Other states are discussing the question and are expected to follow New York. Mississippi has purchased large cotton plantations and has solved the prison question to the satisfaction of its people by working the prisoners on these plantations. Evidently the old contract system must go in all the states sooner or later.

Reformation. That there is plenty of room for reformatory work in our penal institutions is shown by the fact that the Superintendent of Prisons and the Commission recommend indeterminate sentences and the parole system, which, they say, if adopted will result in great good.

Of the 3161 prisoners, in the three state prisons, 1752, or more than half of them, are under thirty years of age. These young men are not all utterly bad, and earnest and persistent efforts should be made to make good citizens of them. If the parole system tends to their betterment it ought to be adopted.

The Superintendent states that 58 per cent of the state prison population have served in other penal institutions and strange to say 245 of these served terms in the Elmira Reformatory, evidently without being reformed; but there may be hope even for these.

As a whole the reports of the Superintendent and the Commission are very profitable reading for those who take an interest in such subjects and who perform a corporal work of mercy by visiting the prisoners.

PROPOSED PRISON LABOR LEGISLATION.

A bill has been introduced (Senate No. 609) to amend the prison labor law, which requires public institutions to purchase their supplies from the State prisons, by permitting school authorities 'to buy school furniture-not in the open market, but of New York manufacturers. In connection with the proposed legislation W. J. Mantanye of the State Prison Commission recently expressed himself as follows in favor of the present system:

"If the school boards saw or understood the bill they would oppose it earnestly, and so would mechanics and all other taxpayers. In the first place the bill does not permit school boards to purchase where they choose in an open competitive market, but simply permits them to purchase such school furniture manufactured by labor in this State. The use of the word labor' is to catch mechanics, for it means nothing, as all manufacture is by labor. There is but one concern manufacturing school furniture in this State and that is in Buffalo. Therefore, to be honest, the bill should be entitled 'An act to give a monopoly in school furniture to the Buffalo company and to prevent competition from out of the State.' The Grand Rapids, Battle Creek and other large factories, with hundreds of laborers, would be barred out. Therefore if this bill were a law, the Boards of Education would have no advantages from the competition of others, and the purchasing agents or brokers would be at the mercy of the one company and be deprived of their perquisites.

"Really, there is every reason why public bodies or boards should be willing to purchase of the penal institutions, for every taxpayer is furnishing capital to carry them on and has an interest to expect a dividend by reduction of his taxes. The prisoners must be kept employed, as all concede, and as they are maintained by taxation the State should require them by their labor to support themselves as those outside do, instead of being a burden upon taxpayers. Under the present system for employing convicts, which took effect in 1897, the State gets the full value of the labor of the convicts in reduction of taxation, instead of selling it out for nominal prices as under the old contract system which netted the State nothing for the labor and yet permitted the contractors to bring that labor into an unfair competition with free labor and to make the market price of goods so low that industries and free labor were crippled.

"Under the present system the prices for articles produced for the public in penal institutions must be and are fixed the same as the prices of like goods made by free industries. Prison made goods can only be used by the public which supports the convicts and cannot be sold elsewhere or be allowed in any way to compete in the open market. All taxpayers and public officials should be glad to thus aid in making the convicts pay their way, and all laboring men and manufacturers should earnestly support and jealously guard this system and law which protects them and not allow the State to be forced to abandon it and go back to the old contract system with its unfair competition with free industries, giving no aid from convicts in earning their own support.

"But there is still more to this effort at Buffalo which savors of unfairness and sharp practice. The Prison Commissioners, in the spring of 1897, when the Superintendent of Prisons first asked to have the school furniture industry assigned to it, declined to do so because it would involve a large expense to establish the plant, and would also perhaps encroach on the Buffalo industry. The matter was pressed upon the Commissioners by many people interested in the reduction of taxation by the employment of convicts, and also those interested in such an employment as would prevent a return to the contract system.

"Finally, in the fall of 1897, officers of the Buffalo company stated to the Commissioners that they had no objections to the assignment of the industry to the Prison Department, as the company had agreed upon arrangements with it to use the company's patents for a compensation, and that as the penal institutions could not produce enough to supply the demand in the State, the Buffalo Company would be benefited as it would naturally by reason of using the same styles and patterns. The company have about all the trade of the State which the prisons could not supply, and it would be greatly relieved from competition outside the State.

"The Commission then assigned the industry to the Prison Department, which at much labor and expense procured the necessary machinery and established the industry and contracted with the Buffalo company for the use of its patents or patterns.

"The Prison Department has never been able to supply the whole demand, probably not more than half of it, and the Buffalo company has been able, as was expected, to get nearly all orders that the department could not fill.

"At first, perhaps, some of the goods made were not as perfect as might be expected on starting a new industry, but during the last year the production by the State has been fully as good as to material and finish as the product of the companies, and in some respects better. Some Boards of Education-Schenectady for one-were pleased with the goods and seemed surprised to find they were even finer than those produced by the companies whose agents had represented that the State goods were of poor finish.

