172 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY. 



the mines, only one individual has been seriously hurt, and that when 

 he disobeyed orders directly. 



There have been many objections to the contract system urged by 

 persons who are outside of the prison and its management. Whatever 

 objections there may be to the contract system in itself, those usually 

 observed are of no force. It is said that the goods made by prisoners 

 come into close competition with goods made by union men outside 

 of the prison and therefore the union men urge the repeal of the law 

 granting the privilege of contracting prisoners for work. There can 

 be no reason in this from the following principles : First, because every 

 citizen of Kansas is interested in the right management of the prison 

 as a means of protecting him and his family. In order to have this 

 protection it is necessary that laborers be given employment for the 

 sake of proper management. As there are less than a thousand of 

 these prisoners all told, many of them are employed about the build- 

 ings and grounds and many employed in furnishing coal and other 

 goods to state institutions, the competition does not figure at all in 

 the great labor market. Again, while the prison mines have been 

 putting forth abundance of coal in supplying state institutions and the 

 market elsewhere, other coal mines in and around Leavenworth have 

 been unable to fill the orders in supplying the demand upon them. 

 Superintendents have tried again and again during the past two years 

 to obtain sufficient miners to take out enough coal to supply the mar- 

 ket, but they have failed. So far as the mines are concerned, the hue 

 and cry about competitive labor amounts to nothing. Again, the 

 contract system is carried on in this way : The prisoners are always 

 under the charge of the warden and prison authorities. Contracts are 

 let to the highest bidder for a certain number of laborers. This 

 labor must be done on the prison grounds and under the general over- 

 sight of the prison authorities. If a prisoner is not doing well at a 

 certain occupation, he is transferred to some other occupation. He 

 has much the same treatment everywhere. Care is taken to adapt the 

 prisoner to the labor that best suits his condition. When these goods 

 are finished they pass out on the market in competition with other 

 goods of the state and neighboring states. This, as has been stated, 

 cannot be avoided unless the solitary system is adopted and with it an 

 exclusion of machinery. The minimum price for contract laborers is 

 forty-five cents per day, and as a matter of business, as those contracts 

 are let to the highest bidder and as labor is plentiful outside of the 

 prison, there can be very little difference in the effect of this contract- 

 ing for prison labor and the injury of union labor outside as respects 

 the cheapness with which goods can be thrown upon the market. 

 However, it seems to me that it would be better to have all prisoners 



