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GLOBALISATION AND KOREAN FOREIGN INVESTMENT
To Sara and Chang-Hee
with love
Globalisation and Korean
Foreign Investment

'Edited by
JOHN A. TURNER
University of Surrey
YOUNG-CHAN KIM
University of London
First published 2004 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge


2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

©John A. Turner and Young-Chan Kim 2004


John A. Turner and Young-Chan Kim have asserted their moral right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 2004007701

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes
correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

ISBN 13: 978-0-815-38924-8 (hbk)


ISBN 13: 978-1-351-15736-0 (ebk)
Contents

List of Figures vii


List of Tables viii
List of Contributors x
Acknowledgements xi

1 Introduction: Interpreting the Idea of a Global Economy 1


John Turner and Young-Chan Kim
2 The Theory of Korean Foreign Direct Investment 17
Young-Chan Kim and Yongrok Choi
3 Paradoxes of Globalisation: Some Thoughts on a Much 39
Abused Concept
Carlos A . P. Machado
4 Global Capitalism and the Asian Financial Crisis 60
DouglasJ. Sikorski
5 Korean Direct Investment in EU: Global Koreanisation 81
Judith Cherry
6 Inward Foreign Direct Investment Policy and Practice: an 106
Anglo-Korean Comparison
John Turner and Young-Chan Kim

7 Globalisation or De-Globalisation: What Role for the World 134


Trade Organisation?
Stephen Young and Thomas L. Brewer
VI Globalisation and Korean Foreign Investment
8 Whither Global Capitalism? 153
John Dunning

Bibliography 192
Index 204
List of Figures
2-1 Foreign Direct Investment vs. Export toward N. America 19
2-2 Production Decision by Factor Analysis 20
2-3 Foreign Direct Investment vs. Export toward S. Asia 23
2-4 Synthesis of Foreign Direct Investment theories 25
2-5 Foreign Direct Investment Trend by Invested Total 27
Amount and Projects
2-6 Foreign Direct Investment Trend by Industry 30
2-7 Foreign Direct Investment by Industry 31
2-8 Foreign Direct Investment by Manufacturing Type 32
2-9 Foreign Direct Investment by Region 33
2-10 Foreign Direct Investment Trend by Size 34
2-11 Foreign Direct Investment by Equity Ratio 35
5-1 The Business Environment and Korean Government 98
Policy 1963-1986
5-2 Changes in the Business Environment and 99
Korea Government Policy 1987-1996
6-1 IBB Organisation Chart in 2000 124
6-2 KISC Organisation Chart in 2000 125
8-1 The Institutions of Global Capitalism 162
8-2 Market 164
8-3 Intermediate Associations 167
8-4 Government 171
8-5 Supra-National Entities 175
8-6 The Moral Understanding of the Global Capitalism 180
Diamond
8-7 Illustrations of Three Perceived Ways in which Global 185
Capitalism Might Fail
List of Tables
4- 1 Pre-Crisis Current Account Balances 63
5-1 Korean Foreign Direct Investment, 1968-1996 82
5-2 Korean Foreign Direct Investment: By Sector, 1968-1979 84
5-3 Korean Foreign Direct Investment: By Region, 1968- 85
1979
5-4 Korean Foreign Direct Investment: By Sector, 1980-1985 86
5-5 Korean Foreign Direct Investment: By Region, 1980- 87
1985
5-6 Korean Foreign Direct Investment: By Sector, 1986-1996 90
5-7 Korean Foreign Direct Investment: By Region, 1986- 91
1996
5-8 Korean Foreign Direct Investment in the EU and the 95
World, Annual Growth Rates, 1968-1996
6-1 Inward Foreign Direct Investment by Industrial Sector 109
1962-1972
6-2 Inward Foreign Direct Investment by Industrial Sector 111
1973 -1978
6-3 Foreign Loans and Direct Investment 1959-1980 113
6-4 Foreign Direct Investment: Liberalisation Status, 1980- 116
November 1992
6-5 Foreign Direct Investment on an Arrival Basis 1962-1990 117
6-6 Foreign Direct Investment by High-Technology Foreign 120
Companies in Korea
6- 7 Inward Foreign Direct Investment Proportions by 122
Country
7- 1 The Uruguay Round - Investment Related Agreements 138
7-2 The World Trade Organisation and Globalisation - Areas 139
of Inquiry
7-3 Summary Features of Uruguay Round Agreements 140
Relevant to Investment-Related Issues
7-4 Trend Over Time in Number of GATT and World Trade 142
Organisation Dispute Cases
7-5 Selected Patterns of World Trade Organisation Dispute 143
Cases, January 1 ,1995-December 31 1998
L ist of Tables ix
8-1 Feature of Three Stages of Market Based Capitalism 157
8-2 Some Indices of Globalisation 158
8-3 Cause of Global Capitalism 159
8-4 Three Possible Future Scenarios of Global Capitalism 161
8-5 The Governance of Global Capitalism 162
8-6 The Impact of Global Capitalism on the Role of 174
National and Sub-National Governments
8-7 What are the particular Moral Virtues which a 181
Knowledge and Alliance Based Globalising Economy
Demands?
8-8 Illustrations of Four ‘Failures’ of Global Capitalism as 187
Revealed in the Case of Recent Economic Events in
Seven Countries
List of Contributors

Thomas L. Brewer, Copenhagen Business School

Judith Cherry, Sheffield University

Yongrok Choi, Inchon University

John Dunning, Reading and Rutgers University

Young-Chan Kim, Royal Holloway, University of London

Carlos A. P. M achado, Universidade de Minho

Douglas J. Sikorski, National University of Singapore

John Turner, University of Surrey

Stephen Young, University of Strathclyde


Acknowledgements
The editors are pleased to acknowledge the support of the Embassy of the
Republic of Korea, especially Dr. Ra, Chong-11 and of the Rt. Hon. Lord
Parkinson for the conference at which early drafts of some of the papers were
discussed, and the support of the Economic and Social Research Council for
the research underpinning Chapter 6.
They also acknowledge the forbearance of Brendan George and Caroline
Court at Ashgate, C. H. Kang for editing support, and of our contributors.
Our families, as ever, have been sympathetic to the disruptions caused by
globalised study.
1 Introduction: Interpreting
the Idea of a Global
Economy
JOHN TURNER AND YOUNG-CHAN KIM

