From 1850 to 1930 America witnessed emigration and resettlement of at least 200,000 children and several thousand adults, primarily from the East Coast to the West. This volume sheds light on the multifaceted experience of children's immigration, changing concepts of welfare, and Western expansion.

These presentations, based on Dorothea Petrie's meeting with a man who had been placedout in Dysart, Iowa, in 1894, gave to a large general audience one story of the placing-out system.