26 BULLETIN 414, U. S. DEPABTMENT OF AGKICULTUEE. 



parative influence of each under particular conditions have not been 

 at hand, owing to the failure of pubhc authorities to preserve adequate 

 record of the amount and cost of work performed and the exact 

 cost of the maintenance of convicts. Because of the apparent 

 cheapness with which convicts are fed, clothed, and housed, officials 

 have been led, through this lack of adequate records, into a false sense 

 of security in regard to the economy of convict labor, and there has 

 been a tendency to condone and overlook lapses from a standard of 

 high efficiency because of a feeling that the margin between the daily 

 cost of convict and free labor was wide enough to allow a certaia 

 amount of waste. But a comparison of the costs of maintenance of 

 convicts and the prevailing wages of free labor in the typical cases 

 given in Table 4 should prove convincingly the need of closer atten- 

 tion to detail in the employment of convicts. 



In considermg the economic improvement of a system of convict 

 road labor the geographical factor must be kept in mind constantly. 

 The problem in the South is widely different from that of the North, 

 East, and West, and there are minor differences between the condi- 

 tions in these latter sections. In the South, the human material 

 dealt with is so radically different from that of the other sections that 

 its problems are not to be remedied by means which wiU apply very, 

 well to the other sections. But, as has been shown, the difference is 

 economically in favor of the South because of the character of the 

 previous experience of its prisoners, their greater responsiveness to 

 discipline, and the relative cheapness of their accustomed manner 

 of Hving. However, in general, it is beheved that the interests of 

 economy may be subserved — 



First, by strict attention to the cost of maintenance and by honest 

 effort to reduce it to the minimum amount consistent with proper 

 Uving conditions and discipline; second, by the reduction, so far as 

 possible, of all losses of working time; third, by providing a positive 

 incentive to industry to offset the negative fear of punishment; 

 fourth, by the elimination of pohtics as a factor in the selection of 

 officials; fifth, by offering to officials such salaries as to command 

 the services of capable men; sixth, by combining the responsibility 

 and authority for the direction of road work and convicts in one 

 person at each camp; seventh, by such a diversification of labor 

 and employment as to provide for the large body of prisoners the 

 kind of work in the performance of which they manifest the greatest 

 abifity; eighth, by judicious selection of the work to be performed 

 by convicts; ninth, by the proper adjustment of the size of the force 

 to the requirements of the work and by the formation of camps of 

 economical size; tenth, by adopting a more mechanical kind of work 

 for short-term prisoners, or, if they must be employed at road work, 

 the separation of long and short term men. 



