Soldiers' Homes

institutions in which aged and disabled soldiers are housed and cared for. A national home has been provided for disabled volunteer soldiers, with branches at Dayton, Ohio; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Togus, Maine; Hampton, Virginia; Leavenworth, Kansas; Santa Monica, California; Marion, Indiana; Danville, Illinois; Johnson City, Tennessee; and Hot Springs, South Dakota. The aggregate number of members cared for is about 35,000. The requirements for admission are as follows:

1. An honorable discharge from the United States service during a war in which it was engaged. 2. Disability which prevents the applicant from earning his living by labor. 3. Applicants for admission will be required to stipulate and agree to abide by all the rules and regulations made by the board of managers, or by its order; to perform all duties required of them and to obey all the lawful orders of the officers of the home. Attention is called to the fact that by the law establishing the home the members are made subject to the rules and articles of war, and will be governed thereby in the same manner as if they were in the army of the United States. 4. A soldier or sailor must forward with his application for admission his discharge paper, and when he is a pensioner, his pension certificate, which papers will be retained at the branch to which the applicant is admitted, to be kept there for him, and returned to him when he is discharged. This rule is adopted to prevent the loss of such papers and certificates, and to hinder fraudulent practices; and no application will be considered unless these papers are sent with it. If the original discharge does not exist, a copy of discharge, certified by the war or navy department, or by the adjutant-general of the state, must accompany the application.

Many states have also established homes for veterans of the Civil War. They are located as follows:

A home for soldiers of the regular army has been established at Washington, District of Columbia. All soldiers who have served twenty years as enlisted men in the regular army, including volunteer soldiers, and all soldiers of less than twenty years' service who have incurred such disability by wounds, disease, or injuries in the line of duty while in the regular army as unfits them for further service, are entitled to the benefits of this home. Inmates are subject to the rules and articles of war, the same as soldiers in the army. They are comfortably lodged, fed, and clothed, and receive medical attendance and medicine. About 1,300 men are receiving the benefit of the home.

The veterans of the Civil War in the South, while the sacrifices they made in what they believed to be a patriotic cause, were not less than those of the veterans of the North, and while they are not less worthy or respectable than their brothers who wore the blue, are, of course, not eligible for admission to national soldiers' homes. Nor do they receive pensions from a grateful country. Nevertheless, out of their poverty the Southern States, not unmindful of the heroism of the "boys in gray," have in some sort provided homes for those of them who are destitute, and the governments of the different commonwealths make it a point, when there are places which they can fill, to appoint Confederate veterans to public positions.