where they would be an extra hand in the daily work and, in theory, would have a ‘home’ in exchange. The most prominent program, of the later known as the “Orphan Train Movement,” was initiated by Charles Loring Brace, a “preeminent figure in American child welfare history,”8 who founded the New York’s Children’s Aid Society in
1853. This was an institution whose mission was to “devote itself, through its agents, entirely to the interests of this neglected class, with the special object of providing work and new homes for the poor and degraded children of New York.”9 Over the years, it evolved into the largest
child care institution running several orphanages, industrial schools, lodging houses, summer outings, and other programs to relieve the poor. In an editorial article shortly printed after Brace’s death in 1890 in The New York Times, his life’s work is praised by saying: “If he did not give up his life as a martyr, he did what cannot be of less worth. He devoted all the years
1850-1900,” Journal of Social History 37, no. 4 (2004), 867, accessed Jan 10, 2018, http://www.jstor.org/stable/ 3790070.
6 Wayne E. Carp, “Orphanages vs. Adoption: The Triumph of Biological Kinship, 1800-1933,” in With Us Always
– A History of Private Charity and Public Welfare, ed. by Donald T. Critchlow and Charles H. Parker (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 124.
7 LeRoy Ashby, Endangered Children - Dependency, Neglect, and Abuse in American History (New York:
Twayne Publishers, 1997), 72.
8 Stephen O’Connor, Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed,
(University of Chicago Press, 2004): xvii.
9 Children's Aid Society, “Annual Report of the Children's Aid Society,” no. 1 (New York: The Society, 1854):
of his life to the welfare of his race, and to that portion of it which most needs help and to which help is most richly helpful – the children of the poor.”10 While Brace has been widely
praised in scholarship for his extraordinary lifework towards a system for modern adoption and foster care, the placing out program was not without critique and challenge by his progressive contemporaries as well as later in academic works.11 Child care reformers voiced their concern,
stressing that children should be supported to continue living with their biological families instead of having cut off all roots and be sent far away. Besides, the Children’s Aid Society, numerous other institutions in New York took care of those children which aimed at preparing them for a self-sufficient life above the poverty line and integrated into society.
Historiography
Early scholarly works focusing on the history of child care institutions in the nineteenth century argued that social welfare was often dominated by the compulsion of the upper classes to morally and socially control the poor, based on the fear that the fast-changing society could turn against them.12 Thus, in their eyes child care institutions represented a possible form of
social control as well as social responsibility and duty to uplift society and secure the country’s future. Historian Susan Tiffin calls this the “tension between charitable instincts and social order.”13
In the following decades, the historians’ focus shifted away from the aspect of social control to a broader and more complex analysis due to new research areas and sources.14 The
concept of childhood and a child’s needs during the time were emphasized more. Viviana Zelizer explores the changing perception of children and reevaluation in her work Pricing the
Priceless Child - The Changing Social Value of Children (1985). She argues that in the late
10 “Editorial Article 3,” The NYT, Nov 28, 1890.
11 Important scholarly work on Brace and the Orphan Train Movement, see Stephen O’Connor, Orphan Trains:
The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed (University of Chicago Press, 2004),
and Marylin Irvin Holt, Orphan Trains: Placing out in America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994). More critical accounts of the method were contributed by Clay Gish, “Rescuing the ‘Waifs and Strays’ of the City: The Western Emigration Program of the Children’s Aid Society,” Journal of Social History 33, no. 1 (1999), and Rebecca S. Trammell, “Orphan Train Myths and Legal Reality,” The Modern America, no. Vol 5, Issue 2 (Fall 2009).
12 See Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America 1820-1920 (Harvard University Press, 1978),
David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Little, Brown and Company, 1971), and
13 Susan Tiffin, In Whose Best Interest? Child Welfare Reform in the Progressive Era (Westport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1982), 290-91.
14 See Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow Of the Poorhouse: A Social History Of Welfare In America (Basic Books,
1986) and Bruce Bellingham, “Little Wanderers”: A Socio-historical Study of the Nineteenth Century Origins of
Child Fostering and Adoption Reform, Based on Early Records of the New York Children's Aid Society (Ph.D.
nineteenth century the status of a child went from “economically ‘worthless’ [to] emotionally ‘priceless’.”15 This had a particular influence on children in institutions who were bound to be
placed out. While previously strong and older children were wanted by families taking in a child, this changed as more wanted a cute, little one with “smiles, dimples, and curls.”16
Drawing upon Zelizer’s research, LeRoy Ashby illuminates in his book Endangered Children:
Dependency and Neglect, and Abuse in American History (1997), the voices of those who were
speaking for the children. In his opinion, this perspective reveals much about “adult needs, expectations, anxieties, status, and ideologies,”17 bringing him to the conclusion that those
children were “puppets in larger political, social and ideological struggles.”18 His findings will
be especially interesting when it comes to understanding the public perception of these children and their past.
The late 1990s saw a rise in research on orphanages and adoption due to newly unsealed records. Tim Hacsi’s account of the rise and decline of orphanages in his book Second Home:
Orphan Asylums and Poor Families in America (1997) constitutes the first lengthy research on
the development of child care institutions in the nineteenth century and the circumstances of the children’s sojourn. Worth mentioning is also Judith Dulberger’s Mother Donit Fore the
Best – Correspondence of a Nineteenth-Century Orphan Asylum (1997), which compiles a
large body of letters written to and by the Albany Orphan Asylum in New York State. Through those letters, Dulberger aptly shows for example how actively parents, if alive, often sought an update on the well-being of their children either living in an institution or being placed out. She furthermore shines a light on the reality of those children in families in the West who did not enjoy their time there, writing complains back to their former institutions.
