Forgotten in America: Personal Tales of the Orphan Train Riders
The Orphan Trains came about as a result of the great immigration to America in the late 19th and 20th centuries. It was a time when families found themselves living in abject poverty and wretched conditions, and the streets were filled with homeless and neglected children who became victims of hunger, disease, or crime.
ORPHAN TRAINS
ReplyDelete...Rather than finance family travel, the Feds established kidnap agencies to collect children until a carload could be sent west on "Orphan Trains," to be picked over at trackside by migrants looking for cheap labor. Frying pan to the fire!
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children snatched children off streets and playgrounds, out of homes, schools and stores, anywhere they could be found a few feet away from their parents. Within minutes, victims were taken to one of three transport agencies. The system was "justified" by massive Federal propaganda that touted immigrant parents as "child abusers." (Yes, Virginia, I see the resemblance to modern massive falsification of child abuse, neglect and molestation accusations that are completely without validity and serve only to "justify" kidnapping children so they can be sold into adoption/slavery.)
Children's Home Society was a Protestant agency that sent more children than any other agency to Protestants in the West.
New York Foundling Hospital was a Catholic agency that sent children to Catholics in the Desert Southwest, where Mexico was trying to block U.S. expansion. (See citation below for litigation that arose from that activity.)
Juvenile Asylum was government controlled. They couldn't have cared less where the kids went as long as they went west. They handled primarily babies.
The Orphan Trains brought the U.S. close to revolution. Older children ran away home. Mobs attacked police and SPCC agents. In the West, Orphan Train and other victims became cannon fodder for a revolution that came close to splitting the U.S. into five nations. (See the Standing Bear cite below, the turning point.)
FULL STORY-
http://familyrights.us/departments/kids/orphan_trains/orphan_trains.html