The desire on the part of many managers and prison officials to make penal and reformatory institutions self supporting is one of the causes for their failure up to the present time to arrive at a successful solution of the convict labor question. Another reason for the failure to successfully solve the question has been the fast disappearing but still remaining spoils system in politics, which gives to the local merchants contracts to supply the needs of the state and state institutions. The usual form of prison labor is not reformative.
The problems to which all right thinking people should apply themselves is to adopt or evolve some system of employment that is fair to free labor, and then endeavor to have such a system uniform throughout the United States. Until some uniform system of disposing of the products of convicts is adopted, there should be a federal law enacted providing that each state shall have the right to regulate the sale of prison-made goods within its own borders. Such a bill, has been pending for a number of years in the congress of the United States. Each state should dispose of, within its own borders, the products of its own penal institutions.
The systems in vogue in our penal institutions at the present time are commonly known as:
- Contract labor (indoors).
- Contract labor (outdoors).
- Piece-price plan.
- Lease system (outdoors).
- State account: products sold on open market.
- State account: for state use.
Of these, the contract labor and lease systems have been universally condemned. At the present time, each state has its own system, or lack of system of handling the convict labor question. Each state endeavors to avoid competition with free labor in its own particular state. To do this, many contracts provide that the product shall not be sold within the state where it is made, and as a result the free labor in all the states is subject to about the same competition because of this interstate commerce in prison-made goods.
The farming out and disposing of the labor of convicts by contracts to private persons or corporations, is the most pernicious form of competition to which free labor is subjected. The piece-price plan and state-account, when the product is disposed of on the open market, either to favored persons or corporations, or without regard to market conditions or prevailing market price, is not much better. All of these systems except the state account plan, where the product is used by the state or state institutions, tend toward the concentrating of the productions into a few trades. The concentrating of prison-made goods into a few trades is bitterly opposed by free labor. Such products are sold in the open market at less than the market prices, and this unfair, cruel competition drives free manufacturers out of business, free workmen out of employment, and puts a penalty on the wage-earner who keeps out of prison.
The old systems of labor have been tried, have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The story of graft and corruption of prison officials who have had anything to do with contracts for prison labor under any system, except the state account plan, where the products are used by the state, or in the state institutions, has aroused almost every state in our Union. The reports of state investigating committees and of committees appointed by civic organizations, are such as to be almost unbelievable. The abuses, the atrocities, the crimes that are committed in the use of convict labor, have brought down the condemnation of all right thinking citizens, and created a demand for a system of labor that will not be subject to those conditions.
In the movement for better conditions, organized labor takes a stand in the front rank. Of all of the systems of work that have been used in the various penal institutions the one most successful is the state account system by which the labor of the convicts is used for the state, and the products for the state institutions. This system eliminates nearly all incentive to bribery of prison officials, the exploitation of convict labor and the opposition to the parole laws. Under it the whole people get whatever benefits may be derived from the labor of the prisoners of the state.
Organized labor is on record as favoring this system. When the prison officials recognize that the profits of the prisoners’ labor belongs to the state, that the state is more interested in reforming the prisoner than making a profit on him, such officials thereupon become much better officials for the state as a whole.
The efforts of the prison officials are thereafter directed toward curing our morally sick men and women, and new and various methods are tried. In this connection I might mention the experiment as reported in the press of September 30, of this year, of Ray Baker, warden of the Nevada state penitentiary, who, in company with three unarmed assistants, took fifty-two convicts, many of them life termers, to attend a theatrical performance. Every convict was upon honor, and not one violated his word.