CONVICT LABOR FOR ROAD WORK. 15 
laborers and with the general public. They give reasons for this position. If prisoners 
are set to work on public roads or streets of cities where people are constantly passing, 
they must be chained and guarded by men armed with deadly weapons. If the 
weapons are used in places where citizens pass, there is danger of killing the wrong 
person. Nothing can be more degrading to a prisoner, nothing more hardening to the 
public feeling, than the public punishment of convicts. 
These conclusions carry the weight of the highest authority; but 
it should be noted that they are directed only against the employ- 
ment on the roads of that class of prisoners which can be so employed 
only when secured by chains and armed guards. It is generally 
conceded that any successful employment of prisoners depends 
upon their proper classification and the adapting of the labor imposed 
to the needs and ability of the individual convict ; and for those pris- 
oners who can be employed in public under proper conditions road 
work offers a convenient, productive, and beneficial occupation. It 
is believed, however, that the foregoing objection is valid when 
applied to the indiscriminate employment of convicts in public. 
The second objection, which also carries force when applied to any 
system of outdoor labor which does not include a classification or 
grading of prisoners according to character, habits, and ability, is that 
the congregate life of the road camp exposes the better convicts to 
the physical, mental, and moral contamination of their more depraved 
associates. However, this objection, like the first, is not directed 
solely against road labor and can not apply to such labor when con- 
ducted under proper conditions. 
A third objection is to the effect that road labor is not suited to the 
ability or physical strength of all prisoners, and that there is a class 
of prisoners, such as physicians, lawyers, merchants, clerks, whose 
previous habits of life entirely unfit them for such work, who will 
never apply such manual experience after release and who may 
receive actual physical injury through such employment. Table 
3 shows that this class does not form more than 20 per cent of 
the entire prison population of any State listed, that in many the 
proportion is far below that, and that the average for all States 
included in the table is only about 10 per cent. Therefore, this 
objection also can apply only to the indiscriminate employment of all 
prisoners on road work, and can not be held against any system 
which provides for the careful classification of prisoners and the 
subjection to road labor of only those who are found to be fitted for 
such work. 
The fourth, a more serious objection to road work than any of the 
foregoing, is that such work, in common with other forms of outdoor 
employment, affords much greater opportunity for escape than does 
any form of indoor employment. To offer this greater opportunity 
to prisoners weak in self-control is to place before them a temptation 
they can not well resist; and to subject them to the possibility of 
53577°— Bull. 414—16 2 
