ought, if their labor was conducted with the same prudence, to realise to the State an annual revenue of nearly $70,000. Your committee can not restrain the cheering anticipations, that your honorable body will promptly adopt some means, by which so splendid a result may, if possible, be realised. An amount like this, added to the Common School fund annually, for the mental and moral improvement of the children of the poor and honest mechanic, would soon silence the complaints of competition with convict labor, and would essentially contribute, in the course of a single generation, to render State prisons, as an abode for our own citizens, comparatively speaking, but of trifling necessity. But to return from this degression, the committee are informed that the labor of the convicts at the Weathersfield prison is also entirely hired to contractors; and that stone-cutting is the principal branch of business carried on there. The committee believe that Mr. Wiltse, the agent at Mount-Pleasant prison, is indefatigable in the discharge of his duties towards the State; that he exerts his best efforts and judgment to render the operations of the institution profitable; in a word, that he does as well as any other gentleman could do, conducting the business upon its present plan of management. But had we not already experienced the unprofitable results, theory itself would seem to dictate the inexpediency of putting under the sole direction of one man, however capable, not only the government of an establishment so extensive, but the duties of procuring materials, making the contracts for, as well as directing the labor of, upwards of 800 men. It is, in the opinion of the committee, more than one man can do, and do well. The committee believe that, to promote the interests of the State, the Agent and his assistant keepers should have nothing to attend to but to enforce the discipline of the prison; and let the contractors bring their materials and direct the manner in which the work is to be done. If gentlemen skilled in the business shall find it to their interest to use the marble from the quarries of the State, let it be sold to them at à reasonable price; but let us no longer be told of the necessity of throwing away the labor of the convicts upon marble from our own quarries, when we can scarcely induce purchasers to take it from us at the expense of quarrying.

In connection with these suggestions the committee submit the answers of the Agent, Mr. Wiltse, to various questions propounded by us; giving his views upon the several subjects therein embraced.

The questions and answers are here to annexed, marked A; which, together with the report of the Inspectors, furnish all the information which the committee are enabled to present to your honorable body, upon this branch of the duties assigned to them.

The committee would also beg leave to call the attention of your honorable body to the provision of the Revised Statutes, (vol. 2, page 761,) as to the appointment of keepers and assistant keepers. By the law the Agent at Mount-Pleasant has the sole power of appointing those officers, whilst that power is lodged in the hands of the Inspectors at Auburn. The committee can not comprehend any good reason for this distinction between the two institutions; and, upon principle, they consider the Agent an unnecessary, as well as an indiscreet depository of the appointing power. The committee are fully persuaded, from the nature of the duties of those officers, that they ought to be entirely independent of each other.

The only remaining branch of our duties is anxiously to solicit the attention of your honorable body to the deplorable condition of our female State convicts. If there be upon the escutcheon of our State pride and greatness a stain of reproach deeper than all the rest, it is our too great neglect of this class of miserable beings. The subject has been brought before the Legislature from time to time, and as often deferred or defeated; whilst a very considerable number of our fellow beings were actually in a condition, which to witness could not but make the heart of the most indifferent towards his species to bleed; whilst, if a citizen of New-York, his soul would sink beneath the load of shame, at the degraded exhibition. The bill providing for the erection of a separate prison, for female convicts, has been already introduced into the Senate, and the able report of the standing committee upon State prisons, of that body, for this year, as well as the last, renders it unnecessary that the committee should recapitulate what is therein set forth. It will be perceived, by the report of the Inspectors of the Auburn prison, that they have, during the last season, employed a matron to superintend that class of the convicts confined there, with very gratifying success. Miss Foot, the lady who was engaged in this employment, gave the committee the most pleasing assurances of the improvement of this unfortunate class of prisoners, since this new arrangement, and expresses her strong belief that, by enforcing a proper discipline among them, with the aid of moral instruction, most, if not all of them, might be [Assem. No. 199.]

