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C h a p t e r 5 ❖ Prison-Made Twine The Role of the Penitentiaries in the Henequen-Wheat Complex We have saved the farmers of this state $200,000 during the operation of the twine plant as a difference between the State price of twine and the Trust price. It has acted as a leveler of prices and there is no telling how much the farmers would have to pay for twine if it were not for the State’s Twine Plant. —Ole Swenson, warden of the South Dakota State Penitentiary, 1913 O NE of the least known aspects of the history of the henequen-wheat complex is the role played by North American penitentiaries in the manufacture of binder twine. The literature on henequen, the fiber industry in general , and U.S. and Canadian agricultural history has either ignored this aspect entirely or alluded to it only in passing. Yet the prison twine industry is an integral part of the larger story of cordage manufacturing and represents in a clear way what governments would do to provide a much-needed commodity for farming: subsidize twine manufacture by using convict labor. This aspect of the larger henequen-wheat story has a variety of dimensions worthy of study. Like any industry, prison twine manufacturing has a context (prison labor history in general), a history of its specific origin (why and how prisons were chosen to manufacture twine), and different agricultural, economic, and political events that affected it over the years. All enter the story here. The idea of using prisoners as workers is quite old. Ancient civilizations from China to Egypt to Peru used convicted criminals and prisoners of war as slave labor for galley crews, construction projects, and agricultural work. The practice continued throughout the world, but by the eleventh century prisons in Europe placed emphasis on convicts working to pay off the expense of their incarceration. By the sixteenth century, “workhouses” for vagrants appeared in England (e.g., Bridewell), and these facilities emphasized work as a 122 B o u n d i n t w i n e reformative program rather than just reimbursement of expenses. The concept of reform was the genesis of prisons as distinguished from jails (“gaols”), with the prison representing a “correctional alternative” to the jail’s purpose of punishment . It was in prisons in eighteenth-century France that the idea of prison “industry” was born.1 The practice continued in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when it became controversial; philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, penologists , and prison reform activists endlessly debated the merits and pitfalls of prison labor, especially the concept of rehabilitation versus economic return. In his influential book, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault , ever concerned with the analysis of power relations, focused on the way prisons used labor to shape and discipline the inmates.2 The history of labor in the prison twine mills that developed later may not touch on all of this debate, but the theory behind them does. Prison labor as a legislated penal institution began in North America in 1794 at the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia—the first penitentiary in the United States. In Canada, inmate labor began in 1835 at the old Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario when prison authorities assigned six prisoners to stone cutting work. The governments of both countries viewed convicted criminals as a cheap source of labor that reduced the costs of their upkeep and helped to pay for other prison programs. Among the first prison-made products were shoes, boots, and clothing, some of which were for inmate use and some for sale to the public. As early as 1828, the U.S. federal prisons of Auburn and Sing Sing in New York state were paying for themselves “due in large part to convict labor.”3 The practice continued into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, most infamously perhaps in the American South, where chain gangs dressed in stripes broke rocks and served on road crews.4 At the end of the Civil War, prisons throughout the South were so overcrowded that state authorities devised a contract lease system that provided penal labor to private industry in a contractual, low-wage arrangement. Railroads, coal mines, road construction firms, and cotton plantations were quick to take advantage of the cheap labor (often consisting of former slaves arrested on trumped-up charges), especially as the South was attempting to rebuild after the devastating war. But the arrangement meant...

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