the government, or they have farmed convict labor to private
individuals. Twenty-nine of the States pursue the latter plan. The
Federal government and seventeen States have discarded it, as have
the leading nations of Europe, since it leads to hideous overworking
and abuse of prisoners, and to endless graft.

Rhode Island, the State dominated by Aldrich, offers perhaps the
worst example. Under a five-year contract, dated July 7th, 1906, and
renewable for five years more at the option of private contractors,
the labor of the inmates of the Rhode Island Penitentiary and the
Providence County Jail is sold to the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. at
the rate of a trifle less than 25 cents a day per man. This Company
is really a gigantic Prison Labor Trust, for it also leases the
convict labor of Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana, Nebraska, and South
Dakota penitentiaries, and the reformatories of New Jersey, Indiana,
Illinois, and Wisconsin, eleven establishments in all.

The enormity of the graft under the Rhode Island contract may be
estimated from the fact that this same Company pays 62 1/2 cents a
day in Nebraska for the convict's labor, and that Tennessee, for
example, gets $1.10 a day for a convict's work from the Gray-Dudley
Hardware Co.; Missouri gets 70 cents a day from the Star Overall Mfg.
Co.; West Virginia 65 cents a day from the Kraft Mfg. Co., and
Maryland 55 cents a day from Oppenheim, Oberndorf & Co., shirt
manufacturers. The very difference in prices points to enormous
graft. For example, the Reliance-Sterling Mfg. Co. manufactures
shirts, the cost of free labor being not less than $1.20 per dozen,
while it pays Rhode Island thirty cents a dozen. Furthermore, the
State charges this Trust no rent for the use of its huge factory,
charges nothing for power, heat, light, or even drainage, and exacts
no taxes. What graft!

It is estimated that more than twelve million dollars' worth of
workingmen's shirts and overalls is produced annually in this country
by prison labor. It is a woman's industry, and the first reflection
that arises is that an immense amount of free female labor is thus
displaced. The second consideration is that male convicts, who
should be learning trades that would give them some chance of being
self-supporting after their release, are kept at this work at which
they can not possibly make a dollar. This is the more serious when
we consider that much of this labor is done in reformatorie