The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-03-22

Gives His Hearers Some Views on the
Evils of Prison Labors.

Evils of Prison Labors.
New York, March 21-About $50 nen,hars
OF the Nineteenth Century Club gathered
at the ball room of Delmonico's tonight
to listen to an address to the organization
by Eugene V. Debs, the labor agitator
Ihere was number of the substantial
business, professional and scientific men
present and the interest in Mr.. Debs
words was rather out of the ordinary. 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
Ilds punt It's monuments grander and
more imposing than any Of the seven Won
oers of the world named in classic lore
if you will excavate for facts Won WI
ma the remains, the bones of the toilers
buried and imbedded in the foundation
Ihey lived, they wrought, they died. In
thelf time they may have laughed and
sung ana danced to the music of their
clahklng chains. They married. prop-
~asated their species, and perpetuated con-
citons, which, growing steadily worse,
are to-day the foulest blots the imagina-
tlon can conceive upon our much vaunted
civilization. And from these conditions
there How thousand streams of vice and
crime, winch have broadened and deepen
ed until they constitute a perpetual and
ever increasing menace to the peace. and
security of society. Jas, warehouses. re-
formatories and penitentiaries have been
crowded with the victims, and the question
now to control these institutions and their
unfortunate inmates is challenging the
most serious thought of the most advanced
nations on the globe.
The pernicious effect of prison contract
LABOR upon free labor so-called when
brought into competition with it in the
open market, is universally conceded but
1t should not be overlooked that prison
labor is itself an effect and not a cause.
and that convict labor is recruited almost
wholly from the propertyless wage work
ing class, and that the inhuman system
which has reduced a comparative few
from enforced jdleness 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 the criminals l pre-
fer to believe that criminals should be
protected against society, at least while
we live under a system that makes the
commission of crime necessary to secure
employment. Developing along this line
1t would be only a question of time until
the state would be manufacturing all
things for the use of the people, and per-
haps the inquiry would be pertinent If
the state can give men steady employment
after they commit crimes and manufac-
turing can be carried forward successfully
by their labor, why can it not give en-
ployment before 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 murder and a thousand other forms OF
vice and crime which pollute every foun-
tain and contaminate every stream de-
signed to bless the world. Prison labor
did not create our army of the unem-
ployed 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
opdlent as they are degrading to the poor "