ranker
than ever ; so much so that m 1858 government again declared the contract annulled, and took forcible pos- session of the premises. The lieutenant-governor was made ex-officio warden, with a full staff, and the keys delivered to him. The assiijnee brougfht suit for dam- ages which was sustained by the supreme court. A compromise was agreed upon, but the state failed to meet its obligation. At last, in 1860, to get rid of him, a bonus was paid the assignee, since which time, if we except several extensive escapes, state-prison management has steadily improved.
Prison discipline, penitentiary science, uniting with the system of reformatory efforts, are of late begin- ning. The castle donjons of the feudal barons had improved but little when civilization had largely ad- vanced in other directions. The eighteenth century had well-nio:h o:one before Howard made his famous expose of the wretched condition of prisons in England and Wales, and the great Milll^ank penitentiary, mod- eled by Jeremy Bentham, had not been built more than thirty years when the grounds at Quintin Point were laid out; so that California, although the young- est of the great societies, is not so far behind the rest of the world in this regard as might be imagined.
In almost all modern prisons industrial labor has taken the place of purely penal labor, such as the crank, shot-drill, and treadmill. All well-managed prisons are now self-supporting, or more than self- supporting Each prisoner, immediately he is incarcerated, whether in a state penitentiary or a county prison, should be put to work. Jails should not be conducted upon the free-boarding- house principle, but convicts should be made to earn their living, or as nearly so as possible. There are things useful that even children can do ; and if the food of the prisoner depended somewhat upon his earnings, it might tend to sharpen his wits over use- ful work.
