=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.
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.
------------------------------------------------------------------------