Convict labor

“ The pernicious effect of prison contract labor upon “free labor,” so called, when brought into competition with it in the open market, is universally conceded, but it should not be overlooked that prison labor is itself an effect and not a cause, and that convict labor is recruited almost wholly from the propertyless, wage-working class and that the inhuman system which has reduced a comparative few from enforced idleness to crime, has sunk the whole mass of labor to the dead level of industrial servitude. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this world it is necessary to work. Labor is the foundation of all prosperity. Larceny is the enemy of industry. Society has the right to protect itself. The question is, Has it the right to punish?—has it the right to degrade?—or should it endeavor to reform the convict?
A man is taken to the penitentiary. He is clad in the garments of a convict. He is degraded—he loses his name—he is designated by a number. He is no longer treated as a human being—he becomes the slave of the State. Nothing is done for his improvement—nothing for his reformation. He is driven like a beast of burden ”

“ 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. ”

“ It cannot be said that the labor interests have always shown great wisdom in all their advocacy of new legislation, and too many acts, like those in reference to the employment of convict labor, show a lamentable retrogression. ”

“ Punishment probably—certainly not labor—is the leading object in the one case as well as the other: and the labor of the bondman in the one, as well as of the convict in the other, constitutes but a subordinate consideration. To suppose that God would, with every consideration out of view, but that of having the best relation of employer and laborer, make choice of slavery—to suppose that He believes that this state of servitude operates most beneficially, both for the master and the servant—is a high impeachment of the Divine wisdom and goodness. ”

“ In so doing it can rarely give to any one interest a clear and prompt remedy for what that interest chooses to consider a grievance. Are convicts to be idle? Are the tax-payers to be indefinitely burdened? These are parts of the problem of convict labor; but, so far from having made a comprehensive solution of the convict labor question, including these elements of it, the people who have assumed to direct legislation show that they have not even mastered the comparison of the three plans proposed for using prison labor. ”

“ It was at this point that the convict labor problem began and it has steadily expanded from that time to this and while there have been some temporary modifications of the evil, it is still an unmitigated curse from which there can be no escape while an economic system endures in which labor, that is to say the laborer, man, woman and child, is sold to the lowest bidder in the markets of the world. ”

“ With prisons under its own control the Government could deal with the somewhat vexed question of convict labor, so far as its convicts were concerned, according to a plan of its own adoption, and with due regard to the rights and interests of our laboring citizens, instead of sometimes aiding in the operation of a system which causes among them irritation and discontent. ”

“ It provided that all agreements whatever between journeymen or other workmen for obtaining an advance in wages for themselves (p. 280) or for other workmen, or for decreasing the number of hours of labor, or for endeavoring to prevent any employer from engaging any one whom he might choose, or for persuading any other workmen not to work, or for refusing to work with any other men, should be illegal. Any justice of the peace was empowered to convict by summary process and sentence to two months' imprisonment any workmen who entered into such a combination. ”

“ In every one of these competition keeps wages at the lowest possible figure. Outside of the army here employed come the washers and ironers who laundry shirts and underwear, whose work is of the most exhausting order, [Pg 219] who “lean hard” on the iron, and in time become the victims of diseases resulting from ten hours a day of this “leaning hard,” and who complain bitterly that prisons and reformatories underbid them and keep wages down. It is quite true. Convict labor here as elsewhere is the foe of the honest worker, and complicates a problem already sufficiently complicated. ”

“ The third, and most important, consideration is that the enormous profits thus wrung from convict labor are a constant incentive to the contractors to exact from their unhappy victims tasks altogether beyond their strength, and to punish them cruelly when their work does not come up to the excessive demands made. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus organized labor, by its foolish opposition to work in prison, defeats its own ends. It helps to create poisonous fumes that stifle every attempt for economic betterment. If the workingman wants to avoid these effects, he should INSIST on the right of the convict to work, he should meet him as a brother, take him into his organization, and WITH HIS AID TURN AGAINST THE SYSTEM WHICH GRINDS THEM BOTH. ”

“ They were punished, just as we punish criminals—with confinement at hard labor. The great mass of the people were forced to labor for cruelly long hours at dull, distasteful occupations; is not that punishment? ”

“ I will add, that the labour of the convicts, of whatever kind, is far from being as productive as that of free mechanics; but it is an abuse which it is nearly hopeless to think of eradicating or reforming. The cudgel may certainly compel the convict to work, because there is a decided difference between activity and rest; but no chastisement can awaken in the breast of the convict that instinctive ardour which alone accelerates labour, and directs it to perfection. ”

“ Are these crimes adequate to such a punishment as confinement for life? But even yet granting that these unhappy people deserve no indulgence, it is certainly imprudent in any state to lose the benefit of the labor of so many thousands. ”

“ As an aversion to honest industry and labor has been the chief cause of most of the convicts incurring the penalties of the law, they shall be employed at some species of labor, of an uniform kind, which they cannot evade, and by which they will have an opportunity of becoming habituated to regular employment. ”