Within the last two decades, the number of publications in the field rose rapidly, looking at it from new angles and examining previously undiscovered sources. A pioneering work in the field of the history of childhood was published by Steven Mintz. In his publication Huck’s
Raft: A History of American Childhood (2004), he synthesizes vast amounts of research from
different scholarly fields, resulting in a comprehensive analysis of childhood and its changes in the last three centuries. In his opinion, child care efforts had two ambiguous sides as “they attempted both to protect children from the dangers of urban society and to protect society from
15 Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child – The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1997), 21.
16 Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child, 171. 17 Ashby, Endangered Children, 1-2. 18 Ashby, Endangered Children, 184.
dangerous children.”19 Therefore, his analysis will be of importance when looking at the
institutions’ aims in their children's development.
A focus in particular on orphanages during the 1890s is made by Claudia Nelson in her work Little Strangers - Portrayal of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850-1929 (2003). The English professor specializing in children’s literature and culture examines the rhetorical style within fictional and non-fictional writings on child placement. She reveals “how an assortment of cultural critics, social-service workers, child-development experts, journalists, and writers of fiction used children real and imagined to advance a wide range of ideas […] construct[ing] images of displaced children to suit their own needs.”20 The comparison of
different literary genres’ reprocessing the topic in that time, provides a valuable angle when it comes to analyzing the style of The New York Times’ articles.
A work particularly focusing on New York City and its foundlings is Abandoned –
Foundlings in Nineteenth Century New York City (2008) by Julie Miller. She argues that the
“experience was shaped by New Yorkers' interpretation of the foundling not only as an endangered child, but as a symbol of female sexual transgression and urban social breakdown.”21 She furthermore offers a new perspective by investigating European strategies
in this matter and reveals how New York adjusted them “to fit the contours of a social landscape […] and the physical and moral anxiety induced in urban leaders by urban growth so rapid that it turned their once-familiar city into a dangerous and unfamiliar place.”22 Her view sheds light
on the situation most children were in before they were taken in by an institution as well as the practices within various New Yorker institutions.
An illuminating picture of the daily life of the children and the care taker inside an institution, is drawn by historian Matthew Crenson in his scholarly work Building the Invisible
Orphanage – A Prehistory of the American Welfare System (2008). By comparing different
institutions in four different states, relying primarily on asylum reports and conference papers, he pays special attention to the role of religion in institutions and how it shaped the life and work in institutions. Another recent publication by Jessie B. Ramey, Child Care in Black and
White: Working Parents and the History of Orphanages (2012), takes up on a previously rather
19 Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft – A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2004), 155.
20 Claudia Nelson, Little Strangers– Portrayals of Adoption and Foster Care in America, 1850 -1929
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2003), 2-3.
21 Julie Miller Abandoned: Foundlings in Nineteenth-Century New York City (New York: New York University
Press, 2008), 3.
incidentally examined fact. Her main argument is that the institutions were actively used by families in times of crisis as temporary relief. This new perspective takes a stand against earlier scholarship portraying the institutions as an instrument of social control for the upper classes.
Since academic literature has used a variety of words to refer to those children living in child care institutions, such as orphans, foundlings, waifs, dependent, or destitute children for example, ignoring that this was not accurate since some of them still had one or both parents living, I will refer to them from here on simply as children. Whenever, I talk about children in general that will be made clear. The same applies to the word ‘orphanage.’ For reasons of clarity and comprehensibility, I will instead use the more broader term ‘institution’.
Importance of Research, Sources and Method
Most scholars have relied on sources from either the institutions, namely annual reports and adoption records, or personal accounts by superintendents, parents or children themselves. I will examine the depiction of child care institutions in The New York Times in New York City, analyzing newspaper articles published in the first decade of the Progressive Era (1890-1900). I will argue that the coverage was overall dominated by a euphemistic tone, emphasizing the morally good and socially benevolent work such institutions provided for those less fortunate children. This implies the set goal to establish a feeling of social responsibility in order to donate money as well as control as the problem was stem within the walls of the institution rather than on the streets. It is topped off with a hopeful outlook for the future as the institution will take care of a moral and general education, preparing them for a good and by their standards decent life. This thesis will take a closer look at this decade of transition, the struggle between old methods, new situations, and modern solutions in terms of child care and how this was illustrated for the readership of The New York Times. In the following, I will give a brief overview on the status of The New York Times and why I chose this as my primary source.
For the most part, the press in the 1890s was characterized by sensationalism, illustrations, exaggeration, and gossip, short yellow press journalism, sold for one penny solemnly for the purpose of making money by entertaining the masses. Journalism professor Michael Schudson encapsulates this evolution saying, that “economic changes made a new mass journalism possible, the prospect of profit made it desirable, and the changing habits and inhabitants of the cities made it necessary in the eyes of ambitious publishers.”23 The century
had been booming for the publishing world, as the number of newspapers had risen every year. Especially in the second-half of the century, the popularity was accounted for by illustrated news. Schudson observes this development as followed:
What happened in the world of print between 1890 and 1930 in the United Stated made of the newspaper a particular cultural style – a museum of the day, a collage of random events, a merger of pictures and words, a cacophony of style and prose, a townhall of voices, a soapbox of self-promotion, and all of this at the same time.24
Yet, The New York Times, by its own admission, set themselves to stand aloof from this new form of journalism. Established in 1851, it had become one of the most read newspaper of middle- and upper-class readers. In his early history of The New York Times published in 1921, Elmer Davis underlines the newspaper’s credo as “a sober, conservative, dignified paper, always American, with its special position in the esteem of readers who valued sobriety of discussion and intelligent and balanced judgment.”25 However, the success of the cheap ‘penny
press’ made it much harder for The New York Times to compete and keep their head above water. Especially the last decade of the nineteenth century proved to be a turbulent ten years, as the newspaper faced being close to bankruptcy, a glorious come back in the second half and then, establishing itself as one of the most read and respected newspaper in New York. Despite the crisis and threat of not surviving in the early nineties due to business miscalculations, bad management, and the financial crisis in 1893, Davis lauds that “The Times stood out as almost the last representative of the old school.”26 Maintaining its ground and integrity instead of
following the ongoing trend of entertainment journalism, counted as an important undertaking of the newspaper.27 This is especially crucial when it comes to the children in institutions as
their oftentimes tragic past which could have been easily exploited for sentimental stories. The work ideology was also represented by the paper’s publishers. In the editorial appraisal of the late founder George Jones, who had been publisher from the beginning of The
New York Times until his death in 1893, his firmly held belief is highlighted with the words:
The newspaper should pay more attention to the worthy than to the unworthy side of human nature, that it should commend itself to right-thinking persons of some seriousness of mind and judgment rather than strive to satisfy the desire to know what the sinful and frivolous are about.28
24 Schudson, Why Democracies, 41.
25 Elmer Davis, History of The New York Times, (New York: Press of J.J. Little & Ives Co., 1921), 176. 26 Davis, History of The NYT, 162.
