CONVICT LABOE FOE f.OAD WOEK. 13 



larlv leaves the outdoor laborers luifitted to resume their foi-mer 

 work after discharge. 



Aside from its deleterious physical effect, the monotony of prison- 

 shop labor has a tendency to reduce the mental activity of the inmate 

 unused to such life, and upon release many of the members of the 

 professional and mercantile classes find themselves no longer able to 

 keep pace with their more alert competitors. Work on the roads 

 offering, as it does, a variety of employment has no such degenerative 

 mental effect, and for this reason is better than shopwork as an occu- 

 pation for about three-fourths of the prison population. 



But leaving entirely out of the question the superior mental and 

 physical advantages of road work or similar outdoor work, a majority 

 of prison officials favor such work for the reason that it removes the 

 convict as far as possible from competition with free labor. It is true 

 that no matter what form of employment be adopted for prisoners, 

 imless it be entirely unproductive, the interests of free laborers will 

 be affected to a greater or less extent; but, by reason of the fact 

 that it is performed in the interests of the public only, that it enriches 

 no private employers of labor to the injury of the free laborer, and 

 that its product is not placed on competitive sale with that of free 

 labor, road work is certainly no more injurious to the interests of the 

 latter than such work as is performed under the State-use system. 

 What is more, in many localities the convict is not depriving the free 

 laborer of work, since much of the road work performed by convicts 

 could not be undertaken at all, for financial reasons, if it were neces- 

 sary to employ free labor. 



Another very important consideration in regard to road work is 

 that it is extremely productive to the public. No field can be selected 

 in which the expenditure of prison labor can be applied with greater 

 benefit to the States, for the reason that, as a whole, there is no greater 

 public need than the improvement of the highways. It is true that 

 the value of such labor can not be measured so readily in dollars and 

 cents as the industrial labor within the penitentiaries, but there is every 

 reason to believe that, properly conducted, the road work may be 

 carried on with as much efficiency as the penitentiary industries, 

 while the former has the additional advantage of requiring no sale or 

 transfer to place it in public use. At this point let it be noted that, 

 although the con\'ict's labor, so applied, may be of very great benefit 

 to the State, it also is of benefit to the convict himself in that it 

 brings to him the realization he can not grasp in the prison-shop 

 grind, that he may be of real importance in life as a producing agent. 

 Through the promotion of his self -esteem in the useful works of the 

 fonstructif)n ramp, there is (Toated the desire to merit the good 

 opinion of his fellows, wifhonf which nifoirnation is impossible. 



