A Home for Every Child : The Washington Children's Home Society in the Progressive Era 9780295802039, 9780295990644

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e m i l a n d k at h l e e n sic k se r i e s i n w e s t e r n h is t ory a n d bio gr a ph y With support from the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest at the University of Washington, the Sick Series in Western History and Biography features scholarly books on the peoples and issues that have defined and shaped the American West. Through intellectually challenging and engaging books of general interest, the series seeks to deepen and expand our understanding of the American West as a region and its role in the making of the United States and the modern world. This is the seventeenth book in the series. A complete listing appears at the end of this book.

A Home f or Ev ery Ch i ld

The Washington Children’s Home Society in the Progressive Era

pat r ic i a s u sa n ha rt

Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest in association with University of Washington Press | Seattle and London

Copyright © 2010 Patricia Susan Hart Designed by Pamela Canell Typeset in Minion and ITC Benguiat Printed in the United States of America 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest PO Box 353587 Seattle, WA 98195, USA www.cspn.washington.edu University of Washington Press PO Box 50096 Seattle, WA 98145-5096, USA www.washington.edu/uwpress Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hart, Patricia Susan. A home for every child : the Washington Children’s Home Society in the Progressive Era / Patricia Susan Hart. p. cm. — (Emil and Kathleen Sick Lecture-book series in Western history and Biography Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-295-99064-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Washington Children’s Home Society. 2. Adoption—Washington (State)—History. 3. Adoption—United States—History. I. Title. hv875.56.w2h37 2010 262.73409797—dc22 2010018411 All photos courtesy of Children’s Home Society of Washington. All rights reserved. Reproduction of these images is prohibited by law. The paper used in this publication is acid-free and recycled from at least 30 percent post-consumer waste. It meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, a nsi z39.48-1984.

This book is dedicated to Ivar and Katrina

contents

Preface xi i n t ro d u c t i o n

Taking a Chance on the Pacific Northwest 3 cha p t e r 1

Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care 12 cha p t e r 2

Child Relinquishment: The Last Best Hope 36

cha p t e r 3

Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed: Coming into the Care of WCHS 70 cha p t e r 4

Completing God’s Plan and Competing Desires: Negotiating Adoptive Parenthood 103 cha p t e r 5

Biology, Botany, and Belonging 129 cha p t e r 6

Traveling Children: Placement, Re-placement, and Return 166 conclusion

A Home for Every Child: The Elusive Promise 191 Appendix

Tables 1–19 207 Notes 227 Selected Bibliography 265 Index 279

Preceding page spread: Railroad Commission Map of Washington, 1910, General Map Collection, 1841–2005, Washington State Archives.

p r e fac e

a d o p t i o n t o u ch e s t h e l i v e s o f at l ea s t o n e i n f i v e p e o p l e

living in the United States today. Like most, my experience with adoption came secondhand, when friends and relatives chose it to create or complete their families. I have not been through the personal decision making or transition that relinquishing or adoptive parents face; neither was I adopted. For those of us who have not been through the arduous processes of relinquishment, foster care, or creating an adoptive family, adoption can appear to be fully integrated into the American social fabric. Law and social welfare policy, school curriculum and health care, community and family life have all been influenced in some way by adoption. Yet, to the degree that adoption is commonplace today, it has not always been so in the past. I first became interested in the historical causes of child dependency and the origins of modern adoption in the United States while working as an editor of two books that helped parents raise their adopted children.1 I was surprised by the differences and challenges those parents and children experienced along with their joy, and by how exposed adoptive families felt in a society where family is still largely defined by biological xi

relationships. That led me to the historical period at the end of the nineteenth century when adoption emerged as a way to save wholly dependent children. I thought that by understanding how adoption became a legitimate way to create families, I would learn more about how it influenced contemporary child welfare policy. Adoption evolved as part of a broader reform movement to remove children from orphanages, almshouses, and poor farms and place them in family homes. Adoption was also intended to remedy the problems caused by poorly supervised placements of children, particularly those made from orphan trains sponsored by East Coast benevolent institutions. Protestant ministers and amateur child savers pioneered the practice of adoption, with considerable resistance from a broad spectrum of established charities, religious organizations, and newly minted professional social workers schooled in family preservation. Fortunately, a research opportunity made it possible for me to begin an investigation of how adoption became integrated into child welfare reform. The Washington Children’s Home Society (WCHS), founded in Seattle in 1896, was a young but exemplary representative of a growing network of private home-finding societies across the nation at the end of the nineteenth century. Its successor, the Children’s Home Society of Washington (CHSW), had remarkably preserved an unbroken record of case histories, now covering more than one hundred years. Historian E. Wayne Carp of Pacific Lutheran University carefully evaluated the archive in the 1990s, and volunteers painstakingly microfilmed the individual files of thousands of children. My primary research began when CHSW allowed me to sample these case histories and read other rare archived material related to child saving. I sampled every tenth case history of children under WCHS’s care between the society’s founding in 1896 and 1915—in all 289 histories sampled from almost 3,000 cases. This book makes extensive use of these case histories in order to tell the story of child relinquishment and adoption from the perspectives of the participants. From these case histories we can see what led parents to relinquish children for adoption. We get a glimpse of what those children experienced while under the care of WCHS and in their placement homes. And, we see from the perspective of the receiving parents how they went about building families through legal adoption. At a time when adoption of non-relatives was new and uncharted territory, participants xii | Preface

shaped adoption discourse and practice with their insistence that it serve their needs, not just a larger moral or civic cause. The case numbers cited in this book have been coded to protect privacy. I have deleted the names of children when information comes from a case history, but I have not attempted to conceal the identity of individuals whose names were used in stories published in the Washington Children’s Home Finder (WCHF) or in newspaper articles because their identities became part of public record at the time of publication. In addition to the adoption case records, this study incorporates insight gained from an unusually full run of the WCHF from the CHSW archives. These archival sources together provide an unbroken record of child saving at a successful western home-placement society from its founding in 1896 forward. Using these sources as a starting point, I began a broader investigation into the growth of the national home-placement and adoption movement, as well as an inquiry into whether child dependency in the West differed from child dependency in the East. A Home for Every Child provides fresh insights into these areas as it situates the homeplacement movement and adoption within a national context of evolving child welfare practice during the Progressive Era. The Protestant ministers who founded the private home-placing agencies under the umbrella of the National Children’s Home Society (NCHS) were imbued with the Social Gospel mission that called them to apply Christian values to solving problems of their day. They attacked every obstacle to their mission with evangelical zeal—taking on critics, arguing for stronger child protection legislation, and finding permanent homes for destitute, neglected, and abused children. During the Progressive Era, adoption—as distinct from temporary free or paid foster care—gradually emerged as a method of child saving in its own right, largely due to NCHS’s nationwide scope. Social attitudes toward legal adoption were beginning to take shape as well. Rapid urbanization, industrialization, western expansion and settlement, the second great wave of immigration, and progressive political reform all played a role in the formulation of attitudes toward adoption. Adoption gained social meaning as a response to general alarm that the influx of immigrants and “degenerates” threatened the state of the family and the state of the nation. Progressive Era child savers who championed adoption as a solution to the problems of wholly dependent children embraced a larger mission of saving the society from misfits and of molding citizens for the Preface | xiii

nation. The adage for the era, “It is better to save a child than restrain a criminal,” positioned adoption as a solution to a perceived threat of unassimilated foreigners and a criminally inclined underclass. Evidence in case histories, however, contradicts the charge that children were relinquished by foreigners, “degenerates,” or criminals. Instead, the causes for relinquishment can be located in the economic conditions existing in the boom-and-bust economy of the Pacific Northwest and the gendered nature of wage work. Poverty in the Northwest, like in the rest of the nation, was the primary factor contributing to child relinquishment. Access to WCHS’s adoption files provided an opportunity to learn from lives transformed in varying degrees by discontinuity and reorganization. The American West was particularly imbued with an ideal of selfmade success, a standard that was out of reach for many of the thousands who migrated to the Pacific Northwest looking for a new beginning.2 Those who did not succeed are among the historically silent because the poor, the transient, and the unfortunate left few records of their own. Those who had transgressed social mores by conceiving illegitimate children or abandoning families did not write memoirs. Those who experienced the financial hardship, family violence, chronic illness, alcoholism, or death that burned holes through the fabric of familial relationships had energy for precious little but survival. Yet, their stories contribute to a true history of the West and provide a necessary corrective to the heroic and colorful portrayal of the western myth. Their experience adds another dimension to the picture of expansion and industrialization of the American West and the nation as a whole. While adoption entered child welfare practice with social and cultural expectations molded around idealized notions of motherhood, childhood, and middle-class family life, the children and adoptive parents who experienced it gave it their own meaning, forcing case workers to take into consideration the needs and desires of individuals. At the heart of this study of adoption are the accounts of those immediately affected by it—birth parents, adopted children, and adoptive families. The participants in adoption dealt then, as they do now, with issues of difference, legitimacy, and identity within both their adoptive families and society. Although their stories were mediated by the case workers who recorded them, the records nevertheless provide a rich source of evidence that often disputes the assumptions and even motivations of child savers during the period. Ultimately, early adoption practitioners had to modify their pracxiv | Preface

tices and policies to respond to the realities of those directly involved as well as to an evolving national consensus about saving families, not just saving children. Access to the invaluable resources of CHSW makes possible this crucial understanding of the historical legacy of child dependency, child relinquishment, and adoption. Some working definitions for terms used in child saving during the Progressive Era are provided here. Although terms were not used consistently then, I have tried to use them consistently throughout the book. The definitions are based on those provided by W. H. Slingerland in ChildPlacing in Families: A Manual for Students and Social Workers, published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 1919. “Child-placing” referred to placement of destitute and neglected children, temporarily or permanently, in families other than their own and did not refer to placement with near relatives. “Congregate care” referred to facilities that sheltered fifty or more children with little effort to individualize care. In contrast, the “cottage model” housed children in smaller “family” groups in order to provide individualized care. “Foster care” referred to free or paid home placement in families who were not near relatives, usually on a temporary basis, until a permanent arrangement could be made or the child returned to relatives. A variation of foster care is the “wage home” or “working home,” where older children worked for wages and were given an opportunity to attend school until they were ready to go out on their own. “Relinquishment” was the permanent legal transfer of parental rights and responsibility to the state or to an assigned society which then served as the custodian of the child until the child was grown. Relinquishment, which was done by court order, was required for children to be free for legal adoption. “Adoption” referred to the legal transfer of parental rights and responsibilities to a family other than the biological parents. Adoption was carried out in probate courts. Adoption can refer to adoption by near relatives, but the term is used here to refer to adoption of strangers, not kin. I owe tremendous thanks to CHSW for making time and space available to me for primary research in its archives. Particular thanks is due to Sharon Osborne, who has dedicated three decades to leading CHSW to its prominent and highly respected position in child welfare and advocacy today. My original research at CHSW was done under the generous and helpful oversight of Bev Parks. The final hurdles of publication could not have been managed without the help of Danny Howe, Dan Spence, and Randy Perin. I am also greatly indebted to Susan Armitage and LeRoy Preface | xv

Ashby, emeritus professors of history, who directed the original work at Washington State University and continue to inspire their many former students. Both deeply influenced the direction of the early research and the questions I hoped to answer with this book. The early research was made possible by a Pettyjohn Fellowship granted to me through the Washington State University Department of History. E. Wayne Carp broke historical ground for this work. Some preliminary findings from this study were included as a chapter in his edited collection, Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives.3 Among those who helped immeasurably to improve the manuscript, I particularly wish to thank Barbara Melosh, an eloquent historian of adoption, whose suggestions through early revisions were generous, unerring, and deeply appreciated. The anonymous readers at the University of Washington Press helped bring clearer focus to many important points during the final revision of the manuscript. Family members, friends, and colleagues have all lent their encouragement over the years while this book was in development and deserve many thanks. My brother Jack and my sister-in-law Laura generously housed me on lovely Queen Anne Hill in Seattle during the early stage of intensive archival research. No one, however, deserves more credit than my husband, Ivar Nelson, who found time to improve this book even as he directed innumerable other book projects as a university press director. Our daughter Katrina Nelson, who grew up while this book was being written, returned from Argentina just in time to bring her fresh and now adult eyes to the final draft of the manuscript. It would not be a book without them. pat r ici a sus a n h a rt

xvi | Preface

A Hom e f or Ev ery Ch i ld

In spite of the recent terrible disaster in the Black Diamond mine, in which fifteen men lost their lives and many were thrown out of employment . . . yet the public school of this place sent a substantial collection to the work of this Society to be used for the benefit of the children from there in our care. —“Black Diamond’s Grit,” Washington Children’s Home Finder, December 1910

Introduction Ta k i n g a C ha n c e o n t h e Pac i f ic N ort h w e st

in 1910 alone, seventeen children were relinquished for perma-

nent care to the Washington Children’s Home Society from the Black Diamond and Roslyn coal mining districts. Four groups of children had been on community relief from homes described as “exceedingly unfortunate.” Three malnourished infants, an overworked “little sister mother,” and several youngsters “on their way to perdition” were among the lot. Fifteen of the children were placed in adoptive homes, so many that the families shared a circular letter about their children’s progress. Photographs published in the Washington Children’s Home Finder (WCHF) show robust, well-dressed children, notably changed from the condition they had arrived in.1 While we celebrate their turn of fortune, as modern readers we must ask: Were these children relinquished just because they were exceedingly unlucky, or were they representatives of a larger national phenomenon? In the early 1890s, Jacob Riis, the Danish-born New York Tribune reporter and photographer, seared into public awareness the plight of New York’s immigrant poor. In two illustrated books, How the Other Half Lives, a national bestseller, and its sequel, Children of the Poor, Riis 3

portrayed the desperate conditions caused by poverty, overcrowding, and overwork in tenement slums.2 His images of newsboys and homeless “Street Arabs”—undernourished, uneducated, ragtag children—were taken in gritty Manhattan tenement neighborhoods and side streets where recently arrived poor Irish, Italian, and Eastern European Jewish immigrants lived and toiled in the sweated trades. Himself an immigrant, Riis became a tireless lecturer and crusader on behalf of urban reform and child welfare. In hundreds of articles and glass slide presentations Riis strove to arouse the political will of the powerful and of the ordinary citizen to join campaigns to clean up the slums, provide decent housing and schools, and otherwise remedy the life-threatening conditions breeding misery among the newly arrived. Riis was the most prolific and well-published Progressive Era social welfare reformer to challenge America to live up to its promise to the nation’s newcomers and to warn the American public that the poor comprised a potential menace to the nation if not assimilated into society. An adage from the period, “Save a child or restrain a criminal,” epitomizes the fears and hopes placed on children in an expanding, industrializing nation during the Progressive Era, between the 1890s and World War I. A different version of this story of endangered children was taking place in the American West, far from tenements, entrenched political machines, and long-established charity institutions of the eastern seaboard cities. Riis’ portrait of urban poverty affecting immigrant families slaving in urban tenements ten to a room requires revision in the Pacific Northwest. Children relinquished for adoption under western skies were mostly born in the United States and at least one of their parents was born in the United States. Poverty was the primary contributing factor in child relinquishment in the West, although contemporary reformers stridently proclaimed that poverty was not a legitimate reason for relinquishment. What are the connections between economic conditions in the Pacific Northwest and child dependency? In the relatively unindustrialized, resource-rich rural areas and boom towns of the newly settled Northwest, sweatshops were rare. Male wage work that characterized the job market was erratic, however, and female employment, where it could be found, could not support a woman with dependent children. Economic forces driving industrialization and urbanization are blamed for the deplorable conditions endemic to the eastern seaboard cities where child dependency grew dramatically at the turn of the century. Meanwhile, different 4 | Introduction

economic forces in the Northwest produced similar results. In temporary logging and railroad camps, mill and mining towns, migrant labor camps, Indian reservations, canneries, and failed homesteads, human relationships suffered when economic hardship struck as severely as in the East. Representatives of established charity institutions in the East dominated the discussion of what was best for dependent children during the late nineteenth century. But beginning in the 1880s a new movement was afoot, rising from the Midwest, where a growing number of private, Protestant home-placement societies affiliated under the National Children’s Home Society started placing children for permanent adoption. By the 1890s, Children’s Home Societies were stretched across the nation, emerging surrounded by thorny debates and competing claims about when it is best to take a child from parental custody and when it is best to preserve a family, debates that continue to this day. Tried and tested in dozens of statewide affiliated societies like WCHS, home-placement methods took hold, responding to the needs of families and the realities of the western experience. Unlike the impoverished street children of New York, Boston, or Baltimore, dependent children relinquished into the care of WCHS were not mainly Catholic or Jewish immigrants from eastern or southern Europe. Rather they arrived from northern European countries, Canada, and the upper Midwest. Like their eastern urban counterparts, they were rarely orphans but were children of single mothers or of families in crisis who had recently relocated. Newcomers to Washington State at the turn of the century were a diverse lot whose reasons for coming ranged from fortuneseeking during the Klondike Gold Rush to more modest goals of prospering through the hard work of homesteading, logging, fishing, or small business. While they came from all directions, they often arrived by train after the completion of the transcontinental railroads. Many arrived from points east by one of three northern transcontinental routes that passed through the railroad hub at Spokane on the eastern edge of the Columbia River Plateau. New arrivals hoped Washington would be a good place to get a fresh start, although survival, much less prosperity, depended on fluctuating economic conditions. If they traversed the state from east to west, some of these factors would have been apparent. Starting from Spokane they would travel through some of the most productive dry land wheat farming in Taking a Chance on the Pacific Northwest | 5

the world. On the vast rolling hills of the Palouse, rainfall and moderate climate produced outstanding yields of grain. These areas were already settled. The fertile conditions thinned out as travelers continued west into the Channeled Scablands, the barren desert beds scrubbed clean by the ancient Missoula flood and covered by dust and ash blown from eruptions of Cascade mountain volcanoes. Beyond the Scablands, the sage-covered basalt plateau was split by green river valleys cut by Columbia River tributaries. Here homesteaders with small farms struggled to compete with larger commercial farms that could better absorb high freight rates that drastically cut profit margins. At the turn of the century, large-scale irrigation that would eventually transform this central area into fields and fruit orchards still lay in the future. Because of arid conditions, many of the original homesteaders had already lost both farm and home and were joining the swelling ranks of tenants and agricultural wage workers, the largest occupational category in the state. Travelers might also see Indian families picking hops in fields recovering from a devastating statewide aphid infestation in the mid-1890s.3 In grass-covered river valleys, migrants could gaze upon immense flocks of sheep competing with cattle, wild horses, and deer for forage on the ever-more-crowded open range or wintering on lands leased from the Northern Pacific Railway Company. Sheep herding, like cattle ranching, offered few and lonely jobs for those searching for steady work. 4 Moving down the west slope of the Cascades, travelers would see evidence of logging and lumber milling, the industries that dwarfed all others in the Puget Sound area. More than three hundred mills and far more temporary logging camps covered the lower elevations of the Cascade Mountains near Puget Sound, together employing almost ten thousand men. Loggers, many from Scandinavia, cut down old-growth fir, cedar, and spruce, then milled them into lumber, shingles, and sashes. By the time migration to the area started to boom, the best timber near water had already been harvested, and logging camps moved ever deeper into forests. Already in 1899 the Washington State Commissioner of Labor warned that the wasteful methods and relentless pace of logging operations would exterminate the finest area of standing timber in the nation. Although Washington was known as the world’s largest supplier of shingles at the time, the demand for timber products was volatile. The industry had already suffered serious setbacks in the mid-1880s and again in

6 | Introduction

the mid-1890s. Logging and milling were by far the most dangerous outdoor jobs, and the turnover rate among workers was 600 percent per year in some camps.5 Newcomers might also see evidence of silver and gold mining and milling along streams on land taken from Indian tribes. Underground, Russians, Austrians, Italians, and a small number of African Americans mined the coal reserves in the state’s second most profitable and dangerous industry. Coal and timber shipped to San Francisco had provided the economic foundation of Seattle, and coal continued to be in demand to fuel steamships until it was replaced by oil after World War I.6 Railroad workers for the several transcontinental lines and rail spurs, a low-paid transient group even during periods of high seasonal demand, camped wherever repairs and new tracks were needed. A few Japanese had replaced Chinese laborers run out of Washington by the Knights of Labor and other avidly anti-Asian labor interests in the mid-1880s. They worked in separate enclaves on the outskirts of the natural resource industries.7 Streams and rivers along the route west teamed with both natural fish populations and with seventeen million salmon fingerlings released from four state hatcheries in the late 1890s to supply the canneries on Puget Sound and the Columbia River. In the Far West, even Sockeye salmon followed cycles of boom and bust: 1897 was the largest run of salmon since the canneries were built, and 1898 one of the smallest runs ever recorded. At the subsistence end of the fishing industry were Indians and Chinese, who supplied clams and crabs direct to market and cleaned salmon in canneries before the invention of automated cleaners in 1903.8 On the wet western side of the Cascades, the traveler crossed low marshes and rolling wooded hills, past scattered stump and dairy farms, to arrive at the Seattle waterfront set among railroad tracks, piers, warehouses, large commercial enterprises, coal bunkers, and street and cable cars. In 1889 fire gutted fifty blocks of Seattle’s commercial district, and the waterfront shingle mills moved to the nearby communities of Ballard, Lake Union, and Salmon Bay. In 1891 new arrivals found a downtown commercial district rebuilt in massive, multistoried brick buildings that had been constructed with astonishing speed and enthusiasm, with an egalitarian, positivist attitude that came to be known locally as Seattle Spirit.9 Travelers arriving later, in 1897–98, were greeted by a booming city of sixty-five thousand that had shed much of its ramshackle frontier log-

Taking a Chance on the Pacific Northwest | 7

ging town inconveniences. Having survived the depression of the 1890s with increased population and a diversified business economy, Seattle flourished in the Alaska gold rush frenzy of 1897–98. During the Klondike Gold Rush, great numbers of speculators headed to Seattle lured by the phenomenally successful, high-profile national advertising campaign waged by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce to make the city the premier supplier to adventurers. These single men usually arrived without resources or job prospects and joined ten thousand other single men in the same jobless situation. Considered by permanent residents to be a vagrant, undesirable lot prone to drinking, whoring, and fighting along the Seattle waterfront, the men nevertheless supplied a convenient source of cheap, unskilled labor to the railroads in the summer months during the peak years of the Alaska gold rush.10 Seattle had emerged as the Pacific Northwest’s preeminent port city with cable and streetcar service to growing suburban communities and ready to embark on an ambitious civic engineering plan to use hydraulics to level hills standing in the way of further city expansion. Seattle was becoming the dominant, proud, and progressive western port city that it promoted itself to be.11 Engorged by migration west, connected at last to the world by several transcontinental railroad lines, and buoyed by the discovery of gold in Alaska, Seattle suffered from a serious labor glut. Seattle grew from 80,671 in 1900 to 237,194 in 1910, an increase of almost 300 percent in ten years. In the eastern part of the state, Spokane’s population also tripled during this decade to 104,402. New arrivals coming in great numbers from the Midwest, other parts of the Northwest, and Canada accounted for much of the migration to Washington State in these years. About 70 percent of the recently arrived were U.S.-born; the other 30 percent were immigrants, mostly from western and northern Europe. Seeking a better market for their labor, they arrived in the West as part of the vast national wave of migration between 1898 and 1914. Seattle was also a port of entry for the nation, and the Canadian-U.S. border was porous.12 Seattle’s expanding and complex economy was built on broad resource-based occupations in logging, milling, coal mining, railroading, agriculture, fishing, shipping, ship building, and manufacturing that relied almost exclusively on male wage workers. In 1900, 63.87 percent of the population of Seattle was male, the highest percentage in the nation of men in cities of at least 25,000 population. While newcomers often 8 | Introduction

brought resources to invest and many settled with families in farming, the professions, or trades, a great number were either skilled or unskilled single men. Few women worked in nonagricultural occupations during these years, and those who did worked in domestic service or laundries or as cooks. Single working women preferred employment in towns, where demand for domestic workers was high and wages somewhat better than the wages paid to women willing to do household work in rural areas.13 Poverty was prevalent wherever marginalized racial ethnic groups were confined, such as on remote and dispersed Indian reservations and in Asian and African American areas of cities. The nature of wage work caused Washington’s labor force to be dispersed in relatively small mine, mill, or railroad towns or in lumber camps and agricultural crews across the state—timber camps in the Cascades; coal mines in Newcastle, Franklin, Roslyn, and Cle Elum; shingle mills in Everett, Issaquah, and Ballard; and a railroad town in North Yakima. Dislocation and layoffs accompanied wage work in railroading, the timber industries, and itinerant agriculture, when workers, and sometimes their families, moved from job to job. Even when jobs were well paid—as in the skilled work in the natural resource and extractive industries—they provided some of the most dangerous wage work in the United States. Workers’ deaths and permanent disabilities impoverished survivors and dependents. These industries were also notoriously susceptible to periodic recessions, busts, gluts, plagues, and just bad luck, from which workers had little or no protection. Many wage jobs were seasonal, and some took men far away from home. Any distinction between absences of men seeking work and men deserting families was often too minute to make a material difference in dependents’ living conditions. “Gone to the mines . . . never been heard from since” is the entry on one child relinquishment form. It offers a classic statement of how unemployment and family desertion overlapped. It is not surprising, then, that general laborers were heavily represented in the population of nonsupporting fathers of children who were relinquished for adoption. This chronic state of dislocation was related to the economic upheavals that characterized the commodification of the Pacific Northwest’s natural and agricultural resources during this period. In 1896, the year the WCHS began its child-saving work in Seattle, the city was recovering from a severe nationwide depression with widespread unemployment Taking a Chance on the Pacific Northwest | 9

in the building trades. Seattle was also affected by the national depression of 1908–1909, when the value of construction dropped precipitously. The boom-and-bust economy caused tens of thousands of men, but also women and children, to relocate frequently. Failed homesteaders moved to cities and towns to seek wage work, becoming part of a more general nationwide move from farm to city that stimulated urban population growth along the Northwest Coast. The result was that Seattle’s population continued to increase dramatically with single men and families seeking a start in the West. Homelessness and desertion accompanied the western boom-and-bust economy. During the short-lived Alaska-Yukon gold rush, Seattle provided a convenient escape route for those who wished to elude unwanted family responsibilities. As historian Linda Gordon has pointed out, migration to the West made it easier to slip the traces of community controls that would otherwise have kept men and women in unhappy marriages.14 Women abandoned in the West could not rely on distant family to look after a child during crises of illness, death, or unemployment. For many new arrivals to Washington State between the late 1800s and World War I, the benefits of starting up or starting over outweighed the risks of misfortune; for them it was a land of fresh opportunity. Yet, most opportunity in the region came with risks that contributed to child relinquishment. Predominant among these risks was the nature of male wage work in resource based industries—including seasonal unemployment, dangerous working conditions, labor gluts, distant work sites, and industry booms and busts. Along with the risks associated with male wage work were the scarcity and low pay for jobs available to single women with dependent children, absent or distant extended kin, frequent relocations, farm failures, and the relative ease of abandoning family obligations. These regionally specific factors were driven by national social and economic trends: capitalistic expansion, commoditization of resources, the rise of corporate agriculture, expansion of manufacturing, dramatic influx of new populations, urbanization, and gendered labor conditions. In its causes and effects, child dependency in the Pacific Northwest reflected the stresses and strains affecting the nation. If Jacob Riis had documented the plight of homeless children in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the century, what would he have found? As in the East, many of the parents placing children in temporary care in orphanages or relinquishing children permanently for adoption were 10 | Introduction

newcomers. While some were immigrants from northern Europe or Canada, most of the children’s parents were members of a mobile population sweeping in from other areas of the West or from the Midwest. Nearly all of the children were born in the United States, and most had at least one U.S.-born parent. Their status as the “recently arrived” put them among the majority in Washington State, where 80 percent of the population were newcomers to the state or area.15 Mostly white and native English speakers, these children could be found starving in a tent along a railroad line, shivering in a raft moored at a coastal logging camp, or destitute in a shack on a failing homestead. The evidence from case histories in the Pacific Northwest helps us understand that child dependency and homelessness were endemic to the conditions that characterized economic expansion in the American West, while continuous with driving national trends characteristic of the Progressive Era. 16

Taking a Chance on the Pacific Northwest | 11

Chapter 1 s e e k i n g a lt e r n at i v e s t o i n st i t u t io n a l ca r e

“ t h e g r eat e s t ev e n t i n m o d e r n t i m e s” i s h ow w. d. wo o d, p r e s i -

dent of the Washington Children’s Home Society, described “the discovery of the child” to an audience of Progressive Era reformers in 1906, ten years after the society’s founding in Seattle. Wood was speaking particularly of the plight of the abandoned child, because “even mother-love looks with small sympathy upon the homeless chick of another brood.” Wood played upon the rhetorical themes that had shaped the practice of amateur Protestant child saving for decades. He placed “the child” within the “economy of God” as the “key to the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, the greatest factor, the greatest possibility, the greatest opportunity, in all of our human affairs.” He echoed President Theodore Roosevelt by demanding a “square deal” for the homeless child. He valorized the child as educator, “Americanizer,” and “key to the foreign family.”1 Wood pointed out that despite a middle-class American cultural climate that beatified childhood, the sentimental appeal often fell upon deaf ears when the child in question was not a blood relative. Indeed, the adoption of homeless, neglected, or abused children by non-relatives stirred up powerful fears fueled by eugenicists, nativists, medical experts, and 12

even well-meaning reformers of the poor. Against this grain, a handful of Protestant ministers and their supporters, deeply committed to the deinstitutionalization of “normal” children, staunchly maintained that Christian faith and a family environment would prevail over heredity and adversity.2 Advocates like Wood believed matching homeless children to childless Christian homes was the road to salvation for both child and adoptive parents that would “normalize” the “unnatural” condition of childlessness. Adoption was also a way to exercise the principles of the Protestant Social Gospel movement, particularly in its faith that within every child lay a perfect soul, not a bad seed. The case for the adoption of wholly dependent children was brought to the Northwest by the Reverend Harrison D. Brown and his wife, Libbie Beach Brown, when they founded the WCHS in 1896. The couple was carrying forward the vision and mission of the Reverend Martin Van Buren Van Arsdale, founder of the National Children’s Home Society (NCHS).3 H. D. Brown, a Methodist minister, had been inspired by Van Arsdale’s work in the Midwest. A recent widower with ties to the Pacific Northwest, he was directed to found a Children’s Home Society there. Knowing that his mission would be difficult because he had little actual experience with children and no wife to help, he appealed directly to God, who, he believed, answered his prayers for assistance by “preparing the helpmate in the person of Mrs. Libbie Beach Hoel,” a widow and superintendent of the Home for the Friendless in Lincoln, Nebraska. 4 “Christian work should be practical work for the unfortunate, for those who need assistance—a helping hand,” Brown told his colleagues at a meeting of Methodist preachers. “The work of Christianity is to help the world.”5 Among those to be helped were homeless and dependent children, who left to their own devices, he believed, were destined to become criminals. “A child appeals to our sympathy. You may refuse a beggar, despise the tramp, and prod the lazy, but who can refuse help to a homeless child?” asked Brown. He believed that the state had a moral responsibility to intervene in cases of neglect, abuse, and abandonment, but that the care of children in state institutions was corrupted by politics and could remain pure only when guided by religious, and thus “disinterested,” charities that did not rely on taxpayers’ money. Brown and his fellow founders of societies affiliated with the NCHS understood permanent home placement and adoption as the most modern and scientific products of evolutionary progress in charity work.6 Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 13

Unlike contracted, indentured, or temporary free or paid foster care, these home placements were intended to be permanent after a successful ninety-day trial. Even when contracts were made for children in their teens, who were rarely adopted, it was with the intention that families would provide good Christian homes until their maturity.7 Reformers such as Van Arsdale and Brown were critics of both orphanages and the practice of some child-saving institutions in the East that placed children in the rural Midwest without investigating families or following up after placement. The remedy was to investigate prospective homes and provide long-term supervision after placements until children reached maturity.8 It “saves the children from the disastrous results of simply scattering them,” Brown insisted, referring specifically to orphan trains. “Car loads of childrens [sic] have been brought out from the East and simply scattered to any who would take them and thus they were left with no investigation of the home, and no supervision after placing.”9 To Brown, the children’s home societies were the natural and obvious next step in the ladder of progressive child-saving methods.10 H. D. Brown later reflected that when the couple began their mission in the Pacific Northwest they were treated as “intruders” and “disturbers” because the idea of placing children in homes for permanent adoption was “entirely new” to the people of the Northwest. Institutions already established in child saving in the Northwest had no intention of changing their methods. Institutional resistance was not the only problem they encountered. Libbie Brown lamented that among Northwesterners “a decided prejudice against homeless and dependent children, especially those of illegitimate birth, led them to feel that such little ones should not be admitted to the circle of their families and firesides.”11 Like many of the NCH societies’ founders, the Browns first worked out of their home. During a short tenure as acting state superintendent of WCHS, when her husband took on ministerial responsibilities at a Seattle church to help support them and their work, Libbie Brown redoubled the effort to build a statewide constituency.12 She was particularly effective in organizing support from city leaders for the cause and delivering passionate pleas for homeless children in churches open to them through her husband’s participation in the Puget Sound conference of the Methodist Church. She attracted influential friends, including one-time Seattle mayor W. D. Wood, who served as president of the society for many years.13 She also organized local advisory boards throughout the state. 14 | Chapter 1

While the couple’s efforts were hampered by the national economic crisis of the mid-1890s, they managed to find homes for 152 children during the first two and a half years of the society’s operation.

a lt e r n at i v e s t o o r p ha n ag e s a n d a sy l u m s

Home placement got its impetus from a much broader national reform movement aimed at removing children from asylums and poor houses during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.14 Although a general agreement eventually emerged among charity workers that almshouses and work farms were an abomination for children, orphanages did not disappear—quite the contrary. As historian E. Wayne Carp and others have shown, home placement expanded gradually in the early twentieth century and did not supplant orphanages, which also continued to expand. U.S. census data shows that between 1890 and 1910, the number of institutions for children nearly doubled and the number of orphanages increased by about 50 percent. Carp concludes that about two-thirds of dependent children remained in institutional care over this period while the absolute number of children increased with population growth. Of the third in home-placement arrangements, roughly two-thirds remained under institutional oversight, an estimated 61,000 children in 1910 and 73,000 in 1923.15 Poor families generally had no intention of relinquishing their children permanently and needed orphanages for short- and long-term help. Despite criticism by home-placement advocates that orphanages embodied an outdated “regime of the asylum,” characterized by unsanitary conditions, overcrowding, and regimentation, orphanages nonetheless fulfilled necessary functions for poor families. Some institutions founded as orphanages were loath to change to home placement because they were receiving public funds to keep children under their care, but many were forced to incorporate reform measures in response to criticism. Catholic and Jewish institutions reacted strenuously and negatively to breaking up families, and made every attempt to preserve families within their religious folds by providing residential care for dependent children.16 Gaining support for adoption was an uphill battle among many child welfare reformers, even among those who blamed institutional care for instilling “bad habits” that encouraged dependency and left children Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 15

unfit for the competitive world and upstanding citizenship. Most child welfare reformers agreed that adoption was to be used only as a last resort after every other possibility had been exhausted.17 Home-saving methods and philosophies would be incorporated in the original child-saving methods and premises under the second generation of Children’s Home Society leadership.18 As home-placement societies became better understood and more commonplace, they gained support from a spectrum of private, public, and civic constituencies, including the new juvenile court system. Meanwhile, Children’s Home Society superintendents helped write new child welfare reform laws in their states that enabled courts to transfer custody of neglected, abused, and abandoned children to private organizations. In parts of the nation where orphanages and poorhouses were long established, implementation of home placement ranged widely. A 1895 law in Massachusetts, where at one time over half the inmates of public almshouses were children, made that state the first to rely completely on home placement in the form of paid foster care for state wards. (Private orphanages continued to care for many children in that state.) The state’s paid foster care approach was referred to as the Massachusetts Plan.19 In New York, where many private philanthropic institutions relied on public funds to operate their residential orphanages, the Catholic New York Foundling Society (NYFS) instituted a hybrid system. As one of several private charities whose orphan trains placed tens of thousands of children in rural homes in the West, NYFS also continued to provide institutional care in a congregate-care facility in New York City. By the turn of the century, three home-placement models had emerged as alternatives or supplements to congregate care: orphan trains run by private charities, temporary foster care, and home placement intended to lead to adoption.20

o r p ha n t r a i n s

Pioneering home placement for dependent children was Charles Loring Brace, who organized the New York Children’s Aid Society (CAS) in 1853. Between 1853 and 1929, CAS sent 150,000 dependent urban children to rural homes, mostly in the Midwest, to keep them out of institutions and

16 | Chapter 1

remove them from the corrupting influences of the urban street and tenement. As early as the 1880s, however, criticism mounted against Brace’s hasty, unsupervised placements, which were essentially indenture for destitute city children. CAS made little attempt to screen adults taking children and had little or no oversight after placement. The society lost track of wards, placed children who were not relinquished but merely poor, placed children who were exploited for their labor, and allegedly glutted midwestern states’ charities with criminally inclined juvenile runaways. The outcry was such that several states initiated legislation forbidding interstate placement of children by societies not registered as instate agencies. Despite criticism, CAS continued to place children out of state at the rate of six hundred or seven hundred each year until 1929, when it abandoned the practice to focus on urban programs.21 Criticism of CAS’s practice of placing Catholic (mostly Irish) immigrant children in Protestant families also fueled long, bitter debates at national meetings until the turn of the century. Catholic and Jewish charity workers fumed over the abuses of home placement and extolled the preservation of family and faith that orphanages provided. CAS eventually agreed not to place Jewish and Catholic children in Protestant homes. Meanwhile more Catholic charities took up home placement for their own reasons, partially to counter the Protestant evangelicals and pragmatically to cope with tens of thousands of needy urban immigrant children. For example, The Sisters of Charity, who ran the New York Foundling Hospital (NYFH), had placed about ten thousand children by 1894, nearly 40 percent of the needy children under their care; by 1904, some five hundred children were moving west to find Catholic homes each year. In 1927, NYFH stopped the practice because adequate foster homes had been found in the New York area.22 Efforts by other New York institutions to avoid overcrowding and longterm institutionalization of healthy children could not keep pace with the increase in dependent children in East Coast cities. Urban orphanages under pressure from reformers to find homes for such children pleaded that a shortage of good, willing homes in cities, housing shortages, and a vastly increased population of poor immigrants restricted the number of children they could place out under supervision. They needed to place children at a great distance from urban centers, they argued, because that was where willing, healthful homes could be found.23

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t h e m a s sach u s e t t s p la n o f f o st e r ca r e

In the mid-nineteenth century, when the Massachusetts system for subsidizing local townships to meet the urgent needs of unsettled immigrants was deemed inadequate, the state opened three almshouses where the poor labored for their board. No sooner were the almshouses opened than they were overcrowded and failed to recover costs through production. Worse, the almshouses confined adults with children and the desperately poor with criminals and those who were ill. A committee charged with finding a solution decided that children should be moved out of institutions altogether and into foster homes. The Massachusetts legislature approved a law in 1895 that allowed the state to place neglected or destitute children directly into foster care. Known as the Massachusetts Plan or Massachusetts Model, it became the most influential and radical departure from state-supported institutional care for children in the country.24 Massachusetts reformers were following a boarding-out plan of paid foster care that was successful in Great Britain.25 In Massachusetts, statepaid boarding out resulted in very few adoptions, but it did remove children from both almshouses and state-supported orphanages. A report of the board of trustees of the State Primary School explained the benefits of foster care: In nearly every instance, these children were found to be attending the same schools with the children of the neighboring households. . . . They were up early to go with the “uncle” for the cows, to help pick up potatoes, to feed one pet chicken, to brush the floor, wipe a few dishes, or to make a beginning of the patchwork quilt. . . . They evidently had no wish to be taken away from the “home farm,” with its barn and pig-sty. In more than one instance, where a child of the household had died, the little stranger had won a place in the hearts of its guardians, and was spoken of with peculiar tenderness.26

Boarded children were placed in homes of modest means because case workers believed that children were well trained and better disciplined in families who needed them. In contrast, children who remained in the state school for dependent children reminded Bertha W. Jacobs, a deputy superintendent of the Massachusetts State Board of Charity, “of little animals” who gathered around her wanting to “cling to my dress, take hold of 18 | Chapter 1

my hand, ask to be kissed, and act as if they had never touched anything human.”27 In 1902, the Massachusetts child welfare system supervised 1,800 children in paid foster care and 2,000 in free foster care, but reported only 75 adoptions for the year. By 1911, the Massachusetts system had caused the closure of some orphan homes, influenced existing private organizations to board a portion of their wards, and encouraged other charitable and public institutions across the nation to follow suit. 28

t h e n at i o n a l ch i ldr e n ’s h o m e s o c i e t y

In 1851, Massachusetts passed the first law simplifying adoption through probate courts. Similar laws were approved in most states over the next several decades. Washington State, for example, had a law legalizing adoption from its territorial days. By the turn of the century, largely through the expansion of NCHS affiliates throughout the nation, adoption became more commonplace. Word spread through church and civic networks that adoption was a humane, efficient, and inexpensive method of helping abandoned children. From that time forward, adoption began to take shape as a coherent child-saving method in its own right. The founding force behind the NCHS movement was the Reverend Martin Van Buren Van Arsdale, who vowed to help deliver children from the poorhouses he saw in his early work with the destitute.29 In the course of his work, Van Arsdale picked up abused and neglected children and found homes for them.30 He was certain that orphanages could be replaced by private societies acting as intermediaries between homeless children and childless homes. In 1891, he organized the Children’s Home Society to embody his child-saving efforts with plans to replicate it in other states. He found biblical justification for the work—Job had “broke his crust with the orphan,” and Jesus had taken children into his arms and blessed them—and his inspiration was infused with the spirit of Protestant evangelical reform that was manifest in the Social Gospel movement.31 His plan required that children be legally relinquished, insisted that homes be investigated before and after placement, and expected that children would be treated as permanent members of the family and legally adopted whenever possible. Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 19

Van Arsdale believed that the family was ordained by God and that being raised in a Christian home was the road to salvation for dependent children and adoptive families alike. He also believed that only Christians were qualified to perfect God’s plan to “setteth the solitary in families,” as the Bible instructed. In 1892, Van Arsdale explained that because the state was bound to represent the interests of both Christians and nonChristians, public organizations could not be trusted to find appropriate homes for children.32 His vision became a crusade and his commitment to permanent home placement often set him at odds with other charities, particularly those run by Catholic and Jewish institutions. When the National Children’s Home Society proclaimed itself willing to find homes for children of any religion, nationality, and race, other organizations protested, and non-Protestant charity workers demanded that children be placed only with families of their own religious heritage. Van Arsdale’s plans were national in scope. Though nondenominational, state superintendents and district agents were chosen from Protestant clergy and the local advisory boards were made up primarily of Protestant churchwomen. The local boards provided the organization with an indisputable advantage over more centralized or strictly local charity organizations. They reported neglected children, investigated prospective adoptive homes, checked on placed children, raised funds, and organized donation drives.33 If Van Arsdale was something of a genius in organizing voluntary associations with eyes, ears, and willing workers in every nook and corner of a state, he also burdened the societies with a near total reliance on very small donations from Protestant church members. State superintendents and district agents were also charged with raising their own salaries in addition to the cost of the society’s work through exhausting rounds of travel and guest speaking.34 In the earliest years, Van Arsdale focused the NCHS on saving children—not adults or whole families. He assumed that the promise of a “good Christian home” was adequate justification and reward for separating a child permanently from negligent relatives. Neglect, destitution, and illegitimacy were accepted as prima facie evidence of parental unfitness. The opportunity for dependent children to equip themselves for the work of life and devotion to God in more wholesome surroundings further justified separation.35 Van Arsdale’s approach would later be modified as societies expended more effort to keep poor but functioning families together. 20 | Chapter 1

By 1889, Van Arsdale’s vision had spawned societies in other states and most of his lasting organizational and financial strategies, goals, and methods were in place.36 In 1891 NCHS began monthly publication of The Children’s Home Finder with a print run of 16,000 copies to be sold by local advisory board members.37 By 1893, eleven societies and as many receiving homes were in operation, including fifteen hundred local advisory boards.38 By 1896, the year that the Rev. Harrison D. Brown and Mrs. Libbie Beach Brown founded their society in the Northwest, twenty-two societies claimed to have collectively placed 6,600 children.39 Van Arsdale died in May 1894. By then the expansion of affiliated societies under the NCHS umbrella was so dramatic that in 1895, Hastings H. Hart, then the secretary of the Minnesota State Board of Charities, warned his colleagues not to “organize new states until you can organize them efficiently.”40 Between 1898 and 1908, Hart was superintendent of the flagship Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society (ICHAS), which provided a model protocol for all affiliated societies. During these critical years of NCHS expansion, Hart became a strong advocate for family preservation and pressed other societies to adopt methods to prevent the unnecessary or too hasty breaking up of families. 41 By then NCHS had gained the endorsement of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church, and other Protestant denominations, and of Frances E. Willard, president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The NCHS proposed to put an end to the problems raised by critics of orphan trains by placing children only in qualified, investigated households willing to raise children as their own. NCHS also insisted upon proof of legal relinquishment and urged adoption. These reforms were far easier to propose than to enforce. Affiliates of the NCHS, including WCHS, occasionally came under criticism regarding insufficient investigation of adoptive homes, inadequate oversight after placement, and the high frequency of return of children to the societies when placements did not work out. Early adoption advocates hoped to find permanent homes for all dependent children; nevertheless, NCHS acknowledged that children needing short-term aid and temporary homes would always outnumber of children relinquished for placement in adoptive homes. By 1902, Hart reorganized the ICHAS’s aid department to meet this need and began placing children in temporary foster homes. 42 WCHS formalized its aid department in 1907. Although adamantly opposed to informal boardSeeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 21

ing and impermanent foster care in its earliest years, by 1910 WCHS and other affiliated societies were placing children needing short-term care in foster homes and legally relinquished children in adoptive homes. Through this extension of its home-placement mission to include foster care, NCHS adopted many family preservation practices even before child welfare organizations formalized those standards at the 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, called by President Theodore Roosevelt. Progressive Era reformers who participated in the White House Conference were the foremost practitioners of the day in matters affecting the welfare of dependent children. “There can be no more important subject than that of caring for the children,” Roosevelt proclaimed, “because in caring for the children of today, we are taking care of the nation of tomorrow.”43 Social welfare reformers James E. West and Theodore Dreiser had initiated the conference. West had also been the force behind the “Child Rescue Campaign,” an anti-orphanage series of articles promoting adoption published between 1907 and 1911 in The Delineator, a popular national women’s magazine edited by Dreiser. 44 W. B. Sherrard, then superintendent of the NCHS, hailed the White House conference as a major event in world history. Sherrard declared a consensus among child-savers that children have innate rights to be brought up with pure moral influences, and that only worthy parents should be assisted to keep the family together. He heralded the conference recommendations as an “entering wedge” endorsing both adoption and moral purity legislation dear to evangelical Christian Progressive Era reformers. 45 The White House Conference resolutions were actually more equivocal with regard to adoption and far more supportive of family saving and reunification than Sherrard’s commentary suggested. According to the conference’s far-reaching recommendations, children of worthy parents or deserving mothers should be kept with their parents at home while the causes of dependency, such as disease or unemployment, were remedied. Meanwhile, forms of insurance compensation and mothers’ pensions should be instituted to substitute for charity in order to help worthy families stay together. “Normal” homeless and neglected children would be cared for in families whenever possible. Any new institutions for children should be built on the cottage plan in order to foster individuality and provide comforts, responsibilities, and close supervision. Agencies 22 | Chapter 1

caring for children needed to be inspected by the state, the education of such children supervised by state educational authorities, and complete records kept. 46 In 1910 at an address to Seattle’s Social Service Club, Hart reiterated Roosevelt’s endorsement of home placement for its role in replacing some forms of institutional care, but he also stated emphatically that poverty was not grounds for removal of a child and that the first priority was to keep biological families together. 47 Hart also pointedly criticized raising money for buildings instead of hiring personnel adequate to handle case work and warned that the greatest weakness of the home-placement method was the lack of cooperation among existing rescue agencies. He admonished local institutions to work together. 48 As the home-placement movement slowly gained momentum and national exposure—a time that coincided with The Delineator’s homefinding campaign between 1907 and 1911—some prospective adoptive parents expressed dismay that most orphanages housed children awaiting retrieval by friends or relatives when circumstances improved, but not children available for adoption. 49 The Delineator had acted as a clearinghouse or referral agency for the thousands of prospective parents who responded to the campaign, sending in letters with orders for “waiting” children. While the December issue of 1910 boasts of two thousand placements facilitated by the series, the campaign’s primary accomplishment was probably in helping to bring national public awareness to the efforts of independent societies stretched across the country that had been practicing adoption for a decade or more.50

ch i ld sav i n g i n t h e pac i f i c n o rt h w e st

In 1886, as Massachusetts lawmakers and reformers were deinstitutionalizing some dependent populations,51 Washington Territory lawmakers were in their first phase of tax-supported brick-and-mortar institutionbuilding that included a state penitentiary, a school for disabled children, and a mental asylum. The county jails were reported to be “of the usual kind—pens for the indiscriminate huddling together of all classes, ages, and sexes.”52 The Reverend W. D. McFarland, superintendent of the new Washington School for Defective Youth, described a litany of territorial shortcomings with regard to dependent populations, including Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 23

uninspected jails, prisons, hospitals, and poorhouses, a lack of agencies to provide outdoor relief to paupers, and no process for saving disabled children. McFarland was particularly concerned about newcomers who “need intelligent . . . Christian watching” and a “considerable number of vicious youths all over the Territory who should be in some way brought under reformatory influences, and in some cases restrained from scattering seeds of vice.”53 Nine Indian schools were operating with money taken from the sale of Indian land, and Native American children’s education was divvied up among religious groups in line with national assimilationist policy of the time.54 In 1894, with a population of 400,000, Washington State still had a relatively small prison population of 431, but also two hospitals for the insane, and these with a significant combined population of 674 patients.55 Explosive population growth and state institution-building also spawned private charities. The Seattle Children’s Home, Seattle’s oldest charity, was founded in 1884 as an orphanage without religious affiliation by the Ladies Relief Society to provide a temporary home for needy children and for children whose mothers were dead and whose fathers worked in the woods or at sea. Like other institutions for dependent children in Washington State, the Seattle Children’s Home built larger facilities during the first decades of the twentieth century.56 In 1889, the western Washington branch of the WCTU founded the White Shield Home for dependent women and children in Tacoma.57 The Salvation Army opened the White Shield Home in Spokane. The Ladies’ Benevolent Society operated the Home for Friendless Children in Spokane; the Episcopal Church Charities Association sponsored The Sheltering Arms in Tacoma; the Puget Sound Methodist Episcopal Church ran the Crown Jewels Home for Children in Winlock; the Home for Dependent Children was founded in Paulsbo; and Bellingham Bay Children’s Home was supported by public charity in Fairhaven. The largest congregate-care facilities for dependent children in the region were run by the Catholic Church, which supported orphan asylums in Vancouver, Seattle, and Spokane, the Female Reform School in Seattle, the Industrial School for Boys in Seattle, in addition to running five of the Indian schools.58 The Catholic House of the Good Shepherd was opened in Seattle in 1890 by the Roman Catholic Sisters of Our Lady of the Good Shepherd from St. Paul, Minnesota, for the institutional care of women and dependent children. In 1907, the same year that the Washington Chil24 | Chapter 1

dren’s Home Society was outgrowing its receiving home, the House of the Good Shepherd moved to a larger facility that could accommodate 125 girls. Although the Jewish community did not run an orphanage, the Ladies Hebrew Benevolent Association organized a free dispensary, offering training for women and medical service to the poor. Private charities were flourishing while women’s clubs greatly increased their membership and influence through social purity and suffrage movements.59 Local child savers perceived Washington as both progressive and immune from the blight affecting old-fashioned welfare institutions of the East; however, institutions built for the two decades after statehood in 1889 were either Northwest versions of established organizational models or new institutions built for particular dependent populations. The Salvation Army rescue home and the Florence Crittenton home for unwed mothers, for example, were fashioned directly on national models. If there was a discernible trend in child saving at the turn of the century in the Pacific Northwest, it was the proliferation of specialized institutional settings for needy children. After WCHS had established itself as the most powerful statewide child-rescue institution in Washington, alongside the increasingly active Catholic charities, other specialized institutions for children expanded or were built to care for delinquent, mentally ill, and physically disabled children.60 These institutions included the Ravenna Girls’ Home and Training School, the Parental School on Mercer Island, the King County Detention Home, and the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital.61 WCHS became the predominate home-finding institution in the state, but after the reported closing of two orphanages, others continued, such as the private Ryther’s Home and the Seattle Children’s Home. It was within this mix of proliferating child welfare institutions and approaches that adoption, as a successful method of dealing with prolonged child dependency, slowly gained supporters—first among Protestant churches, influential businessmen, politicians, and judges.

t h e wa s h i n g t o n ch i ldr e n ’s h o m e s o c i e t y c o m e s t o stay

Like all the affiliated societies, WCHS carried out its home-placement activities independently while sharing NCHS’s mission, philosophy, methodology, organizational structure, and annual conference. Each Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 25

affiliated society was headed by a state superintendent, often assisted by his wife, and presided over one or more district superintendents. District superintendents were helped by local, voluntary advisory boards that were crucial in recruiting homes for adoption and identifying children they believed to be homeless, neglected, or abused.62 Advisory boards were recruited from the congregations of Protestant churches throughout the state.63 District superintendents sought members among influential women—wives of state senators, newspaper editors, physicians, and county commissioners. Men were rarely members of advisory boards. Advisory board members investigated homes seeking children, compiled lists of childless families, and documented the character, standing, and financial ability of prospective adoptive families.64 Ideally, two or three volunteers would visit a prospective home at intervals, making tactful inquiries, but preferably saying nothing of their relationship to WCHS or any specific child.65 The competence and interest of the boards, however, varied widely. “Many are of really little service, because not sufficiently interested and intelligent about the work,”66 complained one state superintendent, who feared that poorly functioning advisory boards could backfire and weaken WCHS’s statewide mission. Nevertheless, WCHS needed its boards to reach some of the neediest in the rural areas, where neglected, abused, disabled, and delinquent children were out of the institutional reach of urban charities. 67 The legitimacy gained by WCHS when admitted into the NCHS officially in 1896 enabled the Browns and volunteers to gain support from across the state in the form of both money and in-kind donations desperately needed to prepare children for home placement. At first, children boarded with members of Brown’s congregation, then were temporarily boarded at the home of Mrs. Irving on the outskirts of Seattle at Green Lake. Soon thereafter, the first modest building serving as a temporary receiving home was built on the Irving property.68 Children stayed at the receiving home in Seattle (and later at a secondary receiving home in Spokane) for a few days to several months. There the staff endeavored to build up their bodies and character through a healthful diet, medical care, and moral discipline in order to better their chances for securing a permanent home. Ideally, the child was then matched with a home that had been previously investigated by members of the advisory board. The parents needed to be of good character, Sab-

26 | Chapter 1

bath-observing, kind, and financially able and willing to give the child the proper advantages of schooling. Despite efforts to find a good fit between children and adoptive homes, the national average for legal adoption through the twenty-eight NCHS affiliated state societies in 1907 was only 25 percent. Half of all children placed had to be re-placed in a new home one or more times before finding permanent placement. The low rate of legal adoption can be attributed to a number of factors. Legal adoption was a new concept. Some inconvenience and expense were involved in getting an adoption legalized in probate court. Additionally, there was the trial-and-error process of codifying adoption practices. Some societies were more determined to legalize placements than were others. Children who were legally adopted passed out of legal guardianship of the societies, but they could return and be accepted back into care until the age of eighteen. All of this added up to a great deal of coming and going that made the continued involvement of the home-placement societies necessary until the children were adopted or turned eighteen.69 County boards of commissioners were early advocates of placement with WCHS, as they were able to pass along children who had been kept at taxpayers’ expense. Many boards agreed to pay a single fifty-dollar fee per dependent child to WCHS to help cover expenses of placement. This practice was opposed by orphanages in states like New York and California accustomed to receiving money directly from counties for keeping dependent children under their care, but businessmen and politicians supported permanent placement because it saved taxpayers money.70 Although WCHS received no direct state tax dollars, it did accept money from government sources, such as county commissioners and superior courts, to help cover expenses of home placement and continued oversight. Because the placement process was repeated until a good home could be found, such income did not exceed WCHS costs because many children came into the care of WCHS without any subsidy. WCHS financed the purchase of land, buildings, and supplies through private donations. With donations WCHS could afford to move into rented office space in downtown Seattle in 1896 and start publishing the Washington Children’s Home Finder (WCHF), its widely distributed recruitment and fundraising newsletter. This early period of expansion was marked by resistance from some Washington communities that preferred to carry

Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 27

out child welfare locally. WCHS also struggled with individual workers who collected money on its behalf but used it in their own communities, and it fought an ongoing battle against individuals receiving and placing children on their own without society supervision.71 In 1905, the Reverend Luther M. Covington took over as WCHS state superintendent from the Browns. A graduate of the Boston School of Theology, he had established WCHS’s presence in eastern Washington and the Olympia districts where he served as district superintendent. Under his aggressive leadership, the society acquired a second receiving home in Spokane and continued to grow in influence.72 In September 1907, when The Delineator started its “Child Rescue Campaign” intent on emptying the nation’s orphanages through adoption, WCHS firmly endorsed the effort while smugly pointing out that the campaign came two decades after Van Arsdale had begun his crusade. At The Delineator’s request, WCHS sent a photo and history of “one of the choicest baby boys we have ever had in our care” that spurred a large number of applications for other children. Several more children in WCHS’s care were subsequently placed with the help of the magazine’s publicity, although the campaign’s effect on WCHS’s overall placement numbers was negligible.73 WCHS faced pressing problems at this time because it lacked the space for the increasing number of children received into its care. Then, on December 28, 1907, a fire started in the nursery of the twenty-room frame receiving home in Seattle, killing two young children.74 WCHS embarked immediately on a campaign to build a fireproof brick receiving home whose imposing appearance on completion in 1909 rivaled any congregate-care facility in the state. From its founding, WCHS shaped the future of child welfare in Washington State by drafting and sponsoring child-saving laws. Adoption had been a statutory option since Washington had become a state in 1889. Before 1900, however, there were no Washington State laws specifically allowing courts to transfer custody of neglected, abused, or destitute children to WCHS or like societies. WCHS wanted legislation that would give Superior Court judges the power to take children from surroundings deemed “improper and vicious” and commit them to the custody of a society organized for their care. Without such a law, judges were reluctant to sever parental ties and transfer custody to child-saving organizations.75 In 1903 the first comprehensive law protecting homeless, neglected, 28 | Chapter 1

and abused children in Washington State was approved.76 The process of receiving and placing children in surrogate homes was determined by law to begin when a court or county commissioners decided that a child must be taken from his or her biological parents or temporary caretakers or when a child was voluntarily relinquished. A custodial parent, guardian, or court order made the relinquishment permanent. Permanent relinquishment severed all legal ties between a child and all biological relatives. Legally binding relinquishment and assignment of custody to a society differentiated NCHS practice from other forms of child saving, such as foster care. The 1903 law was important because it legitimized WCHS methods and cleared the way for legal adoption. WCHS was an influential member of the local chapter of the national Charity Organization Society, which met in Seattle in 1904 to consolidate support for the law to establish a juvenile court. Thereafter the juvenile court became the primary conduit for moving relinquished children to WCHS.77 The Charity Organization Society also urged stronger divorce legislation, parent delinquency laws, and child labor laws.78 Other new laws WCHS helped to write mandated school attendance, established truant schools, regulated employment of children, and penalized family desertion.79 WCHS pushed for legislation in 1907 that punished men who failed to support their dependents and anyone who contributed to the delinquency of minors. The law provided that nonsupport of a wife by a husband or of a child under the age of sixteen by a father could result in a $500 fine or imprisonment at hard labor for up to three years.80 Several thousand households learned about such legislation and social policy initiatives supported by WCHS each month through the WCHF newsletter. For example, when women were re-enfranchised in Washington State in 1910, WCHS was elated. “We cannot but feel their influence and help in any clear-cut moral issue will be greatly to the advantage of the state,” reported the WCHF, in the glow of women’s help in defeating the establishment of a vice district in Seattle and in electing a new city council in 1911.81 WCHS also asked that women use the vote to change laws that placed the burden of care and support on the unmarried mother rather than on the father of an illegitimate child. WCHF published brief articles of support for general Progressive Era reform legislation such as the initiative and referendum process, and a liability law requiring employers to provide compensation for on-the-job injuries in the woods, mills, mines, and factories in Washington State.82 Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 29

WCHS strongly advocated the creation of the Charities Endorsement Committee (CEC) of businessmen to investigate and endorse only certain charities, thus concentrating and channeling business support to a few “worthy” institutions.83 The committee particularly urged that contributions be withheld from institutions that refused to reveal how their income was spent. One children’s home was found to be unacceptable by CEC because it reputedly supported itself by taking children on theatrical tours in the surrounding country, giving benefit performances to raise money.84 CEC also helped eliminate fundraising impostors, who presented themselves as solicitors for the society.85 WCHS used Progressive Era business rhetoric that valorized efficiency in government and scientific management of social problems.86 “It is no longer a mere charity,” proclaimed the Reverend O. P. Christian, state superintendent of the Children’s Home Finding and Aid Society of Idaho in 1909. “It is good common business sense, and should be treated as such—a question of economics. The man who fails to do his part in assisting in this work cannot, and is not, living up to his privilege as a citizen of his country.”87 The expense of placing a child rose from fifty dollars in the early years to slightly more than twice that in 1915, but remained a fraction of the cost of keeping a child in an institution at public expense.88 Ironically, the rhetoric of economy might have defeated WCHS’s efforts to raise a permanent endowment to help cover operational expenses. Based on small, individual contributions, WCHS’s fundraising efforts continued to be plagued by economic downturns and outpourings of donations to other causes during crises, such as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Meanwhile, it continued to send out empty canning jars for food donations, depended upon coal companies for heat, and accepted free transportation from railroads.89 Hastings Hart, then head of the NCHS, reported in 1908 that WCHS had risen in the national ranks from fifteenth place to third or fourth among all the affiliated NCHS organizations. WCHS’s star was rising along with the number of home placements, but an urgent need remained to provide immediate aid and temporary foster homes for more children.90 Aid work and temporary care was justified by WCHS for reasons unique to the Northwest. It was “so short a step to Alaska, or over the British line,” it pointed out, and “family desertion is frequent.”91 But in fact, many economic and social factors affected the demand for WCHS’s services, including the phenomenal population growth during the previ30 | Chapter 1

ous decade, business recessions, the impact of boom-and-bust industries, and the reluctance of most charities to provide direct relief. Washington State passed its first mothers’ pension law in 1913, but few pensions were awarded and the amounts awarded were miserly. 92 By 1910, WCHS’s work was expanding and its practices were undergoing standardization. It was placing an average of one child a day, and the number of children under its care had reached a total of 1,645.93 WCHS maintained that there was no actual increase in dependency, but only a greater recognition of the work of the society. A more credible explanation is that demand for WCHS services grew along with the population and fluctuated with the demands placed on it by the courts, economic conditions, and the availability of new services, such as day nurseries and Catholic orphanages. Meanwhile, the growing burden of aid work threatened to swamp WCHS, which stated it had neither the personnel nor financial support to meet the need for help.94

e x pa n d i n g s e rv i c e s t o i n c l u d e f o st e r ca r e

The steady and growing need for temporary foster care prompted a farreaching change at WCHS. Evolving from WCHS’s Aid Department, and in response to juvenile court judges’ pressure on the Society to find temporary care for older, harder-to-place children, WCHS modified its adoption-preferred stance. By 1911 WCHS reported positively on the Massachusetts Plan of caring for children in carefully selected foster homes. “The wisdom of using the family home for what may be termed temporary care cases, is two-fold: first, in the success it has achieved in permanent care cases; second, in the expansion of this plan inaugurated in Seattle and Spokane years ago.”95 Of 1,089 cases investigated or assisted that year, 21 percent received temporary care, including children of widows, children of unmarried mothers who were unwilling to place their children for adoption, and a few children of parents temporarily unable to care for their children.96 In 1912, 1,443 children’s cases were investigated, and 23 percent received temporary care.97 By 1913, WCHS reported having forty to fifty foster families willing to take up to five children each. More than a hundred families had been recruited as paid foster homes by 1914, and the Seattle Health Department was appointed to inspect and give permits to those who qualified. Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 31

Although the founders of WCHS preferred adoption to temporary care, the placement of children in foster families kept families together, at least in a nominal sense, because children did not have to be relinquished permanently. Parents and guardians who were able paid the full cost of board, ranging from $10 to $25 per month. Through foster care, counties were able to temporarily place epileptics, the physically and mentally disabled, infants of “doubtful mentality,” and other children not generally considered adoptable.98 WCHS’s Spokane and Tacoma offices followed Seattle by adding aid work. As WCHS took on the job of sorting cases involving children not necessarily headed for adoptive homes, the society also advocated building institutions for the care of mentally disabled children and mentally disabled women.99 WCHS had always been an advocate—in fact was one of the original architects—of the juvenile court system in Washington, but by 1911 WCHS was calling for the legislation to be repealed or amended so that court judges could not themselves act as home finders. New legislation also included the Washington Mothers’ Pension Act, which made provision for an allowance for mothers of children under fifteen who are destitute “but otherwise proper persons morally, physically and mentally to bring up their children.”100 In 1913, of 185 pension petitions heard by juvenile court, 99 were granted aid, benefiting a total of 390 women and children.101 By 1915 WCHS had more children committed to its care than any other single institution in the state.102 Nearly 3,000 children had been transferred to the care of WCHS since its founding. A report in 1915 for the previous year shows that 440 dependent children had come into the care of WCHS, of which 121 were relinquished to WCHS for permanent placement. Of 738 children aided, 102 became paid boarders in temporary homes, 113 were referred to other agencies, 13 were placed in free foster homes temporarily, but only 6 were awarded mothers’ pensions.103 WCHS had grown to play a wider, more flexible, and certainly more established role in child-rescue institutions without actually supplanting other institutions as it had originally aimed to do. Adoption alone was not the panacea for child dependency that Judge Wood believed it could be, and not every dependent child found a home; nevertheless, the society had grown to play a vital, diversified, and prominent role in child welfare reform in the Pacific Northwest.

