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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