“ There is no earthly inducement, in the slave's condition, to incite him to labor faithfully. The fear of punishment is the sole motive for any sort of industry, with him. Knowing this fact, as the slaveholder does, and judging the slave by himself, he naturally concludes the slave will be idle whenever the cause for this fear is absent. ”

“ Imprisonment at hard labor, compulsory and unpaid, is, in the strongest sense of the words, 'involuntary servitude for crime,' spoken of in the provision of the ordinance of 1787, and of the thirteenth amendment of the constitution, by which all other slavery was abolished. ”

“ The compulsion which would force him to labor even for his own benefit only in one direction, or in one place, would be almost as oppressive and nearly as great an invasion of his liberty as the compulsion which would force him to labor for the benefit or pleasure of another, and would equally constitute an element of servitude. ”

“ It is best for the prisoners themselves to be so employed and until such an amendment to the constitution can be secured, my contention is that they should be employed, whatever they do, at the same [15] wage that is paid the same character of labor outside the prison walls; and that the profit of their labor be applied by the State to the maintenance of the families of the convicts instead of going to and enriching the contractors. ”

“ Neither should they deter any man from peaceably performing his duty by following his honest convictions.
On the other hand, all those who have seen and realized the blessings of universal liberty, and believe that it can only be secured and promoted by the prohibition of domestic slavery, and that the elevation of honest industry can never succeed where servitude makes labor degrading, should, as in duty bound put forth all reasonable exertions to advance this great object, by lawful means, whenever permitted by the laws of their country. ”

“ As only one class is called "hired" it is inferred that servants of the other class were not paid for their labor. That God, while thundering anathemas against those who "used their neighbor's service without wages," granted a special indulgence to his chosen people to force others to work, and rob them of earnings, provided always, in selecting their victims, they spared "the gentlemen of property and standing," and pounced only upon the strangers and the common people. ”

“ It is the principle of personal liberty again. To English notions, and to English courts, indefinite labor continued for an indefinite time, or applied to an indefinite number of services, is indistinguishable from slavery; and compulsory labor even under a definite labor contract, such as to work for a week or a month or a year, or in limited directions, as, for instance, to work at making shoes or weaving cloth, when enforced by the strong arm of the law, smacked too much of slavery to be tolerable by our ancestors. ”

“ If the state can give men steady employment after they commit crime, and manufacturing can be carried forward successfully by their labor, why can it not give them employment before they are driven to that extremity, thereby preventing them from becoming criminals?
All useful labor is honest labor, even if performed in a prison. Only the labor of exploiters, such as speculators, 351stock gamblers, beef-embalmers and their mercenary politicians, lawyers and other parasites—only such is dishonest labor. ”

“ We have cited the case for the proposition that imprisonment with the accompaniment of hard labor is an infamous punishment, made so by the accompaniment of hard labor, and declared illegal because not upon presentment or indictment by a grand jury. ”

“ Yet the statesman or philosopher to whose understanding “the whole matter lies140 in a nutshell”—who thinks he can formulate a practical political or social policy within the four corners of an epigram is constantly to the fore with a simple specific for ills whose causes are complex, constant and obscure.
Nevertheless, it would be wise to make a breach of labor contract by either party to it a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment. “Fine or imprisonment” will not do—the employee, unable to pay the fine, would commonly go to jail, the employer seldom. ”

“ The fact is, the parties who are foremost in the endeavour to inundate us with workers look only to the depreciation of labour as the sure result. They have been accustomed to having the convict's toil for nothing, and they cannot bring their minds to paying for that of the free man. ”

“ With the objection to competition between prison-made goods and the products of free labor in mind, he is weighing the possibilities of providing occupation not subject to such objection. The necessity of finding some employment to fill in the life of the man in prison he appears thoroughly to subscribe to. ”

“ Socialists themselves are among the foremost in complaining of the competition of prison labour with honest labour, although they fail to see that precisely the same objection attends the competition of relieved labor in public workshops with unrelieved labour in regular private employment. ”

“ Now, with regard to this “precautionary imprisonment,” of which the victims are almost always honest and industrious mechanics, driven to the necessity of combining together by the In organization of Labor and the Insufficiency of Wages, it is painful to see the law, which ought to be equal for all, refuse to strikers what it grants to masters—because the latter can dispose of a certain sum of money. Thus, under many circumstances, the rich man, by giving bail, can escape the annoyance and inconveniences of a preventive incarceration ”

“ Even if some determination to begin life anew, to avoid associations that have led to infamy and disgrace to accept any labour anywhere in order to obtain an {275} honest subsistence, has been working in the mind of a convict during the period of imprisonment, and under the advice and remonstrance of the chaplain and the governor, what is to sustain such half-formed resolutions? ”

“ As things stand to-day, they are! Might is right, and by the title of such right the slaveowner considers the fruit of the work of his slaves his property; by this right, in former times, the feudal landowner made his serfs work for his employment and benefit. Slavery is injustice; serfdom is injustice; so the right which capital claims to the work of the worker is injustice. ”