Prison Labor Quotes
While Woodhull was an ardent feminist, she had a complete platform dealing with almost all aspects of society. At the time, women were unable to vote, and the support she did get came from men. She was a serious candidate. She was appealing to most of the mens issues of the time.
This quotation shows that in 1922 a major state prison was operated at a profit with NO COST to the taxpayer. They key was that the Warden was an experienced successful businessman who put the prison into a number of different businesses which paid the expenses and taught the inmates marketable skills like stone carving. The model however has been opposed by businesses in the area which saw the prison as competition and labor unions which saw the model as taking jobs away from honest, non-criminal workers and not paying high wages.
This law had an interesting unanticipated effect. Since most prisoners were assigned work outside the jail in different locations, there were not enough guards to watch them all so most reported to their work assignments as if they were going to a job and returned to the jail after work. The prisoners were paid wages by private employers and the first dollar a day they earned went to the State for their expenses. However, the prisoners got to keep the rest. The system seemed to work very well, however the crimes were relatively minor ones. In modern times, as a practical matter, almost no one gets jailed for these offenses any more.
She was referring to the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. The point was one of the explanations of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Quotation 643956.
The issue of immigration was being debated in Congress.
