Description
New York's Newsboys is a lively historical account of Charles Loring Brace's founding and development of the Children's Aid Society to combat a newly emerging social problem, youth homelessness, during the nineteenth century. Poor children slept on the docks, pilfered, and peddled cheap wares to survive, activities which frequently landed them in prison-like juvenile asylums. Brace offered a radical alternative, the Newsboys' Lodging House. From there he launched a network of additional programs, each respecting his clients' free will, contrasting with the policing interventions favored by other reformers. Over four decades Brace built a comprehensive child welfare agency which sought to alleviate suffering, prevent delinquency, and divert children from a life of poverty.Using primary documents and analysis of over 700 original CAS case records, New York's Newsboys offers a new way to look at the foundational roots of social work and child welfare in the United States. In this book, Karen Staller argues that the significance of this chapter in history to the profession, the city of New York, and the country has been under appreciated.
Table of Contents
PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Mr. Brace's Arrival: Early Influences and New-York, 1848-18532. Family Life Among the Poor in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York3. Creating the Children's Aid Society: Exploration and Experimentation4. Opening the Newsboys' Lodging House: Proposal to Practice, 1854 15. Eddying Point: Mr. Macy's Central Office6. The Earliest Lodgers: The Good and the Bad, 1855-18567. Advancing the Lines: Building an Anti-Poverty Agenda, Newsboys' Lodging House, 1855-18618. Mr. Macy's Record Books: Newsboys Lodgers and the Emigration Branch, 1861-1866 and Beyond9. A Permanent Place: Building, Bridging, and Policy Advocacy in the Gilded Age10. The Society Mr. Brace Built: A Life's WorkAfterword: Charles Loring Brace's Legacy and Implications: Bridging Support for Poor Families
