EFFORTS TO IMPROVE CHILD CARE - PART 1
THE NEW YORK CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY
The New York Children's Aid Society (CAS) was founded by Connecticut born minister, Charles Loring Brace. Brace moved to New York City in 1948 and was shocked by the thousands of vagrant street children and appalled with the city's response - incarceration in juvenile and/or adult prisons. In response, he formed the CAS in 1853. He strongly felt family life would serve children better than any institution - which is the primary principle of modern child welfare.
The CAS established a series of industrial schools, shelters, and lodging centers which provided academic and vocational education as well as religious instruction. The first of these was established in 1854. It was the nation's first youth shelter to preserve independence. For a nominal fee, a boy was able to have a safe place to sleep, tend to hygiene needs, eat meals, and an array of other services.
In 1854, Brace launched his Emigration Plan. He sent out circulars to fellow evangelists to recruit adoption homes in the in rural areas across the country. Brace received an overwhelming response and he formed volunteer committees to place the children. The volunteer committee was comprised of a mayor, minister, newspaper editor, banking and a store keeper. The were responsible for placing a child. Brace believed country living and training could prevent negative habits and vices of the of the city. He also believed environment caused misbehavior and farming families could save a troubled youth.
The Emigration Plan became the most influential and controversial issue. He placed over 105,000 city children with farm families across the country with the exception of Arizona. T
hose who were in objection to his Plan claimed this practice resembled early indenturing practice because the children were expected to perform work. Brace vehemently rebutted this objection because the CAS or the biological parent remained their guardian, children could leave (ideally) if there were any problems, and the families were to treat the children as they would their own by providing love and shelter.
In 1860, The Catholic Church accused the Brace and the CAS of trying to convert the children to Protestant beliefs. Brace admitted this was not his intention, although the majority of the country was Protestant.
More criticisms arose in the 1870s from child welfare advocates in favor of family preservation. These advocates felt it is more helpful and humane to attempt to preserve the family, rather than separation. The CAS was also accused of not providing enough oversight of the placements.
In response to these criticisms, the CAS (after Brace's death) banned placement of Catholic children under the age of fourteen, children were place closer to home, and screening a supervision of placements increased.
Although the CAS did prosecute two cases of abuse, and occasionally children were removed from placement due to not being sent two school, research shows most of the children were treated well and abuse was rare. The rarity of abuse coincides with the environs of the placement. Children were placed in small towns and the committee members knew the applicants making wrong-doing difficult to hide; placements were done publicly, and abuse would be corrected by the community; and agents visited the home a few months after the placement as a form of checks and balances.
SOCIETIES FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN - THE SPCC
The first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded in 1874 in New York City. The society was founded by Elbridge Gerry, an attorney who worked for the founder of the SPCA, Henry Bergh. Bergh received much criticism for his indifference towards children. To gain much needed respect, Bergh instructed Gerry to help charity worker, Etta Wheeler, to rescue an eight-year-old girl by the name of Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen's parents had died and her guardians abused her. The only way these guardians could be prosecuted was under the laws that protected animals.
The SPCC was directed by wealthy, conservative white Protestant men serving the poor Catholic immigrants and poor black families. The founders aligned themselves with law enforcers and the states provided this power. The agents were to find abused children, investigate the families, and prosecute the abusers. They issued warrants and removed children from their homes. Citizens of Massachusetts dubbed the SPCC, "the Cruelty".
During the early twentieth century, Grafton Cushing, president of the Massachusetts SPCC, shifted its focus from policing to welfare. Both the Charity and private law enforcement agencies arbitrated custody and support arrangements and placed interventions into the home of poor families. The thought was in order to prevent abuse, social problems needed to be fixed.
When C.C. Carsten was hired to take the lead, his focus switched from abuse to neglect. Agents were to prevent family breakdown. The issue of abuse took the backseat until the wide use of the X-Ray machine in the 1960s.
The problem with the agents were their own personal biases. Poverty was confused with malfeasance or wrongdoing; victims were to blame for their own problems; working mothers who supported the family were considered to be neglectful; molested or raped girls were considered sexually delinquent; and abused women who left were accused of abandoning their families. These biases interfered with distribution of financial aid. Children reformers did not want to interfere with families.
The American SPCCs also held a conservative feminist vision and imposed middle class ideals. They also had ambiguous attitudes toward the family unit; wavering between child centered and family centered.
THE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT
Efforts to improve care provided to dependent children occurred during the 1890s until the 1920s. The Progressive Movement or Era, as it was referred to, called for a change in labor and fiscal policies within the various levels of government. The aim of the reformers was to target the local level, and then for those changes to occur at the state and federal levels. They wanted social justices and general equality. Their efforts referred to as Child Saving looked for change in regard to child abuse, child labor, establishment of kindergartens and playground, Mother's Pensions, reduction of infant mortality and the Juvenile Court System.
The Children Savers was the beginning of Social Work with a new field in child care, an ever evolving field. They began as a "large, active coalition of women's club members, philanthropists, and urban professionals and they established themselves as the Charity Organization Society. The first COS was established in Buffalo, NY in 1877. The charity sought to make the distributions of charity more fair and to keep the undeserving from receiving aid.
CHILD LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES
Another issue addressed during the Progressive Movement was to regulate and protect working children. Massachusetts was the first state to establish a minimum working age law in 1836. Children under the age of fifteen were not allowed to work unless they had more than three months of schooling in the previous year. In 1848, Pennsylvania followed suit, setting the minimum age of twelve years to work in silk, cotton, and wool mills. By 1853, several states instituted a ten hour work day for children under twelve years of age. Despite these efforts, twenty percent of children between the ages of ten to sixteen were employed.
The efforts to regulate child labor laws were mixed with victories and losses.
In 1904, the National Child Labor Committee was founded by Edgar G. Murphy and was directly related to photographs taken by Lewis Hine. Hines photographed children employed in textile mills, coal mines, and canneries. The NCLC was a private and not-for-profit committee with a mission of promoting the rights, awareness, dignity, well-being, and education of children and youth as they relate to work and working. The NCLC was incorporated by an Act of Congress in 1907.
Prior to 1910, there were no federal statutes regulating child labor. In 1916, Congress passed a minimum working age of fourteen in production of non-agricultural goods for interstate commerce and export. The law was overturned in 1918 because it was felt the law was an infringement on personal freedom. By 1919, the Child Labor Tax Law was enacted to tax employers of child labor and this was ruled as unconstitutional in 1922 for being overtly prohibitory and regulatory.
When the National Industrial Recovery Act was introduced in 1933 by Franklin D. Roosevelt, minimum ages were set for working youths. The minimum age for most industries was set for sixteen, and in hazardous industries the age was set at eighteen. In 1935, the Supreme Court ruled the NIRA unconstitutional.
It wasn't until 1949 that there was finally some consensus and finality of the present regulations. The Fair Labor Standards Act (aka Federal Wage and Hour Law) was established in 1938; and then ruled unconstitutional in 1941 by the Supreme Court. Finally in 1949, the FSLA was amended with a minimum working age of sixteen in any occupation that was not deemed hazardous by the Secretary of Labor. Children between the ages of fourteen and fifteen could be employed in non-manufacturing and non-hazardous occupations. Limited hours were also part of this amendment stating working hours needed to be outside of school hours and during vacations.
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