control of an office of the first importance to them is a fact which ought to convey its lesson to the short-ballot propagandists.

But it is with Mr. Childs' second "element," the "labor delegates," that we are concerned. If our information is correct, the Short Ballot secretary has assigned a totally inadequate reason for their opposition. The fact is the whole trade union "element" of the country has been paying due attention to the "short ballot" catch-phrase and has decided not to be caught by it.

That, in State, county, and city or town elections more offices may be put on the tickets than are logical or necessary to a well-organized lawmaking or administrative force, is a truth to which we all may readily bear witness. But from that truism to the proposition that a "short ballot" is as Mr. Childs and his associates seem to believe, very little short of a social panacea, is a leap in belief too great for the average voter to make. In their discussions, the labor men of the United States have been brought to the conviction that they need to hold a permanent, unremitting, and immediate control over certain officials, to the fullest extent of their voting power. The proposal that they shall give up that control, or cease demanding it where they have not yet acquired it, is to them not a reform in politics but a cheat and a snare-whatever the theory of its advocates.

In this magazine have already been given reasons, and sound ones, we believe, for Labor to retain in its hands at all times, and in all circumstances, the full force of its voting power over every official. The time is coming, it may be confidently asserted, when in all of our industrial communities, Labor will rule, just as it will in every farming community to the extent that the farmers in the Ohio convention protected themselves in the instance above cited. Labor does not intend, if we interpret its aspirations aright, to rule merely through having a certain proportion of labor men in office. It seeks to give effect to the wishes of the mass on every question important enough to warrant a referendum on it or an initiative to bring it to a vote.

A list of the offices which should at all times be under the control of the people has been printed in these columns. No reasons have been educed for shortening that list. Mr. Childs has had his opportunity to show, in reply, why those offices should be appointive and not elective. He has not done so. His article evaded this fundamental point.

In many of the proposed changes in government, which from time to time are advocated, there is a "something in it" to which most men assent. An unfortunate circumstance is that propagandists of any particular change usually claim too much for its efficacy. They become mere propagandists, not judicial seekers of pure truth. At times, unconsciously, they go ahead stubbornly maintaining crudely formed propositions, not seeing the corrections of them suggested by their well-wishers, or at least of men devoted to reform as much as they themselves could possibly be. One of the merits of an interested public is that, on questions of government, which so long as not settled right must pester men, it lops off the unessentials of proposed change and gets down to the possible and the practical.

In this connection, we may assure the Short Ballot organization of the co-operation of organized labor, up to the point to which it offers a fair idea to the country. But the facts of its case lead us to suggest it has asked impossibilities of the voters at the very time the voters are insisting that they shall be the one source of power, continual and immediate. They have passed beyond the stage where they were only occasionally the source of power, with vague and indirect influence on law-makers and law-administrators. They will not allow their servants to be shielded from their vote.

CONVICT LABOR

From yet another source comes formal endorsement of a policy organized labor has been advocating and promoting. At its last conference the National Committee on Prison Labor adopted the following resolution:

AND

PENAL SERVITUDE.

"After one year of study, the National Committee on Prison Labor found the preponderance of evidence to be in favor of the State use system. After a second year of study and further investigation, the committee is in a position to declare as prejudicial to the welfare of the prisoner, the prisoner's family and the public, the contract system of prison labor. The committee therefore declares itself opposed to the contract system of prison labor and to every other system which exploits his labor to the detriment of the prisoner."

The material upon which the committee based its resolution has been summarized by Mr. E. Stagg Whitin in his book Penal Servitude. The author views the convict labor problem from these various angles: Economic, political, institutional, productive, distributive, educational, and remedial. The first sentence, "Will you buy me, sah?" a wail from an Alabama boy of eighteen, rouses the reader to keener perceptions of the fundamental evil inherent in convict labor-the slavery element. He says:

"The status of the convict is that of one in penal servitude-the last surviving vestige of the old slave system. With its sanction in the common law, its regulation in the acts of Legislatures and its implied recognition in the Constitution of the United States, it continues unchallenged and without question, as a basic institution, supposedly necessary to the continued stability of our social structure.

"Slavery was conceived as necessary to the stability of society until it was done. away with. The world progress has been said to be based upon the conquest of the weak and uncivilized by the strong and supposedly virtuous. Plato could depict no state of ideal justice without a slave class. Justice today can conceive of no state without penal servitude, yet those same forces which overthrew the black slavery of a generation ago are today tending unperceived to limit and to change this penal form of slavery till it too may soon be considered with the historic past."

