Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1889-03-23

to make good silk weaver out of iute
weaver, as to make silk purse from
hogs ear. Between silk weaver and
hemp weaver, there is the difference
which separates the thoroughbred from
the plow-horse.
On the other hand, if jute is not to be
pursued in the prisons on account of its
whitening moral influence, what occupa-
ton is to be carried on there? When all
objections have been raised against jute, it
is still incontrovertible that sack weaving
is infinitely more ennobling than the
tread-mill or oakum picking. Compared
with such wicked employment as the latter,
jute almost rises to the dignity of an art.
The problem of finding prisoners en-
ployment is no doubt a difficult one in
every case where the site of the prison las
in the examples of Folsom and Portland)
has not plainly indicated the nature of the
employment to be pursued there In the
DRY 1t would seem fair that to employ pris-
oners on fifty different trades, would by
difiusing the evil of competition over a
wider surface, remove its pressure in any
special direction This plan, however.
to be impossible. Common sense and ex-
perience suggest that prisons, like commu-
mites, should expend their energies on
the material nearest to their hands. When
this material is stone or metal, or forests
then let quarrying, mining and clearing be
the staple industry pursued there To ig-
more these sources of wealth and go afield
for others, is foolish, particularly when, by
using them, moral difficulties, such as
those presented by jute, cannot be raised.
In this conflict of opinion as to the best
employment for prisoners. none but the
very ignorant still maintain the theory
that it is good for the country to keep its
prisoners in state of idleness, than which
contention more monstrous one was never
preached. Every prisoner who is received
into penitentiary was either producer
before he entered it, or he was not. If the
former, by being kept employed at pro-
ductive work in prison, he is no more
competitor in the struggle for existence
than he was while free. And if the latter.
by working in prison, ne is compelled to
pay back to the community the debt he
contracted to it while supporting him in a
state of idleness.
According to the arguments of certain
of the Trades Unions, it is good for the
community for segregation of its units
to be supported by their fellows in state
of unproductiveness. But if this is so.
why should the vicious and wicked be
selected for this enviable exemption !?
What have old soldiers done that thew
have not better claim to be supported in
ldleness than criminals? Given the case
OF an artisan, what is there about the fact
of his imprisonment which should limit
the exercise of his powers? BY commit
ting himself he has not forfeited the re-
sponsibility of being as much a self-sup-
porting member of the community as he
was in state of innocence. The only
difference Is, that while in a state of free
dom his competition in the struggle for
existence was only limited by his power
to maintain 1t; IN prison, the shorter
hours and lack of spur to ppt forth great
efforts, curtail his possible output by al
most one-half
taxpayers have to be considered in this
relation quite as much as Trades Unions,
and because the former are freed from the
onus of supporting unproductiveness out
side, they should be equally freed from
supporting unproductiveness inside. II Is
idle to talk Of solving the labor problem
by cedlng to the prisons the monopoly of
quasi Improbable industries like iute. If
the Trades Unions were the only bodies
to be considered in this relation, the
move might be a wise one. Seeing. how
ever, that the cost of supporting unprofit
able prisons falls on the numerous body of
taxpayers, and not on the narrow BODY of
trades unionists, the rights of the former
have to be considered before the whins of
the latter.
As no prison in the world can be made
autonomous, producing everything that it
needs from beef to bell-handles, the sale
of its manufactures should not be impeded.
where money derived from it is directly
applied TO the support of the prison. On
the other hand, a prison should not be
made to pay dividends, or the utilization
OF Its labor permitted to subserye any
other purpose than to meet current ex-
penses and wipe off old loans.
In England, where the conditions of the
laboring man are far harder than in this
country, the good sense of the Trades
Unions has long recognized the fact that
convicts must be kept employed and their
output to a certain extent conflict with
that of free labor. There hostility to
prison labor, such labor being controlled
by the Government, is as obsolete as the
rattening and Misunderstanding of a by
gone age. Arrayed on the side of prison
labor are the arguments of every thinker
OF repute, from Jeremy Bentham to Her
bert Spencer. The former, it will be re-
membered, invented the first industrial
prison: the celebrated Pantechnicon. on
the present site of Millbank. And not
only philosophers, but busy men of the
world, among them the shrewdest intel
lects of the time, have been unanimous in
their opinion that the worst use prisoner
can be put to is to consign him to compul-
sorry idleness.
Seeing, then, that the opponents of
prison labor are in an intellectual minority,
it becomes Trades Unions to cease their
ill-timed importunings of the Legislature
to induce it to subscribe to their crude
opinions. To these opinions the best
thought Of the age has declared itself hos
tile, in the face of which concensus of in
telligence it is madness to fly. 4.
March Is, 1882