Christina Baker Kline's The Orphan Train

The novel “The Orphan Train” written by Christina Baker Kline is a fictional portrayal of a young girl who migrated to America from Ireland, and found herself orphaned at the age of ten in New York City in the year 1929. The book tells the story of the pain and anguish she suffered, and the happiness she would later find. From the mid 1850’s through the early 1900’s there was an surge of European immigrants just like Niamh and her family who came to America in search of a better life. Unfortunately, most were not as prosperous as they had hoped to be. As a result, many poverty-stricken children were left orphaned, abandoned, and homeless. They roamed the streets looking for food, money, and refuge by any means necessary. Since there

were no child labor laws during that period of time, children capable of doing so would sometimes find work, but for many of them the only choice they had was to beg or steal. These children were not seen as victims in those days. They were looked at as vagrants, and burdens to society. In 1853 Charles Loring Brace established the Children’s Aid Society. He developed “a system called ‘placing out’ whereby children would be sent to families throughout the United States, Canada, and Indian Territory (Chiodo and Meliza 1). He believed that placing these children with families in other states and territories he could solve several problems that plagued New York City. He thought that by placing out the children he could “help poor children but also to rid the city’s upper classes of the frightening vagrants who preyed upon them [sic]” (Eviatar 2). Brace’s idea of placing the orphaned children of New York into homes of families in the Midwest was a good, as well as a necessary one. However, due to the lack of resources available to the Children’s Aid Society to follow up on the welfare of the children once they boarded the trains, as well as after they were placed into homes, the children were defenseless against abuse and neglect.

When the Children’s Aid Society began to place out orphaned children of New York City they only sent children of working age, and in 1854 that “meant [children] as young as 6” (Chin 1). It wasn’t until many years later that they began placing out children ages five and under. The views on childhood were significantly different from what they are today, and “for most of our history, until the twentieth century, the social worth of children was understood primarily in terms of economic rather than emotional value” (Jalongo 3). The primary concern of the Children’s Aid Society was to make sure the children were presentable to potential parents, and not the wellbeing of the children.
Every child was bathed and provided clothing donated for the train ride with “the girls in dresses with white pinafores and thick stockings, the boys in knickers that button below the knee, white dress shirts, neckties, thick wool suit coats” (Kline New York City 1929-2, p.

4) . The children were expected to stay clean, and keep their clothes clean for the entire length of the train ride which could last for weeks at a time if they were not selected at one of the earlier stops. They were mistreated, and spoken to harshly while in the company of the chaperones on the orphan trains, and it was clear that they had no compassion for the children. While on the train the children were fed, but not very often. The children would go nearly twenty-four hours without eating, and when they ate they were given, “some crusts of bread and milk and an apple each” (Kline New York City 1929-2, p. 3). The children were not permitted to wander off away from the group whenever the train stopped, and if they did they would be punished. When the train reaches the destinations arranged by the Children’s Aid Society, the children are instructed to look their best, and behave well while being paraded in front of families. The older children knew that there was a chance that they would be selected because they would be capable of being put to work. When Dutchy says to Niamh, “You should make out all right, at least you won’t be breaking your back doing farm work” (Kline,The Milwaukee Train 1929, p. 3), it shows that he is aware of what may be in store for him. If selected you would go with your new family, and if not you would board the train and continue on until you found a new home. The children did not know what would become of them once they were selected. Some children were received well by their new families while others were mistreated, neglected, or beaten, and they often “lost any sense of their cultural identities and backgrounds; siblings were often separated, and

contact between them was discouraged” (Kline About the book, p. 12). Since many of the children aboard the orphan trains were of European descent, it was likely that they would not share the same religious beliefs with their new families. They would be forced to abandon their beliefs and take part in the religion as the family they were placed with.

Although many of the children were adopted into kind and loving families, others endured a life of hardship and indentured servitude. The Children’s Aid Society, “not only made little attempt to investigate the families that received children, it made even less effort to determine what happened to the children after they arrived” (Eviatar 2). The Children’s Aid Society reported that families needed the recommendation of a committee of leading citizens (i.e., pastor, justice of the peace, banker, doctor) in order to qualify for a child and that follow ups on the placements were made. Given the demand for services and flawed record keeping practices, however, it is unlikely that these stated policies were consistently followed (Jalongo 3). During that time period child safety and labor laws did not exist. Therefore, children were not protected as they are today.