The State Public School for dependent and neglected children is located at Sparta, in the valley of the La Crosse river, and is surrounded by hills which impart a varied and pleasant scenery. The location is a most desirable one for the healthfulness and happiness of the inmates. The grounds are spacious and well laid out, affording ample play grounds for the children. Flowing wells abound furnishing the purest water.

The school was established in 1886, and from its opening to Sept. 30, 1900, 2,221 children had been received within its doors, and after a few weeks or months, as might be necessary for preparation, passed on to homes where opportunities have been given them to develop into useful citizenship. More than 85 per cent. of the children thus placed have accepted these opportunities and have grown and are growing to be good men and women. Rescued from neglect, squalor and vice, where the downward road was the easier, lifted up to useful lives, in 85 of each 100 cases is a record which is very gratifying to the friends who urged the passage of the bill to create the school.

The school is intended for a depot between the children in their neglected conditions in the several counties and the many homes to which children will be welcome. Some of these children, however, have some physical, mental of moral deformity which may require attention for awhile before they are ready for a home. Thus the school is the place where, when possible, the child may be cured of some habits, and finally passed on to commence real life in a home surrounded by good influences. To do this requires comprehensive and careful teachers and matrons and those employed in the Sparta School are doing a noble work in preparing their charges for worthy homes and lives of usefulness.

The utmost care is taken in selecting homes for the children. The great number of applications in excess of the children enables agents of the school to accept only the best homes, and these only on personal inspection and thorough investigation. After a child is placed in a home it is frequently visited by the agent and to supplement this means of supervision, the guardian is required to make monthly reports to the superintendent regarding health, conduct, attendance at school, and any other items of interest concerning the ward.

For reasons already given, some children cannot be placed in homes. These are given the opportunities of a common school education and the larger girls are taught sewing and cooking under a competent teacher. The larger boys are taught farming. The farm connected with the school consists of 234 acres. About 100 acres are under cultivation, the remainder being pasture, some being of light, sandy soil, unfit for cultivation at present. Sufficient vegetables are raised for the population of the school, and a herd of cows furnishes all the milk required. The product of the farm for the year ending Sept. 30, 1900, was $4,800.

The buildings consist of a main building in which are the offices, superintendent's living rooms, dining rooms for children and employees, a small assembly room, and sleeping rooms; five cottages with a capacity for 250 pupils; a large new hospital, and an old frame building used for epidemics; a school house containing six rooms; a laundry building with heating plant, cold storage and ice house, and farm buildings.

Visitors are made welcome at the school, as it is the desire of the present administration to interest the people in one of the most essential charities of the state, that which may make true men and women of those who, it left uncared for, might descend to unuseful and degraded lives.

From its inception in 1886 to Sept. 30, 1900, the total cost of this school to the state for all purposes, including land and buildings, has been $705,231.14.

The whole number of children admitted up to Sept. 30, 1900, was 2,221; the average number in the school for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1899, was 163, and for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1900, the average number was 159. At the last named date 1,925 children had been placed in homes.

The Blue Book of the State of Wisconsin. Complied and published under the direction of Wm. H. Froehlich, Secretary of State. 1901. page 521 - 522

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