The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1886-03-04
WEEKLY STATESMAN.
CONVICT LABOR.


1t is very difficult political problem
to decide whether it Is right to profit by
convict labor, when that labor completes
with free labor, and has n tendency TO re-
duce the price of the latter, to the injury
of the honest workingman of the
country.
The object of punishment Is TO reform
the criminal. The law is not vin&ictive,
and does not punish as a revenge for the
crime committed. The whole theory of
the law is that punishment shall be re-
sorted to only when all other remedies
are exhausted to reform the criminal, and
under this, view phlanthrophi7ts have been
puzzled to know what was best to do
with the criminal classes.
The difficulty has been to make
convict labor profitable and at
the same time non-competiye with free
labor. There is too, in this consideration
humanitarian view that ought 10 be
considered. The first proposition is
whether state can afford to tax its citi-
zens to support in idlenes5 the strong
and healthy criminal that it has been
found necessary to deprive of liberty and
incarcerate in the state penitentiary.
The second proposition is whether 1t Is
humanitarian to congregate num-
Der of men with criminal ms 5incts
and habits together in state prison
without employment and subject to
a common corruption of idle associa-
ton together, where they are fed and
clothed, and do not have any kind of oc-
cupation for hand or mind.
In the first place. it does not seem that
state is under any obligations to sup
port its criminal classes, but that it ought
TO use them in such n way as to protect
the taxpayer from the burden of their
support. In the next place, considering
the question in its humanitarian view, it
seems wrong, as the object of
punishment is for the reformation of
the criminal, that they should be allowed
to spend their time together in idleness,
and, as II consequence, the connection OF
schemes by which, when they are released,
they are adopts in crime, and can more
successfully ply their different dishonest
occupations ON the community in which |
they are turned loose. OF course it is
very difficult to persuade the working |
classes who come into competition with
cheap prison labor that there is any thing
worthy of consideration in either of the
above ideas, but the general public will at
once recognize the force of the argument,
and will take into consideration all the
facts bearing upon this question.
The first consideration is in behalf of
the tax payers, and the interr@gatory
forces itself upon the public, whether, to
protect free labor, the legislator has "A
right to vote appropriations to support
the criminal classes of the country in idle
ness. The next consideration touches the
condition of the criminal classes, in their
treatment, in regard to the legal contem
plation Of punishment, and whether, thus
defining the Object of the law, we have
any right to leave them in an
idlencss that would, at the
end Of their terms of imprisonment,
place them in worse condition than when
they first Went 'nto prison.
Of course wo nave decided views on this
subject Uha0 fine mere statement of this
argument indicates but we leave it, with
these views 10 the consideration of the
public