The global economy at the beginning of the 21st century can seem like a man
caught half way up a cliff - he cannot go up, he cannot go back, but if he stays
where he is he will die.1 This book has grown from a vigorous seminar on
‘globalisation and de-globalisation’, which was first prompted by a shared
interest in the impact of the 1997 Asian economic crisis. Trying to understand
the impact of this severe shock to global expectations of smoothly
accelerating prosperity, the participants began to combine a direct, evidence-
based analysis of current activity with a more profound and reflective analysis
of long-term change. Since the group included a politician and a diplomat as
well as academic economists, political scientists, management specialists and
historians, the debate was lively and eclectic. The resulting volume will irritate
purists in any of these disciplines.
‘Globalisation’ is as enveloping and imperialist a word as ‘progress’ - a
concept which in some quarters it has almost come to subsume. Carlos
Machado in his essay below on the paradoxes of globalisation anatomises the
dozens of definitions and half-definitions which scholars have used
promiscuously in the last fifteen years. A common feature is the belief that
there has been a huge change in degree, and possibly in kind, of long-distance
and trans-national trade which generates ‘the process whereby the population
of the world is increasingly bonded into a single society’ with a common
culture and common values (Kilminster, 1997, citing Albrow, 1992). One
might observe that this is a state of becoming, not of being, as witness the
frequent small genocidal wars in which both sides fight with Kalashnikov
rifles bought on the open international market. If the establishment of a
‘single society’ is globalisation, it has not yet come about; the ‘end of history’
(Fukuyama, 1992) has not quite happened; and there is a lot of work still to do
in the historical analysis of the underlying processes. This introductory paper
sets out some of the problems in a long historical context, notes the variety of
interpretation (of both past and future) which this long-run perspective
permits, and indicates how the rest of the book seeks either to answer or re­
state the issues raised.
2 Globalisation and Korean Foreign Investment
Globalisation as history
Let us take as a fixed point on a very uncertain map the proposition that the
historical changes we are examining are principally described, if not
determined, by economic change. A stylised history of the last three thousand
years would probably emphasise that human communities at the beginning of
the period acquired most of the means of subsistence within a very small area.
Over time the development of transport and of stable governmental systems
over larger areas of the world made it possible to increase the proportion of
material needs which were acquired from long distances. Evidence for
prehistoric trade in low-bulk, high-value items over thousands of kilometres
merely emphasises the small proportion of life’s necessities which could be
acquired in that way. A presupposition of the globalisation thesis is that
industrialisation made it possible to generate larger surpluses above
subsistence, and to transport of this surplus over longer distances in greater
bulk. The result was a global division of labour in which certain areas had a
comparative advantage in primary production and others in industrial
manufacture; a complex international economy grew up to engineer the
exchange of needs between the two areas. Thus by the end of the 19th century,
the leading European industrial nations were importing a high proportion of
their basic foodstuffs and raw materials, and exporting manufactured goods in
return. At the same time there was a high volume of trade between
industrialised countries, and an international capital market which allowed the
large surpluses of industrial countries to be invested wherever the returns were
most attractive. National economies were highly interdependent, though
growth rates differed quite dramatically, and business cycles were as yet not
fully synchronised. While large areas of subsistence economy remained, even
in Europe, the process of economic globalisation was well under way by the
outbreak of war in 1914. Modem interpretations of the origins of that war
emphasise the struggle for position in a global economy, rather than the
‘European civil war’ which was how the conflict was routinely viewed in the
mid-twentieth century (Offer, 1989).
If this stylised history is extended into the 20th century, it conventionally
recognises that the Great War was a major setback to globalisation.
International trade collapsed and did not recover in volume until 1980s. The
free movement of capital was also restricted by the war and the post-war
financial settlements on reparations and war debts, and by the appearance of
political regimes in Europe from the 1920s onwards which preferred autarky
to an open trading system. World War II, followed in short order by the Cold
War, did little to help. The aspirations of the post-war setdement, from the
Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 to the establishment of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947, were towards an open
international financial and trading system. The practicalities were different.
The Bretton Woods system established the dollar as a freely exchangeable
Introduction: Interpreting the Idea o f a Global Economy 3
international currency only where other, largely political factors did not restrict
the free movement of goods and capital. The GATT system took decades to
chip away at an immense structure of protective devices erected by
industrialised countries. Comecon cut off Eastern Europe from free trade
with the rest of the world; the European Free Trade Area was clearly intended
to restrict the freedom of trade with countries outside Europe, as was the
European Common Market.
Ostensibly the climate only began to change in the 1980s. Restrictions on
capital export, which most countries had maintained since World War II,
began to relax. Serious efforts were made to create regional free trade areas.
The creation of a Single European Market (SEM) by the process culminating
in the 1992 Maastricht treaty was perhaps the clearest example of a real free
trade area being created out of an institution which had only been pretending
for 30 years. The emergence of the North American Free Trade Area
(NAFTA), at the instigation of the United States (US), was somewhat more
ambiguous since it was far from an agreement between equals. The collapse of
the Soviet sphere of influence promised to allow Eastern Europe and Russia
back into the international economic community, while the steady ‘reform’ of
the Chinese economy promised that it, too, would soon be participating fully.
At the same time capital movement was encouraged by the development of
global financial markets relying on improved telecommunications to trade
effectively across national and regional borders. Not only were financial
institutions legally allowed to operate internationally, they increasingly had
access to communication and information flows which allowed them to do so
profitably.
Alongside the rather spasmodic re-emergence of the political and financial
conditions for a globalised economy, the growth of multinational enterprises
(MNEs) has made sure that more and more business will be done across
national boundaries, though it coincidentally made it much more difficult to
observe the volume or nature of that business. MNEs can move goods, and
increasingly services, across the world, seeking the best location for
manufacture and for sourcing raw materials, semi-manufactured goods and
finance. Those authors who were warning ominously in the 1970s of a
growing ‘meso-economy’ in which international corporations would have
grown larger, more powerful and more deadly than nation states have certainly
not yet been proved wrong (Holland, 1975: 44—94). The cultural impact of
MNEs, especially those with interests in consumer goods and consumer
services, has also been prominent: the idea of an international brand, be it
Coca-Cola, Sony, or Windows 2000, clearly strengthens the idea of a global
market without borders.
Thus the stylised history arrives at the beginning of the 21st century and
changes gear from history to futurology. What faces the world economy is not
a cross-roads, with two contrasting paths to follow into clearly different
4 Globalisation and Korean Foreign Investment
futures, but a spectrum of possible futures in which any of the conflicting
trends of the last century might become dominant, and thus determine the
future. At one extreme is the possibility that, notwithstanding a setback lasting
since 1914, the world economy is indeed set to become a single global market
in a ‘single society5, much as the creation of national markets in 18th and 19th
century European nations contributed to the making of national societies. At
the other extreme, the increasing scale and speed of cross-border transactions
might simply elicit new politico-economic blocs, such as the European
Union(EU), which will find themselves in the sort of supposedly
irreconcilable competition which interrupted the last thrust to globalisation in
1914. Awareness of the strong likelihood that the outcome will lie somewhere
between these two extremes does not help us very much to determine its most
likely shape.
We can, however, reflect usefully on the considerations which are likely to
set the direction of the future of global society. The first of these is the
interaction of the global economy and the nation state, both of which have
seen their definitional boundaries fray in the last three decades. The second is
the potentiality of the globalised economy to deliver steady and accelerating
per capita growth to a growing population. The third is the impact of global
economic change on the evenness of economic development across the
world: another of the welfare consequences of globalisation. The fourth is the
potentiality of a global economy to develop effective global institutions of
governance, or to create its own ‘civil society5: the World Trade Organisation
(WTO) has made an uncertain start as a governing institution, and the claim
that international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) can be the basis of
a ‘global civil society5is as yet unproven. The papers in this volume address all
but the second of these considerations, not to prophesy but to illustrate the
complexity and conflicting evidence which underpins the ‘facts on the ground5
which are themselves the stuff of prophecy.

