In the Clutch of Circumstance; My Own Story, by a Burglar

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVI TWENTIETH CENTURY SLAVERY WITHIN the past few years much has been written and a good deal left unwritten about the contract labor system in prisons. In a previous chapter I made a few remarks about that system as I found it in the Wisconsin State Prison at Waupun. It is true that most of the progressive and enlightened States have abolished this modern form of slavery as a brutal and unjust exploitation of the unfortunates in prison by a clique of private individuals, as a system which does not reform men but actually deforms them. In Connecticut, known as the Commonwealth of steady habits, the contract system still flourishes. If the good people of Connecticut looked into the matter, they would find that the taxes of the citizens at large are supporting a contract labor plant within the walls of the State prison which is turning out good profits for private individuals. The same thing is true in other states where private contract labor in prison exists. Before I begin to give the picture of conditions as I found them upon arrival at Wethersfield, I want to make it clear that T do not hold that convicts should not have to work in prison. I simply contend that they should be taught useful trades, that a just amount of wages should be secured to them or their families, and that any benefits from prison labor should go to the state as representing the people and not to a set of grasping contractors. When I arrived at Wethersfield in the autumn of the year 1908, a shoe company of Boston, Massachusetts, held the contract for the main shop and employed some three hundred convicts in the manufacture of cheap shoes. A shirt-making concern with offices in Chicago, Illinois, had a shop over the prison chapel and employed about one hundred men to turn...