One Protestant institution that drew the loudest condemnation from the Catholic clergy was the Children's Aid Society in New York City. Founded in 1853 by Charles Loring BRACE, the CAS was committed to saving children who were orphaned or living in unfit homes. The goal was to remove the children from the harmful environment of the slums and place them in the homes of respectable families. Starting in 1854 and running until 1929, the CAS sponsored so-called "orphan trains" that carried 250,000 children to the Midwest, where they were placed with adoptive families. In some cases the children were not actually "orphaned" but had been placed in the CAS by a surviving parent who fully intended on reclaiming the child as circumstances improved. Children on "orphan trains" were often herded onto a stage in some town along the route where prospective adoptive parents could examine and choose their child -- this event having been advertised in advance in the newspaper. Nonetheless, it is a fact that many children found loving new families and had been rescued from the dangerous and unhealthy conditions existing in the slums. Sadly, in some adoptive homes they were treated more like servants. Some children benefited enormously from the program and went on to successful lives as a result. John BRADY and his friend Andrew BURKE, for example, grew up to become the governors of Alaska and North Dakota. Other children merely ended up in Midwestern jails rather than Sing Sing. Upper-class New Yorkers hailed BRACE for his humanitarianism. Archbishop John HUGHES denounced him as a kidnapper, for the great majority of the children taken by the CAS were Irish Catholic and most ended up in Protestant homes. To combat the effort, he organized the Catholic Protectorate and other agencies designed to harbor children in need and to place them in Catholic families.