27 Joseph W. Campbell, The Year that Defined American Journalism – 1897 and the Clash of Paradigms (New
York: Routledge, 2006), 90-91.
Furthermore, following the sale of the paper to publisher Adolph Ochs in 1896, he reinforced this ethos as it is stated in his first official editorial piece:
It will be my earnest aim that The New York Times gives the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, […] to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect or interest involved; to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.29
To conclude, the coverage of The New York Times in the last decade of the nineteenth century contrasted with the average newspaper as they embraced a standard of reliability, integrity and seriousness. If this standard was maintained in case of reporting on child care institutions will be examined in this analysis.
For my search, I used “ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times with Index,” as it not only offers a fully digitized version of The New York Times, each article can also be viewed in its original place on the newspaper page. This gives the scholar a sense of the length of the text, the inclusion of pictures as well as the position in relation to other articles. In the stretch of ten years, from 1890 until 1900, I searched for the keywords “orphan*,” “orphanage*,” “foundling*,” “child care,” as well as “Children’s Aid Society.” Furthermore, I used “orphan*” in combination with “care,” “charity,” “institution,” and “immigration.” This initial search provided around 4500 articles. To narrow it down, I looked for articles which were not just marginal notes on e.g. announcements of events connected to institutions, or plans of extension, short articles on openings of new wards, or other minor events. Instead, my focus was to find recurring topics, general articles on children in various institutions, reports on conferences on this matter, opinion pieces and lengthy articles. As recurring, I identified the following major topics: education, immigration, patriotism, religion and donations. By far the most articles on the work of an institution were about the ‘Children’s Aid Society’, followed by coverage on Jewish institutions such as the ‘Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Society’ or the ‘Hebrew Orphan Asylum Society of Brooklyn’. Furthermore, the ‘Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum’ as well as the ‘New York Foundling Hospital and Asylum’ were among the institutions that were covered more regularly in The New York Times. In the end, I had a sum of close to sixty core articles, which will be primarily used for this thesis’s analysis. None of the articles contain an author, except if it was a guest writer or a letter to the editor.
Overview of Chapters
The following chapter will analyze The New York Times’ portrayal of the institutions themselves, the children as well as the superintendents. How were the institutions and the children described? How is their daily life illustrated? Did they report on the children’s backgrounds or parents? What tone do they use to refer to these children? Are there certain recurring stylistic features? Did the articles contain forms of admiration or criticism? Are there differences in the reports concerning various institutions? How is the method of placing out portrayed? A critical look will be taken at those questions to get a general understanding of the newspaper’s coverage of this matter before moving on to broader aspects.
In chapter three, I will take a closer look at two main elements closely connected with each other, namely education and immigration. When it comes to providing these children with a basic education, industrial schools, of which most were affiliated with a child care institution, play an important part. Furthermore, practical teaching in order to prepare them for the job market is an integral aspect. Against this backdrop, the portrayal of immigrant children living in institutions will be examined more closely. Education was considered the most important tool for them as many did not even speak English. It will be analyzed whether the overall existing disapproval of immigrants can also be seen in the relevant articles. In this context, the importance of patriotism within such institutions will be taken into consideration.
In chapter four, the portrayal of religion will be examined. The fact that most of the institutions were run by a religious provider, often led to disputing situations. Therefore, it will be illuminated how The New York Times, which reported for a mostly Protestant readership, dealt with this. Furthermore, the articles will be examined for other religious aspects in regard to life in institutions, such as praying or faith education. All the institutions’ work would not be possible without large sums of money donated by private sponsors. The newspaper played an influential role in informing the public of the good work that was done by the institutions. In addition, their encouragement to give money to such a benevolent cause as this would in the end again benefit themselves, society and the city’s future. How the articles incorporated this will be critically analyzed.
In the fourth chapter, the preliminary findings will be taken into account in order to see how the coverage changed over the ten years. A contextualization and collation with the new ideas of the decade will be undertaken to determine if the articles in The New York Times were rather progressive or reluctant when it comes to new methods of child care.
Chapter 2: Institutions, its Children and Methods
Children in Institutions
Most articles use the term “children” to refer to those living in the institutions, yet, oftentimes more trivialized words such as “little ones,”30 “youngsters,”31 “little waifs,”32
“tots,”33 or “small boys and girls,”34 are used. Those underline their childish and innocent
character, eliminating the negative stigmatization such children were often connected with, in order to be more appealing to upper class readers.35 Especially when it comes to reports on
“joyful festivities,”36 such as openings, exhibitions, or parties organized by the institutions and
often open to the public, the articles tend to polish the image of the children even more by adding endearing words, for example “dainty little girls and chubby little boys,”37 “brightly
arrayed little guests”38 or in one case, when seeing the served food, it “caused their round eyes
to brighten, cheeks to flush […] and little hearts to beat with unusual palpitations of joy.”39
Highlighted is also the children’s appearance with filigreed descriptions to clearly detach them from the dirty image homeless and orphaned children had in the public eye. For the occasion of an opening of an additional building at the Protestant Half Orphan Asylum, it is reported that “all the boys’ heads had been newly barbered, and the girls wore bits of ribbon or lace.”40 At the Silver Jubilee of the Foundling Hospital, “the little girls were dressed in pink,
blue, and other light colored frocks and pretty white aprons, while the little boys behind them wore darker suits.”41 Such outfits were in conformity with a upper class style symbolizing the
children’s social uplift. In one description, the children appear almost angelic as it is reported on the going to bed ritual, “the seven little midgets, in cape and gown, with lightened candles in hand, all ready for bed save that their bright eyes were widely opened, were the more
30 “The Children of the Poor,” The NYT, Dec 24, 1890. 31 “Bright Italian Children,” The NYT, Dec 24, 1890.
