Swiss "Verdingkinder" and American "orphan trains"

An exhibit about Swiss "verdingkinder" ("contract children") is presently touring that country, and creating some controversy.  Excerpts from a BBC report:

A dark chapter of Swiss history is getting increased attention, with the release of a feature film about "Verdingkinder" or "contract children" and an exhibition about them which is touring the country. A common feature of Swiss life until the mid-1950s, Verdingkinder were primarily children from poor families in the cities, forcibly removed from their parents by the authorities and sent to work on farms. There, many of them were regularly beaten and even sexually abused. They had little education and consequently, as adults, little chance of making careers for themselves... 

"Up to the 1950s there were regions in Switzerland that were really poor," he explains. "The Verdingkinder were taken from poor families in the cities. "Families were deprived of custody if they didn't live according to a middle-class family model - unmarried mothers, or divorced people, or people who weren't able to keep their money together. "The authorities took away a lot of children and placed them in agricultural environments where they had to work really hard." Some children were lucky enough to stay in farming families who cared for them, but by and large they were used as child labourers, in an era when, as Mr Weidmann points out, Swiss agriculture was not mechanised, and a great deal of work had to be done by hand... 

The exhibition "Verdingkinder Reden" or "Contract Children Speak", contains first-hand testimonies from former Verdingkinder, memories they have now shared with Ruedi Weidmann and his colleagues to draw attention to what happened...

Other rooms show a variety of farm implements - rakes, wooden shoes, leather straps, cast iron pans. These, explains Mr Weidmann, were things the contract children mention regularly because they were used to hit them. Other exhibits include small toys, and letters and postcards sent to the children by their real parents. "These were nearly always taken away - presents for Christmas they were not allowed to have… to interrupt the contact with the real family," says Mr Weidmann...

Meanwhile the feature film Der Verdingbub (The Contract Boy) is bringing what was once a taboo subject to a wider public. The film has been number one at the Swiss box office for weeks. "It's time to talk about it," says Mr Weidmann. "Since we began working on this exhibition we talk about it, we tell our friends, and I would say every third or fourth person we talk to says 'yes, my mother', or 'yes, my grandfather was a Verdingkind'." "It's something that affects a large part of Swiss society in one way or another." 

My wife found this link, and pointed out the many similarities to American "orphan trains," featured on a segment of the American Experience television program (an excellent series, btw...):

Eighty years ago, Elliot Bobo was taken from his alcoholic father's home, given a small cardboard suitcase, and put on board an "orphan train" bound for Arkansas. Bobo never saw his father again...

Between 1854 and 1929, more than 100,000 children were sent, via orphan trains, to new homes in rural America. Recognizing the need for labor in the expanding farm country, Brace believed that farmers would welcome homeless children, take them into their homes and treat them as their own. His program would turn out to be a forerunner of modern foster care...

Placement into new families was casual at best. Handbills heralded the distribution of cargoes of needy children.  As the trains pulled into towns, the youngsters were cleaned up and paraded on makeshift stages before crowds of prospective parents...

The separation from families, the beatings and the abuse were unspeakably cruel, but I have mixed feelings about how the labor aspect per se should be viewed.  In those days children were incorporated into the labor force much more quickly than most people (most first-world people) can imagine nowadays.  I can cite this example from a brief biography I posted about my mom several years ago:

She was born in 1918 to a classic 2nd generation Norwegian immigrant family in southern Minnesota, in an era when children were expected to help work the farm. She wore a huge bonnet in the summer sun, so that neighbors said it looked "like a big hat was driving the rig." She learned to drive that team of horses in a straight line so the cultivating tines wouldn't disturb the planted corn. She was 8 years old at that time.

That wasn't considered either abnormal or unloving at the time; children were expected to assist with the support of the family when they were capable of doing so.  School was closed during key harvest times.

I often think today's youth are actually deprived of the experience of various forms of family-related work.  I see neighborhood children reaching their teen years never having raked a leaf or mowed a lawn because hired crews do that.  Housekeepers do the household cleaning.  A truck with a blade arrives after a snowstorm to clear the driveways.  They don't seem to have summer jobs like I had, selling door-to-door or working in a factory or washing bedpans.  I'm not saying it's a better or worse experience for them, but it's different.