'The State has to sell at the market price established by other manufacturers and cannot cut or change it, nor pay commissions to purchasing agents or brokers. The latter would, therefore, like to have the privilege given to boards to purchase elsewhere. The Buffalo company is working upon or through this desire to procure for itself this monopoly, for as the State cannot cut prices or pay a bonus or commission its industry would be driven out.

"The result of this proposed law permitting the purchase of other manufacturers in this State, that is of the Buffalo company, as a supplement to the establishment of the industry in the prison and the law requiring public bodies to purchase of penal institutions, would be to leave the State with its expensive machinery idle, and the convicts also idle, to be maintained by taxation only.

“Very likely, too, other industries would act on the precedent and soon the State would be forced back to the old contract system to employ or exercise convicts without profit and to the destruction of free industries and wages."

THE LAW OF BOYCOTTING.

The recent dispute between a New York newspaper and its trade union employees, resulting in the issuance of an injunction order in restraint of boycotting and picketing, focuses attention upon the legal phases of the boycott. According as the boycott is defined it will appear legal or illegal. Thus, if it be defined as the practice of withholding custom from an establishment alleged to be unfair in its treatment of employees, the boycott appears to be a perfectly lawful proceeding; but if it be defined as an organized attempt to destroy the business of an establishment, it appears to be against public policy and illegal. As a matter of fact the two conditions are so frequently found together, that it becomes extremely difficult to determine where the lawful shades into the unlawful.The courts have in this instance been obliged more and more to concern themselves with the motives of the participants; and the tendency has been to pronounce as lawful only those combinations in which the pecuniary interests of the participants are immediately concerned, while declaring as illegal those combinations which can bring more harm to the adversary than good to themselves. Thus the sympathetic strike has often been declared illegal because the strikers' interests were held to be remote rather than immediate and direct; and thus the courts have permitted merchants to use any means of attracting trade, short of direct attacks upon competitors.

The law of conspiracy is founded on the idea that a combination of individuals may become too powerful for any single adversary, even though this combination use only means that are perfectly lawful in the hands of an individual. A definition of conspiracy that has obtained wide acceptance in England and America was given in the case of Queen vs. Parnell (14 Cox C. C., 508) wherein the court said:

Conspiracy has been aptly described as divisible under three headswhere the end to be obtained is in itself a crime; where the object is lawful, but the means to be resorted to are unlawful; and where the object is to do injury to a third party or to a class, though if the wrong were effected by a single individual it would be a wrong but not a crime.) I think under these three heads every class of conspiracy ranks. And, gentlemen, I have to declare to you that it is a criminal act where two or more agree to have a crime committed; where two or more agree to

effectuate their object by unlawful means; or where two or more agree to do an injury to a third party or to a class, though that injury, if done by any one alone, of his own motion, would not be in him a crime or an offense, but would be simply an injury, carrying with it a right to civil remedy. The court also say, "this law of conspiracy is not an invention of modern times. It is part of our common law; it has existed from time immemorial." And Justice Barry meets the frequent contention that an act or purpose should not make several persons guilty of criminal conspiracy when it would not be criminal if done or attempted by one person only, in the following words: "The third and last case is where, with a malicious design to do an injury, the purpose is to effect a wrong, though not such a wrong as, when perpetrated by a single individual, would amount to an offence under the criminal law. Thus an attempt to destroy a man's credit, and effect his ruin by spreading reports of his insolvency, would be a wrongful act which would entitle the party whose credit was thus attacked to bring an action as for a civil wrong, but it would not be an indictable offence. If it be asked on what principle a combination of several to effect the like wrongful purpose becomes an offence, the answer is, upon the same principle that any other civil wrong, when it assumes a more aggravated and formidable character, is constituted an offence, and becomes transferred from the domain of the civil to that of the criminal law. ** * Thus the dividing line between private wrongs, as entitling the party injured to civil remedies, and private wrongs thus converted into public wrongs, in other words into offences and crimes, is to be found in the more aggravated and formidable character which the violation of individual rights under given circumstances assumes. It is upon this principle that the law of conspiracy by which the violation of private right, which if done by one, would only be the subject of civil remedy, when done by several is constituted a crime, can be vindicated as necessary and just. It is obvious that a wrongful violation of another man's right committed by many assumes a far more formidable and offensive character than when committed by a single individual. The party assailed may be able, by resource to the ordinary civil remedies, to defend himself against the attacks of one. It becomes a very different thing when he has to defend himself against many combined to do him injury."

The definition of conspiracy has been steadily narrowed in England during the last century. Early in the nineteenth century it was a conspiracy for workmen to combine for the purpose of securing an advance in wages. But this was mainly because the rate of wages itself was fixed by law. Since the abolition of a legal rate of wages, the situation in England has been changed. As no American State has attempted to fix a legal rate of wages, American courts have not followed the English precedents in holding a combination to secure an advance in wages to be illegal. And American statutes have distinctly limited the definition of conspiracy in this direction; thus sec