If proper contract labor cannot be had for our penitentiaries, then the price-piece plan is the best, and if it is not possible to employ the convicts in any other way, then we should resort to proper industries to be carried on, by State account, like New York.
The convict should be employed, either by contract or price-piece plan before resorting to manufacture on State account. Many a warden at the National Prison Congress, has shown that they could have all the contract or price-piece work that they could do if the law permitted it, but it is the everlasting fear of antagonizing force labor.
When we find that the entire output of all the penitentiaries in the United States during 1899, for the five principal things manufactured in prison was only one-tenth of one per cent, it does seem strange that any Trades’ Union would be unwilling to have the State by employment care for the health and best interests of their sons and brothers detained!
CONVICT LABOR ON STATE FARMS.
Mississippi Penitentiary Board of Control find farming their best interest, have leased 9,350 acres of cleared land on which was worked 720 convicts, the net revenue past year estimated at $100,000. The State has purchased 3,000 acres on which 80 convicts will be employed, and they have set apart $80,000 to purchase not more than 12,000 acres.
ROAD MAKING FOR CONVICTS.
The most valuable contributions in some respects, is the report of the Industrial Commission on “Prison Labor,” Washington, D. C., in the brief part which deals with what is not prison labor at all, but the labor of convicts outside of prisons—building and repairing roads—an employment which meets the demands of intelligent and practical reasoners, and seems to solve the problem of prison labor from a humanitarian standpoint. Mention is here made to call attention to it.
INDUSTRIAL REFORMATORIES.
New York State Reformatory, Elmira, is one of the oldest institutions of the kind in the United States. Has about 1500 convicts. As the State does not permit the sale of their product in open market, the institution has become more than ever a great trades school. Thirty-six industries are taught, beside mental, physical, and industrial training, including education in the school of letters. Several of the literary schools are taught by convicts trained for that department.
The trade of the convict is determined by the Superintendent, according to the advice of his relatives, and the surroundings he is likely to return to. Of the 658 discharged in 1899, 82 per cent. went directly to the trade practiced in the Reformatory.