32 “A Happy Day for Little Children,” The NYT, Oct 12, 1894. 33 “Festivities for Foundlings,” The NYT, Nov 30, 1894. 34 “Waifs at Bath Beach,” The NYT, Jun 19, 1895.
35 This becomes particularly obvious when comparing to the words The New York Times used when referring to
children living on the streets which it is laid out in an article by Leanne G. Rivlin and Lynne C. Manzo, “Homeless Children in New York City: A View From the 19th Century,” Children's Environments Quarterly 25, no. 1 (1988),
26-33.
36 “Festivities for Foundlings,” The NYT, Nov 30, 1894. 37 “Bright Italian Children,” The NYT, Dec 24, 1890. 38 “Waifs at Bath Beach,” The NYT, Jun 19, 1895. 39 “In Hospitals and Asylums,” The NYT, Dec 26, 1894. 40 “A Worthy Charity,” The NYT, Nov 15, 1891.
applauded and doted on as they sang with charming simplicity.”42 Furthermore, the children’s
good health is repeatedly pointed out.43 All this positive and flowery language contributes to a
reader-friendly image of the children and of order, trimness and seemliness in the institutions. This trend can also be seen when looking at the descriptions of the individual institutions which are praised for their “great buildings and delightful surroundings,”44 “cool,
pleasant playgrounds and such large airy rooms,”45 or “well-lighted and ventilated class
rooms.”46 Moreover, the leadership is applauded in one example, as “one of the most worthy
of the cities charities,” 47 or another as “none is doing more for manhood and citizenship.”48 In
another, it is pointed out that the “sisters take so much comfort in their pleasant house.”49 More
broadly, the “good work”50 that is done in the institutions is often mentioned.
Such a portrayal gives the reader the impression of a generous and loving home, a place one could even wish to grow up in. Yet, this represents a distorted picture, as such happiness and excitement might have been the case on special occasions such as Christmas or 4th of July.
However, their daily routines were much different, but were hardly ever the subject of an article. For example, daily chores, such as cleaning, cooking, sewing or similar were done by the children as a cheap method to keep the institution running. This work was seen as beneficial for the children’s later life since they would “acquire habits of industry and usefulness,” and at the same time it would “instill obedience to authority,” 51 as Hacsi elucidates. Thus, it is hardly
surprising that such work is not specifically pointed out in any articles but rather disguised as education. Furthermore, the days were often rather unexciting and mostly followed a set routine, which made life in the institutions “strict and monotonous.”52 Yet, by reporting mostly
on special occasions such aspects could again be avoided. This extends to corporal punishment which was also part of the daily occurrences. However, one reference to this is found in an
42 “Bright Italian Children,” The NYT, Dec 24, 1890.
43 “A Year of Good Work,” The NYT, Apr 28, 1890; “Colored Orphan Asylum,” The NYT, Feb 11, 1893;
“Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 29, 1899.
44 “All Called for Praise,” The NYT, Jun 14, 1894.
45 “Happy Day for Many Orphans,” The NYT, Jul 5, 1894. 46 “Memorial to Mrs. Astor,” The NYT, May 28, 1897. 47 “A Worthy Charity,” The NYT, Nov 15, 1891. 48 “Helping a Good Work,” The NYT, Dec 23, 1899. 49 “Little Colored Orphans,” The NYT, Jul 22, 1894.
50 The term ‘good work’ is used exceptionally frequently, for example see: “A Year of Good Work,” The NYT,
Apr 28, 1890; “Outing for the Little Ones,” The NYT, Jul 5, 1890; “A Work Worthy of Support,” The NYT, Nov 23, 1892; “What Kindergartens Do,” The NYT, Mar 17, 1895; “Summer Work of the Children’s Aid Society,”
The NYT, Aug 7, 1898; “Helping a Good Work,” The NYT, Dec 23, 1899.
51 Timothy A. Hacsi, Second Home– Orphan Asylums and Poor Families in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1997), 1.
article that reports on the Conference on the Care of Dependent and Delinquent Children, which was held in New York in 1893, where the question of corporal punishment was discussed. Participants, all in charge of different institutions, recount spanking or whipping when necessary.53 Nonetheless, articles dealing with the situation in individual institutions do
not thematize such educational measures.
Another exception can be seen in an article on Christmas celebrations, stating that “their unhappiness was forgotten in the joy of the day, their parentless condition was lost sight of in the kindly care of the sisters who are intrusted with their bringing up, and the cold and hunger of many in the recent past was not thought of.”54 The contrasting juxtaposition of the children’s
bad past and happy present illustrates the literary ditch created in the article. The unpleasant facts are quickly downplayed by highlighting the “happy anticipation,”55 in this case of festive
food, presents, and a visit from Santa Claus. This phenomenon of immediately shifting away from negative incidents or things, was a common strategy by reporters in order to keep the reader’s interest and sympathy and is used in many occasions. Judith Miller labels such a reporting style as “language of fairy tale to make this institution for abandoned babies sound like a magical castle run by industrious elves.”56 Even though The New York Times abstains
for the greater part from running stories of the fate of an individual child and instead kept the focus only on the good things to provoke attachment through sympathy.
