Charles Brace and his contributions to social reform

Charles Loring Brace

Identification of Brace's Life and Times: Charles Loring Brace was born on June 19, 1826, in Connecticut, and passed away in Switzerland on August 11, 1890. His father, John Brace, is the grandson of Captain Abel Brace, an officer in the American Revolution against England, according to the Dictionary of American Biography (DAB). Although Charles was ready to attend college by the age of fourteen, he decided to wait for two years before attending Yale (1842) and graduating in 1846. Brace taught in country schools in Connecticut for one year prior to returning to New Haven where he studied theology at Yale Divinity School in 1847 (DAB). But the time Brace spent in studies at the Yale Divinity School "bred more doubts than convictions" (DAB) -- so he moved to New York City and volunteered to help with "delinquent classes" (DAB) in the big city.

At first the Children's Aid Society was providing shelter, education, healthcare and employment for foreign immigrants (homes for over 100,000 people were provided) but as the Children's Aid Society grew and expanded its advocacy children became the recipients in most cases of the support and guidance (DAB).

It should be noted that when he was finding homes for abandoned and homeless children, he and his peers "…considered Catholic parents unworthy almost by definition" so he tried to place them in "Anglo-Protestant farming families in small towns and rural areas" (University of Oregon). Catholics saw Brace as a "child-stealer rather than a child-saver") (U. Of Oregon).

Description of the Problems in the Era in which Brace Lived and Worked: New York City in 1848 was a place that horrified Charles Brace. No wonder he was shocked and dismayed at what he saw, given that the chief of police in that era claimed there were about 3,000 children living on the streets, hanging out in the alleys and abandoned buildings and hiding wherever they could (O'Connor, 2001, p. 2). The vagrant children had become "beggars, bootblack, flower sellers and prostitutes," according to O'Connor's excerpt from the book Orphan Trains: The Story of Charles Loring Brace and the Children He Saved and Failed.

Efforts by Brace to Address the Problem: The initial goal for Brace was to bring public attention to the horrific problem that these homeless children represented. Part of meeting that initial goal was to set up the Children's Aid Society, which sought to begin helping the thousands of struggling children in the streets by first offering them "religious guidance at Sunday meetings" and vocational and academic instruction at industrial schools (O'Connor, p. 3). Also a shelter was established called the "Newsboys' Lodging House" -- a place where homeless and "vagrant" young boys could have room and board and an education. Brace and colleagues tried to find jobs and homes for children, but O'Connor writes on page 3 that Brace and his fellow advocates "…soon became overwhelmed by the numbers needing placement.

One strategy that Brace set up was to allow citizens who would like to "adopt" children in order to get them out of the city and into the country environment. In fact, according to O'Connor, over a 75-year period 105,000 homeless children were taken on "Orphan Trains" to homes in the rural areas of the country.

The values, beliefs, and methods by Brace are linked to social practices today because it is the moral duty of social workers to prevent abuse to children. City streets are not homes to thousands of children in 2012, but there are thousands of homeless adults on the streets, and it is a concern of every social worker to help people get sober, get jobs and homes and live in peace.