22 BULLETIN 414, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGEICULTUKE. 



laborers are convicts. Among the most important of these is the lack 

 of a sufficient incentive to induce the convict to labor dHigently. Even 

 among free laborers the man who works for the pure love of his work 

 is in a decided minority. These thoughts do not animate the convict. 

 He has no fear of losing his position, and he is aware that he will rarely 

 be punished for the small procrastinations which he knows well how 

 to practice. Indeed he is very sure that his guards and keepers 

 expect him to be inefficient in a small way, and that he will not forfeit 

 his good time for any but flagrant violations of the rules or open 

 disobedience to orders. He prefers to work rather than to remain 

 in absolute idleness, but he takes his work as a pastime and seldom 

 permits it to become irksome. He sets his own pace and there is 

 a comparatively smaU percentage of ambitious workers among con- 

 victs, such as set the standard of work for the less ardent among free 

 laborers. He frequently feigns sickness to avoid work, and often in 

 such a way as to defy detection. He becomes surly and unruly when 

 worked beyond his will so that his keepers often are forced to lower 

 their standards, in order to avoid the too frequent administration of 

 punishment. The investigators witnessed an example of this sort in 

 an eastern State, where a squad of convicts engaged in grading was 

 found divided into two gangs of pickers and shovellers respectively. 

 The shovellers rested while the pickers worked, and vice versa, which 

 amounted to the employment of the entire squad only one-half 

 the time. When questioned about this practice the superintendent 

 rephed: "It is impossible to work the men economically because 

 they would become dissatisfied and we would have to be sending 

 them back to the penitentiary continually." Corporal punishment 

 is forbidden in this State, hence to administer punishment means to 

 return the men to the penitentiary. Though this is an extreme 

 example, all who have worked convicts know that it is only possible 

 to overwork them by the introduction of actual cruelty into their 

 discipline, and that in general the only men about a convict camp 

 who are hkely to be overworked are the foremen and the superin- 

 tendent. 



This lack of incentive may be overcome to a great extent by a 

 system of reward for earnest effort, as explained elsewhere in this 

 bulletin. 



Another fact which precludes the possibiUty of developing the con- 

 vict squad into as efficient an organization as the free-labor gang is 

 that in the former it is impossible to eliminate completely the incom- 

 petent worker. As stated, there are differences in abifity among con- 

 victs as among free laborers, but whereas in the employment of the 

 latter it is possible, by selection, to raise the plane of efficiency of the 

 organization to a high level, the incompetent convicts generally must 

 be carried along with the relatively competent, and the efficiency of 



