"Here are 1,685,746 packages given as the aggregate product of fifteen cooper shops in Chicago for a period of 11 years; and 157,562 as the total product for 1885. "The census returns for 1880 show that the total number of cooper shops in Chicago at that date was 65, and that the number of coopers employed in them was 686. In the spring of 1885, however, an enumeration was made by the Coopers' Assembly of Chicago, which developed the fact that 16 establishments had closed out their business since 1880, and that they had given employment to 235 men. This would leave as the present force 451 men engaged in 49 shops, provided the discharged men did not obtain work in the surviving shops. A more recent canvass by this bureau, however, has developed a total of 56 shops of every kind, employing from two men upward, and an average of twelve employees to each, which would give 672 as the total of working coopers in the busy season, which is from November to April. Accepting then 56 shops and 672 men as a fair approximation to the present totals in this industry, the question is what proportion of them are engaged in making the four specific packages used in the meat-packing trade. Of the 26 returns received, 15, or 60 per cent., are so engaged; while an estimate by our canvasser is that not more than 40 per cent. are so engaged. Assuming that 60 per cent is the proper proportion, we arrive at the conclusion that 34 shops employing 403 men are the surviving competitors in Chicago of the prison shops. Of these we have the records of 15, employing 182 men, and producing last year 157,562 provision packages. This would make the entire product of 34 private cooperage establishments in Chicago, employing 403 men on provision work, 354,517 packages. Upon this basis the following comparative table is presented of the relative product of prison and private shops, showing the columns in juxtaposition in order to bring out the contrast between them: "Last year's product of the prison shops was 745,261 packages, while that of all private shops, upon a liberal and legitimate basis of computation, was 354,515. In other words, out of a total sale and consumption of 1,099,776 packages in Chicago, 67.8 per cent was manufactured in prisons. 66 Another marked feature of this table is the great and continued growth of the prison industry throughout the period under consideration. This is not more noticeable, however, than the entire absence of any material increase for the same series of years in the development of the industry outside the prison walls. In brief, the contractors' business has increased in volume 360 per cent during the 11 years, while the increase in private establishments was only 31 per cent in the same time. The present output shows a regular progressive growth from year to year for the whole period; but the private shops feebly fluctuate in volume of product throughout the term, and at the end are practically no stronger than at the beginning. "The manufacture of cooperage, stimulated as it has been by the enormous meat-packing trade in Chicago, should have itself increased four or five fold during the last decade, and would have done so beyond a doubt if such opportunities for free development had been open as were enjoyed by other branches of manufacture. Instead of that it is now a feebler industry relatively than it was 11 years ago, and instead of enjoying the healthy and prosperous growth for which a notable opportunity was presented, it has barely maintained its existence by a constant and unequal struggle. "But the proprietor has not been the only nor the greater sufferer in this struggle. Under the natural and inevitable operation of the contract system, prices have continually declined, and the citizen, in his fruitless effort to compete with the contractor, has visited every reduction in price upon the journeyman cooper in the form of a reduction in wages. The consequence has been, as is frequently stated, that Chicago coopers have often been able to earn more upon the streets at any kind of unskilled labor than at the trade they have spent years to acquire. Some facts in regard to the average annual earnings of coopers for the term of years under consideration have been procured from the books of employers who have been continually in business for 11 or more years. From nine of these we have been able to obtain an average of the yearly payments made to their operatives for each of 11 years, and the results of the inquiry as to wages are presented in the following tabulation of averages: Average annual earnings of provision coopers in Chicago for eleven consecutive years, in nine establishments. Years. 1875. 1876. $624.00 $700.00 $643.00 $640.00 $625.00 $690.00 $650.00 $634.00 $511.00 1877 1878. 593.00 675.00 607.00 600.00 590.00 1879. 572.00 675.00 579.00 590.00 1880. 525.00 640.00 572.00 575.00 624.00 591.00 501.00 598.00 540.00 500.00 598.00, 500,00 450.00 603.00 482.00 450.00 500.00 600.00 572.00 475.00 450.00 500.00 | 560,00 572.00 475.00 441.00 450.00 550,00 572.00 462.00 411.00 513.00 460.00 546.00 575.00 450.00 400.00 546,00 450.00 410.00 488.00 400.00 473.00 540.00 420.00 400.00 481.00 400.00 400,00 469.00 400.00 468.00 500.00 395.00 400.00 467.00 400.00 390.00 27% 600.00 680,00 540,00 670,00 500.00 680.00 37% 42% 28% 37% 24% "These 9 establishments are selected from the whole number reporting wages because the data in these instances are full for the 11 years in each case, making a complete serial table for the term. The returns from other shops are more or less fragmentary, although the downward tendency is equally marked in every case. 66 The decline is seen to be painfully uniform from year to year in every estabment, the percentage of reduction varying in different shops from 22 to 43 per cent. Another arrangement of the figures will give the annual average for the same shops, by years, and the general average for the term: Establishments. Annual average of earnings in nine establishments for each of eleven years. 1875. 1876. 1877. 1878. 1879. 1880. 1881. 1882. 1883. 1884. 