Wars and how they relate to a child's place in this world
How does a government profit from the life of a child? Read some American History through the eyes of a child who was born out of wed-lock in one country, but sent to live with complete strangers, away from any members of my own family, because it was in my 'best interest'....
The Virginia Company of London failed to discover gold or silver in Virginia. However, the company did establish trade of various types. With trade comes profit, and where there is profit, so grows competition. The biggest trade breakthrough came when colonist John Rolfe, introduced new tobacco to his crew. This discovery became the economic basis of the early English colonies. Man-power was needed, so migrant workers (children) were imported.
Fast-forward through the history books: There was the American Revolution (1775-1783), the War of 1812 (1812-1815), and the American Civil War (1861-1854) What came next for the children of those ages? Orphan trains.
Started by Charles Loring Brace, in 1854, "the orphan trains were based on the theory that the innocent children of poor Catholic and Jewish immigrants could be rescued and Americanized if they were permanently removed from depraved urban surroundings and placed with upstanding Anglo-Protestant farming families." However, how many of these "vagrant and pauper children" were the children and grandchildren of lost or killed soldiers?
The orphan trains are among the most famous episodes in adoption history. Between 1854 and 1929, as many as 250,000 children from New York and other Eastern cities were sent by train to towns in midwestern and western states, as well as Canada and Mexico. Families interested in the orphans showed up to look them over when they were placed on display in local train stations, and placements were frequently made with little or no investigation or oversight. http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/topics/orphan.html
- During the orphan train trip, children were accompanied by a placing agent.
- "The trains stopped in scheduled locations. Children usually lined up in front of prospective takers on a platform or at a meeting hall. They were encouraged to look and act their best. Inspection sometimes involved poking and prodding; an attempt to ascertain their value as workers on farms or in local shops and businesses. Children that were not selected returned to the train to travel on to the another stop". http://www.42explore2.com/orphan.htm
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/orphan/
Elliot Bobo was eight years old when he was put on a train. His mother had died when he was two. "Far as I know, my father hit the bottle pretty heavy, and they took us away from him." The Children's Aid Society gave him the small suitcase he still has. "I had all my possessions in there, which wasn't much. No shoes, just a change of clothes."
He did not know--no one knew--where he or the other children would wind up.
Placement into new families was casual at best. Handbills heralded the distribution of cargoes of needy children. As the trains pulled into towns, the youngsters were cleaned up and paraded on makeshift stages before crowds of prospective parents. Elliot Bobo remembers the ordeal:
A farmer came up to me and felt my muscles. And he says, "Oh, you'd make a good hand on the farm." And I say. "You smell bad. You haven't had a bath, probably, in a year." And he took me by the arm and was gonna lead me off the stage, and I bit him. And that didn't work. So I kicked him. Everybody in the audience thought I was incorrigible. They didn't want me because I was out of control. I was crying in the chair by myself.
All orphan trains and child-home services ceased operations by 1929, as The Great Depression affected all sources of profit and income.