Pocahontas Times

The State of Tennessee is doing something that may solve the question of convict labor. Nine thousand acres of Brushy Mountain coal lands have been secured, and the convicts will be employed digging coal for the State instead of being leased to coal-mining corporations. In this way it is hoped that riots, caused by free labor coming in contact with convicts, will be avoided, and convict labor be made a source of revenue to the State, and to that extent, a relief to the tax-payers. It would be a grand advance, were the ways and means available, to make the criminal element of society self-sustaining. Mines, factories, and farms may yet be opened by every state, with a view to this, much to the relief of the toiling, law-abiding citizenship.