Monday, August 27, 2007 Prison Labor by E. Stagg Whitin Published in Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York, Vol. 2, No. 4,Organization for Social Work. (Jul., 1912), pp. 159-163. Prison Labor by E. Stagg Whitin General SecretaryNational Committee on Prison Labor Christianity has brought no greater change into the world than the overthrow of slavery. The greatest war of modern times had human slavery as its inciting cause, yet behind the dark bastilles we call our prisons, penitentiaries, reformatories, workhouses, and refuges, there still hides the enemy of our social progress, the economically-vicious slave system. The abolition of the evils inherent in this system, comprising as they do the exploitation of the helpless, the perversion of state functions, the gnawing of graft and the corruption of politics, appears no limited task, even to the most light-hearted of reformers; to undertake to work out the reconstruction, the peaceful reformation of this system throughout the length and breadth of this land is at least to grapple with fundamental issues. Its dealings with the criminal mark, one may say, the zero point in the scale of treatment which society conceives to be the due of its various members. If we raise this point we raise the standard all along the scale. The pauper may justly expect something better than the criminal, the self-supporting poor man or woman more than the pauper. Thus if it is the aim of good civilization to raise the general standard of life, this is a tendency which a savage criminal law will hinder, and a humane one assist. Thus speaks Hobhouse. The level of the convict today is, economically considered, slavery. He is the property of the state, and during his incarceration the economic value which is in him may be disposed of by the state to those who desire to lease it, or he may be worked by the state as it sees fit. The leased convict is always exploited. The state-worked convict may be made to work either to pay for his keep, to sustain his dependents, to reform his ways, or to bring revenue into the state treasury. Work he must, and by the sweat of his brow he must learn that society has rights to be protected, and he duties to perform. The conditions under which this training is given need not debase the state, his disciplinary authority, in the performance of its function. While we raise the level of the convict and force up the level of industrial society, we must force up likewise the moral standard of the master who has charge of the discipline. Negro slavery was more demoralizing to the free man than to the slave; convict slavery today demoralizes the community and the free individual in just the same way. It is an old saying worthy to be believed of all men that a state cannot exist half slave and half free. The abolition of slavery in our prisons does not mean a jail delivery, nor does it mean even an indiscriminate pardoning by over-enthusiastic governors of large numbers of depraved and diseased men who are now incarcerated. From a slave the convict must become a ward, and as a ward he must be disciplined, corrected, developed, trained through daily chores, through honest work, with ever the hope of the brighter future before him when he can again assume the position of citizen and praise and bless the state that has trained him. Simple was the process of the abolition of slavery as pointed out by Lincoln when he said: Free labor has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope; the power of hope upon human exertion and happiness is wonderful; the slave master himself has a conception of it, hence the system of tasks among slaves; the slave whom you cannot drive with the lash to break seventy-five pounds of hemp in a day, if you task him to break a hundred and promise him wage for all over, will break you one hundred and fifty. You have substituted hope for the rod, and yet perhaps it does not occur to you that, to the extent of your gain in the case, you have given up the slave system and adopted the free system of labor. The movement which this thought represents is sweeping over the country, finding its expression in many states. It is championed by Wilson in New Jersey, Harmon in Ohio, Mann in Virginia, Hadley in Missouri, Johnson in California. The legislatures are responding, commissions are investigating, governors are conferring. As an outcome of the discussion at the governors conference at Spring Lake, the southern governors met in May in special conference upon it, and the governors in the West are soon to follow. But what is the actual status? Whither are they leading? To point the movement in a few brief phrases must suffice here. Economically two systems of convict production and two systems of convict-made goods exist: production is either by the state or under individual enterprise; distribution either is limited to the preferred state-use market or is made through the general market. In the light of such classification the convict labor legislation of recent years shows definite tendencies toward the states assumption of its responsibility for its own use of the prisoners on state lands, in state mines and as operatives in state factories; while in distribution the competition of the open market, with its disastrous effect upon prices, tends to give place to the use of labor and commodities by the state itself in its manifold activities. Improvements like these in the production and distribution of the products mitigates evils, but in no vital way affect the economic injustice always inherent in a slave system. The payment of wage to the convict as a right growing out of the production of valuable commodities is the phase of this legislation which tends to destroy the state of slavery. Such legislation has made its appearance, together with the first suggestion of right to choice allowed to the convict in regard to his occupation. These statutes still waver in an uncertain manner between the conception of the wage as a privilege, common in England and Germany, and the wage as a right as it exists in France. The development of the idea of the right of wage, fused as it is with the movement toward governmental work and workshops, cannot fail to stand out significantly when viewed from the standpoint of the labor movement. In a word, the economic progress in prison labor shown in recent legislation is toward more efficient production by the elimination of the profits of the lessee; more economical distribution of the products by the substitution of a preferred market, where the profits of the middleman are eliminated, in place of the unfair competition with the products of free labor in the open market; and finally the curtailment of the slave system by the provision for wages and choice of occupation for the man in penal servitude. In administration the adaptation of these new principles presents many difficulties and points the need of much careful study and detailed application suited to the special locality. Dr. Harts illustration from the Columbus reformatory finds its counterpart in the horrors that have been perpetrated at the Columbus penitentiary. The pen portraits of Brand Whitlock in his Turn of the Balance exaggerate nothing in their depiction of the horrors of the convicts in the shops, suffering from industrial diseases as horrible as the poisoning of which Dr. Seager has spoken, but forced to work under the brutal contractor till fatigue and anguish break them down -- then the paddle and the water-cure change them from men into brutes. I should hesitate so to testify if the facts were not a matter of court record in a case now pending in that great city of Ohio whence came most of our inspiration at this mornings meeting. This is but a type, however. The convicts in Alabama who tried to become my slaves to avoid the mine-camp can be found if you care to seek them; all along the line the war goes on between brutality and enlightened state control. What Dr. Hart told of Ohio is as true in many other places. You have read of the abominable conditions in Maryland, the contracts in Connecticut which sell their right to grasping contractors to punish the convicts at their pleasure -- but this phase must soon belong to the past. The National Committee on Prison Labor for two years has been investigating the conditions, advising with state officials, drafting legislation, organizing reform. Armed with a constructive program resulting from its studies and experiments, it will bring to the legislatures which are to be elected this year the encouragement which comes from well-conceived plans based upon actual conditions, and to the administrators whom the new governors shall appoint a synthesis of the available material upon which to work. It is not for support from these men that we need ask; they will be glad and ready to respond -- it is from the public which this association represents, the public of the good citizen, the church-goer, the preacher, the tax-payer, and the educator. Reform is impossible of permanence until these are fully alive to the problem and take personal interest in aiding each community to make that adjustment upon which permanent reform must rest. What are the conditions in your community? What are you doing to improve them? Do you realize that as a citizen of a state that continues the slavery of its convicts, you join in the responsibility for its existence?
Posted on: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 18:05:51 +0000
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