Page:Our habitual criminals.pdf/7

 are made for the navy and bags for the post office; and at Brixton, boots, shoes, and clothes are made for the police and prison departments of Her Majesty's government. As to the adaptability of the convicts, we have the very high authority of Mr. Bernays, for sixteen years the Admiralty Civil Engineer at Portland, and of Mr. Wood, for fourteen years in the same position at Portsmouth. The former (in Q. 7,203) says:—

"'As a rule, convicts are men of superior intelligence. I do not hesitate to say they are very easily trained to anything. I could manufacture bricklayers, or carpenters, or masons, in three or four months, sufficiently for my purpose.'"

And Mr. Wood, asked as to this (in Q. 7,926-7), replies:—

"'I have found the same thing—if they take an interest in the work, it is astonishing how soon they pick it up. When we commenced we got the lowest class, and this place was made head depot for the Roman Catholic labourers; but it is astonishing how soon these men were licked into shape in the use of all kinds of tools generally.'"

These latter men, we may conjecture, were probably Irishmen, which makes this information more significant for us.

In England, where, under the very able administration of Sir E. E. DuCane and his colleagues, these aggregate results have been reached, the large standing number of convicts (never less than 8,000 men), the imperial public works, and superior industrial development of the country permit experiments hitherto not possible here; yet, even in England, prison labour is subject to conditions which, greatly detracting from its economic value, are scarce consistent with that individuality in prison training to which I aspire. Sir E. E. DuCane explains the difficulty of devising new work from time to time (such as avoiding the trade jealously of capital and labour outside), the country may undertake with fair regard to economy and usefulness. But his chief drawbacks are the disciplinary rules, and notably the rigid ones imposing silence in associated works, and compelling the formation of large and inflexible gangs, forbidding the mobility and individualism which free labour admits and needs. On this Mr. Bernays' evidence is most instructive. He thinks that at present the country cannot reckon on more than twenty per cent, as saved by convict as against free labour, in works of construction. The weak points he explains in Q. 7,227 as:—

"'Owing to all the limitations of discipline, and the impossibility of apportioning the work to the gang, or the gang to the work under constantly varying conditions; in the morning you may want twenty men in a gang, and in the afternoon you may be thankful to have only ten, or vice versa; but you must have the men employed. Then there is a superabundance of men in one place belonging to one division, and a deficiency in another division. You cannot take the men from one place and put them into the other then and there. In the one place you have a great deal more labour than you want, and in the other you have less than you can profitably employ.' And in Q. 7,235: 'Your convicts are a standing number in the summer months; I could gladly employ perhaps several hundred more than I could in the winter, but they must be kept doing something profitable or unprofitable.'"