Abstract
Too few, if any, histories of social work practice and knowledge development have been written by professionally educated, experienced social workers with a sensibility to philosophical orientations, pressing practice problems, and enduring research questions in the field. As a result, histories of social work often disappoint in their capacity to help us understand the previous development of our field as a guide and influence on its future development. Karen Staller’s New York Newsboys: Charles Loring Brace and the Founding of the Children’s Aid Society stands as a shining exception to the extant historical work in our field. Staller describes the aim of her book as follows: In the end, this book is not an exercise in theoretical historical narration, although the empirical evidence paints a humanitarian, rather than social control, portrait of Children’s Aid Society practices. Instead, the book offers a pragmatic and hopefully inspiring look at the early development of social work practice and institution building, inductively constructed from existing documents. (p. xxxvi)
Staller’s work is exceptional in several ways. First, Staller is a master’s and doctoral-trained social worker from Columbia University with experience working with youth experiencing homelessness in New York City. Staller signals her value orientation by dedicating the book to her mother, the “daughter of New-York social justice workers.” The second way her work is exceptional is that she lays out the specific assumptions that guide her analysis, including (a) recognition that children estranged from all other systems of socialization are the “rightful” recipients of support; (b) deep respect for the individual agency and ingenuity of the “clients”—in this case, streetwise teenage boys; (c) understanding that building an “organizational intervention”—in this case, a 19th century social agency—requires flexibility, creativity, and ongoing data collection; and (d) recognition that evidence from internal organizational documents can be used to reveal organizational design, integrity, and impact through qualitative inquiry and interpretive methods.
The orientation of the book is consistent with the defining characteristics of social work as a profession, focusing on the individual-in-context or person-in-environment, i.e. the dual concern with promoting individual dignity and well-being as well as social justice. Social workers promote social justice and social change on behalf of clients, using the term “client” inclusively to refer to individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities (National Association of Social Workers, 2021). Social work practice and knowledge development are fundamentally based on recognition of and responsiveness to client perspectives in the pursuit of social and economic justice (Marsh, 2002). This focus on the individual-in-context is reflected in both the structure and content of this book. The book is organized into a preface laying out the issue of youth homelessness, followed by dense and detailed empirical chapters describing the context or environment of 19th century New York and the individual, specific experiences of youth who are homeless. The preface describes the modern issue of youth homelessness, its current scope, and political, economic, and social approaches to this issue relative to the scope and approach of 19th century street youth. The early chapters describe the early development of the Children’s Aid Society and Charles Loring Brace’s vision for the agency, whereas the latter chapters provide rich descriptions of the brutalities of urban 19th century New York and the backgrounds and daily lives of youth experiencing homelessness.
Throughout its chapters, the book addresses terminological issues plaguing the study of youth homelessness in the 19th century and now. Staller documents the current understanding of youth homelessness whereby poverty, family instability, conflict, violence, and parental substance use result in significant numbers of young people being forced to leave, abandoned, or otherwise excluded from their homes by the actions of parents, custodians, or caregivers. She provides the more or less pejorative labels currently used to describe these youth, including shove outs, pushouts, runaways, throwaways, predators, street youth, victims of labor or sex trafficking, homeless youth and youth experiencing homelessness. Ultimately, she defines the “problem” as “autonomous or semi-autonomous young people who are prematurely on their own, floating around, day and night, without adult supervision and without being engaged in traditional institutions or socialization” (p. xx). Staller connects current terminology and problem definition to the concern of the 19th century about the “‘deplorable and growing evil’ in ‘the constantly increasing number of vagrants, idle and vicious children (emphasis added) … who infest our public thoroughfares, hotels, docks etc.’” (p. 35). She documents the cleverness of Charles Loring Brace in strategically choosing the term newsboys to describe the youth he wished to serve. In 19th century New York, newsboys (who were part of a revolution in the newspaper industry and sold breaking news for one cent or less per copy) were known for their industry, savvy, and entrepreneurial spirit as well as their engagement in pickpocketing, theft, and other crimes. Their location between “redemption and ruin” positioned them perfectly for Brace’s campaign to build an institution serving poor children. As Staller points out, this label enabled him to remind churchgoers of their Christian duty to help, of wealthy industrialists of their interest in entrepreneurialism and nativists, fearful of immigrant groups, that their ultimate political power might be tamed through educatin and socialization. Regardless of the group to which he appealed, the label newsboys enabled him to build financial security for this new institution serving children.
