[14] Revised Statutes, 6442, 1889. The management of the mines is intrusted to a skillful engineer, Mr. Oscar F. Lamm. The writer has investigated the conditions under which men work, and has been to the face of the mines where they were at work, and can testify that the stories circulated about hard usage in the mines are wholly unfounded, except by persons who consider all labor, particularly mining, hard usage. The air below is pure--men are sent down every morning to test the air before prisoners are allowed to go down--and the mining is comparatively easy. There is very little difficulty in it, and the prisoners are not so bad off in these mines as are the miners in private mines elsewhere in Kansas. It may be a dreary life to lead for a person who has not been accustomed to work underneath the ground, but the average miner would pronounce the life in the mines endured by the prisoners as one of comparative ease and very few hardships. In all the experience of the mines, only one individual has been seriously hurt, and that when he disobeyed orders directly. There have been many objections to the contract system urged by persons who are outside of the prison and its management. Whatever objections there may be to the contract system in itself, those usually observed are of no force. It is said that the goods made by prisoners come into close competition with goods made by union men outside of the prison and therefore the union men urge the repeal of the law granting the privilege of contracting prisoners for work. There can be no reason in this from the following principles: First, because every citizen of Kansas is interested in the right management of the prison as a means of protecting him and his family. In order to have this protection it is necessary that laborers be given employment for the sake of proper management. As there are less than a thousand of these prisoners all told, many of them are employed about the buildings and grounds and many employed in furnishing coal and other goods to state institutions, the competition does not figure at all in the great labor market. Again, while the prison mines have been putting forth abundance of coal in supplying state institutions and the market elsewhere, other coal mines in and around Leavenworth have been unable to fill the orders in supplying the demand upon them. Superintendents have tried again and again during the past two years to obtain sufficient miners to take out enough coal to supply the market, but they have failed. So far as the mines are concerned, the hue and cry about competitive labor amounts to nothing. Again, the contract system is carried on in this way: The prisoners are always under the charge of the warden and prison authorities. Contracts are let to the highest bidder for a certain number of laborers. This labor must be done on the prison grounds and under the general oversight of the prison authorities. If a