On holidays, especially Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, an excellent meal is served to every inmate in the institution, and they are allowed on all legal holidays to spend three hours in the prison park where they are given the privilege of talking.
THE IMPLEMENT FACTORY
At present, although still in embryo, there is in the Stillwater penitentiary a factory devoted exclusively to the manufacture of rakes, mowers and binders, but this branch is just emerging from the experimental stage and may require a year or two to reach a scale large enough to supply the needs of the Minnesota farmers.
This factory is in charge of Supt. Downing, an experienced machine man, with years of experience in this kind of work. At present all preliminary work is being carried out and field tasks made with the machines. These machines had to be constructed along entirely new lines so as not to infringe patent rights controlled by the harvester trust. An appropriate name has been chosen for the binders,—“The Minnesota.”
The legislature of this state has been very liberal in supplying the farmers with cheap twine, rakes, mowers and binders, and, it is presumed that as soon as some trust controls the price of wagons these, too, will be made by convict labor at greatly reduced prices.
PRISON LIBRARY
The inmates of the Minnesota State Prison have a fine library of about 6,000 volumes at their disposal, and it is well patronized. The books have been carefully selected, and all those of a suggestive nature or of the “Dead-Eye-Dick” variety have been excluded. Here are many volumes pertaining to history, biography, science, art and fiction, bound magazines, poetry, reference books, etc. However, the intellectual pabulum mostly preferred by the inmates is fiction and bound magazines. The state subscribes for all the best magazines, and, after they have been withdrawn from circulation, they are sent to the bindery, bound and later listed in the catalogue ready for reissue among the prisoners.
There are two prisoners employed in the library who circulate the books and papers among the inmates. The prison has what is known as an “exchange box.” All papers and magazines subscribed for by inmates are permitted to be exchanged for others. Papers circulate ten days from date of issue, and magazines thirty days. For instance, a prisoner subscribes for the Weekly Dial; after he has read it he can place five or six of his friends' numbers on the margin thereof and then drop it in the exchange box in the morning as he comes down the main stairway to work. It is the duty of the librarian to see that such papers and magazines are delivered to the room numbers indicated. When the first man has finished the paper he erases his number and again places it in the exchange box. This procedure is continued until the last number has been reached or until the prescribed limit that it has to circulate has expired.
Every inmate in the institution is given a library [pg 92] catalogue and permitted to draw out two books a week. He is his own free agent in the selection of books, receiving just what he has ordered on his library slips. These slips contain the numbers of the books selected by him and are gathered up by the night guards. If an inmate mutilates a book he is denied the privilege of the library.