6 BULLETIN 414, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



decline in the number of convicts employed hj private industries 

 under the lease, contract, and piece-price systems, and the increas- 

 ing tendency to adopt those systems imder which the convict is em- 

 ployed entirely for the benefit of the State. 



ROAD WORK FOR CONVICTS. 



In much of the discussion of the proposition of road work for con- 

 victs, there is evident a popular behef that the employment of 

 convicts in the open air, which such work entails, is a radical depar- 

 ture from well-estabhshed principles and a development of very recent 

 origin. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such employ- 

 ment has been in practice at one time or another in all countries, and 

 among the ancient nations no other method of employment was 

 known. The ancient prisons were places of detention and torture 

 only; labor formed no part of their regimen. But there are numerous 

 references in history to the employment of prisoners of war and of 

 criminals on the pubhc works of the ancient kingdoms and almost 

 invariably these works were performed necessarily in the open air. 

 In fact, the provision of indoor labor is of comparatively modern 

 origin and dates back no further than the development of the work- 

 house in the sixteenth century, while the penitentiary, as now known, 

 is practically a product of the nineteenth century. 



In America perhaps the earhest record of the employment of 

 prisoners on pubhc works is found in statute 29 of the Virginia Colon- 

 ial Assembly, enacted in 1658. 



Somewhat later in the French colony of Louisiana, it is recorded 

 that ''Bienville, reappointed governor (1718), intending to found a 

 town on the river, set a party of convicts to clear up a swamp — the 

 site of the present city of New Orleans." ^ 



However, the criminal class in the majority of the colonies, with 

 the exception of those convicts who were sent to them by the mother 

 country as "servant criminals," was very small, and there seems 

 to have been no general system of labor as a punishment for those 

 convicted within their boundaries. Indeed, as aU who are familiar 

 with the colonial history of America are aware, the barbarous prac- 

 tices of tongue sphtting, branding, burning at the stake, whipping, 

 ducking, and exposure to the pubUc gaze in the stocks and pillory 

 were the methods most favored by the good colonists for the punish- 

 ment of their own offenders, and the number of crimes for which the 

 death penalty was prescribed was very large. 



After the close of the Revolution, one of the earliest measures in 

 Pennsylvania ''was in the direction of reforming the Penal Code, and 

 in 1786 an act was passed providing that certain crimes, which until 



1 History of the United States, by Rich and Hildreth, vol. 2, p. 281. 



