Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1884 — CONVICT LABOR. [ARTICLE]

CONVICT LABOR.

The Vicious Contract System Brought to the Attention of Congress. [Washington Telegram.] At a meeting Of the House Committee on Labor Representative James was unanimously Instructed to favorably report the bill providing that it shall be unlawful for any person In • the employ of the United States, or any State, to contract with any one to hire out as laborers prisoners confined In any prison or jail for the violation of any laws of the United States. The violation of the act is made a misdjineanor, punishable by a fine of from SSOO to SI,OOO or imprisonment from one to three years. Mr. James has prepared areport to accompany tho bill. It says that in some cases the State prisons have taken personsconvioted for violation of the laws of the United States without cost to the Federal Government. and then, in order to make the arrangement prontab e, have inhumanly treated theta. The contract system, the report says, is wholly adverse to reform. The prisoners are treated as dumb beasts, boing driven to work by men whose only aim Is to get a certain amount of work from them every day, men who look upon the convicts os only so much machinery for making money, and whoso chief recommendation for the position is that they are the h ghest bidders lor the human beings hired by them. At a wedding in Hannibal, Mo., the bridal march was played on a mouth organ.