Quite likely you thought massive prison populations used as cheap labor were some sort of medieval tradition. Nope. Here’s an article that debunks that misconception and informs you about many other things I (and perhaps you) didn’t know about prisoners as cheap labor.
Locking Down an American Workforce Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman wrote for TomDispatch 19 April 2012, Prison Labor as the Past — and Future — of American “Free-Market” Capitalism,
Penal servitude now strikes us as a barbaric throwback to some long-lost moment that preceded the industrial revolution, but in that we’re wrong. From its first appearance in this country, it has been associated with modern capitalist industry and large-scale agriculture.
So where and when did it come from?
As it happens, penal servitude — the leasing out of prisoners to
private enterprise, either within prison walls or in outside workshops, factories, and fields — was originally known as a “Yankee invention.”
First used at Auburn prison in New York State in the 1820s, the system spread widely and quickly throughout the North, the Midwest, and later the West. It developed alongside state-run prison workshops that produced goods for the public sector and sometimes the open market.
A few Southern states also used it. Prisoners there, as elsewhere, however, were mainly white men, since slave masters, with a free hand to deal with the “infractions” of their chattel, had little need for prison. The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery would, in fact, make an exception for penal servitude precisely because it had become the dominant form of punishment throughout the free states.
In case you’ve never read it or have forgotten, here is the Thirteenth Amendment (emphasis added):
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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to create confusion & stalling in the hopes regular GOP delegates have to leave for other commitments & they can then vote themselves in as delegates. Ron Paul cannot win the GOP nomination so they are attempting to hijack the system to put their delegates in hoping to be able to vote for RP at the national convention. Whether or not one agrees with their methods the fact is at the Lowndes County GOP Convention the RP people were clearly outnumbered by what they call the establishment (those who pay dues & work all year for the party). If the “establishment” had wished to do so we could have out voted them on each and every individual delegate position so that they had zero delegates. Instead they were generously allowed a more than fair number of delegate slots in an effort to have a compromise. If there appears to be some impatience from those in charge it was because the RP participants were not cognitive of the fact they were arguing a moot point that could have gone against them if pursued. The video also does not tell you that some of the RP Libertarian values are so attractive to liberal Democrats that a large group of Democrats have joined the RP forces, calling themselves Blue Republicans, in an effort to aid the RP hijacking of the GOP conventions. The RP participants are aware of these Blue Republicans because they communicate with & encourage each other. I have spoken with RP delegates who participated in the county convention who agreed that they could have been totally shut out for delegate nominations per the number ratio. I’m confused about from who & why this video is surfacing now when the convention was back in March and at least some of the more intelligent RP participants acknowledged they were treated more fairly than could have been the outcome. In hind sight many wish they had encouraged individual voting to be pursued, thus eliminating all RP delegates, since the compromise was not appreciated.
