aginations of many that any movement was being set on foot to abolish labor in the prisons of the State.

The systems of labor advocated by the industrial classes are chiefly :

First. Distributing the labor of the convicts upon a number of different industries under the public account system.

Second. In manufacturing clothing, shoes, etc., for the prisons and charitable institutions of the State.

Third. In building roads and public works, widening and deeping the Erie canal, etc.

Fourth. On a State farm, the chief aim being to reform them instead of making them self-supporting.

Fifth. By the State being the contractor, and putting the goods manufactured on the market at the same price as private manufacturers.

Sixth. The Elmira Reformatory plan.

Seventh. In manufacture of bricks for public buildings and public works.

Eighth. By employing a limited number at any one branch of industry.

Ninth. In making roads and fortifying the harbors of the State. Tenth. In mining, quarrying, etc.

Eleventh. The plan provided by the provisions of the "Butts Bill," introduced in the Assembly last year.

Twelfth. Let the State employ them honest labor does not care in what branches. Let it be placed on the market at the same price that honest labor should have, and with the business managed by honest, Christian men, the laborers will be satisfied.

The Buffalo section of the Socialistic Labor Party offer the following suggestions:

"We must condemn the way in which prisoners are employed, especially in that their labor is sold to individual contractors.

"First. Because the contractor is enabled to buy the labor of the convict at one-third and one-fourth of the price at which free labor is employed, and, as a consequence, can sell his products at a price which is ruinous to all fair competition; and

"Secondly. Because the object of the prisons is left out of view. They should be an institution where people are made better; they should be houses of correction, but under the present system they are far from that, for the persons imprisoned in them are made only more demoralized and hardened by reason of the hard treatment from greedy contractors.

"We are, by no means, of the opinion that prisoners should not work; the contrary. We only want that they shall not be subjected to greedy capitalists, but employed in the following ways:

66

Manufacturing all those products which are needed in the army and navy and other governinent departments; building highways and canals; cultivating waste lands, and raising agricultural products needed for those departments."

The remedies offered by manufacturers are covered by the foregoing, with the additional plan of stamping the goods, "prison made," if the present system be continued.

These suggestions and proposed remedies are, of course, valuable chiefly as an indication of the light in which the problem is regarded rather than as the results of experience and careful study of the subject. They are valuable also as a guide to enable the State, when devising a more perfect system, to avoid, as far as possible, without trespassing upon other interests, the grievances of which manufacturers and mechanics complain.

TESTIMONY

OF EXPERTS IN PRISON MANAGEMENT ON CONTRACT SYSTEM

DR. ELISHA HARRIS.

DR. ELISHA HARRIS, ex-Secretary of the New York Prison Association, who is quoted by Mr. Perry as in favor of the contract system, testified as follows before the special commission of New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts, in New York city, in November, 1879:

"When you come to look at the contract system with any degree of allowance and say that it is fit for a civilized people, and that it should be the ruling method in our prisons, I must say that I think the whole subject ought to be re-studied."

Again he testified:

"The contract system, as it is found, is making for us habitual criminals, is maintaining the ranks of crime, is filling them and keeping them full, so that if any one hundred felon-convicts found in this State, or your State, or in any of the four States that are most concerned in this particular inquiry about us here, of any one hundred of these felon-convicts, you may say with much certainty, that more than fifty of them will, when released according to law, again do crime, and again make themselves worthy of prison."* "I confess I look with absolute abhorrence upon the whole contract system, because it is shifting of responsibility."

* * * * * * * *

DR. WINES.

*

* * *

DR. WINES, of Irvington-on-the-Hudson, a gentleman of international reputation, who has made a life-long study of the subject of convict labor, is quoted by Mr. Perry as favoring the contract

system.

The report of the joint commission of 1879 gives the following testimony of Dr. Wines:

66

The CHAIRMAN - Now, a few questions, Doctor. In your experience and study of both ways of utilizing prison labor- the public account and the contract system is there any difference in favor or against the laboring men, whether one obtains in the prison or the other?

"Dr. WINES-I don't think there is. I would repeat here, as your question suggests it, what Gen. Pillsbury- the late Mr. Pillsbury said to me, and said under oath too, that he employed both

plans. He said he made more money for the institution or the State when he managed the labor himself on public account.