brought to a proper sense of their situation, and their vicious and abominable propensities in a great measure corrected, if not entirely eradicated. The order and discipline which had been introduced in the short period of Miss Foot's superintendence, when contrasted with the loathsome spectacle exhibited by those at Bellevue, was sufficient at once to satisfy the most careless observer of the necessity of making arrangements forthwith to put them under the charge of competent matrons; and the committee would beg leave most earnestly to solicit the early action of the Legislature, in providing a suitable building for their reception, where the prison discipline, so far at least as solitary confinement and the prohibition of conversation extend, may be rigidly enforced. The committee deem it unnecessary for them to express any opinion as to the location of such an establishment. The expense of erecting one, sufficiently large to answer all supposeable exigencies, would be but trifling, compared with the immense blessings which we believe would assuredly follow. A healthy location, in the neighborhood of some benevolent village or city, whose inhabitants would feel an interest in the mental and moral improvement of these degraded beings, is, in our opinion, the principal object, connected with which, if the location was such as to furnish profitable employment for the prisoners, the pecuniary interests of the State would be advanced. And in dismissing this branch of the subject, the committee most earnestly hope that New-York will no longer suffer herself to be so justly rebuked by her sister States for her delinquency, in this particular.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

I. R. VAN DUZER,

WM. SEYMOUR,

R. D. DODGE,

Committee.

Questions to, and Answers of, Robt. Wiltse, Esq., Agent, &c., referred to in the preceding report.

QUESTIONS.

1st. What number of men has been employed in the various shops respectively, (exclusive of the stone-cutting,) on an average, since you have been Agent?

2d. What has been the expense of stock furnished to each shop? 3d. What has been the amount of receipts for work sold from the above shops?

N. B. Please note the average of receipts for each man thus employed.

Will Mr. Carmichael please give us an estimate of what the building at the prison during the past year would have cost upon contract, in which he will please state the dimensions of the various buildings put up? In this, Mr. Lent's opinion is also request

ed.

Please furnish an estimate of the average daily earnings of the convicts engaged in furnishing the stone under the contract with the French church.

Mr. Wiltse will please furnish the same under the contracts with Stevens.

In the above statements, please to give as succinct a statement of the particulars upon which the estimates are founded, as may be practicable.

ANSWERS.

There was charged to individuals for work done and delivered, in the blacksmith and lock shop, during the months of October and November, $2,123.91. Deduct for cost of materials used in said work, $776.39, leaving for the earnings of the men, averaging 45 during the two months, $1,347.52, which is 57c. per day per man for their labor.

During the same time there was charged to Gary & Cogdell, for work done and delivered, in the shoe shop, $750.95; deduct shoe thread, &c. $13.50, leaving for the earnings of the men, averaging 48 during the two months, $737.45, which is 30c. per day per man for their labor. In this shop the men earn considerably more in the summer season.

These shops are the only ones where mechanical branches are carried on, except the stone-cutters' shops.

About the middle of November, I commenced the coopering business in its various branches, and have now about 50 men thus employed; but as they are all new hands, and have yet to learn the trade, I cannot at this time make a correct estimate as to their proba

ble earnings; they are to work by the piece, all the stuff to be found by the contractor. In the course of the winter it is my intention to increase the number at this business to 100 men. At the prices we are to have, I have no doubt they will earn from 35 to 40c. per day each.

During the past year we have had on an average of 156 men in pounding rubble stone, quarrying and cutting rail-road blocks, loading the same on board of vessels during the year, (deducting the time stopped in consequence of the cholera,) leaves 248 working days for 156, is 38,688 days' work, for which I have received $14,500, equal to 39c. per day per man. Many of those thus employed, were the infirm, lame, &c. of the prison.

It is proper here to remark, that the number of shoe makers, blacksmiths and locksmiths, were not the same during the whole of the preceding year. The calculation with them only embraces the two months of October and November. They will, I think, improve, so as to make their average earnings 35 to 40c. per day, another year.

The average employment of the convicts for the year past, has been as follows:

The large amount of orders for cut marble contracted by my predecessor, and left unfinished, (which I have since mostly completed) together with the want of shop room, and the length of time necessary to instruct so great a number of men in the various mechanical branches, has prevented my getting as many thus employed as I would have done under different circumstances.

I was appointed agent, 1st November, 1830; at that time we had 770 prisoners, and not over 25 or 30 at work, for sale, at mechanichal branches, other than stone-cutters. In one year from that time, we received an increase of 232 actual gain, making our number, 1st November, 1831, 1,002 men. This enormous increase was occasioned, in part, by the great addition of our prison district, which was done to relieve Auburn prison, as they had more