Warden Bridges wishes to retire from the post at the State Prison which he has held for more than 20 years. He is past 78 years of age. If Gen. Bridges insists upon his retirement the State will lose the services of a man who through a long career in a post of extreme difficulty has maintained the dignity and efficiency of an important branch of the public service in a manner which will never be forgotten. The trials and suspense of such a position as Gen. Bridges has held for two decades are hardly weighed by the average citizen, who regards them as matters of course, and expects, in this State, thorough efficiency. During these past 20 years that public expectation has not been disappointed. It has been worth much to the Commonwealth to have had a man of Gen. Bridges’ sort at the head of its State Prison. He assumed his present position in 1893 when he was appointed by the late Governor William E. Russell. Only one prisoner remains who has been an inmate continuously since General Bridges took control. The man is Jesse Pomeroy. * * * * * _Convict Labor and Labor Unions_--According to the Cedar Rapids (Ia.) Times, Union labor’s war to prohibit state authorities to allow honor prisoners at the penitentiary at Fort Madison to work for outsiders as painters, plumbers, etc., at Fort Madison, will now go into court, following the passage of an ordinance by the Fort Madison city council, which prohibits prisoners entering the city only on official business. Police will be ordered to arrest them and the ordinance provides for a fine of from $1 to $100 in violation of the ordinance. The war against the system has been going on for two years. The Governor and State labor commissioners have been appealed to but nothing was done. The State board of control allowed Warden Sanders to put honor prisoners outside in competition with union labor. Leaders of union labor took the matter to the city council, which resulted in the passage of the prohibitory measure and will now be tested out in court. * * * * * _Says Georgia to Tennessee_--The Atlanta Georgian has this to say in a recent issue: “Since Governor Hooper of Tennessee and his party of prison investigators, who came to Atlanta last week to inspect convict conditions in Georgia, have returned home they have given interviews to Tennessee papers upholding the Tennessee system of convict control as superior to that of Georgia, particularly from health and humanitarian viewpoints. “To one who has spent several years in each state and has had opportunity to observe the prison systems of the two states--not in a three-day cursory inspection, but at frequent intervals extending over these several years--the view’s of the Tennesseans seem open to question. “In Georgia all the able-bodied men convicts are worked out of doors, under the direct supervision of state and county officials and inspectors, constructing public highways.