32 | Chapter 1

nchs as the va nguar d of moder n adop tion pr actice

In many respects, the early founders of Children’s Home Societies were the least likely vanguards of modernization. The Rev. Van Arsdale was an uncompromising Protestant evangelical religious reformer, who was certain that creating “complete” Christian families through adoption was morally justified. The Browns and their successors carried that same religious zeal well into the twentieth century at WCHS. They all believed in the family as a divine institution mandated by God to carry out His plan on earth to raise generations of Christians, and that childless Christian homes were preordained for that task. Yet, with one foot in nineteenthcentury private religious charity, WCHS managed to plant the other in modern twentieth-century child welfare reform. Hastings Hart led the way. Originally carried by the force of the founders’ religious convictions, adoption practice at NCHS was tempered by internal reform between 1898 and 1908, when Hart reorganized the flagship ICHAS.104 ICHAS became a diversified child welfare institution fully integrated with the juvenile court system and flexible enough to incorporate changes necessary to meet real needs, such as temporary foster care. Both preserving families and keeping mother and infant together were incorporated into standard practice at ICHAS by 1905. Julia C. Lathrop, another renowned child welfare advocate who would head the Federal Children’s Bureau when it started in 1912, served on the Board of Directors of ICHAS during this period of change. Hart built upon the founders’ deeply held religious convictions that a child needed a permanent home. Because critics of orphanages and orphan trains like Van Arsdale and Hart insisted upon legal surrender before placement for adoption, new state laws at the turn of the century greatly improved the prospects that a child was really available for adoption when placed with a family. Other innovations date to NCHS founders. Prospective adoptive families filled out applications to demonstrate their ability and commitment to provide for a child until that child reached adulthood. Agents initiated visits to prospective homes and later evaluated the child’s adjustment, a precursor to the home study that social workers use today. Prospective parents perceived Children’s Home Societies as adoption agencies as they filled out applications for desirable

Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 33

children, knowing that few children were available and many couples applied. The unbroken record of every child relinquished to the society is a testimony to early, if not always fully realized, efforts to create case histories incorporating information on relinquishing parents, children, and adoptive parents. The societies’ newsletters gave meaning and purpose to adoption and conveyed that understanding to supporters and prospective families even in remote communities through church and advisory board networks. With varying degrees of rigor at first, adoptions were increasingly carried out in a coherent, continuous, and predictable manner over a period of time sufficient to test and improve methods in dozens of societies across the nation. The National Children Home Society and its affiliates can justly be considered the vanguard of the modern practice of adoption in the United States.105 As NCHS pioneered modern adoption practice it persisted against an array of critics and skeptics, such as religious and private organizations committed to orphanages, established charities receiving financial support for caring for children, eugenicists, and many social workers. Added to that was the hard-won consensus among top child welfare experts from the late 1890s forward that family preservation was to be the top priority of child savers.106 Adoption survived its critics as a method of child saving partly because of the stature of its advocates. Hasting Hart was a towering figure of his generation who had originally led a critical investigation of the New York Children’s Aid Society orphan trains. While working for NCHS, Hart criticized the building of elaborate receiving homes; warned societies not to place expansion before efficacy in the care of children; improved record keeping, the application process, and visitation of children; and rationalized aid and foster care. Hart’s reorganization provided a model for societies across the nation to emulate. Adoption also sought and found support in statewide networks that tapped deeply into rural culture through churches and advisory boards. Tens of thousands of miles were covered each year by Children Home Society representatives who made personal pleas for homeless children and the benefits of adoption. Societies were known through guest sermons and face-to-face contact with civic and government groups. The WCHF reached many thousands of readers in Washington each month. Appeals made through churches and schools, such as the annual red stocking 34 | Chapter 1

campaign at Christmas, had significant emotional and civic appeal. These regular campaigns took place in communities far from the professional squabbles among child welfare reformers of the day and helped create support for adoptive families living in small communities. Above all, adoption found an emotional home in the hearts of Americans who wanted children. This deep desire among thousands of families for children to call their own gradually overcame an inchoate fear of “the homeless chick of another brood.” That was as true in Washington State as it was across the nation. By 1910, NCHS had thirty state affiliates, including societies in all the Pacific Northwest states.107 There were never enough healthy, young, and available children to fulfill the desire to adopt them.

Seeking Alternatives to Institutional Care | 35

The vaudeville people were there with their lawyer and witnesses and made a hard fight for the possession of the child. The line was clearly and sharply drawn. There were the representatives of the low class theater on one side—those who played before lewd women and dissipated men; those who were familiar with the language and habits of the slums and made their living by pandering to the appetites of this class of people. Those were the forces arrayed on one side, who fought for the possession of the little boy that he might be used in this kind of work. On the other side were benevolent and Christian people, who sought to rescue the boy from this kind of life and place him in a good family home where he might go to school and be fitted for a useful life.—Washington Children’s Home Finder, February 1904

Chapter 2 ch i ld r e li n qu i sh m e n t

The Last Best Hope

high profile, emotionally charged cases involving moral short-

comings and child abuse helped WCHS win popular support for adoption and new child protection legislation. The sensational 1904 Seattle child custody trial over eight-year-old vaudeville acrobat Ray Sansom had the florid qualities of melodrama. As events were recounted for readers of the Washington Children’s Home Finder, an innocent child-victim’s fate was to be decided in a contest between lascivious, selfish, and menacing forces of evil on one side and unselfish, Christian, family-loving child savers on the other. Only the engine coming down the tracks and the predictable happy reunion of victim and rescuer are missing from the script. Yet the trial’s outcome was not certain to favor WCHS. During the proceedings, the judge seemed to support the claims of the theater couple to whom the boy was given (or sold) by his father. By late afternoon the judge had decided that the vaudeville couple was in loco parentis and therefore entitled to the boy. Had his blood relatives not intervened to request placement of the child with WCHS, the society would likely have lost the case.1 The best-interest-of-the-child doctrine, which had evolved through 36

court decisions from the mid-nineteenth century on, increasingly influenced child-saving philosophy and legal practice during the Progressive Era, but did not guarantee outcomes in individual cases. The doctrine, evoked at the discretion of judges, recognized the individuality of the child and empowered courts to sever parental rights in extreme cases of nonsupport, neglect, or abuse. Child protection legislation, maternal preference in custody cases, and a juvenile court system are a few of the innovations instituted widely during this period based on this doctrine.2 Evangelical Protestant ministers at the NCHS believed that children were central to God’s unfolding plan for complete Christian families: without the vigilance of a full-time mother and the support of an upstanding, bread-winning father, children would have difficulty developing into honest, thrifty, responsible Christian citizens. The NCHS saw its role as bringing God’s plan for Christian families to completion by tying together the “loose ends”—homeless children and childless homes. While the popular outcry about Sansom’s case supported the moral outrage of some adoption advocates, who believed they were fighting a righteous class war for decency, the case’s complexity and outcome show the interplay between the best-interest-of-the-child doctrine and blood ties. Blood ties generally prevailed over the claims of non-relatives in custody battles. As a foundation for understanding the real factors in child relinquishment, the moral outrage that aroused popular support for adoption in Sansom’s case is actually misleading. In fact, relinquishment records show that the inability of a parent or parents to provide for a child was the most common factor contributing to child relinquishment in Washington State—not overt child abuse. Even as children acquired legal rights separate from their biological parents, they were perceived as needing an unprecedented quality of parenting, particularly mothering. On the one hand, a romanticized and sentimentalized Victorian mist veiled childhood, during which children needed full-time, tenderhearted, self-sacrificing mothering.3 On the other hand, turn-of-the-century mothers were expected to use new “scientific” approaches to child rearing and household management, with stringent standards for everything from personal hygiene and diet to regimentation of chores, play, eating, sleep, and school attendance. The ideal family man was expected to be a full-time breadwinner, to provide a firm guiding hand, and to be a model of productivity and enterprise. Some working-class parents were at a disadvantage. Birth fathers of relinChild Relinquishment | 37

quished children generally occupied the lower rungs of employment as coal miners, general laborers, farm workers, loggers, railroad workers, and mill workers or were unemployed workers in those occupations (see table 1). Not surprisingly, insufficient wages was a commonly cited reason for relinquishment by single working mothers, compounded by a lack of support by a child’s father. Almost all parents who relinquished their children were women. One-third of these women relinquished their children because they were unmarried or deserted by the father of the child before birth, a condition virtually certain to lead to impoverishment of mother and child. Women who were stranded with dependent children when their partners died or deserted relinquished children to WCHS, as did women who worked but could not support their families on the subsistence-level “woman’s wage.” In 1900, only 13 percent of all females over ten-years-old were counted in the census as being gainfully employed, but 47 percent of the women who surrendered children to WCHS worked, most often at low-paying domestic jobs (see table 2). Actual national labor force participation of women in 1900 was between 48.5 and 56.7 percent when using a formula that factors in farm labor, factory outwork, and gainful employment at home, an estimate that is roughly consistent with the 47 percent figure of working women derived from the WCHS sample. 4 If the latter percentage is more representative than the official census, where women’s labor was undercounted, women who relinquished children were employed at about the same rate as women in the general population. More to the point, women who had dependent children and were not working had virtually no hope of economic survival on their own, and those who did work could not make ends meet. A minimum wage for women in sales was not introduced until 1913 and did not cover women working as domestics. Although the law made it illegal to employ women in industry below a wage adequate to their maintenance, a woman’s wage alone was not sufficient to support dependents.5 Mothers’ pensions were not introduced in Washington State until 1913 and then were awarded only to a few “worthy” widows. While the relinquishing parent was almost always a white, U.S.-born woman, birth parents as a whole were fairly diverse in age and nationality (see table 3). They claimed more than two dozen different ethnic backgrounds and ranged in age from adolescent to middle-aged. Labor and economic factors contributing to relinquishment by poor white parents 38 | Chapter 2

were magnified and compounded when the parents were Native American, Asian, or African American, as these populations faced racial prejudice from white immigrants, U.S.-born wage workers, and organized labor that excluded people of color from most job categories.6 WCHS took into care children of color for home placement, but they were often of mixed-racial heritage, indicating the difficulty children of mixed-race parentage had in Seattle and other communities where people of color generally lived in racially segregated enclaves. Prevailing racial attitudes and other historical factors often determined which organizations presided over the care of dependent children of color. Adoption of children of color also raised complex issues of race matching. Understanding relinquishment is difficult because relinquishing parents’ very existence was erased by the legal act of forfeiting parental rights, which is then overwritten by the legal act of adoption. The difficulty is largely due to the process of legal relinquishment, which routinely narrowed complicated reasons for relinquishment to a few categories of parental failure conforming to state laws allowing such an extreme measure. Ledgers and simple forms used by WCHS agents to receive children into care typically offered only a word or two indicating that the mother was unmarried, the child abandoned, or the parent dead. WCHS did not hire its first professionally trained social worker until 1928 and its first professional, non-clerical director until 1938. Between 1896 and 1915, information in the written record about relinquishing parties is sketchy and fragmented. Only in the later years of this study, when charity work was under pressure to professionalize, did family medical histories become fairly standard. Some information available from the case histories is undoubtedly inaccurate. Parents and guardians had little incentive to reveal more than they had to or report anything unfavorable, despite the prying for which benevolent charity workers were renowned.7 More problems in record keeping were caused because children usually came under the care of WCHS after passing through other agencies, courts, county commissions, or surrogate providers. The result was that only a minimum of information about relinquishing parents in these early years was ever saved in adoption files.8 In the first decade of its existence, the National Children’s Home Society was driven by a Protestant moral mission with an emphasis on rebirth and salvation of the child in a new home environment. Yet by the 1890s, sentiment among leading national child welfare reformers had already Child Relinquishment | 39

swung in favor of family preservation, specifically to keep mother and child together. WCHS had begun to modulate its early strident childsaving rhetoric to promote itself more as a family-saving institution even before the 1909 White House Conference on Dependent Children mandated family preservation. By that time WCHS ran a full-fledged family aid department and routinely arranged for short-term, material help for “worthy” poor families while discouraging “too easy” relinquishment of poor children. WCHS did not, however, abandon its belief that poor children needed to be saved from “low-class values” represented by the three “D’s”—Drink, Desertion, and Divorce—although these causes accounted for less than half of child relinquishments. Even as the nation moved toward mothers’ pensions and other efforts to keep mother and child together, the child, not the parent, remained steadfastly the client at WCHS, and causes of relinquishment continued to be translated into morally loaded terms.9 The use of home placement by private and public organizations spread dramatically during the early twentieth century, although cultural and institutional forces worked against relinquishment. Relinquishing a child was stigmatizing and even considered unnatural by many Protestant reformers of the day, notably those involved with the Florence Crittenton Mission, which was committed to saving “fallen women” through the transforming power of motherhood. Many Catholic and Jewish institutions also actively opposed adoption because they realistically feared children of their faiths were being adopted through nominally “nondenominational” but indisputably Protestant societies like WCHS. The Florence Crittenton homes, the Seattle Children’s Home, the Catholic House of the Good Shepherd, and a number of other private orphanages boarded children. Primarily operating in the East and upper Midwest, the new profession of social work had difficulty gaining authority over the practice of adoption and had no influence in the Pacific Northwest at this time. Its influence would eventually be felt in the 1920s and its voice heard through the very influential Child Welfare League. When the League conducted a survey in 1924, social workers steadfastly supported keeping illegitimate babies with their mothers and downplayed adoptive homes.10 Meanwhile, reformers everywhere helped advance stronger child protection legislation during the Progressive Era that created penalties for the abuse and neglect of children. Arguably, child relinquishment carried a greater social stigma of personal failure during the Progressive Era 40 | Chapter 2

than previously because the cultural reform climate identified middleclass American family life with the highest attainment of civilization and equated economic insecurity with personal, moral, and civic failure.

mothers alone

The most common cause for relinquishment was illegitimacy, which represented about one-third of all relinquishments (see tables 4 and 5). Women relinquished their children because they could not provide for them, and those who tried to provide often could not overcome the social stigma and economic hardships. Florence Crittenton homes, for example, offered pregnant women shelter and training, mostly for domestic work, and made women sign agreements to nurse and care for their children for at least six months. Reform-minded child savers in Washington State and their national counterparts were appalled at the double-standard that forced women to suffer for illicit sexual relations, and they fought to criminalize abandonment and seduction.11 That did not, however, restrain Rev. H. D. Brown from defining illegitimate birth as “a crime against children” and often tarring unwed mothers with the same brush used on men who transgressed late nineteenth-century sexual morality. Washington State law conformed to the prevailing harsh social attitudes and legal precedents with regard to children born to unmarried women. A woman bearing an illegitimate child could not claim the child as a “natural” offspring of the biological father and thus could neither legally give the child the father’s last name nor expect child support unless she sued in court.12 The English Common Law rule of filius nullius—the child of no one—prohibited an illegitimate child from inheriting a father’s estate. Unless a woman were willing to advertise her “immorality” for her part in a stigmatized sexual relationship, the hope of receiving child support was practically nonexistent.13 The Protestant sense of morality was offended by sexual relations outside of marriage, although WCHS did not consider its policies intentionally punitive to unwed mothers.14 The Rev. Brown, for example, considered the social stigma of illegitimacy sufficient reason for relinquishment, regardless of the woman’s preference. In stark contrast to the position of the Florence Crittendon Mission, which sought to keep unwed mothers and children together, a Washington Children’s Home Finder Child Relinquishment | 41

article warned: “Even when the mother desires to keep her child it has no name and a very low standing in life. The child is the innocent party and should have some consideration. It should not be sacrificed for the welfare of the mother.”15 Understandably, many women chose child relinquishment rather than the stigmatization and the certain state of poverty that resulted from attempts to support dependents on a woman’s wage alone. About one-quarter of the women relinquishing illegitimate babies were between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, younger than the age of consent in Washington (see table 6).16 The two youngest mothers were fourteen at the birth of their babies.17 One was six years younger than the child’s father. The second mother, who gave her daughter her own first and last name before she relinquished, indicated her occupation as “school girl” and the unnamed father’s occupation as “school boy.” Although sketchy, these records are not mute. These women do not appear to be victims of domestic sexual abuse, as their youth might suggest; they each named their child’s father and likely had frequent contact with him. In the first instance, however, the age difference suggests the girl was involved in a sexual relationship over which she probably had little control. The second case suggests sexual intimacy developing in a more protective social environment. In neither case was the baby taken in by the young mother’s or father’s family.18 Very young women often traveled far from home to bear illegitimate children. One fifteen-year-old woman traveled from a town in Oregon to Tacoma on the recommendation of a family friend, then went to White Shield Home in Tacoma, left after a week, and then returned three weeks later, two months before the birth of her child. Another came from the middle of Washington State to White Shield Home. A third fifteen-yearold mother, identified only by her name and birthplace in Wisconsin, gave her child a different last name than her own. The identities of the fathers were stated, as was common when women bore their children in rescue homes, and in some cases included specifics about the men’s livelihood, age, and nationality.19 Where young, pregnant women had widowed mothers that status was considered sufficient reason that the baby could not be supported. Two such unmarried immigrants were taken to WCHS by their widowed mothers (who no doubt understood firsthand the economic and social struggles immigrant women faced in raising children alone). But the cases differ in the woman’s expectations of marriage. The pregnant Irish 42 | Chapter 2

immigrant and her mother pursued the father-to-be to Seattle, where he eluded them by leaving the country. In this case, the stigma of illegitimacy apparently outweighed the disadvantage of a youthful marriage. In contrast, the very young German woman’s affection for another German immigrant, “almost a boy,” ended in relinquishment because the couple was considered too young to marry.20 The mothers of these young women were powerfully influential parties to the decision making regarding the relinquishment of their grandchildren. Sometimes women who bore illegitimate children merged back into their own families, although their babies did not. In one such case, maternal grandparents attempted to raise the baby, but the social ostracism proved hard to bear. The couple tried to care for their young daughter’s child by moving out of state, but finally gave up because they kept encountering people they knew. After paying board for the child for four months, the couple placed it with WCHS, contributed financially to the child’s care, and requested that the child be placed in a home “of the better class.” The family had determined that the mother was too young (and perhaps too good) to marry the seventeen-year-old farmer who impregnated her and who, in any case, “ran away.”21 Women wishing to place children born out of wedlock might create stories to fit their predicaments. A sixteen-year-old immigrant from Poland told a WCHS agent that she had been raped by a man in the woods on her way home from town one night. The visiting worker contended the girl “lied like a thief” because there was not “a foot of woods between the town and their home, but that is the story she tells and seems to know enough to stick to it.”22 Whereas a Florence Crittenton rescue worker might have concerned herself with extracting a more probable confession in an effort to name the father and redeem the mother, WCHS’s priority was to secure legal release of the child in order to place it in a moral home, with an afterthought to the mother’s redemption. WCHS shared the view of many other amateur child savers who believed that an unwed mother and child was an unfinished social unit—incomplete and dysfunctional. Rather than providing a redeeming experience for mothers, as both professional social workers and benevolent organizations like the Florence Crittenden homes maintained, WCHS argued that a woman strapped with an illegitimate child would find it impossible to reintegrate into society.23 Particularly in the society’s earliest phase, WCHS’s concern about the birth mother’s life and sexual relations rarely extended beyond Child Relinquishment | 43

a perfunctory disapproving or occasionally sympathetic comment or two. Protestant amateur child savers of this period disagreed among themselves over whether or not a woman should raise a child born out of wedlock. Should a woman decide to place a child for adoption, they also disagreed over the ideal time for relinquishment. WCHS favored separation before the mother became attached to the child, and certainly before the child was one-year-old.24 WCHS routinely received newborns from the White Shield Home in Tacoma, the Salvation Army Rescue Home in Spokane, and the Catholic House of the Good Shepherd in Seattle and Spokane. Babies from these homes were often taken by WCHS agents in small batches, and ranged in age from a few days to about a year. Indeed, 81 percent of all women relinquishing children born out of wedlock did so before the child was two-months-old, a decision they almost certainly made before the child was born. In one instance, a seventeen-year-old Irish Canadian immigrant living in a town near Seattle never saw her baby before the child was taken by a WCHS worker. The birth mother’s father had been killed in an accident and her mother, who worked as a housekeeper, already supported several children. Evidently, another mouth to feed was not considered possible, even if it were morally acceptable, which is unlikely. What these sixteenor seventeen-year-old relinquishing mothers had in common was the bleak prospects of providing for themselves and a dependent on the wages they could earn as a waitress or salesgirl. Children’s Home Society organizations in other states published newsletters that were a constant source of stories illustrating adoption philosophy. A celebrated criminal child-abandonment case in Chicago in 1904 offered an opportunity to plead WCHS’s case for relinquishment by unwed mothers: “Why do our reformers and officers of Charity organizations teach such girls to keep their babies?” asked the editor of WCHF. “Why insist that a homeless, helpless girl must keep her child?” 25 Sixteen percent of all illegitimate children relinquished died soon after birth, and all who died were younger than two months at relinquishment. The causes of death, when noted, were from common and easily transmitted diseases, such as whooping cough and diphtheria.26 Forty-four percent of the women relinquishing illegitimate children were age eighteen to twenty. Women in this age group were often eager, even desperate, to place their illegitimate child for adoption. A sense of urgency on the part of mothers should not be construed as relinquishing 44 | Chapter 2

without feelings of grief and shame. Their desperation reflected the social and economic consequences of single motherhood. WCHS agents occasionally expressed concern about women in this age group relinquishing too readily, although such eagerness probably made WCHS’s work easier. Once young mothers decided to relinquish they were urged by WCHS never to look back on their “unfortunate mistakes,” except as reminders to stay on a purer path of womanhood in the future.27 About one-third of these young women bore their children at the White Shield Home in Tacoma, from which infants were routinely transferred to WCHS for placement before the age of one month. Not all maternity or rescue homes advocated relinquishment. Florence Crittenton rescue homes operated in Spokane and Seattle, and opposed adoption in favor of regeneration of a woman through motherhood. Few babies ever came directly from Crittenton to WCHS. If women did relinquish babies born at a Crittenton home, they relinquished older babies. A woman was required to stay on at the Crittenton homes for at least six months and up to two years after the birth of her child while she breast-fed the infant and acquired training that might enable her to support her child while she worked in domestic service. Despite this policy, some women who bore their children at a Crittenton home made it plain that their first choice was relinquishment. One mother simply left her baby at a Crittenton home; another stated that she was a student and did not intend to raise her baby. Others relinquished after failed attempts to follow the Crittenton plan of working while boarding the baby.28 The women between the ages of eighteen and twenty tended to be more working class and more likely to be from European immigrant populations than was the general Seattle population. About 60 percent of the women relinquishing because of illegitimacy in this age group said they were American citizens, and 50 percent of the relinquishing mothers said they worked for wages. Two U.S.-born women said they were students. American women usually worked as domestics or laundry workers, although one worked as a cashier and another as a telephone operator; women from eight other countries worked as domestics or as “salesgirls.” A Portuguese immigrant worked as a waitress (she relinquished her child after the child’s father, a German immigrant, shot himself). Only one, an English woman, was recorded as a “laborer.” Because women in this age group often worked outside their homes, an unwanted pregnancy represented a genuine threat to any independence or self-sufficiency gained Child Relinquishment | 45

through working. In some cases, these young women apparently met the men they were involved with while they were working: a young French domestic became intimate with a cook; a chambermaid met a railroad worker; and a sales clerk got involved with a music salesman. Immigrant women often developed intimate relationships with other immigrants, but not necessarily fellow nationals. U.S.-born women also developed relationships with immigrant men. In some cases, different cultural and social expectations about sexual relations leading to marriage might have contributed to the illegitimate births. Young women working in cities— both immigrant and U.S.-born—were beginning to meet men in public places during this period, at vaudeville theaters, dance pavilions, and parks. As Kathy Peiss has stated, young women “marked out their leisure time not only as an opportunity for romantic entanglement but also as a sphere of autonomy and assertion.”29 Such opportunities existed in abundance in Seattle and other cities of the Northwest, and were blamed for illicit sexual activity by juvenile court judges like Judge Archibald Frater in Seattle.30 In a few cases, the father of the baby had used a position of power to force sexual relations. A Seattle policeman, sentenced to jail for keeping a young Norwegian domestic “in duress” at his home, fathered the child she relinquished in court. A domestic worker from Scotland was unable to impart any information about the father of her child to a case worker, who considered the woman “a little below average mentally” and suspected that she might have been taken advantage of by her employer. In another case, a physician sold his business and financially settled with the family of a nineteen-year-old woman who claimed she was raped by him when she went for the treatment of a burned hand.31 No relinquishing women were specifically identified as prostitutes, although the designation “immoral” does occasionally appear. Women did not have to be prostitutes to be identified as “wayward” or “immoral.” Women were assigned to these categories if they engaged in sexual relations with a married man, seemed to show little regard for parental authority, or engaged recklessly in a relationship with a man considered worthless. Men in such relationships were recorded as off to “parts unknown” or listed as “address unknown,” indicating no reasonable hope of support or marriage. Women relinquishing babies in Cleveland reported that they were domestic workers because admitting that they were barmaids or occasional prostitutes would have led to them being 46 | Chapter 2

denied shelter and the medical care that they needed.32 In a like manner, adult women voluntarily relinquishing an illegitimate child to WCHS controlled information about themselves, and WCHS workers would be reluctant to record a child’s mother as a prostitute if they felt it might lessen that child’s chances of being adopted. Twenty-four percent of relinquishing women were twenty-one to twenty-nine years old. Most women of this age in the general population were married, and more pregnant women in this more mature age group probably married the fathers of their children. Illegitimate children might also have been absorbed into families headed by cohabiting couples. Otherwise, the two age groups were similar: like the younger women, among those whose nationality was recorded, half of the women in their twenties were U.S. citizens and half indicated that they worked for wages.33 Evidence of personal trauma experienced by women with an unwanted pregnancy is rarely elaborated upon in WCHS records, probably because it had little to do with WCHS’s goals and because suffering was considered the natural result of unsanctioned sexual relations. Nevertheless, the emotional toll of such a birth occasionally shows up in the record. A woman’s mental incompetence was the only acceptable excuse for placing a child from a Florence Crittenton home for adoption. One woman, who “became mentally unbalanced on account of her condition” and was diagnosed as having an “incendiary disposition, with a tendency to injure people,” was referred from the poor farm in Ritzville, Washington, and delivered to the Medical Lake hospital for the mentally ill by a worker from the Crittenton Mission home in Spokane. Her records said she was helpless, filthy, and suffering from “melancholia with maniacal tendencies.” She refused to talk about herself or, indeed, to say a word. When the baby was born, she refused to have anything to do with him. A few months later she was discharged in an “apparently normal mental condition,” not to be heard from again.34 Such a case alerts historians that the documentation available about birth mothers’ experiences from adoption records tends to record only unusual or complicated cases in any detail. The grief that many women most certainly felt at the prospect of permanent separation when they relinquished their child for adoption went undocumented. One desperate, unmarried black woman took her infant from Wayside Emergency Hospital against the advice of doctors, who were treating her and the baby for an unspecified infection (venereal disease is implied). Child Relinquishment | 47

At the WCHS office, she told an office worker her baby was three weeks old, although he was only a few hours old, and that she did not want to leave until her baby was “settled.” Anxious and agitated, she arrived with an empty baby bottle, stating that she had to wean the baby to go back to work immediately. She asked for help in boarding the baby but was subsequently unable to maintain payments, and she relinquished him after a month. Her urgency about “settling” her child and escaping the county hospital to return to work only hints at the economic pressure and hopelessness at her inability to support herself and board her child on the wages available to her as a woman of color.35 After relinquishment of an illegitimate child, the mother nearly always disappears from the WCHS record. What happened to the Norwegian domestic who relinquished the child of a Norwegian farmer (both parents were twenty-four) after the man refused to marry her? Had she entered willingly into sexual relations expecting to marry a man of her own nationality and settle into becoming a farmer’s wife? Or, were sexual relations commonly expected of women working on farms as domestics? Where did she go next? What happened to the twenty-one-year-old woman who relinquished her child by a man who married someone else? Could she do as she desired and return to the respectable fold of her family where her father was one of the “best known citizens” of the town and a candidate for state legislature? After relinquishment, those records are silent.36 Women who released older illegitimate children to the care of WCHS were ill or in second marriages to nonsupporting or chronically unemployed spouses. In difficult second marriages, older children fathered in previous relationships could be the first to be relinquished. In one such case, a nine-year-old child was relinquished by a twenty-five-year-old woman living in destitution with three children in a ramshackle dwelling in North Yakima. The stepfather of the child, a telegraph operator, had gone to California. The nine-year-old spent most of her years in a Catholic institution in Seattle, but had been retrieved by the child’s mother temporarily when she remarried. Later the child moved in with her grandmother, who proved unable to support her, and she was moved back to a Catholic school in Seattle. Her mother relinquished the girl permanently only after she and her other children were taken to the county poor farm. The court and charity workers condemned the woman as neglectful for

48 | Chapter 2

“dragging around” the child in her inadequate attempts to provide a home for her.37 Occasionally, a woman’s parental status could change for the better. A Canadian woman, whose husband had deserted her twelve years earlier, relinquished her child over whom she was said to have no control. The court recorded the child as suffering from “gross neglect.” The woman remarried, and the child, who had not been adopted, was returned to her mother two years later.38 Impoverishment of the mother and child, after desertion by the child’s father, figures into relinquishment more often than not. Surprisingly, claims by women that they were deceived by false marriage promises rarely are recorded in WCHS cases, although that was the standard account given by women admitted to homes for unwed mothers.39 WCHS record-keeping expediencies probably cover a good number of such explanations under the category of “desertion.” When women did say they engaged in sexual relations under false marriage promises, WCHS workers recorded it with skepticism. When a twenty-six-year-old American explained that she had been misled by a thirty-year-old Irish railroad worker whose whereabouts were unknown, the WCHS worker attached the word “claims” to the woman’s account, seeming to qualify it as unverifiable and probably unreliable. 40 Accounts of women’s indifference to or neglect of their illegitimate children are also rare. However, in one such case, a remarried woman of twenty-eight left her illegitimate twelve-year-old child, her new husband, and their two younger children in Seattle with no more explanation than that she was going to a movie with a friend. When she did not return, her husband located her in the company of another man in Bellingham. With no plans to return to her family she joined her husband in relinquishing the eldest boy; the stepfather kept his biological children to raise himself. 41 Only about 8 percent of the women relinquishing for reasons of illegitimacy were older than thirty, and none were older than thirty-eight. Older mothers of illegitimate children appear in the record only between the years 1912 and 1914—late in the period of this study, but during the peak years of relinquishment at WCHS. Three of the women worked as domestics, and four of the five infants were relinquished at the age of one month. One baby relinquished at eleven months was later returned to its mother. The explanations women gave society workers only hint at

Child Relinquishment | 49

the complexity behind their decision to relinquish their children and at their reluctance to reveal very much about why they did so. One woman working as a domestic had a relationship with a married man of her own Scottish nationality. A Swedish woman, working as a domestic in Idaho, refused to reveal information about the father, saying only that she had separated from her legal husband a year earlier. A widowed woman working in domestic service found companionship with a Norwegian shinglemill worker. She told caseworkers that she did not know where her former husband had died or where the child’s father could be located, but that the father had left her seven months before the child was born. 42 The oldest mother relinquishing a fatherless child was thirty-eight. She worked as a stenographer to support herself, and the child was born six weeks after her husband had died of heart failure. Although technically fatherless, the child had been wanted. After eleven months, she temporarily relinquished her son, saying she did not feel she could make a home or care for him. When the child was later returned to her, she placed him with a family in Seattle. She later committed suicide by jumping from an apartment building in Seattle. 43 The conclusions to be drawn about older women relinquishing illegitimate children are speculative at best. Gordon points out that when a divorce was difficult to get, many children were technically illegitimate only because long-separated women entered new stable relationships and bore children. 44 Those who did relinquish were single at an age when most women were married with children, and they usually worked as domestics. Two women were far from their native homes, and one was in mourning for her recently deceased husband. All of these women were alone on the margins of economic survival. The relinquishments of children born out of wedlock were considered “voluntary,” but the term “consensual” is more accurate. It was illegal to distribute information about abortion or birth control, which were both unlawful and frightfully dangerous.45 The choices for women bearing illegitimate children were extremely restricted, and a woman’s wage was insufficient to support most single women with or without dependents. Although women were often eager to relinquish babies for adoption, particularly young women without hope or desire to marry their child’s father, desperation frequently weighed in their decision. “Voluntary,” therefore, is not synonymous with “first choice,” but rather reflects the parameters of available options within the constraints on women at the time. 50 | Chapter 2

w h e n pa r e n t s d i e d

In one-quarter of all relinquishments, the death of one or both parents resulted in the placement of children for adoption, although children were more likely to be relinquished at the death of a mother than a father. 46 Because the death of a spouse contributed to decisions to relinquish in ways that were shaped by gendered work roles and parenting expectations, it is useful to examine men’s and women’s reasons for relinquishing separately. In eight of thirty-seven cases where maternal death was a factor, men abandoned children without support after their wife’s death. Another eleven fathers were determined unfit because they were deemed abusive, neglectful of their children, or chronically drunk. Fourteen men were considered unable or incapable of caring for their dependent children, although not necessarily unwilling. Two men failed to provide support for their children who were already in the care of others. One of the fathers was in the penitentiary. In almost 20 percent of the cases, children relinquished under these conditions were eventually returned to the father. Widowers who relinquished had an average of about four children, while the largest family had somewhere between twelve and fifteen children. Widowers were more likely to be involved with the forced surrender of children for adoption than were widows, although it is not clear why this is so. Perhaps men’s feeling of “ownership” of their children made them more reluctant to ask for help in providing for them. Men were also considered incapable of parenting very young and female children. Replacing the unpaid labor of mothering, a role with increasing expectations and demands during the Progressive Era, was often difficult. In at least one case, an elder daughter became overwhelmed by the responsibilities of filling the roles of homemaker and mother for younger siblings, and her case came to the attention of child welfare authorities. In another eight of the thirty-seven cases where maternal death was cited as a reason for paternal relinquishment, men had left their spouses and children before the mother’s death or abandoned children soon after her death. Male abandonment, however, covered a multitude of arrangements, including finding a home for a child and then disappearing. A man whose two sons were neglected in his care after their mother’s death requested placement with a distant relative living in Seattle, and then left the area for good. Another man arranged with acquaintances for the care Child Relinquishment | 51

of his three children. The couple later decided to raise only the two girls, and the older boy was placed with WCHS. 47 In other cases described as paternal abandonment at the death of a mother, the term itself is problematical. Some couples were separated long before the woman’s death, as was the case of a woman who had been left by her husband with four children on a homestead in Tommyhawk, Wisconsin. She died after improving the land and divorcing her husband. The children were moved around from relative to relative in Idaho and Washington for three years before the fifteen-year-old girl finally came under the care of WCHS. Another woman, anticipating her own death, arranged for her four children to be placed through WCHS after signing a claim that she had been deserted earlier by an abusive husband. The designation “abandonment by the surviving spouse,” however, seems to hardly apply to a “door-step” baby who came under the care of the society with a note that the mother had died in childbirth and the father was unknown. In this case abandonment by surviving parents is merely a catchall phrase for a parent who is unaccounted for. 48 In fifteen of the thirty-seven cases, men played some role in the relinquishment of children at the mother’s death, but that degree of participation varied from merely signing papers to reasserting parental rights aggressively later on. A few men did actively seek placement for their children through WCHS. In two cases where men did take the initiative, both were ailing and unable to care for their children any longer. In one instance, the children were returned when the father recovered. In the other, the children were placed with an aunt. In another voluntary placement, two of six children were placed by a homesteader, who after a trial with housekeepers found it best to find homes for his children. A logger with ten children placed three with the society, moved to Alaska to work, and returned to check on the children he placed, having had “many anxious days on account of giving up his children.” Fathers occasionally asked after their children long after voluntary relinquishment. More than ten years after the suicide of his estranged wife, a father who had not contested his three children’s placement wrote asking about their whereabouts because he owned a home and berry farm, which he intended to will to his children. 49 Where the inability of fathers to care for children was cited as the reason for relinquishment, they participated in the decision, at least to the extent of signing the legal papers. Several children were often involved, 52 | Chapter 2

and the lack of an adequate maternal substitute registered at the top of the list of contributing causes. Eight Portuguese children came into the care of WCHS after their father failed in his attempt to keep the family together on a homestead he bought after his spouse’s death. In a pathetic story featured in the Home Finder, the father was portrayed as having “bought a piece of wild and nearly worthless land” in his attempt to make a home, relying on his thirteen-year-old daughter to be the “little mother” of the brood in a one-room house. When this arrangement became insupportable, he attempted to board them with neighbors. The man’s “lack of English education, his poor management and grief for the death of his wife, prevented his venture from being successful,” according to the account. When his deteriorating economic situation prevented him from boarding his children, he relinquished them to the society, having been defeated in all his efforts to hold his family together.50 This Home Finder report suggests how child savers could equate foreign birth and child-raising methods with failure. The account blames his inability to succeed at homesteading because of his lack of English rather than on the real difficulty of “stump” farming on logged-over land that was offered cheap to such immigrants.51 The father relied upon his eldest daughter to mother his younger children, a common and traditional arrangement made by many immigrant families but an arrangement opposed by Progressive Era reformers who wanted all eligible children in school. Norwegian, Canadian, and Swedish immigrants settled in such great numbers throughout the Puget Sound area that finding kin, community, or new marriage partners was relatively easy. But immigrants from less populous groups could find themselves with no one to help when a spouse died. “Father [has] no relatives or any one to help him in care of children,” reads the file of two children relinquished by a Filipino working as a milkman whose Costa Rican wife had died. “Father has no relative to help him in the care of the children,” reports another file of a child with three siblings relinquished by an Australian coal miner working in Roslyn.52 The letter of a recent Finnish immigrant was reprinted for readers of the Home Finder. One cannot doubt its heartfelt sincerity: I am under heavy sorrow because I lost my wife by dying and left boy baby, and I have not any relation or other friend to nurse or take care of the child and I am wishing to get my baby to good hands to take care of him and I Child Relinquishment | 53

hereby beg you if you give me some information how I can get my boy into the institute.53

Some fathers acted on their paternal responsibilities. The impending death of a woman encouraged one estranged father to take custody of his children. A man who was ordered to pay child support for his four children in a divorce took custody of children already in the care of WCHS because of the deterioration of the mother’s health. Another man relinquished five children at the death of his spouse, but reclaimed custody of several after he remarried. Once legal relinquishment was made, children of large families usually went to separate homes for adoption, and a parent could hope to have children returned only when adoptions did not work out. Yet, because multiple placements were common, children were occasionally returned to their biological parents. However, in at least one instance, a recently arrived Russian immigrant who worked in the coal mines at Roslyn claimed that he thought his signature only relinquished his five children temporarily. Since he was known to drink heavily, WCHS workers felt justified in taking the children from the home permanently. When the man went to visit his children at the receiving home, he was notified that all but one of his children were in adoptive homes.54 Forced relinquishments after maternal death most often involved groups of three or more siblings. In the worst cases, private arrangements made by fathers had threatened the well-being of their children. The father of “twelve or fifteen children” initiated placement of three children at his wife’s death, but the eldest girl was subsequently committed through WCHS to a Florence Crittenton home for unwed mothers, having become pregnant by a married man in whose care the children had been left. A WCHS report did not find that charge sufficient grounds for the removal of the two other children, noting inexplicably that the children seemed to have “received very good physical care and in general religious and moral training.”55 In another case of forced paternal relinquishment, “Motherless Evelyn” had been left in temporary care at Ryther Home in Seattle after her mother’s death. She was periodically retrieved by her father, who left her with relatives who beat her. She was finally placed by her father with an adoptive family that continued the mistreatment, and she came into the custody of WCHS where she was described as cowering in “abject fear.”56 Although drinking was rarely the direct cause of relinquishments, it 54 | Chapter 2

figured prominently in forced relinquishments by men. A family headed by a drinking man and without a wife to moderate his vice was a family under acute scrutiny by neighbors and local religious crusaders. Drinking, neglect, and abuse were cited together in the forced relinquishment of many children by men after the death of a spouse. Drinking men were “no accounts” and “worthless,” according to the WCHS workers. One WCHS agent wasted no pity on a drinking Irish Catholic man who exercised his traditional male prerogative by expecting his eldest daughter to work in a restaurant and care for the other children after her mother died. The children were committed to WCHS after living for some time in a reported state of “filth and squalor.”57 In another case, where both the mother and the eldest daughter in a family had died one after another, neighbors complained that the father of the five surviving children was a drunkard and the children neglected. The children were subsequently removed from his care.58 A stint in the penitentiary, however, was not necessarily grounds for ending paternal custody when the mother was dead. A nine-year-old boy was committed to WCHS when his father failed to pay court-ordered board following his release from prison. Nevertheless, the boy was returned to his father for a couple of years before falling again into the care of WCHS.59 Such unsettled situations were frowned upon by WCHS. Yet, not even good fathers were believed capable of providing the nurturing traditionally supplied by mothers for young children or for girls of any age. Men often sought surrogate mothers in relatives and housekeepers when a spouse died. Fathers remarried or pressed an older daughter into service to take up the mothering role. When a man did find socially acceptable mother substitutes outside the home—in boarding situations, with relatives, or with other families—he could become distant from the intimacies of daily life and contact with his children, leading eventually to becoming separated completely from their care. Fewer widows relinquished than did widowers, and for different reasons. Unlike men who relinquished children of all ages, women either relinquished newborns or children five and older. Women relinquished boys 65 percent of the time, and the boys were usually between ten and fourteen years old, suggesting that women felt a need for help in raising older boys. Most often, a mother relinquished only one child, keeping other children with her or making other arrangements for them. (In contrast, men relinquished groups of three or more children from large Child Relinquishment | 55

sibling groups.) Children were returned to mothers, or to other relatives, nearly 30 percent of the time, and to fathers only 19 percent of the time. Only four widows in this sample worked outside the home for wages— as laundry workers, domestic workers, or waitresses. Another three indicated they were housewives, suggesting little or no outside income to support dependent children. In the ten other cases, no occupation was indicated, and it might be assumed that those women did not have income or other resources to support dependent children. If no one was available to supplement or provide support to the mother, economic survival for widows with infants was particularly precarious. Several women relinquished infants born after their husband’s death, placing children only two weeks old. Another woman signed relinquishment papers with a mark for her unnamed baby boy. A twenty-eight-yearold Canadian citizen named her infant son for her husband who had died in Alaska. “Mother left with care of another child and no means to care for herself and children” was noted on the child’s file.60 In about one-third of the cases, women were able to regain custody of children they relinquished after the death of a spouse. Children older than five were returned frequently to WCHS for a different placement. When older children were returned to their mothers because they were hard to place, their mothers took up the struggle again by boarding them with relatives or neighbors. While remarriage could improve a widow’s chances of reclaiming her children if poverty were the primary reason cited for relinquishment, remarriages that turned violent were the impetus for the relinquishment of several children. Remarriage to a man hostile to a previous spouse’s children caused more than one woman to place their children with WCHS to protect them. A scathing letter was sent to WCHS State Superintendent L. J. Covington by a Superior Court judge, castigating him for returning two boys to such a home where “the stepfather is hopelessly alcoholic and unfit to be associated with them.” The judge cited a letter from the mother “in which she begs [Judge Frater] to do something for the protection of these boys.” Dependent upon doing wash for a living, she claimed that the man she was married to was “crazy drunk most of the time and cruel to them.” The judge ordered Covington to retrieve them at once.61 Relinquishment may have been the last resort for widows. While men often attempted to place their children in a household with a surrogate mother, or to hire one in, women could make no equivalent arrangement 56 | Chapter 2

with men. A woman might attempt to share a household with relatives or call upon her parents or her husband’s family for child care so she could contribute wages to family upkeep. Frequently women could get by working for wages until older children were reported to authorities as being neglected or delinquent. As Gordon has pointed out, it was ironically those women who worked the hardest that were often found neglectful of their children because children had to take care of themselves while their mothers were away.62 Children came under the custody of WCHS because both parents died in approximately 6 percent of the cases, eighteen cases out of 289. The circumstances surrounding their placement varied dramatically. While most of these children were older, between the ages of eight and twelve, two infants came into custody: one born to a widow who died in childbirth; and the second, a doorstep baby who might have been illegitimate. Far different circumstances surrounded the placement of a family of four children who came to WCHS after their father murdered their mother and killed himself, leaving $2,000 in life insurance and a dreadful emotional legacy for the children. Relatives of the father put up an unsuccessful legal battle after the children were placed. “It seems strange to me that a supposed charitable institution should take children bereft of their parents under such circumstances as these were, separate them from each other and try to keep them concealed from all their relatives and friends,” stormed a letter from an attorney representing the family.63 The death of a birth parent, if previously widowed and remarried, could leave a large brood of children, some without blood ties to the surviving spouse or to other children in the household. A forty-one-year-old Bohemian immigrant, for example, father or stepfather to nine children, relinquished the youngest children in the group after his wife died. Two of the children placed were from his wife’s previous marriage, the youngest of the pair born six months after her first husband’s death. Another group of nine children, originally from Kentucky and long dependent on county welfare, was finally placed by the court with WCHS. The family had been under the scrutiny of welfare workers for some time before the parents died because the eldest girl was pregnant and the four boys were being treated for skin diseases. In one case, a widow took the initiative before her own impending death to place her four children—already under supervision of the county probation officer—with WCHS in hopes of keeping them out of trouble. Other orphaned children straggled into Child Relinquishment | 57

the custody of WCHS when older siblings who had contributed to their care moved on with their own lives.64 Nonrelative guardians also relinquished children, often after caring for them for years. A woman who had emigrated from Sweden with a threeyear-old boy claimed that she took the boy because his widowed mother was dying in desperate poverty. She relinquished the boy five years later, stating that she was no longer able to care for him, and that he needed “a strong and firm hand.”65 Although tuberculosis caused the death of comparatively few people in Washington State, once it infected a household it could slowly kill adults and shorten the lives of infected children.66 One such family with several children migrated from the Midwest to a farm. The parents died of tuberculosis within about a year of each of other. Two of their children had died young, but one of the surviving twin boys, who had been placed in an adoptive home, was later returned to the WCHS receiving home to languish for two years, although he showed no sign of the tuberculosis his foster family feared he had.67 Relinquishment at the death of a spouse must be considered in the context of culturally derived expectations of men and women. Men had a wider set of options in finding surrogate mothering because they could use their wages to board their children, hire a housekeeper, or prevail upon female relatives to contribute mothering care. Women had fewer options. They could struggle to be the provider and risk neglecting their children, but they could rarely find a surrogate provider without remarriage, and even then some men resented caring for another man’s child. Being orphaned by the death of both parents comprised a small percentage of all children relinquished for adoption, probably because in most cases relatives stepped in to care for such children. When full orphans came into the care of WCHS, the children appear to have been extremely distant from kin for one reason or another or were committed after traumatic events.

t h e t h r e e d’s : dr i n k , d i vo rc e , a n d d e s e rt i o n

Abandonment for more than one year, chronic drunkenness, or habitual nonsupport were grounds for divorce in Washington at the turn of the century, a liberal divorce policy for the time. Mothers were nearly always the sole relinquishing party after divorce following failure of fathers to 58 | Chapter 2

respond to public notice of his child’s surrender.68 Relinquishment was also forced in a handful of cases where the court found evidence of neglect or abuse after a divorce. Women relinquishing after divorce were the oldest in this study: the youngest recorded was thirty, and three were thirty-eight. Divorced women often stated they were unable to support their children, although many struggled for four or five years before giving up.69 In more than half of the eighteen cases where divorce was cited as the primary reason for relinquishment, children were eventually returned to relatives, most often to the mother who relinquished them. Children of all ages were relinquished to the society after divorce, but most were between the ages of five and ten. The relatively advanced age of children relinquished after divorce, and thus their remote prospects of finding an adoptive home, helps explain the comparatively high rate of return to relatives. Some children were returned two, three, or even four times a year from placement homes, which offered plenty of opportunity for a child to be offered a home if a willing relative could step in. Such a pattern suggests that surrogate parenting provided by WCHS, even in unsuccessful placements, might have served relinquishing divorced parents as respite from serious but remediable child-care crises.70 When fathers did play a role in the relinquishment or retrieval of children after divorce, the degree of participation varied widely. At one extreme, fathers were already long gone at the birth of a child. At the other, a man who had repeatedly deserted his wife and three children, leaving them without food or clothing, successfully contested her decision to relinquish their children to the society from the county poorhouse where they were residing. The man eventually returned, took his wife and a disabled child from the county home, and two years later was successful in having his other children returned.71 The intervention of a father in a child’s adoption was rare, but in one case the father of five children relinquished by his ill and abandoned thirty-eight-year-old wife waited more than a decade to take action against his children’s adoption. He then apparently conspired with an elder son to kidnap his daughter from her adoptive home in Great Falls, Montana. During the brother’s trial for kidnapping, the father and brother asserted they would “fight all along the line” to contest the signatures on the children’s consent-to-relinquish forms.72 A divorced woman, who was forced to relinquish her child after she Child Relinquishment | 59

was hauled into the police station with two longshoremen on drunk and disorderly charges, waited nine years before attempting to contact her daughter. She was remarried and prosperous, and the child, who had not been adopted, was returned to her.73 Children occasionally came into the care of WCHS during divorce proceedings when parents could not agree about what to do with them. After one such divorce, a woman proclaimed herself unable to provide for her children, who were then placed with the father. Dissatisfied, the woman proclaimed her ability to provide for the children, and they were returned to her, only to find their way back to WCHS through the child welfare system two years later. The woman was apparently unable to care for the two children on wages she earned as a chambermaid at a hotel in Idaho, but was unwilling to let their father care for them either.74 Divorced parents could desperately miss their children after placement and still not interfere or attempt to recover them. A woman working as a cook in northern Idaho, having divorced her husband, a railroad worker, relinquished two children she was unable to support alone. She wrote with longing to WCHS, offering to pay for a picture of each of her small children to remember them by. While wishing for her children’s happiness she wrote anxiously about their safety and the apparent need of one of the children for an operation. “My heart often aches for those two babies, but I would be more contented if I only knew that they were well and happy,” she wrote. “I would be glad to know that they are not in Spokane at the present time on account of the fevers that are raging there now. Will you please tell me how they are at any rate? How did the boy get along with the operation?” 75 While not always the primary reason for relinquishment, divorce could be a major contributing factor, as in the case of an English woman working as a printer to support her five children after a divorce. When a heart condition threatened her ability to support her family, she made arrangements for three of the children and requested the juvenile court to help her find a home and guardian for the remaining two. Three years later, at least one child rejoined her mother, who had by then recovered enough to remarry.76 In nearly all cases of desertion, at least one parent was present to relinquish a child legally. Slightly more than half of relinquishments related to abandonment were made by women who reported that their spouses had deserted them. Women claiming abandonment relinquished children of 60 | Chapter 2

all ages, but were most likely to relinquish an only child who was younger than one year old. If they had more children, women were likely to relinquish them all, or all but one. Some women were left by their husbands during their pregnancies, but abandonment usually preceded relinquishment by quite some time in cases involving older children. A mother relinquished her children after reporting that their father had gone “to the mines four years previous, never been heard from since.” Some other crisis in the woman’s life most likely acted as a catalyst for action four years later. A fifty-two-year-old French woman, deserted by her husband in Canada, worked as a cook to raise her son alone for more than six years before placing him with the society. The struggle to “work out” and raise children could end with older children being relinquished in juvenile court as delinquents, such as it did for a woman working as a nurse who had left her children for weeks without supervision. In five of twenty-six cases, illness suffered by relinquishing mothers was noted in placement files of children whose fathers were listed as deserters. When a woman who was attempting to support her infant and her own mother became ill, she sought placement for her infant son—the most promising candidate for material assistance.77 Moderate to severe disabilities in a child, including cross-eyes and bent legs, factored into a Canadian woman’s decision to relinquish her child. Having exhausted meager family resources, the child had been moved from a day nursery to a hospital, and then to Children’s Orthopedic Hospital while her mother worked unsuccessfully to support herself. Any hope of continued treatment required that the child be relinquished. Children routinely received professional medical evaluation and treatment at WCHS that poor families could not afford.78 Some women were left by husbands shortly after relocating to the area. A Hungarian immigrant placed her children, one at a time, with the society when it became apparent that she was stranded in eastern Washington State. The condition of women and children left in these situations could be life threatening. Four children and their mother were left to starve in a tent in Whitman County, along the Milwaukee Road railway line, in November. Two of the children suffered from typhoid fever and three of the four later developed pneumonia. One man fed his family of seven children on stolen boiled wheat cooked over scavenged coal for a winter in eastern Washington before leaving them to their own resources. Another man deserted his children and dangerously ill wife, Child Relinquishment | 61

who appealed to the court for protection from his drunken rages. This couple was later reunited, and at least one of the children was temporarily returned to them.79 County commissioners or judges occasionally designated mothers as the abandoning party when the women were determined to be demented, immoral, or destitute. A woman of Spanish or Portuguese nationality, described as a “drunkard, young, nice looking woman, but terribly dissipated” was forced to relinquish her daughter, who was deaf due to a bout of scarlet fever. The story of “Gladys,” as it appeared in the Home Finder, gave the impression that the child was parted from her parents by the hand of Providence rather than by the hand of child welfare workers. Providence had “left her a waif, for during her illness both her father and mother were taken from her, and they left her not even the guardianship of relatives.” This fabrication glossed over her father’s desertion and her mother’s drinking, possibly in order to elicit a sympathetic response from potential adoptive families.80 Women deserted children in only four of fifty desertion cases. Women more than men were likely to leave in stages, arranging for children to board or stay with relatives. Children were subsequently relinquished when their mother’s continued absence—in fact or in effect—stretched from weeks to months or years. Men relinquished children deserted by their mother in only three cases. A Norwegian immigrant asked that he be relieved of the three youngest of his ten children so he could work, his wife having allegedly left him for another man. One man parted with several of his children because his ill health prevented him from supporting them.81 By comparison to rare situations where a woman left her husband with dependent children, desertion by both parents showed up in sixteen of fifty cases. Parents abandoned children with acquaintances and left for the Alaska-Yukon gold fields not to be heard from again. Couples boarded their children then quit making payments. Parents pleaded homelessness when their infant left languishing at a day nursery died. Children left indefinitely at homes run by benevolent organizations might be transferred for permanent home placement if no relative took an interest. One couple paid a messenger to deliver their baby to WCHS, and another simply left a child on the overhead hat rack of a train. These cases, as sad as they are, need to be distinguished from neglect tantamount to infanticide, intentional starvation or exposure, or any 62 | Chapter 2

other act that threatened a child’s very existence. A 1904 case of intentional infanticide committed by a Seattle man illustrates the difference: He placed his healthy three-month-old baby in a sack with a ten-pound stone and left her on the mud flats to drown by the incoming tide. In contrast, strategic abandonment nearly assured that the child would be quickly found in good condition and eventually cared for by an adoptive family.82 Women generally were the last party to take flight. A French Canadian who worked as a laundress kept up boarding payments for five years before she quit. Efforts to track her in Alabama failed. The position of mixed-race women and children adrift in Anglo-Protestant society was particularly precarious. A child’s mother of European and African American ancestry had been raised as an African American and married “a Hindu,” presumably a person of color.83 She abandoned the child from her third failed marriage. Unless placed with a minority-race family, such mixed-race dependent children could become unpaid house servants (although in this particular case the child did not). Placement with a same-race family, however, did not guarantee that the child would not be abandoned again. An African American woman who took a foundling from a California home placed the baby with another couple when her marriage foundered. The couple then passed the child on to WCHS when they decided the baby was too difficult to care for. Drinking and divorce were the two commonly cited conditions blamed for child relinquishment, although divorce produced fewer homeless children than it was blamed for. At WCHS, divorce was cited in only 6 percent of the relinquishments, far less than the one-third caused by illegitimacy or the one-quarter caused by death of one or both parents. Desertion was cited as the primary reason for relinquishment in fifty cases, or 17 percent of the cases, and it took many different forms.

f o rc e d r e l i n qu i s h m e n t

Under a law passed in Washington State in 1903, the Humane Society (originally founded to protect animals from cruel treatment but later extended to the protection of dependent human beings) and the courts acquired new powers to sever parent-child ties where the life of the child was threatened. Operating under the new law, the Humane Society took Child Relinquishment | 63

three children from a Chinese man and his terminally ill wife, who were both addicted to opium. The reputed father was actually an uncle of one of the children relinquished. Both parents were transferred to the county hospital, and the three children, described as bright and intelligent but filthy, were taken in by WCHS, and contracts were drawn up for their placement. After surviving unimaginably difficult conditions, with stupefied parents bedridden for weeks on end, two of the children died of tuberculosis.84 Claims of parental custody were occasionally made by Chinese who told the court that children who had actually been sold or bartered to them were instead blood relatives. In one case, a judge and WCHS workers used the force of the 1903 child welfare law to intervene on behalf of a Chinese boy who explained that he perennially ran away from a Chinese man falsely claiming to be his father. The boy claimed he had been sold to the man who treated him cruelly and did not send him to school. He was placed with another set of Chinese parents living in the middle of Washington State, but they returned him, saying they were terrified of a Chinese society in Astoria who took the other man’s side of the argument.85 Some children carried to their next homes physical or emotional legacies of their misfortunes, whether those were syphilis, tuberculosis, or the trauma of sexual molestation. An older girl whose father attempted to rape her begged and cried to stay under the protection of the receiving home matron at WCHS rather than be placed out. After promising to keep the girl until she was grown or married, the matron allegedly found her molesting children in the home. Distraught, the girl ran away, and no effort was made to go after her.86 Women who were habitual drinkers figured prominently in the category of forced relinquishments. While a man who drank heavily would reap the full wrath of WCTU rhetoric, he was better tolerated by benevolence workers than a drinking woman, who transgressed not only the Protestant middle-class virtues of sobriety and self-control, but also their vaunted expectations of womanliness and motherhood. Children and women could presumably survive with a drinking man for a father or spouse, but without a sober, modest mother, children were bereft of the guiding light necessary for their moral development.87 A case in point was a woman who made her living as a piano player in a saloon in Kahlotus who was reported to authorities for bringing her three-year-old son to work and allowing him to drink beer. When author64 | Chapter 2

ities learned that mother and child were sleeping in the sagebrush, they removed the boy, hoping that the woman would reform herself, which she evidently did not do. In a different case, a Polish woman who drank and had a violent temper alienated everyone who might sympathize with her, including her husband, her eldest son, a WCHS case worker, the town’s doctor, her children’s teachers, and eventually the children themselves. A fellow Polish immigrant who was enlisted as a sympathetic witness in a habeas corpus case to retrieve her children that was filed on her behalf instead testified against her character. Her small house on railroad land had been burned down so the company could be rid of her presence. Ultimately, her children expressed a wish to remain with their foster parents rather than return to their mother.88 Brutality was habitual in other homes, and women sometimes stayed in violent relationships they considered unfit for their children. For example, a woman who had endured many hospitalizations to repair injuries inflicted by her husband reluctantly relinquished her children from her sickbed, stating that they “ought to have a change,” though she was unable to extricate herself. She was particularly reluctant to release her husband’s favorite, afraid that he would kill her for relinquishing the child. She died in the marriage, reportedly in childbirth, although her surviving children blamed their mother’s death on their father’s drunken rages.89 Forced relinquishments, like cases of destitution and abandonment, tended to be final, and many such children came into WCHS’s permanent care.

