Part I. Shaping the Future: Institutions and the Law 17
1 Playing Progressively? Race, Reform, and Playful Pedagogies 19
in the Origins of Philadelphia's Starr Garden Recreation Park,
1857-1904
Deborah Valentine
2 Model Schools and Field Days: Colorado Fuel and Iron's 42
Construction of Education and Recreation for Children,
1901-1918
Fawn-Amber Montoya
3 Of Families or Individuals? Southern Child Workers and the 59
Progressive Crusade for Child Labor Regulation, 1899-1920
Gwendoline Alphonso
4 "I Was So Glad to Be in School Here”: Religious Organizations 81
and the School on Ellis Island in the Early 1900s
Claire B. Gallagher
5 The Trajectory of Benevolence: Progressivism in the 102
Little Colonel Books
Sarah E. Clere
Part II. Managing Change: Children, Youth, 121
and Families
6 Willful Disobedience: Young People and School Authority 125
in the Nineteenth-Century United States
James D. Schmidt
7 The Contested Meanings of Child Marriage in the 145
Turn-of-the-Century United States
Nicholas L. Syrett
8 Sex, Abortion, and Prostitution in the Lives of Gilded Age 166
Chicago Girls
Mary Linehan
9 Ohio Departures: George as Progressive Youth in Sherwood 187
Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio
John James and Tom Ue
10 Fit Body, Fit Mind

In the decades after the Civil War, urbanization, industrialization, and immigration marked the start of the Gilded Age, a period of rapid economic growth but also social upheaval. Reformers responded to the social and economic chaos with a ?search for order,? as famously described by historian Robert Wiebe. Most reformers agreed that one of the nation's top priorities should be its children and youth, who, they believed, suffered more from the disorder plaguing the rapidly growing nation than any other group.
Children and Youth during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era explores both nineteenth century conditions that led Progressives to their search for order and some of the solutions applied to children and youth in the context of that search. Edited by renowned scholar of children's history James Marten, the collection of eleven essays offers case studies relevant to educational reform, child labor laws, underage marriage, and recreation for children, among others. Including important primary documents produced by children themselves, the essays in this volume foreground the role that youth played in exerting agency over their own lives and in contesting the policies that sought to protect and control them.