Aberdeen Herald

Waste Lands and Criminals.

Massachusetts is about to try a new experiment in the industrial management of its convicts. Instead of employing them in manufacturing goods to compete with the products of non-criminal labor, it is proposed to establish industrial camps and set the convicts to reclaiming waste and worthless land, of which the Bay State possesses enough to keep them at work for generations.

The plan is a tentative one, the first camp having just been established near Rutland, but on the face of it the scheme appears to possess two merits. It furnishes outdoor work for the convicts without subjecting them to the humiliation of constant public observation, as would be the case if they were employed on the streets and highways, and the work performed will be useful work. If they are able to make two blades of grass grow where one or none grew before there is authority for the claim that they will be transformed from malefactors into benefactors.

The experiment will be watched with a good deal of interest for various reasons. While no sane person would advocate the maintenance of criminals in idleness, no one has as yet found a way of employing them that is entirely satisfactory. The farming out of convicts which has been practiced in some of the Southern States has been shown to be subject to glaring abuses. These abuses could be minimized if not entirely avoided if the State did the farming under wise and honest management. Every State has an abundance of waste lands, which would be worth reclamation, and which, if reclaimed, would add to the public wealth.--Philadelphia Bulletin.