as 34,000. The police referred to these children as "street rats". According to an essay written by Brace in 1872, one crime and poverty ridden area around Tenth Avenue was referred to as "Misery Row". Misery Row was considered to be a main breeding ground of crime and poverty, and an inevitable "fever nest" where disease spread easily. Many of the children he deemed orphans were not orphaned at all, and when families of origin tried to keep their children, they were rebuffed. Orphan asylums and almshouses were the only "social services" available for poor and homeless children. Brace did not believe that these were worthwhile institutions because they merely served the purpose of feeding the poor and providing handouts. He felt that such institutions only deepened the dependence of the poor on charity. Brace was also influenced by the writings of Edward Livingstone, a pioneer in prison reform who believed that the best way to deal with crime and poverty was to prevent it. Brace focused on finding jobs and training for poor and destitute children so they could help themselves. His initial efforts in social reform included free kindergartens, free dental clinics, job placement, training programs, reading rooms, and lodging houses for boys. However, Catholic and Jewish religious leaders feared that Brace was trying to "rescue" children from Catholic and Jewish faith. Fostering and the "Orphan Trains" Brace believed that removing homeless children from their street environment and overcrowded city institutions and placing them with "morally upright" farm families was key to providing the children with good lives. Realizing the practical need for workers in the developing Western and Midwestern states, he proposed sending homeless children to those communities in the hopes of finding them work or families. "In every American community, especially in a western one, there are many spare places at the table of life," Brace wrote. "They have enough for themselves and the stranger too." After a year spent testing his idea by dispatching children individually to farms in nearby Connecticut, Pennsylvania and rural New York, the Children's Aid Society mounted its first large-scale expedition to the Midwest in September 1854. The arrangements for placing homeless children varied. Sometimes, children were pre-ordered by couples, who would send a request for their desired gender, age, hair and eye color, end etc. to one of the institutions participating in the placements. After a suitably fitting child was