Charles Loring Brace. The Dangerous Classes of New York, and Twenty Years’ Work among Them. New York: Wynkoop & Hallenbeck, 1872.
Minister and social reformer Charles Loring Brace was assigned to work with the poor in New York City’s Five Points area and Blackwell’s Island in 1852 at the age of twenty-six. A year later he established the Children’s Aid Society, which ran the “orphan trains” that transported children to new homes in New England and the West, in what would become the largest resettlement of children in American history. In this book, Brace advocates for improving the lives of children through proper education, moral guidance, responsible parenting, and improved “material circumstances.” Sympathetic to the plight of the country’s vulnerable youth, the book explains the factors leading to youth crime and is replete with poignant illustrations of its subjects, shown here.
