68 



SCIEXCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 155 



will be five million dollars, and subscriptions will 

 be immediately opened in the capitals of the four 

 states which signed the general act of the confer- 

 ence at Berlin. The railroad will be constructed 

 within the territory of the state of Kongo, either 

 on the south side of the river, between the frontier 

 and Leopoldville, or in two sections, — one on the 

 right bank of the river, and the other on the left. 



Lieutenant Taunt of the U. S. navy recently 

 arrived in London from the Kongo, where he has 

 been on a mission for the government. Mr. Tis- 

 dell's report of a visit to the lower Kongo, in 

 which he painted so black a picture of unsuccess 

 and sterility, will be fresh in the memory of our 

 readers. The report which Lieutenant Taunt has 

 to render bears a very different complexion : he 

 did not content himself with a hurried visit to 

 Vivi and Stanley Pool, but went as far as Stanley 

 Falls. He describes the lower Kongo as in the 

 main barren, but even there relieved by fertile 

 spots. The administration of the Kongo state is 

 severely criticised. Lieutenant Taunt finds that 

 in the lower Kongo the officials do not retain their 

 offices long enough : this is presumably to be 

 credited to the extremely unhealthy climate, 

 although no such reason is given by Lieutenant 

 Taunt. On the upper Kongo he found the 

 officials better contented, and the administration 

 more satisfactory. It is understood that there is 

 no prospect of Mr. Stanley proceeding to the 

 Kongo in the near future ; and there is a tendency 

 to withdraw all officials not of Belgian nationality. 

 Sir Francis de Winton has retired, and has been 

 succeeded by N. Janssen. These changes may 

 result in doing away with the jealousies formerly 

 existing among the officials of different national- 

 ities. 



The decline of cholera in southern Europe 

 has afforded ground for the hope that the epidemic 

 had nearly ceased, or at least that the worst was 

 over. From recent news, however, it appears 

 that there yet exists cause for apprehension. The 

 disease has broken out in the provinces of Cadiz 

 and Malaga, and quarantine lias been established 

 at several seaports. It has approached the fron- 

 tiers of Portugal, and it is very possible, if not 

 probable, that it may break out with its previous 

 intensity in the spring. Not only in Portugal, 

 but in various provinces of Spain, evidence seems 

 to indicate that the end of the epidemic is not yet. 



On another page will be found the proceed- 

 ings of the first meeting of the Indiana academy 

 of sciences. This society enters upon its existence 

 under auspicious circumstances, and its future 

 progress will be watched with interest. The fist 

 of names of the officers or participants, as given, 

 includes not a few of men of acknowledged 

 ability ; and there certainly seems to be sufficient 

 material among the scientific workers of Indiana 

 to make the academy a success. Other state 

 academies have led a feeble existence, from lack 

 of material or proper management ; may it be 

 hoped that the future of the present one will be 

 brighter. 



THE COMPETITION OF CONVICT LABOR. 



Back of all the discussion as to the various 

 methods of employing convicts, one of which was 

 commented on in a recent number of this journal 

 {Science, No. 153, p. 28), lies the complaint that 

 any method whatsoever of utilizing convict labor, 

 save in the work about the prisons, results in a 

 competition with free labor which is unfair and 

 injurious. 



The idea that this competition really exists in 

 an appreciable amount has taken possession of 

 so many minds, that we offer a few statistics on 

 the subject. It may at once be admitted, that 

 were all the 60,000 convicts in this country em- 

 ployed in a single industry, under one scheme of 

 management, the effect would be that an enormous 

 addition would be made to the productive capacity 

 of that industry, and consequently prices might 

 fall, and a reduction of wages result. But this 

 hypothesis is as far from the truth as possible. 



In 1879 Col. Carroll D. Wright (' Eleventh an- 

 nual report of the Massachusetts bureau of the statis- 

 tics of labor,' p. 112) stated that such convicts as 

 were employed at any kind of labor whatsoever 

 throughout the whole United States were 40,122 

 in number, and were distributed among 129 penal 

 institutions. Of this number, 23,524 — 22,288 males 

 and 1,236 females — were employed in 108 kinds 

 of industries requiring skilled labor; 11,668 — 

 11,450 males and 218 females — were employed in 

 25 kinds of industries requiring unskilled labor; 

 the remaining 4,930 were employed in prison 

 duties. These 23,524 convicts, employed in pro- 

 ductive skilled work in the prisons of the United 

 States, were competing {ibid., p. 114) with 666,625 

 workmen employed in the same states upon the 

 same kind of work, and with 1,269,240 in the 

 whole United States engaged in the same produc- 

 tive industries that were carried on in the prisons : 

 therefore the percentage of convicts to free laborers 

 was 1.83. 



