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

在本研究中，我通过考察儿童福利，特别是将贫困儿童、妇女和家庭从东部沿海各州重新安置到西部各州的孤儿培训计划，来思考世纪美国民族主义是如何在美国普通民众中建构起来的。1853年，查尔斯·洛林·布雷斯（Charles Loring Brace）和纽约儿童援助协会（Children's Aid Society）开始在儿童慈善机构中开展这些项目，并一直持续到新政之前的20世纪20年代。在分析中，我提出了几个假设：为什么西方的改革家和慈善活动家会强调像独立农民之家这样的家庭机构？为什么西方农业社会是他们的理想？他们愿意通过做慈善来参与国家建设和成为美国人吗？他们如何建立自己的社会团体和社交网络？通过研究这些问题，我得出结论，改革者和活动家想要重建新的社会和网络，并将他们的农业意识形态扩大到整个美国。他们的价值观植根于欧洲传统的自由土地意识形态，将贫穷的孩子送到西方，是一个将他们的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.