Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1895-02-08
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most unsettled condition, and is the
most difficult of solution of any pertain
ing to economy in state appropriations.
When one system p~ervails there is
clamor for It's abolition and the substi-
tuition for other systems. In some of
the older and wealthier states they have
what is known as the state account
plan, or the running Of the business of
manufacturing by the state, which is
carried on with but little favor and does
not meet with financial success to the
state. The most popular and prevalent
system in states where contractors can
be found is the contract system, which
has been in force the past two years in
this state, and the labor is used in the
manufacture of harness, ard now comes
a clamOr from certain dealers in harness
in Fargo, asking for a change. They
make the demand on the ground of CON-
peting against free labor, but the facts
lead one to believe they are not so much
concerned for Stree labor" as they are to
shut off competition. BY so doing they
can sell eastern manufactured and
prison made goods at exorbitant profits
and thereby profit, as they have already
done, and grown wealthy in so doing.
Are our laws to encourage personal
greed or are they to be made for the
best interests of our state at large? Some
demand that the convict be made to
work in the walls, because the labor
comes in competition with outside labor.
Others demand they be worked on the
outside, because when worked inside
their labor in competition with
skilled labor. Some want the convict
confined and not allowed to work at all,
but to be a tax upon honest labor, while
a large majority are willing they should
work anywhere or at anything so long
as they are not a tax upon the people
for their support. Every man who
enters a prison was a laborer before he
was sent to prison or he was a drone
who lived off of other people. If he was
the latter, he was the of the
product of free labor and paid nothing
for what he used. When he supports
himself he relieves free labor of
so much tax as he caused it. That means
relief to free labor. If any convict main
tanned himself before he went to prison
and is made to do it in prison, he is no
more competing with free labor than he
was before he got into prison. Shall a
man who has assailed society be made a
guest of society in prison and a tax upon
others for his support? And is 1T better
to make laws to protect a few or the
masses? Under the present system in
the past two years the state has received
s3,OO0 for their convict labor, which
means a decrease of $4,000 in taxes upon
honest labor, as every dollar the convict
contributes to his own support means
just two dollars to the taxpayer. This is
not much, you may say, but when you
stop for a moment and consider that
Minnesota and Mlchigan's convict labor
has gone begging, and without an op-
portunity to utilize it, and that this is
the first step toward making our state
penltentlary self supporting, it is we'll to
give 1t a thorough investigation be-
fore legislating on supposed facts which
are fictitious as was the article recently
published, that in one town alone in the
state the population had been decreased
sixty people On account of the harness
shop at the penitentiary, and that there
are only four or five harness shops within
a radius Of 100 miles of the penitentiary.''
The facts are there is not one more
or one less shop than before the enter
prise of manufacturing harness at the
penltentiary was established, and as to
the driving out of sixty people from the
town of Casselton, there were only two
left on account of the mandatory at the
penitentiary and they are engaged here.
The question solves itselfinto this simple
proposition, are the people of the state
willing to tax themselves to keep the
prisoners at the p~enitentlary in idleness
and allow harness manufacturing in east
ern penitentiar aries to be sold here, or
would they prefer to see the prisoners at
the ~penitentlary made to barn from
$4,000 to $4,000 a year, as they will do
hereafter, and thus help to support
! themselves?
In the Illinois legislature a PROPOSE.
ton is pending, without prospect of seri-
GUS consideration, to tax money loaned
out on interest. This is a species of
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