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implements and shirts, while one industry has proven itself well adapted for prison work, the manufacturing of brooms and whisk brooms. It is not hard work, is clean and easily learned. A certain task is set and what is made over and above the task is paid for and placed to the prisoner's credit in the prison bank. The highest amount paid for overtime in the broom factory was thirty-three dollars for one month, but only a few earn that much, and I judge the average to be about three dollars per month. The dealings with the owners of the broom factory have been satisfactory to the state as well as to the inmates. The superintendent, Mr. Johnson, is a humane man and a gentleman. He has made very few complaints against the inmates, and on the other hand the inmates have made few complaints against him.

The chair factory, an institution established a year ago, also gets along nicely. It is very clean, the best of sanitary condi-

 

 
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tions prevail throughout it and the boys have a chance to make a little money right along. Only the very finest of reed, rattan and fibre chairs are manufactured, some selling for over forty dollars, most of which are made by hand. Once a man masters this trade he can command high wages.

At the last session of the legislature a law was enacted, abolishing contract labor in the prison, and thirty thousand dollars were appropriated towards establishing a binder twine plant. That amount is but a drop in the ocean when it comes to building a twine factory. Other states have these plants, and an investment of nearly a quarter of a million dollars has been needed of which one-third was used for buildings and machinery, one-third for working capital and one-third for sisal, the raw material. Owing to the perpetual revolutions in Mexico where the sisal is raised, it becomes necessary to buy it in large quantities or sometime not get any.

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A large warehouse is needed and same should, for safety's sake, be built outside the walls or it will be necessary to pay a heavy insurance premium on sisal stored in this warehouse. One of the states that went to this large expense has a modern and money making twine plant, but when running to its full capacity, it employs only seventeen convicts. I doubt if this state will spend a quarter of a million dollars to employ seventeen of its wards. Far better would it be for the state to use the thirty thousand dollars towards purchasing the chair factory when its contract expires. This plant already employs between fifty and sixty men and is on the increase all the time. As there is no other factory of this kind in the state, it would in no way interfere with outside labor. This factory could, if acquired, be used for those men who were not admitted to the outside.

Warden Melick, in his report, to the governor, suggested that the state buy

 
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several tracts of land adjacent to the prison on which to raise vegetables. Several of these tracts could be bought, one of which could be irrigated in case of drouth. On this the warden would work the young men, and the first offenders, and raise small fruits and vegetables in abundance. While the prison now cultivates over two hundred acres of land yet they buy large quantities of canned fruit and vegetables and many loads of potatoes. With this land, and a small canning plant which could be established for less than five hundred dollars, much money could be saved, and good healthy work found for many of the men.

In no other department of the prison is there room for as many improvements as there is on the farm. Reformers say "Why do not the poor prisoners get a little milk once in a while?" Well, reformers say so much and do so little. It is easy to say a thing, but hard to do it, and it seems to be easier to attend to other people's business