Various

“ These convicts are returned to society about every five years, and the product of their labor is in every state in the Union. Is it not better and cheaper to prevent tuberculosis by wiping out one of its most prolific causes than to let it continue to spread pain, misery and death, among our people who have committed no crime? ”

“ This colony is successful in furnishing, as do the score of other colonies in Germany, a haven to the “brothers of the highway” who are stranded and unable to live honestly without our help. This colony is a colony not for the permanent rehabilitation of its inmates, but for the temporary succor of those who seek our help. ”

“ That the inmates of penal and reformatory institutions must have employment if the object of their confinement is to be attained, is admitted by all. That this employment will, in some degree, compete with free labor, is also true. That at the present time this employment of convict labor does compete with free labor, and compete in a demoralizing way with it, is recognized by all who are informed. People who do not come in contact with prison labor or the products of prison labor, do not realize what the competition of the convict labor means. ”

“ There may have been valid reasons for pardoning a man who has served four years in our state prison for forging checks and since then has been in the Springfield jail for another offense, but it is hardly treating our neighbors well that one of the conditions of his pardon is that he shall leave the state. If he is entitled to pardon at all he is entitled to a chance to prove that he is worthy of it in the jurisdiction where his offenses were committed. It looks too much like passing our burdens on to others. ”

“ The abuses, the atrocities, the crimes that are committed in the use of convict labor, have brought down the condemnation of all right thinking citizens, and created a demand for a system of labor that will not be subject to those conditions. ”

“ The attitude of free labor toward convict labor finds expression only through the means afforded by the labor unions. Unorganized free labor is what the name implies, and has no authorized person to speak for it. Organized labor’s attitude toward convict labor is, therefore, the only one capable of being crystalized and expressed. ”

“ It is unthinkable that the United States, ever ready in commercial and industrial lines to profit not only by the mistakes but by the successes of other nations, will be blind to the wealth of experience that European countries can offer us. ”

“ If ever a labor colony was organized and conducted with the earnest purpose of reformation of a large proportion of its inmates, the voluntary labor colony at Bielefeld was such a one. Yet after thirty years the parent colony, known throughout the civilized world and quoted more than any other of its kind, bears this testimony through its secretary, given to me on August 6, 1911: “This colony is not successful in reforming many men or in making them permanently self supporting. ”

“ European vagrants and beggars seem seldom malicious and vicious. The colonies in Belgium and Holland are not regarded as penal institutions, and in Prussia as only semi-penal. Discipline is comparatively easy, the proportion of infractions of rules varying largely in proportion to the tact, discretion and humanity of the director and of his assistants. Throughout the Merxplas colony the words docility and disobedience kept recurring to my mind. In Merxplas and Veenhuizen the men come and go without the restriction of walls. Escape is easy and the possibilities are often taken advantage of. ”

“ Where the state through its courts has no power, as punishment for crime, to sentence a convict to labor for private persons, it should have no right to do so directly by contracts with private persons providing for the labor or the product of the labor of the convicts. ”

“ A Prison Philosopher.—Number 6203 in the Oregon state penitentiary sees things thus:
Men are like cigars. Often you cannot tell by the wrapper what the filler is. Sometimes a good old stogie is more popular than an imported celebrity. Some men are all right in the show-case on display, but are great disappointments when you get them home. No matter how fine a man is, eventually he meets his match. ”

“ We want those who are the outcasts of society, and who are confined in prisons to be allowed to do work—such work as will be beneficial to them; but [Pg 2] we do not believe that, when these men are confined in prisons, instead of their labor being put in the direction of either grinding out dividends for stockholders of concerns of this kind (prison contractors) , or making profits for the state, their efforts should be rather in the direction of educating them and reforming them to lead better lives. ”

“ To appreciate the full force of this, one should see these girls and note their characteristics, their physical appearance, and those qualities and characteristics that go to make up the type of young woman—those things that make us instinctively feel that they are responsible persons and make so many persons even now refuse to believe that such can be feeble-minded, and yet here are the tests. And more than that, here is the test of life—they are unable to adjust themselves to their environment and will always be unable. ”

“ In all movements for the betterment of prisoners and the welfare of prisoners, organized labor has assisted. Every law enacted in the United States, changing and bettering prison conditions has either been initiated or strongly supported by the labor unions. The improvement of sanitary conditions in the prisons; the providing of dining rooms are all improvements largely due to the efforts made by organized labor.
The adoption of the foregoing plans will make of the penal institutions of our country industrial institutions for the saving of morally sick men and women committed to them. ”

“ The great majority of the vagrants and the beggars who are segregated in Holland, Belgium and Germany are men who know how to do things with their hands and heads sufficiently well to earn a living, but who are either physically or mentally so under par that they cannot work hard enough, or will not save money enough, to render them permanently self supporting. Hence they gravitate, generally without marked criminal instincts or intentions, into vagabondage or vagrancy, are arrested, and sent or returned to the beggar colony. ”

“ To be sure each country has its political parties, but the integrity of men in office is, I was informed, rarely if ever questioned. Positions such as secretary-general of the department of justice, which office carries with it in Holland and Belgium the administration of prisons and other correctional institutions, or that of the head of the Prussian prison system, or that of chairman of the prison commissioners of England or Scotland is practically a position of life tenure, during good behavior. ”

“ Although vagrants in the colonies and the workhouses manifest in general a restlessness and a frequent desire for liberty, they are themselves aware that their condition in general is better in the colonies than outside. Indeed, at Merxplas, and particularly at Veenhuizen the American visitor finds a beauty of landscape and a condition of intensive development of garden and meadow, grove and forest, canal and highway that renders both institutions scenically beautiful. ”