d e st i t u t i o n a s a m o r a l cat e g o ry

Destitution—signaled by a mother’s relinquishment of children from a county poor farm or when relinquishment was forced by child welfare authorities in court—accounted for only 2 percent of the cases. These cases were much more extreme than those where parents were unable to properly care for their children. Destitution was not simply an ongoing economic struggle. It meant living exposed to the elements or in grossly overcrowded living conditions, perpetually hungry, and isolated from community and kin. It was sometimes accompanied by physical or mental illness. Cases of destitution were found on the coast and in the center of the state, where a failed homestead or a tent along the Milwaukee Road railway provided little protection from exposure that exacerbated Child Relinquishment | 65

disease and endangered lives. When illness, poverty, and homelessness converged and lengthened into intractable stretches of human suffering, courts and county commissioners intervened on behalf of the children. Conforming to a consensus among welfare organizations, poverty alone was not sufficient grounds for removing children from a home. Indeed, WCHS arranged temporary aid and outside relief for hundreds of children who were never relinquished. Yet, when parents did not provide a middle-class diet, frequent baths, clean changes of clothing, constant maternal supervision, and treatment for lice, eye, or skin infections because of their living conditions, that physical evidence stood as a silent indictment of an extremely poor family. It is telling that none of the children determined to be suffering from conditions of extreme destitution were returned to a parent. Predictably, the Home Finder thrived on beforeand-after stories about children taken from such conditions and transformed in middle-class, Christian adoptive homes. That WCHS exploited the emotional value of these cases to promote adoption does not diminish the fact that children often expressed a sense of relief when given adequate food and clothing by WCHS. An adult who had been relinquished as a young child in destitute circumstances with his four siblings, all of whom had been successfully placed in adoptive homes, returned to thank WCHS for helping his entire family when they were in great need. He evidently did not feel he had compromised family loyalty in accepting the help. Not surprisingly, children often expressed their satisfaction with their new homes in terms of material comfort and possessions. WCHS agents used “destitute” and “dissolute” more or less interchangeably when referring to Native Americans. An Indian couple living in poverty came under the scrutiny of the court because they drank and their children got into trouble. The children were deemed destitute because their parents were incapable of exercising control over them. Once this family came to the attention of the court and welfare system, it became impossible for them to escape. In succession, the couple’s twentyyear-old son was sentenced to the Washington State Reformatory for taking a fishnet and spectacles from a cabin; two daughters were removed to an Indian boarding school near Salem, Oregon; and two boys were turned over to WCHS. WCHS wanted to send them to an industrial reform school for boys, but the school did not accept children so young. A caseworker predicted that the remaining three children would be taken on the court’s next visit to the family’s home on the Barbar Coast, ten 66 | Chapter 2

miles down river from Cathlamet. The youngest of the boys was placed with the family of a Christian Indian trader. Another Indian boy, who suffered epileptic seizures, was relinquished under pressure by his birth mother. She wrote authorities to have him returned, only to have her request denied. He had been moved to the Medical Lake facility for the feeble-minded. “They are half breed Indians and from what I could learn absolutely worthless,” recorded the caseworker in one of the boy’s records. Such indictments were often carried forward into subsequent appeals.90 The category of destitution, with its moral implications as much as its extreme material deprivations, masks the significance of poverty as a factor in most relinquishments. If poverty and its attendant miseries were given their full weight as contributing factors in child relinquishment, many more cases would fall into the category of destitution. But, because poverty was disallowed as a legitimate reason for relinquishment, destitution was designated only in the most desperate situations forcing children into the care of WCHS.

t h e ro l e o f j u v e n i l e c o u rt

The West had for decades provided rural homes for homeless children of urban eastern tenements. By the turn of the twentieth century, western states were seeking foster and adoptive families for their own dependent children. By then relinquishments were granted or pressed by the courts with the best interest of the child in mind, often within the jurisdiction of the new juvenile court system and new Progessive Era child welfare reform laws. Relinquishments that had been made directly to WCHS in the 1890s were being channeled through courts by the early 1900s. By then state laws made it possible for judges to remove neglected, abused, and delinquent children from parents’ custody and to place them under the care of a charitable or state supported institution. Probation officers, parental and reform schools, hospitals for children with disabilities, orphanages, and societies such as WCHS all played increasingly specialized roles in the process. The overall effect of channeling cases of relinquishment through superior and juvenile courts was to remove some of the distinctions between relinquishments made voluntarily by parents wanting and needing surrogate families for their children and those court-forced relinquishments Child Relinquishment | 67

made on complaints that negligent or abusive parents were a menace to their children’s welfare. Whether voluntary or forced, relinquishment and the conditions leading up to it were stigmatizing, which was enough to encourage most of the birth parents to disappear from their children’s lives. Parents who signed relinquishment documents were bound by the law to stay away from their children, and most did just that. However, a few did not. Correspondence in case files between WCHS field agents and the district superintendent or between relinquishing parents and the society add to the scanty information about birth parents, as letters were most often exchanged only when the deposition of a child was complicated or contested by reluctant biological parents.91 Despite severed parental claims, children were sometimes returned to the parents when, after multiple placements, they could not be settled in an acceptable, permanent home. Children were most frequently returned when they had been relinquished after the death of one of the parents. Other children were eventually settled with blood relatives. Some children also returned to their families on their own, most often when they were older at the time of relinquishment. Relinquishing adults occasionally corresponded later with WCHS, asking about the welfare of their placed children, even when they had little hope of seeing their children again. Such correspondence made it possible for a few adopted children to be reunited later with their biological relatives. Ultimately, the factors contributing to child relinquishment were both prosaic and far more pervasive in society than the celebrated case of Ray Sansom would lead us to believe. Poverty was not considered in itself a legitimate reason for relinquishment, but poverty was the most common factor contributing to relinquishment cited in court documents and case histories. Of course, grossly neglected and abused children did frequently come into the care of WCHS from all parts of Washington State—newsboys living in boxes, children raised in bars and brothels, sexually abused and abandoned youngsters, and the occasional overworked, underage circus worker. Children like Ray, a child of a legally mandated surrender, usually showed bruises and other outward evidence of abuse. More often the child was voluntarily placed by a parent at the end of her economic rope. Cases like Sansom mask the fact that the vast majority of children were not forcefully taken but rather were relinquished for adoption because they were born out of wedlock, because their mothers could not care and provide for them on a woman’s wage after a father deserted, 68 | Chapter 2

or because of the lingering illness or death of a supporting adult. 92 Despite the unusual efforts the theater couple made to keep Ray Sansom, and the overwrought moral tone of WCHS’s court case, parents or guardians could not afford to fight an expensive custody battle for a child forcefully taken from them for neglect or abuse. Rarely did WCHS have to defend its moral or legal position in a custody case. Most parents signed relinquishment papers because they could not provide for their children after the crisis of illegitimate pregnancy, death, illness, or separation. Legal adoption is predicated upon legal relinquishment. But, without the stories of relinquishing families, a too complacent understanding of adoption emerges that overlooks the important influences of class and gender in determining who relinquished children—and why—during this formative period when adoption practice was in its infancy. Without information about the birth parents, we are left with a simplistic melodrama of adoption with the forces of good (represented by adoptive families and child savers) conquering forces of evil (represented by failed or absent parents) with an outcome inevitably made in the best interest of the child. The alternate scenario, with child savers snatching children from poor, non-consenting parents, is just as distorted. The National Children’s Home Society was a pioneer in setting protocols that required proof that a child was legally relinquished and needed a permanent home. Relatives of children were sought out as surrogate parents before a child was considered for placement with strangers. Especially in large cities, societies like WCHS functioned as official or unofficial adoption agencies and had to cooperate with other charities and particularly with juvenile and district courts. Like WCHS, most societies also practiced aid work and some developed foster care for children not legally relinquished. Indeed, many parents desperately needed and actively sought the help of WCHS in finding the security of a home that they could not provide themselves. Relinquishment was the last resort—and for many, the last hope—for children and their families.93

Child Relinquishment | 69

Chapter 3 s o rt e d, b oa r de d, a n d r e f or m e d

Coming into the Care of WCHS

t h e g i r l i n t h e p h o t o g r a p h , l o o k i n g yo u n g e r t ha n h e r e l ev e n

years, reaches up to post a letter. She appears to be well-fed, clothed, and groomed. Her picture is on the March 1914 cover of the Washington Children’s Home Finder, and readers might assume her to be another adoptable child successfully rescued from the brink of calamity. Instead, she seems to have planned her own rescue. In her letter to L. J. Covington, then state superintendent of the WCHS, she wrote: .

Dear Sir: I am a lonely little girl without a home I am 11 years old and not quiet old enough to take care of myself. My mama died when I was a baby and I have bin with my papa but about two years ago he bigin putting me from place to place About a month ago my papa diserted me He earns good wages but he wont take care of me Now I have no home Hoping to hear from you soon I remain Yours truely, Miss Edna G____1 70

As this letter was the first, and perhaps only, appeal WCHS received directly from a child, it might easily be overlooked as exceptional or explained away as a ploy influenced by an adult who understood that such a letter would prompt a swift response from authorities, which it did. Edna’s appeal is unusual, but several factors argue for including her experience within the spectrum of others who came into care at WCHS. In particular, the progression of events leading up to her appeal was strikingly typical of older dependent children. A family crisis, in this case the death of a wife and mother, led to a downward spiral of informal, short-term child-care arrangements followed by sporadic support by the surviving parent as the child approached adolescence, and finally abandonment that left her as a wholly dependent child. For older children like Edna, the first family crisis was usually not the one that brought them to the care of WCHS. Like two-thirds of the children under the care of WCHS, she was between the infant to toddler stage desired by adoptive parents and the age when she could manage on her own. Like many other WCHS wards, she expressed loneliness and a desire to be somewhere with someone who could help her until she was old enough to care for herself. Edna had grown pragmatic in her relationship with adults and her prospects for survival without them, yet she demonstrated a cautious hope for change in the future. Finally, while Edna’s response to her predicament clearly demonstrated a remarkable degree of self-possession, her action is well within the range of other older dependent children who attempted to take some control of the events in their lives.2 Edna’s self-rescue is not typical, but it is a reminder that like most children relinquished to the society, she was at an age that she knew her family history, and she expressed a range of responses to the loss of parental protection and support. Children who were committed to the care of WCHS did not easily conform to the middle-class ideal of the time—that childhood was a period of innocence protected by the sanctity of the family home. Two concepts of childhood and child dependency influenced this ideal. One line of thinking, pursued by some home-placement advocates like those at the NCHS, was environmentalist and maternalist.3 Every child was malleable, and each could rise to the opportunity to grow into fine citizens under the influence of a proper Christian home and devoted mothering. To staunch believers in the power of nurture, heredity was merely the sum of previous environmental influences that could be subordinated to new influences, Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 71

especially when wholesome surroundings were combined with ethical and spiritual growth. The soul was pure and God-given, claimed Protestant ministers advocating adoption at WCHS, and therefore exempt from the natural law of heredity. By extension, every child’s soul was simply waiting to be awakened in a Christian family. Such faith was the foundation of adoption orthodoxy as it developed during the Progressive Era. W. D. Wood, of Seattle, in a speech delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Washington Children’s Home Society on June 24, 1906, stretched Theodore Roosevelt’s “square deal” rhetoric to say that every child is entitled to a good body, a good mind, and a good character guaranteed by a good home. This entitlement would be backed up by a divine “square deal” from God, who would never strap a child with heredity that could not be improved upon. 4 This line of logic countered the strident message of a small but influential eugenics movement, which warned of the race suicide of white Protestants and the pollution of Nordic stock by “degenerate” eastern European immigrants, Jews, African Americans, and mental “defects.”5 At the same time, statements of such complete faith in environmental influences tended to essentialize, universalize, and sentimentalize the condition of childhood (and its indispensable correlate, motherhood) as infinite in possibility while it widened the gulf between idealized childhood and the actual experience of relinquished children. A second line of thought recognized each child as a unique individual. Over time, WCHS increasingly embraced this “modern” and “scientific” approach to Progressive Era social work, the hallmark of which was the case study. The case study closely scrutinized each child’s physical, intellectual, and emotional endowment, and sought a well-tailored, personalized solution to the problem of the child’s dependency. This approach recognized the individual needs of each child, but could exacerbate feelings of rejection, difference, and isolation by defining each child’s prospect for adoption and citizenship using categories such as gender, race, intellectual capacity, appearance, temperament, and disability. In the early years, both approaches tended to emphasize a child’s potential for adaptation as more important than continuity with past experiences or associations. The Washington Children’s Home Society pursued both ideals as it sought homes for children, but a number of factors intervened. The complexities of the children’s lives, their reluctance in some cases to forget their past, their return from trial homes, and their unpredictable propen72 | Chapter 3

sity to grow and change confounded both the sentimental idealization of childhood as a protected refuge and the notion that every “normal” dependent child could thrive in a carefully chosen adoptive home. As children came into the custody of WCHS, they usually moved into the WCHS receiving home, where they were sorted, evaluated, and prepared for adoptive homes. Children passing into the custody of WCHS experienced losses and dislocation at various stages along the way, including separation from parents and siblings and pressure to change their behavior and appearance. Knowledge that the receiving home was just another way station, and not a place to put down roots, was a source of anxiety for many children old enough to know what it meant to lose something or someone. At the same time, some experienced material abundance for the first time at the receiving home in the form of food, shelter, and clothing. Some children eagerly anticipated new homes, while others clung to the comfort of the receiving home and were reluctant to leave. The rescue stories published in the WCHF generally masked the emotions experienced by children when they were taken from familiar surroundings, removed from parents and acquaintances, and transferred to the care of the WCHS. Rescue stories were a staple of popular journalism, and stories traveled far and wide through such media as the WCHF, daily newspapers, and popular national magazines like The Delineator.6 The popular press villainized child abuse and valorized child-saving efforts, but it generally neglected to report the experiences of children themselves, who were confronting multiple dislocations, relocations, and losses in the process of being salvaged and redeemed. Historian Kenneth Cmiel, in his study of the records of the Chicago Nursery and Half-Orphan Asylum, points out that case workers only started to keep records of the stories of relinquishing parents in the 1920s. Children’s feelings were not systematically recorded until the 1950s, when psychoanalytic theory turned attention to early childhood development.7 First-hand accounts of what children were feeling at the point of separation are missing. Still, indications of what children outwardly experienced are found in some of the more descriptive stories told by WCHS agents in their work of retrieving children around Washington State. The case histories often provide some additional information about the conditions shaping a child’s experience at the time of relinquishment. Most relinquished children were old enough to have memories from before home placement. Setting aside the one-third relinquished as infants, the Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 73

average age of a child placed for adoption was almost six and a half, certainly old enough to remember relatives. Nearly 70 percent of these older children had siblings. Later, some of these children returned as adults to ask about the circumstances of their relinquishment, separation from loved ones, and the whereabouts of siblings. Their unwillingness to have their past histories and relationships erased suggests that they perceived WCHS differently than the WCHS staff perceived themselves and their mission. Developing a fuller account of adoption therefore requires that we read child rescue accounts by WCHS workers critically for the experience of children that the rescue stories eclipsed, effaced, or silenced, as well as for an understanding of social and material conditions that led welfare workers to the children in the first place.

p e r i l s o f i n fa n cy a n d i ll e g i t i m acy

A good many babies were voluntarily relinquished at homes for unwed mothers. Many others came to WCHS after being strategically left by one or both parents in ways that reasonably assured their safe passage to child-saving (and life-saving) institutions. In either situation, it is difficult to assess the effects separation had on infants in the same terms used to describe children older than four or five. Nevertheless, something of their experience might be gleaned from evidence of their physical well-being as reported by WCHS workers. Keeping infants alive was a challenge in itself, and WCHS often took them in when they were only hours or days old. Three-quarters of the babies relinquished by unmarried mothers were left before they were two months old, at an age that left them extremely vulnerable to the ravages of malnutrition, dehydration, and communicable childhood diseases (see table 7). The perils of “baby asylums,” as measured in staggering rates of infant mortality, were well known to child savers through the publicity of Jacob Riis, who promoted the success of boarding out in private homes as a means of keeping infant mortality to a minimum.8 WCHS in Seattle took the precaution of having babies examined by physicians for disease and disability before they were accepted at the receiving home. Very ill or weak babies were admitted to hospitals.9 Only babies who were in temporary custody, or babies with contagious diseases, were boarded out to private homes.10 Well babies, who were in great demand, were doted on by a 74 | Chapter 3

specially assigned volunteer or nurse at the receiving home and placed as quickly as possible. Still, babies who seemed healthy sometimes became mortally ill shortly after coming into WCHS care, dying of diphtheria, “cholera infantum” during the summer months, whooping cough, pneumonia, and what today might be called a “failure to thrive.” All infant deaths in this sample occurred at the receiving home or within weeks or months after placement.11 Although infant mortality was high in comparison to the general population, WCHS defended its infant mortality rate as low when considering it took in ill, weak, and undersized babies for compassionate reasons.12 The often poor condition of infants on arrival was compounded by the loss of immunity acquired through breast-feeding and by the inevitable perils of contagion at the receiving home.13 Despite criticism, WCHS continued to advocate early separation of infants from their mothers and fought the battle against breast-feeding advocates on the grounds that it was single mothers boarding their babies on low wages—not bottle-feeding—that was to blame for infant mortality. A government study in 1910 appears to bear this out. The study showed that the highest incident of child mortality correlated with the lowest family income and the highest survival rates with greatest family income. Deaths were tied to a constellation of conditions related to poverty, but not to breast-feeding. Higher income mothers, in fact, breast-fed less than did lower income mothers.14 WCHS’s justification for early infant-maternal separation seemed supportable when the overall mortality figure for all children at the society dropped to a low of 3 percent in 1904. “Out of 118 children we took last year, only four died and two of these were very sick, almost in a dying condition, when they were brought to us,” wrote the editor of the WCHF. “The only human thing was to take them. Each one was a child the mother had tried to keep. To get work she was obliged to put the child out to board.”15 However, while the overall mortality rate at WCHS was low, death took its toll disproportionately on babies, who were nearly always illegitimate.16

r e s c u i n g o ld e r ch i ld r e n

Older children occasionally arrived at WCHS after sudden tragedies, such as murders, suicides, or industrial accidents, but they more often Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 75

came into care after witnessing the prolonged illness of a parent or having endured poverty, disintegrating relationships between adults, household disruption, neglect, or desertion. Children from coal mining, railroading, and logging camps may have experienced both the traumatic loss of a parent and the effects of hunger, exposure, and homelessness. A genre of waif-rescue story, which appeared frequently in WCHF, was written in the first person by WCHS personnel to recount their heroic missions to remote areas of the state to retrieve children. The articles impressed upon home-placement supporters the dire conditions of neglect or abandonment suffered by children and bolstered the image of WCHS district agents as dedicated and dauntless. The stories were usually packed with specific detail, and with careful attention to the lacunae of a child’s experience, it is not too hard to conclude that rescuer and rescued had vastly different perspectives of such events. On one foray to retrieve three children from a remote logging camp on Squaxin Island, an Indian reservation, WCHS representative J. W. Miller crossed the channel in a row boat from Olympia and located an Indian guide. He arrived at night in the pouring rain and followed a cow trail for a mile and a half only to find that one child was on a different island, twoand-a-half miles away through marsh and thickets. Miller went to fetch the child and wandered lost for a time before finally arriving at the camp at midnight. Miller roused the boy out of bed and made the youngster walk through the rain in order to catch the return boat by 5 a.m. The child shivered miserably during a three-mile rowboat ride to meet the steamer, and since there was “never an hour when the Superintendent was dry from the exposure and rain,” we might suspect the child was thoroughly saturated as well. Satisfied that now the three children would be placed in Christian homes “whereas before they had lived dreary, unwanted and unneeded lives,” Miller spiritualized the two-day ordeal as a successful mission to bring the children out of the perilous darkness of the soul into the light of salvation. No mention was made of whether or not the children were Native American. Was the rescue experienced by the children as the storm before the light? Perhaps, but their dislocation involved successive relinquishments by parents and by an uncle, as well as the emotional stress of leaving their familiar, if distressed, lives and community behind.17 Later, having made an apparently successful adjustment to her new home, the ten-year-old girl of this sibling group used her adoptive family and 76 | Chapter 3

the society as intermediaries to deliver letters to her younger sister and older brother, whom she evidently keenly missed. Far from leading an unneeded and unwanted life, this child acted as a source of comfort and cohesion for her siblings. Miller’s self-regarding conflation of the mission of child rescue with his own perceived role in Christian salvation might not have intended to suppress a longer and more complicated experience of these children’s leave-taking, but it certainly aggrandized the experience of “rescuer” over the complex realities of the “rescued.” As in logging, wage work in mining and agriculture could take a heavy toll on families. The Black Diamond and Roslyn mining districts produced children made destitute through oppressive poverty, parental illness, desertion, and industrial accidents. In 1910, the year of a mining disaster that killed fifteen men and threw many more out of work, seventeen children came into the permanent care of WCHS from the mining districts, including children who were overworked, truant, delinquent, and starving.18 The year before, WCHS took in six little boys who during the winter wore flour sacks made over into clothes by their mother at Roslyn. The deserting husband’s final act was to sell off the cook stove, leaving one chair, two beds, and a table. No dishes or food were found in the house. Two of the children’s bones had softened from malnutrition. The mother stated that she wanted to keep the children together as long as she possibly could before relinquishing them.19 An article in the WCHF complete with “after” photographs of plump, immaculate, and finely dressed youngsters was devoted exclusively to the transformation of such children from the mining districts once they were placed in middle-class homes. Absent are the moments of anguish that relinquishing parents and their children likely felt at the final moment of separation.20 Wage work in agriculture could also leave children to care for themselves as parents moved around the countryside to make a living. Three young girls left in a tent in the sagebrush at Wapato were taken in by authorities when it was discovered that their parents left them on their own while the couple baled hay and cooked for a crew. The eldest, fourteen, was allegedly left to care for the younger children without food or fuel and had to cut sagebrush for the fire.21 Child savers blamed parents for lack of moral fiber and fate for child dependency, but low wages and unsteady work were rarely mentioned by reformers as the cause of homelessness. Instead, the “Three D’s”—divorce, drinking, and desertion—were blamed. “All unite also in saying that Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 77

practically all of their children are received from homes which have been either broken or demoralized by drink, vice or crime, separation, divorce or death of one or both parents,” stated one WCHS representative.22 Families living in severe states of poverty were often told to buck up or wait patiently for relief from friends or relatives. It is not surprising, then, that children who were ultimately relinquished because of extreme poverty were often received in very poor physical condition. A few relinquishing mothers died before their children were received into care, and others were more dead than alive at the time of relinquishment.23 Under such conditions poor children frequently learned survival skills that eventually brought them to the attention of authorities. Children sent out to gather fuel, old bones, or iron to be exchanged for money graduated to scavenging the wharves and streets for more valuable articles, allegedly receiving praise at home for bringing home more useful finds.24 One partially paralyzed child moved from town to town with her mother, telling stories that qualified the girl for short-term aid and boarding.25 Such survival strategies, when used in middle-class adoptive family settings, were perceived as dishonest and reduced older children’s chances for long-term placement. WCHS struggled to find boarding or contract arrangements where these children could receive schooling, wages for work, a banking account, and free room and board so they would no longer feel the need to steal and lie. Depending upon their physical condition, children received more or less dramatic rehabilitative treatment to make them placeable.26 In some cases, the children were in such ill condition that they could not travel until tended to by physicians and volunteers. Other children spent weeks or months undergoing operations and medical care at Seattle or Spokane hospitals to treat rickets, eye infections, or poorly healed injuries before they moved to the receiving home. After the large WCHS receiving home was built at Ravenna Heights in Seattle, such newly arrived children were housed on the third floor until they were considered rehabilitated and presentable in the company of other children and the visiting public.

s e pa r at i n g s i b l i n g s

Some placements were handled with such dispatch that children hardly had time to get a full night’s sleep before being located with strangers in 78 | Chapter 3

new homes. Such abrupt separation from a known location, preceded as it often was by the death or desertion of parents, likely frightened children over the age of two or three. The additional anxiety of separation from siblings could alarm older children. Home-placement agents firmly believed that children should not be contacted by former family and friends, who might, intentionally or not, disrupt the child’s “new” life. Bidding farewell to relatives and friends, then, was a final sad prerequisite to securing a new home. Although such dislocation and relocation must have been a cause of anxiety and even panic for many children, little evidence exists in the records or in retrieval stories to document it. At the other extreme, those children who had experienced multiple dislocations before coming into the care of WCHS, including stays at other social service agencies, may have become resigned to such changes. Some were not warned before they were taken from familiar surroundings, although WCHS did not recommend this as a way of dealing with separation. Gentle removal was not always realistic, as agents frequently visited sites to see already placed children and retrieve children for the society from different families on a single trip. Travel depended upon train, boat, and coach schedules. Judged only by the more dramatic retrieval reports that were published in the Home Finder, the separations from siblings and multiple placements in adoptive homes were not considered traumatic events with lasting emotional effects. The general silence on how siblings experienced separation is significant when we consider that at WCHS, the great majority of the children who were not infants had siblings. One such story of retrieval and dispersal that serves as an example of this silence involves a group of children in central Washington. The district superintendent for eastern Washington learned of the five children by way of a newspaper notice. Four days later a telegram from the sheriff of Okanogan County requested that an agent from WCHS come and get them. The children were only 150 miles from Seattle, but they lived in a remote mining and farming community. The agent had to take a train, a steamer, and a ten-hour jolting ride by Concord stage to get there. During a late-night session of the county commissioners, the children were legally transferred to the care of the society. On the return trip, the group visited a couple willing to take all of the children, but the agent decided that two were enough. After the hasty signing of papers, the ten-year-old boy and the five-year-old girl were left, and the rest went on. The agent recalled sentimentally: “So [the two children] stood with those who would unfold Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 79

to them anew the meaning of that sweet old Anglo-Saxon word—home. The scene lingers with me yet. The fertile farm on the hill top, the snug, cozy house nestling down in the valley with well-kept farm buildings and surroundings indicative of thrift and prosperity, and the husband and wife, with the little children waving farewells, standing by the roadside.” Back at the receiving home, the baby boy was quickly parceled out to a Seattle couple, the eight-year-old boy was moved into a home recommended by a Presbyterian minister, and the oldest girl moved in with a young, highly religious couple. The tone of the article is so self-congratulatory that its unwritten subtext—this forced family diaspora experienced over a few short days by young children—begs for some further, more compassionate explanation. Unfortunately, little more is known, except that the children were apparently from a second marriage, that the children’s father was paralyzed, and that the man’s second wife kept the children for a time. In the end, their stepfather relinquished them. At least one of the children contacted the agency twice as an adult, once in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, but the entry is illegible. Reading rescue stories such as this one for what is left out is essential for grasping what children were giving up when they came into the care of the society.27

e l i g i b i l i t y a n d ava i la b i l i t y

One of the more effective means of acquiring homes for children was through the monthly Washington Children’s Home Finder, which was distributed to thousands of supporters through subscriptions. A typical issue showcased children available for adoption in October 1906. Three young girls, beautifully dressed with their long hair curled and in ribbons, smile serenely from a cameo-shaped studio photograph. Closer inspection, however, suggests the girls were not chosen for their charm but because they represented an assortment of children who were hard to place in adoptive homes. “Esther,” 12, who came to the society by way of King County Juvenile Court, had recently returned from months of hospitalization and surgical procedures for a leg broken near the hip. Now able to “have an equal chance, physically with other children,” she was pronounced ready for a good home. “Esther” has her hand on the shoulder of “Gertrude,” who was allegedly kidnapped in England, brought first 80 | Chapter 3

to New York, then to Spokane, and then to Seattle, where she was taken from a woman “known by police authorities” who worked in a dance hall. “Annie,” the youngest, was born to an Aleut Indian mother who died at birth. Her white father suffered from tuberculosis and made arrangements to transport his child aboard a ship from Alaska to the WCHS.28 Each child, in her own way, illuminates some exception to the ordinary criteria that determined which children were good candidates for adoption. Esther is disabled, Gertrude was “rescued” from the corrupting influences that might have “tainted” her, and Annie has a mixed-racial ancestry and had been exposed to disease. Nevertheless, these three had successfully passed the sorting stage at WCHS, which involved screening for legal eligibility, tests for “normalcy,” and age restrictions. The fact that these children were accepted for placement shows that categories of normal and acceptable were frequently stretched to make room for special cases. Most dependent children referred to WCHS were not adoptable because they needed only temporary care and were not legally relinquished. Most parents and guardians preferred less permanent and drastic solutions to their problems, and many charities throughout the region offered temporary forms of care. The families of children in temporary need were often aided by WCHS, which also helped find temporary foster care in boarding homes, made referrals to other agencies or institutions, and located sources of material assistance to keep dependent children with their parents. Children receiving temporary aid often outnumbered the total of legally relinquished children and the number of children placed for adoption by the society (see table 8). Once WCHS started to receive children through courts and referrals instead of investigating cases of neglect and abuse itself, the percentage of children aided by or provided temporary assistance increased to between 66 percent and 85 percent of children referred to the society each year. The variety of aid requests grew in the early twentieth century as WCHS responded to the Progressive Era mandate to keep families together whenever possible. 29 WCHS quit investigating child neglect or abuse cases on its own in the first decade of the twentieth century. Beginning in 1908, the juvenile courts in Washington State had taken on the responsibility of sorting wholly dependent, adoptable children from truant and mildly delinquent children or criminal cases. In time, WCHS agents such as M. A. CovSorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 81

ington also held appointments as voluntary probation officers. Eligible children who showed any promise of reforming in an adoptive home environment were transferred from juvenile court to WCHS for placement.30 If they failed to progress in adoptive homes or ran away, they were sent first to a custodial school for short-term detention, and if they were a problem there, to a reform school. As strong advocates for the juvenile court system in Washington State, WCHS wielded considerable influence in the sorting of children brought before the courts. “Normal” is a critical term in adoption because it was central to all child-saving arguments against institutionalizing children. The child who did not fit easily into the category of normal was usually considered a poor adoption risk. WCHS used physicians to sort “normal” children from those with physical, mental, and emotional “defects.” The fear that “defectives” were polluting American society increased apace with immigration and is evident in the 1910 U.S. census report, which attempted to count those dependent on charity and government assistance. “The burden of caring for the insane, criminal and feeble-minded is increasing at a rate out of all proportion to the growth of other requirements of state government,” reported the WCHF, quoting the Washington State Board of Control. Reformers strongly associated alcohol consumption with deviance in the children of drinkers. Membership in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Washington State overlapped sponsorship of WCHS, and the activities and opinions of the WCTU were promoted in the Home Finder. Margaret B. Platt, president of the Western Washington WCTU chapter, used such an opportunity to provide “evidence” from a study of drinking and nondrinking families that showed that only 17.5 percent of children from families who drank were “normal,” while 81.9 percent of children from nondrinking families were entirely healthy.31 This example suggests the way that morality mixed with eugenics helped to sort “normal” children from “defective ones.” Such bald statements about moral degeneracy and drinking in immigrant populations were fanned by race-suicide eugenicists well into the century, but the boundaries of normality and adoptability remained fairly porous at the Children’s Home Society because WCHS founders had deep faith in the transformational powers of Christian family love. In contrast, many orphanages used admission standards based on the “worthiness” of

82 | Chapter 3

the family of origin, or accepted only children of a particular faith or of a specific ethnic or racial background.32 WCHS’s parameters of the normal included children who were desperately poor; illegitimate; malnourished; who performed in school below grade for their age; and who swore, stole, lied, and cheated. These conditions were considered regrettable, but expected, and remediable. The normal category also included, conditionally, some children who were scarred by beating, starvation, and hardship caused by alcoholic and drug-dependent parents. However, children hurt by chronic physical and emotional abuse, especially older children, were not considered promising candidates for adoption, and the rate of successful adoption for such children was the lowest among all relinquished children, at slightly more than 11 percent. Physically disabled children accepted for home placement were often described as having compensatory personal qualities, such as an affectionate or docile temperament. Often heroic and well-publicized efforts were made to heal such children and to find them loving families. “Pearl,” described as “nobody’s baby” because she was abandoned by both parents, was one of the children for whom the WCHS helped find devoted foster parents. Tragically, complications of surgery to improve her eyesight resulted in her death at the age of two.33 Another child, “Dolly Gray,” fell outside the placeable range, according to a WCHS’s physician’s recommendation, and she was initially rejected as an adoption candidate. She was blind and “did not come from healthy parents,” a veiled statement implying that her parents were infected with venereal disease. As these two cases suggest, blindness alone was not the reason for rejection. The rejection was due to the causal disease of her blindness and the difficulty in treating it. Moral implications attached to the child through the alleged degeneracy of her parents undoubtedly further hurt Dolly’s chances for adoption. Nevertheless, WCHS later offered to find a home for Dolly if the Humane Society would legally remove her from her career as a bitpart player at a Seattle theater.34 The “normal” range could be stretched if the child seemed like a promising candidate for rehabilitation, but WCHS did not accept children of known incest for placement no matter what the child’s apparent health status, and it rejected children infected with venereal disease.35 It also screened out mildly retarded or severely emotionally disturbed children, who were referred to the Medical Lake facility.36

Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 83

y ea r n i n g f o r t h e d e s i r a b l e ch i ld

A home-placement worker wrote to a couple who had requested a perfect baby girl—with curly hair, musical talent, and not less than a year old— that finding one “would take 99 years.”37 Toddlers rarely stayed long in the receiving home, and applications for baby girls often went unfilled because of demand. The demand was apparently little affected by the risk that an infant was more likely to die of a common childhood disease than an older child because at least 65 percent of the babies found permanent homes on first placement. Slightly older babies and toddlers were quickly placed if they were healthy and white, and homes could be found fairly easily for children up to the age of four and a half, the average age of children relinquished because of desertion. However, when the infant population is excluded, the average age of children for whom homes were sought was 6.46 years. School age children were more frequently returned to WCHS from home placements (see table 9). These school age children were old enough to require significant parental support in the way of food and clothing, too old to be cuddly, and not old enough to contribute a great deal in the way of farm or household work. A great number of these children were advertised in the WCHF for placement. Full orphans, who had neither parent and were available without much chance of future interference by relatives, were nevertheless adopted only 25 percent of the time because, at an average age of nearly nine years, they were the oldest children in WCHS care. Orphans were part of the older population of children who also experienced the greatest number of placements and returns—an average of 2.81 placements per child—and they often grew to an age that they could “do for themselves” without ever being adopted or finding a permanent home. WCHS did not usually accept children older than fourteen, which was consistent with the general policy of other home-placement agencies across the nation. There is no evidence that WCHS discriminated against taking older children up to the age of fourteen, but older children remained longer at the receiving home and were more likely to be put “on contract,” to work for room, board, and an opportunity to go to school until they were old enough to care for themselves. Home-placement advocates were concerned about adoptive parents’ preference for girls. Oddly, this preference is not supported in any simple way by adoption statistics from this sample. Boys and girls were relin84 | Chapter 3

quished in about equal numbers and were adopted equally (see table 10). Boys were adopted even on first placement at a slightly higher rate than girls, and boys were no more likely than girls to be placed more than once before being adopted. Girls were only slightly more likely to be returned to their parents, and girls were only slightly less likely to run away from their foster homes. Nevertheless, girls were reported to be widely preferred by adoptive parents, and not just at WCHS. “We do not have to seek for homes for the bright, handsome, attractive children, especially ‘little girls one to three years old, with curls and dimples.’ On the contrary we generally have trouble to settle which of many applicants shall have the privilege of taking these ‘almost angels,’” lamented the Iowa Children’s Home Finder.38 The Home Finder frequently published stories about the receiving home bursting at the seams with boys. “Those who have asked for girls, are invited to look carefully at these [twenty] bright boys, to see if one of them will not receive a welcome to your home and your hearts, instead of the girl for whom you have waited so long,” urged the WCHF in July 1910.39 Nine little boys lined up in the September 1911 issue, tall to short, promising to be “citizens of tomorrow” for anyone who would adopt them. 40 And again in 1912, twenty-one boys and only four girls waited for homes. It is possible that agents had to work harder to place boys because boys did spend more time at the receiving home. 41 It is also possible that the home-placement movement reinforced socially constructed gender bias and inadvertently contributed to the difficulty in placing boys, as the following example suggests. “The statement that boys grow away from home and parents more easily than girls, will not bear up where the same effort is put forth for the boy as for the girl,” advised WCHS, suggesting that adoptive parents may have preferred girls because they could be socialized to become more dependent for a longer time than boys. 42 Gendered social expectations advanced claims that boys were more trouble, required more freedom to pursue the “strenuous life” in order to develop into muscular manhood, and at the same time demanded more discipline so that they did not grow into vagrants and criminals.43 Boys were not expected to be particularly grateful by comparison to girls and were portrayed as rightfully demanding. “Seven-tenths of the number of children we have received have been boys, strong boys, vigorous, hearty, fired with the strength of youth, with appetites like men, and propensity for wearing out clothing, especially shoes, enormous,” proclaimed Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 85

the WCHF in an article thanking the Washington Shoe Manufacturing Company for a $20 donation of boys’ shoes. 44 WCHF readers were cautioned that they would find boys half angel and half animal: “The angel and the animal combine to make him a bundle of contradictions.” While giving boys considerable leeway for bad behavior, such statements promised that each child could be redeemed, if given the chance. 45 The editors of WCHF wrote little regarding the social benefits of adopting a girl. Perhaps this is because girls were in demand, but also because they were not expected to be “a bundle of social contradictions,” likely to cause trouble, or to “be only half an angel.” The main discourse regarding the gendered roles for girls was the need to keep them protected from “the results of disease that too often follow the wrong step” and the “permanent and terrible consequences” of experimenting “with the mysteries of life.” The “innate or inbred modesty not only makes a girl in every way lovely,” but her virtue was also her “greatest shield” against awakening in boys “a desire which some boys at least will lose no opportunity to satisfy.” Despite the elliptical language, reformers were urging parents and guardians to discuss sex and venereal diseases with girls as young as ten so that when older they would not be drawn to the bright lights and sounds of the street and to male companionship in the dance hall, which provided glamour and “the dance that she craves.” The subtext in such warnings was that young girls would follow in their birth mothers’ footsteps. The solution, according to the reform-minded Progressive, was an increased working wage for young women, “real preparation for life,” including industrial education and “knowledge of herself,” and opportunities for wholesome, supervised, municipally sponsored entertainment in self-improvement clubs and libraries. 46 It is a well-established historical reality that adoption operated in a racialized social environment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Racial segregation was the norm in child welfare institutions, which makes it more remarkable that WCHS and many of the other NCHS affiliated organizations took children of any race and religion under its care. It sought “colored” homes for children of color, and actively recruited children of color for prospective “colored” homes. Consider the following solicitation published in the Home Finder in 1904: “This society would be glad to take a few young Indian children or half-breed children. They must be two years old or less. If we could find Chinese or Japanese children 18 months old or less, who need care, we would be glad to take 86 | Chapter 3

them. We can do well for a few such children.”47 Another solicitation read: “A good home among civilized Christian Indian people is in waiting” in Alaska for an Indian baby, and a home was being sought for “a lovely bright-eyed little mulatto baby girl.”48 A typical list of children “on hand” from 1907 included a ten-year-old “bright, active negro boy, a promising lad,” and a pair of “colored” baby girls. WCHS’s acceptance of non-white children into its care was consistent with Christian missionary goals, although the practice was not exempt from the racial stereotyping of its day. Adoption advocates represented a constituency in many ways at odds with “race suicide” eugenicists because adoption advocates put their faith in the power of nurturing and environment to overcome negative qualities. Nevertheless, the fact that race was considered one of these factors that needed to be “overcome” suggests the depth and power of the racialized social environment in which adoption was practiced. A seven- or eight-year-old Indian girl, jailed with her mother and grandmother, represented to caseworkers not just another rescue mission, but a legacy of degeneracy. “Three generations of the same family in jail!” bewailed the WCHF. “Is this the legacy the Indian has received from the Christian? God forbid! Indians are children as compared to whites, and have more readily adopted the vices than the virtues of the Caucasian.”49 The young girl is pictured with another Indian child, but not of the same family, on the cover the December 1905 issue of the WCHF. “Can these children be saved?” the editor asks. This child and other Indian children were placed in homes of Christianized Indians with assimilation and race improvement clearly in mind: “In a Christian home the improvement will continue as it has begun, and from the slime and ooze of shame and sin the flower of a beautiful life fragrant with graces divine, sun-crowned we may hope to see.”50 Few Asian children came into the care of WCHS as there were few Asian children in Washington State at this time. Japanese far outnumbered Chinese in Seattle by 1900 (2,933 to 441 in 1900 and 5,728 to 838 in 1910). In Seattle by 1900, the male/female ratio among Japanese was 61 to 1. The Gentlemen’s Agreement in 1907–8 made it possible for Japanese men to bring Japanese women as wives to the United States, and the ratio became 6.77 to 1 by 1910.51 All Asian immigrants were excluded from acquiring citizenship in the years under study. Authorities were not certain about what constituted kinship among Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 87

Chinese living in Washington. That confusion was further compounded when Chinese children entered the United States under guise of a kin relationship and then were sold for their labor. Fires that destroyed birth records account for part of the confusion about legitimate kin. A few celebrated rescue cases, such as the forced relinquishment of Lai Choy Yoke, an abused and neglected domestic worker in Spokane in 1912, suggest the nature of contract labor in the West.52 The handful of Asian children who did come to the attention of child welfare authorities often existed in the shadows of their racially restricted ethnic neighborhoods, as was the case with Lai Choy Yoke. Because the vast majority of Asians occupied the lowest stratum of jobs available in the Northwest, Asian children who were placed for adoption in non-Asian families risked a fate similar to that of one child, who was taken into a white family on contract for board and wages and then casually moved to other families who needed “help.” African Americans comprised even a smaller part of the state population than Asians. Dependent children of African American parents were also relatively rare at WCHS, despite a nominal connection to the society through a network of Protestant church affiliations. WCHS did advertise for “good colored homes” from time to time, but there is no hard evidence that WCHS served the needs of the African American community, either intentionally or effectively. Networks based on kin, community, and church already existed in Seattle’s African American neighborhoods. A front-page article in the Seattle Daily Times of May 16, 1908, for example, reported the attendance of two hundred and fifty people at an Afro-American baby show held at the Afro-American Hall in Seattle. The show and needle craft sale, sponsored by the African American women’s Dorcas Charity Club, raised money for the care of two ill and homeless children.53 While WCHS solicited same-race families for children of color, Asian and black children were occasionally placed in white families: “Here are two children who recently came into our care,” reads a picture caption in the WCHF. “They are good children—reliable and faithful. They have a little colored blood in their veins. The little girl now has a home with an excellent white family.”54 This child may have been able to “pass” as a family member, but home-finding advocates must have been aware of the problem presented by placing children of color in white homes, where the adults might be more interested in household help than adoption.

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b oa r d e d a n d r e f o r m e d

Home-placement societies learned from experience that in order for school-age children to be transformed physically, emotionally, and intellectually into promising adoption candidates, they usually needed time in a suitable home-like environment and considerable remedial attention from staff. In practice, that meant building larger and more elaborate receiving homes. WCHS attempted to keep its commitment to do away with long-term institutional warehousing of children, and, in fact, the receiving home did effectively avoid long-term institutional care for most children. Yet, in its role as a temporary clearing house, the receiving home generated new functions that extended beyond its original intended role as a “wayside inn,” the “invisible orphanage” envisioned by WCHS founders for children destined for permanent homes.55 For children whose lives involved dislocation and relocation interspersed with returns to WCHS, the home and its personnel represented both instability and stability. It was a place of instability because children were constantly reminded by adoption rhetoric and the coming and going of other children that they were not supposed to stay for long. On the other hand, the receiving home represented stability as a common place that united siblings separated through adoption. Unrelated dependent children shared a brief, family-like common history at the receiving home, and that was where lost family members might later be found. In short, the receiving home was a place of shared experience. The receiving home was also the repository of individual and family history to the extent that it was recorded in these early years before collecting elaborate family histories became standard practice. This accretion of institutional “memory” made up of fragments of many individual lives provided a type of continuity in the lives of many children passing through WCHS because the society often maintained at least minimal contact with adoptive families until the children were grown. More than one-fifth of adults adopted as children from WCHS returned to the society to gain information, which was usually given, about themselves and family members. The society’s first receiving home, the residence of the Rev. H. D. and Libbie Brown, was quickly outgrown. Mrs. Irving, a woman who was caring for a disabled child at her home, was recruited as “matron.” Her fam-

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ily home in Green Lake was converted to a receiving home, but it, too, was quickly outgrown, and a boys’ dormitory was added on the property.56 The location was desirable because it was in the country and easy to reach by rail. One savvy child reportedly quipped, “Why, this is like a real home—this is not a ‘childrens’ home’ like where we have been before,” which suggests that, because the early receiving homes were actual residences converted to accommodate many children, they conformed more to the idea of a private, middle-class home than to an orphanage.57 The receiving home served many purposes. WCHS needed a place where children could be deloused, their clothing discarded, new clothes fitted, and where they could be scrubbed, groomed, and made ready for relocation to a middle-class home. The society also needed a place to warehouse donations of clothing, food, and other supplies. Rooms for enormous amounts of cooking, laundry, and mending were needed, as well as sleeping dormitories segregated by sex and age. A good deal of attention was given to reforming children’s eating and grooming habits, and room was needed for each child’s individualized wardrobe and personal belongings. Rooms for recreation and an infirmary were also needed, but schoolrooms were not. If they seemed ready, WCHS placed children in public school, but it relied primarily on their adoptive families to pick up the child’s schooling at the grade level the child could manage. The schooling provided while the child lived at the receiving home was directed toward introducing the child to routine, not toward academic accomplishment. The receiving home was also used as a place to present children to visitors for possible adoption.58 The expanded receiving home at the Irving site was quickly outgrown. A rented, nine-room home proved inconvenient; the nursery was too small, and the dormitories and laundry were inadequate. In 1906, when the twenty-room Mortimer Hall receiving home burned down, killing two children and making the need for a fireproof building imperative, WCHS had already decided to build a brick home on donated land in the Ravenna Heights neighborhood of Seattle. In February 1907, a scarlet fever outbreak, believed to have come from contaminated clothing donated at Christmas, hit a hastily built temporary home, and the newly arrived children had to be boarded away while the rest were quarantined.59 WCHS workers were desperate to move children to a safe building where they could also avoid crowding. When finished in 1909, the new receiving home looked like a well-appointed mansion; it was three-stories 90 | Chapter 3

high, with full cement basement and a huge entrance way complete with pillars and balconies. The receiving home was 82 feet long and 44 feet wide—grandly manorial in appearance. The “invisible orphanage,” as Libbie Brown had earlier referred to as the home-placement movement, had become manifest as an edifice to rival any permanent orphanage in the state.60 As historian LeRoy Ashby has explained, it was precisely these types of building projects that jeopardized the anti-institutional reform movement that home-placement advocates professed.61 The basement of the new home had a furnished laundry room, store room, fuel room, fumigating room, boiler room, janitor’s apartment, and a large playroom able to accommodate the needs of up to fifty children at a time. The first floor had a parlor for receptions, a matron’s apartment, a hospital, sewing room, matron’s dining room, children’s dining room, kitchen, and pantry. The second story had girls’ dormitories containing eight beds for young girls and two beds for older girls, two caretakers’ rooms, the boys’ dormitories, a nursery hospital and workroom, the nursery sleeping apartments, and the day nursery with a solarium for sun baths. The third floor was built to provide for all incoming children, who were placed under close observation before they were “promoted” to the downstairs dormitories. It also housed dormitories for boys and girls, a caretakers’ room, bathrooms, and a large gymnasium. “It is the plan to bring the children here and keep them segregated long enough to make a careful study of them in reference to disease or moral taint,” the governing board explained. The caretaker of the third floor’s room was strategically located between wards for the boys and girls to allow for close surveillance.62 Solicitation to supporters for donations to maintain such a large institution grew yearly along with the increase in case loads. Babies were outfitted with a white iron crib furnished with a mattress, pillows, a rubber sheet, a pair of white wool blankets, two pairs of white cotton blankets, four sheets, a pair of pillow cases, and a white spread.63 Babies also required a constant supply of handmade flannel skirts, long and short dresses for males and females, wraps with hoods, diapers, and stockings. Outfits of clothing went with the children to their new homes. Every girl needed seasonal dresses, long stockings, shoes, and underwear. Boys needed stockings and shoes, suits, vests, coats, and underwear. The home was in constant need of bedding, toweling, toothbrushes, brushes and combs, wool caps, mittens and gloves, ribbons and neckties, and individSorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 91

ual washcloths. Tablecloths, napkins, and boxcars of coal were depleted regularly.64 WCHS needed cows, chickens, fruit, staples (three hundred sacks of flour), potatoes (five tons), vegetables, and meat annually.65 Fruit farming was well underway in Washington State, and apples were always in good supply. In 1904, the matron said, “Why we have apples stewed, and apples raw, apples baked and apples dumplings, till the children nearly turn to apples, and yet they never tire of them.” When a donation of fruit or vegetables came in, the children followed it to the basement for unpacking, many having gone without enough food before coming to the receiving home.66 The neighbors were invited to take part in apple-paring bees during harvest and, at one point, a notice was run in the WCHF for donors not to send any more apples.67 A special stove was requested to cook the immense quantity of cereal used at the home.68 With its beautiful, rural setting, new manorial building, homey furnishings, and middle-class provision of food and clothing, the WCHS receiving home conveyed a sense of permanence and importance. Some children were understandably reluctant to leave it, having had recent experiences of separation, grief, and dislocation. Others were reported as finding it the most agreeable home they had ever had. If a child was accepted for placement—not too deviant in behavior, young enough to be redeemed from “polluting” social influences, healthy, possessing ordinary intelligence, and legally relinquished—that child would usually spend a few weeks or months at the receiving home to be prepared for placement.69 The receiving home personnel played an important role in mediating children’s pasts and their futures, and it was never intended simply to be a morally neutral clearinghouse for children needing homes. WCHS located itself between a child’s past and future in ways that demanded change from the child and endeavored to ready each child for further personal transformation, something on the scale of a religious conversion. That change took various forms, and documentation of improvement was important to legitimizing the home-placement mission. Receiving home personnel endeavored to transform children: from underfed to plump; from vermin-ridden to deloused; from enervated to robust; from barefoot to well-shod; from straggly to coifed; from filthy to disinfected; and from near-naked to bundled and bonneted. WCHS described children as blossoming into dimpled smiles and musical laughter from states of grief, trauma, and depression. Frightened, cowering 92 | Chapter 3

children opened up to personnel and visiting strangers in the safety and security of the receiving home; inarticulate or blasphemous children acquired some rudimentary manners, and all were introduced to middleclass hygiene and eating routines. Under watchful and ever-present eyes, children’s progress was monitored until the time when they were considered suitable for a family. Underlying the more doctrinaire or progressive explanations for the need to transform children into good upstanding Christian citizens was the inescapable fact that potential middle-class families were offended by expressions of ethnic or lower-class behavior and appearance. Because most of the children came to WCHS with evidence of the effects of poverty, the matrons of the receiving home were vigilant in their attempts to replace what they understood to be deviant social upbringing with a middle-class environment. The WCHS receiving home attendants were particularly gratified when children like “Eugene,” who was admitted with body sores covering his hands, face, and head, turned out to be suffering only from “dirtitis” and not from “bad blood,” according to the results of the standard administration of a Wassermann test for syphilis. Venereal disease was on a steady rise in the years under study here, so testing for infection was not an idle gesture. WCHS advocated registering every case in the state and treating the infection like an epidemic of smallpox because it was so widespread. 70 While some children made abrupt transitions from former surroundings directly to a new home, as did the family of five children mentioned earlier in this chapter, others moved through the paces of transformation at the receiving home and within days or weeks moved into new homes. Still others languished for months or even years in the care of the society. The following selection from the WCHF titled “Soliloquy of a Big Boy” suggests ways that sorting and selection affected children who fell within the acceptable range of adoptability by WCHS standards (according to the criteria of age, normality, and availability) but outside the status of adoption preference expressed by adoptive families. Hard times. Don’t know what is coming to me. Hate to live all the time in uncertainty. This Receiving Home is a good enough place to stay. We all like Mrs. Meyers, and they cook good things and give us plenty, especially Sundays and Thanksgiving, but a fellow never knows what is coming to him. I was here once before. I don’t remember my own mother, she died Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 93

when I was thirteen months old, but I remember my father. He meant to be good to my older brother and me, but he was not strong and went away from home to work, and when I was five, he got killed. They took us both to the Home and I have not seen my brother since. I was in a good home the first time, and the people liked me and treated me right, but when I was ten, the man died and after a year the woman got married again, and her husband said I was a big boy not earning my salt, and sent me back to the Home. I don’t object to working, but when I have worked all morning, I want to go to base ball Saturday afternoon. I hate to be sent off to the field to do work alone. I like to work where I have some one to talk to. Still, I would like to try another home on a farm, for they have so many good apples, also horses and generally one dog. I wouldn’t mind staying here if I knew I could stay, but they are always talking about our going to homes. The folks come out on visiting days to see us. They say, “Have you any big girls here?” The people seem to like to take big girls better than big boys, though I am sure I can do as much work as a girl, and I do not wear out so many fancy hats and hair ribbons. I can wash dishes, too, as well as any girl, the first place I stayed the woman taught me that. There is a man who likes boys, he has taken three, he has two with him now, and they are not brothers either. I heard he said he might take another boy, I wish he would take me. The boys he has like his farm. I’ll soon be a man, but I have to go to school more, for I cannot read well enough to read all the newspaper through, and I can’t figure up interest yet. I don’t want the boys to hear me. They might say they wished I was a pretty girl baby, then some one would take me away. There are four of us here now, but perhaps some one will ask for us tomorrow. I won’t be a cry baby anyway.71

This child was suspended in a situation where his age, sex, and history converged to discourage easy placement, and he was fully conscious of his disadvantages. He hated the uncertainty represented by the transitory nature of the receiving home. Yet, from the perspective of many younger children, who cheerfully called the matron of the home and district superintendent “mama” and “papa,” the home seemed to compensate, at one level, for earlier personal losses. Holidays at the home, particularly the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, were made especially memorable and undoubtedly stuck in the minds of children residing there. Thanksgiving and Christmas corresponded to huge fundraising and donation solicitations that 94 | Chapter 3

brought produce, clothing, gifts, and candy by ferry and railroad cars from around the state. At Christmas youth groups and older children at the home were recruited to decorate a tree with candles, balls, bells, toys, candy canes, books, tops, brushes, combs, dolls, tools, and baseball mitts. As children assembled to sing “Oh, Santa, We Love Thee,” the door to the playroom flew open and St. Nick arrived to distribute toys and play with the children for hours. At dinner, the children ate as much turkey, pies, cakes, and candy as they could, and afterwards were entertained by music from the gramophone. After more recitations and singing, the children retired for the day, but the festivities took up again a few days later with more parties, games, and treats.72 Children were understandably dazzled by the plenitude and excitement, and the contrast to their pasts might have made them feel like lucky or guilty survivors, or even disloyal traitors to their poorer family members. Plentitude measured in food, clothing, and luxuries like toys impressed the wards. When children were placed in middle-class homes, they reported in particular exactness on the material possessions they had acquired through their families, often at Christmas but year-round as well. New children arrived at the home in greater numbers near the end of the year, and some of the children must have been thinking of families or friends they had left behind. Christmas was also a time of separation from the receiving home, as there was a great demand for “Christmas babies” and children just before the holidays. For adoptive couples, Christmas represented a longing to welcome a child into the home through an important cultural celebration of family. Home-placement advocates also promoted the idea of getting and giving children as Christmas presents, and excitement, resentment, and sadness must have mingled when children left for new homes at the holidays. In one case, the Reverend Covington telephoned on Christmas Eve to request that a little boy be sent to Olympia for some people who wanted him on Christmas morning, but the child’s anticipation for the festivities at the receiving home was so great that his leaving was postponed a day.73 Perhaps a less stressful holiday for the children was the Fourth of July, when they were escorted to a beach or park for a day of games, lemonade, picnics, and large donations of fireworks that the older boys were allowed to blast off. Such holiday picnics were described as carefree.74 All holiday celebrations, however, were significant because they provided the contrast that expanded the distance between children’s potential “new” lives and Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 95

the conditions of less material and emotional well-being that they had come from. In addition, holidays set up expectations for comfort and consumption in the lap of the middle-class adoptive families, although that expectation could also be disappointed. The homes of middle-class adoptive families were elusive to older children like fourteen-year-old “Gus.” For children who were not placed quickly or who were returned often, the receiving home took on a larger significance. The ordinary routine of the receiving home constituted the meaning of home for such children. Asked by the editor of the WCHF to describe the receiving home, Gus described the daily routine: Well, it looks to me all right. You have to do a little work there, if you didn’t work, maybe they wouldn’t give you anything to eat. When people come to visit, they always ask what sort of work a boy can do, and the matron will say whether he is able to work or not. She will tell what work he does, if good, they will probably take him. If bad, they won’t take him. There are swings and rings that the children play mostly on, and the bigger boys read. When it rains, they go in the play room and play different games like pit, authors, and checkers. Evenings, two bells ring, one is to get washed, and another is for them to get in line as soon as they are washed. The janitor tells them to stand up straight, and then march upstairs to the prayer room. I get up at half-past five, the others get up at a quarter to six. The children make their own beds and sweep the dormitory, and clean up upstairs, and by that time, it is time for the first bell to ring to go down stairs. Then the treatment bell rings, and all who have cut fingers or anything the matter, go up to the infirmary and Miss Millard attends to them. When they are all done, another bell rings for them to march to breakfast. Miss Rutherford cooks good. The dinner we had today you couldn’t have got for 25 cents down town, or yesterday either. She cooks things that are nourishing to the children and give them all they want of it. No one has come to see me to get me to go to a home, and I don’t care; I’d as soon stay there as not, I like it.75

Appended to this description is an editorial note that suggests the magnitude of difference between the perceptions of WCHS personnel and Gus’s experience. The editor expressed her regret that Gus believed that applicants wanted children who could work, since WCHS preferred to believe that applicants wanted children because their home was lonely and they 96 | Chapter 3

really wanted to help a homeless boy become a good citizen. “Every rightminded boy recognizes that he must do his share of work, but a boy’s business is to grow and to learn, that he may be able to do a man’s work when he is of age,” explained the editor. “The reason no one has been to see Gus ‘to get him to go to a home’ is that he is an unusually sturdy, capable, bright boy, and he must have a home where he will have firstclass educatonal [sic] advantages. Thus far the right home has not been opened to him, but we hope it will come soon, as he should be attending high school early in the year, to get all of the work.”76 This passage is particularly interesting because the editor attempted to overwrite and revise Gus’s verbatim remarks, which the editor had promised to publish “unedited.” The unedited Gus was marking time until he could be on his own doing a man’s work and believed that he would be chosen when he could do a man’s job. His life consisted of regimentation marked by designated times for play, sleeping, and eating. Even ministrations for small injuries and illnesses needed to wait for a bell. Dinner was measured in nutrition delivered, but also in comparison to what it would cost him to buy his own meal downtown, with the added benefit that he could get enough at the home. Gus was in no hurry to leave the home, and was not particularly expecting to have an adoptive family, but at the same time he showed anxiety that his stay at the receiving home was conditional (on his working) and impermanent. Despite the best intentions of WCHS, he was satisfied to make the receiving home his childhood home. Gus’s reading of the situation presented a number of problems for adoption advocates. Although only fourteen and not yet in high school, he might easily have chosen not to go to school and take the first opportunity offered to work a man’s job in order to gain his independence. He might have been beyond the emotional reach of most adoptive parents because he was unlikely to be so trusting as to let strangers get close to him. He was effectively institutionalized, marking time by the bells and his comfort by the amount of food available. He did not seem to feel lonely. In fact, he was emotionally isolated but never really alone. Progressive Era child savers saw such behavior as symptomatic of the very institutionalized mentality they spent their careers fighting. If Gus were not put on the path to high school graduation soon in an adoptive family, might he not squander his birthright to childhood and his intellectual gifts? His sturdiness (age), capability (independence), and intelligence (lack of trust) ironically became impediments to his successful placement. Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 97

As Gus’s description pointed out, food—its variety, its presentation, and most of all its quantity—was an important area of interaction between the children and WCHS managers. An institution that grew to accept four or five hundred children each year needed staggering amounts of food, and its preparation was a never-ending task. Eating was also an arena of instruction in middle-class values, and WCHS wished to assure its supporters that the children were receiving an education in the use of a knife, fork, and napkins as well as being served nutritious, hearty meals. Supporters were assured that children were not treated as they were in Dickens’s time: fed mush and treacle, and dressed all alike. Children were often dressed in secondhand clothes, to be sure, but individuality was encouraged. Just as a towel, brush, and comb was assigned to each child, so each child was issued his or her own personal napkin at the table. However individualistic the approach was to personal property, the matron did not indulge personal preference in the choice of food or ways of eating it. There was some conflict over what was considered a decent meal, for example. “Children who come to us after being fed on coffee, pancakes and pickles, or an over-supply of meat, must live with us for a time before their stomachs become adjusted to proper food, hence a run away boy may not be the best authority as to what is the best food for a child,” reported the WCHF in 1915.77 As historian Ellen Ross has noted in her study of motherhood in late nineteenth-century London, poor people felt deprived when welfare workers demanded that they eat more oatmeal and less meat.78 The receiving home menu, which the directors were proud enough of to publish in their 1915 annual report, served meat, beans, cheese, or fish only once a day at the large midday meal. It is possible that the high carbohydrate, low protein diet did leave larger, rapidly growing boys and girls feeling hungry. Their health and vitality, however, seems to have been generally high, considering the distressed situations from which many of the children had come. The regime was nevertheless a trial for many of the newly arrived. WCHS’s 1915 annual report defended the imposition of new habits: “It ought not to be surprising then, if some of these children . . . should be strangers to the use of knife, fork or napkin, tooth brush or individual towel; or who must needs be taught the luxury of clean linen, soft bed and a shower bath; nor should it be a matter of wonder that these children should come to us breathing through the mouth instead of the nose, 98 | Chapter 3

with tonsils enlarged, eyes and ears needing attention and teeth defective.” Beyond attempts to reform some children’s apparent indifference to middle-class hygienic and eating behaviors, WCHS treated conditions that were believed to affect the children’s physical health and appearance. In 1915, 73 tonsillotomies, 63 adenectomies, and 12 circumcisms were performed on entering children. Depending upon their physical examinations, some children received evaluations and treatments for spinal curvature, ring worm, epileptic seizures, orthopedic conditions, heart disease, eye infections and sight problems, chronic ear and hearing problems, and a variety of psychological symptoms, which were referred to specialists at the University of Washington.79 The transformative routines also emphasized work skills. Older boys were taught to milk, garden, chop wood, and care for domestic animals; girls were taught to cook and do housework. WCHS considered these skills necessary for successful placement in middle-class Christian homes, especially on farms (considered highly desirable locations) where children were expected to contribute in appropriate ways to the economic well-being of the family. The pragmatic side of such training cannot be overlooked because, as children grew older, they were often taken “on contract” to work in exchange for room, board, an opportunity to complete their schooling, and nominal wages. Domestic work and ordinary farm work were exempt from child labor laws covering other types of child labor in this period. Older children returned often from such contract arrangements, possibly because the contract arrangements became less useful to the family or to the child. “Older girls and boys are more and more coming to consider the Receiving Home their headquarters where they can stay a day or two and make inquiries as to the other children, meet the superintendent and other workers, and so keep in touch with those whom they have learned to consider their best friends,” the WCHF reported. These optimistic words imply that the society was a useful source of camaraderie and gainful employment for older, unadopted children and for those who yearned for adult independence.80 Such arrangements also demonstrate how WCHS’s original mission had expanded over the years. In the evenings, the children were assembled for music, readings, stories, and prayers. They attended the small Methodist church three blocks from the receiving home and went to public school sporadically, and not very successfully. By 1915, WCHS was asking the school district to supply Sorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 99

the services of a part-time teacher at the receiving home. “We believe the results would be far more satisfactory from an educational standpoint,” they argued, “and would certainly make the work of placing the children less complex.”81 WCHS personnel believed that children were graded down because teachers had trouble keeping track of their academic progress when children came and went from the receiving home into prospective homes. In fact, most children seemed to be at a disadvantage for many reasons, including frequent moves caused by placement and return, and they were usually working below their potential and grade level at the time of placement. Many, however, made rapid academic progress once permanently settled.

trial and return

On an average, one of every three children was returned to the receiving home from a home placement at least once. Returning to WCHS was a very significant aspect of children’s placement experience. This rate of return was remarkably consistent during the years under study. Until 1910, more children were returned each year than were placed for the first time. Children were sent out “on trial” for three months with potential adoptive families, during which returns were tolerated as a natural, if not inevitable, way for children to find homes adequately suited to their needs and to prospective parents’ desires. The first adoption case workers believed that children were malleable and that a favorable environment would eventually slough off bad habits to reveal a perfect child. On the other hand, they also believed that every child was unique and required special encouragement to develop into a full moral individual. This revelatory process, in keeping with evangelical Christian beliefs, likely fueled the notion that multiple placements, while not desirable, were not disastrous either. Later, the very high rate of returns would be considered unacceptable, although the problem remained intractable, particularly for older children. Those who championed adoption at this time saw their role as guardians of each child’s best interest, and they insisted that their oversight extend until the child was adopted or became an adult. WCHS, by accepting back a child who did not fit in well with a family, also saw itself as protecting the child’s interest by arresting the casual passing off of children onto another family or back onto the county welfare rolls. 100 | Chapter 3

WCHS felt its responsibility keenly and assured the child a place to return to if an adoption did not work out. Still, the returns were frustrating to home-placement advocates because they interrupted once again the child’s insecure grip on the most basic advantages homes had to offer, including rudimentary education and stable upbringing. The society put the best possible face on returns, stating that children learned how to fit into middle-class Christian homes gradually, in steps. From this perspective, a failure to fit in one home placed the child just one rung higher toward the goal of acquiring a permanent family. The case histories, unfortunately, are nearly silent on the feelings expressed by children upon their repeated returns. Their comings and goings were noted merely with dates and names of the next home placed. When these children contacted WCHS as adults with questions about their childhood history, they sometimes expressed confusion about their many placements and whether or not anyone had legally adopted them.

r e d e e m i n g t h e ch i ld a n d f ea r o f t h e u n f i t

Dependent children of “feeble-minded” mothers were considered a particular threat to American society by some Progressive Era reformers as well as eugenicists because such women were feared to be carriers of criminal and degenerate influences that would contribute to a decline of the nation. Dependent children were also sexualized by those who worried that they could grow up to reproduce degenerate traits, both physical and social, and threaten the future of “the species,” which was understood to mean U.S.-born white people of northern European descent.82 Welfare reformers in Washington State were not immune to these ideas. In an address at the 1914 Washington State Conference of Charities and Correction, Seattle Mayor George F. Cotterill pointed out that during the twenty-five years since statehood, the population had increased five times, while the insane in institutional care had increased tenfold, and that Montana, while having little more than half of the population of North Dakota, had five times the number of penitentiary inmates.83 At the same convention, a report on immigration called for Congress to construct proper immigrant stations on the Pacific Coast to weed out the diseased and feeble-minded when the anticipated flood of immigration arrived via the Panama Canal. “The number of mentally defective perSorted, Boarded, and Reformed | 101

sons in the United States is increasing and a large percent of the feeble minded are foreign born of foreign parents,” warned the chairman on the committee on immigration, although the percentage of persons of foreign birth had increased only 1.4 percent between 1900 and 1914.84 The Rev. M. A. Covington of the WCHS in Spokane pressed at the same meeting for remedies for public health hazards such as typhoid fever and contaminated milk, but more ominously warned against the problems that Washington would have if it allowed “the marriage of the unfit with the unfit.” He went so far as to recommend sterilization of feeble-minded females in extreme cases to prevent “the propagation of the certain unfit.”85 Nevertheless, he and other religious advocates for adoption argued tirelessly for saving the children of the poor and unfortunate, because each child represented a separate and perfect soul.

