Mississippi Penitentiary Board of Control find farming their best interest, have leased 9,350 acres of cleared land on which was worked 720 convicts, the net revenue past year estimated at $100,000. The State has purchased 3,000 acres on which 80 convicts will be employed, and they have set apart $80,000 to purchase not more than 12,000 acres. ROAD MAKING FOR CONVICTS. The most valuable contributions in some respects, is the report of the Industrial Commission on “Prison Labor,” Washington, D. C., in the brief part which deals with what is not prison labor at all, but the labor of convicts outside of prisons--building and repairing roads--an employment which meets the demands of intelligent and practical reasoners, and seems to solve the problem of prison labor from a humanitarian standpoint. Mention is here made to call attention to it. INDUSTRIAL REFORMATORIES. New York State Reformatory, Elmira, is one of the oldest institutions of the kind in the United States. Has about 1500 convicts. As the State does not permit the sale of their product in open market, the institution has become more than ever a great trades school. Thirty-six industries are taught, beside mental, physical, and industrial training, including education in the school of letters. Several of the literary schools are taught by convicts trained for that department. The trade of the convict is determined by the Superintendent, according to the advice of his relatives, and the surroundings he is likely to return to. Of the 658 discharged in 1899, 82 per cent. went directly to the trade practiced in the Reformatory. It is a very busy place, the convict plying his trade industriously, not to be sold or serve some useful purpose, but only to give him practice and skill; when completed it is destroyed, then done over again. The disposition to excel in skill and excellence has a tendency to make them better men. Almost every visitor is impressed with the conviction, that labor here so exquisitely performed, should be applied to some useful purpose and the articles sold. The carefully prepared system of grading is admirable. A prisoner when he enters is placed in the second grade; he may work up to the highest grade, shorten his term, secure his liberty by good conduct, and proficiency in trades and school work. The lowest grade is cared for much like the prisoners in the penitentiary, the middle grade fare better, have a table-cloth and other privileges, the highest grade have better food and clothing, privileges to converse, and order their food and pay for it out of their own funds. The system seems to rest on three ideas--1st, indeterminate sentence. 2nd, parole provisions of the law. 3rd, the trades and marking system. Gross cost per capita in 1899, $153.85. MASSACHUSETTS STATE REFORMATORY, CONCORD.