Reconnoitering along Shasta River. Commissioner Stern in center.
the main trunk lines. The thousand miles of mountain laterals leading to the county seats in or east of the Sierras must be built at the expense of uncompleted portions of the main trunk line. Nor is the State justified in expending the large sum necessary to build a permanent type of tourist or commercial road through these mountains, where the population and assessed valuation to be served are so comparatively small, and where the cost of building an ideal type of road is the greatest.
The bill was drafted by Highway Commissioner Charles F. Stern as the result of a year's study of the road problems of California, and intensive study of methods and results in other States, where convict labor has been employed for road work.
The proposition presents three aspects.
First as to the State: California is today supporting four thousand convicts as a daily liability. The economic value of such labor is definitely expressed in the experience of Colorado. We quote from the 18th biennial report of the Board of Prison Directors of this State, which is probably furthest advanced in this problem:
"Our largest item of labor performed by the convict was, of course, the road work. The prisoners … have built 157 miles of good roadway, and a great deal of this has been blasted out of solid rock.… The average labor cost for the 157 miles was $298.12 per mile. It is hard to estimate the immense value of the roads, for the reason that the work in Mesa County alone would have cost with free labor not less than $25,000 per mile, as the rock in places had to be blasted for 75 feet in order to get a proper road bed.… The difference between what the free labor alone would have cost the public—namely, $270,285…and what the labor of our men actually cost them, shows a labor profit of $223,479.56. However, this labor did not compete with the free labor of the State for the reason that the counties could not otherwise have afforded to do this work."
For every thousand men employed on road work under the conditions suggested a definite State liability of $600 a day can be turned into an equally definite State asset of not less than $1,500 per day. This change can be translated into many miles of road not otherwise possible, or into a higher type of road than could otherwise be contemplated.
Wherever convict labor has been tried under an intelligent plan, intelligently administered with due regard for both parties at interest, the State and the convict, the plan has been uniformly successful. The economic advantage lifts a burden from every taxpayer in the State, be he union or non-union, laborer or capitalist.
The effect on the convict himself is equally definite and beneficial. Constructive work instead of deteriorating grind on the rock pile or in the jute mill, better working conditions and better living conditions, and outdoor life and as large a measure of freedom as he will demonstrate his fitness for, and the tremendous incentive provided for in the bill of one day's reduction of sentence for every two days' efficient, loyal work—these things must necessarily make for the physical and mental and therefore moral betterment of the convict.
The work will be begun with a sane nucleus of trustworthy men, and developed as fast as it will justify itself. Guards will be employed insofar as necessary, but the elimination of "Gatling gun" government will be the ideal sought.
The proposal carries no antagonism to organized or other free labor. Its object is to build roads in localities and of a character which could not otherwise be contemplated by the State. It proposes to do work for which the unemployed taken from the streets of San Francisco demonstrated their unfitness and unwillingness in the Highway Commission road camp in El Dorado County last spring, as set forth in the Governor's message to this legislature. It proposes to make possible commercial roads, to open the undeveloped empire in the mountain counties east of the Sierras, to add to the •assets of the State millions of acres of cheap land that needs only road transportation to become a practical solvent of the unemployed problem of California. For every job thus done by a convict which might otherwise have possibly been done by a free man, the way is opened for many free men to get back to the soil and raise the bread they are demanding of their State.
Thus the necessities of the State and the welfare and ultimate redemption of the convict are united in this solution of the problem, a solution which, without injury to any, will result in the betterment of all concerned.
OREGON BEACH ROAD CUT.
By the action of the County Court of Tillamook County recently, and previous action taken by the Polk and Yamhill County Courts, a road to the Tillamook beaches that may be traversed from Portland in four hours by easy riding is rendered a probability before summer.