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Chapter 4 C o m p le t i n g G od’s P la n a n d C o m p e t i n g De s i r e s

Negotiating Adoptive Parenthood

In 1909, the Home Finder explained the scarcity of children most

wanted by adoptive parents: There are on file in our office 111 applications for children. Those sent in by our district workers are known to be from persons who are in all respects worthy of confidence and whose homes would be proper places for children. A few will eventually be dropped or refused as not acceptable. A large number will be supplied with children and the remainder will go by default because we cannot supply the kind of children applicants called for: Children under one year old, boys 8, girls 22; one to five years old, boys 9, girls 41; five years old and upward, boys 4, girls 27; total for boys 21, total for girls 90. Now, if any reader of our paper is waiting and wondering why that little girl from two to five years old for whom he has applied is not sent to his home, this will furnish an explanation.1 103

At the time this was written, the society had available a thirteen-year-old motherless boy, an orphaned boy of twelve, boys seven and eight, a sixyear-old boy with one arm, and four siblings. It comes as no surprise that couples’ hopes for a child they most desired could not always be fulfilled. Each year WCHS sent its district representatives to dozens of churches and communities to preach the spiritual and emotional rewards of adoptive parenthood, and their calls were met with enthusiasm. Hundreds of prospective parents sent in applications each year, asking—and sometimes demanding—that case workers find a child to fulfill their desires for compatibility, love, and companionship. By 1910, societies federated with the National Children’s Home Society were functioning as prototypical modern adoption agencies.2 Prospective couples expected to use these statewide societies to find desirable children available for adoption. The problem facing the societies was that the children available were not necessarily the children desired by parents wanting to adopt. WCHS sought desirable types of homes for adoption and was often frustrated that qualified homes wanted only the “best” and youngest children. Specific demands from prospective families came directly in conflict with WCHS’s mission as a child-saving institution dedicated to helping the neediest children, not just the most adorable. Still, homefinding societies had the advantage of controlling the selection and matching process, and of vetting adoptive homes. Suitable adoptive parents were defined as Christian and middle class, with few exceptions. WCHS sought out and selected adoptive families because they conformed to and replicated normative values. Once adoptive parents were approved, they influenced that formulation by adopting children who matched their needs and expectations and by sending back to WCHS children who did not. Ultimately, adoptive parenthood was held in tension between WCHS’s selection process and prospective parents’ desires. The model family from this period was built securely on traditional gender roles. Full-time motherhood in the service of society was the bedrock ideology on which the turn-of-the-century practice of adoption was built. Men usually played a secondary, effaced role in the adoption drama, which was centered on the romance of motherhood and the mother-child dyad. However, men’s apparent absence is misleading. Their ability to provide financially for dependents was the principal—and indispensable—qualification for adopting. Adoption was also predicated on ideals of muscular Christian manhood. Husbands were to be models of sobri104 | Chapter 4

ety and self-reliance. Incentives for adoption that had benefited men in the past, such as continuity of family name and lines of inheritance, carried less weight during the Progressive Era than did setting children on the path of righteousness, independence, and hardworking, upstanding citizenship.3 Thus, the successful male breadwinner was considered an essential, if relatively silent, partner to the adoptive mother. Unlike the stigmatized dependency attached to the women and poor families who relinquished children, the social dependency of women who adopted children was sentimentalized, and the dependency of adoptive mothers was considered a sign of moral fitness. 4 Maternalist ideology of the Progressive Era exalted the virtues of domesticity and expanded those domestic roles into the public arena. The blurred boundaries between private and public “homemaking” and “housekeeping” generally permitted women to move out of the private family household and into the public arena to clean up the squalor of the cities and to improve housing, education, and health care through voluntary associations and political reform.5 Maternalism also was well suited to the promotion of adoptive motherhood. Adoption worked selectively toward the same reform goals. When dependent children, usually complete strangers, entered the homes of the middle class to be “mothered” and reformed, adoption was penetrating private, domestic borders from the outside in. The social definitions of housekeeping and motherhood had already stretched beyond the home when women used their domestic experience in civic roles, but adoption breached the barriers of intimacy implicit in biological childbearing, marriage relationships, and late nineteenth-century ideas of the sanctity of home. Ministers, politicians, reformers, social workers, and physicians all contributed to the maternalist ideology of the period. Without the heightened social significance given to motherhood and the willingness of many women to embrace it, adoption would not have had such fertile ground on which to thrive. Progressive Era reformers, with such influential advocates as President Theodore Roosevelt, believed that motherhood had the power to mold the citizen and state, cure social ills, expand the nation, fulfill an ordained Christian plan, and complete the role of woman as nurturer in marriage. An essentialist and universalized definition of womanhood propped up the expanded social role of motherhood and, by extension, the social role of adoptive mothers. The adoptive mother, by elevating her “natural” nurturing instinct to a spiritual level, would overwhelm any child’s past misCompleting God’s Plan and Competing Desires | 105

fortune and would improve the world by shaping destitute children in a Christian, middle-class mold. Beneath this idealized view lay the competing claims of the eugenics movement, which argued for selective breeding and for the sterilization of “defectives.” Adoption advocates, with their faith in nurture over nature, fought bravely against the more draconian eugenicists’ claims, but they also reflected contemporary understanding of what was inheritable and what was not. Adoptive families were buffeted by the contradictory claims of eugenicists and adoption advocates. Some struggled to overcome fears that the children placed with them might have been “tainted” through illegitimacy, disability, or “bad blood” inherited from morally or racially “inferior” parents. Because adoptive parents were a self-selecting population, it is impossible to know how many decided against adoption for these reasons. If adoptive families received conflicting and ambivalent messages in the popular press about the wisdom of adopting dependent children, they encountered no such ambivalence in the Children’s Home Finder, where women who adopted acquired a nearly deified role. Adoptive mothers were reputed to possess transformative powers. Adoptive mothers transcended “natural” roles as nurturers and rose to a spiritual plane where they acquired a particularly favored position in God’s eyes: “The mother who takes into her heart her own children may be a very ordinary woman, but the woman who takes into her heart the children of others, she is one of God’s mothers,” the Washington Children’s Home Finder liked to remind its readers.6 Spiritualized motherhood owed much to the social purity movements of the nineteenth century. Although under pressure of modernization by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, residual values still connected motherhood to special powers of redemption. Many social purity advocates still insisted that women keep their illegitimate babies because they believed motherhood would reform “fallen” women.7 In contrast, adoption advocates emphasized the transformative powers of motherhood through the redemption of dependent children in adoptive homes. Spiritualized motherhood elevated nurturing, religious roles over biological roles, thereby partly “de-naturalizing” biological relationships and helping to normalize and naturalize adoptive parenthood. WCHS tirelessly and successfully recruited adoptive homes in Protestant commu-

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nities, where the claims of spiritualized motherhood appealed to many women. The same Christian reformers who made adoption possible by redefining motherhood as above and beyond the biological were also persistent in their efforts to define womanhood as motherhood. Women who were voluntarily childless were considered deviant, pitiable, or supremely selfish. Woe to the white woman who was childless by choice: She deprived America of white, Protestant, “superior” middle-class children and rejected the sanctification that came from being a mother through adoption. The NCHS attempted to keep strict control over the meaning and legitimacy of adoption. The national organization promoted permanent legal adoption as superior to institutional care. It required that applicants’ homes be investigated, and it issued “dos and don’ts” to adoptive parents. The societies were available to adoptive families after placement and to adoptees into adulthood. Adoption advocates tried to establish an emotional, sentimental “value” for children and set the responsibilities of parenthood. For example, they demanded that children attend school and not be exploited for their labor. They promoted the investment of affection, guidance, and love in return for the often-elusive devotion of children. They counseled long-term “investment” in the face of adoptive parents’ often-disappointed expectations for instant gratitude, trust, and affection from adopted children. Despite admonishing adoptive parents to value children without regard for a return on their investment, adoption case workers encountered prospective parents who held their own, sometimes very specific, ideas of what they wanted from adoption. Adoptive parents acted on their own needs in choosing children. While their needs were influenced by culturally endowed definitions of desirability concerning the sex, race, intellect, and class of the children they requested, the applications also reflected personal desires for love and companionship. Their stated preferences represented boundaries of acceptable differences, but more often suggested ways they wished to be close to a child. In this early period of modern adoption practice, prospective parents often baldly stated their preferences—for a specific sex and coloring, specific age, and even specific degree of musicality. Through the hopes and desires of adoptive parents we see that adoption for the purposes of “saving the nation,” so earnestly sought by Progressive Era

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child savers, had to accommodate specific, individual needs of adoptive parents, who frequently sent children back to the receiving home when they did not fulfill those needs.

Nat u r a l i z i n g t h e “ U n ” n at u r a l M o t h e r

In the late nineteenth century, as eastern and southern European immigration became a visible presence in urban areas, census takers took notice of the steady decline in births among white, U.S.-born women. Although the size of white middle-class families was merely continuing its steady nineteenth century decline, some demographers nevertheless sounded the alarm that “the race” was in peril of being overrun by “inferior” people. Nativists and eugenicists proclaimed that “superior” white women who refused to do their civic duty by having half a dozen or more children were willfully committing the nation to “race suicide.” Theodore Roosevelt was the most prominent purveyor of the race suicide theory.8 “Exactly as the measure of our regard for the soldier who does his full duty in battle is the measure of our scorn for the coward who flees,” he wrote, “so the measure of our respect for the true wife and mother is the measure of our scorn and contemptuous abhorrence for the wife who refuses to be a mother.” Roosevelt labeled families with two children sterile and recommended no fewer than four children per white, U.S.born couple.9 Women who chose to remain unmarried and childless (a heretofore acceptable status for those who remained at home to help with children or parents, and for teachers and public servants) found themselves the object of criticism.10 Married women who remained childless by choice were excoriated in public forums, although this did not seem to convince the women to adopt pro-natalist views. The birth rate continued to drop for the first four decades of the twentieth century, reaching a low point in the 1930s.11 For married women who wanted children but could not bear them, denigration was added to their own feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and despair. Particularly despised were women whose class privilege and choice of childlessness intersected. A newspaper reporter counted seventy-one small dogs sitting on the laps of finely dressed women along Fifth Avenue in New York City. The editorial pitied any child (“worse—ten thousand times worse—than orphaned”) who might be born withering “like little 108 | Chapter 4

stunted shrubs” on soil “too hard and dry to supply the tree” to women who “by natural inclination and selection, have found the measure of their affections . . . are only pup size.” 12 Women were warned through the WCHF and other popular prescriptive literature of the perils that rejection of motherhood entailed. Young mothers who turned their children over to trained nurses and kindergartens, for example, were told to expect their children to come down with a new disease that would leave them gray, bloodless, and weak, or kill them outright. Too much female education was the curse: If the college-graduate mothers follow the advice of their dean their children will lose something out of their lives which no nurse or kindergarten can give. Will the boy of fifteen when the devil tempts him be most likely to go for help to the brilliant companion who understands politics and civic reform, or to the little fond woman who always sang him to sleep on her breast and knelt beside him while she taught him to speak to God?13

A young woman’s first duty was to be a mother; her greatest glory was to give a child to the world. Indeed, her work was “nearer akin to that of God than any other done by man.” By choosing any other path, “she will, by just so much belittle herself and her life.”14 Another favorite target was the modern club woman, who in one story was accused of being so busy with self-fulfilling activities and civic duties that she was unable to recognize her own child playing in the street. In another, civic roles interfered with parenting roles: “The lodge and the club drive the boy from the parlor to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the back yard, and then to the devil.”15 The irony, if not hypocrisy, of these stories published in the WCHF was that the WCHS and other NCHS affiliates were run on the energies of female civic and church volunteers, and thrived on the paid work of trained female personnel. The pedestal motherhood was placed on in middle-class society, particularly in the home-placement movement during the Progressive Era, helps explain the sentiment behind such letters as the following, which WCHS cofounder Libbie Brown reprinted in the WCHF to make her point that “While some women have no mother love, [others] crave it”: I want to feel the little arms around my neck and hear little voices saying “mama” . . . I want above all else to get children with affectionate disposiCompleting God’s Plan and Competing Desires | 109

tions, who can be governed through affections. I do not believe in whipping. I don’t want any little pieces of perfection but just real, everyday children who will probably get angry and stamp their feet and yell. They won’t frighten me a bit. I shall remember when I used to do the same thing. I shall wait till they get over their temper and then try to make them see how naughty they are. Forgive me. I forget how many such letters you have to read when I get to thinking of the children.16

The writer’s longing for, and anticipation of, the affection she would give and receive might suggest that WCHS would consider her a particularly fine candidate for an adoptive parent. But Brown’s note that the writer’s desire was “pathetic” may have been informed by the emphasis homeplacement advocates placed on “the best interest of the child” as more important than adoptive parents’ self-interest. In popular literature, childless women were sometimes portrayed as desperate or insane. Brown and other agents felt an obligation to sort the fit from the unbalanced.17 A national romance with the virtues of white middle-class motherhood, a vestige of separate sphere ideology that was carried forward after the social purity movement had already abated, pervaded adoption rhetoric. Adoption advocates effectively exploited both the cult of motherhood and its class biases in deciding who was fit and unfit to raise the nation’s children. They also embraced a disembodied ideal of motherhood—a motherhood without biological basis carried out on a social and spiritual plane. Such a “un”natural, spiritualized motherhood gave the adoption movement its claim to legitimacy. Extraordinary powers were ascribed to the adoptive mother-child relationship. For example, adopted children could “cure” grief over the loss of a child, ennui in the self-indulgent woman, emptiness in marriage, and even physical symptoms of disease. It was not uncommon for the death of a child to be noted in an application to WCHS for a child of the same sex, age, or appearance.18 It was expected that such an exchange was full compensation for the loss of their biological child. One bereft woman at the receiving home was described as hungrily drawing a child to her, missing the touch of her recently deceased six-year-old daughter. The woman offered the child anything she wanted, perhaps to compensate for her own child’s suffering and premature death.19 Inconsolable mothers were portrayed as “finding” a child among the destitute to compensate for their loss, after months of praying that God return their own dead 110 | Chapter 4

child.20 Women who adopted in hopes of replacing a dead biological child were given little sympathy when their grief returned unabated. “We do not criticize,” wrote the editor of the WCHF, “but only deplore the fact that this woman had not in her heart that nobler and larger love of universal motherhood” which, presumably, would have helped her put aside her grief over losing her biological child.21 Adopted children were reported to be responsible for curing afflictions other than grief over a dead child. In one version of the story, a woman suffering illness with no apparent cause adopts a child, mostly out of a feeling of obligation or duty, and miraculously recovers. The kind, indulgent husband, wistfully hoping for a child, rejoices at the fulfillment of his dreams.22 Certainly, many who applied to WCHS for children shared the conviction of home-placement advocates that the “twin desolations of life are homelessness and childlessness” and that their childless home was incomplete. While earlier generations of women might have reluctantly accepted childlessness as their cross to bear, many women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were willing and ready to accept adoptive parenthood as the extended hand of Providence interceding on their behalf. When a biological child was born after adoption, adoption was sometimes credited as a “cure” to infertility, somehow releasing a motherly essence that prepared her for pregnancy.23 The devotion of adoptive mothers was never questioned in print. In fact, near sainthood awaited the mother who gave her life in an attempt to save her adopted child. A small girl, recently placed by WCHS, died clasped in the arms of her adoptive mother in a winter train wreck. The surviving husband asked permission to bury them together, their devotion was so complete.24 A woman who lost her life saving her adopted daughter from being run over by an interurban train was celebrated as an inspiration of true motherhood. These undeniably heroic acts were written in such a way as to elevate the adoptive mother–child relationship, possibly because its legitimacy was frequently challenged. For adoption advocates, the task was in redefining motherhood from a state both innate and instinctive in biological mothers to a state of grace and civic duty attainable by non-biological mothers. By defining childless women who had the biological ability to reproduce but chose not to as “unnatural” and by deifying social and spiritual adoptive motherhood as “natural” and “womanly,” adoptive advocates wrote a new equation of motherhood. Historians Seth Koven and Sonya Michel point out that Completing God’s Plan and Competing Desires | 111

“maternalist discourses—often competing—lay at the heart of debates about the social role of women, children, and the family.”25 Heroic acts of devoted adoptive motherhood helped to equalize the new equation, but beneath the logic was another powerful message: Supreme sacrifice was needed from superior women willing to mother less-than-perfect offspring of inferior classes to save the nation from a slide into degeneracy. As it happened, however, women and men had their own reasons for adopting, as their applications for children show, and sacrifice for God and nation was not paramount among them.26

“ B r ea dw i n n e r s” a n d “ B r ea dl o s e r s”

Considering the investment American culture had in motherhood, men played supporting roles in adoption. But it was men, not women, who possessed power over the economic resources that would qualify couples for adoption and prevent children from exploitation in the labor force. Historian Robert Griswold has argued that immigrant fathers were “liminal figures” on the American family landscape.27 Specifically, he positions the immigrant father as suspended between an old culture, wherein lay his prerogatives and authority, and a new culture, where his American children often rejected his patriarchal claims. Griswold’s definition could also describe fathers of many relinquished children. “Fathers entered the twentieth century divided by class, race, and region,” he writes, “but they were inheritors of historical changes . . . [that] increasingly identified with breadwinning at a time when men’s other functions had been absorbed by an active state and an expansive maternal culture that relegated fathers to a secondary position within the family.”28 Applied to the adoption scenario, the living biological father who had lost his legal parental claim (although these men usually were not first generation immigrants) was nearly always cast in the role of “breadloser,” to use Griswold’s term.29 The birth father was present in adoption records typically because he was not a sober, self-reliant provider—the only legitimate standard of manhood recognized by middle-class reformers of this period. When a man failed to provide, a newly expanded and more efficient state moved in to take his place. By then, the men had often moved out of the household rather than face the humiliation of failed manhood.30 The biological father was absent in body, having usually departed some 112 | Chapter 4

time before the mother relinquished her child to the society, and therefore absent in legal standing and influence because, in cases of abandonment, only the custodial parent’s agreement was needed for relinquishment. While the birth father appeared as a shadowy and liminal figure in adoption when he failed to be a provider, the middle-class adoptive father was nearly as invisible, but for the opposite reason. A father’s legal claim based on biological ties had eroded long before the Progressive Era. Child savers had evoked the “tender years” doctrine, which favored women in child custody cases, since the early nineteenth century. The early nineteenth century cult of domesticity further invested women with authority over child-rearing matters. Additionally, the adoptive father’s lack of a strong presence followed from his success at competing in a mature and modernizing industrial economy outside the home. White, middle-class, male breadwinners were invisible in adoption because their role was in the workplace. To earn money, men spent long days, often six days a week, away from home and their children. Child labor laws also contributed to breaking traditional father–son relationships. From the late nineteenth century on, children were moving off farms for better opportunities in the city. The adoptive father is a dimly lit figure because, unless he was a farmer or rancher, he had much less to do with the day-to-day business of raising children than did the adoptive mother. The breadwinner was invisible for another reason as well. His capacity to provide in a competitive capitalist society was so basic to the middleclass idea of the suitable adoptive home as to be nearly taken for granted. Recording of most personal and family information was haphazard and sketchy in adoption applications, but proof of ability to provide was expected before a family could acquire a child. Birth fathers were often among the unemployed, seasonally employed, and disabled, or were working on the lowest rungs of the industrial labor force. In contrast, adoptive fathers were nearly always self-employed (as farmers or ranchers), full-time managers or clerks, or skilled industrial workers.31 Another measurement of ability to provide was home ownership. More than 61 percent of applicants were recorded as owning their own home, and that percentage jumps to almost 75 percent when the total is reduced by the number who left that question unanswered. Those who did not own houses rented them. While homelessness was one of the most often cited reasons for relinquishment by biological parents, home ownership was usually a mark of adoption applicants, who also tended to be well Completing God’s Plan and Competing Desires | 113

established in their trades and in their church communities. The average age of adoptive fathers—nearly forty—further suggests established roots (see table 11). Other indicators related to class or ethnic affiliation reveal preferences in application selection. One of the very basic conditions of adoption was that the children would attend nine or ten months of school each year. By no means were working-class and immigrant parents hostile to educational opportunities. Many made great sacrifices to ensure that their children received “American” educations. But some poorer and even middle-class families who owned farms and ranches relied heavily on their children for domestic labor, farm labor, or income from various forms of employment. Excluding working on the family farm, which WCHS found ideal for children, child labor was anathema to progressives who insisted on children being in school most of the year. Seattle, in particular, prided itself as a model progressive city with a model progressive school system. It is clear from WCHS records and juvenile court accounts that truancy remained an issue for many working-class families. By 1904, school attendance officers rode motorcycles and streetcars searching for truant youngsters. Truant officers were given police power to increase their surveillance. By 1914, the Seattle Socialists helped install an additional female attendance officer who reported to principals and parents about girls who exhibited “deviant” behavior.32 Consistent with progressive values, the ability to afford a full grammar school education, plus high school and even college, marked adoptive families as particularly well suited for raising the next generation of citizens.

H u n g ry H ea rt s, I n f e rt i l i t y, a n d D e s i r e

WCHS routinely published the following list of legitimate reasons for those wanting to adopt: Because—You are heart hungry for the love of a little life. Because—Having been denied natural issue your home is empty of children. Because—God has blessed you with an abundance of this world’s goods and your heart yearns to aid the homeless and destitute.

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Because—You uplift humanity by the rescue of a life, which might other wise pass speedily away in want, or if survived be of low class. Because—You protect society and the state by the transformation of a prospective vagrant and criminal into a noble high-minded, helpful citizen.33

Economic and moral fitness qualified parents for adoption, but adoptive parents emphasized “heart-hungry for love of a little life,” and the second, “home empty of children” in their applications. For placement purposes, WCHS grouped prospective adoptive homes into three categories: the childless home; the home where a child had died; and the home in which children had grown and left.34 According to WCHS wisdom, the childless home was not the easiest in which to place children. The society believed that childless couples simply did not know what they were missing, having never “felt the little, soft, clinging arms and heard the oft repeated, ‘Papa, I love you,’ or, ‘Mamma, I love you more than tongue can tell.’” Perhaps this perceived difficulty reflected anxiety over the small but increasing number of households that were childless by choice. However, applications from the childless tend to belie this concern, as 87 applications (46 percent of the 188 applications available in this sample) had no children at the time of adoption. Another 46 applicants (24 percent) did not write a number on the application and might not have had children at the time of application. Hopeful childless couples expressed a physical, nearly palpable longing for the touch of a child or for the experience of possessing or holding a child. A “love of children” and inability to have children of their own were most often cited as reasons for adoption among childless applicants (see tables 12 and 13). Involuntary childlessness, Margaret J. Sandelowski explains, should be addressed as “a source of real (rather than socially constructed) sorrow.”35 The cultural significance given to motherhood added degrees of misery to the grief expressed by couples who said they sought children “to satisfy a natural desire for one,” “to fill the vacancy of the home,” or “to love and have love in return.”36 One young couple protested: “We have no children at all,” suggesting a feeling of deprivation about what others so effortlessly possessed.37 Infertility was still a mystifying phenomenon to doctors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it was usually assumed to be a female problem—emotional, physical, or both.38 Some medical adviCompleting God’s Plan and Competing Desires | 115

sors told infertile women that they were insufficiently submissive to their husband during sex or had sex too often. Others blamed efforts at birth control and especially abortion. Physicians often resorted to surgery as a remedy, which was dangerous and generally useless.39 They were gaining an understanding that syphilis (which was beginning to be treated) and gonorrhea (which was untreatable and often asymptomatic in women) contributed significantly to middle-class infertility during this period. Historian Allan M. Brandt estimates that one in seven married couples in 1890 was infected with venereal disease. Doctors treated young women who were healthy before marriage but suffered chronic, painful infections afterwards. They were outraged at the men who infected their wives with venereal disease, but nonetheless conspired to protect them from divorce. 40 Meanwhile, many women continued to believe they were responsible for prenatal deaths and for fatal or disabling birth defects in their infants. 41 Infertile parents found in adoption a way to ameliorate their deeply felt feelings of loss at their inability to conceive and bear living, healthy children. Anxieties that middle-class white couples expressed in letters requesting children could be magnified in applicants who were not members of the majority culture. For example, Native American families who wished to adopt needed to comply with white, Christian, middle-class standards before children would be sent to them, as did Japanese, Chinese, and African American parents. Couples were scrutinized to make sure that they were humble, sober Christians and models of industry. WCHS actively sought ethnic and racial matches for placement and justified such placements as conforming to the goals of Christian family life. The following letter suggests the desperation a young couple felt at their childlessness. K___, Alaska, Nov. 19, 1905 Dear Sir: I will try to write you these few words to ask your kindness about the child. H. L. told me about the children that you got and I and my wife we make up our mind to ask you if you can let us have one of them. We want a boy, one or three years old. I hope you will be very kind to us whenever you find one boy and send us word right away. We will support the child as long as we live. We are both young and have no children, so if you please we want to have one, a boy. I stay at K___now, but my own place is over at M___; and

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H. L. will tell you all about me and my wife. He will be a witness for us. I thank God if you will let me have one of them. I think that is all. I am your true friend, J. H.42

Childless adoptive couples were usually relatively young and may have acutely felt their childlessness while others in their age group were raising families. The second kind of home sought by WCHS was one where a child had died. Mourning families were considered very promising homes because it was believed that once mother love was aroused, it was a simple matter to transfer that affection to another child. “If that baby was not born to me it was born for me,” summarized one bereft woman’s affection for her adopted child. A number of couples did adopt during periods of mourning for their own children or other family members. “To take place of children lost,” stated one such application. 43 “We have one little boy died,” reads another, suggesting in its mixed tenses that the dead child was still very much a part of this couple’s life. 44 “Lost five baby, die very young at 2 hours,” stated one application, a statement so brief yet so evocative of the exhaustion and cumulative grief suffered by this couple. 45 The women of mourning couples were often in their twenties. Somewhat older couples, where the woman was in her thirties, sometimes adopted after the loss of an older child or another family member. Couples also adopted because the death of a parent left a sense of emptiness in the home: “Death of dear mother” was a typical expression of emptiness felt by some seeking to adopt. 46 “Vacancy” was an expression that described several different situations, and not all vacancies were created by a death. Some couples felt they needed children to “complete their home life.” A feeling of emptiness and a “love for children” were sufficient reasons for many couples to seek adoption. Couples in their thirties and forties were more likely than young couples to anticipate “vacancy” or loneliness in later years and cited desire for companionship and comfort in old age as reasons for wanting a child. Older couples were more likely to say they desired to love and be loved, or desired to give a child a home. The third type of adoptive home sought by WCHS was one that had already successfully raised biological children and wanted to “help humanity” by adopting the homeless. These homes were considered par-

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ticularly desirable for older boys or more difficult children. Based on applications, these homes were in short supply. WCHS especially sought out farm families, where children in their middle and teenage years were sometimes welcomed to “replace” older, married children who had moved away. 47 Adoptive couples living on farms tended to be older, with women in their fifties and men even into their seventies. As home owners and upstanding citizens, applicants often expected to be sent specific children or the “best” children, for whom they believed they would make excellent adoptive parents: We have seen by the papers that you are taking the [name omitted] children to your home at Green Lake and wish to secure homes for them. . . . We have no children and could give one of them a good home. We own our own place. Please let us know whether the children are at the home yet or not, and what the prospects are for us to get one. If they are there we will go down and see you and the children. We can give you the best of references or would be pleased to have you come up and see us. Yours truly, E. J. D.48

Such couples were often in their young middle years, with women in their early thirties, and exuded a pragmatic, even businesslike approach to acquiring a new member of their family. Most such potential parents, in addition to listing their qualifications as God-fearing, home-owning, and living reasonably close to church and school, stated exactly what they wanted in a child. “I thought I would write you and see if you have a suitable child on hand, age from 8 to 11 or thereabouts. I would like to have a bright, intelligent little girl,” requested one typical letter. 49 WCHS editorials could be snappish when personnel felt applicants were thinking only of their own needs and were unwilling to accept the “imperfect” child. In one such article, reprinted from the Illinois Children’s Home Finder, prospective adoptive families were urged to look at adoption “from the other way”: Here is an application from a pretty, sweet faced, sunny dispositioned little girl of three years with beautiful golden curls, large expressive brown eyes, with long dark lashes, perfect complexion, born in wedlock, both parents

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dead, left with an inheritance of a million dollars in government bonds, with no blood relation to be responsible for her. She applied to us for a father and mother and we are on a still hunt for the family that will meet the conditions. First, this little applicant is thinking mainly of her own comfort, she doesn’t want a mother under thirty or over forty, she must not be sickly or nervous or homely, for who wants a homely woman for a mother? She demands that this mother must be perfect. . . . Now in regard to the father: He must be sound in body and mind, too. No over forty-five nor under thirty-five. He must be well build [sic], free from all bad habits . . . a model citizen and a kind, true hearted husband and father, always at home with his family nights and devoted especially to me, the only baby. He must have good business ability, own his home and have a respectable occupation.50

In many respects, of course, the list of requirements reflected precisely the qualities that home placement agents were looking for in a best “qualified” adoptive applicant, so the irony falls somewhat flat. On the other hand, this role reversal indicates the frustration experienced by adoption workers attempting to place ordinary children, much less children considered too old or undesirable by prospective parents.

Th e A p p l i cat i o n a n d Ru d i m e n ta ry H o m e St u dy

The WCHF offered pointed suggestions on how to apply for children. A sample “don’t” application read like this: “We want a little girl with violet eyes * * * straight and helthy. She must be pretty * * * and if we doan’t like hur we won’t keep hur.”51 These applicants failed on all counts: The couple requested a young, pretty girl instead of a child in particular need of a home and reflected an applicant-centered, insensitive attitude that treated a child as a commodity who could be returned if defective. The grammar and spelling also suggest a less-than-middle-class education. Still, the warnings did not dissuade parents from hoping for and asking for an “attractive” child. Applicants were further advised not to select a child on appearance alone because “some of the homely ones are smarter and have better disposition” and might grow up to be handsome after all. They were also told not to “insist on having ‘a little girl, one to three years old.’”

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WCHS advised, “We have her so seldom that we scarcely know what she looks like.”52 In contrast, this ideal, and fictitious, application was offered as an instructive example for prospective adoptive parents: “Wanted a child that needs a home. Object to love and patiently rear as my very own, to stick to through thick and thin, and do all in my power to finally present him to the world and to his God, a man that shall be a credit and blessing to all with whom he may come in contact.”53 Only one application in the sample approached such selflessness. The lowliest applicant in adoption agents’ eyes reflected the worst-case scenarios culled from orphan train experiences, where children were chosen from train platforms and settled with farm families in the Middle West to work. One adoption advocate wrote: “A man who adopts an orphan boy, promises to treat him as one of the family, and then keeps him at work like a beast of burden and requires him to wear his own cast off clothes, is one who helps to lower the record for meanness, has a frostbitten soul and when he comes to the final reckoning will find himself landed high and dry among the billy goats instead of being taught how to use a harp.”54 Agents were understandably sensitive because WCHS often received applications for big, strong boys and girls to work on the farm in exchange for room, board, and an opportunity to go to school. The “contract” arrangements WCHS made for older children or those who were not truly free for adoption came as close to old-fashioned indenture as home-placement societies dared to go without compromising the mission completely. Such children could, however, leave such arrangements. Often older children returned to the receiving home, complaining of their treatment in homes where they had worked for wages. WCHF also reprinted cautionary articles about “naive” assumptions applicants made in requesting that unrelated older male and female children be placed in an adoptive home together.55 Again, home-placement workers had enough knowledge of incest, foster parent abuse, and sexual liaisons between older foster children and adoptive family members to be anxious over any culpability arising from such situations, which they deplored. Some occupations automatically disqualified adoption applicants. “This Society will hardly find it wise to place a child in the home of a saloon-keeper,” fumed the editor of WCHF, “notwithstanding he is

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required by law to be a man of good moral character, as long as his business makes more orphans, destroys more homes, produces more idiots, insane and epileptics, fills more jails and reformatories and blasts more lives than all other agencies combined, for as the Scripture proclaims, on account of strong drink, ‘Hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure.’”56 WCHS superintendents boasted that they inspected every prospective home, but many homes qualified based upon not-always-reliable secondhand testimony of neighbors, church members with knowledge of the family, and ministers. Three decades after the founding of WCHS, H. D. Brown still believed that gaining reliable information concerning the suitability of homes remained one of the most difficult tasks the society faced. “Friends and neighbors of a family were not inclined to refuse a recommendation, and a pastor is quite prone to take it for granted that his parishioners are suitable and desirable people,” wrote Brown. “It therefore came about that sometimes a child was taken to a family well recommended only to be taken away again.”57 The application process itself was intended to make sure that families met minimum requirements. Applicants were expected to be married, kind-hearted, humane, mentally competent, Sabbath-observing and church-going, as well as financially able to “sustain such social relations as to give children good advantages and companionships, and an education suitable to their conditions and circumstances in life.”58 An example of the rudimentary “home study,” in the form of a laudatory recommendation of an adoptive family reputedly supplied by a minister, was published in the WCHF to give applicants an idea of what was expected of the home. The applicants were reported to be members of the Baptist Church for many years and in the “best moral standing.” While not “society” people, they “move in the best society.” The man was a contractor and builder who owned his own home and had interest in a large lumber manufacturing shop as well as owning other property.59 Such models of industry, morality, and reputation were considered ideal. WCHS district superintendents and their representatives traveled many thousands of miles throughout the state each year, spreading the word about adoption in sermons given as guest ministers. Nearly all successful applicants reflected the constituencies of those congregations. Most adoptive families were members of Protestant churches; however, a

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scattering of irregular church attendees and even a couple of non-attendees were selected to become adoptive families. When Catholic children came into the care of the society, Catholic homes were sought for them.

N e g o t i at i n g f o r t h e “ R i g h t ” C h i ld

Most couples sought a child to fulfill personal desires, and those desires varied with the age of the adoptive mother (see table 13). Overall, adoptive parents were older parents. Adoptive mothers were often in their thirties or forties, and adoptive fathers were sometimes much older. Occasionally, adoptive parents sought a sibling for a child already at home, but despite WCHS’s urging to “adopt two,” few adopted sibling groups.60 WCHS agents worked tirelessly to normalize and legitimize adoption in a social and political climate that prescribed biological parenthood for all healthy, white, married couples. At the same time they were forced to match applicants and children based on individual and personal needs and desires. Their emotional appeal to women aroused interest in adoption—through calls to religious and civic duty and to the sentiment represented in the empty, outstretched arms of a childless woman toward a dependent child, an illustration that topped the WCHF ’s masthead. The society, however, was pressed to deal more pragmatically with adoption at placement time. Adoptive parents were not applying for sainthood, but to be parents of children who would return their love. Their applications reflected their expectations that their personal preferences and desires for children be taken into consideration. It is revealing that the last “good reason” for adoption given by WCHS—to save society from a lower-class child gone bad—scarcely registered a mention on application forms. The applicant who wrote “[to] make it a home and make it a Christian citizen” was alone in his response to the call to civic parenthood in this sample. Softened statements of altruism were more common, such as “have sufficient funds to properly care for child” and “to give a home.”61 To “adopt as our own,” a phrase often found in applications, more typically expresses the longing that childless parents felt and reflects the expectant, hopeful feelings adoptive parents revealed in their applications.62 Adoptive parents often stated clear preferences. Fifty-nine percent expressed a desire for a child of a certain sex, while 55 percent expressed 122 | Chapter 4

an age preference (see tables 14 and 15). Only one application stated explicitly that “it makes no difference” in both these categories.63 Childless people preferred younger children twice as often as older children, and they were almost twice as likely to prefer female children, suggesting that they were not looking for a child to “carry on the name” but rather for traits attributed to girls, such as affection and emotional closeness. Couples over the age of thirty and those who already had one or more children, commonly requested a specific child, sometimes one already in their temporary care.64 A few wanted young children as companions for children already in their home, or wanted a child of the opposite sex to complete their family.65 Adults also requested older children to be companions and to help with farm chores and younger children, who could be sent out on “contract” for room, board, and some small amount of property or money when they came of age. Applicants for older children more frequently preferred boys to girls. A few children were taken on contract when they were very young, probably more due to extenuating conditions of relinquishment than to the desire of the adoptive families to use them as farm hands or housekeepers when they grew older.66 Considering that adoptive parents clearly did care about the age and sex of children they adopted, it is remarkable that only thirteen applications indicated a preference for or against specific physical or emotional characteristics. A few applicants asked for specific features, such as light hair, brown eyes, medium complexions, high intelligence, or kind-heartedness. Some of these few indicated that they did not want a child with obvious physical deformities, from unhealthy parents, or who was badly abused, intellectually “slow,” or “mean.” Far more often adoptive parents stated their preferences for children as a desire that the child have the capacity to return love, affection, and companionship. Occasionally adoptive parents desired children to complete their marriage, or in hopes of being cared for in old age. In all cases, adoptive parents’ reasons belied the rhetoric of universal sacrificial motherhood and altruistic child saving by expecting that the parent-child relationship be reciprocal. Their requests for a child with specific qualities suggest a deeply felt desire for their children to look, feel, and act like they “belonged” to them, although applicants frequently made statements that expressed a willingness to have a child with qualities and traits unknown to them. In this context, a request for a dark complexion or blue eyes might be interpreted as an effort to narrow difference rather than exclude Completing God’s Plan and Competing Desires | 123

children based on superficial qualities, particularly in the context of the immense cultural weight given childbearing and biological motherhood. Did receiving parents get what they wanted in an adopted child? The case records include only applications of parents with whom a child was placed, and so there is no information regarding those who applied but were rejected or who never received a child because none were available who matched their desires. We have little to go on in terms of verifying specific character or appearance requests of children placed. It is even more difficult to verify matches based on stated emotional need. However, 73 percent of those who requested a child of a specific age received a child of that age; 87 percent received a child of the age requested or younger (see table 16). Of those adoptive parents who requested a child of a specific sex, 84 percent received a child of the sex they requested (see table 17). Of those adoptive parents requesting both a particular sex and age, 63 percent were matched in both categories (see table 18). The desires and needs of adoptive parents had a significant influence on the placement process. Evidently qualified couples had enough influence to frustrate WCHS’s efforts to find a home for every child, but that did not discourage WCHS from persistently urging altruism in the selection of a child and advocating the overarching virtue of selfless motherhood. Adoptive parents did not want just any child; they wanted a child just right for them, and not all prospective parents’ wants could be met through adoption. WCHS frequently referred to requests left unfilled because bright, beautiful, very young girls were unavailable. And, even for adoptive parents whose needs might have been met by an available child, cultural debates over nature and nurture could still undermine their confidence in completing an adoption.

Nat u r e a n d N u rt u r e

When applicants chose adoption, they were already swimming against the cultural currents set in motion by eugenicists, race-suicide alarmists, nativists, and other xenophobes of the period. As historian Linda Gordon points out, the nineteenth century understanding of heredity was essentially “folkloric” in its explanations of what was genetically determined and what was influenced by environment.67 Gordon explains that in the “optimistic, perfectionist vein” mined by adoption advocates, eugenics was used to demonstrate that people could “improve” over time with the 124 | Chapter 4

correct influences. But in its turn-of-the-century, more pessimistic manifestations, heredity was also used to explain “feeblemindedness” and social deviance of all kinds, focusing particularly on the social “menace” represented by “defectives”: unwanted children and children of alcoholics, criminals, and the “inferior” races.68 Little direct evidence supports the idea that applicants requested children based on eugenic criteria, although those who specifically requested that their adoptive child be “passably good looking, not deformed in any way” or have “no bad blood” expressed nativist fears about disabilities and “race degeneracy” that circulated during this period.69 Race matching was taken for granted. Applications from white parents commonly stated preference for fair-skinned, light-haired, blue-eyed children. By the same token, black parents and Native American parents requested “dark complexed [sic]” children, or children with “dark complection [sic] but not too dark.”70 Still, it is impossible to prove that adoptive parents were not influenced by contemporary debates about eugenics. After adoption, a few parents inevitably did confront differences between themselves and their adopted children that they did not understand, and a few wrote WCHS asking about a child’s background. Such concerns surfaced most often after a child placed in a home exhibited behavior that adoptive parents worried about. Adoptive parents who were seeking out evidence that supported the nurture side of the argument could find plenty in the WCHF that refuted heredity’s claim on children’s character and capabilities.71 As an antidote to eugenicist arguments for “protecting the race” from the children of social deviants, home-placement advocates promoted the success of adopted children, often through the lives of a legendary few. Beginning with Moses, Caesar, Jesus, and Mohammed, and running through Civil War heroes such John C. Fremont and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, adopted children were hailed as among the most successful people who had ever lived.72 Of course, such atypical role models worked at cross purposes to the adoption of ordinary children, and alongside the “great man” and “devoted daughter” stories were pleas for parents to accept less than perfect children and to exercise patience after placement.73 WCHS admonished adoptive parents not to expect perfection: “We do not expect you to be perfect; if we did we might be disappointed,” it stated pointedly.74 Still, some adoptive parents were disappointed in their child’s reluctance to return their affection. To such parents, WCHS counseled nurturing— Completing God’s Plan and Competing Desires | 125

a sort of child husbandry—to coax “transplanted” children to graft their affections to a new and sturdy family “tree”: Kindly remember that these children have had some kind of a home before, that they have formed certain associations, that their affections have been twined about other individuals. They are like the transplanted plant, or tree now, perhaps some form of sin or crime has rudely broken former associations, and affections, but a fond memory lingers with them still. . . . It will take them some time to learn to love and cling to the foster parents. You may be disappointed at first in their lack of affection, and appreciation of all that you do for them . . . but be patient. They are learning to love you and appreciation will be shown in time, and the longer it takes to win them to perfect loyalty and devotion, the greater will be your reward.”75

Following the same line of reasoning, WCHS forbade visits to adopted children from former family members and friends, although letters from the worthy were occasionally passed through the state superintendent to or from a child and another relative, often a sibling. The early placement period was considered a delicate time when children could easily be disrupted from developing new ties with adoptive parents. Adoption workers were not just concerned with fond lingering memories; they were also concerned about the children’s pasts having a corrupting influence on their futures. Home-placement advocates answered critics of the policy that children be completely separated from their past associations: “It is an impossibility to keep [children] quiet and happy if their past association and family-ties are kept fresh in their minds; again in a large majority of cases there are memories of the past that, if not forgotten, will carry them to destruction.” 76 In explaining its policy to concerned biological relatives and friends of placed children, WCHS stated that most placements broke up when past ties were maintained, and that adoptive parents made it the condition of taking a child that his or her whereabouts would not be revealed.77 In fact, except for infants, the return of children who did not fit into the adoptive family after the trial period was too common to blame on outside interference. Most likely, few of these returns were caused by direct contact with past friends and relatives. What is impossible to know is how many children returned because they were unable or unwilling to part with their pasts and past associations. Indeed, few adoption records 126 | Chapter 4

reveal specifically what led to a child’s return. The responsibility for, and agency of, a child’s return to the receiving home seems to have often devolved upon the child who, in the phrase used by adoption workers, had not yet found “a home in which [he or she] felt happy.”78 Such a phrase disguises as much as it reveals, but it does suggest that adoption workers knew there were limits both to children’s willingness and ability to adapt and to the nurturing incentive of adoptive parents. Many kinds of differences—physical, emotional, and intellectual—could preclude an easy or instant fit in the confines of a existing family and new location.

C o n t i n u e d C o n tac t

WCHS state superintendent D. S. Revelle ruefully pointed out to adoptive parents in 1912 that the act of having “cared for and placed about the child the riches of their maternal and paternal love has little or nothing to do with the adoption itself.” Unless legally adopted in court, the dependent child “remains in law a stray or waif” with the legal protection of a “stray or superfluous kitten.” Of course, by 1912, children had more protection by the state than did stray kittens, but Revelle was getting at an important legal matter. Signed legal documents relinquishing children by birth parents only cleared the way for adoption; they did not transfer those parental rights to adoptive parents. WCHS attempted to track legal adoptions, which required parents to travel to a probate court, pay a fee, and get the adoption approved and legally filed. A significant number of parents, particularly in the early years of the society, apparently believed they had legal rights to the child at placement. Others could have been evading the procedure, possibly putting off inheritance disagreements with biological children. A few protested the expense, saying they had never intended to “buy” a child. But many just never got around to legally adopting and changing their will. WCHS was adamant that the legal adoption be done because there were real consequences for children being left without footing as an heir if their adoptive parents died. Precedent did not exist in English common law for adopted children to inherit if a parent died intestate.79 WCHS reasoned with and threatened adoptive parents who did not legally adopt, and yet the records of legal adoption are missing in dozens of case histories of children who very likely grew to adulthood believing they were fully and legally adopted. It is possible that adoptive parents Completing God’s Plan and Competing Desires | 127

never believed themselves fully in charge of the adoption because, even when legal adoption was finished, WCHS remained in the background until the children were eighteen. WCHS cases, in effect, were never irrevocably “closed,” even after legal adoption, and adults returned to the society for information recorded many years after adoption.80 For practical purposes, the cases were kept open and information added because WCHS stood ready to take back children months or years later if adoptive parents returned them or died. Oversight of the adoptive home and child took place in a number of ways. Parents of small children were required to write letters on a regular basis, reporting on the child’s adjustment and development. Older children were also encouraged to write to WCHS after placement. The most extensive efforts at oversight were the home visits made by employees of WCHS after placement, which the society endeavored to make on a regular basis—ideally, every year—but actually accomplished only every few years and even less often for children making good adjustments. Agents visited adoptive homes when they were in the area working on an investigation or new placement. Over time, the expectation for thoroughness in reporting increased, although the form that case workers used is as revealing for what it omitted (for example, any direct input from children) as for what it included. A form used by visitors in 1906 left space for one-word answers to questions about the child’s health, clothing, manners, bad habits, church and Sunday school attendance, school attendance, work demands, obedience, helpfulness, happiness, and feelings toward foster parents, which were described in one case as “loving and dutiful,” but by whose assessment it is impossible to judge. WCHS evaluated cleanliness, orderliness, comfort, appearance of house and outbuildings, books, newspapers, pictures, intelligence of parents, their kindness and affection, and whether the home had “adapted” to the child.81 Visitors were encouraged to add commentary to this, of course, but sometimes the child was not even in the home at the time of the visit. In the few records of home visits existing in case histories, responses are missing that would offer insight into what adoption felt like from the child’s perspective. As WCHS’s list of cases under its care grew to over a thousand, requiring agents to visit three or four homes a day, WCHS’s oversight was inevitably overextended. All that is recorded when placements did not work out is usually a brief note dating a child’s return, which regrettably offers no further insight. 128 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 B iol o gy, B o ta n y, a n d B e l o n g i n g

Adoptive relationships were modeled closely on the biological

family, particularly when childless couples adopted infants, as was the case in about one-third of the placements. The “delivery” of an infant sometimes included rituals analogous to birth. One WCHS escort, acting as a sort of midwife, took a baby by train to her new adoptive home and reported on the infant’s “royal welcome”: When we arrived, four ladies were there waiting for us—the foster mother being ill had delegated her four most intimate friends to safely escort her treasure home. When we reached the house Mrs. ___ held out her arms and when she took Baby I just wish you could have seen the joy in her face as she cuddled [name omitted] up to her and loved her over and over again! Then Baby was laid tenderly on the bed and Mrs. ___ hastened to the phone to tell her husband the Baby had arrived. In a very short time Mr. ___ came rushing in, exclaiming breathlessly, “Where is the baby?” On being told that she was asleep, he dashed into the bedroom, grabbed up [name omitted] and smothered her with kisses, declaring that if they had searched the wide world over they could not have found a more perfect child! We then 129

had lunch and the people began to come until there were surely over fifty there in that house to admire the new baby. I am so glad I was asked to take [name omitted] to her new parents—I shall never forget the welcome they gave her.1

This account begins an adoption narrative, a strategy for combining unrelated events and people in a coherent explanation of kinship. Repeated telling created family history where none had previously existed. The story does not merely describe the eager anticipation of an individual couple waiting for the child of a stranger to enter their lives, but also patterns adoption on a model derived from biological reproduction.2 Biological birth is suggested in the narrative retelling, if not the event itself, by mention of the foster mother’s illness, the attendance and delivery of her child by intimate friends and a “professional” (in lieu of a physician), and the bliss of receiving an infant in arms for the first time, all taking place in the intimacy of the bedroom. Once the child is safely delivered, the proud father is called to the bedside (belatedly) to admire the offspring, the actual birth having taken place (privately) offstage. Finally, the visitors arrive to the house to receive the child and bless the “birth.” Mimicry of birth rituals in the adoption setting had purpose: to transfer “ownership” of a child and to establish kinship, legitimacy, and community ties. One of the more striking facts about adoption in this period is its public face. It was rarely kept a secret, even when the child adopted was an infant, and WCHS firmly warned adoptive families to be open with their child about adoption. The narrative—the fiction—that created the kinship connections between non-relatives was intentionally in public view, so that in many respects adoptive parents shared with biological parents the same rituals of welcoming that any new family member would receive. Social conventions helped bridge some differences that might otherwise be troublesome. For example, in the same way that modesty shrouded the physical details of childbirth, social propriety could be extended to cover a child’s illegitimacy. A child might be provided with a different story of origin, such as the death of the birth mother. Families provided “fresh starts,” wrapped the child in rituals of family belonging, gave children new names, and otherwise helped create a new identity. WCHS acted as the repository of children’s life histories, mediator between child and adoptive family, and publisher of adoption

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stories. Successful adoption stories published in the WCHF shaped public understanding about adoption and legitimized it at the time that adoption was being codified into modern practice. Because the stories were nearly always positive does not mean they were not true. James Clifford’s phrase “partial truths” well describes this period when language first gave modern adoption experience meaning.3 Case records usually included only sketchy, often unverified, almost always secondhand accounts of the experience. Letters written to the society by adoptive parents and children were also purposefully and strategically written, revealing some feelings and experiences and eliding others. Necessarily, these sources lead to a partial map of the adoption terrain as it was being formulated during these years. Nevertheless, letters are helpful in illuminating some of the ways adoptive families incorporated strangers into their families and communities and the ways adopted children understood and made a home for themselves—when they were able. In fact, most of the young children were able to shape their identities around their adoptive family and community expectations, although older children were returned from their homes during their trial period more often than not. And, while most children tried valiantly to remain where they were placed, even some very young children resisted placement. The adoption story emerged as a new narrative framework intended to increase adoption’s acceptability and extend its reach. WCHS made the most of successful adoption stories by reprinting them in the WCHF and mailing them to thousands of subscribers and donors. The National Children’s Home Society, by encouraging the sharing of newsletter content among societies affiliated with it, developed a rich lexicon of rhetorical strategies to create and legitimate the new family structure and to extol the virtues of adoption. The new discourse of adoption stressed metaphors of biological imitation and botanical grafting as ways for bonds of adoptive kinship to grow. Adoptive families, of course, did not always fit the new discursive mold. But, rather than discuss placements or families as “successful” or “failed,” it is more productive to think of individual participants in adoption as responding to the challenges that adoption brought to them. In this light, adoptive parents faced certain dilemmas in the process and adopted children faced others. Family members had different needs and adjustments to make, as the letters so often—and so poignantly—reveal.

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R i t ua l Ac t s o f C la i m i n g

The arrival of an adopted infant was the occasion for many welcoming rituals, including the pleasurable tasks of holding and bathing the baby, sewing, visiting, and ministering to the needs of the child. Dozens of letters from mothers experiencing the thrill of first-time parenthood were published on the pages of the WCHF over the years. However, many letters from adoptive mothers also include more somber undertones. The letter below is typical for its combination of love and pride in the new baby with some reflective, candid notes that tie the parents’ pleasure to experiences of previous loss and disappointment:4 Mrs. Brown, he is the dearest baby and is so fat and sweet. We all love him, my husband being as foolish as I am over him. We got two nice blankets and tore them in two and the baby is wrapped up in half a blanket day and night. He has his flannel skirts and a white flannel dress on and his white skirt and dress, but we are so afraid he might get a cold. He has never had the least bit of cold yet, and never sick a day. Oh, how I wish every child you get a home for was loved and cared for like our darling baby. I was almost afraid to take him, he was so young. I was afraid the trip might kill him, but I am thankful I did. I first wanted the little girl baby, because she was older, but he just suits us. I was not looking for a pretty child. I wanted to take some poor little child that needed a good home and a father and mother’s care, and this little darling came into our life. We will raise it as our own. We lost our baby, and I know God intended this baby should fill its place. It seems like our own baby that we had talked and planned for so long. The little darling sleeps on my arm every night and is so good, and Mrs. Brown, he is the prettiest little baby I ever saw. Every one speaks of it being so pretty. I am so glad it is so healthy.5

The fear of receiving a very young or underweight baby was a realistic concern for adoptive parents. 6 Babies as small as four pounds were placed by the society, and such small babies were the ones most likely to die, especially when they had been exposed to childhood diseases in nurseries. This adoptive mother writes that she is terrified for the baby’s health and expresses grief and hope for reconciliation over the death of her birth child. The letter ends on a hopeful note—perhaps the outcome would be

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different this time, particularly since she was so willing to serve unselfishly in her mothering role. While the adoptive mother attempts to overcome her sadness, disappointment, guilt, and anxiety over her dead child and her adopted child, she reveals a spectrum of intertwined emotions that complicate any easy conformation to the ideal biological birth model. Considering that most adopting parents had such complex reactions to adoption, the instant fulfillment blithely reported by the WCHS agent at the beginning of this chapter calls for some skepticism. At the same time, rituals of “making [children] one’s own” deserve close attention because the rituals helped bridge this gap between parent and child, past and present, individual lives and kinship. Dread diseases of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century childhood, including whooping cough, summer diarrhea, and diphtheria, killed babies of every class, but disproportionately babies of the poor. WCHS often received babies who were underweight at birth, ill, undernourished, or malnourished. Such babies worried staff and were a source of constant anxiety for adoptive parents, such as the one who wrote, “I weighed her today, 7 1/2 pounds, so small, but dearer than diamonds.” 7 Obviously delicate babies were not the only children who suffered. Without warning, babies who appeared well became deathly ill shortly after placement. In fact, the first letters received by the agency frequently reported the survival of a child after a frightening bout of illness and an exhausting vigil by adoptive parents: In reply to your letter will say, we have not taken measures to adopt little baby [name omitted]. I expected to have attended to it before [name omitted] had pneumonia. We very nearly lost him, but he is very hearty and weighs 20 pounds can sit up in his buggy and has two teeth. I wish you could see him now. He is a lovely little, fat, rosy baby. . . . We will never part with baby—that is settled.8

Adoptive parents often waited until a crisis had passed before reporting it to WCHS, no doubt partly out of exhaustion, but possibly also because they were afraid to claim as their own a child who might not survive childhood. When the baby did survive a bout of a common childhood illness, parents often expressed urgency to go through with the adoption.

