Statistics of Convict Labor; Advanced Chapters from the 4th Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of Illinois (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 Excerpt: ... fact is that the 204 convicts compete with 686 coopers in Chicago, assuming that they are all working on pork barrels, etc. In reality the 204 convicts compete with such portion of the 686 Chicago coopers as are at work on provision cooperage, and not with the whole of them. What that proportion is it is impossible to learn from the census tables, but as a matter of fact it is very small, for the well-known reason that the 204 convicts of Joliet, and 169 more in the Northern Penitentiary of Indiana, employed by the same firm of prison contractors, have monopolized the enormous trade in packages for the packing of meats in Chicago, and driven that class of manufacturers and of coopers out of business. This fact, however, could not be made to appear by any study of census statistics, nor could any legitimate deduction be made from that source as to the real influence of prison labor in Illinois upon the business of making pork barrels, which, in fact, it has wellnigh destroyed. Again, the largest industry in the penitentiaries of Illinois is the manufacture of boots and shoes, in which 499 convicts at Joliet, 225 at Chester and 159 boys at Pontiac, 883 in all, are employed. The census report of 1880 gives the total number of men, women and children employed in all kinds of manufacture of all kinds of boots and shoes and repairing in Illinois as 3,443, as to which the number of convicts is as 26 per cent. In the tables referred to, based upon the census returns of 1870, the number in the convict shops of Illinois is given as 447 and the whole number in the State as 4,660, the former being 9+ per cent. of the latter. Without attempting to explain why the industry should appear as nearly onethird greater in 1870 than it was ten years later, we merely cite an im...