Globalisation and the nation state


Late 20th century discussion of globalisation tended to take the nation state for
granted, while groping towards the realisation that more and more of the
phenomena which affect the lives and lifecycles of human beings are either
sub-national or supra-national in their focus. But the development of a global
market has taken place at the same time as the parallel development of the
nation state, which itself has been closely associated with the industrialising
societies of 18th and 19th century Europe and North America. Not for nothing
has the world economy been routinely described, in English at any rate, as the
‘international5 economy, for neither economists nor political scientists have
been able to think of a world economy without nations in it. Moreover, much
of the discussion of the impact of globalisation has centred on its propensity
Introduction: Interpreting the Idea o f a Global Economy 5
to weaken or damage the nation state or to provoke conflict between nation
states. It is therefore worth looking briefly at the long-run interaction between
the nation state and the world market.
Two long-run perspectives on the emergence of the nation state have
become established among historians, neither of which seriously
acknowledges the positioning of the nation state in a world economy. Writers
on the early modem period in Europe —roughly from the late 15th century to
the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century —have developed the idea of
the ‘military-taxation state’, whose origins lay in the need felt by ambitious
princes to develop taxation systems to fund their increasingly expensive
military expeditions. This culminated in the work of the ‘enlightened despots’
of the 18th century who erected large bureaucracies to collect taxes, organise
land reform, count populations, promote technical education and scientific
research, and stimulate industry, all in the interests of producing a larger,
stronger and more cohesive military forces. Save for the appearance that
economic growth has latterly become an end in itself rather than a means to
military expansion, there was not a little in common between the ambitions of
late 18th century Prussia, France and Austria and those of the ‘developmental
states’ of late 20th century Asia. The ‘military-taxation state’ was the
foundation of the governing institutions of the 19th century European state:
ministries of defence, police, finance, trade, and education grew up as
bureaucratic agents of the sovereign body, and could be agents just as well of
a republic or a constitutional monarchy as of an autocratic emperor.
The late 18th century great powers certainly knew what they were and
what they wanted, and their governments operated economic and social
policies accordingly. In outline, most were interested in developing
rudimentary human capital, either in the form of skilled workers or numerous
and healthy potential soldiers; most were interested in accumulating resources,
and thus tended to operate protective tariffs and ‘bullionist’ policies towards
international trade. Territorial acquisition, especially of areas rich in primary
resources, was more readily understood than the benefits of commerce. Spain,
Portugal, France, Britain and the Netherlands duly acquired areas of territory
outside Europe, principally in India and the Americas, and fought over it for
most of the 18th century. A practice of international relations which, if not
stable, was well understood was finally disrupted by the double impact of the
massive productivity growth of the late 18th century which allowed Britain to
increase its international trade dramatically, and the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic Wars between 1793 and 1815, which disrupted the European
states system.
At the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the victorious anti-French alliance
thought that it had thwarted the destructive and revolutionary processes
launched by the Jacobins and carried on by Napoleon Bonaparte and restored
the ancien regime,. In the event, though many aspects of the old order proved
6 Globalisation and Korean Foreign Investment
extremely robust, a new form of state was beginning to appear alongside
military-taxation states. The nineteenth century nation state was based on
claims about the right of ethnically and culturally homogenous groups to self-
determination. This right had first been asserted, with French support, against
the claims of the Austrian and Russian emperors to govern the diverse
populations of Central Europe. By emphasising the identity of the state with
its population - rather than its rulers - this was subversive of monarchical
government as much as it was destructive of the old empires. For all its
insurgent energy, this new political life-form took about a century to establish
itself as the dominant form of political organisation across Europe. The state
which most successfully established itself around the idea of ethnic
homogeneity was in fact not an insurgent: Prussia, an archetypal military-
taxation state, had by 1871 absorbed the overwhelming majority of German­
speaking territories outside Austria and reinvented itself as the German
Empire. But the dynamic appeal of the ‘ethno-political5 state strengthened
steadily. Greece established its independence of the Turkish Empire. Italy was
created from the remnants of three moribund regimes in the Italian peninsula,
and the Savoyard monarchy, which had brought about this risorgimento, set
about imposing a linguistic homogeneity to justify the creation of a nation­
state. France, after a number of false starts and a major military defeat at the
hands of Prussia in 1871, was consolidated under the Third Republic as a
major industrial power with an acute sense of national identity.
There was thus by the beginning of the twentieth century a ‘world order5
which encompassed the military and economic power, and the territorial
influence, of a small number of nation states, each of which supported a
subtly different relationship between ethnic coherence and political integration.
France, Germany, Italy and Japan were, at least in theory, ethnically coherent
nation-states; the Austrian, Russian and British empires were self-consciously
multi-national each with a metropole (Austria-Hungary had two) and a
dependent periphery; the US eschewed ethnicity altogether as a concept
justifying its existence and represented itself as a political system whose
members were all immigrants or the children of immigrants. What tied the
states into a system was a shared military technology and participation in an
international economy. The economic hegemony of the industrialised powers
and the openness of most of the non-industrialised world to trade created a
genuinely international economy in which raw materials, intermediates and
semi-manufactured goods were, with a few important exceptions, traded freely
across the planet. The attempts by nation states to control cross-border trade
or movement of economic migrants were important politically —in that the
maintenance of tariffs and other trade barriers appealed to nationalism and
xenophobia and won electoral support for some politicians in most of the
countries named - but they did little to inhibit the development of a genuine
economic interdependence amongst the industrialised powers and between
Introduction: Interpreting the Idea o f a G lobal Economy 7
the industrialised powers and the rest of the world, based on their mutual
needs for goods manufactured with comparative advantage and for food and
raw materials. A de facto adherence to a gold standard for international
payments created a stable framework for this international trade.
The world order of the first decade of the twentieth century was thus
arguably ‘globalised’ in a meaningful sense, which was palpably injured by the
political and economic outcome of World War I. In Europe the Paris Peace
Conference in 1919 deliberately created ethno-political states in place of the
Austro-Hungarian empire, but also created a system by which the new League
of Nations, through its ‘Mandates’, parceled up even more of the non-
European world in the empires of the victorious powers. Even more
destructive of the tendency to globalisation was the policy developed at the
Paris Economic Conference of 1916, at which France and Britain agreed to
maintain trade barriers against Germany after the war. The pursuit of
nationalist economic policies during the post-war recession sharply restricted
cross-border trade, despite the attempts by central bankers to develop
international economic institutions and practices which would create a stable
monetary environment for the international economy. Attempts to re-create
an international gold-based economy, led by Britain and the United States, fell
apart after the 1931 crash.
There was thus a considerable impetus to international economic reform
after the Second World War, but this could, and can, only be understood in
the context of political and military competition between nations and,
eventually, supra-national blocs. On the one hand, the global economy
acquired its own regulatory institutions and practices: the World Bank (a
development fund), the International Monetary Fund (a bank established to
be a lender of last resort for national central banks), and the GATT. On the
other hand, these institutions could only exist because of the enormous
economic power of the US, and their working assumptions were consistent
with the policy preferences of US governments. The US began to work on
free trade, in the sense of free access for American goods into other national
markets, during the war. American economic support for the British war
effort was conditional on a British promise to drop its trade barriers after the
war. American support for reconstructing European economies under the
1949 Marshall Plan was conditional on the adoption of liberal economic and
political policies by the beneficiaries. While it can be, and was, argued that this
was in die general interest of the receiving countries because such policies
would increase the total volume of trade and thus increase welfare, it was also
easy to represent it as American economic imperialism. Similar policies were
applied in occupied Japan after its postwar reconstruction and to a lesser
extent in Korea after the Korean war of 1951.
As a result there were at least two world economies for most of the last
half of the twentieth century, reflecting the political polarization of the Cold
8 Globalisation and Korean Foreign Investment
War. In the W est’ (which of course included much of East and South East
Asia and of Central and South America), national economies were conducted
as part of a world trading regime which preferred, but could not insist on,
steadily reducing tariffs and the reduction of non-tariff barriers to trade.
Within the ‘East’ (which included the Soviet bloc, China, and a few dependent
countries in Asia and the Americas), there was a good deal of international
trade which was controlled by governments and sometimes even by barter
arrangements rather than by tariffs. Trade between the two blocs was limited.
The less developed areas of Africa and South Asia were in the world economy
only to the extent that they participated asymmetrically in the production of
food and raw materials and the import of manufactured goods.
Even the Western economy of the late twentieth century differed
significantly from the globalised economy of a hundred years before. On the
one hand, national governments had retained their strongly interventionist
attitude to national economies, for reasons of domestic politics as much as
anything else. The Keynesian toolbox, superseded after the mid 1970s by the
Friedmanite toolbox, enabled and encouraged governments to tinker with the
growth rates of their national economies. Many nation states sought to
develop particular industries or areas of manufacturing capability, or to
protect those whose decline threatened social stability. In the US and within
the European Common Market, governments also protected agriculture,
largely for political reasons. All these interventions tended to dampen the
impact of the world economy on economic activity within states, and
contrasted strongly with the largely unfettered flows of food, raw materials,
manufactured goods and even traded services around the much smaller
‘international economy’ of the late nineteenth century. Another feature of the
nineteenth century international economy which was not fully replicated in the
latter twentieth century was the unfettered flow of human capital across
national borders. Immigration into the advanced industrial countries was
much more controversial than in the previous century, partly because it was
associated with the untidy dissolution of colonial empires, but its economic
impact was much smaller because of enforced restrictions intended to limit
‘economic migration’.
Another manifestation of difference was the role of the MNEs in a period
of growing industrial concentration. MNEs were an important part of the
international economy from the late nineteenth century onwards. As noted
above, Stuart Holland and other authors began to fear out loud in the 1970s
that MNEs would before too long be able to exercise more economic power
than national governments. Certainly there were already by that time a number
of MNEs with a turnover larger than many sovereign states, but the MNEs in
question were almost without exception American and the sovereign states
were still among the smallest. Nevertheless, for the time being, most MNEs
were clearly domiciled somewhere and operated within a particular national
Introduction: Interpreting the Idea o f a G lobal Economy 9
economic context. The largest were multinational producers of consumer
goods such as foodstuffs, consumer electronics or cars, and as such they were
often associated with international brands. limitations on capital export, and
sometimes on capital import, operated by most countries between 1945 and
the 1970s meant that new direct investment in plants or enterprises overseas
was difficult even for large companies. A characteristic example of an MNE
affecting a national economy would therefore be an American or British
company, probably established since long before World War II, taking
decisions about employment in its foreign subsidiary: plants in Liverpool or
Singapore would be closed by faceless men in Detroit or London, whose
offence was that they were foreign, often American, as much as that they were
not accountable to government. National governments often responded by
nationalist policies, creating and subsidizing ‘national champions’ in industries
thought to be critical to the prosperity or economic stability of the national
economy, and correspondingly pushing forward the interest of their ‘own’
multinationals in foreign investments.
In 1976 the OECD adopted a set of ‘guidelines for multinational
enterprises’, giving the following reasons:
Multinational enterprises now play an important part in the economies of
Member countries and in international economic relations, which is of increasing
interest to governments. Through international direct investment, such
enterprises can bring substantial benefits to home and host countries by
contributing to the efficient utilisation of capital, technology and human
resources between countries and can thus fulfil an important role in the
promotion of economic and social welfare. But the advances made by
multinational enterprises in organising their operations beyond the national
framework may lead to abuse of concentrations of economic power and to
conflicts with national policy objectives. In addition, the complexity of these
multinational enterprises and the difficulty of clearly perceiving their diverse
structures, operations and policies sometimes give rise to concern.2

The Guidelines were published in the middle of a period of global


transition catalysed by 1973 oil crisis, and also reflected widespread concern
about the impact of MNEs on employment rights and welfare in host
countries. The OECD could neither enforce its guidelines, despite the
establishment of a Committee on International Investment and Multinational
Enterprises (CIME) with business and trade union representation; nor could it
change the course of history, which flowed on much as predicted. At the end
of the century CIME reviewed the guidelines and concluded that MNEs, the
economic context, and national government behaviours had all changed.
MNES were more widespread; fewer of them were American; governments
tended to intervene in the economy in a different way; and in particular were
10 Globalisation and Korean Foreign Investment
more likely to welcome foreign direct investment (FDI) and to influence
business behaviour indirectly by setting the economic context, rather than by
direct regulation. More generally
Looking now at conditions today, over twenty years after adoption of the
Guidelines, we are faced from the very start with the phenomenon commonly
called ‘globalisation’, or, as it might better be called, ‘global integration.’ The
process is still uneven and asymmetrical, in terms of the countries and regions
involved as much as the particular economic sectors and industries. Still, it cannot
be gainsaid that it is increasingly bringing national economies closer together; the
world economy tends to function, not as an aggregation of discrete national
economies, but as a single economic system. The walls around national territories
that have historically allowed national economies to function in selective isolation
from one another and from the world market, thus lending effectiveness to
government measures of intervention in the economy, are now being lowered.
FDI is a most important element in this process and MNEs have been its
principal architects as well as beneficiaries.3

