60 BULLETIN 414, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
rules shall be followed by immediate return of the offender to the 
penitentiary, where the prescribed punishment is administered. 
In two States, Washington and Texas, the honor system is applied 
only to conditionally paroled convicts, who are required to enter into 
' 'honor agreements" or contracts with the governors of the States, 
in which they promise to work faithfully and well under the conditions 
prescribed, either until given final release, as in Washington, or for 
a specified period of a year, as in Texas. In the former State, a cash 
per diem of 50 cents is paid and in the latter a similar per diem of 
25 cents is granted under the terms of the contracts. In both these 
States, however, the disciplinary measures effective in the camps are 
in all essentials the same as in other States. 
COMPARISON OF THE GUARD AND HONOR SYSTEMS. 
The guard system may be adopted effectively, as it has been in 
the South, for the discipline of convicts of all classes. The honor 
system, on the other hand, is applicable only to a selected number 
of any prison population, and can not, with safety, bemdiscriminately 
applied. However, in maintaining the security of those prisoners 
who are employed under them, the two systems appear to be equally 
effective, as will be noted by comparison of the following percentages 
of escape reported from a number of States using each system. In 
the road camps of New York and Utah, the number of convicts 
who escaped in 1914 formed less than one-half of 1 per cent of the 
total number of individuals handled; in New Jersey the proportion 
was 2.5 per cent; in Virginia 3.5 per cent; and in the counties of 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida the percentage 
varied from 1 to 6. All the foregoing States employ some form of the 
guard system, yet the percentages of escapes sustained are roughly 
the same as in the following States, which employ the honor system 
in their road camps: Oklahoma, 1 per cent; Colorado, 1.2 per cent; 
Kalamazoo County, Mich., 2 per cent; New Mexico, 3 per cent; 
Washington, 3.5 per cent, and Montana, 5 per cent. It will appear by 
examination of the above statistics that the lowest proportions of 
escapes were registered in the States of New York and Utah, in 
which a modified form of the guard system is applied to a selected 
group of convicts; but it should be stated that in the Southern States 
in which the convicts are employed indiscriminately under the 
guard system with its chain gang, the majority of escapes occur in 
the trusty class. It is urged in favor of the guard system in the 
Southern States that under it large numbers of convicts have for some 
time been safely employed at work on the roads; that their work has 
been largely productive in the construction of many miles of improved 
highways, and that during the time they have been thus employed 
the States have been relieved of the burden of maintaining expensive 
