An effort is on foot to secure a wage allowance for the men employed upon the construction of a new reservoir, to be followed by compensation to prisoners for all work on strictly prison industries. As an ultimate possibility in this direction is the plan to put all prisoners upon a salary, charging them for their care and living, with opportunity given for earnings. At the same time, throughout the city of Fort Madison is being circulated a petition to Governor Clarke to halt the employment of prisoners to do laboring work about the city. Such work as papering, plastering, painting and carpet cleaning is specifically mentioned. The petition has nearly a thousand signers. * * * * * _At Duluth, Minnesota._--Although the joint city and county work farm had been in operation little over a month by February 9th, prisoners sent there have already cleared the underbrush from nearly 20 acres. It is expected by spring over 200 acres will be cleared. During the summer the men will prepare the land already cleared so that it may be plowed in the spring of 1915. According to Superintendent Fred Ward of the farm, all men now at the institution are apparently satisfied with conditions and appear willing to work. A few have been encountered, he says, who at first refused to do their share. In all 52 men have been sent to the farm from municipal and district courts. Four men have been discharged, leaving 48, the limit, now in the toils. * * * * * _Ending an Old Abuse._--The Boston Transcript thus characterizes the effort of the War Department of our country to modernize its treatment of military prisoners. “The bill for the revision of the Articles of War, which was passed by the Senate recently without dissent, and almost without debate, is intended to be the legislative expression of Secretary Garrison’s advanced ideas on military penology. It will be remembered that in September last Secretary Garrison issued an order applying the principle of endeavoring to make the military prisoner better instead of worse for his imprisonment. This is a familiar purpose in civil penology, but an innovation in the military code. Secretary Garrison could proceed but tentatively in putting his reform--for reform it is--into operation, but now, if the House concurs, he will have the authority of unquestionable law with him in substituting detention barracks for military prisons.