The OECD, and governments, had come to take more seriously the
potential of the MNE to move goods and services around the world quite
freely, using internal transfer prices to regulate the economic and fiscal
consequences. Where the balance of power had remained, broadly, with the
governments in 1976, by 1998 it was perceived to lie more with the MNEs,
and the concern was not simply about welfare and employment rights but
increasingly about the macro-economic impact of capital movements and the
impact of MNEs on the environment. An MNE which had its legal
headquarters in one country, its markets in many others, and its
manufacturing capacity distributed across another set of countries, some with
and some without large markets for its products, could be a formidably
complex institution to manage or to deal with. The concepts of ‘ownership’,
with a globally distributed body of shareholders, or ‘control’, with an executive
group drawn from any of a number of subsidiary companies and national
elites, are no longer what they were.
In that way, global integration has clearly eroded the autonomy of the
nation state with respect to its economic policy. It has also interacted
significantly with another cause of dilution of autonomy, the development of
international collaboration through economic blocs. Most restrictive
international trading agreements have been extremely porous, and the work of
GATT and its successor the WTO has tended in general to reduce the impact
of collaborative agreements between nations on the freedom of trade. The
major exception to this tendency has been the evolution of the EU into a
single market protected by a common external tariff. The EU began its life in
the post-war years with a political dynamic, driven by Franco-German
Introduction: Interpreting the Idea o f a Global Economy 11
determination to reduce the potential for conflict within Western and Anglo-
American desire to consolidate the western alliance against Russia, in both
cases using economic measures as instruments. Economic integration hardly
became an end in itself until 1986, when largely at the instigation of the British
government the creation of the Single European Market (SEM) was agreed.
The requirements of the SEM for harmonization and the removal of internal
non-tariff barriers to trade were formidable, and fulfilled a British agenda for
general economic liberalization. European states were much less able than
before to protect their domestic industries from competition from other
European states. This had the predictable result that rationalization within the
EU reduced the number and increased the size of firms in most capital-
intensive sectors; the former ‘national champions’ in the key areas of cars,
computers and pharmaceuticals ceased to exist, and even the defence and
aerospace sectors began to come together in collaboration over major projects.
More interesting for understanding ‘globalisation’ was the effect of the
SEM on inter-firm collaboration and direct investment across the tariff wall
around ‘Fortress Europe’. In many of the largest sectors of industry, the
potential size of the European market is now as great or greater than that of
the US, and enlargement of the Union will certainly make it so in even more
sectors before long. The rewards for entry into this market are
correspondingly high, but because of the competitive advantage of larger
capital-intensive European enterprises, the costs of entry are also extremely
high. The tariff barrier, as it was intended to do, tends to reduce the cost
advantage of manufacturing cheaply outside the EU in order to sell profitably
inside it. The opportunities and challenges for MNEs are enormous.
In that way, global integration has clearly eroded the autonomy of the
nation state with respect to its economic policy. It has also interacted
significandy with another cause of dilution of autonomy, the development of
international collaboration through economic blocs. Most restrictive
international trading agreements have been extremely porous, and the work of
GATT and its successor the World Trade Organisation has tended in general
to reduce the impact of collaborative agreements between nations on the
freedom of trade. The major exception to this tendency has been the
evolution of the European Union into a single market protected by a common
external tariff. The EU began its life in the post-war years with a political
dynamic, driven by Franco-German determination to reduce the potential for
conflict within Western and Anglo-American desire to consolidate the western
alliance against Russia, in both cases using economic measures as instruments.
Economic integration hardly became an end in itself until 1986, when largely
at the instigation of the British government the creation of the Single
European Market was agreed. The requirements of the SEM for
harmonization and the removal of internal non-tariff barriers to trade were
formidable, and fulfilled a British agenda for general economic liberalization.
12 Globalisation and Korean Foreign Investment
European states were much less able than before to protect their domestic
industries from competition from other European states. This had the
predictable result that rationalization within the EU reduced the number and
increased the size of firms in most capital-intensive sectors; the former
‘national champions’ in the key areas of cars, computers and pharmaceuticals
ceased to exist, and even the defence and aerospace sectors began to come
together in collaboration over major projects.
More interesting for understanding ‘globalisation’ was the effect of the
SEM on inter-firm collaboration and direct investment across the tariff wall
around ‘Fortress Europe’. In many of the largest sectors of industry, the
potential size of the European market is now as great or greater than that of
the United States, and enlargement of the Union will certainly make it so in
even more sectors before long. The rewards for entry into this market are
correspondingly high, but because of the competitive advantage of larger
capital-intensive European enterprises, the costs of entry are also extremely
high. The tariff barrier, as it was intended to do, tends to reduce the cost
advantage of manufacturing cheaply outside the EU in order to sell profitably
inside it. The opportunities and challenges for MNEs are enormous. There is
now a long history of inward investment from outside the EU generated by
major companies both from the major developed economies - the United
States and Japan - and from the developing economies of East and South
East Asia, intending to secure markets both for consumer goods and for
intermediate goods by manufacturing or assembling products within the
Union’s borders. The response from Europe has been mixed, varying from
the enthusiasm of Britain over a period of two decades to a distinct suspicion
on the part of French governments. Inward investment activities have been
wrapped around with complexities, as national governments and the EU itself
have worried about the cost and benefits of the investments themselves, the
relation between investment subsidies and competition policy, and the
requirement that goods manufactured within the tariff barrier should have a
specified proportion of ‘local content’ to ensure that the investment was not a
tool to frustrate the purpose of the common tariff.
Korea and Globalisation
In this new economic world order, the position of dynamic developing
economies is especially fluid. A small number of Asian economies grew so
rapidly after the oil crisis of the 1970s that until the middle 1990s these ‘Asian
tigers’ were being taken for a paradigm case of successful industrialisation and
modernisation. Most of them - particularly Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and
Korea — had political systems which were robusdy authoritarian though
otherwise very different from one another, and the most common
explanations of their success included the proposition that economic growth
Introduction: Interpreting the Idea o f a G lobal Economy 13
was best achieved by a ‘developmental state’ which undertook various
interventions which promoted successful private enterprise. This, though far
from liberal and very far indeed from the doctrines of free market capitalism,
was equally far from socialist planning, and the ‘tiger economies’ were
regarded respectfully if ruefully by the West during the Cold War period and
afterwards. Korea’s place in this pantheon was quite particular. As a country
which until the 1960s had been among the poorest in the world, its capacity to
develop large business enterprises with a global reach was remarkable. Its
particular path to prosperity was marked by its very specific role in
international diplomacy, its idiosyncratic politics and the unusual nature of its
business structures. Each of these had an important bearing on the way in
which Korea approached globalisation, which is the core theme of this book.
Korea’s international position in the late 20th century was a product first
of the Cold War and then of an emerging unipolar world order. The decision
by the United States and Great Britain to challenge the expansion of the
Communist regime in China by undertaking military action on the Korean
peninsula in 1950 was in some ways an accident of geography, but it had
profound effects. The United States became committed to the preservation of
a pro-Western regime in South Korea, spent heavily in supporting the South
Korean government and especially its armed forces, and encouraged the
development of anti-communist (and pro-capitalist) institutions and modes of
behaviour. Hostility between North and South Korea was reinforced as part
of this diplomatic pattern. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United
States identified North Korea as a ‘renegade state’ with its own nuclear
programme and willingness to give practical support to terrorist insurgency
against Western interests. This perception dominated American policies
towards North Korea, and significantly frustrated attempts by South Korean
politicians to bring about any form of reconciliation between the two Koreas,
in particular the ‘Sunshine Policy’ of Kim Dae Jung. Thus the regional policy
which Korea might wish to pursue is heavily influenced by supra-regional
politics.
At the same time, Korea has been an active participant in ASEAN and
regards itself as an important broker between China and the capitalist states in
the region. These relationships have influenced its economic and industrial
policy in recent years and will continue to do so. The domestic politics of
South Korea have also been remarkable by any standards. The post-war
regime of Rhee Syngman succeeded in retaining American support but failed
to deliver sustainable political stability or economic progress and was
overthrown by Park Jung-Hee in 1960 in the first of a series of military
insurrections which maintained an authoritarian politics until the 1990s. From
one point of view the post-1960 history of Korea can be assimilated to the
model of a military-led modernising state which was first promulgated by S.E.
Finer in The Man on Horseback in 1962. Not only the presidents, but also a large
14 Globalisation and Korean Foreign Investment
proportion of bureaucrats under successive regimes and constitutions were
former soldiers who relied on their military networks for political support as
well as looking to the armed forces to control the population and provide the
logistical and organisational resources to run the country.
The economic policies of these military elites were characterised by a
preference for a command economy and a strictly nationalist interpretation of
economic advantage. Korea’s rulers were also distrustful of civil society and
feared the economic power of businessmen even though they depended on it
to deliver the policies on which they had decided. To some extent, economic
policy shifted at the whim of changing leaders. Park favoured the promotion
of heavy industry in a protectionist environment. Chun Doo-Hwan, who took
power in a military coup in 1980 after Park’s assassination in 1979, made a
radical shift towards opening the economy, and his successor Roh Tae-Woo
made gestures towards liberalisation which were frustrated by bureaucratic
inertia and the resistance of the chaebol conglomerates which dominated the
Korean economy. Kim Young Sam, another creature of the military regime
though his achievement of the Presidency was ostensibly through democratic
election, came to power in 1993 under extreme pressure to liberalise the
economy further, in particular by opening up the service sector to foreign
investment. By the time he took Korea into the OECD in 1996, it had
become apparent that despite its predilection for control, the Korean
government was in fact incapable of managing its economy. Presidential
offices were unable to create the necessary culture change in entrenched
bureaucracies; the economy was too complicated for the effects of regulation
or deregulation to be predicted accurately and thus for effective control to be
exercised; and the private sector itself, though ostensibly heavily regulated,
was quite capable of ignoring the government and pursuing its own agendas.
A nation state which was, before 1997, struggling to develop towards a stable
polity, faced the period after 1997 with its capacity even further challenged by
the pressures of adaptation to a global economy.
It was Kim Young Sam who, in a rather arbitrary gesture, committed
Korea to a ‘globalisation policy’ in 1993. By all accounts he did so after
minimal consultation within government, and his way of achieving
globalisation was to deregulate industrial sectors to a strict timetable with little
regard for internal political sensibilities, though he prudendy left agriculture to
the last. As he gave way to his successor Kim Dae Jung, in the first truly
constitutional handover of power in Korean history resulting from a
democratic election, the government was assailed by complaints from
international investors and foreign governments alike that liberalisation was
still too slow, and the 1996—7 financial crisis struck a blow to the economy
and to Korean society which at last seemed likely to force it to globalise by
creating a widespread political emergency. Still the government found it
difficult to take on the internal opponents of change, and the vested interests
Introduction: Interpreting the Idea o f a G lobal Economy 15
of at least some of the chaebols ensured that radical reform was not achieved
in quite the sense expected by the IMF delegation, which confronted the new
president.
The chaebols themselves are the final element in the peculiarity of Korean
globalisation. The concentration of ownership in the Korean economy has
been one of its most striking features since the period of economic growth
began in the 1960s. The major chaebol groups are all based on individual or
family assets, built up by strong individuals who were obliged to work with
governments to secure business advantage or permission to operate. The
mutual interest of chaebol owners and the government officials who favoured
them was an important element in maintaining the protectionism which was
still in place in 1997. The largest groups such as Hyundai, Daewoo and
Samsung were extremely powerful, with diversified assets and considerable
financial strength. Most of the largest, whose origins lay in miscellaneous
trading and import businesses, had carefully followed the signals from
government from the 1960s onwards, investing first in heavy industry, then in
cars and consumer goods, finally in electronics and IT. Their forays abroad
were in pursuit of raw materials or of markets and were undertaken with
complex internal financing deals and the support of the Bank of Korea which
was in effect an agent of government policy. Heavy borrowing by the chaebols,
a patent lack of transparency in reporting the intra-group dealings of member
companies, and a failure to evaluate business risk contributed substantially to
the 1997 crisis. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that the Korean economy could
have moved as far or as fast as it did towards integration with the global
economy, had it not been for the willingness of the chaebols to invest in
everything from ship-building to semiconductors, to build up networks of
overseas subsidiaries in all the major economies, and to act aggressively to
penetrate overseas markets.
The articles in this book represent an attempt to get to grips with aspects
of the relationship between Korea and the process of globalisation in the last
decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st. It was, clearly, a
very particular form of engagement with the world, albeit with a process
which has by its very definition been regarded as one which was experienced
in common by the societies which participated in it. One must ask whether
Korea was, nevertheless, globalising differendy from other economies and
whether such an idea can be made meaningful. The concept of globalisation
itself requires some comment, and it is challenged here from different
directions by Carlos Machado, and by Stephen Young and Thomas L. Brewer.
Korea’s role and response is explored by Douglas Sikorski, Judith Cherry,
Yongrok Choi and Young-Chan Kim, and in an article by the editors. The
collection concludes with a general reflection by John Dunning, whose
authority to speak on global capitalism is unrivalled. On a subject such as this
there is no ‘final word’, and the globalisation of Korea over the next few years
16 Globalisation and Korean Foreign Investment
is quite capable of taking yet another different turn, or even turning back. If it
does, or if the globalisation of which we so lightly speak turns out, after all,
not to be an inevitable progressive march but a process which can be
interrupted as easily as it was in 1914 by a catastrophic international event,
Korea will face yet more difficulty and upheaval.

