The Orphan Trains

In the 1800s, the railroads faced a problem -- farm labor shortages along their newly expanded westward lines threatened profitability. Not surprisingly, in 1853, they jumped at the chance to support a New York City minister’s idea--an early version of foster care that would find homes for the city’s orphans on farms in the Midwest. Until the program ended in 1929, more than a quarter of a million abandonded, homeless, and orphaned children were taken from the streets, tenements, and orphanages of New York