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The prospect of caring for a chronically ill child was daunting, but the ritual of nursing could contribute to affection for a child who might otherwise have been rejected. A woman wrote: “I regret to tell you that little E___ almost died a few days ago. He has asthma very badly. The doctors brought him around, but we shall have to watch him all his younger days. I say frankly, that had we known he had asthma at first we should not have kept him, but we love him, and he loves us. That settles it. . . . He is a little jewel, and one of the brightest in the book line we ever met.”9 The nursing of sick children might take its physical and emotional toll on women as caregivers, but not on their affection for their child.10 A woman wrote: “I have done the best I could, she has not seen very many well days since I have had her, is just recovering from a hard sick spell, I think she has had everything in the baby line but teeth and she will have them soon, but day and night I have nursed her and with God’s help she is spared to us. If she had of gone I wanted to go, too, so dearly do I love her.”11 If anything, a sick child’s overwhelming dependence upon its adoptive mother could help create an intimate bond, which is what adoptive parents so often said they wanted to have with an adoptive child. Thus, rituals of care—of holding and rocking ill children through nights of fevers and strangling coughs—seems to have reinforced parents’ commitment to their children. Some very ill children inevitably died in their adoptive homes. In one such home, two babies died one after another.12 A letter that informed WCHS of a child’s death might also request a quick “replacement,” as though, having been childless before, adoptive parents decided never to be childless again. Grieving parents wrote: “Our home and hearts are, it seems, empty. Our comfort is, however, that there might perhaps be some other homeless child that we could get to fill [name omitted]’s place. We would therefore ask if you have some little girl 2-1/2 years old or thereabouts of Scandinavian parentage, or some other northern people of noble birth, that you would give us. You know just about what we would like.”13 The fear of a child’s impending death was genuine whether the child was in real danger or not. The other day he went to sleep and was asleep 3 hours and we got uneasy and woke him up, we were afraid he was sick, but he was all right and ready for play. The poor little thing had a gathering in his head and we did not take our clothes off for 5 days and nights, we walked the floor with him 134 | Chapter 5

nearly all the time, he would cry if we rocked him in the chair or rocked him in his crib the only way we could keep him still was to carry him. His papa would walk the floor for two hours at a time and I would carry him until it seemed my arms would break. Oh, Mrs. Brown, we thought our baby was going to die . . . the doctor laughed at us and said what would become of you people if the baby got bad sick . . . we prayed to God to spare our baby and he did and he is well and we are all so happy.14

While anxiety over a sick child might be considered a universal experience, such torture over a child who would likely get well suggests ways adoption extenuated and mitigated those emotions. The joy of parenthood in these cases could be understandably bittersweet: She says she hasn’t been a bit lonesome since she came here. And our friends all think she is so nice. My father and mother liked her as soon as they saw her. They say she looks like our other child, and we all think so. She will be so much company to me and seems to like her new papa so much. They had a big romp and play today. It seemed like old times when we had our little girl with us.15

When children were well, parents never tired of reporting their weight and height gains, which documented high-quality mothering and helped justify and legitimize adoptive parenthood. The fatter the baby the better, as this seemed to move the child further from harm’s way.16 Bottlefeeding was then the only way to nourish adopted babies, and in one case the parents bought a cow for the baby’s homecoming, only to learn that the child could not tolerate milk. The parents laboriously mixed the milk with enzymes to separate the whey, which babies could more easily digest.17 In the same breath that parents spoke of their child’s growth and vitality, they expressed fear of separation: “He weighs 19 1/2 pounds and he is 2 feet 3 1/2 inches long and is four and a half months old. Don’t you think that is pretty good for that age. He can laugh out loud and reach his little hands to us to take him. . . . The dear little thing . . . is so sweet we could not get along without him.”18 Another parent wrote, “She is a dear little girl and I should dreadfully hate to part with her again.”19 For many adoptive parents the specter of the death of a biological child lingered over the adopted child; in other cases, such anxiety suggests a feeling of contingency implicit in the adoptive process wherein WCHS Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 135

kept oversight over children until they reached eighteen. Many parents asked how they could make the adoption final as soon as possible, even before the ninety-day trial period was over.20 Although the language of possession is rarely so obvious as in the following letter, the rhetoric of ownership is pervasive in correspondence from adoptive parents, such as this: “There are one or two things I want to know before coming to Seattle in June. How long will it be before I can gain legal control of the boy? While I like him very much and he seems to be perfectly satisfied and happy, there will be a different feeling when I know he is legally mine.”21 Once legal papers were signed, the sense of empowerment through possession and pride in ownership was palpable: “Well we have full possession of baby now, had the adoption papers made out and it was put on record in court. . . . We feel very happy to own such a sweet baby. She is getting so fat. We had her out to church yesterday for the first time, and she never cried at all, she was so good. A better baby never was born. Everybody admires her.”22 This letter is full of complex feelings of pride that accompanied “ownership”: Their child was well-behaved, healthy, and adorable. It was also important that their love was validated by their community. Children came to adoptive homes with handed-down wardrobes, so preparing new clothes for them was an important way to embrace them within the household. Dressing the newcomer in pretty handmade clothes increased a mother’s pride in her child’s appearance and in her own motherliness. “I have her pretty well clothed now and can take her anywhere and feel proud of her,” wrote a mother. “I have had to make the needle fly since she came. Now we would like to know just when her birthday is, if you can tell us and if we can have her for keeps. We would like to play keeps in this case if we could and what arrangements are to be made in that case. Would be pleased to have you see her now, she looks so nice.”23 Proud of having presented the child in public well dressed, this adoptive parent was ready to claim the child more fully. Parents often asked about a child’s birth date and parentage only after a period of ritual claiming.24 Some parents found it easier to claim a child who conformed to middleclass standards of tidiness. One mother wrote immediately after arriving home with her toddler that she “love[d] him nearly to death, he is so good and clean about himself” and concluded with a list of clothing purchases made so that he would look “too cunning.”25 The pages of the WCHF provided a regular forum for adoptive parents where they could 136 | Chapter 5

boast about their adopted children, and clothing was a common theme. An embarrassed but pleased father was pressured to report on his own child’s belongings, which included a vast new wardrobe: When we read the little paper every month, and find little pieces about what the little ones get, my wife wants me to tell you what our sweet baby got. In the first place she got 14 new dresses of all descriptions, a nice silk dress, a very nice cloak, then our neighbor made her a very nice silk hood, then she got a $23 baby buggy and a nice pair of pink shoes, a nice bracelet and lots more, but of course it is no use of telling all about it. If it was not for my wife I would not have written this, but I have and I don’t think there is any harm done.” 26

When adoptive parents provided such detailed lists to the WCHF, adoption discourse moved beyond showing off the baby to the local community and reached out to a community of adoptive families who sought and shared adoption stories through the monthly newsletter. Appearance did make a difference to parents getting to know their child, as the letter below shows: I wish you could have seen [name omitted] when he was dressed ready to start for Forks, he looked as pretty as a picture, with those large brown eyes under the white straw hat (he is wearing the new clothes every day at school now). . . . Mr. T. [her husband], our son and myself were quite proud of the little boy and we like to present him in nice clothes before the public. Our son said that of all the children present at the celebration none looked sweeter than [name omitted].27

Other children in the family might also participate in clothing the adopted child, as did older boys in a family who adopted a young girl. They promised to buy her articles of new clothing on their next payday.28 It was important for adoptive parents to feel that the other children in the home accepted the newly adopted child. In keeping with the biological ideal, physical similarities were also valued if they helped the child merge with biological siblings. As one parent wrote: “We have six children but I believe a stranger could not pick out the adopted one. As for looks, he will pass all right in our family, and as for showing partiality, there is none. The children don’t seem to realize any difference between him Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 137

and their other brothers and sisters.”29 In this case, the child’s appearance helped the family “absorb” his difference. Adoptive parents were also pleased to report when their extended family, especially grandparents, accepted the child as their own. “My mother, who lives with us loves the baby dearly,” wrote a women. “She says she knows no difference from the other grand children, and sometimes I think she loves little [name omitted] a little more than any of them.”30 The statement that the child received extra love from the grandmother strongly suggests that extra love was needed in order to bridge the gap created by a non-blood relative. From such letters it becomes understandable why dressing and presenting rituals were used to help to embrace the child as a member of the family. Efforts to bridge differences with similarities between the adopted child and other family members, particularly when there happened to be physical resemblance, point to a need to mimic biological families. As adoptive parents went through the adoption process, they needed a starting place, a family history that would document the outward and inward evidence of family membership. Documentation lends legitimacy, and few cultural artifacts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries carried more validity than the photograph. Not surprisingly, photographs played a significant role in adoption as a way of legitimizing and documenting the health, wealth, and well-being of the child after placement. Before and after pictures were adoption’s stock in trade, and pictures of adopted children were solicited for displays on child welfare at world fairs and other expositions. Documentation of an adopted infant’s life in pictures was something particularly freighted with meaning because it records a life before the child possesses memory or agency. By creating the family album, adoptive parents could claim a child as a family member when the child was too young to remember any previous existence. Baby pictures provided putative “evidence” that a child never “belonged” to anyone else. In the same light, the family album helped provide ex post facto evidence of the permanence and reality of adoptive kinship. By 1906 the practice of photographing the baby was well on its way to becoming an established cultural practice because of the availability of the Kodak camera and promotion of family picture taking for genealogies made popular in mass circulation magazines such as the Ladies’ Home Journal.31 Its unique value to adoptive parents in creating a family history for a child earned the high approval of WCHF editors: 138 | Chapter 5

There has just been laid upon our desk the most interesting book we have seen in many a day. It comes from a home where we have placed a darling baby girl, and bears the title: “Our Little Lady’s First Year In Kodak Land.” In the book are twenty-three kodak pictures, representing the history of the child for a year. We have not been so strongly tempted to turn kleptomaniac in a long while. Indeed, we would like to have every one of our readers to see this wonderful book. It shows the baby when first taken, nestling on a couch, in the mother’s arms, in the father’s arms, cooing and crowing, laughing and smiling, in a dreadful temper, sober and serious, “In my lady’s chamber,” early in the morning, and last of all, ready for the bath. On the back of the book, is the imprint of the tiny foot. Many of our homes could have just such a book, why not? If you have no kodak, why not have a book giving a little history of the child, and the cute sayings from time to time.32

The novelty of the hand-held camera is evident in the title, as though “Kodak Land” were some place suspended in time, like a fairy tale. More significant was the recognition that freezing in time an infant in the arms of the adoptive mother and father, in an intimate, domestic setting, proved beyond doubt that the child was theirs and no one else’s. Such documentation could be used to erase the biological fact of another set of parents and thereby create a new starting point—the time of adoption. Agents recognized the importance of such a document for an adopted child, who could then refer to it as ancestral. For families without a camera, a baby book documenting a child’s early life would serve the same purpose. Giving a child a new name was a public declaration that parents claimed the child as a family member. Even children who were older and taken without intent of adoption sometimes were given the family name, possibly to discourage prying questions about the child’s past. Infants were routinely renamed, and the name change was made legal at the time of adoption. As adults, adoptees often returned to the agency for proof of their birth under another name. Names at birth were spelled variously, sometimes recorded incorrectly, and frequently never known in the first place. This was complicated by the fact that filing official records of births was new and not evenly enforced in this period.33 When parents “failed to recall” their child’s birth origins or flatly denied the non-biological way the child entered the family, consequences could set in. Acceptance of the Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 139

child as kin in renaming could be an initial step toward denying that the child had a different family of origin in the first place. Your letter of recent date arrived in due time and was very welcome, although it awakened memories almost forgotten, even then, that our darling boy had ever belonged to any one else. . . . We love him dearly for himself, and it matters not about his parentage. I often wonder if the little mother ever thinks of her boy or cares.34

Because parents were frequently responding to letters written at the end of the trial period to remind them of their obligation to adopt a child or return it, their replies could have an edge of defensiveness and possessiveness, particularly if the family could not afford the time or fee to travel to a town to register the adoption in probate court: Your letter of recent date reminding us that we had better take steps towards the adoption of our dear little boy almost hurt us, although we realize that you are right. We want to say that you can’t have our boy back no more at any cost, even if we did not yet adopt him as our own! . . . Baby is our boy. We should have not been so negligent putting off so long adopting him, but just now it is simply impossible to take steps.35

For such parents, the prospect of acknowledging their child’s origin and difference was possibly too painful to deal with. Modeling their kinship on the biological model of blood relation, some adoptive parents sought to rewrite history so they did not have to confront the horrifying thought that the child they had possessed could be repossessed. But other parents felt their adoptive parenthood more as a spiritual trusteeship. “We had her baptized Wednesday, 17, of last month and we are united more closely now than ever, for we are registered together in the book of life,” wrote one mother, who took the event as an opportunity to note the changes the child had brought into the couple’s home.36 Another parent wrote: “I am truly glad that you approve of my care of [name omitted]. To me he is ‘God’s child’ entrusted to us, but we love him dearly. . . . We are certainly lucky to have such a boy and could not think more of him were he indeed our very own.”37 Curious outsiders often asked adoptive parents about their child’s parentage, putting their status as a “real” family in question. One adoptive 140 | Chapter 5

mother evaded such queries by explaining: “Many people ask me ‘who she is,’ and ‘do you know her folks?’ To all I say: ‘She is one of God’s little lambs.’ My other children are all in school now, baby and I are alone today. She sat on the floor playing and talking her baby talk while I was washing, and I thought as I looked at her, no money could buy our baby now.”38 The woman clearly had a public response that bracketed and evaded a discussion of the differences between blood and adoptive kinship, but at the same time put each on equal footing. She privately entertained the notion that babies were coveted commodities, but exempted hers from that economy by placing it beyond price.39 Another mother fended off disturbing comments from friends that placed the permanency of her adoption in doubt: “She is surely one of God’s precious jewels. . . . Several of my neighbors have asked me to give her to them. I just laugh and tell them she is not mine to give, but mine to keep.”40 For parents who could not or did not ignore the biological parentage of the child, the existence of another parent prompted conflicting responses. Many parents, as they grew close to their adopted children, could more easily imagine the pain of parting with them. In some instances, their fear was expressed as a degree of empathy with the birth mother: “We are filled with sympathy and compassion for the young mother, and we assure you that the dear little fellow will always be loved and cared for.”41 The death of an adoptive child could also prompt a feeling of understanding for a bereaved birth parent. “If you know his parents you might let them know of [name omitted]’s sad end,” wrote a grieving family. “His parents must have some redeeming qualities for such a child could never be born of low birth. . . . My heart yearns in sympathy for any poor wretch that is compelled to suffer as we suffer in our bereavement.”42 With the adoption of older children, the possibility of a living birth parent could seem very threatening to the adoptive parent. One woman, while insisting that so perfect a child could not have been born of inferior people, nevertheless had difficulty accepting a worthy and living birth mother. She wrote, “I feel sure his mother has been a good woman; she may have died when he was born.”43 Another woman found herself wondering more about her child’s parents as she committed herself more fully to her adoption: “I should like to ask you for a history of [name omitted]’s parentage. I didn’t feel as if I cared very much to know while there but since I have wondered so much who and where they are, if living, I know now I shall feel better satisfied to know something about them.”44 Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 141

Of course, a living birth parent and siblings of an older child were nearly impossible to ignore, and one adoptive mother plaintively explained why she felt her relationship with her adopted child would be threatened by contact between child and birth mother: Your letter received and one from Miss [name omitted]. In regard to [name omitted] corresponding with her brother and her family, it would be my choice that she does not hear from them at all. Maybe it is cruel and wicked of me, but I feel this way: we all think so much of [name omitted], and we all do love her so much and she is so well and happy and contented that I am afraid she would not have the love for us that she does have if she were allowed to correspond with them. If I care for her until she is a married woman or even through her life, I want her love, and it might be it would be all right for her to correspond with them, and it might be it would cause lots of trouble. [name omitted] is very happy and contented, and she does not even ask to write them, not even to her mother, although once in a while she speaks of her mother and sisters. My heart aches when I think of her poor heart-broken mother, when I know even a few lines from [name omitted] would comfort her so much. It is sad for me to think about. [Name omitted] has been so well all winter. . . . Everyone speaks of how well she looks. She is a very dear girlie and has surely made our home a happy one.45

This mother wanted her child’s love and was unwilling to risk dividing that affection between herself and the child’s relatives. Although she seemed troubled by the grief she could imagine the birth mother experiencing, she abruptly changed the topic to something less sad.

N o - S e c r e cy a n d P o st- P lac e m e n t Ov e r s i g h t

Washington Children’s Home Society retreated to the background after adoption but did not disappear. WCHS was where adoptive parents reported annually on their child’s adjustment, where children would return if the placement failed, and where a repository of placement and family history was kept. Its oversight had the practical effect of creating an adoption triad: the child, the adoptive parents, and the society. 46 WCHS’s continued role interrupted the fiction that adoptive families were identi-

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cal to biologically formed families. The effect of this relationship was to create both positive and negative tension between the parties. The complex relationship began at recruitment, as ministers acting as agents for the society used their contacts at Protestant churches across Washington State to promote child saving through adoption. Recruited families were often recommended by their ministers or other church members, and potential adoptive families often first learned about WCHS when they encountered adoptive parents and their children at church or on a visit to greet the child. Letters from adoptive parents frequently mentioned other couples who were seeking a child to replace a recently lost baby or who wanted a child like the one they had adopted. The recruitment had a “capillary” effect, to use a term employed by historian Michel Foucault to describe how powerful alliances are built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. Such alliances spread throughout churches and communities across the state, feeding back by way of local church committees to the regional agents, and only then to the main Seattle office of WCHS. 47 Secrecy about adoption was nearly impossible to maintain and of no strategic use to the organization, which was constantly spreading the word about adoption in order to find more good homes. Clare Lunbeck, a former district superintendent of the Iowa Children’s Home Society and later assistant superintendent of WCHS, urged parents to tell children about adoption as soon as they were able to understand: My message is this: If you have adopted a child do not imagine you can keep the knowledge of it from him forever. Many say “Oh, we only mean to wait until he is old enough to understand and then we will tell him all.” How do you know that you will? What assurance have you that the information will not come from some other source, perhaps come roughly, coarsely, from some schoolmate or other rude acquaintance who will enjoy his discomfiture and pain? Do you flatter yourself that no one knows? Some one does and such news has a way of escaping. And the worst of it is the knowledge generally comes during the period of adolescence, “that strange land of the teens” when the boy is neither a child with its sweet trustfulness, nor a man with calm mature judgment. He cannot understand that it is your great love for him more than all else which has caused you to withhold what you

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feared might sadden his young life. Instead he is apt to feel that he has been deceived in the dearest and most sacred relation he has ever known and for a time he loses confidence in those whom he should respect and love above all others. Children’s Home Society workers have wide opportunity for observation, and I would like to mention some conversations we have had or letters we have received when stories were poured into our ears by sorrowing parents who felt they had learned their lesson too late. Does any one ask what then would we recommend? Simply this: Let the child grow right up with the knowledge that he is adopted. Tell it in your own way, but tell it. If you believe it and can say it reverently, tell him that God sent him to you because you had no little child to love and your heart was hungry. Speak of him coming on the train and mention some little incident about it or his arrival. Tell him you took him because you loved and wanted him; anything so that he will feel safe and secure in your love. If he is young enough he will probably think all children come in the same way. When he grows old enough and understands he will remember and be thankful that you never deceived him. Be honest with yourselves and him; keep his confidence and you will never have cause for regret. If it is too late to begin at the start with your child, tell him now. You can at least have the satisfaction of telling him yourself and in your own way, and there is little possibility of his denying the love you gave. Indeed it has sometimes seemed to me that the adopted child loved most deeply; for, added to his filial love, is the feeling of gratitude which children do not have for the natural parent. Thus the adopted child, properly taught, can feel that he has lost nothing but has gained. 48

The “no-secrecy” policy was motivated by concern for the child, but the policy also had the practical effect of keeping open the flow of information between the society and the adoptive parents and children. The primary methods for keeping communication open were correspondence between the society and adoptive families, visits by agents to communities to promote the society, periodic home visits made to check on children, and pilgrimages made by adoptive parents to the society to show off flourishing children. Many adoptive families also subscribed to the WCHF. During the early years under study, the WCHF was distributed on a regular monthly schedule to as many as four thousand supporters in Washington who had sent in their twenty-five cents for a subscription. In 144 | Chapter 5

addition to appeals for public support, the newsletter was full of advice for prospective and new adoptive parents. Aside from being an extraordinarily powerful recruitment tool, it supplied information that validated adoptive parenthood, gave encouragement, shared uplifting stories of adoption, and published stories and letters about and from adopted children and parents. Although the WCHF was primarily a fundraising and public relations tool, at least some parents used its pages to boast about their child, validate their own worth as parents, ask for advice, and even offer some of their own. The newsletter also published letters from parents announcing the death of a child under the assumption that the death of a child was of interest to all those associated with the society. The following letter from parents to the society was reprinted in the WCHF to convey to readers the joy of receiving a child, her acceptance among family and friends, and the significance of the child’s naming. The letter also asks advice on adoption, helps recruit another family, and demonstrates the role the newsletter played in creating community among adoptive parents: Everyone admired her so much that she held quite a little court by herself. Indeed she is a dear little girl and I should dreadfully hate to part with her again. Her papa got her a go-cart and every pleasant day when I can possibly get out I take her up town and around to my friends. She loves to ride and get out in the sunshine. She is a dear, good baby, and you did not praise her half enough when you wrote me about her. Her new papa is very proud of her and thinks she is the only baby. He named her [name omitted] and we will take out the papers as soon as we can. When you answer this please give us instructions in regard to them, telling us what to do. Another young couple, friends of ours, since seeing our baby, want to get one from your home also. They want to take the little “Home Finder,” as she always gets my copies.49

At least some parents subscribed to WCHF to find support from others who were experiencing adoptive parenthood for the first time. A woman wrote: “What a fine little paper the Children’s Home Finder is. I enjoy it and save each copy. . . . I love my baby and am not ashamed of anything about him and am willing that others may know what a precious treasure I have gained through the Society.”50 Another woman wrote that she depended upon the newsletter and missed it: “I didn’t get my paper last Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 145

month and I suppose my time is out. . . . I know one thing, I can’t do without your paper. Each day finds me looking for the mail man and wishing for the time to come when I shall see the Home Finder.”51 At least one birth mother read the newsletter as a way to maintain a vicarious connection to her child via ties to the society.52 The following letter was unusual: Your letter gave me much pleasure concerning little [name omitted]. I am very glad indeed to hear she is doing so nicely. I will be glad to get her picture. . . . I pray God to bless her [the adoptive mother] for being so good to my little child. May her pathway be always bright. May no shadow cross her home, as it did mine. When I think of once a happy home then think of my three little children that are angels in heaven, then think of my husband turning to drink, then being crushed under a train going to meet his God unprepared it is almost more than I can bear. I think I am improving. In a few months will be well and strong. In regard to the paper, I think it is so nice and will never allow my subscription to run out as long as the paper is published or as long as I live. I wish it was published weekly instead of monthly. It fills my heart with pleasure to read of the good work and read the nice letters from grown people and children.53

This letter, representing a frail link to the generally invisible experience of birth mothers, is a reminder that what was published usually masked all but the positive side of adoption. Although alluding to excruciating experiences of loss, the letter blesses and endorses the adoptive mother, and emphasizes the birth mother’s satisfaction in knowing that her child was in good hands. One woman, who was keeping the adoption of an infant secret, still read the Home Finder: “We have not told anyone here except our cousins but what he was our own baby. . . . I missed the one little book. I look forward to getting them. I enjoy reading them very much.”54 In most families adoption was necessarily out in the open because of the age of the children. For some of them the newsletter seemed to provide a way to talk about adoption and served to connect children to a larger adoption community. “Our little girl is well as can be and enjoyed so much your last paper, for she loves babies, and there were several in the last paper,” wrote a parent. “I tell her all about them and then she takes 146 | Chapter 5

the paper and reads about them to her dolls.”55 In homes like this one, where the WCHF was shared with adopted children, parent and child had an additional commonality in their connection to WCHS and to other adopted families. During one period readers took a special interest in Frank, a child waiting for an artificial limb and a home. In a sense, the fate of a child waiting for a new home was related to other children’s experiences, insofar as the children shared a history at the receiving home and all sought a permanent home. Although Frank’s circumstances were different from most other children and he was marked by his disability, in sharing concern for Frank, children’s letters in a small way acknowledged the difference in their own situation, and even that their difference was also their commonality. 56 A portion of the letters selected for publication in the Home Finder were probably written in response to letters from WCHS that pressed parents to legally adopt, and so they can hardly be considered spontaneous. Indeed, the surveillance built into WCHS’s oversight likely prompted parents to write letters saying what the state superintendents wanted to hear. That is not to say that the letters are not “true,” only that they were written and selected with purpose for publication. They consequently show how adoptive families and WCHS desired to be perceived and how they wanted their personal family adoption stories to be understood. While the most numerous of these were written in the first flush of joy at the arrival of a child, at least some adoptive parents purposefully sought out a continued role for the WCHS in their lives and the lives of their children. Some acted as interlocutors and mediators between WCHS and adopted children. As an example of the latter, a woman who took two brothers wrote to explain how happy the children were that WCHS had forwarded a letter from their grandmother: They go to the post office and brought me your letter and they were so pleased. . . . I read it and then handed it to them an[d] they took it in the kitchen and spread it on the table and both read it together and seemed so pleased. “Boys,” I said, “this morning I will write to Mrs. Brown, have you any word to send?” “Yes, give my love to her; tell her we go to school and are having a fine time and we like her.” Then [name omitted] began about how many pigs and chickens they had. Well, [name omitted], said I, you can write that yourself sometime. . . . They speak often of the ninety days’ trial. They have old heads on them.57 Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 147

These children were clearly aware of the power that the society had over their situation and of how long they had to endure not knowing whether they would be “kept” or not. Although retold as an everyday event, the letter shows how the adoptive mother and children were negotiating the complex terrain of blood ties, legal guardianship, prospective but uncertain adoption, a shared past between brothers, and an unknown future. Others, though not always adoptive parents, willingly acted as advocates for children who were separated from siblings: He is quite a precocious child and has an excellent memory. He talks so much about Mrs. Barr and the home there. I am sure Mrs. Barr will be glad to hear that he thinks of her and appreciates her kindness to him. Quite a number of our ladies have seen him already and have taken quite a fancy to him. . . . I will be in Seattle soon at the western Washington Christian Convention and will bring the child to see you. One thing I would like to know is about his brother [name omitted]. He speaks so much of him and wants to visit him some time and I want to know what you think about it and what arrangements can be made for such interchange of visits.58

Having someone willing to mediate with the agency in regard to siblings was crucial to a child’s ability to hold onto former relationships. The child above is described as precocious and as possessing an excellent memory, which in the context of adoption could also mean a sharp awareness of a past personal history and ruptured relationships, and likely a persistent desire to “stay in touch.” Children who resisted becoming a tabula rasa for the sake of adoption might press parents or others into service on behalf of their needs, as did this child. One parent attempted to convey the anxiety separated siblings felt and her willingness to facilitate meetings: I will write you a few lines to let you know [name omitted] got here all right. . . . She seems to be a good little girl, only I think she has been among people who have not been kind to her. . . . [name omitted] is very anxious to work; I was canning fruit and she wanted to help, so I gave her some little jars and she canned them as nicely as I could have done. . . . She says that you must not look for her back because she is not going to leave here, but she wants to know how her little brother [name omitted] is and if he is at the home yet.59 148 | Chapter 5

Few parents advocated such contact between the child and biological relatives, which was discouraged by the society in nearly all cases anyway. In contrast, many parents did encourage their children to write letters to WCHS, and others encouraged charitable acts that connected their children to WCHS, such as filling the woodbox to earn money to send to the receiving home, or sending outgrown clothes or toys. 60 Another way to continue the contact was for the parent to write, sometimes years after placement, to “catch up” the staff on a child’s development: Perhaps you would like to hear from our boy whom we got from the home over three years ago, when he was a tiny baby, and I am always glad to sing his praises. I think the best way to describe him is to say that he is like a little boy of my acquaintance, who said, when asked if he was a good boy, “Yes, but it is hard work.” He is full of mischief and fun and like every other boy, is naughty. He is frank and honest however and is almost sure to tell me, when he has been into mischief, and consequently I have great hopes for him.61

Parents might choose to write to the society at the time of the year they had received the child. And while many wrote to ask their child’s birthday, birth dates were not always known. Instead, a child’s birthday might be celebrated on the day she was received into her new home. “It is one year since I brought our dear little daughter home and we love her better than anything else on earth. We call this her birthday,” wrote one parent, conflating the child’s birth and her arrival in the adoptive home. Of course, it is impossible to know if the conflation of dates was an effort to mask the child’s past or an acknowledgment of her different way of coming into the family.62 Parents wrote long after placement to report the growth and change in the child, to tell the child’s story to someone who understood the significance of the adoption, to help mark time in a way appropriate to adoption, and also to create coherence in a shared history. On the whole, letter writers were a self-selected group, generally pleased with themselves and their children. Parents wrote to brag, share news, establish community, and to ask for information and advice. Parents also wrote to connect an occluded or dislocated past to the present and future by using the sociBiology, Botany, and Belonging | 149

ety and its newsletter as reference points from which to begin their own family history. Of the letters written, the editor no doubt picked only the most flattering to publish. Nevertheless, the letter writing helped create stories and shared institutional and personal histories that legitimized adoption. Some parents conveyed a desire to obliterate a child’s past or memory, overwriting it with their own sense of devotion and duty. But others actively sought continued contact with the agency for themselves as well as their child by seeking out support from WCHS, by taking their child to visit traveling ministers from WCHS, and by extending open invitations to WCHS agents to visit. Parents who took their children to the Seattle office might have their child’s accomplishments, manners, and beauty reported in cheery detail in the next WCHF. Most poignantly, the writing reveals that adoptive parents were seeking ways to incorporate a child as kin and to become an important part of a child’s life.

Th e B o ta n i ca l M o d e l

The operative metaphor for children adopted after infancy was the botanical grafted bud, which acknowledged that children older than toddlers had a previous existence which was stored as memory. This trope also depended upon the idea that children would flower only with sustenance supplied by the adoptive parent stock; a substitution of the “blood” or “sap,” so to speak, of the adoptive family for that of the family of origin. While allowing for some hybridity in the “grafting” process, the botanical model assumed that the child’s survival (and salvation) depended upon complete transplantation and the transfusion of vital new life forces through the grafted part after separation from its dead or diseased root stock. The process intentionally “naturalized” the child to its new surroundings. An alternate but equally potent meaning of grafting, which is muted in adoption discourse of this period, is that the child would take its strength from the adoptive parent stock but retain its own character, manifested in the child’s different appearance, qualities, and interests. Children who were old enough to write were urged to compose their own letters to WCHS to report on their adjustment to adoptive homes. Obviously, the letter writing was done under close supervision and with coaching and editing by parents. There is clear consistency in the form of the letters insofar as they report on school progress and church atten150 | Chapter 5

dance, two of the primary conditions that qualified homes for adoption. In many of the letters there is also a striking similarity in the inventory of material wealth and gifts acquired by the child through the adoptive parents. The letters often include descriptions of surroundings with an eye for details in work and living routines, descriptions of extended kin, and observations about religious practices and educational expectations. Some letters are almost ethnographic in their description of an unfamiliar or exotic territory that new homes and communities represented to recently placed children. For children old enough to write letters and old enough to remember biological relatives and former homes, the new adoptive home was clearly territory loaded with significance. The adoptive home was intended to be a “new start,” a “rebirth,” and a time of forgetting old associations and past habits. The adoptive home was also a proving ground, and children old enough to be aware of it were sensitive to their situation. Children had ninety days to win the hearts of adoptive parents if they wanted to stay. If they did not fit into their families or rejected the placement themselves, they were returned to the receiving home to start the process all over again. Considering the pressure, it is not surprising that letters generally had a positive tone. I will write you a few lines to let you know that I am well and like my home very much. I go to school every day. My report was excellent last month in everything except deportment, and I got very good in that. I go to church and Sunday school every Sunday. I got lots of things Christmas. I got two dolls, two tops, a sheep, a sack of candy and a box of candy, a small train, a handkerchief, a box of paint, a flute, a little mug and some oranges. They had a Christmas tree at the Methodist church, and I spoke and sung. I was baptized in the church three weeks ago. I help mamma sweep the floors and I carry in wood and go up town. I earned almost enough last summer to get me some new clothes and mamma put enough with it to get me a new coat and pants and shoes and cap. I would like to know how Frank is getting along. I guess I will close for this time. I hope you will write soon. Your little friend.63

Beyond the home, school was an arena where children often strove to please, although older children were often far behind their classmates Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 151

because of a fractured record of school attendance. The placement process actually exacerbated school attendance problems because children might be placed and replaced two or three times in a year. But once settled, many children reported progress in catching up. Children were clearly aware of their opportunity to “prove themselves” in the classroom and eagerly reported on good attendance records, awards, or progress. “I like my new home very much and I am very happy in it,” wrote a child just getting settled. “I am getting along fine in school, better than I ever did. . . . I have a ball and a bat and I have good times out here.”64 Another child wrote: “Not long ago us children in school were drawing, writing and sewing for an exhibit we had last Friday, April 10th, and my drawings were the best in the room.”65 Good deportment in school and church, including participation in Christian rituals of baptism and confirmation, also tended to solidify adoptive parents’ pride and acceptance of adopted children: I have passed in the fourth grade. Papa gave me a Bible and I am proud of it. I have a garden and in it I have beans, peas, tomatoes, cabbage and turnips. I am going to be a Christian and a industrious boy. Papa and Mamma are awful good to me. I am a lucky boy for getting such a nice papa and mamma and such a nice home. I don’t think a boy could get such a good home as I have. I helped papa to haul in some hay. I picked a lot of blackberries this year, mamma has 16 quarts of blackberries put up already.66

The letter above shows how the tangible and intangible were entwined in the new relationship. Ethnohistorian Arjun Appadurai states that material objects have value not because of supply and demand but because they are exchanged.67 When tangible symbols of permanence were transferred to the child from the parent, their value was embedded in the exchange: shared spirituality, symbolized in the Bible; shared property, symbolic of inheritance; and shared trust in the child’s abilities and capabilities, symbolized by the child’s contribution to family work. Judging from the children’s letters, the significance of material goods and their transference from adoptive parents—clothes, farm animals and equipment, toys, treats, and garden space—was immense. The following letter expands on the significance of ownership felt by a child in his new home:

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I am living with Mr. [name omitted]. I don’t go to school yet, but Alma gives me lessons, and she says I am learning fast. I went to Sunday school. Got eggs. We have got 2 pigeons, and 2 horses and 3 cows. I drove the horse. We have 2 pigs. We have some geese. We have a top buggy. Mr. [name omitted] gave me a patch of strawberries and plum trees all for myself, so I will have berries and plums to sell and get money for myself. Good. Tell Mrs. Ervin I am well. I got a suit of clothes and a pair of shoes for Sunday. I had a fine ride on the cars. Alma had a party yesterday. I helped make candy. I have a big chunk in my mouth now. Good by. I am going to Juniors at 3. I am going to be a good boy.68

Two young but enterprising brothers boldly asked after the possibility of inheritance shortly after their placement; the father demurred. The mother wrote: The little one . . . has an eye to business. He said to Mr. S___, “Will you give me your boat?” He replied, “You can go with me in that boat every Saturday to A___, and help row.” Then [the older boy] said, “Perhaps if I am a good boy and behave myself and do right, when you die you will give me the ranch.” Mr. S___ told him he would see about it.69

In a strange new home, children might share in the care of animals, and children often spoke of parents and farm animals as associated, as in the privilege and confidence one child felt in being allowed to drive the horse. Children’s chores frequently focused on caring for animals, which seems to have delighted them.70 In addition, children were often allocated part of orchard and garden space, giving them a sense of entitlement and “ownership” of property that must have been a novelty or extravagance unknown to many of them. Symbolically, the planting of a garden and the care of fruit trees represented ties to the future, when matured crops could be harvested. For children who had experienced multiple placements, watching something change and grow over time might have reassured them that they, too, were expected to put down roots for a while. Adopted children, especially those who had already been returned to WCHS, could hardly have missed the lesson that the privileges of middle-class life depended upon good behavior. The opportunity to make

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egg money or otherwise acquire wealth was attractive especially to older children, some of whom expressed concern that they needed to prove their worthiness as workers to be acceptable to new families: I made a red apron, a night gown, white underskirt and a pair of panties and knit a pair of mittens. I am sorry I haven’t a better memory. I hardly remember anything Mrs. C. tells me. I made enough lace for a pair of panties for Bertha and two pair for myself. I am learning to crochet, and have crocheted enough lace for half a pair of panties. School will begin in a few days. . . . I guess I have told you all for this time. Good-bye. Your loving friend.71

For this child, learning handwork was a necessary chore, and every inch of lace was a victory. Adjusting to learn from her new mother was also apparently a chore, as it was for other children. “I have a good home. I try to do right,” wrote one young child. “Sometimes I get cranky and don’t do what Mrs. C. tells me. I sauce her back sometimes. I’ll try to do better and be a good girl. She teaches me lots of nice fancy work, and house work. She wants me to know nice things when I grow up. . . . I am in the second grade. This is the first letter I ever wrote.” 72 A child who knew how to be helpful and a contributing member of a family might have had an easier transition, at least superficially: “I arrived here all right. I like my home very well. I have a pony to ride every time I go to town. I get the mail. I milk my cow and help Mr. L___ with everything. Mr. Brown, you couldn’t ask for a better home. Why I thought I had jumped into Paradise.” 73 Striving for acceptance in a new home revealed something of the contingencies children dealt with in their new families. The contingencies were often very real and frankly stated, as in a letter written by a mother accompanying a letter from her son. The woman wrote, “He is a fine boy and we are not sorry that Brother Hollar insisted somewhat on us keeping him. He is making fine progress in school. He writes very well, but in writing his name he was a little nervous. He speaks of Frank [who had lost an arm and whose story had appeared in the WCHF] quite often and he heard that he has a home and wants to know about him.” 74 The boy’s letter, below, expresses an urgent desire to please and satisfy his new parents. I suppose you want to hear all about me. Today I am happy because I am with Mr. and Mrs. C___. Mr. C___ is trying to teach me how to work. He 154 | Chapter 5

sends me to school and I am in the fifth grade. I am going to make it to the sixth if possible. On Sundays I go to Sunday school and learn about God’s words. . . . I was converted to God and I am happy . . . since my conversion I am striving to do better. . . . I would like to know about some of the little children and especially about their ways. If nothing happens I am coming to visit the houses and to visit you. You must not think for one minute if I come to see you I will stay, because you could not hire me to stay away from Mr. C___. Mr. C___ is taking the best of care of me. He says when I finish the public school he is going to send me off to college, that I may learn some trade. I hope that I will not be like that little boy that goes on crutches. I have wondered how I would feel if I were in an ungodly home. I know deep down in my heart that I would feel sad. Mr. C___ is a noble Christian worker in the Sunday school. He has two boys that are trained up to the bible; one of these boys, Sam, is about forty-five and Mack is about forty. They are good Christians. I want you to correct my writing for I know there are just heaps of mistakes.75

Striving to please, in this case, meant religious conversion and learning to work. It was accompanied by ambivalence about wanting to stay and wanting to return to the receiving home (where acceptance was possibly more assured), by hope for the future, and by emulation in faith and practice of vocations pursued by older sons in the family. His desire that his “mistakes” be pointed out and corrected speaks to the unsettled condition that trial placement (and probably previous placement) represented. Under such pressure, it is easy to speculate that the child was unsure about his identity and consequently had difficulty knowing what name to use and how to write it. Another element often present in letters from children was a concern whether others left behind at the receiving home had been placed. Sometimes this concern was associated with an identification with those children and at other times with a stated or implied fear or ambivalence about their own return to the receiving home. WCHS was emphatic in its warning to parents not to threaten children with return to the receiving home because the receiving home was a place of protection and comfort for many who had previously experienced hunger, extreme poverty, violence, or loss due to death—in short, WCHS was the most comforting Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 155

place many had ever known.76 One child succinctly expressed her pleasure in having a new home, her desire to be adopted, and an assumption that the adoption would not permanently remove her from the society of friends (and apparently also a sister) left behind at WCHS: “I like it fine. I get everything that I want. I have just started to school. I am in the fourth reader. I would like to have Mr. ___ adopt [name omitted] and me. . . . I would like to find out our birthdays. Have all the children got good homes? I hope they have. I would like to find out where they are and [name omitted]’s full address and where she is.” 77 Children who very much liked their home often continued to care deeply for friends and relatives left behind. Even very small children may have recalled kind treatment at the receiving home and continued to look to it for comfort. A woman wrote that she was on her way to Yakima, Washington, to adopt her child who loved to receive letters from the society: “Every time I get a letter from you she takes the envelope and just hugs and kisses and sings to that picture of a baby. Then she sits in her little rocking chair and rocks it.”78 “Give my regards to all of the children in the home,” wrote another child. “My love to all my brothers and sisters. The name of our new home is the hermitage, and I like it very much. Our new parents are good to us. Give my love to all and the largest share to you.”79 Possibly some children did not recognize a complete split between the receiving home and the new adoptive home, and tried to keep a foot in each, as is suggested by a very young child who wrote about two matters significant to her—her connection to the receiving home and her pleasure that her new mother was helping her to attend school. “Please give my shoes to your little girls,” she wrote. “Mamma says I may go to school.” Her mother’s letter offers some further explication: She is so anxious to start to school I guess I will allow her to go, although she is hardly old enough. . . . She is greatly taken with the family with Grandpa Brown [the Rev. H. D. Brown] in the last Home Finder. She saves all those pictures for her scrap book and is greatly grieved that the fold breaks them. She has so many scrap books she has made herself. Last week she pieced a little quilt for her doll, and for a little five and one-half-year old it is real good. She wanted I should tell you I helped her make those “Gs” in her letter, because she said that would deceive you to let you think she made them.80 156 | Chapter 5

What do we make of the precocious but otherwise ordinary childhood activities of a child in the extraordinary position of existing simultaneously in two locations? Does her piecing and pasting together signify more than childhood pastimes? The fact that the mother uses kinship terms to describe the superintendent, and further describes the children photographed with him as “family,” suggests an inclusiveness in her definition of kin and a continuity between the receiving home and the adoptive home, at least as perceived by the parent. Cutting and pasting pictures from magazines was a common childhood pastime, but the child’s particular care in creating and preserving a special WCHS scrapbook suggests an acquaintance with the popular family albums of the period. The creation of a “family album,” which embraced the WCHS’s receiving home as part of a larger context of her “kin,” demonstrates a remarkable level of inclusiveness and connection between family and institutional genealogies. The patience to create other “story” books and a quilt suggests a desire to piece together coherence from fragments of her past. In this light, her brief message, “finished” with help on the g’s, might imply a bridge of experience and memory between the adoptive home and the receiving home. She remembered children sharing her experience through the gift of her outgrown shoes even as she pleaded for early admittance to school, another community mediated by her adoptive home. The strangeness of new homes often extended to the most commonplace experiences, such as a simple Christmas celebration described by a boy who experienced one for the first time. A complicating factor for this child was that the society was reluctant to leave children in a home after one foster parent died. The boy could not necessarily expect to remain in his adoptive home after his foster father had died, although WCHS’s concern was likely to be about financial instability or lack of parental control in a fatherless home: I thought you might like to hear about my new home. I love my mother and my two sisters. My foster father died last November. One sister is older and one is a year younger than me. I had seen pictures of Christmas trees but I never saw a real one until last Christmas. We all went in the woods and found a pretty fir tree. I chopped it down and carried it home, then we found beautiful ferns, moss and vines and decorated the house, and it looked very pretty. I got a jack knife and several other fine presents on the tree. The tree looked very pretty when the candles Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 157

were lighted. I had a happy Christmas. I go to Sabbath School every Sunday and to public school during the week. I am going to try hard to be a good boy, so I can stay in this home and make a good, useful man.81

As the only boy, he might have felt he should somehow become the man of the family, which is implied in his statement that he needed to be good and useful in order to remain part of the family, although still a child himself. Letters from a pair of siblings suggest differences in perspectives that a new home evoked in children of different ages. Each looked in different directions for familiarity and comfort. The first is from the younger child: I like my home very well. I get lots to eat—nice apples. Grandma gave me a hen; she stole her nest and I found it and I will have some of the eggs for Easter, then I will get some and have some little chicks and I am going to have a little garden. We will send you 25 cents for the Home Finder. Now hoping you are well, from your boy. Well, I like it here; it is nice on the beach. We can get lots of clams when the weather is fine but we go to school all the time so don’t have much time to play around. How is Mr. and Mrs. Irving? I expect the children are all gone from the home that were there when we were. How is Frank getting along since he left the Home? Hoping this will find you and Mr. Brown both well. Yours in love.82

The younger child signs himself “your boy,” implying a lack of filial distinction between the receiving home and the adoptive home. He shows his enthusiasm for his new surroundings and looks forward to owning chicks and produce. The older child writes with more circumspection, and perhaps more understanding, of the confines represented by a home with new expectations, such as daily attendance at school. The older child also shows concern for children still at the home, and perhaps still considers his own situation tentative. The older child closes with respectful and affectionate terms, but not kinship terms, to the Browns. A few children clearly expressed a desire to be remembered by WCHS 158 | Chapter 5

workers by sending pictures of themselves, gifts for children at the home, or a sample of their handiwork. This child seems embarrassed to be writing and troubling anyone to remember him although he clearly wishes to be remembered and thought well of: I suppose you will be glad to hear from me again. I am well and feeling just fine. I suppose you are both well, are you? How are you making it with the orphan children? I guess you are glad I am not there to be bothered with, arn’t you? . . . I will send you two pictures apiece, so that you may show other people how homely I am. Excuse all mistakes.83

Rejection, of course, was not a theoretical or distant experience for such children. If anything, the letter above is quite revealing and candid about a longing to be loved and accepted. A less candid letter from a child might be extremely positive, but an accompanying letter from the parents might reveal more typical childhood behavior, such as conveyed in this letter from a parent: I will write you a few lines about [name omitted]. What is his age and when is his birthday? He is so happy. He said when he came he was going to call us ma and pa, and he thinks lots of my mother, who lives alone, and she thinks lots of him. He is full of mischief. You have to watch him. He was quite saucy after he was here about a week. My husband, though he did not like to touch him, told his grandma we would not whip him. A little switching does him more good than talking. He is easy to conquer. Well, I hope he will grow better all the time. You won’t get lonesome around him. He will be lots of help in a few years. He is a hearty child. He went down and stayed with his grandma for three days, and it seemed the house was lost. He is washing the dishes now and whistling all the time. He never asks to go and play with other children. Well, this is all.84

Possibly this boy feared including other children in his life, children that might compete for his new family’s affections. Or, the company of other children might have reminded him of the receiving home, where other homeless children were his constant companions. It is impossible to know. Nevertheless, efforts to connect with a new family, fear of rejection, trial and error in relationships, a desire to please, and a desire to be loved when they could not please all show through the letters written by Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 159

children back to WCHS. Letters from parents showed a desire to know a child better, a desire that the child would “improve,” and a hope that a child would eventually return their emotional investment. Because siblings, with the exception of twins, were usually not placed in the same home, placement often meant excruciating separations. An average of 69 percent of the children had biological siblings (excluding infants coming into the care of the society because of illegitimacy), while 86 percent of those whose mother had died had siblings. Babies were usually adopted at their first placement, but children age four and older were placed an average of 1.29 times, increasing to an average of 2.81 placements apiece for children who had lost both parents and whose average age was eight and a half. Thus placement might have added intensity to any existing feelings of abandonment and loss. A ten-year-old boy, whose mother was dead and whose father could not provide for him and his siblings, ran away from the homes he was placed in until the society was compelled to write to the child’s grandfather living in Michigan: “The oldest son [name omitted] is grieved greatly to be taken away from his own people. Your son was in to see me recently and asked me to write to you to learn how you are situated and whether you would be willing to take [name omitted] and care for him.” The child was returned to his extended birth family.85 Grief was not always the prevailing sentiment. An adoptee stopped by the society in 1930 for a birth certificate, thanking the society for its help in placing him and four other siblings successfully in separate adoptive homes.86 In other cases, the baby of the family might be adopted and the rest returned to birth relatives.87 Older children occasionally ran back to biological relatives. In one case, an adopted girl was kidnapped by her biological relatives who had never accepted the splitting up of the family.88 Reunions of older siblings who remembered biological relatives with others who did not could be poignant, yet awkward, later in their lives. Being placed together could be a mixed blessing, as it was with brothers who vied for the attention and affection of their adoptive parents, jealously guarding their advantages over each other.89 Siblings could become rivals, even when placed in separate homes. One twelve-year-old girl reported smugly that while her little sister had written to the society that she had the best home, her sister was mistaken because she was sure hers was the best.90 Although placing twins together was policy, at least in one case an adoptive father decided to “get rid of one to save the other.”91 A mother reported that a 160 | Chapter 5

brother and sister placed together formed an abusive cabal, ending with the daughter throwing the adoptive mother down the stairs and the son leaving home.92 Shared placement could also mean shared misery. One of a pair of siblings returned to the society to report that they had “gone through a great deal together in their foster home,” where the adoptive mother had died.93 Thus, while placement with siblings could ease the pain of separation, it was not a guarantee of happiness. Although eager to be adopted, children separated from their siblings were also anxious about staying in touch. “[Name omitted] has had a letter written to her sister some time, waiting for me to write to you and send it, she wants to hear from [name omitted] or would like to hear from her brother [name omitted],” wrote an adoptive mother in behalf of her daughter.94 Placement in different homes did not necessarily lessen an existing bond between siblings, even after time had passed. One of two brothers, twelve and fourteen, who had come into the care of the society when both parents died, remained in touch through the society and one of its agents, Mr. Laningham. While one of the boys spent the school year at the School for the Blind, he was able to stay in touch with his brother by spending vacations with Laningham.95 When the eldest of two brothers came of age, an older sister called to inquire about them. The society reported, “We were glad to tell her that the older boy was doing for himself and doing well, and the younger was a manly boy, greatly beloved by his foster parents, who expressed their gratitude at having been led to take him.”96 Others were reunited as adults through information provided by WCHS. Adoptive parents who were insecure about their child’s affection tested it with leading questions or with implied or explicit demands that a child prove his or her love. A measure of that love might be the forgetting of biological relatives, as reported by a pleased parent: “[Name omitted] is happy, he has not mentioned his father’s name since he wrote him last, which proves that he is contented with his new home.” Apparently insecure about her own place in her child’s heart, the adoptive mother recounted another proof of love—emerging trust: “One day the teacher promised [name omitted] a nickel for bringing her mail, but she failed to do so; when [name omitted] came home I gave him the money as I don’t like to disappoint anyone, so the little boy told a party sometime ago: Mamma does not disappoint even the cat. Now isn’t that a good opinion he has about me?”97 One child was required to reject her biological relatives in order to remain with her adoptive family: Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 161

We were talking of going South and just to see what [name omitted] would say I asked her which she would rather do, go home to her friends or with us down South, and she said she would rather go with us. Then I told her if she went with us perhaps she would never see her people again. She said that would not make any difference. So I take it that she likes her home and is willing to give up all to stay with us. We all love her and will do the very best we can by her.98

Another loyalty test lay in an adopted child’s willingness to be known by a new name. An adoptive parent proudly recounted that her child had passed the test: “She says that her name is O. [first letter of adoptive family’s last name], and she don’t like it one bit if anyone says that it is not. . . . We will have the privilege of giving L. our other name if we like, will we not? This is what I should like to name her, Lillian, Leota, Lovira. I call her that sometimes and I can tell by the way that she acts that she likes to be called that. She says that is my name, ma.”99 Clearly, being “sent back” was on the minds of most of the older children. A mother wrote, “A. is well and as contented as any child can be. He comes to me so often and puts his arms around my neck and says, ‘Mama, I like you, you won’t send me away will you?’ He has never worried a bit, and thinks his papa is just right. . . . Will you write me a few lines and tell me when A’s birthday is.”100 Although this story was related in order to show how secure the child was, there is an undercurrent of concern that the placement could be undone if the parent were made unhappy. A threat to return a child might prompt a letter from the child begging for another chance to prove loyalty, usually through better behavior. In response to such a threat, a child wrote: “I write and ask you if I can stay with Mamma a while longer. I have been a bad girl, but Mamma said if you would let me stay a while longer she would keep me a while and try me once more. I love Mamma better than I loved my own mother. If you will let me stay I will try how good I can be. I want to stay so bad that I don’t know what to do. Please let me stay, Mr. Covington.”101 Some children expressed feelings of unworthiness, often in terms of gratitude to the home for undeserved kindness. An older boy, looking after the few belongings of his and his siblings, wrote: Dear Brother Brown, will you get them things of ours out at the home and send them to me. . . . I thank the home for taking care of me. If it wasn’t for 162 | Chapter 5

the home I would be a big bum, going around and begging for something to eat. . . . We will pay for them things of ours. . . . Bless the Children’s Home. Please answer soon.102

Another child, seemingly aware that her benefactors at the society loomed larger in her cosmos than she in theirs, wrote the following letter of gratitude: “I am well and happy, and hope you are the same. Last Sunday I went to M. Mr. Brown preached. I did not know Mrs. Brown, but I knew him. They did not know me. Dear friends, I THANK you one hundred times for finding me such a beautiful home. The home is not beautiful, but the people in it.”103 Some children expressed surprise that a very fine home would be chosen for them: I like the people I am staying with very well; they are all good to me. They have got a nice place, and they got a nice horse and they learned me how to hitch it up and I can unhitch and we go buggy riding. I don’t think I would ever get a gooder father and mother as good as they are. How is everybody at the Home. I hope they are all well. Is B. got a home yet? They gave me a gun and I am going hunting in the Spring. . . . Answer soon as you can.104

Other children perceived their home as a place where they were piling up debts they would never be able to repay: “I have an awful nice mamma and papa and brother,” wrote one such child. “Mamma made me the nicest white dress for Easter and she bought me a new hat and a pair of white slippers and stockings. I think I owe all my gratitude to you for getting me such a nice home. They are all so kind to me that I don’t know what to do for them. I hope all the others get good homes.” 105 As a corollary to their concerns about unworthiness, children might have thought that enchantment or magic had something to do with their recent good luck and not their inherent value as a person. “I am very much thankful to you, Mr. Covington, for getting me a good home where I get enough to eat and wear,” wrote a boy. “I had such a good time on Christmas. I wrote a letter to Santa Claus and told him I wanted a wagon, and I put the letter on a post and in the morning I went to the post and the letter was gone, and so I think that Santa Claus got it, and I got a wagon in the morning and an axe and an orange and some nuts. I would like to know when my birthday is.”106 Children surrounded by love and abundance could easily believe in Santa Claus or a fairy tale existence: “Oh! Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 163

I have such a nice home; such a good papa and mamma; so many dolls and playthings,” exclaimed an overwhelmed child. “Oh! I have such a fine time. I got here on Saturday and started to school on Monday. Mamma has such a nice daughter. She is married and she told me she was going to get a little girl from the home. She will have a nice home and a fine piano, and they play so nice. I have a nice organ; I’m going to take lessons as soon as school is over. I am so happy in my new home.”107 It appears that some children continued a strong relationship with the society after placement. One child wrote: “Mr. Covington, you know when I first came to Auntie’s place I was only in the first grade, but now I am in the fourth grade and getting along fine. . . . I like to go to school and I like my new teacher fine; there are 268 scholars in our school. Your loving friend.”108 Older children, well established in their homes, sometimes kept up a deep regard for WCHS as well as for their adoptive homes: We are having beautiful weather, the fruit trees are all in bloom and the flowers are blooming, too. We got 2180 eggs during the month of March from 109 hens. We have 120 young chickens and have 160 eggs setting. I am getting along fine in school, expect to go to High School next year. I had the honor of being the only one in the room who got one hundred in deportment last month. I go to Sunday School every Sunday and league every evening. I enjoy the services so much. I am going to lead League next Sunday. I like my home better and better every day.109

Children learned ways to relate to their new home even as they remembered past associations. The society provided a crucial link to this memory. At least some children expressed feelings of loss and conflicted loyalty in their letters, such as in the case of a girl who compared her adoptive siblings and biological siblings. She wrote: Mr. and Mrs. D. are very kind to me; they have two children, D___ and M___. D___ is five years old; he thinks there is no one like me and if any one says anything against me [gets] so angry and starts after them as if he was going to fight them. M___ is two years old and the dearest litle girl there is, (besides my own sister).110

Another child was able to identify with and create a type of kinship with an assortment of children, united in their status as adopted children: 164 | Chapter 5

Last week was a very busy week, with business and getting ready for Easter. We had beautiful services at the church, consisting mostly of songs and exercises by the children; one thing attracted my attention particularly. In an exercise of seven children, as I was closely watching them, it dawned on my mind that four out of the seven were “Home” children and when I tell you that none of them suffered by comparison with the other children, you may think it egotism on my part, but that is the way I saw it. Mother thought of the same thing, too.” 111

She conveys her pride that they measured up to non-adopted children, although such a statement also implies its opposite, that their equality among children who were not adopted was in question. We can see in her pride an underlying concern about her identity as an adopted child and worry about the legitimacy of adoptive families in the larger non-adopted population, which did not conveniently end after the papers were signed. Letters published in the WCHF generally reveal the sunny side of adoption. Shared rituals of belonging and claiming buoyed in glowing accounts by children and parents helped to create history and document points of similarity and familiarity. With infants, adoption rituals patterned themselves most often on birth rituals, and such efforts were usually directed toward possessing the child as though it had been born into the family. Slightly older children were encouraged to meld into any existing biological family or to emulate appearance and behavior that would make them appear to be part of the biological family. But ultimately, biological and botanical models failed to address the full and complex experience of becoming an adoptive family. The biological model did not work with children who were not babies, while the botanical metaphor failed to address the fact that children were not plants, but individuals with histories and qualities of their own. Nevertheless, the metaphors were useful in creating a legitimate place in society for adoptive families that had not existed before and also provided families with models for embracing these needy children in their lives.112

Biology, Botany, and Belonging | 165

Chapter 6 T r av e li n g C h i ldr e n

Placement, Re-placement, and Return

“ Ma r t ha ,” o r p ha n e d at t h e ag e o f e i g h t w h e n h e r pa r e n t s

killed themselves, was handed over to the society by her guardian in March 1899 along with fifty dollars. She stayed a month in her first placement in Spokane, less than two months in both her second placement in Mount Vernon and her third in Piedmont, three weeks in her fourth placement in Seattle, less than three months in her fifth in Houghton, and two months in her sixth in Dungeness. She spent over a year with a family in Seattle when she was ten-years-old, then eight months in Charleston before finally being placed back with her guardian in St. John when she was eleven-years-old. The total time elapsed was three years and three months. In that time, she was placed nine times and returned nine times—eighteen moves in thirty-nine months.1 Children like Martha had less in common with children who were adopted at a very young age and more in common with children who had experienced traumatic events—the sudden death of loved ones, extended separations from kin, abrupt displacement, and periods of transience— much as children in refugee populations. To better understand these older children’s experiences, we need to remove them from the narrative 166

of middle-class family ideology that shaped adoption and instead consider their lives as those shaped by forces of social and economic upheaval. While charities for homeless children were often called some sentimental variation of “a home for little wanderers,” there was nothing sentimental about the state of serial homelessness children experienced when family placement did not work out for them.2 The rituals used by mothers to claim adopted infants “as their own” could not be used to create family unity and forge new identities for children who were relinquished in their middle and teenage years. Martha, committed to care in middle childhood after great emotional trauma, did not take to adopted kin, nor they to her. The implications of her placements, returns, and re-placements are staggering. She moved through alien environments for her entire middle childhood years, as a great number of children in foster care still do today. Martha’s history is extreme but not unique, and it shows the limitations of treating every child as infinitely malleable. Even the botanical metaphor for adoption—whereby delicate buds taken from withering vines are grafted to hardier stock— fails to embrace such dislocation and discontinuity. Grafts, after all, need to stay in place long enough to heal.