“ Just as we in the United States are coming to see that the feeble-minded criminal and non-criminal are chronically deficient and that feeble-mindedness means an absence of a quality which cannot be replaced or cured, so with vagrancy and its twin sister mendicancy, European conclusions are emphatic that vagrancy and mendicancy, especially in the more advanced stages, must be regarded as manifestations of a social inefficiency and incompetency which require segregation and custodial care, in most instances permanently or for long periods. ”

“ The foregoing sentiment represents the altruistic attitude of the American labor movement.
What reason is there for an expression of labor’s attitude? People who have a selfish purpose to serve have directly and by innuendo charged labor unions with selfishly endeavoring to keep all prisoners in idleness, so that no products from convict labor would be manufactured. Organized labor has never been guilty of such an endeavor, and its attitude has been intentionally and insistently misrepresented by those who knew better. ”

“ In the movement for better conditions, organized labor takes a stand in the front rank. Of all of the systems of work that have been used in the various penal institutions the one most successful is the state account system by which the labor of the convicts is used for the state, and the products for the state institutions. This system eliminates nearly all incentive to bribery of prison officials, the exploitation of convict labor and the opposition to the parole laws. Under it the whole people get whatever benefits may be derived from the labor of the prisoners of the state. ”

“ These short sentence prisoners are not in long enough to receive the value of any real reform and are out just long enough to keep themselves confirmed in their vicious habits. So it happens that the board has recommended longer sentences for two reasons, one that some real reform may be inculcated and the other that jail may be made so tedious that culprits will be less ready to seek the institution as a haven of snug refuge and ease for a time. ”

“ A large proportion of our brothers come time and again to see us. They think themselves strong enough to leave us, but they come back. If they do not come to us, they go to other colonies from time to time. Many of our colonists are discharged prisoners. Many of them are at times in the voluntary labor colonies, at times in the compulsory workhouses. We have many instances of successful reformation and rehabilitation, but the voluntary labor colony as represented by Bielefeld colony has not solved the problem of the elimination of the tramp. ”

“ Compulsory workhouses, semi-penal in nature, have come to number about thirty in the [Pg 6] kingdom of Prussia, containing not thieves, not cases of assault, not robbers, not other criminals of greater or less degree, but solely vagrants, mendicants, and that despicable class of human beings, the souteneurs, who traffic in human flesh.
Today the accumulated experience of generations can be found in the records and in the methods of administration of Belgian beggar colonies, Dutch vagrancy colonies, German free labor colonies and German compulsory workhouses. ”

“ Organized labor is on record as favoring this system. When the prison officials recognize that the profits of the prisoners’ labor belongs to the state, that the state is more interested in reforming the prisoner than making a profit on him, such officials thereupon become much better officials for the state as a whole. ”

“ The important point is that the state, or in Prussia the county, can organize and operate its institutions for vagrants and mendicants independent of petty local prejudices or ignorance, and regardless of pernicious political influences. If the state concludes to institute in its labor colonies or other institutions an innovation or a method well tested elsewhere, it has the power. ”

“ Instead of enlarging our reformatories we will establish colonies and schools, where these girls can be taken, as early as we can detect them, cared for and trained to do the things they can be trained to do; where they will be made happy and allowed to live a happy and measureably useful life under the care, guidance and direction of intelligent and humane people, who will make their lives happy and partially useful, but who will insist upon the one important thing, and that is that this race should end with them; they shall never become the mothers of children who are like themselves. ”

“ Every state should be responsible for its own offenders. We do not want the ‘undesirable citizens’ from other countries or commonwealths passed upon us and doubtless other states feel the same way about it. ”

“ Communities in New England, equally with other sections of the country, continue to report the receipt of fake appeals, along with the extravagant promises of rewards if money is sent on, by which the languishing prisoner may be released from prison, and thus enabled to enter upon possession of his gigantic fortune. ”

“ The danger to the public from the clothing and other products made by these tuberculosis infected convicts is so great that if the public only knew the facts, prompt remedial legislation would be forced. The states are spending millions of dollars annually to eliminate or reduce the great “white plague,” yet at the same time they are maintaining also at public expense some of the worst causes. ”

“ There seems to be a rather general belief in the United States that farm colonies for tramps and vagrants will be important reformative agencies. European experience is directly contrary to this belief. European sociologists, directors of colonies, prison physicians, or prison commissioners without exception stated emphatically to me that the percentage of reformation (by which is [Pg 8] meant fairly permanent rehabilitation) is exceedingly small from the colonies and the compulsory workhouses. ”

“ Any person who has lived in any sort of average environment for the requisite number of years is able to do these tests, even though he has never been to school, even for a day, and by failing in these they manifest their mental defectiveness. ”

“ Thomas F. Tracey, representing the American federation of labor, said, in part: “The labor organizations of this country, as typified by the American federation of labor, have not, are not, and should never help in the advocacy of anything that would put prisoners in idleness. ”

“ The death rate from tuberculosis is much higher in prisons than outside. In some prisons the conditions are such that a sentence of five years or more means almost invariably another case of tuberculosis and death. ”

“ In the arrangement of employment for the prisoners the state should endeavor to supply itself with everything necessary in its various institutions. Convicts should be employed as nearly as possible at the work they are accustomed to, especially if they are skilled mechanics, in order that they should not lose their skill. A large proportion of the convicts are men accustomed to outdoor life, either on farms or other outdoor labor ”