TV: The Orphan Trains
The 1995 PBS movie about the Children’s Aid Society train program
The Orphan Trains, a one-hour episode of American Experience on PBS, aired in late November 1995. It’s a good Thanksgiving broadcast. The WGBH-produced program, written and co-produced by Edward Gray for his company, introduced by historian and author David McCullough and narrated by Stacy Keach, unfolds a powerful, moving and little known tale of the Children’s Aid Society program to place city orphans in country, rural or farming families. It’s engrossing to say the least.
According to the show producers:
In the mid-1800s, there were 10,000 homeless children in the streets of New York. Called "street Arabs," these children of impoverished immigrants slept in stairwells, stables or on the docks. Between 1854 and 1929, the Children's Aid Society in New York and other [private] East Coast charities sent more than 150,000 orphaned and neglected children by train to farming communities, to begin new lives in foster families. There were successes and failures, and this film recounts examples of both, but most poignant and powerful are the memories of living Orphan Train riders, remarkably elderly Americans who vividly recall their own childhood journeys to the West, 70, even 80 years ago.
That a private charity could successfully relocate and place the orphans in decent homes—and, of course, not all the stories are happy tales—“to rescue poor and homeless children …[who] roamed the streets of New York in search of money, food and shelter” goes against every modern notion of the general welfare. But it happened and this government-funded broadcast documents the evidence. The testimony provided by several living orphans, who were fostered and/or adopted by loving parents, is stunning. Many of them grew to become productive, thriving, happy adults.
They talk about their childhood memories with plain, frank words. They speak with candor, eloquence and simplicity in interviews which were apparently conducted without self-aggrandizement or making the interviewer part of the testimony—a nearly lost art in today’s filmmaking, documentaries and journalism. These old people remember that, as lost street children, they sold matches, rags or newspapers to survive, seeking protection against violence. Some banded together to form gangs. They were vagrants, truants and runaways, often treated like they were savages.
Motivated to capture and remake the children as little Christians, of course, a young minister, Charles Loring Brace, from Connecticut sought to evangelize these street kids, whom he encountered while in New York City to study at a seminary. "The great duty," minister Brace wrote, "is to get utterly out of their surroundings and to send them away to kind Christian homes in the country."
That he did, and The Orphan Trains shows how and how it helped, which, for the most part, it did. Brace founded the Children's Aid Society to “arrange the trips, raise the money, and obtain the legal permissions needed for relocation.” Brace’s campaign, which deposited children at various homes, farms and towns throughout the Midwest and, later, the plains states (including Boys Town in Nebraska) and as far west as Texas until 1929, was a forerunner of today’s foster care system.
The children’s tales are fascinating. Their memories are crisp. They tell the stories in steady streams of clear thought, halted only in silences punctuated by emotion, realization in the moment or a sudden awareness of a long-forgotten recollection. They’re never interrupted. No one’s shoving a microphone in their faces. The style is comforting, relaxed and welcoming. By all appearances, the children of the orphan trains want to talk; they want their stories to be known. As adults, the former orphans discuss leaving the pasts as they become loved by productive, decent and loving parents, many of whom were much older.
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…The Children's Aid Society liked to point with pride to other success stories, like those of street boys Andrew Burke and John Brady who grew up to become governors of North Dakota and of Alaska, respectively. But the record of placements was mixed. Some of the farmers saw the children as nothing more than a source of cheap labor. Hazelle Latimer, an orphan train rider featured in the film, remembers a farmer with "old dirty hands" examining her teeth. There was also evidence of abuse by foster parents. Many of the older boys simply ran away; some children were rejected by their new parents.
Other evidence shows that much of the 70-plus-year program was documented in letters, records and other writings. Minister Brace struggled with the moral dilemma, too, admitting that: "[w]hen a child of the streets stands before you in rags, with a tear-stained face, you cannot easily forget him. And yet, you are perplexed what to do. The human soul is difficult to interfere with. You hesitate how far you should go."
McCullough’s introduction to The Orphan Trains is straightforward and concise. Watch the program, especially if you’ve ever felt like or been or wanted to adopt or foster an orphan. Judge for yourself whether this idea was worthwhile. But after watching The Orphan Trains I wanted to know more. And I’m more convinced than ever that private charity trumps government-sponsored welfare for children.
Archived articles involving trains
Travelogue: Travel Town train museum and grounds in Los Angeles
This was both fascinating and heartwarming. Private help is always better than government intervention. A proper moral foundation is what would have made the orphan program even better.