L i m i t s o f t h e B o ta n i ca l M o d e l

The botanical metaphor could not incorporate the experience of children who were placed and re-placed repeatedly. Nevertheless, it was pressed into service to explain and smooth over the trouble adopting parents had when their children were disappointing to them. Pruning and weeding was recommended in such situations:

Too often the call comes for a child strong, willing, true and honest. Too seldom do we have the faultless child that needs no patience, love and thoughtful care. In the garden of child culture there has been neglect. The weeds have grown apace. But the good seed is there. Who will give tillage necessary for the perfect fruitage? We do not ask homes to take our children as finished products, ornamental or useful, but as raw material, ugly, sometimes rejected, upon which to expend effort and talent out of which should come beauty, charTraveling Children | 167

acter and immortality. May each child be to each home and heart as the rejected block of marble, which when seen by the genius Michael Angelo, he exclaimed, “I see an angel face in that stone and by God’s grace I’ll get it out.” That bad boy, neglected, untrained, that wayward girl, willful, disobedient, need firm discipline and loving care. It may be your thought, love and sacrifice lavished upon them will be the crowning act of your life, the one thing worth while, and your investment in character will enrich you through all eternity.3

The malleability of children was an article of faith, but even the most enthusiastic adoption case workers understood that the early period of adjustment to strangers and strange surroundings was tentative, and alliances fragile, when children were older than toddlers. Parents were warned: The first days following a child’s reception into a home often decide the question whether the relationship will be a permanent one or not. Consider the situation. The lad or lass of eight or twelve years old, finds himself or herself in a place entirely new and strange. Notwithstanding that the home may be a carefully selected one, combining all the educational, social and religious advantages that could be desired, yet the child is unable to reason the case as an older person would, and with its dismal sense of loneliness and homesickness cannot at first settle down in a contented way to enjoy the benefits of that home; older and wiser people have had the same experience. 4

Parents were advised to “lose no time in convincing the child that [the adoptive home] is the abode of love and affection,” to make their “child feel ‘at home’” with “whatever expedients” that “may be summed up in the word ‘love.’”5 Parents should expect little, to treat the child “as if it were one God had handed down to you from heaven,” to give the child the exact treatment as other siblings, and to practice the patience of Job. Cast in the role of saviors, parents were expected to show no disappointment about their child but to cultivate “a settled conviction that this was the wise and Christlike action . . . though she was not the ideal child you had pictured.”6 Supporting their role as saviors, parents were reminded that children came to the society “untrained” or “badly trained,” marked with the experi168 | Chapter 6

ence “of sin, sorrow or suffering, and generally all three.” Swearing, slang, and obscenities picked up from “so-called” homes were symptoms to be purged in adoptive homes, where a child’s “only salvation is to go where the spirit of purity and truth abides.”7 In reward, adoptive parents could expect children to “exhibit talents and intellectual promise surpassing those of average well-to-do” families, or at least a transformation of the “inner character . . . features and expression of children rescued from evil associations.”8 As parents were cast as saviors, so children were cast as survivors: “Children often suffer as they go to new homes, for they do not understand why they are torn from the only friends they know, and a six or eight year old heart may ache very keenly.” The approach recommended was to help the child “forget” by avoiding questions that might reveal the past: “Do not ask the child a thousand questions about its parents and relatives, such as would shock your sensitive nature if they were asked you. Children have feeling, even these poor waifs. . . . Try to banish from the child’s mind all past of its wretched life.”9 Parents were advised to protect the children from prying questions of others and to cloak old relationships in silence. “It will save some embarrassment both to you and the Society, if you will assume that the child has come into the legal custody of the Society for good reasons,” WCHS advised parents. “It may be well for you to assume that it is for the best interest of the child to help it to forget the past.”10 Parents were also warned that they would experience a time of trial with children (boys, in particular). The following advice, couched in botanical terms, warns: When you took him into your home you were greatly pleased with your experiment. Such a choice boy, the pick of many! Frankly, you had not expected so many points approaching perfection. The first week such a model of obedience, politeness, appreciation. Then that boy seemed occasionally dull of hearing, about getting up time, particularly; slow to mind about work time. An astonishing number of defects began to crop out in the boy. You were sorely tried. If you had not taken this boy for better or for worse; if you had not had a certain pride in your ability to train, develop and love a boy, you would have returned him long ago. Besides, you were surprised now and then by that gleam of humor in the boy, that show of genuine Traveling Children | 169

affection, that particular pride in your achievements and success—all showing the taking root, the belonging to your home. While you thought simply of your relationship to the boy studying him, now proud, now disappointed in him; it may not have occurred to you that the boy was studying you and often perhaps as grievously disappointed in you! When he was as trying that day he was experimenting, trying you out.11

The dual regarde, or gaze, from the separate and distinct points of view of adult and child provides an important insight into the adoption of older children by recognizing the degree of contingency in adoptive relationships. At the same time, such an assessment suggests a necessary degree of individual agency required of participants in adoption. Adults controlled nearly all the power to determine whether the child would be adopted or returned to the society. Nevertheless, many school-age children did judge their adoptive families, made assessments of their own readiness to be adopted, and adjusted their behavior accordingly by refusing to “forget” their past associations or by running away from their new homes. For example, one child, age seven, loyal to his birth mother, who was deemed unfit by school authorities and the court, refused to call his adoptive parents “papa” and “moma.” He “rebelled and incited [his] sister to do so also” and was returned promptly to the receiving home. Such resistance to incorporation was not considered amenable to adoption.12 WCHS had reduced expectations in regard to establishing long-term kinship relationships for children from about the age of fourteen and older. WCHS rarely accepted children this old into their care, although they were frequently instructed to do so by the court. While those who were seeking children were admonished not to ask for older children as servants, teenage girls were sent out on contract primarily to perform child care and household tasks.13 Girls were expected to be able to make their own way by their late teens, and many girls in their mid-teens simply went out to homes that promised to allow them to attend school while they worked for wages, room and board, and the protection of a home. WCHS was caught between the ideal of finding true families for these girls and the reality of finding practical solutions to their homelessness and their need to be trained in wage work. On the one hand, it advertised four girls from the ages of eleven to fifteen who, “like Anne of Green Gables,” wanted a “really truly home” instead of a series of demoralizing 170 | Chapter 6

short-term placements as household drudges; and on the other, it continued to place older girls in “situations” where they worked for wages.14 Solicitations for homes willing to take older girls were matter of fact: As we go to press, there are a number of large girls at the Home. They want homes where they can work and attend school. Short time contracts may be made for these girls, providing room and board and school privileges with a sum each week sufficient to buy suitable clothing or start for themselves a savings account. This plan will work well with those who may not wish to adopt the girl or to keep her until she is of age. Each contract is made according to the ability of the girl.15

Sending girls younger than fourteen out on contract to do domestic work became unacceptable early in the twentieth century. In 1897, however, a contract was made for an eleven-year-old girl of English and German parentage, stipulating that she receive schooling until age eighteen and training toward becoming “a housekeeper.” The girl was to receive an outfit of comfortable clothes, a bedroom set of furniture, and a cow at her majority. The child was intended to replace a seventeen-year-old daughter who was leaving home, and her job was to care for two small children. The expectations of the contracting family included that the girl be between age nine and eleven, and “a nice looking, smart, bright, healthy, kindhearted girl.”16 Domestic arrangements for children as young as this girl may have been relatively uncommon even in 1897. By 1914, only girls in their late teens were placed on contract as domestics, and they received wages. Older girls working for pay also had some recourse when they did not like their situation; they complained, causing WCHS to adjust its policy in 1914: For some time the advisability of making new rules for the placing of our older girls has been apparent. The dissatisfaction is due to several causes, among which are the following: The amount of work is too great, there is no time allowed for study, the girls are not pleased with the amount and sort of clothing provided. The plan followed by the University students who work a stated number of hours for a stated sum per hour does not easily lend itself to use in adjusting younger girls to the homes offered, as there is so wide a difference in the time required by girls to do the same amount of work. Traveling Children | 171

A better plan seems to be a contract specifying what work a girl is to do, and what she is to receive each week, the supposition being that a girl of fifteen would be able to attend school and earn at least one dollar each week, which amount, judicially expended, would buy her clothing. We have a few girls now working under this plan, and it is thought that it will be acceptable in most instances to the home in need of help. As in all cases of children placed by the Society, no girl is to be returned without consulting the superintendent, and no girl is to leave her place and go to a new one without permission.”17

Although plain enough to WCHS case workers, the distinction between younger girls and University of Washington female students who boarded with families and attended college was blurred in practice. It is apparent that girls reported to WCHS on the conditions of their employment and expected agreeable situations to be found for them. Because WCHS kept such children under supervision until they were adults, the girls could use the society to mediate and change their living conditions.18 Similarly, older boys were usually placed in homes where they would be able to contribute substantially to the family economy by helping with farming, logging, or other family enterprises while attending school and being treated as a family member. The analogy between boys and workhorses can hardly be overlooked in this home solicitation: “Farmers who know horses will find it easy to learn boys. Some of the boys can go into homes under contract at free board, others should be adopted. . . . If you cannot yourself take one, can you not call your neighbor’s attention to this appeal.”19 Consider the appeal for homes for “two large boys, one of whom wants a farm home, and the other who wants a home in Seattle, where he can have the benefit of the manual training given in the public schools, as he is of a mechanical turn.”20 Such arrangements were a mixture of surrogate family, schooling appropriate to farm work or manual labor, and child labor. Expectations regarding work for board could be complicated by a child’s history and abilities. This letter was received in 1911, after WCHS pressured a man to adopt a fourteen-year-old boy who previously worked as a bootblack: I don’t think you have any file in your office which I have signed in which I either agree to adopt or contract with the child.

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If my memory is right I wrote you at the time you forwarded the application back that I would do a fair thing with the child and would sign no contracts or adopt. This I have done and with a clear conscience can say I am proud of the success I have had with [name omitted] when I consider that he came to my home at the age of fifteen years, without training, manners, home discipline or the least sign of ever having been governed besides he was slightly mentally affected and had only been a short time from the hospital where he had had an operation for a scrotum rupture and the operation was not a success and the boy will always be an unable man. Now if I did sign any binding agreement at the time of taking him I will admit that I made a wonderful mistake and will get out of it in the best way I can and am sure I will never sign anything else that bind me to him any closer than I see fit to be from the love and respect I have for him. [Name omitted] came to my home the 12th of Sept, 1906 and stayed with me as one of the family and enjoyed every right and privilege of an own child from Sept. 12, 1906 until Jan. 4 1909 and during this time he attended school regular never missing a day when school was in session (we have nine months school each year). On Jan 4, 1909 he went back to Tacoma to be with his father he and his father had been corresponding quite freely and both seemed anxious to be together and asked my consent, and here I wish to state that regardless of law or whatever may result I will never stand between a parent and child and I advised him to be with his father as that is the proper place for any child. He only stayed with his father about thirteen months and during this time I kept a continual correspondence with him and twice went to see him. In Feb 1910 he came back to me with the story that he couldn’t live with his father, on account of the stepmother. He has been with me ever since and is here now. [Name omitted] will be twenty years old next August he has a seventh grade education is a total abstainer from tobacco and intoxicating drinks of all kinds and forms and doesn’t swear. He is clean and proud and chooses good associates, I am paying him a small monthly salary and have encouraged him in starting a bank account which was only commenced a short time ago. [Name omitted] is neither physically or mentally able to carry a heavy burden that will demand much pay but I am a great believer that there is a chance for all [who] consider them what they actually are.21

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Although the man was adamant in refusing responsibility for the child other than what was freely given, and adoption was out of the question, it was still considered a successful placement. During the first decade of the twentieth century, some households would establish themselves as regular foster care families with WCHS, acquiring another child from the society when one had grown up and moved away.22 The degree of contact and continuity beyond the years of care and service seems to have varied considerably from child to child. The most vulnerable children in contract relationships were children of color and mixed ancestry whose post-placement experience went awry. A ten-year-old boy of Chinese and European descent was taken on contract by a well-educated woman who sent him to the home of a relative, where he worked as a servant, waited tables, swept the floor, and attended school for a time before being expelled. Shifting back and forth between families, he was converted to Christianity and remained “attached” to these households for several years, taking a course in “agriculture,” which might have led to his becoming the family gardener. While there was expressed concern for the well-being of this child and while he was maintained under the roof of family, he clearly was used as a servant and not adopted as a son.23

R e t u r n f ro m A d o p t i v e H o m e s

Children who did not last the ninety-day trial period and were returned to WCHS most often were orphans (with an average age of eight and a half) with an average of 2.81 placements per child. But deserted children, who tended to be much younger (with an average age of four and a half), were also placed at a comparatively high rate of 2.16 placements each. While the age of orphans might help explain why they were returned, it does not explain the return of younger deserted children, and rarely does enough remain in case histories to reveal specifically what made adults decide against adopting them. It is difficult to judge from the advice given in the WCHF whether children were being returned for minor infractions or for more serious causes. Probably lying or roaming by a child with a known “family history” of “degeneracy” loomed larger in significance than breaking such

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rules might in a biologically related child. A child who lied and stole could be considered tainted by the sins of the father, as was assumed to be true of a young boy returned for such transgressions and whose birth mother, reputably a drug addict, had been beaten savagely by her drunken husband. The adoptive family returned the child specifically because they believed the child was permanently marked by the birth parents’ corruption.24 Older children who came into the care of WCHS with a group of younger siblings, and who probably had spent years looking after them, simply did not see the purpose of placement in a family home. Bereft of both parents, a thirteen-year-old girl with four siblings decided that she did not need “orphan’s care.” She was placed with a woman who spoke the child’s native Scandinavian language, but remained “sullen and unappreciative.”25 WCHS rarely oversold the qualities of older children, stating frankly at one time in the WCHF that it was looking for a home for an eleven-year-old girl, who protested, “People thought I was naughty, but I wasn’t,” and for a 15-year-old girl who was reported to be only “reasonably capable and honest.”26 Yet, few articles seeking a home for a difficult child were as blunt as this: We have just had returned to us a little girl about ten with an old-fashioned Bible name, who is neither good looking nor attractive in personality. She has been tried out in several homes and found untruthful. She cannot be trusted with a dime to buy milk. Today we have had her before two physicians who are more or less expert in children’s nervous diseases and mentality. “The child is not abnormal, what she needs is a mother,” said the doctor. The child keenly feels her lack of a home. She is our ugly duckling! Who wants her? Whoever takes this girl should be permitted to keep her out of school for awhile until they have studied her good and her bad qualities—until they feel they are perfectly acquainted with the child. Anyone who thinks he knows how to take care of other people’s children can here have a rare opportunity.27

WCHS had its own explanation for the frequent returns of children, which depended heavily on the belief that children were redeemed in stages, often having exhausted the patience of many adults before finally becoming adoptable:

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There are some cases where a very bad or troublesome child will be successively placed in five or six different homes before he finally settles down to a normal state of docility and goodness. This frequent change, instead of being detrimental, has a decidedly beneficial effect on the majority of children thus changed about, although it is rather hard on the foster-parents. When one family has exhausted all its patience and persuasive disciplinary methods, another family takes up the burden and the child is advanced one stage further. In each home he receives a benefit and although often the people feel their labors have been in vain they certainly have been highly successful in bringing about an improvement of the child’s character. This noble work of child-training, most of it undertaken in a spirit of helpfulness, accomplishes far more for the child than the best equipped institution in the world could possibly do.28

In this account of placement, the returning child and the enduring parent both benefit—the returning parent having the satisfaction of saving one child temporarily from the corruption of institutional care and the child because he moved one step closer to adoption. The third and permanent set of adoptive parents for a child explained it in different terms: “Most people expect too much of a boy—and of an adopted one far more than they would of their own.”29 Parents were reluctant to attempt an adoption when biological relatives might interfere. Although birth parent interference with an adoption seems to have been rare, a woman whose son was taken from her because she reputably made her living as a prostitute located her child in his adoptive home. The adoptive parents returned the child allegedly “because it was impossible to have a woman of notoriously bad reputation, coming about.” She repeated the disruption with the child’s third placement “with a highly intelligent and educated negro family of the best order,” this time hiring two attorneys to assist her. Although she lost her appeal, she had meanwhile interrupted at least two placements.30 Because it was the policy of WCHS to place neglected or abandoned children in parts of the state that were distant from former influences, it is not quite clear why this child was not placed farther from his birth mother, except that finding African American families was undoubtedly easier in the urban areas of Seattle or Spokane. Neighborhoods where African Americans lived were concentrated in only a couple of places in each town.31

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Networks within black communities might also have made it easier for the woman to locate her son.32 For example, African American clubs and associations, such as the Dorcas Charity Club in Seattle, undertook the sponsorship of black dependent children.33 WCHS compiled a list of behaviors that adoptive parents would almost certainly find offensive but that the society did not consider legitimate reasons for returning a child. WCHS told parents not to return children who refused to wash, roamed after school, gorged on food, ruined clothing, stole, or lied. Nevertheless, stealing, lying, and running away were the reasons most often cited by adoptive parents for returning children.34 Acceptance in many adoptive homes was predicated on the belief that it was best for the children to forget their pasts. “Like most of the children received by the society the dark shadow of a tragedy has fallen athwart their lives,” the society ominously advised adopting parents. “Children come to us because of sin or death and there are some things worse than death. In many cases the first thing for children to do is to forget . . . and as tender plants they will soon begin to take root in a new environment.”35 Return to the society could result directly from children’s “failure” to forget, as it was for a pair of siblings whose father had committed suicide. An exasperated WCHS agent wrote to a colleague at the society about the unpromising prospects for a five-year-old girl and her brother: Well Brother Covington, you will likely be greatly surprised when I tell you that the two [name omitted] children, [children’s names omitted] did not fit into the [name omitted] home at Sunnyside, at tall, I took them out there and they kept them one week, I received a letter from them asking that they be removed right away, so when I was over there today I found that it was best to take them, and so I did, and have them on my hands now and will try very hard to place them else where. First I find them to be rather below the average in intelligences, and undoubtly have had very bad training never taught any manners, and from every indication they must be what we would call regular “degenerates” but the poor little children can’t help that part of it, and the boy is always telling about his father killing himself, so the very best thing for me to do was to remove them, I consider [names omitted] very nice and inteligent people, and also their young folks are real bright and inteligent, [name omitted] treated me very nice about their disapointement in the children and paid the expenses in taking them there.36

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The girl was placed and returned three more times before her birth mother remarried and reclaimed her. It is notable that failing to forget might have been confused with lack of intelligence, although the family might also have associated the lack of table manners and other unpleasing habits with intellectual limitations. Children who refused to be quiet about the people or trouble in their pasts were at a disadvantage in finding adoptive families. On the other hand, the appearance of forgetfulness was often an illusion. About one-quarter of the children in this sample asked for information about their pasts once they were adults.

R e m ova l f ro m A d o p t i v e H o m e s

Occasionally, and more often than WCHS publicly admitted, children had to be removed from adoptive homes because they were treated cruelly or because the home was determined unsuitable after placement. Harry Schmar was a child whose case received such notoriety that it was impossible to suppress, and WCHS was publicly criticized for its role in placing the child in an abusive home. WCHS confessed that the offending parents were personally known to WCHS workers at the time of placement. The father was described as a sober, industrious mechanic and the mother as a well-educated woman and good housekeeper. The society ran a rebuttal to public criticism of the placement in the December 1910 issue of WCHF in the form of a letter written by L. J. Covington, then state superintendent of WCHS, and sent to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: With all right thinking people, the officers of this Society deplore the cruel treatment of little Harry Schmar by his foster parents. Too many times have the officers of the Society been called to the rescue of children mistreated, abused, neglected or outraged by their natural parents, for us not to want the guilty parties in this particular case brought to justice. Frequently we have had to meet the criticism that our requirements and investigations of a home were too exacting. . . . A Society like this, following . . . principles with the best intentions is after all a human institution, not infallible, but susceptible to criticism destructive or constructive. The wonder is not so much that this little boy should have suffered such gross abuse, but that with 1656 wards, so many 178 | Chapter 6

of whom are still under the supervision of the Society, we should not before have been called to answer individual cases of neglect, abuse or outrage. With thoughtful citizens, we agree that this work has become too grave a responsibility to be carried on without the help of properly accredited and authorized representatives of the State. We ask for State supervision. We are sure State visitors should be appointed to visit homes in which these children are placed, that they may ascertain the facts as to the kind of home and its adaptability to the particular child placed therein.37

WCHS was rarely called to answer publicly for cases of neglect or abuse in adoptive homes, but it routinely acted on more frequent but less formal complaints. Sometimes the placement was never fully investigated beforehand, as in the case of a nine-year-old girl adopted at birth who was retrieved from her adoptive father at the death of her adoptive mother. A sister of the dead woman charged in a letter that the adoptive father had spent time in jail for the sexual assault of a young girl.38 Children were occasionally retrieved after adoption when no criminal charges were made. For example, reclaiming an adopted girl when the adoptive mother died was considered proper, and in one case, a birth father and daughter were reunited after a young girl was removed under such circumstances against the adoptive father’s will.39 Divorce between adoptive parents was also considered grounds for return. 40 Children were also retrieved and replaced when charges of abuse were not substantiated. When a son, in his thirties, returned to the home where a teenage girl had been placed, neighbors complained, and the situation was investigated. The man pleaded misunderstanding, and a doctor determined that there was “nothing wrong,” but the child was moved anyway. 41 Inexplicably, WCHS chose not to remove the siblings of a girl who became pregnant by her adoptive father (it is unclear whether the original foster care arrangement was made by the widowed birth father or the society). A WCHS agent removed the pregnant girl with a court order and sheriff escort, hoping to get the child to confess to the illicit sexual relationship. “The situation hardly justified taking the other two yet,” concluded the report, suggesting that WCHS suspected the girl was complicit in the sexual relationship. 42 A case of abuse was revealed after a complaint that a seven-year-old boy was running away, staying away nights, stealing, and not going to Traveling Children | 179

school. On investigation, the adoptive father admitted that the child was terrified of his adoptive mother and was afraid to be home when his father was traveling on business. The mother’s drinking was blamed, as well as marital discord. 43 In another case, a child’s adoption by blood relatives only extended the abuse from a parent from whom the child was taken. The child described how she was repeatedly stripped, tied hand and foot, choked with rags, and beaten with a horsewhip. Although those charges were not proved, the claim was sufficient to convince a judge that the girl should not be returned to members of her extended birth family. 44 Some children who seemed well placed to begin with were later taken back when the arrangement deteriorated. In one case a man reported to the society that he had visited the home of a six-year-old girl who was badly bruised and suffering from a broken arm. Her adoptive family had reportedly moved and left her to be taken care of in different homes in the area. Although removed from the adoptive home, she was later returned to it and was living there eight years later. 45

C h i ldr e n w i t h D i sa b i l i t i e s

At least some children whose chances for adoption were influenced by physical disabilities eventually did find deeply committed parents. One child adopted after three years in the care of WCHS and the School for the Deaf was taken by a man who subsequently died and a woman whose illness forced her to return the child. The woman missed the child, requested her back, and shortly thereafter adopted her. 46 Other children were deeply loved, but their hospitalizations made adoption a formidable step. WCHS acted as mediators between charities and hospitals to help make those adoptions work. 47 Placements of children who could not satisfy a parent’s desire for an intelligent and emotionally stable child were more problematic and probably account for more returns than the records show. We are wondering whether or not it will be better for us to return the girl we took on trial, [name omitted], to you. The longer we keep her, and the more we try to do for her, the worse she seems to get. At first, she seemed to appreciate kind treatment, and tried to obey, but now, we must speak 180 | Chapter 6

to her sometimes three or four times before she notices, and she does not remember what we tell her long enough to pay us telling her. If we send her on the front porch with [name omitted], to give them a chance to run around and yell to their hearts content, she will be as quiet as a mouse, until she comes in, and then start running and jumping because as she says, she like to do it where it makes a noise. And no amount of kind argument or talk will make her see otherwise. We have tried our best to treat her as our own, bought and dressed a nice large doll for Christmas, gave her candy, etc., just as we did [name omitted]. She carried the doll around in her arms for two or three days, then left her in the cradle, and did not even know when we put it away for a while. We tried to get her to behave by promising to ask Santa to bring back the doll, but no results. She has a very good memory for songs, and rhymes, etc., but seemingly none at all for requests to be good. We have not punished her, except to pat her hand a little, but if we do that, more than likely she hides her face and starts sniffling, or whining. A real hearty cry is not so bad, but her sniffle-whine is something fierce!! 48

The child was subsequently returned from three other homes, who reported her as “nervous and unresponsive to the routine of family life.” A University of Washington psychologist typed her “a mentally defective but rather of the insane type” and recommended that she be sent to the State Custodial School. Her mother was residing at the Western Hospital for the Insane and her father was in the King County Jail at the time of her referral to the Custodial School at Medical Lake, where she stayed from 1915 until 1921. At that time she showed no signs of dementia or mental aberration, but was assessed as having an intelligence quotient of 76 and a mental age of eleven. 49 WCHS usually culled such children before they were placed, but exceptions were apparently made when a family of siblings all came under the care of the society at the same time. There remains the question of whether this child would have been successfully placed had the “average” families she was placed with understood her range of behavior and abilities before placement. Distinctions between slow development, emotional distress, and mental illness were not always clear. Parents returned children who they believed to be unintelligent, but who were, instead, just out of step with their expectations. The boy referred to in the following letter was relinquished at the age of eight along with three siblings and placed as Traveling Children | 181

a delinquent in the Parental School on Mercer Island. Five years later he was placed with a salmon canner, who wrote the following letter before returning the boy: We have done everything that we can for [name omitted] but find he is getting worse all the time, he appears to have lost all ambition, will go out in the field and lay down on the ground and go to sleep, and at any time we send him out to do any thing he will lay down and go to sleep, he went to sleep sitting on a big log and fell off on the ground. Unless something is done for him the poor boy will land in the asylum, he is a slave to self abuse, I caught him doing it standing in the open field along side a stump, he admitted to me that he had done it for about five years and that he did it five and six times a week, he shouldnt be where he is alone but where he could be watched. I don’t think he was very bright. Now I will send him back as soon as you give me instructions how to send him and when, I will wire you when I send him so you can have some one meet the boat at Seattle. I wish you would send us another boy even if not so old but one that is bright and wide awake, I am away from home considerable and want a boy that I can trust with the folks. Send him to me . . . and send me the amount paid you to Clellam and I will remit same at once.50

The boy ran away when the ferry docked, and more than thirty years later sent the following carefully composed letter: “I hate to bother you at this late date, but it is necessary for me to get a delayed birth certificate since mine was not registered. Would you kindly send me a record of my stay in your home in Seattle, I believe that I was there from about 1906 to 1909 or 1910.”51 The writer was articulate, literate, and possessed a sense of his own history. The letter also suggests that he was employable, as work in the defense industry was the most often given reason for the request for birth certificates in the 1940s. In retrospect, he was probably returned not because he was mentally deficient, but rather because he was a loner, emotionally detached, uncommitted to the work ethic, and he masturbated. The adoptive parent wanted someone, understandably, whom he could “trust with the folks” to share similar values and act in accordance with them. That proved to be an unrealistic expectation for the few children who had spent much time at the industrial schools or at the Medical Lake facility for the mentally retarded or mentally ill.

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Na r r at i v e s o f T r av e l a n d R e t u r n

One of the most intractable problems WCHS experienced with permanent adoption was when children and prospective parents did not “graft” and “mend.” Martha, who experienced eighteen moves in thirty-nine months, was such a child. For her, the home-placement motto “a child for every home and a home for every child” was an unattainable proposition.52 For such children, the predictable return to the care of the society may have been the only thread of continuity. Ultimately, Martha was returned to her guardian and dropped out of view of the society. Another girl, thirteen when she came into the care of the society and described as “the despair of the corps of workers” because she had been returned nine times before marrying at age fifteen, later returned to the society to tell about her happy marriage and to show off her baby boy.53 What unites these two girls, beyond their age and tormented placement history, is their connection to the society, which provided some ongoing contact—even continuity—in their lives. The girls were also connected by a failed expectation that they would “succeed” in homes that WCHS considered desirable and fit. This last is important to keep in mind while considering the narratives of children who were not permanently placed. WCHS built its expectations on known, acceptable models of kinship that were often alien or incomprehensible to older children. Even as WCHS provided continuity, it also acted as an agent of discontinuity: in juvenile court where it acted to remove children from unhealthy environments, in arranging multiple placements, and in separating siblings—all done in an effort to find every homeless child a family home. What set children “in motion” and what kept them moving? Why were some children returned and re-placed many times while others were passed on to institutional or foster care? Indisputably, many older children had been moving from place to place for years, if not for their entire lives, before they came into the care of the society. Nearly half of the relinquishing birth parents had migrated to the area compared to about one-third of the general population of Seattle. Washington State was not the first stop for most relinquishing parents. A good number traveled in search of work as laborers. Others were wage workers or wage seekers who lived in seasonal or impermanent dwellings or tent towns moving with demands for labor along the railroad lines, and in timber camps, mining towns, and agricultural areas. Some children had parents who continTraveling Children | 183

ued moving, leaving them behind. Child dependency must be placed into the larger context of movement to the United States and to the West in response to the economic booms and busts that were characteristic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These social and economic currents sometimes intersected, creating crosscurrents with far-reaching effects in the lives of children who came under the care of WCHS. For one boy, the son of a Polish coal miner whose family arrived in the United States to seek better working and living conditions, the coal mines in Washington State were almost certainly not the family’s first stop in the United States. The boy and his four siblings came into the care of the society after their mother’s death and upon complaint that the father was a drunkard. The boy was placed and returned several times. In 1910 a WCHS agent wrote: “As to the case of [name omitted]. I suppose it will be necessary to take him back. Such boys are a trial and it may be necessary for us to send him to the Reform School; but I would give him another real good chance with people who may be able to help him overcome his habit of lying and stealing.” He was placed and returned in 1911 and 1912, and was finally adopted by a German immigrant who was compelled to register as an enemy alien in 1918. When the boy also registered as an enemy alien, the society wrote to the boy’s older biological sisters, seeking help: It appears that [name omitted] registered as an alien enemy also giving his age as eighteen and his birthplace Vienna, Austria. The fact of this registration will bar [name omitted] from a membership in a Fraternal organization in which he is a member, and will also bar him from American citizenship. Now we know that [name omitted] is nineteen years of age and is of Polish origin and consequently is not an alien enemy we wish to get facts as to his birthplace as nearly as we can. Our records give the nationality of your parents but do not show when they came to this country nor where any of you children were born. I wish, therefore, as your memory certainly goes back farther than the others, that you would let us know if you can, when your parents arrived in this country and whether if any of you children were born in United States.54

As an adult, the adoptee contacted WCHS, wanting information about his father and brother. Other biological family members were already in communication. The society recorded the adoptee’s visit: “Mr. [American spelling], whose name had been changed from [German spelling], knew 184 | Chapter 6

that his father had never planned that his children should be separated and adopted,” wrote a caseworker in his file. “He was a man of Russian birth, not versed in American ways and when the children were placed he felt it was only temporarily. Once he had visited the Receiving Home, but only the older sister . . . was there to visit with him.”55 Here was a child “misplaced” by a Polish coal miner of Russian birth who believed he was leaving his children in good hands, only to find them dispersed to homes where he was forbidden contact. The child who believed he was never intended to be relinquished refused to remain in homes until he was adopted by a German, who was forced to register as an enemy alien during World War I. The society intervened when the adopted child did what was expected of him and took on the father’s nationality. Before he was finished traveling through international identities, the boy had adopted an American spelling of his German name. Ultimately, he was reunited with his birth father and siblings. Issues of loyalty and identity were complex for such children and carried significant consequences. These travels—placements, re-placements, return, and reunions—complicate the picture of adoption as a permanent, static, and unchanging solution to homelessness. Another child’s case history shows how someone born into a Native American culture became part of a traveling immigrant culture. In 1932, a sister of a child born to Indian and white parents called to find out what had happened to her brother. “I’m awfully sorry we had to be separated because I can plainly remember him and never thought but what I could find him when he was of age,” pleaded the woman. At the same time a brother of the same boy asked why he could not get any information about his sibling. Because of his mixed-racial heritage, the boy had been placed with a Chinese family who had returned to China three years before her inquiry. A caseworker wrote: “In going through the files it was found that the boy had been adopted by a Chinese family, and it was not considered [desirable] to tell [the sister] this.”56 The consequences associated with having mixed-racial ancestry were further complicated by adoption into another racialized group existing at the margins of white U.S. culture. Beyond the obvious fact that the child was missed, the adoption demonstrates that home placement did not exist outside the racial and ethnic social fabric of its time, but rather reflected the dominant views of white, Protestant, middle-class, U.S. society. WCHS tended to “blend” all nonwhite children at the time of placement, although they knew enough to Traveling Children | 185

understand why this would be a source of astonishment, even outrage, for the child’s family of origin. Repatriation of immigrants to their native country could cause adopted children to drop abruptly from view. When a caseworker went to visit the home of a Norwegian couple who had adopted an infant, she was told by the postmaster that they had moved back to Norway seven years earlier. Placements were intentionally made within the state—close enough to ensure WCHS oversight, yet far enough away from biological relatives to make it difficult for them to contact the child. But, when children traveled beyond the official “reach” of the society, the child also left its oversight.57 From the sample used in this study, WCHS appears to have lost track of relatively few children permanently, although many probably dropped from sight at one time or another. When they needed to be found, serious efforts were made to locate them. A caseworker reported having searched tax lists, voter lists, school censuses, and city directories looking for a girl who was twelve at the time of placement. Finding three families in the county with the same last name, the worker interviewed them all: “They know of no such party nor have they ever taken a child from any home. They all have plenty of their own. I have also hunted for forwarding addresses at all the leading post offices and find that no mail is received by such a man at any post offices.”58 The woman adopted as a child was eventually located, although one wonders if WCHS would have made this much effort except when biological relatives were interested in reuniting. More commonly, children traveled under the purview of the society, but not always with its approval. For example, WCHS was usually notified when children ran away. A boy who was eight when he came into the care of WCHS was placed several times before a juvenile court probation officer lodged a complaint on the child’s behalf six years later, after he had escaped from the State Training School. The probation officer wrote WCHS: While the boy was with us he appeared to be so unhappy and critical in his attitude toward the State School and your society . . . [and] his long period of detention that I talked at some length with him regarding the matter. His grief and resentment seemed to center in the conviction that he has been without friends since his commitment to the school during October, 1910, at the age of 8 years. I assured him that I would take up the matter with you and if possible arrange for his parole and would personally assume the 186 | Chapter 6

responsibility of securing employment and a boarding place for him in case he should be released into my care.59

The superintendent of the State Training School at Chehalis replied that the boy had “had every opportunity to work his way out by obtaining the necessary number of votes for the honor squad from the teachers and instructors” but instead had run away and therefore would not be eligible for parole for another year. The superintendent wrote defensively: “Since I established this system, over 120 boys have been paroled, nearly all of whom are making good. Considering that we have the boys passed on to us from all over the State who are regarded as cases too hard for parental schools, children’s homes, and detention homes, this is a fairly good record and shows we are able to do our own constructive work.”60 The dilemma was resolved the next year when the boy joined the Navy, moving out of the circle of movement and incarceration and into a larger circle of movement and military oversight. The telling aspect of this story is the reason given for his running away—that in the midst of social care he was friendless and lonely. Running could mean getting away from a place that was caring in the bureaucratic sense and searching for something more elusive—toward something missed or desired. Running away was a serious concern for WCHS workers for many reasons, not the least of which was that they were responsible for the children wherever they were. WCHS workers were desperate when one notorious runaway not only refused to stay put in prospective adoptive homes, but also took younger children with him whenever he had the chance to run away from the receiving home. Children who ran away obviously undermined the ideal of finding a home for every needy child. Movement from home to home and eventually out of the placement/ re-placement circle did not signal the end of movement or searching for some children. A girl, age five, who was taken from a mother existing in desperate conditions in a tent at Malden along the Milwaukee Railroad line was placed twelve times in eight years before the society wrote to the child’s mother asking her to take the child back into her care. When the child became an adult, she contacted the agency using five different last names, indicating five different married names, searching for additional information from the society about her past. Such movement, along the railroad lines, from home to home, and through multiple alliances and searches for information, suggests a person who was rarely, if ever, at rest.61 Traveling Children | 187

The individual and collective histories of the children who were repeatedly placed help define the limits and possibilities of adoption as it emerged as practice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Stepping away from the biological family ideal helps bring into focus the significance of transience in the lives that embodied it. Incorporating transience into an understanding of adoption also helps bring child saving in the West into the national context. In his discussion of traveling cultures, James Clifford defines diasporic populations as living at long distances from sites of origin (defined in terms of place or ancestry or religion) who experience separation as exile accompanied by a taboo or postponement of return to the original site of community.62 In a sense, older children with memories and longings who wanted to connect with their forbidden pasts resemble the response of diasporic populations in exile. In another important way, homeless children were like people in diaspora because their traveling trajectory was often launched when their birth parents migrated or immigrated to the American West. Concerns about the assimilation of immigrants and concerns about the assimilation of homeless children were in many respects different facets of the same national phenomenon. From this perspective adoption was the ultimate manifestation of the assimilationist impulse. With few exceptions, however, children of social and economic displacement who came into the care of WCHS were not members of communities in exile—quite the opposite. They were children severed from extended families and without the advantages of longstanding social attachments to community. Older children in particular often did “dwell differently” than younger children in adoptive homes, maintaining to a degree what Clifford describes as “the language of diaspora” used by “displaced peoples who feel (maintain, revive, invent) a connection with a prior home.” Other children developed the “loosely coherent, adaptive constellation of responses to dwelling-in displacement” that was compatible with staying in adoptive placements. Still others responded in ways incompatible with permanency, resisting efforts to erase, forget, or distance themselves from their pasts.63 Children who could not make easy adjustments to adoptive families caused WCHS and other home-finding societies to incorporate multiple strategies—including wage contracts and foster care for older children—rather than rely on adoption as the only solution for child dependency.

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As for these traveling children, their situations were not diasporic because they lived in the Pacific Northwest, although what brought them into the care of WCHS in the first place was often tied to regional economic conditions and the migration of parents to the Northwest for jobs. The Pacific Northwest was not even the area of the West dealing with the greatest number of dependent children. Child savers in California despaired that it had proportionately more dependent children than any state in the nation. In 1904, while Washington State reported 359 children in institutional care and Oregon 255, California reported 4,680. In 1910, the total number of children under institutional care or institutional oversight in Washington had more than tripled to 1,302, while Oregon’s dependent child population had increased five times, to 1,265. California’s dependent child population did not increase at the same rate, but did increase nearly forty percent to 6,338 (see table 19).64 The Pacific Division, which included only the West Coast states, led the nation in 1910 for the number of institutions for the care of children per capita, at one for every 55,162 inhabitants, comparable to that of the New England Division.65 California ranked sixth after New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, and Massachusetts in the total number of children under the care of institutions in 1910.66 Child-saving institutions of every type burst at the seams in the San Francisco area, but relatively few children found adoptive homes, despite the existence of home placement societies and laws favorable to it. Many children apparently moved among or between institutions, adding to their time in transit without helping them to escape institutional settings. Aside from the usual moral reasons given for child dependency, such as climbing divorce rates, California child savers specifically cited the very high rate of migration to the area. 67 During the same period, Oregon and Washington led the nation in the average number of children placed per institution, at 207 and 216 respectively; New York, which far outpaced the rest of the nation in number of children placed, placed an average of only 97 children per institution reporting. Census takers attributed the high placement numbers in Oregon and Washington to the fact that they both had home-finding societies with statewide jurisdiction and general hegemony in the area of child saving.68 Overall, the 1910 census noted that the most pronounced trend in child saving from 1904 to 1910 was a dramatic increase in the number of organizations practicing home placement as a method of caring

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for dependent children. Nearly all societies for the care and aid of children and 45.4 percent of homes for children were practicing some form of home placement.69 The New York Children’s Aid Society, founded by Charles Loring Brace, placed more than 200,000 children in free foster homes by the end of the Progressive Era, far outpacing the National Children’s Home Society in total numbers of children placed in permanent adoptive homes.70 What is clear from a study of both adoption and less permanent and binding forms of care, such as foster care, is that child dependency was not unique to any region, and the West was far from the exception to that rule. Instead, the nation’s dependent children shared the consequences of national expansion without the benefit of traditional community or new social networks to support them or their families, at a time of dramatic population shifts, urbanization, and economic upheavals. Only when the West is placed in this national historical context can we begin to see child dependency in the United States as a legacy of these factors.

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Conclusion A Ho m e f or Ev e ry C h i ld

The Elusive Promise

Th e Washi ng t on Childr en’s Hom e Soci et y, t oday the Childr en’s

Home Society of Washington, has evolved over more than a century of service to address the needs of 36,000 children and families across the state. Never a static institution, today its services include early childhood learning programs, parenting support and counseling for at-risk families, advocacy, and support for children when they must leave their homes through adoption or foster care. The lasting legacy of its work from the Progressive Era of child saving is the belief that every child has promise and is deserving of love and respect, a home and family—if not with the family of birth, then with a caring surrogate family. The groundwork was laid by WCHS and other NCHS affiliates like it across the nation, many of which continue to make the welfare of the children their paramount mission today.1 Adoption and foster care began taking their present shape during the Progressive Era as alternatives to institutional care when national social reform agendas brought poor children into political focus.2 Middle-class children had long basked in the glow of sentimental childhoods, but poor

191

children came and went from view according to the political winds. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, Theodore Roosevelt had positioned children in the forefront of his nation-building project, proclaiming the American family the highest achievement of civilization in its capacity to mold citizens. For Roosevelt, the future of the nation and the future of the species balanced on the willingness of U.S.-born, white families to raise children to middle-class standards of self-sufficiency, moral uprightness, and Protestant sobriety. Progressive Era child-welfare reformers gave poor children visibility in this period by focusing on their incorporation into this nationalistic project based on the values of useful middle-class citizenship. In this context, some Protestant child savers propagated the belief that wholly dependent children could be saved both from “corrupting” lower-class influences and the stultifying conditions of orphanages if placed directly into Christian middle-class families, where they would be quickly reformed and assimilated. Thus, at the same time that the national discourse urged the “right sort” to procreate and reproduce white American middle-class values, the communitarian project of assimilation was extended through the home-placement movement to dependent children, who were considered better prospects for redemption than were their parents. Adoption and foster care evolved in an establishment culture alarmed by mass immigration, concerned over whether newcomers could ever be assimilated into productive citizenship and fearful of “race suicide” should white U.S.-born women not produce families of sufficient size. Religious conservatives and political reformers proclaimed the nation under siege from a decline of morals and in danger of being overrun by degenerates. The Reverend Van Arsdale and his evangelical Protestant disciples in the home-placement movement worked this fertile but contested field as advocates for adoption. Adoption advocates promised to redeem a child endangered by moral decline and mold that child into a responsible, independent citizen. An uneasy truce prevailed from often sharply conflicting interests, with Catholic and Jewish charities frequently at odds with Protestant home-finding societies. In a struggle to preserve their respective faiths, these adoption critics were joined by professional social workers committed to family preservation. The truce recognized that home placement in

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adoptive families was best only for healthy but wholly dependent children when family reunification was impossible and no kin was available to parent. From this period in the late nineteenth century we can date the forms of child welfare interventions practiced today, as well as the complex legacy of tension between family preservation and adoption, with temporary foster care serving both—and too often serving neither. The movement to remove children from long-term institutional care and place them permanently in family homes slowly gained momentum over two decades beginning in the late nineteenth century, acquiring urgency as the need for care increased. The growth of public support can be attributed largely to home-finding societies and particularly the National Children’s Home Society. Through an evangelical commitment to saving every needy child, NCHS workers traveled hundreds of thousands of miles in their respective states, sold hundreds of thousands of homefinding magazines promoting adoption, and tapped deep into urban and rural communities across the nation during the Progressive Era. Permanent placement in the form of adoption gained further exposure with the publication of The Delineator’s child-rescue series in 1907–11, and earned qualified endorsement at the 1909 White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, which codified the new directions in child welfare reform. As the most permanent form of child-saving intervention, adoption slowly gained public and political support from the grassroots up, as home-placement societies spread to most states in the nation and worked through the new juvenile court system. Yet, even as Children’s Home Societies located tens of thousands of temporary foster and adoptive homes for needy children, their assumptions and practices were shaped by challenges. Established private charity organizations’ congregate-care facilities proliferated during this period. Eugenicists fueled concerns about taking in children unrelated by blood. Toward the end of the Progressive Era, newly minted child welfare professionals arrived on the scene, favoring family preservation. Meanwhile, the need for short-term family relief and child care only increased with western expansion. Even adoptive families who desired children to satisfy their personal needs challenged values of the old founders of the National Children’s Home Society. Versions of these many challenges, modified by subsequent waves of social welfare reform, survive in child welfare policy to this day.

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Th e (V e ry) S l ow D e m i s e o f C o n g r e g at e Ca r e

One might expect that a young, progressive western state like Washington, relatively unencumbered by an entrenched social welfare system, would avoid the problems of moribund eastern orphanages and embrace home placement in the form of adoption and foster care without a backward glance. Yet, an older pattern of institutional benevolence had already taken root in the West by the late nineteenth century. Taxpayers’ money in Washington State was spent to build large facilities that provided specialized care for segments of the disabled and delinquent populations, leaving the care of dependent children largely to privately supported charities. By the early twentieth century, an abundance of private charities, orphanages, shelters, and hospitals met the diversified needs of a burgeoning population. Instead of replacing other forms of protection for dependent children, adoption and foster care took their places alongside other options in Washington State during the Progressive Era.3 Even as WCHS rose to become a dominant, broadly supported home-placement institution, fully integrated into the new juvenile court system with more children under its care than any other institution in the state, it could not fill all child welfare needs. Catholic children, for example, were not usually placed through WCHS. Large Catholic congregate-care facilities were built in the state well after WCHS was established, were expanded during the early part of the twentieth century, and continued until the latter half of the twentieth century. 4 The Catholic House of the Good Shepherd in Seattle, to cite the most imposing and influential example of a congregatecare institution, was founded in 1890 and expanded over the following decades. It lasted well into the 1970s, until women were able to exercise some control over unplanned pregnancies through the use of birth control pills and access to abortion. Such changes did finally bring about the demise of large orphanages, but it was nearly one hundred years after the beginning of the movement to remove children from them.5

R efor m and R edemption

WCHS superintendent M. A. Covington was typical of his time in sharing some claims made about the “unfitness” of mentally and physically 194 | Conclusion

disabled people, but he also believed that most “degeneracy” that “caused” child dependency was socially conditioned and preventable. He compared child dependency to the “terrible scourges of yellow fever, small pox, or the black plague” and advocated an “application of every known remedy by every available force . . . until . . . each and every child in a dependent or delinquent or defective condition shall be so far as possible restored to normality.” He urged education and intervention to reduce alcoholism and venereal disease. He also unapologetically favored the removal of children from unsavory environmental influences, as did most of his generation of benevolent child savers, and argued that mothers’ pensions were generally a waste of money, insofar as they kept children trapped in “failed” homes.6 At the time he made these pronouncements in 1914, 1,442 children were under the care of WCHS, and from his perspective, there was no end in sight to the number of children needing saving—in Washington State, in the West, and in the nation.7 The moral crusade to save children and reform the nation had taken on the cast of a Sisyphean endeavor for reformers of his era. Despite adopting some of the alarmist concerns over immigration, feeble-mindedness, and the moral failures of adults, adoption advocates like Covington stridently rejected claims that children inherited moral failures from their parents. Adoption supporters refuted eugenicist arguments with strategies that spiritualized children and childhood by comparing them to delicate buds ready for grafting rather than bad seeds waiting to sow discontent and disease. A spiritualized child was a perfect child, regardless of his or her origins. Still, the grafted bud model rationalized and legitimized the notion that children came from a degenerate and decayed parent “stock” and justified saving children but not their biological parents. The idea that children could be severed from their biological families and “reborn” in better homes was derived from the concept of a spiritualized, sentimentalized, and idealized childhood of the late Victorian middle class. The optimism of the Social Gospel mission saw potential for redemption in the poor, neglected, or abused child, and adoption advocates believed that the best interest of wholly dependent children depended upon removing them from their kin and surroundings. They hoped to reform and remake the real, physical child in order to redeem the ideal, spiritual child. WCHS workers were vested in the idea that A Home for Every Child | 195

children were malleable and transplantable. Their evangelical Christian values led them to reform the real, material, and temporal in favor of the potential and ideal. From all available accounts, matrons and workers at the receiving homes were caring and affectionate; nevertheless, they took considerable license in trying to reform the bodies, minds, and souls of young children in order that they might fit into middle-class homes. Reforming a child in most cases meant treating children as a blank slate, on which a nation could record its hope for needed social reform and its desire that middle-class family values would mold national unity. Historian Stephanie Coontz has called this collective nostalgia for a unifying American family ideal a search for “the way we never were.”8 The enduring rhetoric of adoption exploited the sentimental and unifying dream of a middle-class nuclear family as the birthright of every child and the foundation for reforming a nation. Adoption advocates forcefully answered eugenicist xenophobia by successfully binding this ideal of the perfect American family to an unshakable faith in the power of love and redemption, thereby clearing a path for the creation of the new adoptive family. WCHS representatives covered countless miles throughout Washington to make emotional pleas for families to adopt homeless children as their Christian and civic duty. Thousands responded with openhearted enthusiasm to having a child to call their own—but on their own terms. Adoptive families wanted children to love and who would love in return; who would be wonderful companions or replace a beloved child in the family; who could lend a helping hand with other children and the household; or who could put in a day’s work in the fields. They received children with all the rituals and loving attention that they could muster, and drew their communities around their newly created family and family member. In the face of opinion that discouraged “taking a risk” on adoption— fear of race suicide, pseudoscientific “evidence” for racial/ethnic and class divisions, social Darwinism, and eugenics—far more people applied to adopt healthy young children than there were such children available. Most of the nation’s dependent children were not available for adoption because relatives had no intention of relinquishing them. And those who wanted to adopt often wanted very young children, especially girls, who were in great demand.

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Arguing for the perfectibility of children and the triumph of nurture over nature, adoption advocates tirelessly fought the notion that heredity determined the character and future of children. Answering the claims of eugenics, adoption advocates used the pages of the Washington Children’s Home Finder to showcase children transformed in loving homes. In the role of child advocate, WCHS and the home-placement movement generally created a protective space where children could grow up in a permanent home and avoid the misery and social stigma of homelessness. The success of home-placement societies like WCHS is documented in the tens of thousands of safe, loving homes found for wholly dependent children and in its effectively changing the cultural definition of family in the United States to include the “chick of another brood.” While the role of motherhood remained sacred in the evangelical childsaving mission of WCHS as the raison d’être for finding adoptive homes for dependent children, the biological bonds of motherhood underwent significant reassessment in the process of child relinquishment and adoption. Far from immutable, biological, God-given, and “natural,” as the rhetoric of blood motherhood would have it, motherhood became revocable, transferable, and even renewable at a later date. Without this crucial step of uncoupling mothering roles from biological relatedness, child saving through adoption could not have gained the social and political acceptance it did during the twentieth century. Adoption advocates accomplished this uncoupling through a number of strategic maneuvers that generated legitimacy, support, and power. The rewriting of laws to favor home-placement societies and to establish the juvenile court system paved the way for future public child welfare policy. The organizational reach of the society into small, rural towns to investigate child neglect and find suitable adoptive homes established a high degree of visibility and statewide hegemony for WCHS. Adoption advocates rhetorically severed the link between biological motherhood and “natural” motherhood by appropriating the nurturing aspects of biological motherhood and reassigning them to the adoptive mother. This process was expressed as a spiritual transformation akin to rebirth, which diminished the “naturalness” of the biological mother-child relationship and elevated the emotional and spiritual aspects of adoptive motherhood. The strategic rewriting of what constituted “natural” motherhood was a crucial and necessary step in redefining the family.

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t h e p e r s i st e n c e o f p ov e rt y

The need for permanent and temporary homes continued as child dependency grew with western expansion. Although the underlying causes of homelessness were economic, the home-placement movement sought moral remedies for child dependency in its early years. As a result, homeplacement societies focused on saving children from the consequences and symptoms of poverty through adoption into middle-class Christian homes. At the same time, they attempted to accommodate the emerging consensus that children should not be separated from families for reasons of poverty. The half-way solution lay in augmenting adoption with foster care, which did not require legal relinquishment. The change was reflected in practice. In 1903, before the creation of juvenile courts in Washington State, 72 percent of the children coming into the care of WCHS were placed in adoptive homes; during the latter years of this study, after the 1909 White House Conference, around 80 percent were placed in temporary foster care. The national scope of the growth of home placement was evident in the 1910 census figures, and at WCHS we can see this historic swing in child welfare policy up close: WCHS’s original mission was to find every wholly dependent child a permanent home; two decades later, it had moved toward finding foster homes for the far greater number of children needing temporary care. Adoption and foster care evolved in tandem but also in tension with NCHS’s original mission and with emerging national child welfare policy adjudicated in juvenile courts. During the Progressive Era, WCHS struggled unsuccessfully to get state lawmakers to provide money to support placement work.9 In some respects WCHS was a victim of its own early success in arguing that donation-supported private religious charities, which were not dependent on public taxes and political patronage, were morally and therefore solely qualified to manage the care of dependent children. When meager mothers’ pensions were instituted in 1913 and then were replaced by Aid to Dependent Children during the Great Depression, the need for homes for children continued to outpace the combination of available private and public resources. WCHS, orphanages, and shelters strained to provide for children during spikes in demand created by downturns in the economy, but often lacked adequate reserves when the demand—and donations— dropped off. 198 | Conclusion

State legislators remained reluctant to get involved in child care directly except to set basic safety standards, preferring instead to leave the work and fundraising to private associations. Washington State serves as one example of the situation where a patchwork of private and public child welfare service providers strove to give comprehensive care without a comprehensive state or national child welfare program to coordinate their efforts. Today, the federal government provides most of the money for the care of wholly dependent children, but states continue to struggle to stitch together private and public services without adequate infrastructure to provide the continuity of care that is needed for at-risk children and their families. Poverty alone was not considered an acceptable reason for relinquishment, although inability to provide for children was the most frequently cited contributing cause of relinquishment. This paradoxical role of poverty in homelessness and dependency is illustrated by the case histories of relinquished children whose parents were among the thousands of newcomers who looked westward at the turn of the century in order to improve their lives. Their stories provide a counterweight to the pervasive mythologies of the American West as a land of unlimited opportunity.10 Child-welfare reformers, including most adoption advocates, did not publicly condone poverty as a legitimate reason for relinquishment because poverty was perceived as a remediable and short-term problem among the virtuous poor or as a sign of shiftlessness and immorality among the undeserving poor. Thus, during the Progressive Era when child saving temporarily occupied center stage, religious reformers amplified moral “causes” for child relinquishment—drink, divorce, and desertion—while being silent on the underlying economic causes for child dependency. The deeper contributing factors included wildly fluctuating economic conditions, growing numbers of often rootless migrants moving to the West, rapid urbanization and industrialization, land and mineral speculation, homesteading failures, dangerous work in natural resource-based economies, and a volatile job market limited to male wage work.11 As historian Linda Gordon points out in The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, poverty never exists alone, but comes with symptoms of depression and an inability to provide oversight, education, adequate nutrition, and consistent protection.12 These de-emphasized and discredited but genuine causes for relinquishment contrast with the rhetoric of A Home for Every Child | 199

adoption that emphasized social mobility, social morality, and “business sense”—all virtues of the successful middle class. Dramatic population growth partially explains the continuous demand for care of dependent children in institutions and private charities in the Pacific Northwest during this period, but why were white, usually U.S.born and English-speaking children being relinquished in a state with a booming western economy? Surrounded by the magnificent resources of the Pacific Northwest— thousands of miles away from the destitute immigrant families dwelling in East Coast tenements—lived children of coal miners, shoeless and wintering in floor sacks; homesteading families lost in futile competition with new corporate farming efficiencies; a father crushed in a log drive; children left in tents while parents searched for seasonal work; and young, single, domestic servants struggling to keep themselves and their illegitimate children alive on women’s wages. The growing list of contributing factors blend into a continuous flow of western child dependency. While no single cause can be blamed for child dependency, the evidence shows that most factors were intimately tied to the very economic and social conditions that fueled the Pacific Northwest’s prosperity and growth. Labor reports provide direct evidence of the connection between the perils of western livelihoods in a boom and bust economy and the relinquishment of dependent children. Resource-based industries and manufacturing created a high rate of seasonal unemployment, injury, and transience that eroded personal relationships. Railroads, homesteading, ranching and agriculture, coal mining, forestry, shipping, and commerce all contributed to the economic booms that attracted migration west yet were notoriously vulnerable to busts, causing fathers employed at the lowest rung of these industries to be unable to support their children. Annual state labor statistics illuminate the toll that resource-intensive western expansion took on families. Mining reports routinely listed the number of injuries, deaths, widows, and orphans produced per ton of coal extracted. Child dependency and female poverty were inextricably linked then as they are today. A 1913–14 labor report compares the family wage of $3.50 per day men earned in skilled trades to the subsistence wage of 77 cents per day women earned as permanent domestic help. Very few women worked in the resource-extraction and manufacturing-based economy, although some were employed in salmon canneries or clothing mills. Young, single 200 | Conclusion

women were attracted to jobs in the rapidly urbanizing areas of Olympia, Tacoma, Seattle, and Spokane, where they were paid better than in rural areas. Should a single woman become pregnant, however, the subsistence wages paid her while she worked as a domestic servant, cook, laundress, or clerk placed her and her child at risk. One-third of the children relinquished were illegitimate. As Progressive Era social reformers on the East Coast dealt with political corruption, tenement conditions, and child labor, those in the Pacific Northwest faced dispersed pockets of rural poverty, where the death of a parent, a couple of crop failures, an injury at the mill or in the woods, or a lay-off could threaten the economic survival of an entire family. While more children were relinquished from urban areas, misery was as deep in rural places and difficult to alleviate because of the isolation. Destitution was, thus, neither an aberration in the West nor confined to the urban East. Dependent women and children who lacked food, shelter, clothing, and other basic life requirements were by-products of the booming West as real as sawdust and mill tailings. Adoption was proposed as a solution to the existing and increasing need for the care of dependent children and promised to be an inoculation against the creation of a permanent criminal or alien underclass. Yet the great majority of those relinquishing were not recent foreign immigrants, and only a tiny fraction of relinquishing parents could be called criminal. In fact, most of these parents existed at the margins of a rapidly expanding Northwest economy and were caught in a personal, but not uncommon, downward spiral of misfortune.

Th e St i ll E l u s i v e H o p e

WCHS began with a strong commitment to permanent placement in adoptive homes, but diversified in the early part of the century under the pressure of practical and ideological forces that altered the child-welfare debate. On the horizon were professionally trained social workers who brought with them a commitment to keep children with their biological parents. Under the leadership of Hastings Hart, the NCHS moved toward a pragmatic solution for the many children who were not relinquished by formalizing foster care. Reflecting these nationwide changes and under pressure from its partners in juvenile courts, WCHS initiated its own fosA Home for Every Child | 201

ter care program to help families who were struggling to stay together while continuing its commitment to adoption. Neither the White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children in 1909 nor the organization of the Federal Children’s Bureau in 1912 stemmed the increase in the number of dependent children in the United States. Each had influence, but neither had policy-making authority. The provision of mothers’ pensions in 1913 increased the likelihood that a limited number of “worthy” poor women could afford to keep their children at home, but the number of children under the care of institutions across the nation continued to climb into the 1920s.13 The Aid to Dependent Children provision of the Social Security Act passed in 1935 favored family preservation, but the number of children in some kind of out-of-home care increased. Children of color were largely excluded from benefits because of discriminatory qualification standards. Children placed for temporary care during the Depression and World War II, however, were often reunited with their biological families. E. Wayne Carp has located a decisive swing toward popular acceptance of adoption beginning between the 1930s and the 1940s, and continuing through the 1970s, in response to demands by childless couples for babies, a surge of out-of-wedlock births, a de-stigmatization of adoption, and later a wider acceptance of trans-racial adoptions.14 Most of the nation’s neediest children, however, met a different fate. After 1961, federal money for dependent children became attached to individual children and followed them into the burgeoning foster care system. After that, the stays for children in foster care grew longer, and the hope of family reunification became more elusive. As extreme poverty in the nation continued to harden along racial lines during the last century, the face of child dependency and foster care in the nation became disproportionately black. It is not surprising that the most divisive battles fought between family reunification advocates and those favoring moving children swiftly through foster care toward permanent (and overwhelmingly white) adoptive homes have been over race. One of the lasting legacies of the Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant rifts over childsaving approaches in the nineteenth century was their continued preferential selection of clients on the basis of race, religion, and ethnicity—to the exclusion of generations of the poorest African American families, who usually received the least and the worst that family services had to

202 | Conclusion

provide.15 It is notable that the WCHS did not exclude children based on race or religion from the time of its founding. Law professor Dorothy Roberts has shown that black children, who were segregated into colored orphan asylums after the Civil War, were also generally excluded from child welfare services until after World War II, when foster care started to replace private charity and case loads of black children increased.16 She argues that poor, black, urban families are the most likely to be the focus of child protection authorities, and their children are the most likely to be removed from home and placed in foster care, where they languish often until they age out of the system.17 Roberts compares the damage done to black families to that done to Indian children through the Indian Adoption Project, which was aimed at placing Indian children in non-Indian adoptive homes. She recommends a group-based approach to reuniting shattered African American families through a process of involving community, removing the coercive aspects of child welfare enforcement bent on punishing parents, and replacing them with preventative services on par with Scandinavian countries.18 Elizabeth Bartholet, on the other hand, argues in Nobody’s Children: Abuse and Neglect, Foster Drift, and the Adoption Alternative that children trapped in an endless cycle of foster care should be released from unfulfilled hopes of family reunification and placed for adoption with those willing and able to meet children’s needs—regardless of race. A step in that direction was taken with the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) of 1994 that tied trans-racial adoption to termination of parental rights. The Clinton administration’s 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) directed the federal government to double the number of foster children adopted annually to 54,000 by 2002 in order to reduce the time children spend in foster homes. Adoptions were fast-tracked and the time allowed to parents to meet guidelines to recover their children was shortened. Bartholet argues that the social bonds of adoption should be considered as valid as biological and racial ties. Using as a model the movement to protect women from domestic violence, Bartholet maintains that there should be no family rights that protect biological parents who maim or repeatedly abuse or neglect their children. Bartholet supports early intervention, removal of seriously endangered children, and strictly enforced benchmarks for progress toward recovering children from foster care. Such measures would then

A Home for Every Child | 203

be matched with placement of children in foster homes intending to adopt those children from the outset, so that if benchmarks are not met, those children could be swiftly moved through the adoption process.19 The century-old tension between family reunification and adoption continues, with foster care poised between, while those without time on their side—children in suspension—continue to age out of the system before finding a permanent home. In 2004, 50 percent of children in foster care had hope of family reunification, and 20 percent had hope of finding adoptive homes. Of more than 10,000 children in foster care in Washington State in 2006, more than 2,000 children waited in foster care for adoption. At the national level, of more than 500,000 in foster care, more than 125,000 children waited for adoptive homes.20 In extreme situations children caught in the revolving doors of foster care still experience a dozen or more placements, as did their counterparts, the traveling children of one hundred years ago. The federal government now supplies most of the money to support children in foster care and subsidizes many adoptions for the neediest children, but states continue to preside over a bewildering array of private and public services operating with inadequate infrastructure and antiquated record keeping. More than one hundred years after adoption was proposed as a way to mend children in family homes, an estimated half a million children in the United States sleep in some form of protective custody. A vastly disproportionate number of these children are poor and non-white.21 Complex economic and social causes affect the differential rates of child poverty across the United States, but no state has eradicated it. A century after the founding of WCHS, the national rate of poverty for children younger than eighteen in 2007 varies in the Pacific Northwest from a high of 19 percent in Montana to a low of 15 percent in Washington State. More than seventy thousand children under the age of five live in poverty or face other serious risks in Washington alone.22 Efforts to eliminate childhood poverty, with its inescapable link to female poverty, have stalled, suggesting deeply systemic, structural, and political problems in addressing underlying causes of child poverty and homelessness in the United States. The historical link between child and female poverty is indisputable. Women and children living in poverty, complicated by a legacy of racism, remains a morally and politically charged subject today, while their 204 | Conclusion

suffering has become a stubborn and shameful fixture of national life. Adoption and foster care are no more panaceas for the underlying causes of homelessness at the turn of the twenty-first century than they were at the turn of the twentieth, but addressing the gendered and racial nature of poverty might help untangle the seeming paradox of child dependency today, where millions of families struggle below the poverty line in one of the richest countries in the world. Significantly, many on both sides of the contemporary family reunification/adoption debate seem to agree on a cure for child dependency: the provision of basic universal entitlements available in other wealthy industrialized nations, such as living wages, universal health care, preventative social services, and affordable child care. With nearly one in five children living in poverty in the United States today, Americans might well wonder when—and if—the public might again “discover” the nation’s most vulnerable children and develop the political will to demand change.

