6 BULLETIN 414, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
decline in the number of convicts employed by private industries 
under the lease, contract, and piece-price systems, and the increas- 
ing tendency to adopt those systems under which the convict is em- 
ployed entirely for the benefit of the State. 
ROAD WORK FOR CONVICTS. 
In much of the discussion of the proposition of road work for con- 
victs, there is evident a popular belief that the employment of 
convicts in the open air, which such work entails, is a radical depar- 
ture from well-established principles and a development of very recent 
origin. Nothing could be further from the truth. Such employ- 
ment has been in practice at one time or another in all countries, and 
among the ancient nations no other method of emplo} r ment was 
known. The ancient prisons were places of detention and torture 
only; labor formed no part of their regimen. But there are numerous 
references in history to the employment of prisoners of war and of 
criminals on the public works of the ancient kingdoms and almost 
invariably these works were performed necessarily in the open air. 
In fact, the provision of indoor labor is of comparatively modern 
origin and dates back no further than the development of the work- 
house in the sixteenth century, while the penitentiary, as now known, 
is practically a product of the nineteenth century. 
In America perhaps the earliest record of the employment of 
prisoners on public works is found in statute 29 of the Virginia Colon- 
ial Assembly, enacted in 1658. 
Somewhat later in the French colony of Louisiana, it is recorded 
that " Bienville, reappointed governor (1718), intending to found a 
town on the river, set a party of convicts to clear up a swamp — the 
site of the present city of New Orleans." x 
However, the criminal class in the majority of the colonies, with 
the exception of those convicts who were sent to them by the mother 
country as " servant criminals," was very small, and there seems 
to have been no general system of labor as a punishment for those 
convicted within their boundaries. Indeed, as all who are familiar 
with the colonial history of America are aware, the barbarous prac- 
tices of tongue splitting, branding, burning at the stake, whipping, 
ducking, and exposure to the public gaze in the stocks and pillory 
were the methods most favored by the good colonists for the punish- 
ment of their own offenders, and the number of crimes for which the 
death penalty was prescribed was very large. 
After the close of the Revolution, one of the earliest measures in 
Pennsylvania "was in the direction of reforming the Penal Code, and 
in 1786 an act was passed providing that certain crimes, which until 
i History of the United States, bj T Rich and Hildreth, vol. 2, p. 281. 