Changes in penal servitude have ever shaped themselves to conform to economic conditions, for "the economic value of labor of the wayward individual has ever directly effected the method of punishment." Offenders could not be banished or put to death when labor was needed for the galley, mine, or colony. Demand for cheap labor in manufacturing provided new industrial uses for the convict. In the United States, humanitarian public opinion rebelled against the death penalty for slight offense, against the promiscuous huddling of convicts, and demanded that the State should

furnish work and maintain order in penal institutions. The State, after building imposing institutions satisfying to popular pride, foolishly or inhumanly, or both, met the costs problem by selling its convicts for private exploitation. Manufacturers discovered they had a good thing in convict labor with such other perquisites as State-furnished factories, heat, light, maintenance of discipline. This slave labor was a menace to free labor. The part trade unionists played in changing this State policy and developing State functions, Dr. Whitin estimates as follows:

"Organized labor with its long and persistent agitation against the unfair competition of convict goods upon the open market probably has been the strongest force toward the development of the State's function in the care of the prisoner. As the control of the State upon prison industries has become greater, the power of labor to restrict them through control of the State Legislatures has also become greater, and the history of most of our States shows that, when labor is once aroused to an antagonism to any specific form of commodity manufactured in prison, sufficient influence can be brought to bear to abolish its manufacture.

"This opposition to unfair competition forced labor to a program of constructive reform for employing the convict. In the New York State Constitutional Convention of 1894 the labor unions secured the passage of a "State use" regulation providing that the labor of the prisoners should not be sold or leased but that the State should produce those things which the State could consume.'

Taking up the question of control exercised by the State, boards or wardens, the writer declares:

"Reform in penal administration today lies therefore in building up the systems of control more firmly on a centralized system of authority, so definite in its form, that responsibility for evil doing can be definitely located, and which by some method of recall can be made to respond to the highest standard of moral action upon which the majority of people in the State may agree."

Dr. Whitin discusses the use of convict labor as an element in reducing the cost of maintenance of the inmates, upkeep of the institution, and articles for use in the institution, showing that since the sheriff is often allowed a certain amount for maintenance per person, a private system often exists in the guise of a public system; that during the last few years there has been a general movement for the State's assumption and operation of the industries in which prison labor is employed. Continuing, the Doctor

"This movement has had the hearty support of the American Federation of Labor which, together with resolutions passed and speeches made, contradicts the assertion that if it were not for the fact that the contractors fought the unions industrial efficiency in the prisons would be impossible. Probably the clearest declaration of principles that can be enunciated upon this point by organized labor is contained in the following resolutions passed unanimously by the Illinois State Federation of Labor at a convention at which fraternal delegates were in attendance from Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin:

""We believe with modern criminologists:

"That nearly all of the prisoners in penal institutions are morally sick people and can be cured; that the primary purpose of confinement is reform and not punishment; that it is cheaper in the last analysis to reform the prisoners and that the efforts of the State and State officials should be toward this end.

"That the labor of these prisoners should not be exploited for the benefit of any private individual or for the State itself; that many of these prisoners sent to prison

leave behind them dependent families, whom the State is compelled to support either by private or public charity.

""That some system of compensation should be arranged whereby the State would charge itself at the prevailing market price for all products manufactured in its penal institutions, crediting each prisoner with the amount thus earned, so after deducting from such the cost of maintanance of the prisoner and other necessary costs for maintenance, the balance, if any, should be paid to the family of the prisoner, or the person suffering financial loss through the crime of the prisoner, or kept and paid to the prisoner at his discharge.

"That the provisions of the present law should be extended so that not only State institutions, but institutions in counties, cities, and other political subdivisions of the State and school districts should be compelled under a penalty to secure wherever possible everything they need by prison labor.

"And in addition to the foregoing, the State should provide a method for the care of prisoners when discharged or paroled whereby they may secure employment, or provide a place where they may remain until they do secure employment in order that they be not compelled to fall back into crime.'"'

The distribution of the commodities produced by convict labor presents the problem of the market for these goods. What this market shall be, the effect of the goods upon this market, and the effect upon the consumer and free labor of the use of the market-"these," says Dr. Whitin, "are the most troublesome questions connected with convict labor discussion."

This has been the phase that has confronted free workers who have been suffering from the competition of convict labor. Dr. Whitin supplements his discussion of the phases of penal servitude with most illuminating and vivid sketches of experiences and persons encountered in collecting the data for the book. It is this human interest and personal touch that intensify and objectify the significance of the problem and the reforms suggested. Penal Servitude is of special interest to trade unionists, not only because of the subject dealt with, but also because of the cordial recognition given the service of organized labor in pointing out these evils and aiding in their reform.

Well done, National Committee on Prison Labor. Well done, Dr. Whitin.

The Trade Unions are the natural growth of natural laws, and from the very nature of their being have stood the test of time and experience. The development of the Trade Unions, regarded both from the standpoint of numerical expansion and that of practical working, has been marvelously rapid. The Trade Unions have demonstrated their ability to cope with every emergency-economical or political-as it arises.

We assert that it is the duty, as it is also the plain interest, of all working people to organize as such, meet in council, and take practical steps to effect the unity of the working class, as an indispensable preliminary to any successful attempt to eliminate the evils of which we so bitterly and justly complain.

Trade Unions in Germany in 1911.

BY HANS FEHLINGER, MUNICH.