A Home for Every Child | 205

Appendix Ta b le s 1–19

Clerk

Engineer

1

2

2

2

2

2

1%

1%

2%

2%

2%

1

1

Teamster

1

1

1

Real estate Bookkeeper

1

1

1

1

1

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1

1%

1

1

1%

1

1

1

1%

Baggage man

1

1%

Teacher

Tram conductor

Gardner

Livery stable

Stone mason

Milkman

Saloon keeper

Bar tender

1

School boy Barber

1

1

1%

Cooper

1

4

8

1

1

2

9

1

1

3

1

1

1

5

2

53

16 35

28%

1

1

1

1

1

1%

Plumber

1

1

1%

Music salesman

1

1

1%

2

1

1

Cigar maker

1

1

4

1%

1 1

1

1

1

1

1

1 1

Druggist

2

4

1% 1

2

1% 1

1

1

1 1

2

1 1 1

1

1 1

Butcher

1

Physician Unknown

21

Incarcerated TOTAL

Laborer Farmer Carpenter Coal Miner Mechanic Logger

Bookkeeper

Real estate

Teamster

Clerk

Engineer

Salesman

Weaver

Cook

Soldier

Railroad

Mill Worker

Occupation

African American

1

1

1

1

2

1

1

7 1

Ethnicity Unknown

1

Austrian 1

Australian Canadian Chinese 1

1

English

Filipino

1

Finnish

French

1

3

2

1

Irish 1

German

1

Polish Russian

1

Portuguese

Native American

1

1

1

1

Norwegian

Scandinavian

1

1

Scot

Spanish

1

10 25

20%

2

1

1

1

1

1

1

2

2

1

1

1

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

3

2

3

3

5

6

7

Total

1

1%

1%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

4%

5%

6%

2

Percent

4

1

United States

1

Swedish

table 1. Nationality and Occupations of Birth Fathers

Bohemian

United States UK and Ireland

Europe Other China and Japan

Canada TOTal Known status (%)

8

4

5

5

2

2

3

1

2

1

2

0

0

0

0

1

table 2. Nationality and Status Summary of Birth Mothers, 1896–1915*

11 3 1 0

1 24

1 1 0

1 13

0 0 0

3 9

2 1 0

0 8 9%

1 0 0

1 8 9%

1 0 0

0 4 5%

0 0 0

0 4 5%

0 0 0

0 3 3%

0 0 0

1 2 2%

0 0 0

0 2 2%

0 0 0

0 2 2%

0

0

0

0

2

2%

0

0

0

0

1

1%

0

1

0

0

1

1%

0

1

0

0

1

1%

1

0

0

0

1

1%

1%

1

0

0

0

0

0

73 12 10 1

7 134

28% 15% 10%

0

Switchboard Operator

0

Printer

0

Milliner

1

Jail

0

Cook 1

Stenographer 0

Poor farm 0

Maid 0

Laundry 2

Nursing 1

“Works out”

1

Waitress

0

Wife

2

Sales Clerk

2

None

8

Dead

31

Domestic

*Table does not include the work status of a birthmother unless her nationality was also recorded.

210 | Appendix

Nationality

table 3. Birthplace of Seattle Residents and Known Nationality of Birth Parents Nationality of birth mothers 1896–1915

Birthplace of Seattle residents 1910 Birthplace

Nationality of birth fathers 1896–1913

Population

Percent

Population

Percent

Population

Percent

United States

169,738

71.6

73

54.5

55

53.4

U.K. and Ireland

11,721

4.9

12

9.0

15

14.6

Canada

10,708

4.5

7

5.2

1

1.0

China and Japan

6,476

2.7

1

0.7

2

1.9

Europe

35,242

14.9

31

23.1

28

27.2

Other

3,309

1.4

10

7.5

2

1.9

237,194

100

134

100

103

100

TOTAL

table 4. Causes for Relinquishment Cause

Cases

Percent

Illegitimacy

95

33

Death of a parent

54

19

Abandonment

51

18

Cause unstated

24

8

Death of both parents

18

6

Divorce

18

6

Neglect/abuse

14

5

Placement with relative

9

3

Destitution

5

2

Parent retarded/insane

1

0

289

100

TOTALS

Appendix | 211

table 5. Relinquishment of Illegitimate Children as Percent of Sample Year

Sample

Illegitimate

Percent

1896

5

1

20

1897

6

2

33

1898

6

3

50

1899

5

0

0

1900

5

2

40

1901

3

1

33

1902

5

1

20

1903

10

4

40

1904

13

5

38

1905

11

1

9

1906

18

3

17

1907

18

2

11

1908

20

8

40

1909

23

6

26

1910

19

8

42

1911

28

10

36

1912

23

9

39

1913

24

11

46

1914

24

15

63

1915

23

3

13

289

95

33

TOTALS

212 | Appendix

table 6. Age of Women Bearing Children Out of Wedlock Age

Cases

Percent

14–17

15

24

18–20

27

44

21–29

15

24

5

8

62

100

30+ TOTAL

table 7. Age of Illegitimate Children at Relinquishment Correlated to Deaths Age at relinquishment

Cases

Deaths

1–3 days

10

2

20

4–10 days

14

2

14

11–21 days

18

4

22

22–27 days

9

3

33

1–2 months

21

4

19

3–4 months

7

0

0

5–6 months

2

0

0

7–8 months

3

0

0

9–10 months

5

0

0

12–23 months (1 year)

0

0

0

24–35 months (2 years)

2

0

0

36–47 months (3 years)

0

0

0

4–5 years

1

0

0

9–11 years

2

0

0

12 and older

1

0

0

95

15

16

TOTAL

Percent

table 8. Comparative Statistics of Children Coming Into the Care of WCHS 1903

1904

1905*

1906

1907

1908

1909

7

11

8

15

18

28

28

Received during year

101

124

*

135

182

200

215

Returned for re-placement

43

62

*

74

96

103

113

Total number for year

151

197

*

224

296

331

356

Temporary care/assisted/ investigated

35

100

*

140

172

297

437

First-time placement

90

99

*

73

80

88

102

Total number re-placed

35

55

*

187

232

258

286

Sent to other institutions

*

*

*

3

4

1

2

Returned to relatives or friends

9

19

*

6

16

27

25

Deceased at receiving home

6

4

*

10

13

16

13

Otherwise disposed of

*

*

*

0

3

1

1

Children on hand

11

8

13

18

28

28

29

Total number of registered wards

*

*

*

773

955

1155

1370

Returned/received during year (%)

43

50

*

55

53

52

53

Returned/total number for year (%)

28

32

*

33

32

31

32

Returned/placed first time (%)

48

63

*

101

120

117

111

Returned to relatives/ friends/total for year (%)

6

10

*

3*

5

8

7

Deceased/total number for year (%)

4

2

*

4

4

5

4

On hand at beginning of year

214 | Appendix

1906

1907

1908

1909

1910

1911

1912

1913

1914

1915

15

18

28

28

29

33

41

53

40

35

135

182

200

215

217

217

301

222

237

242

74

96

103

113

138

143

184

170

163

167

224

296

331

356

384

393

526

445

440

444

140

172

297

437

695

1151

1143

1182

886

*

73

80

88

102

194

269

269

214

236

228

187

232

258

286

351

304

417

161

405

*

3

4

1

2

9

6

17

7

7

*

6

16

27

25

17

29

32

19

22

139

10

13

16

13

6

11

4

3

3

12

0

3

1

1

3

2

3

3

3

12

18

28

28

29

33

41

53

40

35

48

773

955

1155

1370

1587

1804

2105

2327

2564

*

55

53

52

53

64

66

61

77

69

69

33

32

31

32

36

36

35

38

37

38

101

120

117

111

71

78

68

79

69

73

3*

5

8

7

4

7

6

4

5

31

4

4

5

4

2

3

1

1

1

3

*Data missing Appendix | 215

table 9. Statistics on Relinquished Children by Reason Relinquished

Percent with siblings

Number adopted

Percent adopted

9

9.4

62

64.6

50

28

56.0

25

50.0

Maternal death

37

32

86.5

14

37.8

Abuse/neglect

18

10

55.6

2

11.1

Paternal death

17

10

58.8

5

29.4

Divorce

17

14

82.4

5

29.4

Full orphan

16

12

75.0

4

25.0

Destitution

6

4

66.7

2

33.3

TOTAL

257

119

46.3

119

46.3

Total without illegitimate children

161

110

68.3

57

35.4

Stated cause

Total

Illegitimate

96

Deserted

Number with siblings

216 | Appendix

Number adopted

Percent adopted

Number returned to relatives

Percent returned to relatives

Average number of placements

62

64.6

4

4.2

1.02

1.02

25

50.0

7

14.0

2.16

4.48

14

37.8

9

24.3

1.43

7.00

2

11.1

5

27.8

1.27

7.44

5

29.4

10

58.8

1.71

8.23

5

29.4

10

58.8

1.29

6.23

4

25.0

0

0.0

2.81

8.62

2

33.3

0

0.0

1.60

6.66

119

46.3

45

17.5

1.51

4.43

57

35.4

41

25.5

1.80

6.46

Appendix | 217

Average age received

table 10. Status of Children by Sex and Number of Placements Boys (n=140) Status of child placements Status Unknown

Girls (n=145)

Number

Subtotal

Percent

Number

Subtotal

  29

29

21

22

22

Percent 15

Adopted after x placements 0x

5

1x

43

2x

1

3x

2

4x

 

 

4

 

62 

 

 

7

 

 

1

 

 

1

 

5x

 

 

 

Total

 

51

36

8

6

Contracted

8

  75 

52

9

9

6

3

3

2

Child died before x

7

 

 

after x

9

16

11

 

Returned to relatives 0x

11

 

13

 

1x

6

 

3

 

2x

3

 

3

 

3x

2

 

3

 

4x

1

 

2

 

5x 

 

1

 

12x 

 

1

 

Total 

23

16

 

26

18

Removed from adoptive home

  1

1

1

2

2

1

Could not be placed

  2

2

1

1

1

1

Left foster home

  10

10

7

7

7

5

TOTAL

 140

140

100

145

145

100

table 11. Age of Adoptive Parents (n=188) Adoptive Fathers Age not stated

Adoptive Mothers

Number 32

Ages

Number

not stated

28

under 21

1

21–25

6

21–25

16

26–30

20

26–30

36

31–35

35

31–35

33

36–40

34

36–40

25

41–45

20

41–45

23

46–50

19

46–50

14

51–55

8

51–55

6

56–60

8

56–60

4

61–65

5

61–65

0

66–70

0

66–70

1

over 70

1

over 70

1

Appendix | 219

table 12. Number of Children in Household at Adoption and Stated Reasons for Adoption Number of children in household

Number in placement group

no response

46

24

0

87

46

love of children, relative adoption

1

27

14

vacancy in family, to adopt as own, love of children, to love/be loved

2

12

6

want child of another sex, completing family, adoptions by ministers’ families

3

8

4

includes four families living on farms or ranches

4

6

3

farmers, stockman, wood products, laborer with four grown children

5

1

1

tanner with five grown boys wants another older boy

6

0

0

7

1

1

188

99

TOTAL

Percent

220 | Appendix

Reasons given for adoption

Chinese family asks for a specific Chinese child

table 13. Reasons for Adopting by Adoptive Mother’s Age Percent with children

Cases

Percent

Number with children

no response

28

15

0

0

information thin, contracts, death of an adoptive parent

18–25

16

9

3

19

unable to have babies, death of infant, relative adoption

26–30

36

19

3

8

wanting children, other diverse reasons

31–35

33

18

8

24

requests specific child, specific qualities in a child

36–40

25

13

25

100

to fill vacancy, companionship, death in family

41–45

23

12

10

43

love and company, specific child/ qualities/siblings

47–50

14

7

4

29

to love/have love, to give home, comfort in old age

51–55

7

4

7

100

specific child, companionship, grown children

56–59

4

2

2

50

grown children, relative adoption

60–69

0

0

0

0

70–75

2

1

0

0

188

100

188

 

Maternal Age

TOTAL

Appendix | 221

Reasons given for adoption

to assist with housework

table 14. Child Age Preferred by Adoptive Parents (n=188)* Preferred

Number

Percent

no preference

86

46

0–3 years

63

34

4–8 years

17

9

9 and older

22

12

188

101

TOTAL

*Not all applicants stated a preference, and not all

dispositions of children included forms for indicating preferences.

table 15. Preferred Sex of Child (n=188)* Preference

Number

Percent

None

78

41

Female

60

32

Male

50

27

TOTAL

188

100

*Not all applicants indicated a preferred sex, and

not all dispositions of children included forms for indicating a preference.

222 | Appendix

table 16. Correlation of Age Requested and Received Requested/received correlation

Number

Percent

No requested age/received child 0–3

49

27

No requested age/received child 4–8

21

12

No requested age/received child 9+

16

9

Requested age 0–3/received child 0–3

53

29

Requested age 0–3/received child 4–8

8

4

Requested age 0–3 /received child 9+

0

0

Requested age 4–8/received child 0–3

7

4

Requested age 4–8 /received child 4–8

4

2

Requested age 4–8/received child 9+

4

2

Requested age 9+/received child 0–3

0

0

Requested age 9+/received child 4–8

7

4

Requested age 9+/received child 9+

12

7

181

100

TOTAL

Note: 48 percent of adoptive parents did not specify an age (86). Of those who did request children of specific ages (95): 73 percent (69) received children of the age requested; 87 percent (83) received children the age requested or younger; and 13 percent (12) received children older than they requested.

Appendix | 223

table 17. Correlation of Sex Requested and Received Requested/received correlation

Number

Percent

No request/received male

40

22

No request/received female

43

23

Requested male/received male

7

4

Requested male/received female

37

20

Requested female/received female

48

26

Requested female/received male

10

5

TOTAL

185

100

Note: 42 percent of adoptive parents did not request a child of a specific sex. Of those who did make a request (108), 84 percent (91) received a child of the sex they requested.

table 18. Correlation of Sex and Age Request Match Sex/age correlation

Number

Percent

Request for sex and age matched

56

63

Request for sex and age not matched

33

37

TOTAL

89

100

224 | Appendix

table 19. Children in Institutions and in Homes under Institutional Oversight at End of Year, Pacific Division, 1904, 1910 In homes under oversight 1910

In institutions 1904

In institutions 1910

4,680

5,620

718

Oregon

255

563

702

Washington

359

639

663

5,294

6,822

California

Division TOTAL

2,083

Statistics from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Benevolent Institutions, 1910, 31, table 23. Statistics reflect an attempt by 1910 to distinguish between children in institutions and those under the care of institutions but placed in homes.

Appendix | 225

notes

Pr eface

1 2 3

Melina, Raising Adopted Children and Making Sense of Adoption. Coontz, The Way We Never Were, 68–76. P. Hart, “A Nation’s Need for Adoption and Competing Realities: The Washington Children’s Home Society,” in Adoption in America: Historical Perspectives, ed. E. Wayne Carp, 140–59.

I ntroduction

1 2 3

4

“Children of the Coal Mines,” WCHF 14, no. 8 (Dec. 1910): 7. Riis, How the Other Half Lives and The Children of the Poor. State of Washington Bureau of Labor, First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor of the State of Washington, 1897–1898 (Olympia, WA: Gwin Hicks, 1899), 9–10, 14, 79–81, 116; Meinig, “Spokane and the Inland Empire: Historical Geographic Systems and a Sense of Place,” 13–19; Rasmussen, “A Century of Farming in the Inland Empire,” 33–40; Schwantes, “Spokane and the Wageworkers’ Frontier: A Labor History to World War I,” 127. McGregor, “From Sheep Range to Agribusiness: A Case History of Agricul-

227

5

6 7

8 9

10

11

12 13 14 15 16

tural Transformation on the Columbia Plateau,” 84–98; State of Washington Bureau of Labor, First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor, 88–92; and Rasmussen, “A Century of Farming,” 37–38. Ficken, The Forested Land, 68–70, 72, 79–80; Cox, Mills and Markets, 244– 54, 292–94; Prouty, More Deadly than War, 8–13, 44; Dahlie, “Old World Paths in the New: Scandinavians Find a Familiar Home in Washington,” 105; and State of Washington Bureau of Labor, First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor, 99–100, 105–6, 144–47. State of Washington Bureau of Labor, First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor, 117–27. Schwantes, “Unemployment, Disinheritance, and the Origins of Labor Militancy in the Pacific Northwest, 1885–86,” 179–94; Schwantes, Radical Heritage, 22–29. State of Washington Bureau of Labor, First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor, 94–96. In fact, the fire was scarcely a setback compared to that of 1873, when city officials had wined, dined, and offered extravagant incentives to lure the Northern Pacific Railroad to locate the terminus of the first transcontinental line to Seattle, only to be jilted in favor of Tacoma. Following slow growth and a serious economic slump in the mid-1880s, Seattle was at last connected in the late 1880s to the nation by transcontinental railroad in a route directly over the Cascades. However, prosperity spurred by the railroads was ended by the nationwide financial 1893 panic and depression that put thousands of wage workers in the Puget Sound area out of jobs. Sale, Seattle, 37–49; Morgan, Skid Road, 159–68; Mighetto and Montgomery, Hard Drive to the Klondike, 18–67; State of Washington Bureau of Labor, First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor, 158–59. Sale, “Premier City of the Northwest, 1890–1910,” in Seattle, 50–93; Murray, “John Considine and the Box-Houses, 1893–1910,” in Skid Road, 116–58; “View of Seattle, Washington, in 1891,” drawn by Augustus Koch, printed by Hughes Litho, Chicago, Illinois, reprinted in Reps, Cities of the American West, plate 31. MacDonald, Distant Neighbors, 60. Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest, 254–57; State of Washington Bureau of Labor, First Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor, 159. Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled, 6. U.S. Census, 1900, Vol. 1, Pt. 1, 686–89, 710, 713: and U.S. Census, 1910, Vol. 1, 730–34, 770–71, as cited in MacDonald, Distant Neighbors, 58–60. Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled, 7; MacDonald, Distant Neighbors, 44–45, 58–63.

228 | Notes to Introduction

Chap ter 1

1

W. D. Wood, “The Homeless Child” (address delivered at the annual meeting of the Washington Children’s Home Society, June 24, 1906). Reprinted in Washington Children’s Home Finder (hereafter referred to in the notes as WCHF) 10, no. 2 (July 1906): 4–9. 2 Wood, “The Homeless Child,” 8. 3 H. D. Brown, “History of the Washington Children’s Home Society,” ii, 8. H. D. Brown had been transferred in 1887 from the North Dakota Conference to the Puget Sound Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, where he served as a pastor. Brown loved the beauty of the Northwest, but at the death of his wife, Maggie Day Brown, he accepted a transfer back to Nebraska, where he first became interested in the work of the Children’s Home Society. After the wife of the state superintendent of the Children’s Home Society in Nebraska addressed Brown’s congregation, he decided to visit the NCHS headquarters in Chicago. In September 1895, Brown was appointed superintendent for the then-nonexistent Oregon and Washington branch of the national society and shortly after had the appointment approved at the annual conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 4 H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 4, 9–10. Libbie Beach Hoel already had extensive child rescue experience, having previously taught at the Boys’ Reform School in Minnesota. At the Home for the Friendless, she placed children in homes (when they could be found), supervised placements, and made home visits. A match of vocations was made between Brown and Hoel. According to H. D. Brown, “Mrs. Hoel and I agreed that we would accomplish more and better work by uniting our efforts, and, on October 3, 1895, we were married and soon after proceeded to the Pacific Northwest where Mrs. Brown became widely known as ‘Mrs. Libbie Beach Brown.’” In hindsight, Brown saw the merger of Libbie Brown’s experience and his position in the church as divinely intended to “open the way” to finding Christian homes for dependent children. 5 “Preacher’s Meeting,” including the text of H. D. Brown’s address to the Methodist Preacher’s Meeting in Seattle, WCHF 7, no. 4 (October 1904): 2. 6 H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 2. 7 Children’s Era (Davenport, IA) 2 (March 1890): 5, as cited in E. White, “History and Development,” 31, 62–63. 8 Children’s Home Finder (Chicago) 2 (June 1893): 27, as cited in E. White, “History and Development,” 41–42. 9 “Preacher’s Meeting,” 2. 10 H. D. Brown, “History,” 5–6.

Notes to Chapter 1 | 229

11 “Early History in the Society,” remarks of Libbie Beach Brown delivered at the opening ceremonies of the receiving home, reprinted in WCHF 14, no. 2 (July 1910): 4; and H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 4. 12 Libbie Brown acted as H. D. Brown’s official replacement as state superintendent of the WCHS for a time when he served as pastor of a local church due to financial necessity. H. D. Brown remained fully active in the business of the WCHS during this time. 13 Libbie Brown’s speaking ability was demonstrated in 1898 in an address at the Plymouth Congregational Church’s annual meeting, where W. D. Wood, Everett Smith, later to become judge of the King County Superior Court and WCHS legal adviser, John Schramm, a well-established businessman, and Ebenezer Shorrock, a prominent banker, became loyal supporters of the society’s work helping to draft legislation regarding dependent children, which also legitimized WCHS work (H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 5; and L. B. Brown, “Early History,” 4–5). 14 The most complete analysis of the debate over deinstitutionalizing children is Matthew A. Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage. 15 Carp, “Orphanages vs. Adoption,” 125–26. 16 McKeown, “Claiming the Poor,” 145–50. 17 Carp, “Professional Social Workers,” 161–84. 18 Children’s Home Finder (Chicago) 12 (April 1905): 7–12, as cited in E. White, “History and Development,” 61. 19 Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage, 51. 20 Studies focused on orphanages of this period include Nurith Zmora, Orphanages Reconsidered, and Kenneth Cmiel, A Home of Another Kind. Some orphanages sought to incorporate more humane reforms, including building smaller, cottage-style accommodations. 21 The New York Children’s Aid Society became a member of the National Children’s Home Society in 1906. On the New York Children’s Aid Society and Charles Loring Brace, see LeRoy Ashby, Endangered Children, 35–54; Marilyn Holt, The Orphan Trains, especially “A Plan for Little Wanderers,” 41–79; Stephen O’Connor, Orphan Trains, xii–xxi, 251–57; and Linda Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, 8–11. 22 Holt, Orphan Trains, 162. 23 H. Hart, “The Evolution of the Child-Placing Movement,” in Prevention and Treatment of Neglected Children, 215–24. 24 For a succinct summary of the Massachusetts Plan, see Crenson, Building the Invisible Orphanage, 50–53. 25 Calkins, “Boarding Out of Dependent Children in Massachusetts,” 157–59, 161. 26 Ibid., 160. 230 | Notes to Chapter 1

27 “Minutes and Discussion,” Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (hereafter referred to in notes as PNCCC), 1902, 405. 28 Jeffrey R. Brackett, “Tendencies in Care of Destitute and Neglected Children in Massachusetts,” PNCCC, 1911, 93–98. 29 E. White, “History and Development,” 20. 30 Children’s Home Finder (Chicago) 5 (August 1892), 8–9, as cited in E. White, “History and Development,” 20, 28. 31 H. D. Brown, “History,” 7–8. 32 Children’s Home Finder (Chicago) 1 (March 1892), 4, as cited in E. White, “History and Development” 15. 33 E. White, “History and Development,” 20–23. 34 Ibid.,” 25–27; and Home Life for Children 12, no. 4 (1923): 4. 35 E. White, “History and Development,” 29. 36 Children’s Era (Davenport, IA) 2 (August 1891): 6, cited in E. White, “History and Development,” 39. 37 The Children’s Home Finder (Chicago) 3 (March 1894): 20, cited in E. White, “History and Development,” 41. 38 F. M. Gregg, “Placing Out Children,” PNCCC, 1892, 417. The states were Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, California, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Tennessee, with preparatory work in other states. 39 E. White, “History and Development,” 39. 40 Children’s Home Finder (Chicago) 1 (October 1891): 9; 3 (June 1894): 8; 3 (September 1893): 3; cited in E. White, “History and Development,” 44. 41 Children’s Home Finder (Chicago) 7 (September 1899): 6, as cited in E. White, “History and Development,” 59. “Echoes from the Children’s Conference at Washington, D. C.,” WCHF 12, no. 10 (March 1909): 3–5. 42 E. White, “History and Development,” 60. 43 “Echoes from the Children’s Conference at Washington, D. C.,” WCHF 12, no. 10 (March 1909): 3–5. 44 For a full exploration of The Delineator series, see Julie Berebitsky, Like Our Very Own, especially chapter 2, “Rescue a Child and Save the Nation: The Social Construction of Adoption in the Delineator, 1907–1911,” 51–74. 45 “The Greatest Act in the Administration of President Roosevelt,” WCHF 12, no. 9 (February 1909): 3. 46 Proceedings of the Conference on the Care of Dependent Children, Washington, D.C., June 25–26, 1909, Serial Set 5400, S.Doc. 721, 60th Congress, 2nd Session, December 7, 1908–March 4, 1909, Senate Documents, Vol. 13, Washington, D.C., GPO, 1909, 5–6; “Conference On the Care of Dependent Children,” WCHF 12, no. 9 (February 1909): 3–4.

Notes to Chapter 1 | 231

47 Roosevelt’s endorsement was used in a speech titled “The City and the Child,” delivered by Hastings Hart to the Civic Institute, sponsored by the Social Service Club of Seattle, excerpts reprinted in “The Civic Institute,” WCHF 13, no. 12 (May 1910): 6–7. 48 “Civic Institute,” 6. 49 Daggett, “Where 100,000 Children Wait,” 773–76, 858–62. 50 “Two Thousand Homes for Christmas: Through Our Efforts Fully This Number of Children Will Spend the Holidays with New-Found Parents,” The Delineator (December 1910): 515. 51 Calkins, “Boarding Out of Dependent Children in Massachusetts,” 158. 52 J. Wickersham, “Washington Territory,” PNCCC, 1886, 342–43; Rev. W. D. McFarland, “Washington Territory,” PNCCC, 1886, 343; and J. Wickersham, “Washington Territory,” PNCCC, 1887, 69. 53 McFarland, “Washington Territory,” 343. 54 “Washington,” PNCCC, 1894, 257. 55 Superintendents of State Institutions, “Washington,” PNCCC, 1895, 390. 56 Lucas, Seattle Children’s Home, 1884–1984. 57 Because WCTU members in Washington Territory had the vote and used it in campaigns against saloons, saloon interests retaliated, and the Washington Supreme Court disenfranchised women on a technicality of the law. On the growth and activity of women’s clubs in Washington, and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, see Sandra Haarsager, Organized Womanhood, chapter 2, “‘Our Little Bands’: The WCTU in the Pacific Northwest, 1880–1900,” 63–99. 58 Thomas P. Westendorf, Corresponding Secretary, “Washington,” PNCCC, 1896, 98–99. 59 Haarsager, Organized Womanhood, chapter 8, “‘The Women’s Century’: A Host of Progressive Movements, 1895–1915,” 251–84. 60 McKeown, “Claiming the Poor,” 145–59. 61 “The Children’s Orthopedic Hospital,” WCHF 14, no. 10 (March 1911): 3; and “Reception by Mrs. Reed,” WCHF 14, no. 9 (February 1911): 5. 62 Durand, “The Study of the Child from the Standpoint of the Home-Finding Agency,” PNCCC, 1907, 256–64; reprinted in WCHF 11, no. 2 (July 1907): 8–11. District superintendents were eliminated in 1928 at WCHS with the reorganization and professionalization of the society under the Rev. Robert B. Ralls, formerly state superintendent of the Nebraska society. He replaced district superintendents with district case supervisors, hired trained case workers, and modernized methods of recording and standardizing case work. H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 10. 63 Washington State had a handful of districts and dozens of advisory boards.

232 | Notes to Chapter 1

64

65 66 67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

76 77 78

79

80

The largest societies had as many as 1,000 local boards (Iowa) in 1907; Illinois had 640 and Michigan more than 200 (Durand, “Study of the Child,” 258). “Value of Local Boards,” and L. J. Covington, “The Advisory Board,” WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 2; “Duties of the Local Advisory Board,” WCHF 10, no. 9 (February 1907): 8. “The Local Advisory Board,” WCHF 12, no. 6 (November 1908): 6. “Local Advisory Boards,” WCHF 10, no. 12 (May 1907): 3. To give an indication of the distribution of 217 new cases reported in 1910: 32 came from King County, 27 from Spokane County, and 6 from Pierce County juvenile courts; 32 came from superior courts of smaller counties, 109 from parents’ assignments, 3 from guardians, and 8 from county commissioners. Seattle had 52 cases; Spokane 46; Tacoma 23; North Yakima 13; Roslyn 9; Burlington 8; and 46 came from other towns and rural areas. “Annual Report of the State Superintendent,” WCHF 14, no. 1 (June 1910): 6. Also see “Our Relation to the Rural Counties,” WCHF 18, nos. 7 and 8 (January/February 1915): 4. H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 5. Durand, “Study of the Child,” 256–61. L. B. Brown, “Early History in the Society,” 5–6. H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 5; and L. B. Brown, “Early History,” 4–5. H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 8; and “Election of Superintendent,” WCHF 9, no. 1 (July 1905): 3. “The Annual Report of the State Superintendent,” WCHF 12, no. 1 (June 1908): 6. Ibid., 3–4. H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 7. Judge Everett Smith, a member of the WCHS Board of Trustees from 1903 to 1912, was elevated to the Washington State Superior Court in 1912. “Preacher’s Meeting,” 2. “The Conference of Charities,” WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 2. See, for example, “Charity Organization Society,” WCHF 10, no. 5 (October 1906): 6–7; “A Fierce Battle,” WCHF 12, no. 9 (February 1909): 6; “The Curfew Law,” WCHF 6, no. 11 (April 1904): 2; “Legislation in Which We Are Interested,” WCHF 12, no. 8 (January 1909): 3; and “Sees Necessity of Prison Reform,” WCHF 11, no. 5 (October 1907): 5–7. Austin E. Griffiths, State Corresponding Secretary, “Washington,” PNCCC, 1904, 107–8; “The Conference of Charities,” WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 2. “Legislation,” WCHF 10, no. 10 (March 1907): 6–7; “The Annual Report of

Notes to Chapter 1 | 233

81

82

83

84 85

86

87

88

89 90 91 92

the State Superintendent,” (June 1908): 5. Legislation to revise the 1907 parent delinquency law was introduced in 1909 (“Parental Delinquency Law,” WCHF 13, no. 1 [June 1909]: 13–14). The role played by women’s groups in passing Progressive Era legislation in Seattle is documented by Sandra Haarsager in Bertha Knight Landes of Seattle. See also, “A Recent Victory,” WCHF 14, no. 9 (February 1911): 4–5. “Is It Fair?” WCHF 15, no. 12 (May 1912): 6; “The People Should Rule Through the Use of the Initiative and Referendum,” WCHF 14, no. 10 (March 1911): 6–7. “List of Charities Indorsed [sic],” WCHF 12, no. 7 (December 1908): 6; and Annie [Anna] Louise Strong, “The Regulation of Children’s Home,” WCHF 12, no. 12 (May 1909): 6–8. Strong, “Regulation of Children’s Home,” 6–8. “Warning,” WCHF 11, no. 7 (December 1907): 11; and “Our Good Name,” WCHF 12, no. 4 (September 1908): 8. Besides WCHS, the first charities endorsed by the business community in 1908 were the Charity Organization Society, the Seattle Children’s Home, Children’s Volunteers of America, Salvation Army, the Children’s Orthopedic Hospital, Florence Crittenton Mission, and the Lebanon Rescue Home. In 1909, they added the Girl’s Home and Training School, which was not yet built. “A Trinity of Reasons Why” included 1) because it is the best way; 2) because it is the least expensive; and 3) because it is efficient (WCHF, Supplement Washington Children’s Home Finder 12, no. 9 [February 1909]). “The Child-placing Method Peculiarly Adopted to Western Methods,” the comments of the Reverend O. P. Christian, State Superintendent of the Children’s Home Finding and Aid Society of Idaho, reprinted in WCHF 13, no. 1 (June 1909): 12. Christian saw Children’s Home Society agencies in the West providing special services to children who lived in areas remote from church and school, kept “captive” in filthy, vermin infected homes, where they were early taught to drink. Children’s Home Societies reached into the rural areas through its advisory boards (13). On different “values” placed on children in American history, see Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child, especially 169–207. “Misconception,” WCHF 10, no. 12 (May 1907): 7; and “Average Cost Per Child for Permanent Care,” WCHF 19, no. 4 (February 1916): 3. “Emergency Fund,” WCHF 13, no. 4 (September 1909): 3. “The Annual Report” (June 1908): 7. Ibid., 9. Ashby, Endangered Children, 3, 101. Such pensions evolved into Aid to Dependent Children in the 1930s but were even then woefully inadequate to meet needs and were awarded on “vague ‘moral fitness’ issues” (112). For 234 | Notes to Chapter 1

a discussion of maternalism, the family wage, and mothers’ pensions, see Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, chapter 3, “State Caretakers: Maternalism, Mothers’ Pensions, and the Family Wage,” 37–64. 93 “Five Years,” WCHF 14, no. 5 (October 1910): 3. 94 “Annual Report,” WCHF 14, no. 1 (June 1910): 6. 95 “Superintendent’s Annual Report,” WCHF 15, no. 1 (June 1911): 9. 96 Ibid. 97 “The Sixteenth Annual Report of the Washington Children’s Home Society,” WCHF 16, no. 1 (June 1912): 3. 98 “The Eighteenth Annual Report of the Washington Children’s Home Society,” WCHF 18, no. 1 (August 1914): 5. 99 “The Seventeenth Annual Report of the Washington Children’s Home Society,” WCHF 17, no. 1 (June 1913): 5. 100 “Washington’s New Legislation for Children and Families,” WCHF 16, no. 11 (April 1913), 4. 101 Frater and Merrill, Why Children Go Wrong, 8. 102 “The Sixteenth Annual Report” (June 1912): 6; “Child Welfare Crisis,” WCHF 18, nos. 7 and 8 (January/February 1915): 3. 103 “Purpose,” WCHF 18, nos. 7 and 8 (January/February 1915): 3. 104 E. White, “History and Development,” 57–75. 105 This sets back by more than a decade the usual date fixed for the first amateur adoption agencies, e.g., Alice Chapin Adoption Nursery (New York, 1911); Child Adoption Committee (New York, 1916); and The Cradle Society, in addition to a range of other less formal and unregulated agents. 106 Carp provides a succinct and convincing argument that demonstrates the power of anti-adoption forces in his “Orphanages vs. Adoption,” 123–43, and in Family Matters, 17–21. 107 The Idaho Children’s Home Finding and Aid Society (Boise), Montana Children’s Home Society (Helena), Oregon Boys’ and Girls’ Aid Society (Portland), and the WCHS were all members in 1910. National Children’s Home Society et al., “Directory National Children’s Home Society,” Children’s Charities (Chicago) 17, no. 11 (November 1910).

Chap ter 2

1 2

“The Ray Sansom Case,” WCHF 6, no.9 (February 1904): 1. Various spellings of the child’s last name appear in stories. Grossberg, Governing the Hearth, 237–59. Grossberg contends that a republican family model replaced a hierarchical, patriarchal model after the American Revolution. Authority for raising children was transferred to Notes to Chapters 1 and 2 | 235

3

4

5



women, and children were seen more as potential citizens, less as male possessions. By extension, rights residing in biological parents generally were diluted, creating the possibility for surrogate parents to acquire custody. The increased significance assigned to mothering roles during the Progressive Era in America is widely documented and noted elsewhere. See, for example, Theda Skocpol, “Expanding the Separate Sphere: Women’s Civic Action and Political Reforms in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, on the role of the National Congress of Mothers, founded in 1897 with the focus of spreading maternal influence throughout society (333–40). The urgency about motherhood, however, was not a phenomenon confined to the United States. In her study of poor mothers in London, Ellen Ross points out that mothers were “discovered” by social thinkers in Great Britain between 1870 and 1918, when mothers came under the scrutiny of the state and were held responsible for schooling children in specific ways prescribed by home visitors and later by professionals. This “marriage of mother and state,” Ross points out, is a distinct product of this era. See Ross, Love and Toil, 5, 23–26. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Abstract of the Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Vol. II, 88–89. For an analysis of the undercount of working women in the census, see Christine E. Bose, “Devaluing Women’s Work: The Undercount of Women’s Employment in 1900 and 1980,” in Hidden Aspects of Women’s Work, ed. Christine Bose, Roslyn Feldberg, and Natalie Sokoloff, 95–115. Washington Industrial Welfare Commission, “Minimum Wage Law for Women, State of Washington, 1913”; Washington Industrial Welfare Commission, “Report of the Industrial Welfare Commission of the State of Washington on the Wages, Conditions of Work, and Cost and Standards of Living of Women Wage-earners in Washington,” prepared by Caroline J. Gleason; and Washington Industrial Welfare Commission, “Biennial Report,” prepared by Caroline J. Gleason. The best historical analyses of the role of gender in defining wages for women are Alice Kessler-Harris, A Woman’s Wage, particularly the chapter “The Wage Conceived: Value and Need as Measures of a Woman’s Work,” 6–32; Kessler-Harris, “Independence and Virtue in the Lives of WageEarning Women,” in Women in Culture and Politics, ed. Judith Friedlander et al., 3–17; Kessler-Harris, Out to Work; and Kessler-Harris, “A New Agenda for American Labor History,” in Perspectives on American Labor History, ed. J. Carroll Moody and Alice Kessler-Harris. Also see Susan Lehrer, “A Living Wage Is for Men Only,” in Hidden Aspects of Women’s Work, ed. Christine Bose et al., 201–21. For the role gender played in segregating employment, see Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Wage-Earning Women, 13–25. 236 | Notes to Chapter 2

For the significance of ethnicity and race in influencing women’s employment, see Elizabeth H. Pleck, “A Mother’s Wages,” in A Heritage of Her Own, ed. Nancy F. Cott and Elizabeth H. Pleck, 367–92. 6 See Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community; “The Emergence of Black Communities in the Pacific Northwest,” 342–54; “Black Urban Development—Another View,” 429–48; and “Blacks and Asians in a White City,” 401–29. 7 Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls, 134–41. 8 For a description of typical case history methods before the 1920s, see Karen W. Tice, Tales of Wayward Girls and Immoral Women, 38–40. 9 The remarks of Mrs. Libbie Beach Brown, a founder of WCHS, addressed to the Conference of Charities meeting in Seattle in 1904 and reprinted in the WCHF summarizes the “child first” mission of the society: “The inherent right of every child to a family home (a respectable family home) with Christian and moral training should be recognized by every one as the first great important right.” Although children should have the right to be wellborn, lacking that, they should have caring, Christian training: “These are the divinely arranged conditions of the child and these conditions are the most successful in bringing out and developing the highest and best type of character. The paramount question is always, ‘What is in the best interest of the child?’” See “Placing Children in Family Homes,” WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 2. 10 Romanofsky, “Professionals Versus Volunteers,” 98. 11 WCHS was instrumental in passing legislation in 1903 for the protection of homeless, neglected, and abused children; in 1905 for establishing provisions for a juvenile court system; and in 1907 for the punishment of adults contributing to the delinquency of minors and for family desertion and nonsupport. See chapter 1 for a fuller explanation of the relationship between WCHS and Washington State child protection laws. At least two cases reached the Supreme Court of Washington on appeal for the prosecution of seduction and were remanded for new trials based on errors: State of Washington v. William Kelknap, no. 6288, December 8, 1906; and State v. Jones, no. 11839, July 23, 1914; both involved pregnancies and alleged broken promises of marriage. 12 General Statues and Codes of the State of Washington, Vol. I, General Statutes, 820–21. 13 In 1968 the United States Supreme Court determined that illegitimate children were the “natural” children of their biological parents under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Before that, state laws governed the status and rights of children born to unmarried mothers. Harry D. Krause, Illegitimacy, 7, 65; Eva R. Rubin, The Supreme Notes to Chapter 2 | 237

14

15 16

17

18 19 20

Court and the American Family, 28–38. In Washington State, a bastardy proceeding against a father for nonsupport of an illegitimate child was a civil action. There was no obligation for a father to support an illegitimate child based on common law (State of Washington, Respondent, v. Peter Tieman, Appellant, Supreme Court of Washington, no. 4572, July 20, 1903). Acknowledgment of paternity did carry weight in court, however. As early as 1899, acting on the petition of an illegitimate son of a father who had acknowledged his paternity and left an inheritance for his son in a will, the Supreme Court of Washington decided in favor of the illegitimate son (In the Matter of the Estate of Rudolph Gorkow, Deceased: Petition of Arthur Kornetzky, no. 3036, February 18, 1899). LeRoy Ashby explains that illegitimacy was a dilemma for Protestant reformers who could not sanction unwed motherhood with its implicit acceptance of sexual relations outside of marriage but at the same time wanted motherhood to redeem fallen women. See Ashby, Endangered Children, 89. On single mothers and illegitimacy, see also Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled, 15–64. “Mother and Child,” WCHF 7, no. 1 (July 1904): 4. An attempt to commit rape with females under the age of twelve, with or without force, was prosecutable as rape. The Supreme Court of Washington affirmed rape convictions committed against female children ages eight (State of Washington, Respondent v. Newton Hunter, Appellant, no. 2720, February 23, 1898); nine (State of Washington, Respondent v. Ludwig Myrberg, Appellant, no. 8184, December 17, 1909); ten (State of Washington, Respondent v. Henry Elswood, Appellant, no. 2149, November 9, 1896); and fourteen (State of Washington, Respondent v. Lin Katon, Appellant, no. 6617, August 2, 1907 and State of Washington, Respondent v. Lizzie May, Appellant, no. 8857, July 25, 1910). The Court affirmed rape convictions against the father of a fourteen-year-old girl (State of Washington, Respondent v. E. W. Roller, Appellant, no. 4452, January 12, 1903) and the rape of a stepdaughter, aged sixteen (State of Washington, Repondent v. William D. Fetterly, Appellant, no. 4843, December 29, 1903). The Court also upheld a decision to perform a vasectomy on a man who was then serving a life sentence for raping a child under the age of ten (State of Washington, Respondent v. Peter Feilen, Appellant, no. 10170, September 3, 1912). Maternal ages were recorded at WCHS with regularity only from 1908 on. Before that date maternal ages were recorded when the relinquishing mother was very young. See table 6. Washington Children’s Home Society (WCHS) case nos. 1306, 413. WCHS case nos. 108, 1010, 1113. WCHS case nos. 403, 703. I have usually stated the ethnic affiliation of 238 | Notes to Chapter 2

21 22 23 24

25

individuals in this study to remind the reader of the wide diversity represented in cases rather than to suggest any correlation between behavior and culture. The place ethnicity plays in this study conforms broadly with Linda Gordon’s statement regarding family violence, i.e., that ethnic differences had minimal impact on family problems in comparison “to the general influence of being poor, migratory, or alien.” See Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, 11. WCHS case no. 2009. WCHS case no. 2314. Romanofsky, “Professionals Versus Volunteers,” 98. Whether or not an unmarried woman should raise her child was an issue under intense dispute during the Progressive Era. For a full exploration of the position taken by Kate Waller Barrett, main spokesperson for the Florence Crittenton Mission, see Katherine G. Aiken, Harnessing the Power of Motherhood, esp. 34–36, 59–65, 71, 76–77, 78–79, 87–88, 201, 211. Regina G. Kunzel has stated that evangelical amateur child savers such as those running the Florence Crittenton homes favored unwed mothers keeping their babies because they hoped the baby would help regenerate the mother. She argues that professional social workers increasingly favored adoption because they subscribed to the best-interest-of-the-child doctrine. For that discussion see Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls, 127–29. Disputing Kunzel, E. Wayne Carp contends that lack of laws or regulation governing adoption made it easy for unmarried mothers to abandon their babies to amateur philanthropic organizations during the nineteenth century. He argues that early twentieth-century professional social workers very reluctantly separated unwed mother and child, and generally opposed adoption. See Carp, “Professional Social Workers, Adoption, and the Problem of Illegitimacy, 1915–1945,” 161–83. I contend that the matter was anything but settled even among evangelical Protestant adoption advocates. Some ministers working with Children’s Home Society agencies believed that the mother had a moral responsibility to stay with the child through the first year, and others thought that she should breast-feed her baby for a few weeks or months only. See J. J. Kelso, “Letter from Ontario,” WCHF 6, no. 8 (January 1904): 2. The issue was often fought on the terrain of bottle- vs. breast-feeding. See “How Best To Help: The Case of Emma Schmidt” and “The Bottle Baby,” WCHF 7, no. 1 (July 1904): 3. Besides advocating the bottle, WCHS claimed that a woman’s wage was insufficient to support a child at board. See “Mother and Child,” 4. Regarding child savers’ ambivalence about the separation of unwed mother and children, see Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, 101–3. WCHS case no. 712; and “How Best to Help,” 3. Historian Lynn Y. Weiner Notes to Chapter 2 | 239

26

27 28

29

30 31 32 33

34 35

contends that the expansion of the female labor force occurred in two distinct phases: the first phase was the era of the single working girl from the mid-nineteenth century until the early decades of the twentieth century; and the second phase, from the early twentieth century to the present, the era of the working mother. See Weiner, From Working Girl to Working Mother. My study complicates that precise division by considering young, single, working mothers as a category. See case nos. 310 and 2711. See table 3.1 for the correlation of infant mortality and infant age at relinquishment and later discussions of WCHS efforts to prevent death by communicable disease. “How Best To Help,” 3. Florence Crittenton homes were originally set up to save women from prostitution but their mission expanded in the early twentieth century to accept maternity cases, which made up only 7 percent of their clients in 1906, but increased and soon overtook their efforts to reform prostitutes, the success of which was found to be difficult to assess (Aiken, Harnessing the Power of Motherhood, 58, 202; and Morton, And Sin No More, 54–71). See also WCHS case nos. 1706, 1414, 1315. Middle-class reformers of the Progressive Era campaigned assiduously and futilely against young working women’s choices of unsupervised venues of entertainment. See Kathy Lee Peiss, Cheap Amusements, 62, 163–88. Frater and Merrill, Why Children Go Wrong, 13–14. WCHS case nos. 1012, 2213, 114. Morton, And Sin No More, 11. Only three of the fifteen women representing this age group had their babies at a Crittenton home or at the White Shield Home in Tacoma. Eighty percent of the children relinquished were younger than six-months-old. WCHS case no. 908. WCHS case no. 1511. Quintard Taylor’s research on African Americans living in Seattle reveals that populations had multiple origins, but that after 1890 they were concentrated in primarily two neighborhoods: one middle-class neighborhood in the Central District and the other in the tide flats along the harbor below Skid Road. There residential hotels, saloons, brothels, and shops served the poor of all races along with sailors, loggers, shipyard workers, and railroad workers. Typhoid, malaria, and opium addiction were common. African Americans were excluded from labor unions and hence from the economic mainstream of Seattle. In Seattle in 1910, 45 percent of black men worked as servants, waiters, and janitors; 84 percent of black women were domestics or personal servants, and that percentage only increased over time (Taylor, Forging of a Black Community, 61,

240 | Notes to Chapter 2

36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45

46

and especially chapter 2, “Employment and Economics, 1900–1940,” 49–78; and chapter 3, “Housing, Civil Rights, and Politics, 1900–1940,” 79–105. See also Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, particularly “‛To Get Out of This Land of Sufring’: Black Women Migrants to the North, 1900–1930,” 152–95. WCHS case nos. 510, 910. WCHS case no. 612. WCHS case no. 1514. “Misplaced confidence,” however, was cited most often as the “causes of downfall” in a study of illegitimacy in Cleveland in 1914, according to Marian Morton. Regina Kunzel postulates that the “seduced and abandoned” explanation for out-of-wedlock births may have been a scenario fabricated by evangelical reformers attacking the sexual double standards. See Morton, And Sin No More, 11; and Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls, 20–25. WCHS case no. 714. WCHS case no. 1214. WCHS case nos. 1312, 1512, 713, 2013. WCHS case no. 914. Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, 21–22. Appeals to the Washington Supreme Court offer some insight into just how risky an illegal abortion was at the time. Charles W. Power, a Spokane physician, was convicted of manslaughter for performing an unlawful abortion in 1898 that turned septic. He was charged with causing the woman “mortal injuries” and to be “externally filthy and covered with vile and poisonous substances, and internally poisoned and inflamed and filled with poisonous and filthy matter and discharges, and did then . . . allow her to remain . . . in an offensive and unclean bed, and in offensive and unclean clothes, and in a filthy room, filled with vile, unhealthy, and poisonous atmosphere” to die in agony (State of Washington, Respondent v. Charles W. Power, Appellant, no. 3560, February 13, 1901). In 1912, a Spokane physician’s ten- to twenty-year sentence to the state penitentiary was upheld for administering two doses of medications and performing two procedures while drunk that led a young, married cook in domestic service to have an abortion, which led to her death (State of Washington, Respondent v. E. E. MacLeod, Appellant, no. 11650, February 16, 1914). Another Chehalis County physician’s nine-month sentence for performing an abortion was upheld by the Washington Supreme Court in State of Washington, Respondent v. M. Rob Stapp, Appellant, no. 9721, October 28, 1911. Where death of the mother was cited as the reason for relinquishment, the 37 cases represent 21 percent of the 173 cases where the status of the mother

Notes to Chapter 2 | 241

47 48 49 50 51

52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67 68 69

was indicated and about 13 percent of the total of 289 cases. Where death of a father was cited as the reason, the 17 cases represent 11 percent of 152 cases where the father’s status was stated and about 6 percent of the total sample of 289 cases. The death of both parents was cited in 6 percent of the total cases. See table 2.4. WCHS case nos. 300, 903. WCHS case nos. 708, 512, 912, 2412, 1913, 1714. WCHS case nos. 299, 1615, 811, 1008, 1612, 1912. “A Family of Eight Children,” WCHF 15, no. 9 (December 1911): 4. Seattle lumber companies, boosters, and urban reformers all promoted the sale to urban workers and immigrants of fifty-acre logged-over “farms” on infertile land that was expensive to clear. Most stump farmers had to work off the farm, and families were isolated by the lack of roads, neighbors, and schools. Richard White, “Poor Men on Poor Lands,” 105–31; and Richard White, Land Use, Environment, and Social Change, especially “Poor Men on Poor Lands: The Movement onto the Logged-off Lands,” 113–41. WCHS case nos. 1508, 710. “Help for a Poor Father,” WCHF 6, no. 12 (June 1904): 4. WCHS case nos. 302, 1111, 410. WCHS case no. 2312. “Motherless Evelyn,” WCHF 16, no. 9 (February 1913): 5. WCHS case no. 803. WCHS case no. 408. WCHS case no. 1509. WCHS case nos. 402, 805, 1608. WCHS case nos. 2309, 2311, 1813, 1014. Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, 22–23. WCHS case nos. 199, 1311, 2911, 1513. WCHS case nos. 1006, 1013, 1713, 415, 1415. WCHS case nos. 597, 198, 111, 112, 913, 1013. Between 1906 and 1910, Seattle had the second lowest rate of deaths due to pulmonary tuberculosis among the fifty largest cities in the United States, and Spokane had the fifth lowest death rate, with eighty-three and ninetythree deaths respectively. Cited in Lilian Brandt, “Facts About Tuberculosis: Twenty-one Diagrams with Brief Descriptive Text,” Studies in Social Work 8 (February 1916): 13. WCHS case no. 1212. In cases where divorce was cited as a contributing cause for relinquishment, women were the relinquishing parties three-quarters of the time. WCHS case no. 507.

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70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91

92

93

WCHS case no. 804. WCHS case no. 498. WCHS case no. 1007. WCHS case no. 314. WCHS case no. 1207. WCHS case no. 1908. WCHS case no. 1515. WCHS case nos. 196, 296, 596, 305, 1807, 1308, 1909, 2109, 2211, 1815. WCHS case no. 915. WCHS case nos. 1409, 2109, 1910. WCHS case nos. 499, 502, 103, 1409, 1215. See “Little Gladys,” WCHF 11, no. 5 (October 1907): 8; and WCHS case no. 305. WCHS case nos. 906, 610, 810, 1810. WCHS case nos. 698, 200, 301, 502, 1707, 109, 2209, 610, 511, 611, 1011, 1611, 2513, 1114, 1915. The case of infanticide is found in State of Washington, Respondent v. Paul Underwood, Appellant, no. 5043, August 10, 1904. WCHS case no. 1708, 406. WCHS case no. 503. WCHS case no. 1911. WCHS case no. 104. WCHS case nos. 1507, 1208, 2014. The child-saving movement was enmeshed with the temperance movement and other social purity agendas. Drinking was blamed for “virtually all family irregularities,” according to Linda Gordon. “The image of maternal cruelty, less prevalent, also focused on alcoholism: a negligent mother, lying abed in a drunken stupor while her children cried out for food” (Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, 20–21). WCHS case no. 2014. WCHS case no. 414. WCHS case no. 515. WCHS claimed that only twenty cases were legally contested, or less than 1 percent of 2,300 relinquishments (“The Seventeenth Annual Report,” WCHF 17, no. 1 [June 1913], 7). Court reporters for the local newspapers covered such cases as Ray Sansom’s, giving WCHS much free and favorable publicity. For other representative high-profile cases, see “To the Boys and Girls of Washington,” WCHF 15, no. 9 (December 1911): 4; “A Trio of Lassies,” WCHF 10, no. 5 (October 1906): 5; and “Our Circus Boy,” WCHF 10, no. 3 (August 1906): 4. Durand, “The Study of the Child from the Standpoint of the Home-Finding Agency,” PNCCC, 1907, 259–62.

