4. Reclamation of lands, public works, farm labour, buildings, carpentry, and smith work are therefore most suitable; and the more domestic industries—tailoring, shoemaking, and house service—the least so.
One of the chief reasons which caused the total discontinuance of transportation, was the departure in practice from Earl Grey's principle of sending out men previously trained on public works. West Australia complained that the compact was broken by sending shoemakers and tailors she didn't want, instead of bridge and roadmakers, which she did; and at Lord Kimberley's late Commission, Major Griffiths, Governor at Millbank (in Q. 3,421) points out the difficulty of prisoners thoroughly mastering those domestic trades already overstocked.
A first-sight view of the achievements of penal labour in the last few years might indicate that the detailed organization my axiom demands could be readily developed. Witness the following results in England. The new prison at Wormwood-Scrubs, intended to supersede Millbank, has been entirely completed by convict labour, including a large part of the manufacture of the material. They made the bricks from their own brick-clay upon the spot, also the concrete; the stone, sent them from the convict quarries at Portland, they dressed themselves; with their own steam saw they prepared the woodwork, save a portion done at Millbank by the convicts there; all the masonry, iron-work, and carpentry was the work of their own convicts on the spot. The magnitude of this work may be partly conceived when we consider that Millbank, which it is to supersede, cost the country £495,000. At Portsmouth, besides the work at the basins and the fortifications, the convicts had in fourteen years turned out 173,000,000 of bricks made from their own brick-clay. Mr. Wood, the Admiralty Civil Engineer, superintending the convict labour there, told the Commission he was then providing 30,000,000 for the War Department at Aldershot, adding that their clay excavations had turned out a gold mine. At Chatham dockyard the convicts have constructed one half the factory basin, nearly all the fitting-out basin, all the locks, a sea-wall, and embankment; they have made all the bricks themselves—the convicts managing the four machines from which they had made five millions each. At Portland, in addition to the vast excavations at their famous quarries, from which 2,000 tons per day are sent over to the breakwater, Mr. Clifton, the Governor, says (in Q. 2,255):—
"At the present moment I am executing a very large amount of beautiful carved stone-work for the Duke of Connaught's new palace at Bagshot; every bit of stone is being dressed by convicts. It has been perfectly marvellous to see the desire which has been shown by well-disposed convicts who have been employed in the work, to complete their education in stone-dressing, so as to fit themselves for obtaining employment of a superior kind when discharged." And at Q. 2,292—"We are now doing all the castings for the coastguard stations throughout England, all their fire-places and stoves."
At Dartmoor, under specially unfavourable conditions of climate and altitude, 1,000 acres of boggy mountain land have been reclaimed. Then, in the separate confinement prisons at Pentonville, hammocks
