The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1899-03-22
DEBS ON PRISON LABOR.
Terre Haute Agitator Talks to Busi-
ness, Professional and Scientific Men.

NEW YORK, March N.-About $50 men,
bers of the Nineteenth Century Club gath
cred at the ballroom of Delmonico'S to-
night to listen to an address to the organi-
cation by Eugene V. Debs, the labor agita-
tor. There were number OF substantial
business, professional and scientific men
present The interest in Mr.. Debs's words
was rather out of the ordinary and the
speaker was applauded mildly several times
during his remarks. Mr.. Debs spoke on
Prison Labor Its Effects on Industry and
Trade" Among other things Mr.. Debs said:
Here In this proud city. where wealth has
built it's monuments grander and more i'm
posing than any of the seven wonders of
the world named in classic lore If you will
excavate for facts you viii find the remains,
the bones of toilers buried and imbedded in
the foundations. They lived. they wrought.
they died. In their time they may have
laughed and sung and danced to the music
of their clanking chains. They married.
propagated their species and perpetuated
conditions. which, growing steadily worse,
are to-day the fouleSt blotS the imagination
can conceive upon our much yaunted civili-
Zation and from these conditions there flow
thousand streams of vice and crime which
have broadened and deepened until they
constitute q perpetual and ever increasing
menace to the peace and security of society.
Jails. warehouses;, reformatorieS and peni-
tentiaries have been crowded With the vic
Tins, and the question how to control these
institutions and the unfortunate inmates is
challenging the most serious thought of the
most advanced nations on the globe.
THE pernicious effect of contract labor
upon free labor, SO-called, when brought
into competition with ii in the open market
is universally conceded, but it should not
effect and not cause and that convict
labor is recruited almost wholly from the
propertyleSS wage-working class and that
the inhuman system which reduced COM
parative few from enforced idleness to
crime has sunk the whole mass of labor to
the dead level of industrial servitude.
1T is popular to say that society must
be protected against its criminals. L pre-
fer to believe that criminals should be pro-
tected against society, at least while we
live under a system that makes the commits
sion of crime necessary TO secure employ
ment. Developing along this line IL would
be only a question of time until the State
would be manufacturing all things for the
use of the people and then perhaps the in
quiry would be pertinent: If the State can
give men steady employment after they
commit crime and manufacturing can be
carried forward successfully by their labor,
why can Ii not give them employment be-
fore they are driven to that extremity,
thereby preventing them from becoming
criminals?
Prison labor is not accountable for the
appalling increase in insanity, in suicide, in
crime which pollute every foundation and
contamnate every stream designed to bless
the world. Prison labor did not create our
army OF unemployed, but has been recruited
from its ranks and both owe their existence
to the same social and economic system.
These conditions are as fruitful of danger
to the opulent as they are of degradation to
he