MAKING ROADS THROUGH PRISON LABOR
Dr. E. Stagg Whitin, General Secretary, National Committee on Prison Labor.
(By Dr. E. Stagg Whitin, General Secretary, National Committee on Prison Labor).
“Open up your jails, penitentiaries and prisons!” cry the good roads associations throughout the country—“a solution is at hand for your most difficult problem. Bad men on bad roads make good roads, while good roads make good men.”
“Good roads and good men” has become a slogan and no topic of prison news today is more widely discussed in the press from coast to coast than this—the employment of convicts in public road building.
Convict road making is a pressing question before the present sessions of legislatures, county supervisors and boards of control. Members are hesitating as to what answer to make and what arguments pro or con to bring forth. The literature on the subject is abundant, but in the suggestions there is little that is new. That thirty-three states had laws on their statute books in 1905 permitting the employment of convicts on state and county roads shows that a solution of the problem does not necessarily lie in legislation but in its administration. The various forms which these laws take demonstrate the fact that there is as yet no satisfactory or uniform law. The many different experiments going on today appear to have grown out of local needs and conditions rather than out of any generally accepted theory of what is right from the standpoint of penology. To solve satisfactorily the difficult problem involved, or even to suggest its proper solution, would require long research and experimentation, but perhaps it may be timely to point out some of the difficulties which must be encountered wherever convict road making is tried.
The theory that convict labor is a proper source of exploitation either by a lessee through his peonage, a contractor through his cheap contract, or a co-ordinate department of a state government through its subtle bookkeeping, is one that is untenable from any point of view. Road making is a legitimate use of state funds and is of practical benefit to all citizens by reducing the cost of transportation of the products of the farms to the great markets; therefore anything that will expedite the building of good roads is for the common welfare. It is on this basis that it is urged that the labor of convicts be used for this purpose. The state has a right to its use and under certain conditions it would greatly reduce the cost of production and tend to a more rapid development of good roads projects.
Still, we are face to face with a condition whereby the state directs its prison department to allow its highway department to have the labor of the convicts at little or no cost to the highway department and consequently at a figure much below that at which free labor might be induced to seek employment in road building. The claim that free labor cannot be had at any wage for work on roads in certain communities is generally advanced as a justification for this, but the large employment agencies of the country as well as the student of economics will soon show conclusively that the difficulty lies not in securing labor at any price, but in reluctance to give an adequate wage which will induce labor to come into the work.
The value of the convict’s labor on the roads is the same as the value of his labor in the prison factory—the wage at which free labor can be secured to perform the same work. Shall the prison department turn over gratis its convicts to the highway department—this is the question. If it does, it is giving to the highway department exactly that amount of money for which the highway department could hire free labor. It makes little difference to the taxpayers which he is taxed to maintain, prisons or roads. Prisons are deemed a necessity and the community is afraid to get along without them. Bad roads are a habit and the community is accustomed to get along with them. But with a single tax maintaining prisons and developing highways, which community could hesitate?
A much more legitimate argument, but one less often advanced, is the healthful, wholesome environment thrown around the convict while at work in road building. The experience of the men who developed the road work in Colorado shows that this is an advantageous way of employing able-bodied convicts—of transforming the sallow ghost-like prisoner, fresh from the prison pen, into a rosy, happy specimen of humanity. Under God’s own sky, with the fresh air of heaven, free from shackles and living on his honor with few guards to do more than supervise, the prisoner is surrounded by the best environment and governed under a method which is sane. While it remains to be proved how long this method will be a success and whether the experience of Colorado can be duplicated both north and south, the work at Kalamazoo, Mich., at Richmond, Va., and other places tends to raise our hope. These practical arguments should have weight.
A movement equally important with that of good roads is passing over the country. Efficiency is demanded in the management of prisons, with a wage for the convict which will benefit those dependent on him. To build up an efficient organization of prison industries is a task of no mean magnitude on an inadequate salary and hampered by red-tape of officialdom and incompetency of subordinates. The man at the head of prison departments needs sympathetic encouragement. To place upon him the burden of securing large appropriations for maintenance of his institution while the labor of his charges is handed over to others for exploitation is destructive of all ambition for the attainment of efficiency.
So it is that the movements of the day tend to clash and we are left with a dilemma. Is there a demand on the part of the highway and road people which is legitimate, which will open this seemingly large opportunity for the convict and still not offer it on a basis of exploitation? This conflict is full of interest to the student of the subject.