Payments to Prisoners.—Dependents of prisoners now serving in the Ohio penitentiary received in January the first payments of money earned by the inmates of the State prison. Under the prison pay system, only those who are employed each day and whose deportment record is good receive any compensation for their labors. Men occupied at trades are paid the highest.
The prison pay system was installed at the penitentiary in the latter part of September, and under its ruling no prisoner can earn more than $2.20 each week. The highest amount sent out Thursday by the penitentiary chief clerk amounted to $30. This sum went to a woman whose husband is serving a long sentence. The woman has three children which she is supporting by being employed as a domestic.
A total of $774.72 was mailed out from the prison Thursday, and Friday an additional $867.15 was sent out.
In Oregon four wives whose husbands are serving time on the rockpile, following convictions of non-support of their families, collected $126.25 from the county for their husband’s work during December. The law provides that the county shall allow the wife $1 and each child up to three 25 cents a day for the convict’s labors. During December two wives received an allowance of $1 a day each, and two received the maximum allowance of $1.75 a day. Three of those serving the county for non-support and whose families were reimbursed by the county are in for six months and the fourth is serving a year.
The Booher-Hughes Bill in Congress.—“The development of convict road work in practically every State of the union will be the natural outcome of the passage of the Booher-Hughes bill, now pending before Congress,” says L. H. Speare, president of the Massachusetts Automobile State Association.
“The bill, which will limit interstate commerce in convict-made goods by subjecting such goods to the laws of the State into which they come, will strike a fatal blow at the contract system. Under this pernicious system great quantities of prison-made goods are annually thrown on the open market, and because of the cheapness of their manufacture are sold at prices far below those at which similar goods manufactured under fair conditions can be sold. A cutting of the selling-price of goods manufactured in free factories and a consequent lowering of the wage paid free workingmen is the consequence.
“Against this unfair competition organized labor has waged unceasing warfare, striving to overcome it by limiting the output of the prisons. Laws requiring the branding of convict-made goods and also a license for their sale have been written on the statute books of New York and a dozen other States. These laws, when tested by the courts, have invariably been held unconstitutional on the ground that they interfered with interstate commerce. The Booher-Hughes bill has therefore been introduced into Congress and is supported by the American Federation of Labor and the national committee on prison labor. This bill is modelled after the Wilson liquor law, which restricts interstate commerce in spirituous liquors, and it is hoped in the event of its passage that the State branding and licensing laws will be possible of enforcement.
“New York City has long been the dumping ground for convict-made goods, and once it is possible to enforce the New York branding laws the profits to be derived from prison contracts will be reduced to a minimum. So great is the contractor’s fear of the effect of such legislation as the Booher-Hughes bill that many contracts contain the proviso that on its passage they shall immediately become null and void.
“The destruction of the contract system would necessitate the building up of other systems for the employment of convicts. In the constructive programme which will be worked out in each of the States, road work, endorsed as it is by the national committee on prison labor and other agencies for prison reform, would play a large part. The passage of the Booher-Hughes convict labor bill is therefore of definite importance to all interested in the movement for placing convicts on the public roads.”