"The CHAIRMAN - When he managed it himself for the public account?

"D. WINES Yes; that he made more money for the institution; and he hadn't a doubt but what if he undertook the management of the labor in the Albany Penitentiary he should bring more into the treasury of that institution than he got from the contract system; and I suppose he was a man as well qualified to judge as any He was a good business man, and he was a man of the very highest moral character. But he said he rather favored the contract system at Albany, because it gave him more time to attend to his own duties of the discipline.

man.

"The CHAIRMAN

- Would the tendency be any less toward concentration in large prisons under the public account than under the contract?

"Dr. WINES-I do not think it would as long as politics dominated. When it becomes really a permanent purpose on the part of the prison officers to make better men of their prisoners and send them out honest, industrious citizens, then I think that they would, as a means to that end, multiply the trades. I think they would find it very necessary to do that; but as long as the bona fide reformation of criminals is not made a permanent object, I do not think it would.

"The CHAIRMAN-Then you think there would be no difference in the two systems, so far as concentration is concerned?

"Dr. WINES - I do not, as things are now. But, mind you, I make this exception: If we brought our whole system up to a system of reformation, and every thing was arranged with reference to changing the criminals into honest men and sending them out to be good and useful c'tizens, then I think it would.

"The CHAIRMAN - Now, Doctor, suppose the prisons on State account would there be any less tendency to competition between the State as a manufacturer and the free manufacturers outside? "Dr. WINES

- How is that?

"The CHAIRMAN-If the prisons were conducted on the State account would the tendency of competition or the tendency of the State to undersell manufacturers be any less than it is on the contract system?

"Dr. WINES

- No, I don't think so.

"The CHAIRMAN -- Would the tendency be any greater to undersell, or any less?

"Dr. WINES-I don't know that it would. I stated, in regard to the workingmen whom the New York commission examined in 1870, that they were all opposed to the contract system; but the ground upon which they put their objection was this: that they thought the State itself onght to benefit from the labor of the prison, and not the contractors. They objected to the profits of

prison labor going into the pockets of contractors. They said it ought to go to the State to diminish taxation.

66

The CHAIRMAN-In your opinion, Doctor, is there any special effort made, or can there be any effort made, looking to the reformation of the prisoners under the contract system?

"Dr. WINES Yes; I think there can be.

"The CHAIRMAN Well, is there?

"Dr. WINES -- Yes, there is. Where the contract system prevails there is certainly an effort, and an increasing effort, to improve the men morally; but I think the contract system interferes with the discipline.

"The CHAIRMAN In what way?

"Dr. WINES I speak from our own prisons, and, in fact, I speak from others; for Professor Dwight and myself in 1865 were appointed--it was in view of the then approaching constitutional convention in the State -- by the New York Prison Association to ascertain and get together all the facts, that they might make suggestions to the Legislature in regard to the modification of the prison system of the State, and I remember this occurred when we were visiting the State prison at Jackson, Mich. We were there before the men went to their dinner, and while they were at dinner. After they had finished their dinner, and while they were still seated at the tables, the warden, a very good man, asked us if we would address the prisoners, and we were quite willing to say a few words to them; and Dr. Dwight asked me to speak first, and he would follow. So I did. I was making a few remarks to them with regard to their duties and for their moral advantage, and in came the contractor and said that the time due to him was encroached upon by the detention of the prisoners in the mess-room; their time at that moment belonged to him and he must have it, and insisted upon having it; and the warden was obliged to stop me in the midst of my remarks and dismiss the men to the work-shops. That, I consider, is a tremendous interference, and very bad in its effects.

"The CHAIRMAN Isn't it for the interest of the contractor to get the utmost amount of work out of the men, regardless of reformation?

"Dr. WINES-Undoubtedly. And I think they do follow that rule in most cases. But I can point out an exception to that-Mr. Griffith. He is one of the best men we have in this prison reform work in this country or any other; and because they couldn't get another he has contracted for the works in the county jail at Baltimore. If we could only get such contractors as he, I should certainly be in favor of the contract system.

"The CHAIRMAN - First, you say, that under the existing circumstances, the contract system should be retained in our prisons? "Dr. WINES - Yes, I say that decidedly.

"The CHAIRMAN Second, if reformation is made the chief object, then the contract should be abolished, and the institutions,