The holiday entertainment was furnished entirely by convict talent and included an oration on Lincoln by an inmate. * * * * * _The Development of Road Work._--Thirteen States have passed laws during the present year allowing the use of convicts in the construction and repair of highways, according to a compilation by Dr. E. Stagg Whitin, assistant in social legislation in Columbia university and chairman of the executive committee of the national committee on prison labor. They are Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. As many other States had previously passed similar legislation, but few of the forty-eight States have not adopted the policy of using prisoners to build and maintain public roads. West Virginia and Iowa are the two States whose laws regarding the working of convicts on highways stand out most prominently. So anxious was the governor of the former State to secure an effective law that he went to New York and with the assistance of representatives of the national committee on prison labor, of the road department of Columbia university and of the legislative drafting bureau worked out bills making compulsory the employment of convicts on the roads. The West Virginia law authorizes the county courts to make appropriations out of road funds for convict work; it states that the court shall sentence any male person over sixteen to road work instead of to the county jail; persons charged with misdemeanors unable to furnish bail shall work on the roads and if acquitted when tried shall be paid 50 cents a day for each day’s work they perform; justices of the peace shall sentence to work on the roads persons convicted of crime whom otherwise they would send to the county jail. Another feature of the West Virginia law is the establishment of a State road bureau to supervise any plans proposed by a county for using prison labor in road building. The plan approved, the county shall apply to the board of control for the number of prisoners required and shall state the length of time they shall be needed. The board shall, as far as possible, give equal service to each of the counties and shall determine which prisoners may be assigned to such work. The warden is to provide suitable and movable quarters, which shall be built, where possible, by convict labor. The convicts shall remain under direct control of the warden, their work, however, being under the supervision of the road bureau.