"Experience has proved that prisoners can best be employed on such works in gangs of from forty to sixty, under a chief overseer, assisted by a sufficient number of warders." "The prisoners," says the official document, show themselves to be willing, diligent, and apt in their work; their productivity is inferior to that of free labourers only at the beginning of their employment, and later it is equal. There is no difficulty in maintaining discipline, and attempts at escape occur very seldom. On the other hand the employment of small bodies of men under the superintendence of one or two petty officers, especially if it be in agricultural work, in which it is almost impossible to prevent contact with free labourers, leads to serious abuses:--bribery, insubordination, rebellion against the officers and even gross acts of violence have occurred. Such small bodies of men, therefore, can only be employed in exceptional cases where the conditions for the maintenance of discipline are specially favourable. "(4) The other prisoners are to be farmed to _entrepreneurs_ by public contract for the carrying on of industrial work. Care must be taken, however, that too many prisoners are not allotted to a single employer, and that the number employed in a single industry is not disproportionate to the number of free labourers engaged in the same industry. Since 1869, the number of prisoners employed by industrial _entrepreneurs_ fell from 73 to 27·2 per cent. in 1903,[61] and a further decrease is probable owing to the extension of the work done for the State authorities. Several establishments have entirely discontinued the employment of prisoners in that way. By the restriction of factory work, the individuality of the prisoner can be better studied in the choice of employment for them, and the justification is taken away from the complaints made by free workpeople about the illegitimate competition of cheap prison labour, used by capitalist employers. At the same time, the prison budgets are less satisfactory than formerly as a consequence." [Footnote 61: The proportion in 1869 was 73 per cent.; in 1895, 52 per cent.; in 1896, 52·6 per cent.; in 1897, 49·1 per cent.; in 1898, 45·7 per cent.; in 1900, 40·4 per cent.; in 1901, 37 per cent.; in 1902, 32·8 per cent.; and in 1903, 27·2 per cent.] In the prison accounts no allowance is made for the domestic and farm work done by the prisoners. In calculating the value of all work done for the Imperial and State authorities and for the general Prison Administration wages are reckoned at 40 pfennige (5d.) per head per day.