WHERE THE CHILDREN COME FROM.

Pennsylvania furnished four hundred thousand men in the war for the suppression of the rebellion. Of these probably fifty thousand were either killed or died in the service. They left large numbers of orphan children in destitute circumstances. It was for time care of such children that the orphan school system was established, and, during the earlier years of its history, no others were admitted into the schools. Persons who have not kept themselves informed respecting the changes made by the Legislature in the laws governing the system, not unfrequently ask where the children come from who now fill the schools fifteen years alter the close of the war. They inquire: "How can there he so many orphans of soldiers when their fathers died so long ago Is not the system being perverted from its original purpose? " These questions should be answered. The act of 1867 organizing the system of soldiers' orphan schools provided only for the children of soldiers who had been killed or had died in the service, and limited the admissions into school to those horn before the 1st day of January, 1866. If no subsequent laws had been passed changing these conditions, the number of children would have become so small that, in all probability, the schools would have closed before the present time.

But in addition to the fifty thousand soldiers who lost their lives during the war, at least one hundred thousand came home disabled, sick, or with the seeds of disease deeply rooted in their systems. Many of them from the first, broken and crippled, could not earn a livelihood for their families, and others, a little more fortunate, were able to work for some years, but finally succumbed to wounds which broke out afresh, or were laid imp with disease which advancing years left them less strength to resist. In every city and town, in almost every school district throughout the whole Commonwealth there are numbers of these human wrecks, sad witnesses of the horrors of war. In many eases they are the fathers of children-children worse off oftentimes than those whose fathers were killed in battle, and having an equal claim upon the bounty of the State. Influenced by these benevolent and patriotic considerations, the Legislatures of 1874, 1875, 1876, and 1878, by a series of acts, finally opened the door fully for the admission into the orphan schools of all children in destitute circumstances, without regard to age whose fathers either lost their lives in the army or were disabled or contracted disease while in the service to such an extent as to prevent them from earning a livelihood for their families or themselves.

More formally, the children now admitted under existing laws into the soldiers' orphan schools belong to three classes, as follows