FARMERS^ STATE CONGRESS. 399 



in the Michigan City prison were being niarclied about to furnish them 

 exercise, because the labor organizations of our State were opposed to 

 their competition. The industry of the honest citizens of the State paid 

 for maintaining these criminals in idleness. Even at the present time, 

 under the contract system there in vogue, the prisoners at Michigan City 

 fire making shirts and socks in competition with sweatshops, and it may 

 be said that prison industry lias the general effect of degrading free in- 

 dustry in the same lines to the sweatshop basis. The making of liollow- 

 ware, chairs, brooms, barrels, leather goods, etc., by the prisons of this and 

 other States has had a killing effect on these industries. The convict 

 contract system does compete with .free labor and free industry, and the 

 agitation against it can not and will not cease until it is thoroughly 

 abolished. 



At the Jeffersonville reformatory chains are being made in competi- 

 tion with the free chain industry of the State. The convicts are com- 

 pelled to perform "tasks" not required of the chain worker, and the con- 

 tractor pays 30 to 40 cents a day for each convict, while the chain man- 

 ufacturers pay from $4 to $5 a day to the free laborer who performs the 

 same work. A threatened increase in the output at Jeffersonville, if car- 

 ried out, will mean the destruction of the free chain industry throughout 

 this and adjoining States. 



The contract labor system is a slave system, with no reformatory or 

 redeeming features about it. It is a system which often leads to the de- 

 bauchery and corruption of public officials. It is a system that robs labor, 

 desti-oys factories and turns over to private individuals an asset of labor 

 which should be used for the benefit of the people. The lawbreaker owes 

 a debt to the community, and any profit from his labor should go to the 

 community. 



The State lost, in 1902, $115,546.29 on its convicts. The average main- 

 tenance cost of supporting the convicts, including salaries of prison offi- 

 cials and running expenses, approximated 40 cents a day per convict. The 

 labor contracts at Michigan City are 40 and 45 cents per man per day, 

 hardly a fraction above the cost of their maintenance; and it is said that, 

 at Jeffersonville, some of the contracts are actually below the maintenance 

 cost. Owing to the supposed semi-employment of the convicts on con- 

 tracts the State in that year secured from contracts only one-half of the 

 maintenance amount. The total maintenance cost of the 1,719 convicts 

 was $231,292.82; the total earnings were $115,746.53. The average main- 

 tenance cost being $132 per man, the amount the State lost would support 

 875 convicts — over half the prison population. 



Taking up a third phase of tlae question, we find that there are at 

 present, in a number of counties in western and southwestern Indiana, 

 vast undeveloped deposits of shale and fire-clay, which, by practical tests, 

 have been proven suitable in every respect for the making of the best 

 grade of paving brick and sewer pipe. Beneath most of these shale beds, 



