CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 287 



merly was wet, boggy, and known as the great Moss, has been, 

 by draining and cultivation, transformed into a beautiful and 

 valuable estate. There are two hundred and fifty prisoners, with 

 sentences of from two months to five years. The men themselves 

 have constructed the Swiss buildings, the barns, workshops, dor- 

 mitories, and dwellings. They seem fond of working with the 

 animals. With the oxen and heavy wagons, they came trudg- 

 ing in from the harvest-fields for their noonday rest. They have 

 fifty horses and seven hundred head of cattle. Accompanied by 

 twelve of the prisoners, the young stock had been sent for the 

 summer months to the pastures of the higher mountains. They 

 sell butter, cheese, and vegetables, but all manufactured goods are 

 for the institution or the State. 



The spirit of confidence and democracy is manifest. The 

 guards or foremen were washing up for dinner along with the 

 other men. The children of the employees were playing about. 

 The Superintendent, Mr. Kellerhals, who has been with the farm 

 from the beginning, said to us, "Yes, these men, when well 

 dressed, look just like the people outside." About one-half turn 

 out well, one-fourth are doubtful, and one-fourth come back. 

 In a year only three had run away. 



In the hospital we found clean beds with outlook on the gar- 

 den and pastures. The windows were open and the fresh moun- 

 tain air was blowing in, but there were no patients in this out- 

 door prison ward. It stood out in marked contrast to many of 

 our own institutions, which by their construction and environ- 

 ment are the breeding-places of tuberculosis and other physical 

 and moral diseases. Recent research has brought to light the 

 fact that the mortality from tuberculosis among our own pris- 

 oners is three times as great as in our general population. 



Germany is making extensive use of the farm colony method 

 in dealing with vagrancy and minor misdemeanors. At the 

 Labor House of Rummelsburg, near Berlin, out of two thousand 

 prisoners, one thousand were working outside on the sewage 

 farms owned by the municipality. In France, Holland, Hun- 

 gary, and Italy the Government has made successful experiments 

 with the colony system for the treatment of offenders. The testi- 

 mony is that it is less expensive for the State and much better 

 for the health and reformation of the prisoners. 



