A short article illustrates the heartless attitude toward the poor and the desperate circumstances of women who had no means of support other than their ability to earn. Peter Whitmer, a county supervisor, thought he had just saved the county a pocket of change, and never considered the fact that no woman at that time could earn enough money to keep a family under a warm roof and feed that family. As today, the work that women did was either unpaid or was paid a fraction of what a man would be paid for a job requiring a similar level of training or expertise.
The poor farm, as we know from past posts, was no land of milk and honey. The conditions there were more primitive than most homes in McLean County and the farm was filled with the "insane" and "idiots." No mother would send her children there except under the most desperate of circumstances.
This article also demonstrates that the children of the poor became free labor for the more fortunate members of society. Whitmer was not finding "homes" for children but finding positions of indentured servitude for those children, where they would be deprived of the love of their mother, the opportunities afforded by an education and a sense of self worth available only to those who have a choice in life. The poor farm did nothing but perpetuate the cycle of poverty and misery through the indenturing of these "able bodied" children.