26 BULLETIN 414, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
parative influence of each under particular conditions have not been 
at hand, owing to the failure of public 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 certain 
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 considering 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 will 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 living. However, in general, it is believed 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 
living 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 politics 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 
ability; 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. 
