Excerpt from Report of the Joint Special Committee on Contract Convict Labor, 1880 To the Senate and House of Representatives: - The Legislature of 1879 passed the following joint orders, approved on the eighteenth and twenty-fifth days of April, A.D.1879: - Commonwealth Of Massachusetts. House of Representatives, March 24, 1879. Ordered, That there be appointed a Joint Special Committee, to consist of five members upon the part of the House of Representatives, with such as the Senate may join, to sit during the recess, without pay, except for their actual expenses, and provided that the whole expense of said committee, including the expense of sending for and examining persons and papers, shall not exceed the sum of one thousand dollars to investigate the system of letting out to private contractors the labor of convicts in the penal and reformatory institutions of this Commonwealth, and report in print to the Legislature at its next annual session upon the following subjects: - First, The effect of said system upon the general industries of the State. Second, The effect of said system upon the interests of free labor. Thirds, The effect of this system upon the reformation of the convict. Fourth, What advantage, if any, the products of prison-labor have over other manufactures in the matter of profits, and cheapness of labor. Fifth, The effect of any prison-contract upon the particular kind or kinds of goods mentioned in said contract. Sixth, The feasibility of abolishing the contract system, and substituting therefor some other, whereby the profit shall not go to private contractors, but to the State. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.