CONVICT LABOR FOR ROAD WORK. 115 
is due largely to the carelessness of the kitchen force, which allows 
the screen doors to remain open much longer than is necessar}^. 
Screen doors should be provided with firm springs in order to keep 
them closed, and knot holes and all other spaces in the walls of the 
dining room and kitchen must be stopped if flies are to be kept out. 
At camps in which the responsibility for keeping these quarters 
neat and clean is placed upon one man much better results are 
attained than is the case when the kitchen force in general is sup- 
posed to attend to this duty. The kitchen and dining room should 
be cleaned thoroughly at least once a week and the floors should be 
mopped daily. 
Tables should be brushed after each meal, scrubbed with soap 
and hot water, rinsed with clean water, and dried. Saltcellars, pep- 
per boxes, vinegar cruets, mustard pots, and sugar bowls should be 
wiped with a dry cloth after each meal, and care should be taken to 
see that they are filled properly. 
Dishes should be washed first in water in which there is plenty of 
soap and should then be scalded. Flatware — knives, forks, spoons — 
should be washed clean in a separate pan, and then scalded and wiped 
dry. The scalding of dishes and flatware is of great importance and 
never must be omitted; otherwise there is danger of infectious dis- 
eases being carried from one person to another. 
HEALTH CONDITIONS AND CARE OF SICK AND INJURED. 
Complete physical examinations are seldom made at the time the 
men are sent to the road camps. Prisoners are examined upon their 
admission to the penitentiaries and their records thereafter are known 
in a general way to the prison physicians. If they have not been 
sick during their stay in the prison they generally are considered as 
being in good physical condition. In some States the only necessary 
qualification is that the men shall apparently be able to work. When 
the men enter the camps under these conditions, the ones who are 
able to work do so and the others are sent to the State farms or 
county hospitals for treatment. It is not intended that prisoners 
suffering from venereal diseases should be permitted to enter the 
road camps, but in the vast majority of camps visited venereal dis- 
eases were not entirely absent. 
PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF CONVICTS IN CAMPS AND DISEASES PRESENT. 
The physical condition of the convicts employed on road work 
depends very largely upon the care which has been used in their 
selection and the motives which have actuated physicians and war- 
dens in their choice. Camps in which the main purpose is to accom- 
plish the greatest possible amount of work usually are composed of 
stalwart laboring men in the prime of life, well suited in every way 
