The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1886-04-08
WEEKLY STATESMAN.
corNTY ROADS ANp coNvIcTs

roads. suggests that the county shout,
have teams, wagons, plows, scrapers
word, every implement and appliance ne
cessary to the expeditions conduct o
work on the roads, meaning county roads
His first suggestion is that a practica
business man should be appointed super
intendent of roads by the county commits
sioners, and that he should be Furnished
with these teams and thirty men to do thu
work, and also camp equipage for the ne
cessary transient home of himself and the
hands under him.
The suggestions of this correspondent
are well worthy of consideration and
adoption, but the same correspondent
closes by saying he favors convict labor
on the roads, which would lessen the cost
greatly"
ID. A. T." does not eIaggerate the EN-
portance to the prosperity Of the business
men of a county in having COED roads, so
that at all times, and in all weather, the
county town may be accessible from every
part of the county.
The second suggestion, as to the en-
ployment of convict labor, is a subject
within ITSELF and, in this connection de-
serves elaboration. There is no more de-
lcate and difficult problem for solution
by statesmen and philantrophists, than
the question of convict labor.
The object of the law, in its penalties, is
not for the purpose of revenge, that be-
longs to the barbaric period, when the
murderer was followed in his flight to the
temple of refuge by the relations of the
murdered, and slain, if caught before
he grasped the horns of the altar, in pure
revenge. The law was enacted in Il more
derer by the law is sacrifice of the guilty
as an example to strike terror into the
hearts of evildoers in order that wicked
and bad men, who are not restrained by
higher motives, in contemplation of the
certain doom of death, would not dare to
repeat the crime.
The more general mode of pun
ishment for crime is incarceration
in the state penitentiary, with the
double motive in depriving the culprit of
his liberty and reforming his nature. No
man is imprisoned for stealing merely to
revenge the loss to the one stolen from,
but to train the thief in honest occupa-
,tion, and it is just here that statesman
ship and philanthropist are embarrassed in
action.
II is not right that these criminals
should be supported in idleness by the
honest classes of society in an increase of
taxation for that purpose, neither is it
right that free labor should compel the
state 10 .onter into competition and reduce
the values Of the industry of the working
artisans of the country, lhere isja great
question for the solution of the states
man. Then comes in the philanthropist,
and declares that the object of imprison-
ment being the reformation of the Grim
inal and his restoration to the community
as an honest and useful man, thatit is i'm
possible TO accomplish this IL he is per
mitted to remain idle during his incarcer-
alton in prison. He very justly claims
that the humanitarian feature, of penalty
is destroyed in two ways-frst, that idle
ness fosters crime, and, secondly, that
the criminal IS not taught any useful oc-
cupation, and he returns to the world de-
pendent upon his old criminal habits for
support.
These are all practical and embarrassing
questions to decide, and ii is impossible to
entirely obyiate all the difficulties sur
rounding them, or to inaugurate any sys-
tenn by which all the criminals might have
advantages that would not seriously con
fiict WITH honest labor, but it seems to us
that the con INJUNCTION of ideas OF our cor
respondent, I'D. A. IT, will at least offer
some relief for the antitheses we have
fairly constructed.
The greatest difficulty in the reform of
criminals is the promiscuous association
within the narrow quarters of n
prison, where the long and hard.
ened criminal is in intimate
and constant association with the timid
boy, who has stolen loaf of bread, per-
haps for sick and starving mother. The
boys heart is against the world before he
enters the prison, and he becomes ready
and apt scholar of the accomplished thief,
and comes out of prison more dangerous
to society and to his own moral nature
than when he entered it. Any plan by
which these two classes can be separated
would advance the means of the humani-
tartan.
Again, small bodies of men, living
under guards, in the open air or tents, in
mild climate, are much more amenable
to the influences of reform than n large
body of men huddled unfortunately to-
gether within the walls of prison. Moral
and physical health would sooner be at
tanned IN the smaller groups outside the