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South Canterbury Times, Issue 2377, 29 October 1880, Page 2

Thk proposal of the Government to make local bodies pay for the prison labor which, up to the present, they have been enjoying for nothing is undoubtedly a stop in the proper direction. The scale of charges has been fixed at three-fourths of the current rate which labor fetches in the ordinary market. At find sight it may appear to many that the Government in this matter are bringing prison labor into direct competition with free labor, but this is not the case in reality. The operation of the new rule will, on the contrary, place a wholesome check on the introduction of prison labor to the detriment of the well behaved and honest workmen. Hitherto there has been a perfect scramble among local bodies for prison labor, and the result is that free labor has been handicapped and driven to the wall. No kind of competition could possibly be more unfair than that of gratuitous labor. Now that Harbor Boards and Borough Councils are required to contribute a fair equivalent out of their funds for the work of prisoners, they will think twice before employing it, and the unemployed and destitute will be afforded a better opportunity of keeping their heads above water. Under the old system it only required a season of depression to drive honestly inclined laborers into gaol in order that they might make sure of a decent subsistence. Even as the case stands at this moment, prison laborers are better cared for and far more comfortable than many of the poorer class of unskilled workmen. They enjoy a wholesome regular diet, regular hours and warm and comfortable lodgings, and their circumstances are far more conducive to health and happiness than those of the railway navvy or roadmakcr, compelled to face the winter under calico, sleeping on damp straw, washing his linen on Sunday, and obtaining a hurried and frequently half cooked meal at irregular intervals. The prison labor payment system will do away with a great deal of clamoring on the part of small bodies, who have been taught to regard a small gaol in their midst as a perfect godsend. In addition to this, it will effectually put a stop to the improvement and enhancement of private property at the expense of the general taxpayer. The suburbs of Dunedin may be cited as an example. On both sides of the bay between that city and Port Chalmers,roads have been made, and small speculators have been converted into little millionaires through the improvement of their properties at the cost of the State. The slopes of the Dunedin peninsula have been converted into luxuriant gardens by the expenditure of prison labor for which the proprietors have never paid a solitary farthing. All round that delightful and picturesque bay, from Musselburgh to the estate of Mr James Macandrew, and far beyond to Portobello, where the late member for Caversham founded and sold a little township, has been improved, with roads, bridges, and culverts constructed by prison labor. In the neighborhood to which we refer not a few of the members of the late Provincial Council of Otago have handed down their names to posterity by conferring them on suburban townships, which they have been enabled to erect and ’advantageously dispose of by the utilisation of that commodity so cheap to themselves but so dear to the community—prison labor. By affixing a value to prison labor the Government have put a stop to a process by which the taxpayers of New Zealand have all along been robbed right) and left, and they deserve, for what they have done in this direction, the thanks of every free laborer in the colony.