1885. $624 $624 $593 $572 $572 $525 8519 $515 $513 $488 Average 613 611 599 577 570 545 523 510 481 445 432 "This shows that a general reduction has taken place in the earnings of coopers in the provision cooperage shops of Chicago from $613 per annum in 1875 to $432 per annum in 1885, or an average decline of 30 per cent. Some part of this may certainly be due to other causes than the competition arising from the prison shops, but the uniform belief among those interested is that the greater part of it is directly chargeable to that influence. As confirmatory of their statements we cite from the pay rolls of three shops in which beer barrels alone are made the average earnings paid that class of coopers for a number of years past: "Here the decline is not greater than might be expected from general causes, ranging from 5 to 9 per cent. "Presented in averages by years the earnings of this class of coopers, not affected by convict labor, appears as follows: "Thus at the present date the earnings of coopers not injured by prison competition is found to be $623 per annum, while the earnings of those who are is only $432, though 10 years ago they were substantially the same. But another line of inquiry has brought out some facts as to the earnings of provision coopers in other cities where the influence of the prison manufacturers is not felt, or only felt in small degree. Among the latter places are Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Kansas City, and of the former Louisville, Denver, and Eastern cities are examples. From each has been obtained the ruling price paid for making pork barrels, and an average week's work is considered 30 barrels; thus the table presents the prices paid and the possible earnings at different points: "No comment can add to the suggestiveness of these figures, and it only remains to refer to the movement in prices in the Chicago market since the establishment of the penitentiary shops to complete the outline of the case against convict labor in cooperage. "The following tables of prices for barrels of the specified kinds, for a series of "The noticeable feature in this table of prices is the correspondence between "It is unnecessary to enlarge upon the significance of these facts and figures in The above facts are commented on in the Second Annual Report of the Depart- "The simple fact that 67.8 per cent of the provision cooperage used in Chicago The State assumes control of the convict, and it is not just to the convict or of the prison, laws, and conditions of the contract indicate that the true features of prison discipline are guarded, from the very nature of the copartnership arrangement they can not be. The contractor must be consulted in all arrangements affecting the work of the convict, and he in time will, to a large extent, control the institution. It is asserted by people who have charge of prisoners that under the contract system they have been able to get more remuneration for the labor of the prisoners; why that should be so has never been clearly explained, except in a very unsatisfactory manner, viz, that it is owing to the lack of capacity of the people who have charge of the prisons. The argument that the system renders the institution self-supporting is not a logical or liberal one, and should be given no consideration if the intention is to determine between a right and a wrong system. B. THE PIECE-PRICE SYSTEM. This is a modification of the contract system and was developed from that system in order to overcome some of the objectionable features of that method of employment. Under it either the State or the individual may own the plant necessary to the manufacture of a given product. The proposition of the State is, then, to transform anybody's raw material into a specified product for a given price per piece. The advantages of the system are that the State does not appear in the market, either as a buyer of material or seller of goods. Under it a great variety of industries can be conducted; the contractor's men have no position in the prison, and every effort for reformation is left untrammeled by outside influence; and, if the State owns the necessary plant, as is usually the case, and the bidder is not required to invest his capital in machinery before he can avail himself of the opportunity to bid för prison work, then all outside parties are upon an equal footing and bids will approximate the maximum value of the work. While these features result in giving the system many advantages over the contract system and do in a large degree satisfy the prison reformer, they do not remove the competition with free labor. This is clearly shown by the conditions under which the system was worked in California. According to the first biennial report of the bureau of labor of that State the piece-price system went into effect January 1, 1882. The report says: "Prior to that time a few business firms in San Francisco practically controlled the State prison at San Quentin by contracting to furnish its convicts with labor at so much a day. This was seen to be wrong, and by the provisions of the act of 1880 the contract system was done away with, and in its place the following plan of working the convicts was ordered: That the State should supply the labor and motive power to whosoever wished to engage them, and then that the product should be sold at a reasonable rate. This practically made the old contract system as active as it ever was, although masquerading under another name. Instead of contracting to pay so much per diem for convict labor, the firms who now make use of a State institution, contract to pay so much for the product of that labor. It is true that the contract is now called a "proposition" but its effects are practically and precisely the same. The result proves this. The evil complained of under the contract-labor system was, that the firm was paying a lɔw, an exceedingly low, rate of wages and were enabled to have made for them articles at such a price that it would be impossible for any other manufacturer who was not enjoying the benefits of such a contract to produce similar goods at anything approaching a similar price. Under the present system, a few firms contract to take from the prison all that is manufactured there at certain prices, but these prices, like the wages they paid, are so low that |