Public opinion is at last moving away from this antiquated type of prison architecture to the newer type represented in the honor prison at New Hampton Farms in New York and in our Commonwealth in the cottage colonies at Sleighton Farms, Glen Mills, Morganza, and Muncy. The change which comes over the men who are transferred from the Western Penitentiary to the new prison site in Centre County is a sufficient commentary on the older type of prison, and demonstrates beyond peradventure the duty of affording to all of our convict population a similar life of freedom and opportunity. This result, so desirable from every point of view, could in large measure be attained in a short time by equipping the Eastern Penitentiary with a suitable area of farm land in the Eastern Section of the State and by making immediate provision for the institution of State industrial farms for the convicts confined in the county prisons, as is recommended elsewhere in this report. IV. PRISON LABOR. The conditions existing in the penal institutions of the Commonwealth with respect to the employment of the inmates in useful industry have been so fully set forth in the Emergency Report submitted by the Commission to the Governor in September last (a copy of which is annexed to this report) and in the comprehensive study of the problem by the Penal Commission of 1913-1915 (submitted to the General Assembly under date of February 15, 1915) that it is not deemed necessary to go into the matter at length in this place. It suffices to call attention to the fact that the conditions described in those reports have not in any material respect been improved. Of approximately 10,000 inmates in the penal and correctional institutions of the State, less than one-half are usefully employed, not more than one-fourth in productive labor. The economic waste of such a system extended over a century is scarcely less appalling than its inhumanity. By the law a large part of this interminable procession of offending and suffering humanity has been condemned to hard labor. In actual practice nearly all of it has been doomed to wasteful and demoralizing idleness. The law of June 1, 1915, “providing a system of employment and compensation for the inmates of the Eastern Penitentiary, Western Penitentiary and the Pennsylvania Industrial Reformatory at Huntingdon” and creating a Prison Labor Commission to carry its provisions into effect, has proved almost wholly inoperative, owing primarily to the failure of the Legislature to provide for the compulsory purchase of prison-made goods by the Commonwealth or the political divisions thereof or by public institutions. As a consequence, out of a total population of 3200 in the three institutions to which the authority of the Commission extends, at the close of the year 1918 only 169 were employed under the direction of the Commission. These were distributed as follows:--