22 BULLETIX iU, TJ. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
laborers are convicts. Among the most important of these is the lack 
of a sufficient incentive to induce the convict to labor diligently. Even 
among free laborers the man who works for the pure love of his work 
is in a decided minority. These thoughts do not animate the convict. 
He has no fear of losing his position, and he is aware that he will rarely 
be punished for the small procrastinations which he knows well how 
to practice. Indeed he is very sure that his guards and keepers 
expect him to be inefficient in a small way, and that he will not forfeit 
his good time for any but flagrant violations of the rules or open 
disobedience to orders. He prefers to work rather than to remain 
in absolute idleness, but he takes his work as a pastime and seldom 
permits it to become irksome. He sets his own pace and there is 
a comparatively small percentage of ambitious workers among con- 
victs, such as set the standard of work for the less ardent among free 
laborers. He frequently feigns sickness to avoid work, and often in 
such a way as to defy detection. He becomes surly and unruly when 
worked beyond his will so that his keepers often are forced to lower 
their standards, in order to avoid the too frequent administration of 
punishment. The investigators witnessed an example of this sort in 
an eastern State, where a squad of convicts engaged in grading was 
found divided into two gangs of pickers and shovellers respectively. 
The shovellers rested while the pickers worked, and vice versa, which 
amounted to the employment of the entire squad only one-half 
the time. When questioned about this practice the superintendent 
rephed: "It is impossible to work the men economically because 
they would become dissatisfied and we would have to be sending 
them back to the penitentiary continually." Corporal punishment 
is forbidden in this State, hence to administer punishment means to 
return the men to the penitentiary. Though this is an extreme 
example, all who have worked convicts know that it is only possible 
to overwork them by the introduction of actual cruelty into their 
discipline, and that in general the only men about a convict camp 
who are likely to be overworked are the foremen and the superin- 
tendent. 
This lack of incentive may be overcome to a great extent by a 
system of reward for earnest effort, as explained elsewhere in this 
bulletin. 
Another fact which precludes the possibility of developing the con- 
vict squad into as efficient an organization as the free-labor gang is 
that in the former it is impossible to eliminate completely the incom- 
petent worker. As stated, there are differences in ability among con- 
victs as among free laborers, but whereas in the employment of the 
latter it is possible, by selection, to raise the plane of efficiency of the 
organization to a high level, the incompetent convicts generally must 
be carried along with the relatively competent, and the efficiency of 