A small deviation can be recognized in the parts of the coverage on colored institutions, were the tone is more racial and pejorative. In one case, it is talked about “urchins, ranging in color all the way from café frappe to black coffee,”57 and in another one, the children are
described only as “fairly clean” and furthermore “their food and bedding and clothing are good.”58 Even though, this is in no sense bluntly negative, compared to the wording of other
institutions, it is not as cheerful or laudatory. However, in both articles other aspects such as the building or its leadership were again praised with stronger words.
Another striking point is that the children are portrayed unconnected to their parents, their background story, or any harm or misery they have experienced before. This comes despite the fact that many children living in institutions still had parents or a connection to
53 “Poor ‘Delinquent Children’,” The NYT, Nov 17, 1893. 54 “In Hospitals and Asylums,” The NYT, Dec 26, 1894. 55 Ibid., Dec 26, 1894.
56 Miller, Abandoned: Foundlings, 147.
57 “Little Colored Orphans,” The NYT, Jul 22, 1894. 58 “All Called for Praise,” The NYT, Jun 14, 1894.
relatives. Although this was true in some cases, many children were only there temporarily and returned home if a better financial situation or living standard was given. If mentioned, their past is depicted as “evil influences,”59 which they, through the institution’s “work of
transformation,”60 as one The New York Times’ author puts it, were able to leave behind.
Their life seemed to have only started since they came under the wings of an institution which literally scrubbed off their past and polished them into presentable citizens, educated, morally uplifted and well behaved, ready to be part of Americas future society. Bellingham interprets the institution as “a wedge between the child's miserable past and his or her future,”61
though criticizes the fact that a reunion with their parent or relatives was almost impossible. More fitting is therefore to see the institution as a symbolic sluice through which hopeless and destitute children optimally turned into bright and good future citizens. Historian Judith A. Dulberger thus argues that in institutions “the deviant and dependent classes could be removed from contact with the general populace, rehabilitated, reconstituted, and spit back out on society as models of right and righteous behavior.”62
The fact that parents of institutionalized children who were still alive are hardly ever mentioned, requires closer examination and reveals a crucial point of the reputation and perception of these institutions in New York’s society. Since those parents were poor, desperate, downfallen, or in a similar forlorn situation and had for that reason abandoned their children, they were seen as unmoral and cruel. Furthermore, “it was indisputable that depraved families ruined their children,”63 as political scientist Matthew Crenson encapsulates the
widespread contemporary thinking. In short, a class of society most readers did not want to encounter nor necessarily donate money to. Therefore, these “deeply rooted assumptions that poverty was a consequence of moral failing,”64 a stigma that adhered to the children living in
an institution, had to be erased in order to gain the upper classes’ sympathy and trigger their benevolence.
By using a rhetoric which portrays everything connected to the institutions as good and everything with their parents and past as evil, was an efficient way to prove to the public the
59 “Helping the Little Ones,” The NYT, Feb 28, 1892. 60 “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 29, 1899.
61 Bruce Bellingham, “Institution and Family: An Alternative View of Nineteenth-Century Child Saving,” Social
Problems 33, no. 6 (1986), 42, accessed Jan 13, 2018, http://www.jstor.org/stable/800673.
62 Judith A. Dulberger, Mother Donit Fore the Best Mother Donit Fore the Best. Correspondence of a
Nineteenth-Century Orphan Asylum (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 7.
63 Crenson, Building the Invisible, 64. 64 Ashby, Endangered Children, 3-4.
institutions’ as well as the children’ worthiness and good character. This is exemplified by phrases such as “little children who owe all the brightness in their lives, and even life itself, to the kind care they received”65 or “thousands of infants and half-grown children raised from the
lowest pits of vice and transferred from the curse of poverty into an existence leading to useful citizenship.”66
Consequently, it is not surprising that the increasing use of institutions by desperate parents as temporary relief in times of crisis, is not stressed in the articles either. Ashby asses that many institutions even worked together with the parents as they saw their desperation. Hence, they began to shift their perception as they “came to see them as victims of bad luck rather than moral depravity, and as individuals who loved their children deeply.”67 Only in an
article on a lecture and discussion of the “Class in Present Day Problems,” at the end of the decade, Homer Folks, Secretary of the State Charities Association and speaker of the evening, drew upon the trend of parents using institutions as child care and is quoted:
It is a curious fact, that among the people in the poorer quarters of the east side this sending of children to institutions is not looked upon as a thing to be avoided. In fact, many parents consider it the same as sending their children to college or boarding school.68
Such a progressive analysis was unusual as it portrayed life in an institution as something normal and even worthwhile, rather than a stopgap due to poverty and moral downfall. Yet, such rhetoric would eventually increase in the early twentieth century as Ashby concludes that progressive reformers “rejected such traditional wisdom and argued that poverty itself was the culprit, producing neglectful situations despite the best efforts of many beleaguered families.”69
However, the State Charities Association’s ultimate goal was a “home-saving agenda,” aiming at elevating a family’s situation so that they would not have to turn in their children in the first place.70
In conclusion, the bright and polished picture of the children, the leaders, and institutions drawn by the articles, where often far away from reality.
65 “A Happy Day for Little Children,” The NYT, Oct 12, 1894. 66 “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 29, 1899.
67 Ashby, Endangered Children, 66.
68 “Care of Homeless Young,” The NYT, Jan 9, 1899. 69 Ashby, Endangered Children, 3-4.
70 Elizabeth McKeown and Dorothy M. Brown, “Saving New York’s Children,” U.S. Catholic Historian 13, no.
Placing Out West
To an extent, this discrepancy between articles and reality is also detectable when it comes to the placing out method. They mostly reported in favor of the institutions and thus, also in favor of their methods, in particularly the Children’s Aid Society and their method of placing children within “good Christian homes”71 in the West.
