employs convicts under contract at Sing Sing Prison, testifies that he could not compete, except at a loss, with the prices at which many firms employing citizen labor in this State sell their goods, and if manufacturers complain of his competition, they probably set it as a reason to their men why wages should be reduced.

TESTIMONY OF WORKING MEN.

It is, perhaps, needless to state that the testimony of mechanics and workmen, of every branch of industry, was in opposition to the contract system. The limited means placed at the disposal of this department made it impossible to make investigation other than by circulars addressed to prominet mechanics and officers of trade and labor organizations, and depend upon the voluntary testimony thus adduced. Under the circumstances the responses have been moderately numerous, representing the testimony of twenty individual witnesses and official communications from organizations of several trades representing an aggregate membership in the State of nearly 50,000.

The occupations of workmen and organizations giving testimony in the investigation were shoemakers, moulders, stovemounters, patternmakers, harness-makers, hatters, grocers, bakers, stone-cutters, typefounders, file-cutters, etc.

The circulars being issued in the form of a series of questions and the answers thereto being largely uniform, the testimony can be condensed so as to accurately present, in a consecutive statement, the united expressions of all, except as to the remedies proposed, upon which they are not a unit, and which will be treated separately.

Without a single exception, the united voice of all the industrial element represented by the testimony given in the course of the investigation has been pronounced and emphatic in its opposition to the contract system as it prevails at present in this State.

The reasons for that united opposition have, in many instances, been manifestly based upon an ardent and laudable sympathy with those mechanics who had been directly injured in their circumstances by the operation of the contract system, rather than upon any claim to thorough familiarity with the subject.

Much of the testimony given by representative mechanics, however, showed evidence of careful study of the question, and a desire to find a statesmanlike remedy for what they considered an evil, not only to their trade, but to the State and to society.

The corroborated testimony of witnesses residing in Albany, El

mira, Auburn, Brooklyn, Troy, Buffalo and other cities, the original of which is on file in this department, furnishes the data upon which the mechanics of the State base their opposition to the contract system. When condensed and compared that testimony is as follows:

First. The largest of existing contracts for convict labor have been taken by firms that were employing a large force of citizen mechanics.

Second. That these citizen mechanics would have had employment continually, were it not for the contract being taken by their employers for the labor of the convicts, but that when the contract was put in operation they were discharged.

Third. That about one-half of those who lost employment at their trades in this manner were householders, with families dependent upon them for support, and that much suffering and privation resulted in consequence.

Fourth. That a large number of those householders paid taxes upon homes wholly or in part paid for; and that in many instances the loss of employment, and the necessity of having to look for employment elsewhere, resulted in the loss of homes, and the separation and the poverty of their families.

Fifth. That it is a most serious loss and detriment to mechanics of any established trade who have lived for years, and been steadily employed in a large factory in any locality, that such factory should suddenly and permanently close, wholly, or in part, thereby depriving of employment those who had made calculations upon continued residence; whose young and dependent families rendered it disheartenin g and unsafe to leave home in search of employment elsewhere, and whose years of routine work in their peculiar trade unfitted them for work in other departments of industry.

Sixth. That were an employer to close his factory, to remove his works elsewhere, there was the satisfaction that employment would be opened elsewhere. It the factory were to be burned down there would be hope of its being soon rebuilt and mechanics again set to work. But when a large force of free mechanics are dismissed from employment, and the labor which had been done by them given to convicted criminals, and the capital transferred within prison walls, then the loss was absolute and permanent.

Seventh. That not only were the mechanics and workmen of the State injuriously affected by the taking of contracts whereby large amounts of capital were suddenly withdrawn from a channel of investment, wherein thousands of free mechanics had found employment, and which consequently deprived them of that means of sup

port,but the system established by the operation of those contracts tends to limit the number of free mechanics necessary to supply the market in those industries; to make it more difficult for those discharged to find employment elsewhere, and to lower the wages of those who still continue to work.

Eighth. That the advantages held by the contractors under the conditions of their contracts with the State, have had the effect of reducing the wages of mechanics in those industries, as employers of free labor could not compete with the contractors, except by reducing wages.

Ninth. That large contractors employing convict labor in the prison in connection with a similar factory outside, are enabled to so adapt and regulate the labor of convicts on the simpler departments of the industry, as to make the convict labor equally as valuable as the same amount of free labor; the task set for each convict by the contractors no less than those accomplished by free mechanics in those departments, and in some instances more.

