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.
IN THE PRISONERS’ AID FIELD
THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY
Early in the year 1776 a society was organized by some benevolent citizens of Philadelphia under the name “The Philadelphia Society for Assisting Distressed Prisoners.” After a career of nineteen months the society was dissolved on account of difficulties arising during the War for Independence.
In 1787 philanthropic citizens constituted themselves “The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons.” From that time until the present this society has been actively engaged in securing measures to improve the conditions of prisons, and also in earnest endeavors to reform criminals, and so far as known it is the oldest prison society in continued existence in the world. The name of the society was legally changed in 1886 to “The Pennsylvania Prison Society.”