The copper era and Morenci leader. [volume] (Clifton, Ariz.) 1911-1929, 1915-09-10

and this is a fact that must never be
lost sight of. 1t is probably not
necessary for me to remind you that
ia man poorly fed is a man who is
discontinued both in mind and body,
whose work will reflect his state of
being.
For sleeping quarters tents are fur
nished, which are heated in the win
ter time. Each man is furnished
with a cot, mattress, sheets and
blankets. We have been accused of
pampering the men by supplying
sheets, but you can readily see that
this is a necessary procedure in the
interests of cleanliness For this
same reason, one man is detailed as
laundryman, who takes care of all
the clothing. An effort to have each
man wash his own clothes did not
prove successful.
Taking up the matter of cost,
which is Of course of the first i'm
portance, there is one point to which
1 wish to call your particular atten-
ION. The aggregate cost of road
= ork is made up of many items. the
lost important of which are the cost
VI labor, cost of teams, cost of ma
terials and cost of superintendent
The cost of teams, material and su-
perintehdce is as great in a. prison
| * fc in Lab
camp, leaving the cost of labor as
the only item on which we can effect
4 saving. At first glance this might
be supposed to be very large, but
when compared with the total cost
Of a piece of work it does not show
rp to as great an extent as anticf-
lated. To demonstrate, l will say
! that this camp under discussion, dur
ing. the period from December 49,
1918, to January %, 1915, spent
nearly $4,000 on the Globe-Roose-
ELI highway, and Of this amount
i19,477, or about one-third, was the
'ost of maintaining the prisoners.
Of the balance, the maintenance Of
teams took nearly $4,000, paid labor
took $4,000, the material bill for
| culverts, cement, powder mad similar
Items was over $4,000, and mainten-
ance and depreciation on the equip
ment was about $1,000 You can
see from this that it would not be
fair to expect convict labor to show
any startling saving over free labor
in the total cost of the work.
1t has been with regret that 1 have
heard some advocates of convict Ia
Dor say that they believed in it :or
the reason that the state had to
maintain the prisoners anyway, and
some benefit should be derived from
the expenditure of money that had
to be made whether the men were
out on the road or inside the prison
wills I say with regret, because I
have bad to undeceive them, and let
them know that the cost of keepin;;
prisoner il prison has no relation
to the cost of keeping a prisoner in
road camp, the expense being near
ly four times as great in the latter
case. Laying aside the fact that a
prison is a large plant in a fixed To-
cation, with easy access to supplies,
and that large operations allow low
unit costs; nd on the other hand
the road camp is a small plant, con-
stantly on the move, with heavy
transportation expenses for both
men and material, the outstanding
reason that it costs great deal
more to keep man on the road
lis that this man on the road is doing
rough, hard, manual labor. He
needs lot to eat, and he wears Out
a lot of clothing.
, On the Globe-Roosevelt highway
last year it cost us rs 7-10 cents pei
/ day to keep a man, this covering
food, clothing, medicine, tobacco ant
the night wachman. The cost PEI
, day was for every prisoner in camp
including the camp force of cooks
lunkeys, ETC., who are general!
known as 'non-producers," and TO
! every day in the year, includin,
Sundays and bad weather days