CONVICT LABOK FOE ROAD WORK. 17 



in other States the work done under the State-use system, the only 

 other system which does not conflict directly with the interest of free 

 laborers, is found to be even less efficiently performed than is the road 

 work. Furthermore, except in those sections where the wages of free 

 laborers are exceptionally low or the efficiency of such labor excep- 

 tionally high, there seems to be no good reason why road work can 

 not be accomphshed by convict labor at considerably less expense 

 than by free labor. 



EFFICIENCY AND ECONOMY OF CONVICT LABOR. 



The relative efficiency of convicts and free men as road laborers is 

 a phase of the convict problem of particular interest. Unfortunately, 

 it is also a phase upon which it is practically impossible to develop 

 precise information. Manifestly, an entirely fair comparison can be 

 made only where both classes are employed in like localities under 

 exactly similar conditions. This is rarely possible, because convicts 

 and free men are seldom employed together, even on different sec- 

 tions of the same road where conditions might be assumed to be 

 roughly identical, but by making proper allowance for differing con- 

 ditions it is sometimes possible to form reasonably accurate estimates 

 of the comparative value of the two classes of labor. Estimates of 

 this sort are not wanting, but in their bearing on the general question 

 of the efficiency of convict labor they serve to confuse rather than to 

 illuminate, for they rate the relative efficiency of the convict at from 

 50 to 150 per cent of that of free labor. 



By assembling a number of such estimates from different localities 

 and under different conditions it is possible to arrive at a composite 

 figure which will represent the average relative efficiency of convict 

 labor throughout the localities represented. An estimate of this sort 

 was made by the United States Bureau of Labor and published in the 

 Twentieth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor in 1905. 

 The data for that estimate were secured by agents of the Bureau of 

 Labor from prison officials, foremen, contractors, lessees, and from 

 omployiTS of free labor in the localities in which convicts wore cm- 

 ployed. As a result of this survny, it was found from a total number 

 of 111 estimates in regard to highway construction in the States of 

 California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Michigan, Minne- 

 sota, Missouri, N(5W Jersey, N'sw M(!xico, N(»w York, North Carolina, 

 Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, 

 and the District of Columbia, that the labor of 3,522 convicts was 

 equivalent to that of 3,481 fn^e laborers of av<Tago skill, woi'kiug thc^ 

 same numb<;r of hours per day. But that such general estimates 

 are of little value in the consideration of particular cases is wc^ll 

 illustrated by the fsu-t that if tlio estimates for the States of Cali- 



