IV THE ETHICS OF PRISON LABOR. NOTWITHSTANDING all the facts, the experience, and the observation which go to prove that civilization has made wonderful advances in almost every direction during the last hundred years or more, the assertion is constantly made that it is an appearance of progress, and not real and not real progress, that attracts public attention; and, however much. popular education may be stimulated and supported by public funds, and material prosperity may attend our affairs, and music and art be nearer the common people than ever, nevertheless the pessimist insists that real moral conditions have not changed for the better, that crime increases, that marriages decrease relatively, that vice in great cities is more strongly intrenched than ever. These assertions can be answered in nearly every particular, and in various and con 161 vincing ways to any one who is able to see beyond present existing evils. One of the purposes of this chapter is to answer the charge that progress is apparent, and not real, by citing one phase only of social science, the condition of prison labor as an index of real moral progress. A little more than a hundred years ago prisoners were either kept in idleness, to the destruction of their moral and physical being, or else were employed in what is known as penal labor. Penal labor had no purpose except as it resulted in a supposed discipline of the prisoner. He was kept at work turning a crank, or in a treadmill, or throwing shot-bags, or doing something else that had no utility whatever as an incentive. It was not productive labor in any sense. It was grinding, demoralizing. It may have had some advantages over idleness in the way physical exercise; but the mental and moral consequences were such as to quite overcome the physical benefits. Philanthropists, philosophers, penologists, began to see that mere penal labor was not much better than idle of ness; and some of these men long ago described prison policies that are carried out to-day. Mabillon, a famous Benedictine monk, Abbé of St. Germain in Paris, and one of the most learned men of the day of Louis XIV., was one of the carliest of those who foreshadowed many of the features of modern prison discipline and of prison labor. In his dissertations he discussed the matter of reformation in prison discipline. He was born in 1632, and died in 1707. It was during the last half of the seventeenth century that he made known his ideas and plans. It was his opinion that penitents might be secluded in cells, like those of the Carthusian monks, and there employed in various sorts of labor. To each cell might be joined a little garden, where at appointed hours the penitents might take an airing and cultivate the ground. At a time later than that of Mabillon, Clement XI. built a juvenile prison at St. Michael, Rome, over the entrance to which there was placed this inscription: "Clement XI., Supreme Pontiff, reared this prison for the reformation and education of criminal youths, to the end that those who, when idle, had been injurious to the state, might, when better instructed and trained, become useful to it." This prison was erected in 1704. Later still, Viscount Vilain XIV., Burgomaster of Ghent, built the celebrated prison of that town, the construction of which has had its influence upon prison building in our time; but the architectural merits of the prison built under his plan are the least to commend it. Dr. F. H. Wines, in his valuable work, Punishment and Reformation, gives Vilain the credit of being the father of modern penitentiary science. He made rules for the government of the prison and the organization of labor in it, and realized that in the use of prisoners in productive labor was to be found the primary agency for reformation of criminals. He appre ciated the importance, Dr. Wines goes on to say, of the selection of prison industries, choosing, so far as practicable, such as would come least into competition with free labor on the outside. There was a great diversity of vocations followed in his prison, among which were carding, spinning, weaving, shoemaking, tailoring, carpentry, and the manufacture of wool and cotton cards. He had some purely penal pursuits for disciplinary purposes, and he paid great attention to the classification of prisoners. The prison was opened in the year 1775. Howard and Beccaria, the first an Englishman and the latter an Italian, living and working in the latter part of the eighteenth century, showed the utility and necessity for labor and the education of convicts. Thus during the last two centuries the elements underlying what may be called the philosophy or the ethics of prison labor were laid. Penologists, philanthropists, and politicians, not only in the old country, but in this, long ago saw that purely penal labor had no reformatory elements in it, and that convicts must be put upon some practical, productive work, in order best to secure their reformation. At the same time |