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Chap ter 3

“A Child’s Appeal,” WCHF 17, no. 10 (March 1914): 1, 3. Although this is the first appeal directly received from a child, the writer was not the only child to ask to be taken from her home. A thirteen-year-old girl told authorities that she left her father’s tent on an Indian reservation near Spokane because “her father and brothers made a slave of her.” A news clipping in her file said, “She is a bright girl and in their way, it seems, her relatives were good to her. But she was a young girl and they did not understand.” (Her mother had died seven years earlier, and officials decided that while the home was moral enough, she was probably demoralized over her loss, and she was turned over to WCHS.) WCHS case no. 1811. 3 I am using the term maternalism as “ideologies and discourses that exalted women’s capacity to mother and applied to society as a whole the values they attached to that role: care, nurturance, and morality.” This definition is given by Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, Mothers of a New World, 4. 4 The text of the speech is reprinted in “The Homeless Child,” WCHF 10, no. 2 (July 1906): 4–9. 5 See Elaine Tyler May, “The ‘Race Suicide’ Panic: Eugenics and the Pressure to Procreate,” in her book, Barren in the Promised Land, 61–93; and Alisa Klaus, “Depopulation and Race Suicide: Maternalism and Pronatalist Ideologies in France and the United States,” in Mothers of a New World, 188–212. 6 For a thorough discussion of the various uses of narrative by charity case workers and social workers to establish the legitimacy of their work, see Karen W. Tice, Tales of Wayward Girls and Immoral Women. 7 Cmiel, A Home of Another Kind, 6–7. 8 “Baby Asylum Not Practicable,” WCHF 11, no. 4 (August/September 1907): 6. WCHS advertised for temporary boarding homes for babies and kept a waiting list. See “Board Wanted,” WCHF 15, no. 4 (September 1911): 6. 9 For example, of three deserted babies received at WCHS in one week of 1912, one lay near death at Wayside Emergency Hospital, one healthy infant was delivered to WCHS by a messenger boy, and another was in such a neglected state that he was placed directly in the hospital. See “Deserted Babies,” WCHF 16, no. 7 (December 1912): 5–6. 10 While WCHS believed in the early relinquishment of illegitimate infants born to otherwise virtuous women, it urged, and sometimes insisted, that “mothers of easy virtue” should care for their babies themselves, although it was willing to help provide suitable temporary respite through boarding. It was an article of Protestant faith that motherhood could help redeem a fallen woman. This paradoxical break with the usual best-interest-of-the1 2

244 | Notes to Chapter 3

11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26

27

child doctrine might reflect WCHS’s reluctance to accept for adoption children who they believed were morally or physically contaminated. WCHS, “The Annual Report,” (June 1908): 9. “Sympathy,” WCHF 7, no. 3 (September 1904): 1; and “Lonely Hearts,” WCHF 9, no. 1 (July 1905): 7. “Our Home and Matron,” WCHF 7, no. 8 (February 1905): 4. WCHS lost an average of about ten babies and toddlers each year between 1906 and 1912, or 20 percent of children in this age group. In comparison, U.S. census figures for Washington State in the year 1900 show 629 deaths in children under one year old and 11,236 live births, a death rate of 5.59 percent of live births in the general population. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Abstract of the Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Vital Statistics, table 19, 544. Levenstein, “‘Best for Babies’ or ‘Preventable Infanticide’?,” 90. “The Bottle Baby,” WCHF 7, no. 1 (July 1904): 3. See also, “Let the Babies Live,” WCHF 14, no. 12 (May 1911): 7–9. Of all children in this study, 11 percent (16) of the boys and 2 percent of the girls (3) died, or about 7 percent of the children relinquished to the WCHS. No explanation of the discrepancies between deaths in male and female children, who were almost all infants, is available. “Two Days,” WCHF 9, no 9 (March 1906): 3; WCHS case no. 1005. “Children of the Coal Mines,” WCHF 14, no. 8 (December 1910): 6; and “Black Diamond’s Grit,” WCHF 14, no. 8 (December 1910): 7. “Children Clothed with Flour Sacks,” WCHF 13, no. 5 (October 1909): 3. The mining districts produced impoverished children, and mine owners made regular donations of coal to the receiving home. “Children of the Coal Mines,” 6. “Forced to Harvest Sagebrush to Provide Themselves with Needed Fuel,” from the Yakima Herald, reprinted in WCHF 13, no. 9 (February 1910): 5. As quoted in WCHF 14, no. 9 (February 1911): 7. “Motherless and Fatherless,” WCHF 9, no. 3 (September 1905): 6; and “In A Better Home,” WCHF 12, no. 2 (July 1908): 4–5. WCHF 14, no. 10 (March 1911): 8. “Taxpayers’ Travelers,” WCHF 16, no. 9 (February 1913): 5. See, for example, “Happy Charlie,” WCHF 16, no. 10 (March 1913), 5; and “The Cry of the Child,” WCHF 16, no. 11 (April 1913): 6. At age three, this child was the size of a two year old, with bones so soft that attempts to walk caused his legs to bend and twist. He also suffered from a swelling of his joints caused by disease. “The Story of Five,” WCHF 9, no. 11 (May 1906): 5–6; and WCHS case no. 506. Notes to Chapter 3 | 245

28 “Esther,” WCHF 9, no. 2 (August 1905): 3; and “A Trio of Lassies,” WCHF 10, no. 5 (October 1906): 5. 29 In September 1907, to take a typical month, there were twenty-four children at the receiving home (eight babies, ten boys, and six girls) of which ten were aid cases in temporary care. In addition, another three babies and seven children received aid in the form of temporary board in private homes. In all, thirty-four children were under the custodial and immediate care of WCHS, and twenty of them were aid cases, about 60 percent.“The Home,” WCHF 11, no. 4 (August/September 1907): 4. A variety of aid cases were written up in some detail showing WCHS’s commitment to families. See, for example, WCHF articles “Aid Cases,” 11, no. 10 (March 1908): 8; “If They Were Yours,” 12, no. 4 (September 1908): 7; “Aid Work at Spokane,” 12, no. 11 (April 1909): 4–6; “Aid Work,” 13, no. 1 (June 1909): 8; “One Aid Case,” 13, no. 4 (September 1909): 7; “An Aid Case,” 13. no. 10 (March 1910): 7; “Holding Homes Together,” 13, no. 11 (April 1910): 6; “Helping the Father,” 13, no. 11 (April 1910): 7; “Need for Aid Work,” 13, no. 12 (May 1910): 8–9; “An Aid Case,” 15, no. 12 (May 1912): 5; and “A Few Aid Cases,” 17, no. 9 (February 1914): 4. The help often came in the form of temporary boarding arrangements for children. See “Board Wanted,” 15, no. 4 (September 1911): 6; “Calls for Temporary Help,” 16, no. 8 (January 1913): 7; “Boarding Places Wanted,” 16, no. 9 (February 1913): 6; “No Room,” 16, no. 9 (February 1913): 7; “Boarding Children,” 17, no. 4 (September 1913): 4–6. 30 Between the organization of juvenile court in King County in 1905 and March 4, 1908, the court handled 1,188 cases and cared for about 1,600 children, mostly for truancy, neglect, and delinquency. See “King County Juvenile Court,” WCHF 11, no. 12 (May 1908): 10; and M. A. Covington, “Juvenile Court Work,” WCHF 12, no. 2 (July, 1908): 6–7. 31 “Rapid Increase of Defectives to Care For,” WCHF 15, no. 9 (February 1912): 5–6. 32 Such criteria are spelled out in detail in Nurith Zmora’s Orphanages Reconsidered. 33 “The Blind Baby,” WCHF 14, no. 5 (October 1910): 5–6. 34 “Dolly Gray,” WCHF 14, no. 5 (October 1910): 6. 35 “Rejected,” WCHF 17, no. 9 (February 1914): 6. 36 The separate fate of children at the Medical Lake facility deserves scholarly attention. What happened to such children falls beyond the scope of this study but is related to the larger question of care for all dependent children in Washington State. Of that larger number, those available for adoption were but a small minority. 37 WCHF 9, no. 11 (May 1906): 11. Julie Berebitsky has located multiple references to a lack of available young children for adoption, even at the height 246 | Notes to Chapter 3

38

39 40 41

42 43

44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

of the home-finding campaign published in The Delineator child rescue series. See Berebitsky, “Rescue a Child and Save the Nation,” 15–16n19. “The Homes Most Needed,” reprinted from the Iowa’s Children’s Home Finder in WCHF 13, no. 2 (July 1909): 6. Female sex preference is one of the most historically consistent preferences indicated by adoptive parents before the Second World War, along with age. See Barbara Melosh, Strangers and Kin, 54–63. However, E. Wayne Carp, using Children’s Home Society of Washington case histories, found that adoptive parents switched to preferring boys during World War II and thereafter were more flexible and willing to adopt either sex because of the scarcity of adoptable children (Carp and Leon-Guerrero, “When in Doubt, Count,” in Adoption in America, 204–5). “Boys at the Home,” WCHF 14, no. 2 (July 1910): 8–9. “Citizens of Tomorrow,” WCHF 15, no. 4 (September 1911): 1. See also “Some of Our Boys,” WCHF 15, no. 12 (May 1912): 1. A sample of fifteen boys and girls taken from the year 1910 and chosen for their relatively complete adoption histories shows that boys spent an average of about three weeks more at the receiving home than did girls. “Homes Wanted,” WCHF 15, no. 12 (May 1912): 8. The WCHF routinely reprinted brief articles about rescuing and raising boys. See, for example, “The Strenuous Life for Boys,” 7, no. 1 (July 1904): 1; “For Bad Boys There Is Hope,” 7, no. 4 (October 1904): 4; “Remarks from the Boys’ Minister,” 7, no. 7 (January 1905): 4; “What a Boy Can Do,” 7, no. 8 (February 1905): 4; “Judge Spencer on Boys,” 9, no. 2 (August 1905): 6; “My Boy,” 9, no. 9 (March 1906): 7; “Give the Boys a Chance,” 9, no. 10 (April 1906): 6; “Wanted, a ‘Bad Boy,’” 11, no. 10 (March 1908): 10; “My Idea of a Boy,” 12, no. 7 (December 1908): 3–4. “New Shoes,” WCHF 10, no. 5 (October 1906): 7. “My Idea of a Boy,” WCHF 12, no. 7 (December 1908): 3–4. Judge Julian W. Mack, “What I Have Learned from Hundreds of Girls,” Ladies’ Home Journal, reprinted in WCHF 11, no. 12 (May 1908): 5– 7. For a larger discussion, see Kathy Lee Peiss, Cheap Amusements, and Regina G. Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls. “Indian Children,” WCHF 6, no. 11 (May 1904): 1. “All Nationalities,” WCHF 6, no. 11 (April 1904): 2. “One Little, Two Little Indian Girls!” WCHF 9, no. 6 (December 1905): 5–6. Ibid., 6. See also “Nature and Art,” WCHF 14, no. 12 (May 1911): 6; and “Metlakahtla,” WCHF 9, no. 5 (November 1905): 4–5. Quintard Taylor provides a comparative overview of African American and Asian populations in Seattle in “Blacks and Asians in a White City, 1870–1942,” chapter 4 of his The Forging of a Black Community, 106–34. Notes to Chapter 3 | 247

52 “Lai Choy Yoke,” WCHF 16, no. 2 (July/August 1912): 7–8. 53 “African Charity Workers Hold Baby Show,” Seattle Daily Times, May 16, 1908, 1. 54 WCHF 7, no. 1 (July 1904): 1 (caption). 55 “Wayside inn” is a term used to describe the Iowa Receiving Home by the Rev. W. H. Slingerland Jr., superintendent of the Iowa Children’s Home Society, in a speech given at the National Children’s Home Society meeting on September 23, 1904. Reprinted as “The Receiving Home: Its Uses and Limitations,” WCHF 7, no. 5 (November 1904): 2. 56 Mrs. Irving cared for as many as twenty-three children, usually keeping each child just a few days until a suitable home could be found. See WCHF 6, no. 11 (May 1904): 1. 57 WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 4. During the period under study here, orphanages were converting to the “cottage plan,” where small groups of children lived with a caretaker, but this conversion was far from universal or complete. 58 “The Receiving Home,” WCHF 12, no. 3 (August 1908): 2; and “Our New Building,” WCHF 7, no. 8 (February, 1905): 1. Selection at the home was later discouraged in favor of WCHS’s careful selection and matching of adoptive family and child through application. 59 “Scarlet Fever,” WCHF 10, no. 9 (February 1907): 9. 60 “Our Receiving Home and Its Needs,” WCHF 11, no. 11 (April 1908): 3–5; “The Receiving Home,” 3–4; and “Fire Proof Home,” WCHF 12, no. 6 (November 1908): 4–5. 61 Ashby, Saving the Waifs, 57–58; and especially “‘The Child at the Door’: E. P. Savage and the Children’s Home Society of Minnesota,” 38–68. 62 “The Annual Report of the State Superintendent,” WCHF 13, no. 1 (June 1909): 4. 63 “For ths [sic] Nursery,” WCHF 10, no. 10 (March 1907): 5. 64 “Our Special Needs,” WCHF 10, no. 5 (October 1906): 8; “Offerings Accepted,” WCHF 10, no. 6 (November 1906): 5; “Coal,” WCHF 10, no. 9 (February 1907): 9; “What We Need—Transportation Free,” WCHF 13, no. 7 (December 1909): 7. 65 “Cows and Chickens,” WCHF 10, no. 10 (March 1907): 4; “The Time and the Place,” WCHF 14, no. 5 (October 1910): 3. 66 “Apples,” WCHF 7, no. 5 (November 1904): 3. 67 “Apple Paring Bee,” WCHF 11, no. 7 (December 1907): 5; “No More Apples,” WCHF 16, no. 5 (October 1912): 6. 68 “Needs of the Receiving Home,” WCHF 16, no. 5 (October 1912): 4–5. 69 Children were brought to the receiving homes in Seattle or Spokane in most cases. Children were temporarily lodged in private homes when the 248 | Notes to Chapter 3

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71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

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receiving home was full or when they needed only temporary aid. Infants were boarded in private homes instead of at the Spokane receiving home but were kept in the nursery at the Seattle receiving home. “The Annual Report of the State Superintendent,” WCHF 12, no. 1 (June 1908): 4. Usually, children this dirty were expected to come from deprived homes. This case is interesting because Eugene was received in this condition from a foster home “well able to care for him,” but where the foster mother had become seriously ill. “Eugene Has Dirtitis,” WCHF 19, no. 4 (February 1916): 3–4. “The Sixteenth Annual Report of the Washington Children’s Home Society,” WCHF 16, no. 1 (June 1912): 9. Venereal disease also contributed to a drop in fertility during these years. See May, Barren in the Promised Land, 74–75. “Soliloquy of a Big Boy” WCHF 12, no. 8 (January 1909): 8–9. The author refers to specific people at WCHS and writes in the first person, suggesting to the reader that the statement was genuinely written by the child. However, solicited pieces written by children at the receiving home for the WCHF are unusual, and thus this article might more realistically be interpreted as based on a case history and intended to arouse sympathy for the case of adopting older children. “Christmas at the Home,” WCHF 13, no. 8 (January 1910): 5–6. “Christmas Babies,” WCHF 7, no. 7 (January 1905): 1. “Fourth of July,” WCHF 14, no. 2 (July 1910): 8; “Glorious Fourth,” WCHF 15, nos. 2 and 3 (July/August 1911): 5. “Seattle Receiving Home, Through the Eyes of a Boy,” WCHF 17, no. 4 (September 1913): 7. Ibid, 7. “The Nineteenth Annual Report of the Washington Children’s Home Society,” WCHF 19, no. 1 (September 1915): 5. Ross, Love & Toil, 30–55, and especially 36–37. “Nineteenth Annual Report,” 4. Ibid. Ibid. Frater and Merrill, Why Children Go Wrong, 4–5, and especially Lilburn Merrill’s contribution to the report, “Physical and Mental Conditions,” 30–43. Cotterill, “Response to Address of Welcome,” Proceedings of the Seventh Session of the State Conference of Charities and Correction, June 2–4, 1914, 6–7. Dr. J. K. Hart, “Immigration,” Proceedings of the Seventh Session, 30–31. M. A. Covington, “The Child Welfare Problems and a State Program Therefor,” Proceedings of the Seventh Session, 45–48. Notes to Chapter 3 | 249

Chap ter 4

“To Applicants for Children,” WCHF 12, no. 9 (February 1909): 8. The term “adoption” is used by H. D. Brown to describe Washington Children’s Home Society’s intention that relinquished children be adopted into permanent homes that would raise them as their own to adulthood (H. D. Brown, “History,” chapters 1, 3). The Washington Children’s Home Finder also includes references to legal adoption of children from the first preserved edition of the newsletter dated 1902, specifically in a letter asking to adopt a particular child and in another letter asking to come to the receiving home to pick out a child (WCHF 5, no. 7 [December 1902], 2). Historians have not counted National Children Home Societies as adoption agencies and so date the first adoption agencies a decade or so later to amateur infant adoption agencies such as The Cradle, founded in 1911 (E. Wayne Carp, Family Matters, 20). 3 Children were believed to have transformative powers on fathers as well as mothers. For example, children provided inspiration to excel as a breadwinner. See E. S. Martin, “Children As an Incentive,” 29–31. 4 For a particularly helpful discussion of the changing meaning of dependency, see Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, “A Genealogy of ‘Dependency’: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State,” in Fraser, Justice Interruptus, 121–49. 5 Koven and Michel, “Introduction: ‘Mother Worlds,’” in Mothers of a New World, 6. 6 WCHF 9, no. 9 (March 1906): 7. 7 Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls, especially chapters 1–4; and Aiken, Harnessing the Power of Motherhood, 59–65. 8 Theodore Roosevelt relentlessly attacked the use of birth control of any sort by white women. Roosevelt, Presidential Address and State Papers 3:282–91, as quoted in Linda Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right, 136. See also Roosevelt, “Women’s Rights; and the Duties of Both Men and Women,” 262–66; “Mr. Roosevelt’s Views on Race Suicide,” 21; and “Race Decadence,” 763–69. See also “A Premium on Race Suicide,” 163–64; and “The Greatest American Problem,” 966–67. 9 Roosevelt, “Race Decadence,” 767. Roosevelt supported suffrage for women, but advocated a deeply gendered role division between the sexes in society. In his view, motherhood came before all for women. 10 May, Barren in the Promised Land, 78–82; Cartland, “Childless Americans,” 585–87. 11 May, Barren in the Promised Land, 82–93.

1 2

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12 “Pups Preferred to Children,” reprinted from the Minnesota Home Finder in WCHF 6, no. 11 (May 1904): 4. 13 “The ‘New’ Mother,” reprinted from Nature, WCHF 7, no. 2 (August 1904): 3. Criticism that college women were neglecting their motherhood duties prompted about thirty alumnae of Pennsylvania State College to pose for a picture with their thirty-nine babies under the age of four years. See “A College Baby Crop,” 738–39. 14 “The ‘New’ Mother,” 3. 15 “The Modern Mother” and “Clubs and Lodges,” WCHF 11, no. 12 (May 1908): 9. 16 “Letter Box,” WCHF 6, no. 11 (May 1904): 3. 17 Julie Berebitsky cites articles in popular magazines that portray women as on the “verge of insanity” over their childlessness. Berebitsky, “Redefining ‘Real’ Motherhood,” 6. 18 See, for example, WCHS case nos. 1009, 1012, 2012, 1113, 1315. 19 “Wanted—A Home,” WCHF 11, no. 5 (October 1907): 11. 20 Jean K. Baird, “In Search of a Mother,” reprinted from the Wisconsin Children’s Home Finder in WCHF 12, no. 6 (November 1908): 5–6. 21 “Found—A Home,” WCHF 13, no. 10 (March 1910): 7. 22 “The Orphan Cure,” reprinted from Medical Talk for the Home in WCHF 17, no. 9 (February 1914): 6–7. For a shattering portrayal of the destructive side of compulsory motherhood, see Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper. On the topic of race improvement, Gilman recommended eliminating the cause of poverty at the bottom, not increasing the reproductive rate of those at the top. “This ruined stock is dead loss to us,” she wrote, “being saved and made into good stock it would be great gain to us. Moreover, ‘us’ includes them. The whole level of our rightful pride lies not at humanity’s narrow shifting top, but at its broad, dark base, so little lifted for all the years.” Gilman, “Race Improvement,” 629–32. 23 “The Better Way,” WCHF 11, no. 12 (May 1908): 7. 24 “Maiwe Hall Died in Train Wreck,” WCHF 19, no. 4 (February 1916): 2–3. Heroic fatherhood is also occasionally reported. See “Heroic Devotion,” reprinted from the Chicago Tribune in WCHF 9, no. 5 (November 1905): 6–7. 25 Koven and Michel, Mothers of a New World, 4. 26 This is confirmed in Berebitsky, “Redefining ‘Real’ Motherhood.” Berebitsky writes that unpublished sources show “adoptive mothers to be women who just wanted children, who just wanted to be mothers . . . their motivation was not a burning desire to do their patriotic duty by rescuing a child” (14).

Notes to Chapter 4 | 251

27 Griswold, Fatherhood in America, 69. See also Rotundo, American Manhood, especially chapters 9 and 10. 28 Griswold, Fatherhood in America, 33. 29 Ibid., 49. 30 Ibid., 43–51; Mintz and Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions, 83–105. Mintz and Kellogg point out that during the nineteenth century more families made a living from farming, coal mining, railroading, and timber cutting than worked in the nation’s factories (96), all economically volatile and dangerous industries. The majority of families, however, still made their living on farms, although that was changing. 31 Only two adoptive fathers in this sample were common laborers. WCHS case nos. 606, 2109. 32 Nelson, Good Schools, 4–6, 81–82. 33 “Why You Should Take a Child to Bring Up,” WCHF 15, no. 5 (October 1911): 10. This list was reprinted from Beacon Light. 34 The Washington Children’s Home Society sought Christian married couples for children. Single parent adoptions were extremely rare and, in fact, when an adoptive parent died or divorced, the remaining parent was often encouraged to return the adopted child to WCHS. Exceptions were made for older children and for parties who were related to or a friend of the family. This policy was not universal, however, and other home-placing organizations allowed single females and widows to adopt at the turn of the century, although the percentage of single adoptions of any kind remained extremely small. See Berebitsky, “‘Mother-Woman’ or ‘Man-Haters’? The Rise and Fall of Single Adoptive Mothers,” in Like Our Very Own, 102–27n5. 35 Sandelowski, “Failures of Volition,” 499. Sandelowski states that infertile women were “caught in the crossfire” between feminists advocating reproductive freedom and those who blamed women for their infertility. 36 WCHS case nos. 814, 1413, 715. 37 WCHS case no. 502. 38 Sandelowski, “Failures of Volition,” 499. 39 May, Barren in the Promised Land, 75–78; Sandelowski, “Failures of Volition,” 499; and Marsh and Ronner, The Empty Cradle, especially chapters 2 and 3. 40 Brandt, No Magic Bullet, 7–20. Brandt chronicles the discoveries made by scientists in the late nineteenth century that made venereal disease one of the greatest concerns of the Progressive Era (16). 41 Ladd-Taylor, Raising a Baby the Government Way, 47–60. By the Progressive Era, it was considered superstitious to believe in “marking” an unborn baby through the traumatic experience of the pregnant mother, but by no 252 | Notes to Chapter 4

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67

68

means was this universal knowledge. Women were also told, and believed, that they were the responsible party for infertility. Letter, WCHF 9, no. 7 (January 1906): 11. WCHS case no. 1315. WCHS case nos. 1113 and 2012. WCHS case no. 497. WCHS case no. 614. WCHF 9, no. 11 (May 1906): 11. Letter (E. J. D.), WCHF 5, no. 7 (December 1902): 4. Letter (Mrs. J. S.), WCHF 5, no. 7 (December 1902): 4 “Looking at It from the Other Way,” reprinted from Illinois Children’s Home Finder in WCHF 11, no. 6 (November 1907): 6–7. “The Latest,” WCHF 9, no. 9 (March 1906): 12. “Placement Don’ts,” reprinted from Children’s Home Herald, WCHF 15, no. 4 (September 1911): 10. “The Scarcest Kind of Applications Are These,” reprinted from Minnesota Children’s Home Finder, WCHF 11, no. 6 (November 1907): 5. WCHF 9, no. 10 (April 1906), 10. “Wanted, A Strong Boy,” reprinted from The Survey in WCHF 14, no. 5 (October 1910): 9. “Hard Hit,” WCHF 13, no. 7 (December 1909): 4. H. D. Brown, “History,” chapter 5. “Conditions Upon Which Children Are Placed in Families,” WCHF 5, no. 7 (December 1902): 1. “A Model Answer,” WCHF 9, no. 5 (November 1905): 9. The average age of adoptive women, for example, was almost thirty-seven, and the average age of an adoptive father almost forty. At least 46 percent (and possibly up to 70 percent) of the adoptive couples were childless. Another 29 percent adopted when they had one or more children. “Taking Two—A True Story,” WCHF 18, nos. 7 and 8 (January/February 1915): 5. WCHS case nos. 1513, 1814, 1614. WCHS case no. 1414. WCHS case no. 1807. WCHS case nos. 206, 1011, 1206, 2811, 1013, 1212, 210, 409, 1911. WCHS case nos. 2114, 1514, 613, 1212, 112, 713, 2008, 1310. WCHS case no. 599, 903, 703. Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right, 120–21. For a history of the eugenics in this period, see also Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics, 57–112. For the history of the impact of eugenics on those diagnosed as deviant, see Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind, especially 135–46. Gordon, Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right, 120–26. Notes to Chapter 4 | 253

69 WCHS case no. 811. 70 WCHS case no. 2109. See also WCHS case nos. 1511, 2211. 71 See, for example, WCHF articles “Training Is Everything,” 6, no. 8 (January 1904): 4; Joel E. Field, “Heredity Does Not Always Tell,” 9, no. 11 (May 1906): 4; “Heredity and Environment,” 10, no. 6 (November 1906): 5; “Dr. Bernardo’s Opinion,” 11, no. 7 (December 1907): 9; “An Important Question,” 14, no. 9 (February 1911): 4; “Heredity and Environment,” 11, no. 6 (November 1907): 11; and “Heredity Versus Environment,” 18, no. 9 (March/ April 1915): 6. 72 “Adopted Children,” WCHF 6, no. 11 (April 1904): 1; “Take This Child Away and Nurse It for Me, and I will Give Thee Thy Wages,” WCHF 6, no. 11 (April 1904): 2; and “A Woman’s Miracle,” 6, no. 11 (April 1904): 3. 73 See, for example, “Everyday Children,” WCHF 9, no. 7 (January 1906): 4; and “Not Perfect Children,” WCHF 9, no. 9 (March 1906): 6. 74 WCHF 14, no. 10 (March 1911): 8. 75 “Not Perfect Children,” 6. 76 “Relatives Must Not Know Where Children Are Located,” reprinted from the Iowa Home Finder in WCHF 7, no. 5 (November 1904): 4. 77 “Children’s Locations Not Public,” WCHF 7, no. 5 (November 1904): 4. 78 For example, see “Binnie in His New Home,” WCHF 9, no. 9 (March 1906): 7. 79 “What Is Adoption?” WCHF 16, no. 6 (November 1912): 7. For a full discussion of the evolution of adoption law in America, see Presser, “The Historical Background of the American Law of Adoptions.” 80 Carp, “The Sealed Adoption Records Controversy,” 27–57. The period covered in this study falls into Carp’s “first and longest phase” of the society’s policy, when both identifying and non-identifying information was released to returning adults adopted as children. This period ended in the mid-1950s (27). 81 “Wards Visited,” WCHF 10, no. 6 (November 1906): 9.

Chap ter 5

1

2

“Baby’s Royal Welcome,” WCHF 12, no. 5 (October 1908): 9. Although WCHS often disguised identities in letters published in the WCHF, those names have been omitted in this chapter for additional protection of individuals’ privacy. The exception is a child called Frank, who had only one arm. His search for a home was widely publicized, and children asked after him in their letters to the society. Anthropologist Judith Modell asks, “How do people in a culture in which 254 | Notes to Chapters 4 and 5

parenthood is created by birth—a biological fact—understand a parenthood that is created by law—a contractual arrangement? The answer seems to be by making the constructed relationship as much like the biological as possible. It is a powerful fiction, but certainly not a new idea.” Modell, Kinship with Strangers, 2. Modell argues that any study of adoption in America must be about biological relationships because biology gives adoption its “as-if-begotten,” “as-if-genealogical” status, that is, its legitimacy and meaning. “Adoption not only mirrors biology but also upholds a cultural interpretation of biological, or genealogical, kinship,” she contends (3). Modell points out that the socially constructed dimension of adoption is overlooked by anthropologists because they privilege the biological mother–child dyad as foundational, although they should know better. Katarina Wegar, building on the breakthrough studies of social attitudes toward adoption by sociologist H. David Kirk in the 1950s and 1960s, points out sociologists’ continued “lack of interest in adoption reflects a tendency to take biocentric definitions of the family, kinship, and parenting for granted . . . mainstream family sociologists have tended to disregard nontraditional and especially nonbiological family forms.” Wegar, Adoption, Identity, and Kinship, 6. 3 Clifford, “Introduction: Partial Truths” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. Clifford and Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 6. 4 Sociologist H. David Kirk, in his book Shared Fate, postulates that the loss experienced in being infertile helps create a bond of empathy between adoptive parents and their children, who have also lost members of their birth family. By acknowledging loss and difference from biologically formed families, adoption participants create kinship bonds. Kirk’s Adoptive Kinship reflects on, revises, and extends the concepts in Shared Fate. 5 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 4. 6 See Dye and Smith, “Mother Love and Infant Death, 1750–1920,” 329–53. In this sample, all the deaths of illegitimate children occurred in infants three months and younger, accounting for 20 percent of all illegitimate babies. See also, Letter, WCHF 9, no. 9 (March 1906): 10. 7 Letter, WCHF 12, no. 3 (August 1908): 7. 8 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 12 (June 1904): 3. 9 Letter, WCHF 9, no. 1 (July 1905): 6. 10 For a detailed historical account of how sick children were mothered in this period, see Ross, Love and Toil, 166–94. 11 Letter, WCHF 12, no. 7 (December 1908): 11. See also, Letter, WCHF 6, no. 12 (June 1904): 3–4. 12 WCHS case no. 1715. Notes to Chapter 5 | 255

13 Letter, WCHF 5, no. 7 (December 1902): 4. See also WCHS case no. 910, and Letter, WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 4, wherein grieving adoptive parents do not request another child but do ask that the news of the child’s death be passed on to the birth mother. 14 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 11 (May 1904): 3. 15 Letter, WCHF 9, no. 1 (July 1905): 6. 16 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 4. 17 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 12 (June 1904): 3. 18 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 11 (May 1904): 3. 19 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 3. 20 Letter, WCHF 7, no. 6 (December 1904): 4. 21 Letter (Geo. F. D), WCHF 10, no. 3 (August 1906): 10. 22 Letter (Mrs. L. F. R.), WCHF 10, no. 3 (August 1906): 10–11. 23 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 12 (June 1904): 3. 24 Letter, WCHF 11, no. 2 (July 1907): 7. 25 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 3. 26 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 12 (June 1904): 3. 27 Letter, WCHF 7, no. 1 (July 1904): 3. 28 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 12 (June 1904): 4. 29 Letter, WCHF 13, no. 9 (February 1910): 9. 30 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 12 (June 1904): 3. 31 Shawn Michelle Smith, American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 118–22. Documenting holidays was particularly potent evidence of successful family life, according to Smith: “By the 1890s, the family became a social unit increasingly imagined through the process of photographic representation. . . . Things central to holidays regarded as particularly familial, objects around which the family is constructed—the Thanksgiving table, the children’s Christmas tree—become ideal subjects to photograph” (118). In chapter 4, “‘Baby’s Picture Is Always Treasured’: Eugenics and the Reproduction of Whiteness in the Family Photograph Album,” Smith shows how eugenicists of the period put the Kodak and white middle-class women to use in constructing white racial bloodlines (113–35). 32 “The Baby and the Kodak,” WCHF 10, no. 5 (October 1906): 7. 33 Carp, Family Matters, 44-46. 34 Letter, WCHF 11, no. 12 (May 1908): 10. 35 Ibid., 11. 36 Letter, WCHF 7, no. 3 (September 1904): 3. 37 Letter, WCHF 12, no. 2 (July 1908): 10–11. 38 Letter, WCHF 16, no. 10 (March 1913): 8. 39 Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child, 175–207. The cultural changes that 256 | Notes to Chapter 5

40 41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

“devalued” children as workers created a boom in the market for adoptable babies, including a black-market economy in baby selling. Letter, WCHF 12, no. 8 (January 1909): 11. Letter, WCHF 12, no. 4 (September 1908): 11. Letter, WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 4. Letter, WCHF 11, no. 12 (May 1908): 11. Letter, WCHF 9, no. 1 (July 1905): 6. Letter, WCHF 11, no. 12 (May 1908): 10–11. I am using the term “triad” here in acknowledgment of and distinction from the term “adoption triangle,” introduced by Arthur D. Sorosky, Annette Baran, and Reuben Pannor in The Adoption Triangle. Their pathbreaking theory and methods “wrote” birth parents back into adoption discourse, thereby laying the ground in social work practice for “open adoption” and adoptee/birth parent search and reunion. The adoption triangle lies far in the future from the adoption practice at the turn of the century, which for all intents and purposes was meant to write birth parents out of the adoption experience. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 94. Clare Lunbeck Robinson, “Tell Them Early,” WCHF 15, no. 12 (May 1912): 6–7. Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 3. Letter, WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 4. Letter, WCHF 11, no. 4 (August/September 1907): 11. In contrast, children placed in some orphanages were allowed to receive letters from the birth parents. For a collection of such letters, including letters written by foster families and children, see Dulberger, “Mother Donit fore the Best.” “A Mother’s Sorrow,” WCHF 9, no. 3 (September 1905): 7–8. Letter, WCHF 10, no. 3 (August 1906): 11–12. Letter, WCHF 9, no. 9 (March 1906): 11. Letters, WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 3; and WCHF 6, no. 11 (April 1904): 4. Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 4. Letter, WCHF 9, no. 11 (May 1906): 10. Letter, WCHF 7, no. 2 (August 1904): 3. Letter, WCHF 7, no. 4 (October 1904): 3; and Letter, WCHF 13, no. 9 (February 1910): 9. Letter, WCHF 6, no. 10 (March 1904): 3. Letter, WCHF 12, no. 8 (January 1909): 11. Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904: 3. Letter (A. C.), WCHF 11, no. 11 (April 1908): 11. Notes to Chapter 5 | 257

65 Letter (B. W.), WCHF 11, no. 11 (April 1908): 11. 66 Letter, WCHF 11, no. 4 (August/September 1907): 11. 67 Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” and Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” both in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3–63, 64–91. 68 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 11 (April 1904): 4. 69 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 4. 70 Farm animals and pets seem to have provided children in orphanages and adoptive homes a source of pleasure and reassurance. In his memoir of growing up in an orphanage, The Home, Richard McKenzie frequently mentions time spent with animals. 71 Letter, WCHF 7, no. 3 (September 1904): 4. 72 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 11 (May 1904): 3. 73 Letter, WCHF 7, no. 4 (October 1904): 3. 74 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 3. 75 Ibid., 4. 76 “Suggestions to Foster Parents,” WCHF 14, no. 5 (October 1910): 5. 77 Letter, WCHF 10, no. 5 (October 1906): 10. 78 Letter, WCHF 7, no. 3 (September 1904): 3. 79 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 8 (January 1904): 4. 80 Letters, WCHF 7, no. 3 (September 1904): 3. 81 Letter, WCHF 9, no. 9 (March 1906): 11. 82 Letters, WCHF 6, no. 11 (April 1904): 4. 83 Letter, WCHF 7, no. 2 (August 1904): 3. 84 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 4. 85 WCHS case no. 610. 86 WCHS case no. 500. 87 WCHS case no. 303. 88 WCHS case no. 1007. 89 Letter, WCHF 6, no. 9 (February 1904): 4. 90 WCHF 6, no. 12 (June 1904): 4. 91 WCHS case no. 512. 92 WCHS case no. 1810. 93 WCHS case no. 1309. 94 WCHS case no. 1005. 95 WCHS case no. 2411. 96 “Results,” WCHF 14, no. 8 (December 1910): 5. 97 Letter, WCHF 7, no. 1 (July 1904): 3. 98 Letter, WCHF 9, no. 11 (May 1906): 9. 258 | Notes to Chapter 5

99 Letter, WCHF 9, no. 1 (July 1905): 6. 100 Letter, WCHF 9, no. 9 (March 1906): 10. 101 Letter, WCHF 10, no. 9 (February 1907): 10. 102 Letter, WCHF 9, no. 1 (July 1905): 6. 103 Letter, WCHF 10, no. 5 (October 1906): 12. 104 Letter, WCHF 11, no. 4 (August/September 1907): 11. 105 Letter, WCHF 11, no. 11 (April 1908): 11. 106 Letter, WCHF 10, no. 9 (February 1907): 10. 107 Letter, WCHF 11, no. 10 (March 1908): 11. 108 Letter, WCHF 12, no. 8 (January 1909): 11. 109 Letter, WCHF 11, no. 11 (April 1908): 11. 110 Ibid. 111 Letter, WCHF 12, no. 11 (April 1909): 10. 112 M. A. Covington, “The Little Boy Who Waits,” WCHF 15, nos. 2 and 3 (July/August 1911): 8–9.

Chap ter 6

1 WCHS case no. 199. 2 Outcome-based analysis of adoption can pathologize the experience of many in an effort to measure adjustment against social norms, usually against the normalized, naturalized status of biologically formed families. For a rigorous outcome-based analysis of adoption on a social history model, see Jamil Shaneen Zainaldin, “The Origins of Modern Legal Adoption,” especially chapter 8, “Evaluating Adoption: A Life Course of the Adopted Child.” Zainaldin mainly tracked probate records to assess the durability of kinship ties with indicators such as inheritance. 3 “Ministering Children,” WCHF 15, no. 9 (December 1911): 8. 4 “He Being Dead, Yet Speaketh,” reprinted from the Minnesota Home Finder in WCHF 6, no. 11 (May 1904): 4. 5 Ibid. 6 “To Our Girl’s Foster Parents,” WCHF 12, no. 8 (January 1909): 5–6. 7 “Be Patient with Them,” WCHF 11, no. 6 (November 1907): 9. 8 Reprinted from (New Jersey) Homes for Homeless in WCHF 10, no. 10 (March 1907): 8. 9 “Hints to Persons Receiving Children,” WCHF 10, no. 10 (March 1907): 8. 10 “Suggestions to Foster Parents,” WCHF 14, no. 5 (October 1910): 5. 11 “The Foster Parent and the Boy,” WCHF 12, no. 8 (January 1909): 7–8. 12 “Take Two,” WCHF 18, no. 2 (September 1914): 3. 13 “Our Exalted Mission,” WCHF 7, no. 1 (July 1904): 3; “Children on Hand,” Notes to Chapters 5 and 6 | 259

WCHF 14, no. 10 (March 1911): 6. Contracts, as opposed to adoptions, were made when a child had not been relinquished in a way that made them available for adoption; for that reason, contracts were occasionally made for young children, not just older, harder to place children. See WCHS case nos. 203, 703, 903, and 1311. Terms of the contracts varied from inheritance of estates to religious training in pursuit of becoming a housewife and fifty dollars on maturity. 14 “Help Me Find a Home,” WCHF 15, no. 1 (June 1911): 15. 15 “Children on Hand,” WCHF 14, no. 10 (March 1911): 6. 16 WCHS case no. 597. 17 “Older Girls,” WCHF 18, no. 3 (October/November 1914): 8. 18 WCHF 10, no. 10 (March 1907): 8. 19 “Our Boys,” WCHF 16, no. 5 (October 1912): 6. 20 “Help Me Find a Home,” WCHF 15, no. 1 (June 1911): 15. 21 WCHS case no. 306. 22 See, for example, WCHS case no. 1606, in which a boy of fourteen replaced another who had moved on. The couple requested a “good bright quiet boy.” 23 WCHS case no. 503. 24 M. A. Covington, “The Little Boy Who Waits,” WCHF 15, nos. 2 and 3 (July/August 1911): 8–9. 25 “Take Two,” WCHF 18, no. 2 (September 1914): 3. 26 “Homes Wanted,” WCHF 18, no. 3 (October/November 1914): 8. 27 “The Naughty Girl,” WCHF 14, no. 12 (May 1911): 10. 28 “Training in a Family Better than in a Reform School,” reprinted from the Kansas Home Finder in WCHF 6, no. 11 (April 1904): 1. 29 “Takes an Interest,” WCHF 6, no. 8 (January 1904): 4. 30 “An Unusual Contest,” WCHF 14, no. 6 (November 1910): 9. 31 On the subject of African American and Asian communities in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, see Taylor, “Black Urban Development—Another View,” “The Emergence of Black Communities in the Pacific Northwest,” and “Blacks and Asians in a White City.” For a complete history of African Americans in Seattle, see Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community, especially chapters 1 and 2. See also Mumford, Seattle’s Black Victorians 1852–1901, especially chapters 5–9. 32 There was at least some collaboration between pastors of Native American and African American congregations and WCHS. See a report of visits for the purpose of home placement from the Reverend Edward Marsden of Metlakatla, representing an Indian congregation, and the Reverend S. J. Collins, presiding elder of the African M. E. Church of the Puget Sound conference. “Some Pleasant Calls,” WCHF 11, no. 2 (July 1907): 4. 260 | Notes to Chapter 6

33 Taylor, Forging of a Black Community, 140. Taylor explains that WCHS had custody of the babies but, unsure of what to do with them, turned them over to King County Hospital, which sent them to the Medical Lake facility for disabled children. Four black women spearheaded the drive to raise money for the twins’ sponsorship. The girls were placed in temporary homes located by the club, and were yet to find acceptable homes three years later. 34 “Do Not Return the Child,” WCHF 17, no. 4 (September 1913): 7. 35 “A Brother and Sister,” WCHF 10, no. 6 (November 1906): 7. 36 WCHS case no. 809. 37 “The Miller Home,” WCHF 14, no. 8 (December 1910): 9. 38 WCHS case no. 698. 39 WCHS case no. 302. In case no. [1280]209, a four-year-old girl was summarily taken from an adoptive father and placed with a woman whose name was not even recorded, but whose home a second-hand source had verified was “one of the best homes that could be found in the County.” 40 WCHS case no. 502. 41 WCHS case no. 112. 42 WCHS case no. 2312. 43 WCHS case no. 607. See also case no. 1809, where the society was notified by the city marshal to investigate the abuse by a tyrannical adoptive mother. 44 WCHS case no. 1612. 45 WCHS case no. 314. 46 WCHS case no. 305. 47 WCHS case nos. 205 and 915. 48 WCHS case no. 2113. 49 Ibid. 50 WCHS case no. 909. 51 Ibid. 52 WCHS case no. 199. 53 WCHS case no. 107; WCHF 14, no. 8 (December 1910): 5. 54 WCHS case no. 410. 55 Ibid. 56 WCHS case no. 1507. 57 WCHS case no. 1811. 58 WCHS case no. 1409. 59 WCHS case no. 509. 60 Ibid. 61 WCHS case no. 2109. 62 James Clifford, “Diasporas,” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1994): 304. Notes to Chapter 6 | 261

63 Ibid., 310. 64 The 1904 Census figures did not distinguish between children in institutional care and those under institutional oversight by home-finding societies. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Benevolent Institutions, 1910, 31, table 23. 65 Ibid., 27. 66 Ibid., 30, table 22. 67 Guthrie and Grossman, “Adoption in the Progressive Era,” 235–53. 68 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Benevolent Institutions, 1910, 67, table 59. 69 Ibid., 67. 70 New York Children’s Aid Society alone placed about 250,000 children by 1929, the date of the last orphan train, and its smaller imitator, the New York Foundling Hospital, placed 30,000 (O’Connor, Orphan Trains, xvii).

Conclusion

1

2 3 4

5

As the field of child welfare professionalized during the 1920s, the setting of national child welfare standards, including adoption standards, was taken over by the Child Welfare League of America. The NCHS was disbanded as a national organization in 1929, although many of its original affiliated societies, like the CHSW, continue today. Ashby, Endangered Children, 2; and Coontz, The Way We Never Were, 10–14. “Child Welfare Crisis,” WCHF 18, nos. 7 and 8 (January/February 1915): 3; and “Comparative Stastistics [sic],” WCHF 10, no. 3 (August 1906): 6–8. In 1906, 224 children of the 874 dependent children in the state came into the care of WCHS, which already had 800 wards. Another 300 children, reportedly most of them Roman Catholic, were cared for by Catholic House of Good Shepherd, Mt. Carmel Mission, the Brothers’ School of Seattle, the Tacoma St. Joseph’s Orphanage, and the Tacoma City Orphanage. The rest were cared for by the Baptist Missionary Children’s Home of Burton, Wash.; Parkland Lutheran Children’s Home, Parkland, Wash.; Martha and Maria Orphan Asylum, Poulsbo, Wash.; the King County Industrial School, Mercer Island, Wash.; the Home of the Friendless and St. Joseph’s Orphanage, Spokane; and the Woolsey Orphan Home, Tacoma. More institutions were built over the next decade (WCHF 10, no. 3 [August 1906]: 6–7). Middle-aged alumni of Saint Dominic’s Home in Blauvelt, New York, celebrated a reunion at one of the last large orphanages, where fifty nuns cared for five hundred children at a time from 1878 until the late 1970s.

262 | Notes to Chapter 6 and Conclusion

Peter Applebome, “An Odd Place to Relive Childhood,” New York Times, Wednesday, August 2, 2006, A20. 6 Covington, “The Child Welfare Problems and a State Program Therefor,” 45, 48, 51. 7 Covington, “Child Welfare Problems,” 52–55. 8 From the book by the same title, Coontz, The Way We Never Were. 9 In 1913 WCHS also lobbied heavily for Senate Bill 283, which asked for the State of Washington to pay for fully dependent children committed to the society through the courts, as counties had been doing for many years. The bill did not get onto the House calendar for that session, and WCHS bitterly asserted that the Rules Committee “had so many other more important matters to present, among them a bill (fortunately killed) providing for prize fighting” (WCHF 16, no. 11 [April 1913]: 3–4). In 1914, the House Rules Committee refused to report the bill out of committee. Outraged, WCHS reported in the WCHF that the Legislature had provided $175,250 for the National Guard; $345,940 for veterans; $857,450 for penitentiaries; $424,000 for the reformatory; $193,975 for the Training School; and $125,000 for a new school for wayward girls; but nothing for orphan children (WCHF 18, no. 4 [December 1914]: 3). 10 For commentary on the mythic West, see R. White, “The Imagined West,” in It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own, 613–32; for commentary specifically about women, 627–29. 11 Richard White, Patricia Limerick, and dozens of other historians have transformed the study of the American West over the past two decades by tackling such thorny issues as race, gender, colonization, Indian displacement, exclusionary immigration practices, Japanese internment, Chicano identity, radical labor activism, and ecological exploitation in the West. The starting place for understanding the new synthesis is still Patricia Limerick’s Legacy of Conquest. 12 Gordon, The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, 309–10. 13 Catholic and Protestant asylums grew between 1890 and 1923, then declined slightly between 1923 and 1933; Jewish asylums rose from nine to eighty by 1929 (Hacsi, Second Home, 34–35). 14 Carp, Family Matters, 27–28; and Carp and Leon-Guerro, “When in Doubt, Count,” 200–201. 15 Bernstein, The Lost Children of Wilder, xi–xiv. 16 Roberts, Shattered Bonds, 7–8. 17 Ibid., 10–46. 18 Ibid., 250–51, 267–76. 19 Bartholet, Nobody’s Children. 20 “Children in Public Foster Care Waiting to be Adopted: FY1999–2004,” Notes to Conclusion | 263

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau, http://www.acf.hhs.gov/ programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/waiting2004.htm (accessed Aug. 4, 2006); “Children in Public Foster Care Waiting to be Adopted: FY1999– 2006,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration of Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau, http://www.acf.hhs. gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/waiting2006.htm (accessed July 11, 2009); and “Foster Care FY2002–FY2006 Entries, Exits, and Numbers of Children in Care on the Last Day of Each Federal Fiscal Year,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration of Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau, http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/ stats_research/afcars/statistics/entryexit2006.htm (accessed July 11, 2009). 21 “The AFCARS Report, Preliminary FY2004 Estimates as of June 2006 (11),” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau, http://www.acf.hhs. gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/waiting2004.htm (accessed Aug. 4, 2006). 22 U.S. Census Bureau, “Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates, Estimates for the United States, 2007,” http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/saipe/national. cgi?year=2003&ascii= (accessed July 11, 2009).

264 | Notes to Conclusion

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Problems of Synthesis, edited by J. Carroll Moody and Alice Kessler-Harris, 217–34. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1989. ———. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. ———. A Woman’s Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. Kevles, Daniel J. In the Name of Eugenics. New York: Knopf, 1985. Kimbrough, Mary. He Who Helps a Child: The Children’s Home Society of Missouri, Its First 100 Years. St. Louis: The Patrice Press, 1991. Kirk, H. David. Adoptive Kinship: A Modern Institution in Need of Reform. Toronto: Butterworths, 1981. ———. Shared Fate: A Theory of Adoption and Mental Health. London: The Free Press, 1964. Klaus, Alisa. “Depopulation and Race Suicide: Maternalism and Pronatalist Ideologies in France and the United States.” In Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, edited by Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, 188–212. New York: Routledge, 1993. Koven, Seth, and Sonya Michel, eds. Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States. New York: Routledge, 1993. Krause, Harry D. Illegitimacy: Law and Social Policy. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill Company, Inc., 1971. Kunzel, Regina G. Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890–1945. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Ladd-Taylor, Molly. Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. ———. Raising a Baby the Government Way: Mothers’ Letters to the Children’s Bureau, 1915–1932. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Lehrer, Susan. “A Living Wage Is for Men Only: Minimum Wage Legislation for Women, 1910–1925.” In Hidden Aspects of Women’s Work, edited by Christine Bose, Roslyn Feldberg, and Natalie Sokoloff, 201–21. New York: Praeger, 1987. Levenstein, Harvey. “‘Best for Babies’ or ‘Preventable Infanticide’? The Controversy over Artificial Feeding of Infants in American 1880–1920.” Journal of American History 70, no. 1 (June 1983): 75–94. Limerick, Patricia. Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West. New York: W. W. Norton, 1987. Lucas, Patricia Latourette. Seattle Children’s Home, 1884–1984: One Hundred Years of Pioneering in Child Development and Mental Health. Seattle: Seattle Children’s Home, 1984. MacDonald, Norbert. Distant Neighbors: A Comparative History of Seattle and Vancouver. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. 270 | Selected Bibliography

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Stratton, David H., ed. Spokane and the Inland Empire: An Interior Pacific Northwest Anthology. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1991. Taylor, Quintard. “Blacks and Asians in a White City: Japanese Americans and African Americans in Seattle, 1890–1940.” Western Historical Quarterly 22, no. 4 (1991): 401–29. ———. “Black Urban Development—Another View: Seattle’s Central District, 1910–1940.” Pacific Historical Review 58, no. 4 (1989): 429–48. ———. “The Emergence of Black Communities in the Pacific Northwest: 1865–1910.” Journal of Negro History 64 (Winter 1979): 342–54. ———. The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994. Tentler, Leslie Woodcock. Wage-Earning Women: Industrial Work and Family Life in the United States, 1900–1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Theis, Sophie Van Senden. How Foster Children Turn Out: A Study and Critical Analysis of 910 Children Who Were Placed in Foster Homes by the State Charity Aid Association and Who Are Now Eighteen Years of Age or Over. New York: State Charities Aid Association, 1924. Tice, Karen W. Tales of Wayward Girls and Immoral Women: Case Records and the Professionalization of Social Work. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Trent, James W. Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. “Two Thousand Homes for Christmas: Through Our Efforts Fully This Number of Children Will Spend the Holidays with New-Found Parents.” The Delineator (December 1910): 515. U.S. Bureau of the Census. Abstract of the Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900. Washington: GPO, 1902. ———. Benevolent Institutions, 1910. Washington: GPO, 1913. ———. Report on Crime, Pauperism, and Benevolence in the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890. Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1896. ———. “Small Area Income & Poverty Estimates, Estimates for the United States, 2007,” http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/saipe/national.cgi (accessed July 11, 2009). ———. Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Population, King County, Washington. Manuscript copy, microfilm, reels 1657-1662. ———. Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910, Population, Spokane County, Washington. Manuscript copy, microfilm, reels 1669-1671. ———. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Schedule No. 1—Population, King County, Washington. Manuscript copy, microfilm, reels 3-5. ———. Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900, Schedule No. 1—Population, Spokane County. Manuscript copy, microfilm, reels 10-11. 276 | Selected Bibliography

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i n dex

ments, 218 table 10; siblings of, 74, 78–80, 122, 126, 148, 160–61, 164; as survivors, 168–69; and Washington Children’s Home Society (WCHS), 128, 147, 156–57, 164, 186. See also home placement; rescue narratives adoption: Adoption and Safe Families Act, 203; and assimilation, 188, 192; biological model of, 129–30, 133, 137–38, 140, 143, 177, 188, 255–56n2; botanical model of, 126, 131, 150–65, 167–73, 177, 195; case records, 131; community, 146–47, 149, 157, 165; as compensation, 110–11; as cure, 110–11; and family history, 130, 138–39, 142, 147, 150, 157; and family preservation, 5, 16, 20, 39–40, 81, 193, 204; fear of,

abortion, 50, 116, 241n45 adopted children: adjustment of, 163–64; boys, 85–86; claiming of, 132–50; of color, 39; death of, 141, 145; and desire to please, 154–55, 162–63; with disabilities, 61, 83, 147; in displacement, 188; and forgetting the past, 177–78; girls, 85–86; as individuals, 72; legal standing of, 127–28, 136, 140; letters from, 150–65; loyalty of, 161–62, 164, 185; and material comfort, 66, 95, 137, 151, 152–53, 163–64; naming of, 139; older, 120, 141, 151, 158, 164, 168–70; and reasons relinquished, 216–17 table 9; and reunion with birth family, 68, 160, 161, 186; and school attendance, 114, 152; sex and number of place279

12–13, 35, 106; and home study, 119–22; legal requirements for, 127, 136, 140, 147; legitimacy of, 111, 131, 138, 140, 150; and middle-class values, 105, 106, 136, 192, 196, 200; and migration, 189; as modern practice, 13–14, 131; narratives, 130–31, 147, 149, 150, 157; and nurture, 100–101, 168; photography, 138–39, 256n31; post-placement oversight of, 142–50; and Progressive Era reform, 104–5, 112, 192, 193; as Protestant movement, 13, 19–20, 72, 194–95, 243n87; public face of, 130, 142–50; as rebirth and redemption, 20, 77, 151, 169, 175–76, 194–97; resistance to, 14, 20; and social mobility, 200; support for, 16, 27; in West, 189–90. See also foster care; home placement Adoption and Safe Families Act, 203 adoptive parents, 103–28; advice to, 168–70; age of, 122, 219 table 11; and age of child, 222 table 14, 223 table 16, 236; and claiming rituals, 129–50; class bias, 110; desires of, 103–4, 107–8, 115–19, 122–24, 196; fathers, as providers, 37, 104–5, 112–14; and home study, 33, 119–22; and middle-class values, 106, 136; nonwhite, 116; and preference for girls, 84, 103, 119, 122, 123, 247n38; qualifications of, 104, 121; and reasons for adopting, 220 table 12, 221 table 13; as saviors, 168–69; selection of, 115–22; and sex of child, 224 tables 17–18. See also infertility; mothers and motherhood Aid to Dependent Children, 198, 202 Appadurai, Arjun, 152 Ashby, LeRoy, 91

Bartholet, Elizabeth, 203 Bellingham Bay Children’s Home (Fairhaven), 24 birth parents: fathers, 37–38, 51–55, 112–14, 208–9 table 1; lack of records of, 39; mothers, 41, 47, 141, 142, 146, 175, 210 table 2, 238n14; nationality of, 4, 38, 211 table 3; reunions with, 186. See also relinquishment bottle-feeding, 75, 135 Brace, Charles Loring, 16–17, 34, 190, 230n21 Brandt, Allan M., 116 breast-feeding, 75, 239n24 Brown, Harrison D., 13–14, 21, 33, 41, 89, 121, 229n3, 250n2 Brown, Libbie Beach (Hoel), 13, 14, 21, 33, 89, 91, 109, 110, 229n4, 230n12, 230n13

Carp, E. Wayne, 15, 202 Catholic charities, 5, 20, 192 charities: Catholic, 5, 20, 192; Charity Endorsement Committee, 30; Charity Organization Society, 20; Jewish, 5, 20, 102; in rural areas, 234n87; western compared to eastern, 5, 25, 200. See also child saving: in the Pacific Northwest; child welfare organizations Charity Endorsement Committee, 30 Charity Organization Society, 20 child dependency. See child saving; relinquishment childlessness: as abnormal state, 13, 107, 108–9; as incomplete, 33, 111; and infertility, 108, 114–16 children: as “Americanizers,” 12; and best-interest-of-the-child doctrine,

280 | Index

100–101, 110; idealized, 71; as individuals, 72; in institutions or under institutional oversight compared, 225 table 19; as malleable, 72; needing nurturing, 71–72; and poverty, 204–5; sentimentalized, 37, 73, 195; sold, 64, 88 Children’s Home Society of Washington (CHSW), 191 Children’s Orthopedic Hospital, 25 child saving: in national context, 189–90, 195; need for, 15; in the Pacific Northwest, 23–25; and Progressive Era reform, 12; and social work, 72; western compared to eastern, 5, 10–11, 188–90. See also child welfare organizations Child Welfare League of America, 40, 262n1 child welfare organizations: admission standards of, 82–82; as alternatives to institutional care, 15–35; Catholic, 15, 17; Child Welfare League of America, 40, 262n1; and congregate care, 194; and cottage plan, 22, 248n57; Federal Children’s Bureau, 202; increase in, 15; Jewish, 15, 17, 40; New York Children’s Aid Society (CAS), 16–17, 34, 190, 230n21; New York Foundling Hospital (NYFH), 17; in Washington State, 24–25, 40, 41, 43–45, 47, 54, 88, 177, 191, 194, 239n24, 240n28, 263n9. See also National Children’s Home Society (NCHS); Washington Children’s Home Society (WCHS); and names of individual organizations Clifford, James, 131, 188 Cmiel, Kenneth, 73 Coontz, Stephanie, 196

Covington, Luther M., 28, 56, 70, 81–82, 95, 102, 178, 194–95 Crown Jewels Home for Children (Winlock), 24

deaths: and age at relinquishment, 63, 213 table 7; infanticide, 62–63; of infants, 44, 74–75, 132–34, 245n13; in receiving home fire, 28, 90. See also disease The Delineator, 73; “Child Rescue Campaign” of, 22, 23, 28, 193 disease, 78; scarlet fever, 90; treatments of, 99; tuberculosis, 58, 64, 242n66; typhoid, 61; venereal, 48, 83, 86, 93, 116, 133–34 domestic abuse, 65, 83 Dorcas Charity Club, 88, 177 Dreiser, Theodore, 22, 23

economic conditions in the Pacific Northwest, 5–11; boom-and-bust cycles, 10; compared to the East, 10–11; and depression of 1890s, 8, 15; and depression of 1908–9, 9–10; and effects on livelihoods, 5–7, 9–11; and the Klondike Gold Rush, 5, 8, 10; and natural resource base, 8. See also employment; relinquishment economy, western, 193, 198–99, 200; and destitution, 201. See also employment employment: farming and homesteading, 5–6, 10, 53, 77, 242n51; fishing and fisheries, 7; and industrial accidents, 3, 7, 9, 77; and labor glut, 8; logging and milling, 6–7, 9; and male wage work, 4, 7, 8–10;

Index | 281

mining and milling, 7, 9; and racial discrimination, 7, 9, 39, 240–41n35; railroads, 7, 9; seasonal, 9–10; and unemployment, 8, 9; of women, 4, 9, 10, 38, 40, 239–40n25 eugenics, 82, 106, 124; and the “feebleminded,” 101, 125; and immigrants, 101–2, 193, 195–96; and moral degeneracy, 82, 87. See also race

Federal Children’s Bureau, 202 Female Reform School, 24 Florence Crittenton Mission, 25, 40, 41, 43, 45, 47, 54, 239n24, 240n28 foster care, 16, 188, 198; and African Americans, 202–3; contemporary practice of, 191, 198–99, 201–5; and Massachusetts Plan, 16, 18–19; at National Children’s Home Society (NCHS), 21–22; at Washington Children’s Home Society (WCHS), 21–22, 31–32, 81, 201–2. See also adoption; Hart, Hastings H.; home placement Foucault, Michel, 143 Frater, Archibald, 46, 56

Gordon, Linda, 10, 50, 57, 124–25, 199 Griswold, Robert, 112

Hart, Hastings H.: as home preservation advocate, 21, 23; and Illinois Children’s Home Society (ICHAS), 21, 30, 33; as policy innovator, 30, 33–34, 201. See also National Children’s Home Society (NCHS)

heredity, 71–72, 87, 106, 195, 197. See also nurture Home for Dependent Children (Paulsbo), 24 Home for Friendless Children (Spokane), 24 home placement: and abuse, 120, 178–80; as alternative to institutional care, 12–35; of boys, 85–86, 94, 247n38, 247n41, 247n43; and children of color, 39, 81, 86–88, 174, 176–77, 261n33; criticism by religious organizations of, 17, 20, 122; of disabled children, 80–81, 83, 104, 180–81; and disruption after placement, 160–61, 166–67, 176; with foreign parents, 184–86; of girls, 85–86; of hard-to-place children, 31, 80–83, 104, 180–82; and home visits, 128; of older children, 71, 75–78, 84, 94, 99, 120, 166–67, 170–71, 172, 175, 188; as religious mission, 12–13, 19–20; and return of child to birth family, 178; and return to society from placements, 100–101, 104, 126–27, 151, 162, 166– 90; of siblings, 74, 78–80, 104, 122, 126, 175; and transience, 183–90; in wage homes, 99, 120, 170–74, 188. See also adopted children; adoptive parents; foster care House of the Good Shepherd (Seattle), 24–25, 40, 44, 194

immigration to the Pacific Northwest, 5, 7, 8, 11, 53, 87–88, 242n51; and fear of “defectives,” 82–83, 101–2; repatriation, 186. See also birth parents; migration to the Pacific Northwest

282 | Index

Indian Adoption Project, 203 Indian Schools, 24 Industrial School for Boys, 24 infertility, 108, 114–16

Jewish charities, 5, 20, 102 juvenile courts, 16, 29, 37, 67–68, 81–82, 193, 197, 198, 246n30. See also laws and legislation

King County Detention Home, 25 Klondike Gold Rush, 5, 8, 10 Koven, Seth, 111

Ladies Hebrew Benevolent Association, 25 laws and legislation: Aid to Dependent Children, 198, 202; and the best-interest-of-the-child doctrine, 36–37, 69; child protection in Washington State, 28–29, 63–64, 67–68; and illegitimacy, 41, 237n13; inheritance, 127; juvenile courts, 67–68, 197; Mothers’ Pension Act (Washington, 1913), 31, 32, 38, 195, 202; and mothers’ pensions, 22, 198; Multiethnic Placement Act (1997), 203; in the Progressive Era, 22, 29, 40, 232n57, 234n81; rape, 238n16; “tender years” doctrine, 113 Lunbeck, Clara, 143

migration to the Pacific Northwest, 5, 8, 11; from Midwest and West, 5, 11, 189; and population growth, 8, 10, 30; and urbanization, 10. See

also immigration to the Pacific Northwest Milwaukee Road railway line, 61, 187 mothers and motherhood: increased significance of during Progressive Era, 37, 105, 236n3; maternalism and reform, 71, 105, 111–12; and mothers’ pensions, 22, 198; naturalized, 106, 108; redefined, 111–12; scientific, 37; in service of society, 104; spiritualized, 105–7, 109–10, 140–41, 197; transformational power of, 106 Mothers’ Pension Act (Washington, 1913), 31, 32, 38, 195, 202 Multiethnic Placement Act (1997), 203

National Children’s Home Society (NCHS), 19–23; and adoption rates, 27; as alternative to orphan trains, 14, 17, 21; and Children’s Home Finder, 21, 34; expansion of, 21, 32; as first adoption agencies, 33–34, 235n105, 250n2; and foster care, 21–22; founding of, 5, 13, 19–23; as innovators, 33–34; moral philosophy of, 13, 19–20, 37, 39–40, 44, 72, 107; and state laws, 16; and Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 21. See also Hart, Hastings H.; Van Arsdale, Martin Van Buren Native Americans, 6, 7; and forced relinquishment, 66–67, 76–77; Indian Adoption Project, 203; placement of, 81, 86–87, 185–86; schools, 24 New York Children’s Aid Society (CAS), 16–17, 34, 190, 230n21

Index | 283

New York Foundling Hospital (NYFH), 17 Northern Pacific Railway Company, 6 nurture, 71–72, 87, 100, 106, 124, 125–26, 168, 197

orphaned children, 57, 84, 174 orphan trains, 14, 16–17; criticism of, 14, 17, 34. See also National Children’s Home Society (NCHS)

Parental School, 25

race, 39, 63, 83; and African American children in foster care, 202; matching of, 39, 86–87, 116, 125; mixedrace children, 63, 81, 86, 185–86; and poverty, 9; “suicide,” 72, 82, 87, 101, 106, 108, 124, 192, 196, 251n22. See also employment: and racial discrimination; Native Americans railroads: Milwaukee Road railway line, 61, 187; Northern Pacific Railway Company, 6; transcontinental, 5, 228n9; and wage workers, 7, 8. See also immigration to the Pacific Northwest; migration to the Pacific Northwest Ravenna Girls’ Home and Training School, 25 receiving homes, 26, 28, 73, 89–100; and diet, 91–92, 98; fire at, 28, 90; at Green Lake (Seattle), 90; and health, 99; holidays at, 94–96; and life history, 89; and middle-class training, 93, 98–100; and older

children, 93–94, 96–98; at Ravenna Heights (Seattle), 90–91; rehabilitation at, 78, 89, 92–93; and reluctance to leave, 92, 96–97; return to, 75, 96, 100–101, 151; routine at, 96–98; as shared experience, 89; in Spokane, 28; and work, 99. See also home placement relinquishment, 36–69; and abuse, 56, 64–65, 68, 74–75, 83; by age of mother, 213 table 6; causes of, 211 table 4; of children with disabilities, 61, 83; and death of both parents, 57–58, 84; and death of father, 3, 55–57, 77; and death of mother, 51–55; and desertion, 9, 10, 49, 51–52, 60–62, 77, 84; and destitution, 65–67, 77–78; and dislocation, 9, 79, 89; and divorce, 58–60; economic causes of, 4–5, 200; and ethnicity, 63, 238–39n20; and female poverty, 42, 49, 75, 200; and forced surrender, 51, 54–55, 63–65; of illegitimate children, 41–50, 74–75, 239n24, 244–45n10; of infants, 56, 62–63, 244n9; in juvenile courts, 29, 67–68; as last resort, 16; from mining districts, 77; and morality, 199; of older children, 71, 75; and poverty, 4, 9, 37, 42, 56, 65–68, 199; and unemployment, 9, 77; and woman’s wage, 10, 38, 42, 75; by year, 212 table 5. See also birth parents; employment rescue narratives, 73–74, 76–80 Revelle, D. S., 127 Riis, Jacob, 3–4, 10, 74 Roberts, Dorothy, 203 Roosevelt, Theodore, 12, 22, 72, 105, 108, 192, 250n8

284 | Index

Ross, Ellen, 98 Ryther’s Home (Seattle), 25, 54

Sandelowski, Margaret J., 115 scarlet fever, 90 Seattle: population, 8, 10; rebuilding after fire of 1889, 7–8 Seattle Children’s Home, 24, 25, 40 Sheltering Arms (Tacoma), 24 Sherrard, W. D., 22 Spokane, 8

“tender years” doctrine, 113 tuberculosis, 58, 64, 242n66 typhoid, 61

Van Arsdale, Martin Van Buren, 13–14, 19–20, 28, 33, 192 venereal disease, 48, 83, 86, 93, 116, 133–134

Washington Children’s Home Finder, 27, 29, 34, 80, 131, 132, 144–47, 150 Washington Children’s Home Society (WCHS): as adoption agency, 104;

advisory boards of, 14, 20, 26; aid department, 21, 30, 31; and business rhetoric, 30; case distribution, 233n67; children under care of, 214–15 table 8; and child welfare laws, 28–29, 36, 237n11; continued contact after placement, 127, 156; district superintendents of, 232n62; and foster care, 21–22, 31–32, 81; founding of, 13, 14–15, 229n3; growth of, 25–32, 35; and illegitimacy, 41, 44; and juvenile courts, 29, 32; moral philosophy of, 14, 16, 40, 41; and Washington Children’s Home Finder, 27, 29, 34, 80, 131, 132, 144–47, 150. See also adopted children; adoptive parents; receiving homes; rescue narratives West, James, 22 White House Conference on Care of Dependent Children (1909), 22–23, 40, 192, 198, 202; and James West, 22; and Theodore Dreiser, 22 White Shield Home (Spokane), 24, 44 White Shield Home (Tacoma), 24, 44, 45 Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), 21 Wood, W. D., 12–13, 14, 32, 72, 230n13

Index | 285

e m i l a n d k at h l e e n sic k se r i e s i n w e s t e r n h is t ory a n d bio gr a ph y The Great Columbia Plain: A Historical Geography, 1805–1910 by Donald W. Meinig Mills and Markets: A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Industry to 1900 by Thomas R. Cox Radical Heritage: Labor, Socialism, and Reform in Washington and British Columbia, 1885–1917 by Carlos A. Schwantes The Battle for Butte: Mining and Politics on the Northern Frontier, 1864–1906 by Michael P. Malone The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle’s Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era by Quintard Taylor Warren G. Magnuson and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century America by Shelby Scates The Atomic West, edited by Bruce Hevly and John M. Findlay Power and Place in the North American West, edited by Richard White and John M. Findlay Henry M. Jackson: A Life in Politics by Robert G. Kaufman

Parallel Destinies: Canadian-American Relations West of the Rockies, edited by John M. Findlay and Ken S. Coates Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest: Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century, edited by Louis Fiset and Gail M. Nomura Bringing Indians to the Book by Albert Furtwangler Death of Celilo Falls by Katrine Barber The Power of Promises: Perspectives on Indian Treaties of the Pacific Northwest, edited by Alexandra Harmon Warship under Sail: The USS Decatur in the Pacific West by Lorraine McConaghy Shadow Tribe: The Making of Columbia River Indian Identity by Andrew H. Fisher A Home for Every Child: The Washington Children’s Home Society in the Progressive Era by Patricia Susan Hart