Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 297, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1912 — HIT CONTRACT LABOR [ARTICLE]

HIT CONTRACT LABOR

Prison Heads Think Convicts Should Work for State. Some of Subjects Bhould Bs Trained. Others Used for Gain, Is Ides Advanced In Reports Given at Jailers’ Congress. Baltimore. —The contract system of prison labor was condemned in the report of the committee on prison labor presented at the congress of the American Prison association in annual session here. The committee, how.ever, recommended the system when no other means of employment could be provided, believing It preferable to idleness. The employment of prisoners, the report maintained, should be directed entirely by the state and the products of this labor should he disposed of by the state. The first consideration df*every or 1 ganization, the report continued, should be the training of the prisoner, and, after that, financial results. Every prison should be so classified thaffc a certain group of men should at all times be provided with work on farms, roads and other outside work, and a larger portion of each prison should be employed on the state account system. The committee believed It possible for every state having a population of two million inhabitants or more to employ all its convict population In the manufacture of articles for the use of state and its political divisions. James H. Leonard, superintendent Mansfield, was elected president- of the association, and Dr. D. C. Peyton, Jeffersonville, Ind., vice-president. Those re-elected were: Secretary, H. H. Trenton, N. J.; financial secretary, H. H. Shirer, Columbus, Ohio; treasures', Frederick H. Mills, New York.