“Our county systems, of which the outward and visible signs are the prisons and court houses, expend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year and are the natural nests and breeding places of county rings, which waste the taxpayers’ money, manipulate and corrupt our local politics, and make the administration of criminal law, in several of the counties sometimes a job, sometimes a farce, and by its delays and appeals a great revenue for lawyers and officials, pocketing fees and postponing or perverting justice, in a manner that every one familiar with county business, as I was while a State official knows, but to a degree that can only be revealed by investigation in each county, such as that undertaken in my own County of Middlesex, and threatened by the mayor and other official persons in Suffolk. Let these investigations go on; but, in the meantime, follow the recommendation of all well-informed persons, and give the State commission control of these nests of crime and vice, our ill-governed prisons.” _The Booher Bill Passes the House._--On March 4th, by a vote of 302 to 30, the House passed the Booher bill that virtually prohibits the shipping of convict made goods in interstate commerce. The measure adopts the principle of the Webb law which provides that liquor shipped into “dry” territory shall be subject to local and State laws prohibiting the traffic in alcoholic liquors. The Booher bill provides that convict made goods “shall upon arrival and delivery in any State or Territory be subject to the operation and effect of the laws of such State or Territory.” Another bill dealing with goods produced by convict labor will soon be considered in the House. It applies the same provisions to goods made by convict labor abroad. This measure has already been reported in the House. _Gruesome!_--In Virginia, according to the Richmond Journal, the body of a convict dying in prison is forfeit to the State; no matter if he has friends or money to receive it and give it decent burial. When a man dies in prison, whether he was sent for one year or for thirty years, his body is sent to the medical colleges of the State for dissection purposes. If he commit some horrible crime, which demands a death penalty, this is not the case. His family may receive his body and bury it. But the life convict and the convict who dies in prison are not given this privilege under the present law. A bill that has come before the committee seeks to remedy this defect in the present law. It amends the law now in force so that it requires only such bodies as are to be disposed of at the expense of the State to be sent to the colleges. No man who saves the little money which he may have earned within the prison shops and lays it aside for this purpose will any longer be refused the right of burial.