I have often wondered whether we fully realize that in the experience of every man there is always the “middle man.” By the “middle man” I mean the character taken after its evolution from the innocent years of early life and out of which the last state of the man will evolve. The man when received at a penal institution is invariably the “middle man.” If we realize this, and in connection therewith that character remains plastic, despite the old adage that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” and we conscientiously endeavor to secure the adoption of regulations designed with the idea in view that we are dealing with human beings, the “man going out” is an entirely new fellow from the man we received—while our prisons will become vast catacombs, the eternal resting place for the shade of the “middle man.”
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.