between human individuals have formed and dominated all our thought of God as a moral governor. Our religious beliefs have become identified with these methods of conception; and these symbols are so interwoven with our religious experience as to have become their very framework and support. How, then, without traversing principles laid down in this very article, are we to substitute other symbols for those that have been so thoroughly indorsed, as to their validity, by use?

These questions we shall try to answer in succeeding articles. F. H. Johnson.

ANDOVER, MASS.

THE NEW PRISON LAW OF NEW YORK.

THE situation which confronted the New York Legislature of 1889 was the culmination of a long-standing hostility of the labor organizations to convict labor. From the workingman's point of view, the one thing necessary is to get work. For any one to be long out of work is, to him, fatal. The amount of work needed to supply the markets appears to be a fixed quantity, not enough, at best, to go around. Many workingmen must be out of work, by turns, all the time. Manufacturing done by prisoners appears to be so much work taken from the fixed quantity, already insufficient for citizen laborers. If either must suffer from idleness it should be the criminals in the prisons, and not the honest laborers outside. The argument is plausible, and appears to fit the facts, especially to men accustomed to deal with hard facts rather than with hard arguments. To see its fallacy one must look beyond the surface of things. The demagogue has an easy advantage in the argument.

It is not strange, therefore, that with the entrance of the workingman into politics, convict labor became one of his leading grievances. But the abolition of convict labor altogether, however desirable it might appear, or however logically it might follow from the argument, was at first too novel and radical a proposition to be seriously proposed as a practical measure. The opposition to prison labor took the form of opposition to the particular system of prison labor then prevailing, known as the contract system. By the contract system, the contractor hires the time of prisoners, at a certain price per day or other period, to work upon the machinery or materials which he places inside the prison.

The contractor, or his agent, enters the prison to superintend and direct the labor of the prisoners, and is in many ways tempted to interfere with prison discipline. The per diem wage paid for the labor of the prisoners is necessarily low, and has the appearance of a tendency to depress the market wages of citizens to the same level.

The argument of the politicians did not proceed so much upon the suggestion of a better system as upon the badness of the contract system. The public account system was really proposed as a substitute by those who looked far enough ahead to think of any substitute. By the public account system, the State furnishes machinery and materials for the labor of the prisoners, and the State markets the products. There is no appearance of wages paid for prison labor. But the State enters the markets and competes with its citizens, both in the purchase of materials and in the sale of the manufactured products. The State can pay higher prices in buying, and receive lower prices in selling, than its com. petitors, without danger of failure from reducing the margin of profits.

The prison reformers were about equally divided upon the issue between the two systems. A very few advocated still a third, known as the piece-price system. By the piece-price system, the State receives payment for the products of the labor of the prisoners upon materials owned and furnished by the person making the payment, but the machinery or plant within the prison may be owned either by such person or by the State. In this way, the party with whom the State deals does not enter the prison as a superintendent or director of the labor of the prisoners, but only as an inspector of the products. If the goods manufactured are not of the agreed quality, he may reject them, but he is not tempted, as is the contractor under the contract system, to induce the prison-keepers to manipulate the men for his benefit, or to bribe the prisoners themselves to favor his work. There is no appearance of wages paid for prison labor; there is no necessity for reducing the price per piece for working up the materials into manufactured products below the current price outside. The problem of price is simple: given a certain quantity and quality of raw materials, what can the owner afford to bid for having them worked up into a certain quantity and quality of manufactured products within a specified time? Who shall do the work, is immaterial to the owner, so long as the agreed quantity, of the agreed quality, is forthcoming at the agreed time.

Except for a prejudice against prison-made goods, without regard to actual inferiority, there would seem to be no reason whatever why the manufacturer should not pay the State as much for manufacturing his materials, as it would cost in the citizen market to manufacture, from the same materials, the same quantity and quality of goods in the same time.

Under the piece-price system of conducting prison labor, there ought, ordinarily, to be no tendency to depress or enhance the prices of labor or of commodities by the payment of other than regular market rates; the State does not enter the market either as a purchaser or seller of goods; and the prison discipline remains wholly in the hands of the prison authorities. It would seem that the piece-price system combines the special advantages of both the contract and public account systems for ordinary lines of manufacturing, without the special disadvantages of either, and reduces the appearance as well as the substance of competition with citizen labor to a minimum, so far as different systems of prison labor are concerned.