Notes
1 The image was used by Alan Paton in Cry, the Beloved Country, to describe the
agonising transition from apartheid to something better in South Africa. Unlike
Paton, I offer no moral prescription or commentary in this essay, but simply
acknowledge the difficulty of identifying a way forward from a situation of
extreme complexity.
2 OECD, The Declaration on International Investment and Multinational
Enterprises (Paris, 1976), Annexe 1.
3 Arghyrios A. Fatouros, The OECD Guidelines In A Globalising World,
OECD DAFFE/IME/RD(99)3.
Another random document with
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BILIBID.
As we are going to press, there comes to hand a little pamphlet
describing the industries and production of Bilibid.
Why not send our wardens who desire to do things to Bilibid?
Perhaps, it would be better to send our legislators, who after
observing the practical achievements of Bilibid may be induced to
authorize our wardens to inaugurate a sound industrial policy.
Where is Bilibid? Take the train for San Francisco, engage passage
on some leviathan of the deep and get off probably at the second
station which is Manila. Thence it is a short excursion to Bilibid, a trip
taken by twenty thousand visitors in a single year, not to mention
those who take involuntary trips thither.
Forty buildings, seventeen acres of ground, plan of main building like
Eastern Penitentiary, one of the best ever constructed if we consider
continual inspection as an essential factor. 2800 prisoners there; as
many others in prisons elsewhere in the islands but all co-ordinated
under a central administration.
The great aim is to prepare the inmates for “honorable position in the
community upon their release.”
The men work and play. We enumerate some of the industries.

1. Manufacture and repair of carriages, wagons, carts, trucks,


trailers, etc.
2. Household and Office Furniture made of mahogany and other
native beautiful woods.
3. Concrete work, construction of buildings.
4. Rattan and bamboo furniture. The famous fan-back chair.
5. Hand-wrought articles in silver, gold and other metals; shell-
work, horn specialties.
6. Tailoring. Service uniforms.
7. Steam laundry. All the work for the inside and a “considerable
civilian trade.”
8. Embroidery, lace making, crochet organized for the female
department.

Output per annum $350,000


Profit for the government 100,000
There are two penal colonies on large tracts of land, on one of which
the 1200 colonists practically have a government of their own.
The San Remon Farm is where the non-Christian convicts from
Moroland are confined. These war-like people have admirable
qualities when treated properly, and three-fourths of the inmates are
at work on the extensive farm without the presence of an armed
guard. Here is found the model prison of the Orient. “Built of
reinforced concrete, with grilled walls, dormitories, shower baths,
and with every modern feature for the comfort, health and
reformation of prisoners confined there, it has proved a wonderful
educational institution for the Moro.” The entire credit for this building
and the admirable system is due to the genius and sagacity of the
former governor, General John J. Pershing.
EMPLOYMENT OF PRISONERS FOR
THE GOVERNMENT.
Early in last July, a very earnest assemblage of wardens and
superintendents of prisons, and members of the American Prison
Association held a conference in Washington with a view of
mobilizing the prison industries so as to be helpful to the government
in these times of scarcity of labor.
There were forty delegates in attendance, mainly appointed by the
Governors of twenty-two States.
After discussions lasting for several sessions, the Conference was
unanimous in making certain recommendations.

1. Already the penal institutions possess enormous acreage. If the


government will accept the product, the crops may be greatly
increased. Over a half million acres are available and 75,000
workers.
2. In many States, where the law permits, selected inmates can be
paroled to labor for farmers at reasonable wages. Extensive
development of this method is possible.
3. Many of the prisons support industries the outcome of which
may be very serviceable. Among the chief industrial products
are socks, shirts, underwear, blankets, mattresses, boots and
shoes, overalls, harness, and army and navy equipment.
4. The executive order of 1905, providing that no prison-made
goods shall be purchased by the National Government, ought at
once to be rescinded.
5. “We are convinced that a very large majority of the inmates of
our prisons and reformatories are ready and earnestly desirous
of ‘doing their bit’ for the country.”
To accomplish these results, a bill has been introduced in the U. S.
Senate (S. 3076) and in the House of Representatives (H. R. 7353)
whose purpose is to utilize the labor of Federal and other prisoners
in manufacturing government supplies.
The prices paid are to be the market prices current in same locality
for same commodities.
The hours of labor are to be the same as the time prevalent in the
same vicinity for the same sort of labor.
The same rate of wages is to be paid to the prisoners, subject to the
necessary deduction for maintenance.
This means that the goods purchased by the United States from the
prisons shall be made by labor which is on a par with outside labor.
No goods are to be purchased by the Government from “any private
person or companies using the labor” of convicts. Thus the
Government utters its protest against any form of “contract labor.”
The Acting Committee of The Pennsylvania Prison Society has
urged the early passage of this bill.
A FEAST OF REASON AND A FLOW
OF SOUL.
Within the last two years, in the Empire State, some prison officials
and students of penology have occasionally met for an informal
conference on methods of penal management. No reporters attend,
they have no Secretary, there are no restrictive features, the
discussions are frank, free and open. They have been held at some
one of the institutions, and so the visitors have opportunity to
observe from the inside the methods and employments of the prison
where the meetings may be held.
Those who attend these conferences are the guests of the institution
which is visited. They have been held at the Elmira Reformatory, at
Great Meadow, at Blackwell’s Island and possibly at one or two other
prisons.
Last summer it was the good fortune of the Secretary to have the
privilege of attending the meeting held at Great Meadow at
Comstock, N. Y. Perhaps there were fifty ladies and gentlemen in
attendance, among whom were Jas. M. Carter, Superintendent of
Prisons for the State of New York; Warden Trombly, of Danemora;
William George, founder of the school which bears his name; ex-
Warden Geo. W. Kirchwey, O. F. Lewis, Secretary of the New York
Prison Association; Miss Katherine B. Davis, Commissioner of
Parole and Probation, New York City, and various officials connected
with the New York City prisons and other penal institutions of the
State.
Arriving at Comstock the guests were met by our genial host,
Warden Homer, whose conveyances soon brought us to the
Administration Building. There were excursions about the big farm
and the various buildings. Bounteous meals were served under a
tent on the grounds of the shady lawn. The ladies were lodged in the
administration building. It was at one time supposed that the
gentlemen would occupy cells in the regular prison department, but
for some reason this very interesting proposition was relinquished,
and a garage was converted into an airy dormitory for the
accommodation of the gentlemen. Prisoners brought iron bedsteads
and bedding and nothing was omitted for the comfort of the guests.
A shower bath was improvised, and in the morning the barber and
the shoe polisher appeared with all the proper accoutrements.
The guests arrived on Friday morning and departed the next
afternoon. There were three informal meetings, at which a variety of
penological subjects were both lightly and profoundly discussed.
Proceedings are not to be published, hence there is no feeling of
restraint.
The writer trusts he will not violate the confidence of his friends if he
may refer to one or two points in the discussion.
One of the prisoners on the farm—by the way an ex-member of the
New York State Legislature—addressed the company in emphatic
recommendation of The Honor System as employed by Warden
Homer. He stated that the prisoners there did not care for any
extension of the self-government plan. He was sure that Warden
Homer could govern them better than they could govern themselves.
They were as comfortable as any persons restrained within limits
could be supposed to be. They knew they could get a “square deal”
from Warden Homer, and they did not care to shift the responsibility
of government to any other shoulders.
An enthusiastic supporter of the self-government system was rather
inclined to look with disfavor on a benevolent despotism, such as the
system now in vogue at Great Meadow. The persons so governed
lost initiative and the power of thinking for themselves. They had no
opportunity of profiting by their own mistakes. They became mere
puppets, and were not learning the practical lessons which would fit
them for the life outside.
The company listened with interest to an expert dietitian who spoke
of the crude and ragged methods of preparing food in the penal
institutions. Sufficient food was provided as a rule, but it was ruined
in the preparation.
Mentally, morally, socially and gastronomically, we may state, the
meeting was a success.
Last October we enjoyed a similar conference at Sleighton Farm,
Pa., and we know of no reason why the experiment may not be
repeated in this commonwealth.
The Secretary is willing to suggest that there are in Pennsylvania
several country clubs where such a conference would be welcomed.
He is willing to mention The Reformatory at Huntingdon with its
splendid farm, the beautiful campus of the School at Morganza, the
Workhouse at Holmesburg and Hoboken, and the magnificent State
Prison Farm at Bellefonte. Perhaps Warden John Francies would
prefer to receive us when his institution is nearer completion.
When the invitation comes from any of the institutions mentioned,
there will be a response.
A. H. V.
Utilization of Prison Labor.
BY H. H. HART

(Suggestions to West Virginia)

