The Dallas daily herald. [volume] (Dallas, Tex.) 1873-1887, 1880-12-12
CONVICT LABOR.

is being circulated for aiguers, peIitioning
that body to establish two moro prisons,
making ono q cotton and the other wooden
mil for the employment orconycts. Ii cor
tainly is the duty of tho legislature to do
som.taing promptly toward conining
fslons inside of walls and providing work for
them to do SO ms to be scli-supporIing, within
tn $50 walls. There are now in the state some
1900 conyicts serving various terms OF I'M
prisSnment, ami there is prison-room, III
Guiding tue new penItentiary ut Rusk, Tor
bu. eight hundred, unless two arc put IN u
coll at the Rusk prison, when there will be
room for 1900. The remainder the lessees
Of the prison are forced to find employment
for on the outside, where they come in COM
petition with tho FREQ men Of the country
striving for an honest living by the sweat of
their faces. Men aro imprisoned for crime,
not SO much rs punishment as for the pur-
pose of reformation, 10 save them from them
selves, and to protect society from their
vciousness. When they are kept in gangs
under the muzzes of shot-guns in the hands
of their guards, there is no opportunity for
moral suasion; the means for corrective and
oloYsting influences are so lessened that they
are imperative, and the criminal is left
to brood upon his own bitter thoughts,
| IA nd 10 fanl
is but degraded wretch, moral and socia
leper, Pariah against whom the contempt
Of his fellowmen is leveled Hope of u
brighter and better future dies within him,
and only the defiant, the combative traits Of
his nature have play and ho comes TO hate
the world, to hate his kind, to feel that he is
dosplsed and loathed, and it is impossible for
aim to BIO bettered. Inside Of prison walls it
is different. There he is not subject to the
gsze Of all the world. His misfortune is not
Haunted continually in the eyes of the public.
Moral influences can DO thrown around him.
The better part of his nature can be aroused
and cultivated and he can be raised above the
plane Of evil he had fallen upon and his con-
GnSment can be made relormatory period
Of his life and the disgrace of Imprisonment
be bereft Of its keenest edge by the knowl-
edge that whatever his name and his fame
may have suffered, he himself has been bet
tered and benefited. We are uttering no
words of Censure against the lesseos of the
penitontisry. They cannot help it that there
is lack OF room for the prisoners in
their charge and they cannot help it
that the prisoners must work on farms
and for railroads, doing labor that men not
held in DURANGO ought to do. We are salts
fed that they do all in their power for the
comfort and the well-being of the prisoners
in their charge, and that what they can, stu.
ated as they are, they do toward leading the
convicts to higher and healthier moral life
The fault, if strictly speaking it may be
called fault, is with the state. 1t costs no
little money to erect prisons, and in the past
those who have boon invested with the law
making power have felt that the state was
unable to incur the expense of building peni-
tentiAriss and they have let the much
needed work 60 by default. Now, with
but small debt on hand, and
moro than million dollars accumulated in
the treasury, we may well ask if the state
should longer refrain from providing walls
for her prisoners and work for them to do in q.
side Of those walls. We believe it has never
been the policy of any state to make ts pris>
onsrs confined for crime source of pecuniary
profit. The state does not desire to coin
money from crime. If they can be made self
sustaining, and given opportunities to become
better men and women, be surround
cd by those influences that will
enable aud induce them to throw off the old
shell Of viciousnesI and evil and emerge into
better and truer manhood ard womanhood,
il Is all that the state should desire of its
prisoners. The state certainly owes it to
her people that felon-labor shall not come
in contact with free labor; that tho good
citizen striving for livelihood for him
self and those dependent upon him. shall
not DO forced to compete with convict. The
suggestion Of the establishment of two new
prisons, one operating cotton mill and the
other wooden mill, strikes us as a good
idea. These mills can be made to be self
sustaining. BY his work at the spindle and
the loom the prisoner can DO made tc earn
his bread and the clothes he wears, and the
expense Of his care and of the wear and
tear of machinery and the cost of raw mate,
rial This would be sufficient for him to 30,
and this class of work, conducted only &c
this extent, would not bring prison labor il
competition with free labor, or at least moi
to that extent that working prisoners OF
railroads and in agricultural pursuits, and il
manufacturing boots and shoes, wagons and
carriages, furniture, and that class of werl
DOES. Right at the doors of these peniten.
tiary mills the raw material is produced, and
why not utliz'it! West Texas supplies fail
quota of the prisoners, and West Texas pro-
duccs annually MILL SA9f pounds o
wool that are shippS for manufac
turo. Here in NORTH Gas, we grow
cotton upon thousands and thousand
| =, .,