One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928

One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866-1928. By Matthew J. Mancini. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996. xi, 283 pp. $34.95. ISBN 1-57003-083-9.

Matthew Mancini examines the implementation, continuation, and demise of convict leasing in the South. In his first chapter, he places the southern convict lease system within a larger framework by comparing and contrasting it with practices in Australia, Siberia, and on Sakhalin Island. Mancini also analyzes slavery and helotry in ancient Greece and concludes that slavery (associated with Athens) could be found in "more advanced societies" (p. 35), whereas helotry (associated with Sparta) appeared in the more "archaic." Mancini then contends that the southern convict lease system was comparable to helotism and was a regression from the antebellum slave system. After the Civil War, Mancini writes, "the South, insofar as it adopted convict leasing, moved in a direction opposite not merely to that of the North's expanding industrial capitalism, but even to its own 'progressive' prewar labor system" (p. 36). Furthermore, Mancini concludes that the convict lease system was worse than slavery because lessees, who had no capital investment in the convicts, had little regard for their lives.

Examining the convict lease system from a labor standpoint, Mancini describes how convicts were categorized as first-, second-, and third-class hands-the same system used to describe antebellum slaves. He shows how the gang and task systems from slave times were combined in the convict camps, particularly those engaged in farming, mining, brick making, and turpentining. Convicts suffered harsh physical punishment, but lessees also used positive incentives, such as giving convicts free time or pay for work performed above the assigned task. In analyzing various economic components such as commodity market prices, Mancini debunks two myths: that labor shortages necessitated the use of convicts, and that convict labor depressed the wages of free workers. Comparing the efficiency of convict and free labor, Mancini maintains that "convicts worked more to produce far less than free workers" (p. 58). He asserts that many lessees were willing to use convict labor in spite of its low productivity, however, because it was reliable.

In a state-by-state analysis, Mancini chronicles the gross corruption involved in convict leasing and reveals that lessees in some states (Mississippi and Louisiana primarily) paid only a portion or even none of the money specified by the contract. Even more compelling is the disclosure that in some instances (Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama) restrictions placed on convict use were completely ignored. The state of Mississippi went so far as to abolish the lease in 1890, yet the system persisted.

One wishes that Mancini had spent some time analyzing how the political influence of lease holders made circumvention of the law possible. For example, Mancini could have more clearly explained the political connections of Louisianan S. L. James, a long-term lessee, who successfully ignored an 1875 law that prohibited employment of convict laborers outside the penitentiary and also refused to pay the monies specified in his contract. When the district attorney in Baton Rouge sued James for failure to pay, he ignored the suit. The author states that "Under pressure from the executive branch, the suit was not pursued, and James actually made no payments for six years" (p. 147). Is there evidence to indicate why S. L. James exercised such political power?

Mancini's final chapter is a bibliographical essay that addresses the problems with early scholarship on the convict lease system. According to the author, the tone of these works is "one of outraged humanity" (p. 216). Most authorities cited humanitarian issues as reasons for the abolition of convict leasing-a rationale Mancini disputes. Using Georgia as a case study, he correctly observes that for forty years before the lease system was abandoned there, cries of indignation emanated from various entities within the state. He asserts that economics-market pressures increasing the price of lease contracts over the years-was the primary reason for the demise of the convict lease system. Secondary causes were the Panic of 1907 and the discovery of "the cost-effectiveness of the chain gang" (p. 225).

Mancini's exemplary monograph, the first to examine the convict leasing system throughout the South, will likely become the standard work on the topic. Mancini has synthesized the secondary sources on convict leasing and sifted through voluminous primary materials in numerous state archives and university collections. One note of warning he sounds is that federal and state records must be used cautiously because of the methods of classifying labor used during the late nineteenth century.

MARY ELLEN WILSON

Middle Georgia College

Copyright University of Alabama Press Apr 1998
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