. What to
do with convict labor is one of the unsolved problems. It is a subject
that will furnish ample scope for the thinking mind.

The prisoner is worked on an average of nine hours each day. He goes
about his labor in silence. It is against the regulations for him to
exchange a word or a knowing glance with a fellow-workman. When visitors
pass through the workshops he is not permitted to lift his eyes from
his work to look at them. An officer, perched upon a raised seat, who
commands a view of the entire work-room, is constantly on the watch to
see that no rule or regulation is violated. The convict cannot take
a drink of water, or go from one part of the room to another in the
discharge of his duties without permission from the officer. The
prisoner is always conscious of being watched. This feeling is no small
factor in making the life of a prisoner almost unbearable. Nearly all of
the inmates work in shops, and all the exercise they receive in the open
air is what they get in going to and from their meals and cells. It
is this sameness of work, this daily and hourly going over the same
routine, this monotonous labor, this being surrounded by hundreds of
busy fellow-workmen, and not permitted to exchange a word with any of
them, that makes the life of a prisoner to be so much dreaded. Young
man, as you read these lines, it is impossible for you to conceive the
misery that accompanies this kind of a monotonous life.

In order to know all that it means, you must pass through it, as I have
done. Things are entirely different with you. While you are at work on
the outside of prisons, you can carry on conversation with those about
you and thus pass the time in a pleasant manner. After the day's work is
over, if you so desire, you can spend an hour or so with friends. Not so
with the criminal. After his day's work, done in silence, is past, he is
locked up in his solitary cell to spend the evening as best he can.

There is no one to watch you constantly while at your daily toil, to see
that you do not violate some insignificant rule or regulation. When you
desire a holiday, and wish to take a stroll out into the woods, to look
upon the beautiful flowers or admire nature in all her loveliness, to
inhale the pure, fresh air--which is a stranger to packed workshops--to
revel in the genial sunlight, there is no one to forbid you. You are a
free man.

Oh, what a wonderful difference between the laboring man who is free,