With the tremendous demand for war supplies in addition to the


ordinary demand for domestic uses; with the cessation of
immigration which for 150 years has poured a steady stream of fresh
laborers into the United States; and with the immediate diversion of a
million men, and perhaps four or five millions, to the trade of war, we
are confronted with a scarcity of labor which compels us to utilize
every available worker to the limit of his reasonable capacity.
Able-bodied men, working under skilled direction and thorough
system, without loss of time from drink, strikes or voluntary holidays,
ought to earn more than their board and clothes. In the present state
of the labor market it is possible for prisoners, under proper
circumstances, to earn two dollars per day. In Vermont prisoners
from the common jail are earning two dollars per day on the adjacent
farms. In Windham county, Connecticut, prisoners are actually
earning $2.50 per day at common labor, and at Wilmington,
Delaware, short-term prisoners are earning $1.20 per day....
In those counties where the jail prisoners are not employed, we
would suggest the adoption of the Vermont plan under which the
jailer finds employment for individual prisoners with a nearby farmer
who pays for their labor at the ordinary rate for free labor. The
prisoner sleeps at the jail and has his breakfast and supper there—
two good hearty meals. He goes out in the morning, carrying a
dinner bucket, and returns at night. If the distance is too great the
farmer sends for him by team or automobile. If the prisoner fails to
make good or tries to run away, the farmer notifies the sheriff
promptly, who sends a deputy sheriff after him. The reports from
Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware and Wisconsin, where this plan
prevails, show very few escapes. No guard is necessary, as the
farmer looks after the prisoners, and thus the overhead charges are
done away with.
Thomas J. Tynan, of the Colorado State Penitentiary, wrote recently
as follows: “We are now doing work to the value of $2.50 per day by
prisoners on the highway at a cost to the taxpayers of the State not
to exceed 40 cents per day. The State could well afford to pay a little
wage besides the good time allowance.”
The difference between the old system and the new system lies
chiefly in the manner of dealing with the prisoners. Under the new
plan an appeal is made to the prisoner’s honor and good will. After
being tested within the walls, he is permitted to join a company of
workers outside the wall on his promise of good work and good
behavior, and on his promise not to run away. The prisoners work
without chains, and the guards in many cases carry no firearms.
Testimony comes from Ohio, from Oregon, from Colorado, from
Wisconsin, from Connecticut and from Canada that prisoners—even
low-grade prisoners and negroes—respond surprisingly to this
treatment; that escapes are few, and that there is a great
improvement in the industry and efficiency of the prisoners.
The incentive to the prisoners to make good is partly an increased
allowance for good time; partly, in some States, a small cash wage;
partly the desire of the prisoners for the freer life outside the walls,
and partly a response to the confidence shown in them by their
officers.
Success in employing prisoners on the roads by modern methods
depends first upon finding a road manager who is interested in his
men and believes in the possibility of exciting their interest and
loyalty for the work. It depends, second, upon creating such living
and working conditions as will keep the men fit for a good day’s
work. That means good food, good cooking, comfortable sleeping
quarters, opportunity for proper recreation, good laundry work and
bathing facilities, and, above all, the treatment of the prisoners by
their officers as reasonable human beings.
The plan of roadside camps, portable cages, chain gangs, ignorant
and cruel guards armed with shotguns and discretionary power will
not secure cheerful and efficient work.
THE INDIANA PENAL FARM.
[This article, by Henry A. Montgomery, Staff
Correspondent of the Detroit News, was incited by the
plan of Detroit to build a large and expensive House of
Correction. What other communities or States are doing
will be told by Mr. Montgomery.]
Greencastle, Ind., March 13.—“Reform them? No, you don’t
reform them. You can’t change a man’s real nature. But lots of them
are not naturally bad. We get the alcohol out of their systems, give
them all they can eat, make them keep regular hours and do a man’s
work, and the good in them has a chance to show itself.”
That is the way Charles E. Talkington, superintendent of the Indiana
State Farm, defined reformation.
The farm is situated in some of the most beautiful farming country in
western Indiana, about midway between Indianapolis and Terre
Haute. The site selected for the colony is particularly well adapted to
the needs of a penal institution, being rich in its deposits of
limestone, having plenty of tillable soil and considerable timber. The
beautiful hills and deep ravines lend the tract beauty and make it
possible for the landscape gardener with little effort to make it look
like the estate of a wealthy landowner. Although general farming is
engaged in, the products of the garden form so great a share of the
subsistence of the men that this has developed into one of the most
important features of the work. When present plans have been
realized there will be at least 160 acres devoted exclusively to
gardening.
It’s an unusual sight that one encounters on arriving at the top of the
long hill where is built the little village, the home of the 700 social
misfits. Two rows of long, squat frame buildings form the “street” of
this strange town. Nobody would guess from the appearance of the
buildings what they were intended for. They resemble the Billy
Sunday tabernacle type of structure. There is nothing attractive
about them, but they are temporary quarters and they are serving
their purpose well.
The first of these buildings is the office and sleeping apartments of
the officers. It is here that the prisoner is first taken. His history is
recorded, he is subjected to a medical examination, his clothes are
fumigated and stored away for his use when he is released, and he
is given a bath, shave and haircut, and a suit of clothes. The clothes
consist of the heavy working jacket and trousers, underclothing and
corduroy cap.
The first interview with the prisoner is considered important. The
assistant superintendent gives him detailed instructions as to his
own conduct and tells him with great care about the theories that are
being worked out. The number of men who, immediately following
this talk, are placed on their honor and given as much freedom as it
is possible to give is remarkable. Few of them violate the trust.
Often the man sent to the farm for six months walks forth from the
office, strolls over to the recreation room to await his work
assignment and never feels for one minute the influence of restraint,
except, perhaps, the realization that in the watch towers placed at
various points of vantage about the farm there is stationed a man—a
fellow prisoner—whose duty it is to notify headquarters if any
prisoner starts to leave the grounds.
The prisoner eats in a dining room and sleeps in a dormitory which
are kept spotlessly clean, and there is neither bar on the window nor
lock on the door. Each dormitory is occupied by about 200 men, and
one officer is all that is needed to maintain order.
“We do not say our plan is perfect,” said Superintendent Talkington,
“nor do we make any great claims about our ability to reform a man
during the short time he is here. But we do say this is the best
manner yet devised for handling them. We take a man from the
gutter, and at least make it possible for him to improve. We give him
health, and direction enough to get him into some employment at
which he can earn his living. Although we refuse to put forth any
claims about how much good we do for the man, we at least know
that we do not injure him. And that is more than can be said for any
jail or prison. We aren’t running any school for crime here. We do
know that. We also know that we can make this institution self-
supporting and a means of revenue for the State. What more can
you ask?
“The wide-open policy of freedom, I believe, has been carried to the
extreme here. Although the great majority of men can be handled
and trusted in absolute freedom, there are, in a population of 700
men, some who can never be given liberty. There is need for not
more than 50 cells. Any farm colony ought to have them even if the
cells are never used. Even so, we are getting along very nicely
without them, and it shows to what great extent this policy can be
carried successfully.
“We never had even punishment cells until a few days ago when four
were completed. We aren’t going to have to use them much, either.
Confinement on bread and water is the only form of punishment
permitted in this colony—no flogging, no dungeons, no ball and
chain, no stripes.
“We have prisoners living down on the lower end of the farm working
under a prisoner-foreman. We see them only when we are making
the weekly round of inspection.”
One could not help but feel, in discussion with Mr. Talkington, that
one was listening to a practical man who is anything but the dreamer
or idealist usually found advocating so revolutionary a plan as the
one on which the superintendent is working. He made no claims to
super-knowledge in the handling of men. He had no illusions about
the matter. He knew the faults of the plan and he knew the virtues.
When he undertook the present work, his only assets were his
experience as a farmer and school teacher.
“I feel,” said Mr. Talkington, “that your officials, before spending more
than a million dollars on the old type of prison, should see this farm
and the one at Guelph, Ont. I’m confident they would change their
plans. This may be a new thing in this country, but it is not untried in
the old. The most famous of the European farm colonies is the one
at Witzwil, Switzerland. It has solved all the problems of handling
men, it pays thousands of dollars annually into the treasury of the
canton Berne and there has been no trouble experienced in
competition with free labor.
“The farm colony has come to America to stay, and I hope Detroit
won’t take any action which will postpone for perhaps half a century
an improvement they are entitled to now.”
One of the bad features of Indiana’s temporary arrangement is the
lack of opportunity to segregate prisoners into classes or groups.
The dormitories are too large and the facilities for recreation are very
limited.
“The men should be divided into smaller groups,” said the
superintendent, “and I believe the recreation room should be a part
of the dormitory. I would not place more than 25 to 50 men in each
group. That would give a chance to segregate the youths from the
older men and permit keeping apart the more dangerous type from
the man who is here on some comparatively trifling charge.
“Another of our greatest needs is the establishment of industries to
supplement the work on the farm. We are going to get these. There
should be a furniture factory, a canning factory, brick yard or other
suitable industries where the men can be worked when weather
conditions are bad or outside work slack.”
The greatest factor in the maintaining of discipline is the use of the
honor system. There are good jobs on the farm and bad ones. And
the good jobs go to the men who have the best records and have
shown their ability to take positions of responsibility.
“You can’t tell me that you can run any prison with any such sort of
discipline,” a prison superintendent recently told me. “There are
some men who must be strung up and there are some who must be
spanked. If we didn’t resort to extreme methods at times we would
have a riot on our hands all the time.”
The best answer to this is found in the record of the Indiana farm.
There hasn’t been a strike or a serious riot since the institution was
founded. There are no guards standing or sitting around idle. The
guards are working foremen who perform as much actual labor as
any prisoner. The employed guards have guns in their pocket, but
the guns are never used and some of them aren’t even loaded.
There is a provision in the State law of Indiana which permits the
drafting from the penitentiaries of trusties to take jobs as foremen,
sentinels and lookouts. Of course, this probably could not be done in
Detroit, because the house of correction is a city institution. But in
Indiana it assists materially in keeping down the payroll. It makes this
difference—the farm colony at Occoquan, Va., has a payroll of about
$5000 a month; the Indiana institution gets along with $1700. And
the two institutions are very much alike.—From The Delinquent,
March, 1917.
THE CRIMINAL CODE OF
[A]

PENNSYLVANIA.
William E. Mikell, Member of State Commission to Revise
the Criminal Code.

