10 
BULLETIN -tU, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
period represent only 186 of the 296 institutions included in the full 
report for 1903-4; but a comparison on the basis of identical insti- 
tutions is made possible by the inclusion of the third and fourth 
columns of 1903-4. 
This table shows that, though the proportions of convicts employed 
in indoor and outdoor work have not changed greatly since 1885, the 
numbers and percentages of convicts employed hi road work have 
steadily increased from 584, or 1.3 per cent of the total convict popu- 
lation represented in 1885, to 8,341, or 12.7 per cent of the convict 
population represented in 1914-15. That the percentage of prisoners 
engaged in outdoor work has not increased correspondingly may be 
due to the partial substitution of road work for railroad building, 
lumbering, the turpentine industry, farming, and other forms of out- 
door work. 
Table 2. — Convicts employed in indoor and outdoor work and in road work in 1885, 
1903-4, and 1914-15. 
Employment. 
1903-4 
1914- 
-15 
296 institutions. 
186 institutions. 
186 institutions. 
Number. 
28,250 
16,997 
Per d. 
62.5 
37.5 
Number. 
28,479 
22,693 
Perct. 
55.7 
44.3 
Number. Per ct. 
19,967 57.3 
14,906 ! 42.7 
Number. 
36, 036 
28,593 
Per ct. 
55 8 
44 2 
Total 
45, 277 
100 
51,172 
100 
34,873 100 
64.629 
100 
584 I 1.3 
3,508 
6.8 
2,497 j 7.1 
8,341 
12 7 
A number of the States are now using convict labor in the construc- 
tion of roads largely because present conditions have forced a change 
in the old methods of employing the prisoners, and it is probable that 
other States, sooner or later, will find themselves in the same position. 
In the South the sentiment against the leasing of convicts has 
reached the point where it was imperative to evolve some other sys- 
tem. At the same time most of these States were inadequately 
equipped for the housing of the entire convict population, and in a 
few there were no State penal institutions at all. Under these 
circumstances it was impossible to provide indoor work of any char- 
acter for all the convicts, and, as in those States there is a pressing 
need for the improvement of highways, the employment of the con- 
victs in highway construction has seemed to offer the best solution 
of both problems. 
Throughout the country the opposition by skilled free labor to 
the direct competition of convict labor in the manufacture of trade 
articles has become so pronounced as to make the abandonment of 
such competitive work almost necessary, and the adoption of either, 
or both, the State-use system and the public-works-and-ways system 
