The lease system calls for special notice. Its particular habitat is the South, where after the war a remodeling of the penitentiary system was demanded because of the addition of the negro faetor to the problem, more than 90 per cent of convicts in most States being negroes Both expense and the need of outdoor work on the part of the negro made impracticable the continued use of walled penitentiaries, which moreover would have been quite inadequate under new conditions. The lease system came into general use in the late forties, and felons were worked in coal and iron-mills, saw-mills and farms. A chief inspector had general charge, but the responsibility, which was scarcely more than nominal, was upon the lessee and his inspectors and physicians. In many States this system gave rise to horrible abuses. In Georgia it was abolished in 1897 and the State camp system put in its place. The death rate dropped from over 7 to 1.4 per cent in four years Pay was allowed the prisoner who volunteered to do extra work, and the more brutal forms of corporal punishment abolished. But even in Georgia the county chain gang, made up of minor offenders, under supervision of county road commissioners, is still cruel and vicious. Worse than the county chain gang of Georgia, where only 45 per cent are hired to private individuals, is the system in other States. Ala bama, notably by its contract law of 1901, which was declared unconstitutional in 1903 by a United States Circuit Court judge, made pos sible the following scheme of peonage: A minor offender and often a perfectly innocent person is sentenced to a light fine which the constable offers to pay for a certain number of months' work. At the expiration of this period a new charge is trumped up, or the negro induced to attempt escape, he is again tried and sent to the convict camp or fined for the benefit of the constable and his bacIcers. The universal dis
approval of this system in the South and the prompt action of the Federal authorities has led to the abolition of its worst features.
Bibliography.— Alexander, H., (The Con vict Lease and the System of Contract Labor' (Nashville 1913) ; Boswell, H. V., (Women and Prison Labor) (New York 1913) ; Brockway, Z. R., (Fifty Years of Prison Service) (New York 1912) ; Cable, G. W., (The Convict Lease System' (1883) ; Gemntill, W. N., 'Employ ment and Compensation of Prisoners) (in Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. VI, pp. 507-521, Chicago 1916); Hiller, E. T., (Labor Unionism and Convict Labor' (in ibid., Vol. V, pp. 851 879, 1915) ; Hardy, R. B., (Digest of the Laws and Practices of all the States of the Union in Reference to the Employment •of Convicts) (1911); Henderson, C. R, (Outdoor Labor for Convicts) (Chicago 1907), and (Penal and Reformatory Institutions) (Chicago 1910) ; Hicks, F. C., (Convict Labor in the United States) (New York 1913) ; Lovely, Collis, (The State Use System) (New York 1913) ; Whitin, S., (Penal Servitude) (New York 1912) ; Wines, H., (Punishment and Reforma tion) (New York 1910); Wright, C. D., (Some Ethical Phases of the Labor Question) (Boston 1902); (Report on Prison Labor) (United States Industrial Comrni.ssion, 1900) ; (Special Report on Prison Labor> (Ohio State Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1910); (Report on Com petition of Penal Labor) (United States House of Representatives, Sub-committee No.4, Committee on Labor, 1908).