Show iT J ONE OK the silly cries is that of the laboring classes against the employment em-ployment of convicts at useful and profitable labor but it is more silly for legislators to propose laws for stopping such work A bill is now before the New York legislature for abolishing the labor system at the three state prisons at Auburn Clinton and Sing Sing The bill provides that the Sing Sing inmates shall work only in lime quarries the Clinton convicts in mines only and the Auburn prisoners must be employed upon no article of American Amer-ican manufacture and not more than fifty of them can be engaged at any one trade Iherd are about 2500 convicts in the three prisons named and last year they cost the state 415 000 but they not only paid back the entire sum but earned 0000 more which latter was clear profit to the treasury Those who protest against convicts working would hardly be willing to pay in taxes the extra cost of keeping criminals in idleness and yet if the convicts were not permitted to work the state would have to support them The New York laboring classes are not the only persons who are stupid and unreasonable on the convict labor question tfor working men everywhere seem to find cause for protest in the making of criminals earn their living They do not seem to realize that the labor of a man in prison does no more harm to free labor than his work would if he were an honest mechanic who never saw a jail |