From its beginning, the Children’s Aid Society had argued that the “best possible place of shelter and education for the outcast and homeless children is the Farmer’s Home. In this shelter, without expense to the public, the child is brought up to be a self-supporting man or women.”72 While the institution was only seen as a temporary place of shelter, the ultimate aim
was “finding for those homeless and outcast children not yet tainted by bad habits Christian homes on farms.”73 Especially, in the Children’s Aid Society’s annual reports, placing out was
always underlined as one of the Society’s “greatest success,”74 oftentimes with a note to the
children’s achieved man- or womanhood, their respectability and ability to support themselves and their status as good middle-class citizens.75 The latter is further highlighted by listing the
professions they followed such as “farmers, storekeepers, railroad men, several are cashiers of banks and ministers of the Gospel.”76 Those were all regarded as solid middle-class jobs and
were therefore proof of the children’s uplift. The social advancement of the children is signalized as a crucial aspect, highlighting the importance of status and class within society during that time. Furthermore, articles tend to stress the benefits of life in the countryside by using terms such as “advantages” and “opportunities,”77 words that were not applicable to the
children’s life before they came under the wings of a child care institution. A reprinted statement by the Children’s Aid Society aptly exemplifies the figurative diction in contrast to the children’s former life, using again a picture-perfect language:
In the small towns and among the farmers of the Western States we find a spirit of humanity and kindness to these homeless children. They are welcomed with true Western generosity and hospitality; they are taken into the homes as members of the families and treated with the utmost patience and care; they are given the same education and the same opportunity to get on in life as the children of those communities.78
71 “Helping the Little Ones,” The NYT, Feb 28, 1892. 72 “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 26, 1890. 73 “Helping the Little Ones,” The NYT, Feb 28, 1892. 74 Ibid., Feb 28, 1892.
75 “Help Destitute Children,” The NYT, Nov 25, 1891; “Helping a Good Work,” The NYT, Dec 23, 1899. 76 Ibid., Nov 25, 1891.
77 “For Destitute Little Ones,” The NYT, Nov 29, 1893. 78 “Aiding Homeless Children,” The NYT, Nov 25, 1896.
What od like a children’s paradise, embezzles the oftentimes hard work, long hours, and the sometimes unsuccessful inclusion into the family.79
Nevertheless, the success story portrayed by the Children’s Aid Society and reprinted in The New York Times about the institution’s placing out system, had its downsides. Taking a closer look at the numbers of the Children’s Aid Society’s annual reports, a steady decrease of children being placed out can be detected during the last decade of the nineteenth century. While in 1890, around 2850 children were sent West,80 not even 1600 were placed out ten years
later.81 An exception constitutes the year 1893 in which only 1940 children found new homes
in the rural areas. Standing to reason the financial crisis which rocketed the country and made it harder for families to pay expenses for an extra child. Noticeable is the absence of the inherent paragraph reporting on the placing out numbers in the annual article on the publication of the report in 1898.82 This coincides with the unfavorable tone towards the method at the
National Conference of Charities and Corrections held in the city earlier that year. However, over the decade the slowly decreasing numbers were not mentioned nor analyzed in The New
York Times.
By placing out an average of 2200 children per year within that decade, effective supervision and follow up checks as promised83 were beyond possible despite the institution’s
assurance that “almost all are happy, healthy, and on the road to steady improvement morally and mentally.”84 Neither, was it possible to do any pre-inspections of the families and homes
in which children were to be placed as, according to the annual report of 1896, only six agents were employed to do this job.85 Yet, the only acknowledgment of failure by the Children’s Aid
Society was that “a few of our children have to be brought back by our agents for restlessness
or bad behavior, but eight out of ten of those placed in homes do well.”86 Again the
downplaying of negative effects can be seen here. Furthermore, the given reasons, ‘restlessness or bad behavior’ blame the failed mission on the child, while other reasons such as homesickness, violence, bad treatment, or disproportional exploitation by the new family are neglected. In some cases, they were certainly true, however, for each failure due to the other
79 For examples of negative examples see: Dulberger, Mother Donit Fore the Best, chapter “Children Outside the
Asylum,” 111-165.
80 “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 26, 1890. 81 “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 28, 1900. 82 “Children’s Aid Society Meets,” The NYT, Nov 23, 1898. 83 “Aiding Homeless Children, The NYT, Nov 25, 1896. 84 “The Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 29, 1899. 85 “Aiding Homeless Children,” The NYT, Nov 25, 1896. 86 Ibid., Nov 25, 1896.
stated reasons, it offered the institution an easy way to shuffle out of their responsibility. The bad image of the children’s past still put them in a position where they were, without much effort of persuasion, portrayed as the one to blame when a placement was unsuccessful.
In addition, the prioritized tactic to stress their aim to offer children a family-like surrounding and highlight the benefits of life in the countryside, which matched the contemporary middle-class family idea, overshadowed any possible negative outcome. It hid the fact that children who were sent West often had at least one living parent and the resettlement would most certainly prohibit a chance of reuniting them with their family.
Rather, the method was seen as a welcome strategy to get rid of New York’s street children, potential criminals and vagabonds and to let others deal with the consequences. Yet, this was not critically pointed out in the newspaper’s coverage, but rather solved by praising the economic benefits as “one hundred dollars will place five homeless children in country homes. No work of benevolence is so satisfactory as this.”87 The assurance of the benevolent
character of it and the good deed they were supporting should convince any doubters. Furthermore, stressing that these children, who “become as good citizens as the average of the people born in the communities in which they are placed,”88 shows the superiority city people
felt towards those from rural areas and can be seen as a reassurance for themselves that these children will not pose a threat to their status even if returning to the city later.
Nonetheless, when it comes to printing progressive voices an increase can be noticed over the decade, especially in connection with the National Conference of Charities and Corrections held in New York in May 1898. An early voice favoring an alternative approach, which was printed in The New York Times, was Henry Dwight Chapin. The director of pediatrics at New York City’s Columbia Medical School “was evidently the first behavioral scientist who employed statistical procedures to uncover a critical period for social development in institutionalized infants.”89 He thus passionately advocated in a unusually long
guest article the benefits of the child care in England which followed a system “strongly away from the institutional way.”90 There, according to the core belief that the best place was a
surrounding coming as close to a family home as possible, homeless and orphaned children were boarded out to cottages. They lived in small groups with other children and a guardian,
87 “Helping a Good Work,” The NYT, Dec 23, 1899. 88 Ibid., Dec 23, 1899.
