The old systems of labor have been tried, have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The story of graft and corruption of prison officials who have had anything to do with contracts for prison labor under any system, except the state account plan, where the products are used by the state, or in the state institutions, has aroused almost every state in our Union. The reports of state investigating committees and of committees appointed by civic organizations, are such as to be almost unbelievable. The abuses, the atrocities, the crimes that are committed in the use of convict labor, have brought down the condemnation of all right thinking citizens, and created a demand for a system of labor that will not be subject to those conditions. In the movement for better conditions, organized labor takes a stand in the front rank. Of all of the systems of work that have been used in the various penal institutions the one most successful is the state account system by which the labor of the convicts is used for the state, and the products for the state institutions. This system eliminates nearly all incentive to bribery of prison officials, the exploitation of convict labor and the opposition to the parole laws. Under it the whole people get whatever benefits may be derived from the labor of the prisoners of the state. Organized labor is on record as favoring this system. When the prison officials recognize that the profits of the prisoners’ labor belongs to the state, that the state is more interested in reforming the prisoner than making a profit on him, such officials thereupon become much better officials for the state as a whole. The efforts of the prison officials are thereafter directed toward curing our morally sick men and women, and new and various methods are tried. In this connection I might mention the experiment as reported in the press of September 30, of this year, of Ray Baker, warden of the Nevada state penitentiary, who, in company with three unarmed assistants, took fifty-two convicts, many of them life termers, to attend a theatrical performance. Every convict was upon honor, and not one violated his word. How many of our prison officials will hold up their hands in holy horror at such unconventional conduct on the part of the warden? Slavery and involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime is forbidden in the United States by the thirteenth amendment to the constitution. It is by this amendment that the state has any right in the labor of convicts. That right, I think, should only exist when the convict labors for the state or its institutions. Where the state through its courts has no power, as punishment for crime, to sentence a convict to labor for private persons, it should have no right to do so directly by contracts with private persons providing for the labor or the product of the labor of the convicts.