The State Economy and Efficiency Commission is to-day investigating State prison conditions. The problems before it should concern every tax-payer, not to mention those who are interested in the great problem of prison reform. The need for their investigation was indicated yesterday by the report of the prison inspectors. The prison of this State is operated under the law of 1814 as it has been amended from time to time. Its operation is based upon an obsolete idea of prisons and their purpose: the idea that prisons are places of confinement under the control of a keeper whose business is, as his title implies, to _keep_ the prisoners. To secure revenue for the State, and incidentally, to preserve the mental and bodily health of the prisoners, provision was made for hiring out their labor and for this purpose a supervisor was appointed. The State wards then fell under the jurisdiction of the keeper and supervisor, whose duties were regulated by statutes requiring interpretation by the courts. Then a Board of Inspectors was appointed to see to it that the keeper kept the prisoners and that the supervisor kept the contracts for their labor; but the board has neither authority nor responsibility. Finally, a Labor Commission was appointed to devise a scheme for carrying out the State-use system of keeping the prisoners busy; an undertaking that it has proved unable, so far, to carry out. Two years ago the Legislature decided to put an end to the exploitation of prison labor as fast as the existing contracts expired. The contracts bring the State a revenue of practically $100,000 a year, two-fifths of the cost of running the prison. By abolishing the contracts, the State forfeits this revenue without decreasing the expense of the prison. Employment for the prisoners must be found, and the State is committed to the principle of employing them for State use, and, at the same time, of providing healthful employment under the honor system in the hope that it will prove reformatory as well as physically and mentally beneficial. Immediately two difficulties arise. One is due to the fact that the State law divides without clearly defining authority and responsibility. The attorney-general has decided that the keeper is responsible for keeping the prisoners, and the keeper demands that whether they are kept in the Trenton prison, at the State road camps or farm, they shall be attended by a greater number of guards than the inspectors think either necessary or for their moral good. There is here a question of expense, of the extension of outside work, of the moral effect of modern prison methods. The inspectors are hampered, also, in the expansion of the State farm and road making experiments by the supervisor, who is responsible for keeping the contracts for prison labor; for the supervisor may requisition as many of the prisoners as he wishes for contract proviso of the law, of course; and the keeper must deliver them.