89 Philipp Howard Gray, “Henry Dwight Chapin: Pioneer in the Study of Institutionalized Infants,” Bulletin of the
Psychonomic Society, 27, no. 1 (1989), 85.
always with the goal and hope that at some point the children could return to their families, “the proper unit in social life.”91 This was in Chapin’s opinion in stark contrast to America
where “there seems to be, in general, rather a preference for ‘magnificent institutions’.”92
Coming from a medical background, he had studied the effects of long term hospitalization of children and the low recovery success as well as later developmental disorders. The hospital situation was similar to other child care institutions where infant mortality was fairly high due to sickness and according to Chapin lacking social services.93 Therefore, he saw the English
method as the most “effectual for [the children’s] future health and efficiency as citizens” in order to reach the shared goal of decreasing “future burdens of society.”94 For years after the
publication of his article, Chapin spoke at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, again emphasizing the importance of a home-like environment and proper preparation so that the child “develop[s] character enough to take care of himself.”95 The
publication of such a ‘counter-opinion’ was rather the exception in the early 1890s. Yet, the fact that Chapin did not criticize a single institution which The New York Times would in other respects report positively on, relativizes the exception.
At the dawn of the new century, the aforementioned Homer Folks argued against any form of institutional care as he says the “plan is lacking in that is has no family features – no special and individual attention is given to each child as would be done under a family roof.”96
In his opinion, there are three different options to look after those children. First, to increase preventive work in order to not bring them in a desperate situation at all, second to support poor parents so that they can keep the children with them and third, if both other options fail, it is to find a new home and adoptive parents who are willing to take them in.97 His ideas were
similar to those of Henry D. Chapin, yet, he went one step further by suggesting that first and foremost it should be the endeavor to keep the child in the family. Other progressives shared this idea as they saw it fit to actually get to the core of the problem. Such opinion pieces gave
The New York Times’s readers an idea of other options and at best, made them doubt the way
destitute children were handled in New York City. Yet, any direct attacks against the methods in an institution are not to be found. If any, such as Chapin or Folks, it was against the system in general but not the individual institutions.
91 Chapin, “Progress in Child Saving,” The NYT, Sep 23, 1894. 92 Ibid., Sep 23, 1894.
93 Gray, “Henry Dwight Chapin,” 85.
94 Chapin, “Progress in Child Saving,” The NYT, Sep 23, 1894. 95 “Conference of Charities,” The NYT, May 24, 1898
96 “Care of Homeless Young,” The NYT, Jan 9, 1899. 97 Ibid., Jan 9, 1899.
Chapter 3: Education & Immigration
Education
A major topic discussed within the framework of institutionalized child care in The New
York Times, was education. This chapter will look at the basic education linked to child care
institutions and the depiction of such in the articles. A general importance of the topic can be observed by the high frequency in which it was mentioned. The focus on schools and education underlines the key role it played for those children as it was their hope for and possibility of a better future than their parents would have been able to provide for them. The importance was also stressed by progressive child care reformers whose core ideas Mintz encapsulates as “to cultivate a respect for diversity and a critical, engaged intelligence that would prepare young people to participate in community affairs.”98 In addition, “schooling at any rate”99 was
considered an indispensable measure towards the city’s prosperous future, as these children would be able to take care of themselves instead of being dependent on public support.100 How
this was conveyed in The New York Times, will be analyzed hereafter.
Most of New York’s institutions included basic schooling within their walls.101 More
specifically, in most cases this comprised the basic curriculum as well as religious schooling, though the latter will be analyzed in length within the frame of religion in the next chapter. For example, the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society prided themselves on their primary school for the younger children, while older ones could attend a public Grammar School. Additionally, they offered courses in shorthand and typewriting as well as bookkeeping.102 The Colored Orphans Asylum is said to have a “good school,”103 however
further details are not laid out in the article. The most important, influential, and well-covered institution was again the Children’s Aid Society, with its various educational branches. It will therefore serve as the main institution in the following analysis.
The inclusion of the schools within the institutions was on the one hand a secure way to monitor their education and “get hold of and influence a more irresponsible and unrestrained class of young people,”104 as one author puts it. On the other hand, those children had no chance
98 Mintz, Huck’s Raft, 175.
99 Crenson, Building the Invisible, 23. 100 Ibid., 23.
101 Hacsi, Second Home, 173.
102 “A Year of Good Work,” The NYT, Apr 28, 1890. 103 “Colored Orphan Asylum,” The NYT, Feb 11, 1893. 104 “Aiding Homeless Children,” The NYT, Nov 25, 1896.