Another valuable contribution is Staller’s cogent critique of the epistemological issues plaguing the development of services for homeless youth in the 19th century, many of which operate today. She describes the two competing frameworks as humanitarian versus moral and social control. Although she notes historians of philanthropy have identified the first wave of humanitarianism as influential in the early development of social work (Friedman and McGarvie, 2003), most professionally educated social workers have been much more stringently schooled in the moral and social control framework. Staller builds on the work of Bellingham (1986) in describing social control theorists as “colonizers of the poor” who make broad assertions about reformers’ motivations and positionality and use evidence selectively to support their claims. According to Staller, their work provides little understanding of the motivations of the actors or organization of the institutions under study. The lack of attention to micro-level experience leads to a loss of nuanced understanding of the gendered, racial, and ethnic experiences of those clients and their relationships and interactions with charitable institutions—the groups and experiences of greatest interest to Staller. Indeed, Staller argues that “by discarding the research questions most interesting to social work scholars, historical accounts my miss important development and undervalue the significance of the very institutions being studied or the practice methods employed within them” (p. xxxiv).
Further, Staller’s relentless focus on “questions of most interest to social workers”—specifically, the detailed micro-level interactions of clients with the institutions serving them— advances our understanding of not only the humanitarian epistemological framework but also the ideas and practices in social work that are of enduring value. Staller accomplishes this through exploitation and excavation of the 996 archival boxes and 490 bound volumes comprising The Victor Remer Historical Archives of the Children’s Aid Society. Fortunately for the historical record, Charles Loring Brace and other actors in the initiation of services were compulsive recordkeepers. They documented not only the brutal conditions of extreme poverty in New York and the problems and challenges they faced in serving clients, but also specific interactions and communications with the newsboys. In a footnote, Staller outlines how one society agent described the purpose of his detailed recordkeeping: In those sketches and incidents among the Newsboys I am giving the details with as much as possible the naivete and conversational case of the remarkable personages themselves the sayings and doing of the newsboys will bring them bodily before the reader, I more definite shape that any description would do. The little narrative may be thus more graphically delivered, and the characters will develop themselves. (p. 201)
By using these detailed narrative accounts to follow the ups and downs, tribulations and triumphs of individual newsboys over time, Staller draws the reader into the daily lives of the youth and provides a visceral understanding of their considerable agency and ingenuity. Most readers will develop empathy for these youth and respond emotionally as the course of their lives is revealed. For example, they will be pleased to learn that Fatty, who initially struggled to learn the idea of savings, ultimately returned to the lodging house to show off a newly purchased coat with “exuberant pleasure.” Or they will be moved by the generosity of the “Professor” who quickly offered his meager savings to help the head of the lodging house when he was himself a victim of pickpocketing. Altogether, Staller uses the detailed recordkeeping to reveal the early residents of the newsboys’ lodging house to be a “colorful cast of characters … industrious children trying to gain traction in a difficult environment” (p. 200).
Finally, Staller does not shy away from reflecting on the impact of American slavery on the founding of the Children’s Aid Society, the lives of its founders, and the children they served. Charles Loring Brace’s unwavering condemnation of slavery and his friendships with other ardent abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, led to his brief imprisonment by the Austrian government and ultimately, created tensions with friends, colleagues, and supporters. At this point in history, slavery was at the center of the national dialogue as new territories had the right to decide whether to permit slavery in their borders. Ultimately, many newsboys were swept into the Civil War and lost their lives defending the Union. Staller outlines the devastating prediction of Charles Loring Brace that 1861 would be remembered as “probably the most disturbed and disastrous which will ever occur in the history of the Republic” (p. 245). In many ways, her treatment of the effect of slavery on the people and practices involved in the founding of a social services agency in the mid-19th century aligns with the work of current authors like Nikole Hannah-Jones and other contributors to the 1619 Project (2021) who challenge us to examine how all our social institutions and historical eras have been shaped by the legacy of American slavery.
Overall, Professor Staller more than achieves her stated aim for New York Newsboys: Charles Loring Brace and the Founding of the Children’s Aid Society. She does indeed provide a “pragmatic and inspiring look at the early development of social work practice and institution building, inductively constructed from existing documents” (p. xxxvi). The structure of the book and the exquisite detail she extracts from her sources document the individual instincts and institutional, political, and economic forces that shaped the practice of social work in the 19th century. The book will be of interest to all child welfare and social work practitioners and scholars interested in the epistemological, political, moral, and practical considerations that shaped and continue to shape the development of our field.