UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
% BULLETIN No. 583 
Contribution from the Office of Public Roads and Rural 
Engineering, LOGAN WALLER PAGE, Director 
siW^mru 
WASHINGTON, D. C. 
March 7, 1918 
REPORT ON EXPERIMENTAL CONVICT ROAD CAMP, 
FULTON COUNTY, GA. 
By H. S. Fairbank and R. H. Eastham, Highway Engineers, and W. F. 
Draper, Passed Assistant Surgeon, U. S. Public Health Service. 
CONTENTS. 
Page. 
Striking results of the experiment 2 
The plan of cooperation 4 
The system of convict labor in Georgia 4 
Description of the camp site 7 
Camp buildings 10 
Other camp structures and fixtures 15 
Moving portable buildings 15 
The water supply 19 
Sewage disposal 22 
Garbage disposal 23 
Clothing 24 
Page. 
Furniture and equipment 25 
Subsistence 29 
Medicine and medical attention 36 
Transportation of convicts and supplies 38 
Convict population 39 
Discipline and morale 44 
Sanitation 45 
Records and reports 47 
Summarized costs of maintenance 56 
Road work 57 
Without a single attempt to escape, an average of 40 negro con- 
victs were maintained for 10 months in the Fulton County (Ga.) 
honor camp conducted under the observation of the United States 
Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering and the United States 
Public Health Service. This notwithstanding the facts that the 
convicts were worked without armed guards, without exceptional 
conditions as to hours of labor, without special rewards or other 
unusual inducements to good behavior, and with the camp located 
near a trolley line and within 11 miles of the city of Atlanta, from 
• which most of the convicts were sentenced, a condition admitted by 
all competent authorities to be most unfavorable to the successful 
operation of an honor camp. 
With a diet prescribed by the United States Public Health Service, 
ample in quantity and containing all the properties essential to 
maintain laborers engaged in heavy outdoor work, the convicts were 
fed at a cost 9 cents per day lower than that required to maintain 
other convicts on an unbalanced diet in the same county at the same 
time. 
5847°— 18— Bull. 583 1 