As early as 1871, a bill for the abolition of the contract system passed the lower house of the New York Legislature, but was lost in the upper house, rather from lack of time than lack of disposition. By 1883 the movement had gained such force that a majority of the Legislature felt compelled to take action. Either from uncertainty or timidity, they shifted the responsibility from their own shoulders, and passed an act to submit the question of abolishing the contract system to popular vote at the next general election. The election, had accordingly in the fall of 1883, resulted in favor of the abolition of the contract system, by a large majority of a light vote. It has often been erroneously supposed that this election effected an amendment to the state constitution. But the constitution sanctioned no such evasion of legislative responsibility. The election had no strictly legal force, but was merely an expression of public opinion, which the Legislature could follow or disregard in its discretion.

The Legislature of 1884 acted promptly in accordance with the election, and early in its session passed the following brief and pointed statute: "The Superintendent of State Prisons shall not, nor shall any other authority whatsoever, renew or extend any existing or pending contract, or make any new contract for the employment of any convicts in any of the prisons, penitentiaries, or reformatories within this State."

Most of the prison contracts then pending terminated in 1886

and 1887, so that the adoption of a substitute for the contract system did not at once become a serious practical issue. The Legislature took no action with reference to such substitute until 1888. The Superintendent of State Prisons, however, under the somewhat doubtful authority of previously existing statutes, adopted the public account system. The change involved very heavy expenditures upon the part of the State in purchasing machinery and raw materials. The proceeds of all sales of manufactured products were required by statute to be paid into the State treasury, and, by a provision of the State Constitution, could not be drawn out again, except by virtue of legislative appropriation. Thus the amount of each annual appropriation for carrying on the prison industries, necessarily very large, upon the inauguration of the public account system, bore no relation to the actual expenses. The appropriations necessary for continuing the prison industries were still very large, after the industries were yielding a net profit to the State. This was misunderstood by legislators and taxpayers, and the prison industries were often embarrassed for lack of legislative action.

Twice, during the regular session of the Legislature of 1888, the prison industries were on the point of suspension for lack of the necessary funds. Twice the Legislature responded with temporary appropriations. The bill making the usual necessary appropriation for the continuance of the prison industries during the year, passed the Senate by a close vote, after the most brilliant debate of the session, but was defeated in the Assembly, by five majority, on next to the last day of the session, and the Legislature adjourned in May without further action. By July the appropriations applicable to prison industries were exhausted, and without further legislative action the prisoners would be compelled to remain idle the balance of the year. Governor Hill called an extraordinary session of the Legislature, which met in July. The first subject recommended by the executive for their consideration was, "the proper employment of the convicts in the penal institutions of the State, and the making of whatever appropriations may be necessary to prevent the prisoners remaining in idleness." Instead of making an appropriation for continuing prison industries, an act was passed, with scarcely a dissenting voice being heard, and with but two opposing votes in both houses, which practically abolished prison labor. Only such articles as should actually be needed and used in the public institutions of the State, for clothing and other necessary supplies, could be manufac

tured in the prisons, under this law. The Superintendent of State Prisons estimated that not more than 150 prisoners could be so employed. This left more than 4,000 prisoners idle in the three state prisons and the Elmira Reformatory, so that the provision for continuing any productive labor whatever was, practically, a mere pretense. The law required the immediate cessation of all other productive labor. Not even the stock in process of manufacture could be completed. The machinery and materials purchased by the State at great expense for carrying on the public account system, but just fairly under way, had to be closed out at a sacrifice. The use of motive-power machinery for manufacturing purposes was prohibited altogether. The law took effect August 1, 1888, and from that day the prison workshops had the appearance of a deserted village.

The Legislature did not meet again until January, 1889. It was then evident that a reaction had begun. The evil effects of idleness upon the prisoners, and the additional expense to the taxpayers, were vividly pictured in the reports of prison managers and by the press. Warden Brush, of the Sing Sing Prison, said in his official report: "The prisoners soon become restless, unhappy, and miserable. Time with them passes slowly; their bodies become unhealthy, and the mind must become diseased. In fact, nothing but disease, insanity, and death can be expected from this condition." An additional burden was being directly imposed upon the taxpayers at the rate of at least half a million dollars per year. All were ready to admit that the situation must not continue, and that something must be done. Several timid and half-way measures were introduced which aimed at a mitigation of the evils, but none boldly grappled with the situation, or foreshadowed any definite or stable policy. While matters were thus hopelessly drifting, two leading members of the Legislature (Senator J. Sloat Fasset and Assemblyman R. P. Bush), of opposite political parties, but both from the county in which that pioneer experiment, the Elmira Reformatory, stands as a conspicuous object-lesson in prison reform, discerned in the signs of the times, with the instincts of true statesmanship, the possibility of passing an advanced and comprehensive prison reform measure. Independently, and almost simultaneously, they took proceedings to have such a measure prepared, and thereby discovered each other. But for their cordial coöperation thereafter, no thorough-going measure could have been adopted by the Legislature of 1889.

The preparation of such a measure was no slight task from a