Reconsidering Nineteenth Century American Nationalism and Poor Children's Relief Projects

在这项研究中，我考察了儿童福利，特别是孤儿列车计划，将贫困儿童，妇女和家庭从东部沿海州转移到西部各州，研究了19世纪美国民族主义是如何在美国普通人中构建的。这些儿童慈善机构的安置项目是由查尔斯·洛林·布雷斯和纽约儿童援助协会于1853年开始设立的，一直持续到20世纪20年代，就在新政之前。他的项目和活动被从东海岸到西海岸的众多私人慈善机构和组织效仿。在分析中，我对以下问题提出了几个假设：为什么改革者和慈善活动家会强调像西方独立农民之家这样的家庭机构？为什么西方的农业社会对他们来说是理想的？他们是否愿意参与国家建设，并通过做慈善成为美国人？他们是如何建立自己的社交社区和社交网络的？通过研究这些问题，我得出结论，改革者和活动家希望重建新的社会和网络，并将他们的农业意识形态推广到整个美国。他们的价值观根植于传统的欧洲自由土壤意识形态，将贫困儿童送到西方，是他们将新意识形态从东方移植到西方的过程。团结整个美国。

In this research, I considered how nineteenth century American nationalism was constructed in American common people, by examining the child welfare, especially, the orphan train programs to relocate poor children, women, and families from the eastern seaboard states to further western states. These placing out projects in child charities were began to be set by Charles Loring Brace and the New York Children's Aid Society in 1853 and continued to the 1920's just before the New Deal. And his programs and activities were followed and imitated by numerous private charity institutions and organizations from the eastern coast to the western coast.In the analysis, I set up several hypotheses on the following questions : Why would the reformers and charity activists stress family institutions such as independents farmers' home in the west? Why was the western agrarian society an ideal to them? How would they like to participate in nation making and to become American by doing charities? How did they build up their own social communities and social networks? By examining these questions, I concluded that the reformers and activists wanted to rebuild new societies and networks and to enlarge their agrarian ideology to the whole America. Their values were rooted traditional European free soil ideology, sending the poor children to the west, was a process to transplant their new ideology from the east to the west., and to unify the whole Americs.