Tenth. That the statistics published purposing to show the per centage of prison manufacturers to free industries are misleading for the following reasons:

Calculations were made upon the number of convicts working at a certain branch of manufacture; these were placed in comparison with the number of free mechanics employed at all the various branches of that industry. For instance, in the hatting trade, 376 convicts were working last year, under contract, making wool hats of a certain grade. It was stated that this was but a drop in the bucket, as there were 16,000 hat makers in the United States. The unfairness of these statistics will appear when it is known that this 16,000 includes makers of straw hats, cloth hats, silk hats and cap-makers of every description who were not directly affected by the prison competition, while not one quarter of that number were engaged in making the wool hats of the grade made in prison.

In shoemaking the published statistics of free mechanics included makers of hand sewed and the finest grade shoes, as well as cobblers and repairers in retail stores. If accurate statistics were attainable they would show that the class of shoes made in prison were a very considerable percentage of all the trade.

In moulding and stove making statistics of those employed include moulders of machinery, facings and artistic castings, as well as recent and finest patterns of stoves. If they were correct in this par

ticular the percentage of contract labor to free labor would appear very much larger. And so in the other trades.

Eleventh. That the State is established for the equal protection of the rights of all its citizens, and when the State, through its representatives, enters into a contract with one citizen, by the terms of which he is enabled to, and continuously does, establish a system of industry to the detriment of a large number of citizens and tax-payers, it is a violation of the spirit of our institutions.

Twelfth. That the contract system of prison labor is directly responsible, to a very great extent, for the reduction of wages and loss of employment suffered by mechanics engaged in the manufacture carried on under the contract system in the prison.

Thirteenth. That the reformation of the prisoner could be better effected by the public account system than by the contract system, therefore that the contract system should be abolished.

Thus far both sides of the question has been presented by this able report of Commissioner Peck, and space in this report cannot at present be taken up to reproduce the arguments pro and con; but we avail ourselves of his conclusions as to the investigations so thoroughly made by him as to the two systems, viz: The contract system and the a public account system.

The contract system, as at present administered, has been found. imperfect, for the following reasons:

First. The object of the law is reform for the convicts. The object of the contractor is to make money from his labor without regard to his reform.

Second. It is destructive of prison discipline, necessarily from the fact that the prisoners are for ten hours a day under the control of the contractor and his agents, who are in nowise responsible for their reformation.

Third. It renders impossible a diversity of employment suited to the different capacities of the prisoners and the conditions necessary to their moral training.

Fourth. It is the intention of the law and to the best interests of society that the terms of the best conducted prisoners be shortened. It is to the interest of the contractor to keep them longer in prison.

Fifth. It makes impossible any proper classification and separation of the prisoners, but places in daily contact the comparatively innocent and the most hardened and depraved.

Sixth. The profits of the labor of the convict belong to the State, the laws of which he has transgressed. The contract system gives those profits to parties not representing the State or interested or

responsible, except for monetary considerations, which are a constant menace to the discipline of the prison and the reformation of the convict.

Seventh. Manufacturers engaged in similar industries and employing free labor claim to be injuriously affected in their business by the operations of the contract system.

Eighth. The mechanical and laboring interests are opposed to the contract system on the ground that it tends to loss of employment and reduction of wages.

The public account system, as it has been administered in this State, has been found imperfect in the following particulars :

First. It was extremely costly.

Second. It was made a political machine to furnish places for small politicians, rather than an institution to reform the criminals. Third. The convicts were employed at labor not adapted to remunerative results or to any possibility of discipline.

Fourth. The officers did not attend to their duties.

Fifth. The large outlay of the funds of the State gave opportunity, in the general disorder and mismanagement, for wholesale extravagance and peculation.

Sixth. The councils of the administration were divided, and consequently there was no unity of purpose or well-defined responsibility.

Seventh. The administration was altered periodically and the officers held position on account of their skill in politics, not prison management.

Eighth. The control of the prisoners was put in the hands of jealous and scheming incompetents.

While it is not the purpose of this Bureau to discuss at this time the different systems of prison management, the Commissioner has thought best to lay this question open in this way. That the State of New York, with nearly three times as many convicts as Missouri, has on her hands at this time the great problem of adjusting convict labor, so that we can afford to wait that adjustment, and in this connection. the Bureau publishes a statement of the various contractors' length of contract.