2 EULLETIN" 414, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
(5) The steps necessary to secure proper sanitation and hygiene; 
(6) The most suitable system of cost keeping and record; 
(7) Detailed and comparative cost data on every phase of the 
subject. 
As no single State can answer these varied and perplexing inquiries, 
an exhaustive investigation has been conducted by the Office of Public 
Roads and Rural Engineering in cooperation with the United States 
Public Health Service during a portion of the calendar years 1914 
and 1915. Personal visits were made to convict camps and confer- 
ences were held with State highway and prison officials in the States 
of New York, New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, 
Texas, Michigan, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, 
California, Washington, and Oregon. On these visits the most search- 
ing inquiries and inspections were made covering administrative, 
engineering, economic, disciplinary, and health conditions at the 
camps. 
These personal investigations were supplemented by correspondence 
with prison and highway officials in all parts of the country, and in 
addition many Government publications, State documents, treatises, 
and reference works were consulted in the preparation of this bulletin. 
It is the purpose of the authors to cover as nearly as possible all 
questions that might arise in connection with either the adoption of a 
policy relating to the use of convict labor in road work or the actual 
working out of such a policy. To this end a presentation and dis- 
cussion of the principles involved, a digest of convict road laws, and 
a discussion of every phase of operation are embodied in the bulletin, 
together with specific detailed instructions for the carrying out of all 
recommendations which the authors make- 
In the course of the investigation muoh valuable and detailed in- 
formation was obtained which could not be brought within the limits 
of a bulletin. This information, however, is filed in the Office of 
Public Roads and Rural Engineering, and inquiries which may not 
be answered with sufficient completeness in the bulletin may be cov- 
ered adequately by correspondence. 
SYSTEMS OF CONVICT LABOR. 
In order to weigh the relative advantages and disadvantages of 
utilizing convict labor in public highway construction and other occu- 
pations, a knowledge of the systems of convict labor in operation 
is helpful. These systems, six in number, are known as the lease, 
the contract, the piece-price, the public-account, the State-use, and 
the public-works-and-ways systems, respectively, and arc explained 
as follow-. 