to actually get into a public school in the first place,105 leading one author to claim that if it was
not for the “organization [they] would grow up without training of any kind.”106 A fact those
children might have been unaware of, yet, such a statement certainly did affect the readers. In response to this mass of uneducated children, the Children’s Aid Society had begun early on to establish so called industrial schools open to both, the children living in an institution and those housed in crowded tenement flats with their families. The industrial schools did not only differ from public schools in regard of their pupils but also the subjects being taught. Besides “reading, spelling, and writing, and arithmetic,”107 a main goal was what Hacsi calls “building
character,” the endeavor to “shape children into disciplined, religious, respectable, hard-working citizens.”108
Their popularity also prompted other institutions to include such facilities. For example,
The New York Times reported on the opening of a new building of the Protestant Half-Orphan
Asylum with its newly established industrial department which “would add materially to the value of the institutions work.”109 Furthermore, the article stresses a gender-specific schooling
were “boys could be taught the use of tools and the girls could be taught the use of cooking and sewing.”110 The Colored Orphan Asylum’s enhancement “to create and firmly establish
principles of industry,”111 furthermore underlined the spreading trend. In 1892, the Roman
Catholic Orphan Asylum joined in and proposed a plan to integrate a trade school which they hope “would materially advance the usefulness of the asylum,” and most of all “give the boys such a practical knowledge of the trades that master workmen will readily take them into their shops and further train them to become experts.”112 What sounds like a beneficial deal for the
asylum, was much more significant for those receiving industrial education. It did not only mean learning practical knowledge, it represented a considerable social uplift as it gave them the opportunity to put themselves out of their past misery and in the best case, earn their keep for the rest of their lives. This would have been close to impossible to achieve before out of their own efforts. The following short analysis of a paragraph from a lengthy article on the Children’s Aid Society’s work in The New York Times clarifies this:
105 “For Destitute Little Ones,” The NYT, Nov 29, 1893. 106 “Aiding Homeless Children,” The NYT, Nov 25, 1896. 107 “Better than Reformatories,” The NYT, Feb 28, 1897. 108 Hacsi, Second Home, 173.
109 “A Worthy Charity,” The NYT, Nov 15, 1891. 110 Ibid., Nov 15, 1891.
111 “The Colored Orphan Asylum,” Feb 15, 1891.
112 “To Teach Trades To Boys,” The NYT, May 29, 1892. Further mentioning of establishing industrial schools in
Here the children are cleaned, freed from vermin, partly reclothed when necessary, and to the half-starved are given noon lunches, for the needs of the body must first be looked to if the mind is to be reached.
Morality, honesty, purity, and good manners are inculcated, the only knowledge that is given these children that there are such things as god and conscience and right and wrong.113
The first part visualizes the children's past characterized by dirtiness, diseases, grunge, nakedness and hunger. From such they are saved by the institution. The physical cleaning that is done before the mental, graphically symbolized the children’s transition. Listing the to be imparted virtues these children were obviously missing, as the word ‘inculcated’ underlines, emphasizes their crucial factor within society. Interestingly, the use of the word ‘only’ makes it sound like they did not get any other education at all. Since this was not the case, it can be interpreted as a stylistic aggravation in order to stress its significance. The term ‘right and wrong’ in the end underlines and if doubted determines for the reader the wrongness of the life they lived before and the goodness they are given in the institutions. It reassures once more the philanthropic work ethic of the Children’s Aid Society for the children, the society and the city. In 1890, the pioneering Children’s Aid Society already ran twenty-one industrial schools which were held during the day as well as eleven evening schools, for older boys and girls who had to work during the day to support their families.114 Nonetheless, the demand of
children wanting to go to school was much higher than the space available. According to the official numbers of the Children’s Aid Society, in 1890 nearly 10,500 children attended their schools, rising over the next ten years to more than 14,500, with an average attendance per day from a little over 4000 in 1890 to 7000 in 1900.115 The annual report of 1895 of the Children’s
Aid Society recaptured and highlighted this great run on the schools, quoting “children are thronging our industrial schools only to be turned away for the want of space. These little ones idle away their time in the streets, and drift into lazy and vicious habits that cling to them for life.”116 Using the term ‘little ones’ illustrates the Society’s belief of the children’s inherent
innocence which needs to be saved. Furthermore, it is regarded as necessary to prevent idling away and becoming lazy. Two things that were associated with the poor and they were opposite to the new money-oriented, fast developing working world. The representation of the streets and poor districts as the hotbed of vice and evil which would alter the children’s characters for
113 “Helping a Good Work,” The NYT, Dec 23, 1899. 114 “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 26, 1890.
115 Ibid., Nov 26, 1890 and “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 28, 1900. 116 “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 27, 1895.
life, underlines the seriousness of the situation and presages the difficult path to get out. To prevent such a situation from further escalating, the article concludes that “more such schools are necessary to the well-being of the city.”117 In sum, this underlines the importance of
education for the brighter future of the city, yet, it simultaneously alerts the reader of the dangers such habits can have, if they are not met “with the help of the city and the assistance of the benevolent public.”118 The prospective of seeing the city degraded by juvenile crime and
corruption, was used as an effective form of fearmongering to convince the upper classes of the importance of their work and the necessity of support.119
This fear by the public can also be seen in a letter to the editor written by an anonymous New Yorker in 1897. Reacting to the publication of the annual report by the Children’s Aid Society, he points out that too many children have no access to education explicitly stressing the dangers such a situation can hold:
Those who are shut out of the schools are in a sense outlaws, are so regarded by others and by themselves, and are the more readily led into vicious ways. It is greatly to be hoped that the new City Government will not hesitate, on the ground of economy, to push the plans for school extension that are now fairly under way.120
His concern underlines that those in charge, were more focused on accumulating money and might not recognize in time the serious consequences such a push back could have for the city. Another reason for the Children’s Aid Society’s priority in manual training was due to the fact that most of the children were likely to work in the service, industrial or domestic area after leaving school, respectively the institution. The inclusion of subjects such as “sewing, dressmaking, cooking, carpentry, laundry, housework, housekeeping,”121 “wood carving,
typesetting and mechanical and free-hand drawing,”122 was therefore very future-oriented and
could make a real difference for the children as they could get into jobs that were closed to them before.
To represent the schools’ success and their methods of teaching, they regularly organized presentations of the work done by their pupils, which The New York Times oftentimes covered in articles. “The exhibition shows that the children have attained great
117 “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 27, 1895.
118 “The Children’s Aid Society Schools,” The NYT, Oct 5, 1896.
119 Joanne Reitano, The Restless City - A Short History of New York from Colonial Times to the Present (New
York: Routledge, 2006), 89.
120 “Letter to the Editor,” The NYT, Nov 26, 1897. 121 “Children’s Aid Society,” The NYT, Nov 24, 1897. 122 “The Industrial Schools,” The NYT, Oct 16, 1892.
