The Rusk and Huntsville prisons have cells in which usually one, and not more than two convicts, are kept. But only 16 per cent. of the total number of convicts are in these prisons. All others are on the plantations. The act of 1910 called for fireproof cell buildings on the plantations, but it did not provide funds wherewith to build them. Moreover, the prison commissioners, like their predecessors in office, deemed it impracticable and unnecessary to provide such buildings. Accordingly the new buildings which they have erected are of the old type, plus some improvements. These farm prison buildings are good of their kind, but the kind is bad. They are wooden dormitory buildings. In each dormitory a large number of convicts are housed, sometimes more than 100. They commingle and converse freely within certain hours. Among the convicts in every camp there are agitators, “congressmen” their fellows call them. The conditions are such as to permit, if not indeed, to invite, immoral practices, conspiracy and mutiny. The efforts to employ practically all the able-bodied convicts on the farms, to cultivate a large acreage, and to meet the varying demands for labor—this latter necessitating frequent transfer of convicts from plantation to plantation, and from shops to the farms—has practically defeated efforts at classification of prisoners as was required by the act of 1910. I do not see much hope for the Texas prison system unless provision shall be made for a business like organization; unless there shall be substituted for the plantation system a line of industries which will admit of the convicts being under the actual control of competent and suitable officers instead of incompetent and poorly paid guards, nor unless adequate operating capital shall be provided. In view, however, of the experiences here detailed, I am fearful that before such reforms shall be enacted the people will grow weary of footing the bills and will permit a restoration of the contract or lease system, possibly in disguise. The present situation is not unlike that of 1870 when the lease system was adopted. THE PRISON SHIP “SUCCESS” There is now being exhibited along the Atlantic coast the oldest and strangest craft afloat in the world to-day. This is the old British convict ship “Success,” now the only survivor of the “Ocean Hells,” as the ships of England’s fleet of felon transports were called in the first half of the last century. Built in 1790, at Moulmain, by the old pagoda “looking eastwards to the sea,” the “Success” is now 123 years old. No ship of anything like her great age to-day is seaworthy, yet this old hulk under her own sail has succeeded in crossing the Atlantic, her time of 96 days, however, creating no new record.