Convicts to Pave the Way?
Walla Walla's Commercial Club debates a new state law to employ penitentiary inmates in road construction.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Road matters in general and the employment of convict labor as provided for in an act passed by the last legislature were questions of importance members of the Commercial Club discussed at a meeting at the city hall last night. In the matter of employing convict labor, Senator Reser, author of the bill, was invited to address the club and stated that the new law provides that all convicts confined in the state penitentiary at Walla Walla may be employed under authority of the state board of control in the crushing or preparation of rock for roads or streets. Senator Reser proposed purchasing a suitable quarry and using a monster traction engine to haul crushed rock to nearby county roads. City Attorney Blandford, however, cautioned that rock roads often 'ravel' and suggested that sprinkling roads with crude petroleum, as done in California, might be a superior and cheaper solution. Ex-Governor Moore, supporting the initiative, suggested that building an experimental mile of rock road would solve the debate for all time, while also providing meaningful labor for the incarcerated.
“The farmers of the state might devote a little of the time spent in denouncing railroads to improving their roads.”
This debate highlights the early 20th-century obsession with infrastructure 'boosterism' and the reliance on captive labor to achieve it. Today, the tension between state-led industrial solutions and local environmental or fiscal concerns remains a constant in Washington's transit policy.
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