The Arizona sentinel., 1897-01-23
PRISON CONTRACT CASE.
Arguments on Both Sides in Supreme
 Court Yesterday.

appellant, vs. the State of Arizona Improvement Company, appellee came up in supreme court yester' day. Argument was made for the appellant by Attorney Genera Wilson. His argument was direct ed only in a general way agains the fulflIment by the Territory O its contract with the appellee The question of the validity of th' contract was hardly questioned but greater stress was laid upon the status of the prisoners who were to be affected by it. He took the ground that their sentences diC not consign them to hard labor but only to confinement in the penitentiary. He did not think the Territory had authority now to impose additional and previously unspecifed punishment.
 The reply of Eugene s. Ives fel the appellee is said by members o1 the bar to have been the clearest most carefully studied and logical yet heard at this term of court. On the subject of the power to compel the fuliliment of the con- tract by mandatory writ MT. Ives referred to a similar action growing out of contract made between the government of the state of Kansas and firm of New York printers.
 A succeeding state government endeavored to rescind the contract and suit was brought to compel it's fulfllment. The defence in that case, as in this, alleged that the arrangement between the parties was a private one but the supreme court to which the matter was ulti- mately brought held that in it's nature 1t was a public contract. This one, said Mr. Ives, is of a much more public character since it involves a regulation of the pris- oners which is of interest to every taxpayer. In reply to General Wilson's observations concerning immunity of the prisoners from hard labor, MT. Ives discussed the subject from both moral and legal points of view. Departing, he said, from direct line of argument, the method of treating prisoners had ever been a problem among people of the Anglo-Saxon race. One plan had been adopted only to be abandoned, until now it was gen. orally agreed that none was so productive of benefit alike to the prisoners and the state as a system of employment. He described the solitary confinement and the English prison system, the out growth of a misdirected charitable sentiment which had been so graphically described by Chas. Reade and whose description led to reforms.
 Regarding General Wilson's theory that the absence of a sen tence at hard labor precluded the leasing of the prisoners for the performance of labor, MT. Ives cited Louisiana case in which precisely the same question had been raised in behalf of a prisoner whom it was sought to release on Q writ of habeas corpus. In that case, though the sentence was of the same general form as that imposed upon prisoners in the courts of this Territory, it was held by the supreme court that the failure to actually sentence a con- vict to hard labor was not sufficient to save him from it.
 Having disposed of the question of the applicability of a mandatory writ, in this case, he replied to another objection on the part of the Territory that the consideration named in the contract was in adequate, that the water rights which would be received in pay ment of the labor of the contracts would be ot no value to the Terri .tory until the canal should be completed and it might never be completed. MT. Ives said that the Territory ran TO risk on account of the character of the considera- xion. The expense which the Ter -ritory would incur in putting the scenvicts at work was infinitely small in comparison with .the