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From Publishers Weekly
In 1859, the New York Times termed urban orphans the "ulcers of society." By 1864, child welfare crusaders were advocating their adoption by rural families and sending trains full of orphaned and abandoned children westward. As Gordon documents in this compelling account, they were often dumped at the end of the line, where they were taken in by whoever needed or wanted a childAfor any purpose. By the end of the 19th century, the Sisters of Charity's New York Foundling Hospital was cleaning up this well-established practice by carefully matching children with families selected by parish priests. Focusing on the delivery of 40 "white" orphans to Mexican Catholic adoptive families in the Arizona mining towns of Clifton and Morenci in 1904, Gordon vividly describes how the Anglo women of the townAall of them ProtestantsAbecame enraged and instigated a mass abduction of the children, often carried out at gunpoint. A trial ensued, pitting the Foundling Hospital against the Anglo powers of Arizona, which ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court held that the abduction was legal, and that placing the children with Mexican families had been tantamount to child abuse. In delineating the racial and religious dynamics in turn-of-the-century Arizona (including frontier feminism, the evolution of racial and class structures and the history of copper mining, labor disputes and vigilantism), Gordon reveals a great deal about the origins of "family values" in America. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Gordon (history, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) builds her book around an incident in 1904, when a group of New York Irish orphans was sent to live with Catholic (and Mexican) families in Arizona. Outraged local Anglos then "rescued" the children at gunpoint. This account of the orphan abduction jostles for space amidst an encyclopedic re-creation of the world of Mexican miners in the American Southwest. The tale is so convoluted that the book even includes a list of characters, and the outcome is, predictably, unhappy. More compelling are the background sections that detail everything from how many pestles were in the miners' kitchens (two) to the racial basis for setting mine wages. Throughout, Gordon discusses the hardening racist system in the Southwest. These painstakingly researched chapters could well stand on their own as a powerful history of the miners' lives and a superior case study of emigrant labor at the turn of the century. Recommended for academic libraries.ADuncan Stewart, State Historical Society of Iowa Lib., Iowa City
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent examination of the evolution of race in US history,
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This review is from: The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (Paperback)
Ms. Gordon has told in a compelling, exciting manner the tragic story of how 40 orphans became a pawn, first in New York's reform movement, and then in the southwest labor struggles.However, her book goes far beyond this simple story, by using it as a springboard for an examination of the evolving concept of "race" in american history, and how the concept of race was used in different ways, at different times--tied to economic, religious and gender issuses which prevailed at diiferent times in different places. The central "action" in Ms. Gordon's narrative is not, as several reviewers seemed to think, the abduction of the orphans. It is the transformation of the orphans from "Irish"--a despised minority in New York--into "White"--a powerful minority in Arizona, as they took their 2,000 mile train ride to their new adopted homes. The only reason that I did not rate this book five stars is because Ms. Gordon first does a very good job explaining the paucity of evidence for the actual abduction--poor people tend not to leave historical records. However, she periodically leaps beyond this limited records into wild speculation (which may well be correct, but certainly is not supported by her evidence), all without acknowledging the contradiction. All in all, well worth the read for anyone who is interested in the role race has played in american history--which ought to be all of us.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Can't quite decide...,
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This review is from: The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (Hardcover)
Gordon divides her book into parts: the "facts" and the narrative. The narrative reads much like a novel (at least partially because Gordon doesn't have a lot of concrete research to draw upon so she can fill in the blanks in an... entertaining manner) while the rest of the book is filled with (often dry) research. It seems as if Gordon is torn between writing an academic work or a popular work and ends up not quite hitting the mark with either. If I hadn't been reading the book for class, I would probably just skim through the book for the story (there's a section of each chapter devoted just to the orphans' story) and then check with the rest of the book is I was very curious about a specific detail.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book of history,
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This review is from: The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction (Hardcover)
Linda Gordon has done a fabulous job using a small incident to illustrate many aspects of US (& Mexican) social history at the turn of the (1900) century. It isn't the orphan abduction that this book is about, something that one of the previous reviewers showed that she had the wrong expectations about. This is straight slice-of-history work. I felt Gordon did a nice, if sometimes mechanical-feeling job, moving from the framework of social history in one chapter to the details of the orphan abduction in the next. And her chapters about the orphan thing in particular were interspersed with some of the most interesting observations about life 100-125 years ago. I thought the book was a very good read, not boring at all. I felt a drive to finish it more to see what new gems of historical trivia would appear than to hear the sorry ending to the orphan tale itself. After all, the sorry ending was known from the start, not the gems of history that Gordon teased out of the story.
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