A NATIONAL PROBLEM In 1887, the United States Commissioner of Labor devoted his second annual report entirely to the con-sideration of convict labor. In a volume of 612 pages, which has become classic, prison industries became rec-ognized as a national problem. The report contains, besides the statistics of prison industries, a summary of the findings of the state investigations referred to above, a history of prison industries from earliest times in all nations, and a digest of all convict labor laws in the United States. The report covers every proposal or argu-ment advanced to solve the convict labor problem up to 1886-and since. In 1896 the United States Bureau of Labor issued a second bulletin on con-vict labor, and another in 1905. In 1923 the latest bulletin on convict labor was issued by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. 4 4 The reports for 1905 and 1923 devote considerable space to the effect on free industry of competition of convictmade goods, setting forth an array of evidence which leaves no doubt that prison industries, by underselling, by dumping, by false labeling, by unfair advertising, by unscientific accounting, by brutal treatment of labor, and by bad management, have been able to take advantage of free industry to the detriment of both labor and capital. The evidence presented is not confined to any one system of production, distri-bution, or management. It persists under the State-Use, the Public Ac-count, and the Public Works and