Perhaps, in the true sense of the term, there is no criminal “code” in


Pennsylvania. The whole body of the criminal law has never been
reduced to a written code in this state in the sense in which this has
been done in some of the States of the Union in which jurisdictions
there are no crimes except those specifically prescribed. * * *
At the common law, crimes were classified as felonies and
misdemeanors. Without going into nice historical questions we can
fairly say that the term “felony” was applied to the more heinous
crimes, “misdemeanors” to the more venial ones. In the statutory law
of both England and of this country these terms have in general
been similarly employed. In the Pennsylvania code the legislature
has in the majority of cases in defining each crime designated the
crime a felony or a misdemeanor; and following the general principle
of the common law, affixed the stigma of “felony” to the graver
crimes. Viewing the code, however, as a whole, there is an utter lack
of principle in the grading of crimes as felonies or misdemeanors,
either according to the moral heinousness of the offense, or the
severity of the punishment.
Bigamy, with its attendant disgrace and illegitimacy, is a
misdemeanor, while embezzlement by a servant is a felony. For a
clerk or agent to embezzle—by the code called larceny—is a felony;
for a banker, trustee or guardian to embezzle, is only a
misdemeanor. * * *
Administering a narcotic with intent to commit larceny, is felony;
assault and battery endangering the life of an infant, is a
misdemeanor. Blackmailing is only a misdemeanor, while receiving
stolen goods is a felony. If one in the heat of a fight, intending to
disable or maim his antagonist, should cut him ever so slightly, he is
guilty of a felony, but, if he “on purpose, and of malice aforethought
by lying in wait, shall unlawfully cut out the tongue, put out an eye,
cut off the nose * * * or cut off any limb” of his victim, he commits
only a misdemeanor. Also if he “voluntarily, maliciously and of
purpose bite off the * * * limb or member of another,” he is guilty of a
misdemeanor. Truly, there must have been giants in those days. The
effect of these two sections is to make it a graver offense to attempt
mayhem and fail, than to succeed.

The Grading of Penalties.

The work of the commissioners who framed the Code of 1860 shows
an utter lack of any consistent theory not only of grading the crimes
as felonies and misdemeanors, but also in grading the punishment
fixed for the various crimes. It may not be easy to do this in all cases.
Persons may intelligently differ as to whether perjury should be more
seriously punished than assault and battery, and whether larceny or
bigamy be deserving of the greater penalty. But it is difficult to see
why embezzlement by a consignee or factor should be punished with
five years’ imprisonment and embezzlement by a person
transporting the goods to the factor should be punished by one
year’s imprisonment. * * *
Under the Act of 1860, having in possession tools for the
counterfeiting of copper coin is punished by six years’ imprisonment,
while by the next section the punishment for actually making
counterfeit copper coin is only three years, though it cannot be made
without the tools to make it. * * *
The distinction just mentioned is, however, no stranger than that
made by the code between a councilman on the one hand and a
judge on the other, in the provisions against bribery. Section 48 of
the Act of 1860 provides that if any judge * * * shall accept a bribe,
he shall be fined not more than $1000 and be imprisoned for not
more than five years. But by Section 8 of the Act of 1874, a
councilman who accepts a bribe may be fined $10,000, ten times as
much as a judge, and be imprisoned the same number of years—
five years. The statute also provides that the councilman shall be
incapable of holding any place of profit or trust in this
Commonwealth thereafter. But the convicted judge is placed under
no such disability.

Relations of Fine to Imprisonment.

In the case of almost every crime denounced by the code fine and
imprisonment are associated. In most cases the penalty provided is
fine and imprisonment, in some it is fine or imprisonment. In a few
cases imprisonment alone without a fine is prescribed, and in a few
others it is a fine alone without imprisonment. We seek in vain for
any principle on which the fine is omitted, where it is omitted; or for a
principle on which it is inflicted in addition to imprisonment in some
cases, and as an alternative to imprisonment in others. Thus the
penalty for exhibiting indecent pictures on a wall in a public place is a
fine of $300, but no imprisonment, while by the same act the drawing
of such pictures on the same wall carries a fine of $500 and one
year’s imprisonment. Manslaughter carries a fine of $1000 as well as
imprisonment for twelve years, but train robbery and murder in the
second degree involve no fine, but fifteen and twenty years in prison
respectively. It cannot be the length of the imprisonment that does
away with the fine in this latter case, for the crime of aiding in
kidnapping may be punished with twenty-five years in prison, but
also has a fine of $5000.
More striking still, perhaps, is the lack of any relation between the
amount of the fine and the length of the imprisonment provided in the
code. In the case of some crimes the fine is small and the
imprisonment short, as in blasphemy, which is punished by a fine of
$100 and three months in prison, extortion and embracery punished
with $500 and one year. In a few the fine is large and the
imprisonment long, as in accepting bribes by councilmen, $10,000
and five years, and malicious injury to railroads, $10,000 and ten
years. But in others the fine is small while the imprisonment is long
and in others the fine large and the imprisonment short.
Incomplete Crimes.

It is a general principle of criminal jurisprudence that “incomplete


crimes,” as they are called, such as attempt, and conspiracy to
commit a crime, should not be punished as severely as the full,
completed crime. It was on this principle that at common law an
attempt to commit even the gravest felony, such as murder, was only
a misdemeanor. Other codes maintain this principle. * * *
The Pennsylvania code has no general section on attempts, but in a
haphazard manner, in providing for some crimes, provides for the
attempt to commit the same, and in some cases has no provision for
such attempts. A study of those cases in which provision for
punishing the attempt is made, shows an entire absence of any
theory or principle in assessing the punishment. Thus the penalty for
the attempt to commit arson is the same as for the crime of arson
itself; for the attempt to commit robbery, the same as for the
completed robbery; but the attempt to commit murder is not
punished with the same penalty as murder, viz.: death, or twenty
years’ imprisonment, but by seven years’ imprisonment only.

Instances of Lack of Co-ordination in Drafting.

Two strikers separately determine to wreck a passenger train: one


removes a rail from the road over which a train is scheduled to pass;
another cuts the telegraph wire to prevent the train dispatcher from
stopping the train from running into a wreck. The first striker would
come within the terms of Section 7 of the Act of 1911 and could be
sentenced to pay a fine of $10,000 and suffer imprisonment for ten
years; the second man would come within the terms of Section 147
of the Act of 1860 and could not be fined more than $500 or
imprisoned more than twelve months. * * *
If the executor made way with a horse belonging to the estate, his
maximum imprisonment would be still two years; but if the butler
made way with another horse he might receive ten years as a
penalty. If a mule would serve the butler’s purpose as well as a horse
he had better take the mule, for then he could not be sentenced for
more than three years; if the mule were not swift enough, however,
he might choose an automobile, for the maximum imprisonment for
stealing an automobile is the same as that for larceny of the mule,
being less than one-third of that for larceny of a horse.
If the driver of a public “coachee” by “wanton and furious driving or
racing” unintentionally breaks a chicken’s leg he may be punished by
five years’ imprisonment, the same punishment provided for
attempted rape, for mayhem, for counterfeiting, and for robbery; but
if the driver of a taxicab is guilty of the same assault on a member of
the feathered tribe he is not even indictable. If the driver of this
“coachee,” while so driving, should accidentally inflict the slightest
personal injury on another, he would be liable to greater punishment
than if he deliberately stabbed that other with intent to maim him, or
wilfully and maliciously exploded dynamite under him, thus doing him
serious bodily harm. This violates one of the cardinal principles of
criminal jurisprudence, viz., that crimes of negligence are not so
grave as crimes done with deliberate intent, a principle recognized in
other parts of the code in providing for murder and involuntary
manslaughter. * * *
The writer has attempted to point out in this paper some of the more
glaring and interesting defects in the code. He has by no means
exhausted them. There is a great need for a complete revision of the
code. It is a jumble of inconsistent theories; a great many sections
are badly drawn, others are obsolete; many are inconsistent, many
are in conflict; there is much overlapping due to different acts having
been passed at different times covering in part the same subject
matter, so that it cannot be told whether a given crime should be
punished under one section or another prescribing a different
punishment.

Governor Brumbaugh has appointed the following on the


Commission to revise the Criminal Code of the Commonwealth:
Edwin M. Abbott, Chairman, Philadelphia; Wm. E. Mikell, Secretary,
Philadelphia; George C. Bradshaw, Pittsburgh; Clarence E.
Coughlin, Wilkes-Barre; Rex N. Mitchell, Punxsutawney.
FOOTNOTES:
[A]From an article by Mr. Mikell in the University of Pennsylvania
Law Review, January, 1917. The article clearly indicates the
urgent need of revision of our criminal code.
AMERICAN PRISON ASSOCIATION.
ATTENDANCE.

The meetings of the American Prison Association in 1917 were held


in New Orleans, November 19-23. Outside of the State of Louisiana,
the registration of delegates and attenders amounted to 261, of
whom seven were from Canada, one from Mexico, one from Cuba
and one from Guatemala. One hundred and thirty-seven registered
from Louisiana. Outside of this State, Massachusetts enrolled the
largest number, thirty-two being accredited to the Bay State. Then
followed New York, with twenty-nine, and Pennsylvania was third
with twenty-two, of whom nine were Official Delegates. It must not be
forgotten that there were many attenders at these meetings who had
not received appointment as Official Delegates, but who were active
and welcome participators in the discussions. In 1916 and 1917, the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has been well represented, but for
several years previous the attendance from the Keystone State had,
from a numerical point of view, been rather insignificant.

THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

Dr. David C. Peyton, Superintendent of the Indiana Reformatory at


Jeffersonville, ably officiated as presiding officer of the various
sessions of the Association. He is evidently a believer in strict
discipline administered by the officials who are legally appointed as
the guardians of the offender, yet no one who visits the institution
over which he presides, would assert that the regulations are harsh
or unreasonable. His view of the Honor System would not involve
government by the inmates.
“In prison management there have developed two colossal evils.
One was peculiar to the past and the other in a measure
characterizes the present. Most of the evils that are associated with
prison work have come from these two roots. They are antipodal as
east and west. They are cruelty and sentimentality. As the first was
the child of ignorance, the second springs from half knowledge and
is not the less reprehensible. True reform will come, not by a
softening and relaxation in prison discipline, not by imputing to
criminals qualities which their whole activities have proven them to
lack and the very absence of which is the cause of their
incarceration, not by making their pathway smoother and easier, nor
yet by touching it with the magic of romance. If a little of the leaven
of common sense were allowed to permeate the situation it seems to
me that the clouds in our pathway would lift somewhat.
“Of course cruelty, the other bête-noir, is only named to be
condemned, and thanks to our even half-knowledge it has no place
in modern prisons except in isolated spots. But I doubt if ever cruelty
was any more cruel than a regime which threatens to become
popular today. It seems to me that prisons should be run for the
purpose of training men for sane living. If that is true, then they
should in fact train these men for sane living.
“A modern prison should be a beehive of industrial activity and
should be more than self-supporting. Indeed, men should be able to
serve their sentences and earn enough overtime money during their
terms to support their dependents—in part at least. A trade should
be taught when practicable, but even more important than a trade is
the idea of inculcating industrious habits. It is not a misfortune for
men to have to labor, but it is a blessing both for them and for us.
“Discipline should be strict but not arbitrary. The rules should be
based on experience and should be obviously sound.
“Punishment has a place in prison, but it should be logical; should,
as far as possible, flow as a natural consequence from the
transgression according to the pedagogical rule of Spencer.
“The industrial training should be correlated with the didactic
instruction and the prison library. The three should form the tripartite
educative force of the institution.”

THE HONOR SYSTEM.


As was naturally to be expected, the so-called Honor System
received a large share of attention, especially in the Wardens’
meetings. The Wardens generally are opposed to that feature of the
Honor System which involves placing the discipline to any great
extent in the hands of the convicts. The experiments of Mr. Osborne
at Auburn, Sing Sing and Portsmouth are regarded as sporadic
efforts largely affected by the personality of a masterful, though
sentimental, empiricist. Men who have never governed themselves
should not be elected to govern one another. Mr. Erskine, of
Connecticut, argued that it was wrong to base any system on
emotional appeal. “Twenty per cent. of the men in prison are entirely
bad and vicious; 20 per cent. would wield a good influence if they
had the opportunity, and the remaining 60 per cent. could be swayed
by either the good or the bad element.”
On the other hand it was stoutly contended that the prison was the
proper place for men to learn to govern themselves. Necessarily they
were confined to a limited area, and still subject to watchful care by
big-hearted, efficient advisers. Let them learn that discipline in life is
an essential feature of any community. Let them learn this lesson by
personal experimentation. Thus they may recover some sense of
self-respect. They will rejoin the outer world with some measure of
responsibility. They will return to freedom with a different
understanding of life.
Dr. Bernard Glueck, director of the psychological clinic at Sing Sing,
asserted that in general prison officials, through limitations to their
work, were not fully qualified to pass judgment on the subject, and
had not availed themselves of opportunities to carry out a
comprehensive system of self-government. He stated that such a
system had proven to be distinctly successful at Preston, California,
and asked Mr. Calvin Derrick, the founder of the School of Industry
at Preston, to present some account of this institution.
Mr. Derrick informed the Association that this California school has
developed its honor system to the point where 250 of the boys were
sent to the Sacramento fair alone, traveling through the country 250
miles, and returning without the loss of a single one. The boys have
a complete republic system of government, and conduct all of the
work of the school. A football team plays regular school and college
teams of the State, traveling without supervision.
It appeared to some of us who listened with intense interest to these
discussions that the difference in sentiment was rather one of degree
than of principle. Wherever any privileges are allowed and wherever
the trusty system is permitted, there is involved some measure of
self-government. One warden permits the prisoners to mingle
together on the base ball field. These men are on their honor.
Another warden might say that he would allow his prisoners to play
and observe games and leave the regulation of their conduct while
on the field to the men themselves. They are still on their honor and
doubtless are aware that their regulation of conduct must meet the
approval of the warden. Suppose we allow the men to impose
penalties for minor delinquencies. The warden still exercises his
judgment on the punishment awarded. The warden governs. The
men may have more or less privileges, but they are granted by the
warden. It resolves itself into a question as to how far such privileges
may be granted. And no two wardens in the world will agree
precisely on this point.
For the last twenty years the trend has been getting away from the
brutality of the former systems, from the petty rules, from degrading
and humiliating treatment, and the avowed object of confinement has
been reiterated again and again to aim at reformation. We admit that
some wardens are more successful than others in accomplishing
desired results, and yet we must not expect them to adopt an entirely
uniform program. We must make due allowance for the personal
equation involved, for the individuality of the ruling authority. The
warden who claims that his system is perfect, and that he has
nothing more to learn, is recommended for removal.

CLINICAL WORK.

Dr. Bernard Glueck exhibited a number of charts showing much that


was deeply interesting in regard to the mentality, environment and
parentage of the criminals sent to Sing Sing.
“Sing Sing is being reorganized and rebuilt to receive all of the
criminals of New York for examination immediately after they have
been convicted. We are trying to get at the man behind the crime
rather than the crime itself. Two facts are very evident from our work.
The social fact is that 66 per cent. of the prisoners we have received
are previous offenders. The medical fact is that 59 per cent. of the
prisoners can be classified for mental diseases or mental deviation;
and thousands of this class can be treated and cured by means of
vocational training and other modern prison methods.
“Sing Sing is being remodeled so that we can devote as much as
four months to an intensive study of each prisoner who enters the
institution. From this examination we can learn which men should be
sent to the insane hospitals, which to the intensive vocational
schools, and can outline the most effective method of treatment
necessary to prepare the men for the future.
“The indeterminate sentence is essential to the proper working out of
our plans, and the criminal courts of the State are working in
harmony with this idea. Most offenders can be restored to a normal
life and good citizenship after they have finished a term under proper
treatment, and criminal judges in New York city tell us that fewer men
come before them for a second time since we have adopted the
present methods.
“It is the aim of the prison to turn the men into citizens with an
understanding. They are allowed many liberties, and are made to
take an active part in community life in prison. They have their own
social organization, a system of self-government, including even a
charitable society. In their charity work they aid prisoners who are
leaving the prison, make it possible for poor people to visit
imprisoned relatives, send the bodies of prisoners home for burial,
and many other things of that nature.”

PRISONERS AND THE WAR.

Some problems arising as a direct result of the war received serious


attention. There was the question of additional food production by
prison labor; whether paroled men shall enter the army or navy; and
whether conditional pardons may be granted, contingent upon
military service.
Some delegates asserted that a general restlessness was noticed
among most prisoners. Many of them are exceedingly anxious to get
into the war, and in some States prisoners are being paroled so that
they may enter the army or navy. Prison officials know that many of
their wards are fit for military service just as well as they are aware
that other prisoners are unfit. After prolonged discussion of the
subject, the Wardens’ Association unanimously adopted the
following resolution:
“Resolved, That the Wardens’ Association of the American Prison
Association suggest to and request of the President of the United
States the modification of paragraph 849 of the Regulations of the
Army and paragraph 3686 of the Articles for the Government of the
Navy of the United States so as to permit the enlistment in the
military and naval forces of the United States of men who, in the
judgment of the proper military and naval authorities, are physically,
mentally and morally qualified, despite the fact that such persons
may have been convicted of the offenses set forth in the regulations
and articles above referred to and imprisoned therefor, upon their
being duly and honorably paroled or discharged from such
imprisonment.”
At Guelph, Ontario, the great prison has been practically
depopulated. The prisoners have gone to war, and the institution has
been taken over as a hospital for convalescents returned from the
scenes of war. The Superintendent, Dr. J. T. Gilmour, declared that it
is only a step from prisoner to patriot.
“We have learned a great deal about prisoners during the three
years we have been in war. We have learned that the prisoner’s
sense of patriotism is not dead because he is behind the bars; that
he is just as anxious to serve his country as the man who is not
being punished, and if given an opportunity the chances are that he
will make a good soldier. It has come to my notice that men have
exchanged prison uniforms for army uniforms in three hours after
their discharge from prison.”
He made the further statement that thousands of men had been
released from Canadian prisons to permit them to serve in the army,
and thousands of others were “doing their bit” by making hospital
supplies during their imprisonment.

PRISONERS CONDEMNED TO SLAVERY.

In at least two Southern States, the infamous lease system, whereby


prisoners are leased for an annual stipend to work in the mines or in
the turpentine forests or in other work, prevails. Isadore Shapiro, a
member of the Legislature from Alabama, and President of the
Committee on Prisons, vigorously lambasted the government of
Alabama for tolerating and continuing such venal disgrace. The
Alabama legislature had made an effort to abolish the lease system
but the governor had interposed so as to prolong the infamy. The
prisoners could profitably and healthfully be put to work on the State
farms but instead they are offered for sale to the highest bidder, and
employed in mills, coal mines, lumber and turpentine camps. All of
the women prisoners in one county were leased recently for the term
of two years at the rate of fifteen cents a day. Mr. Shapiro produced
a leather strap six feet long and an inch and a half wide with which
prisoners are flogged.
Recently in the State of Florida 598 prisoners were leased at an
average of $360 per head by the year. It is a fact that most prisoners
who work in the turpentine industry are so broken down in health
after a few years that for the remainder of their days they are unfit for
any manual employment. Of course it is granted that this work must
be done, but we insist that it must be done under humane
regulations. We have yet to learn of any leasing corporation or
individual that has treated his serfs with merciful consideration.
Georgia, after a long fight, has entirely repudiated the system.
The Association, while insisting that employment should be given to
prisoners, unanimously adopted a resolution condemning in the
strongest terms a system whereby men and women are sold into
bondage in order to enhance the revenue of the State.
THE INDETERMINATE SYSTEM.

There is no longer any debate about the Indeterminate Sentence.


The principle is written upon the statutes of nearly every State of the
Union, tho in a debilitated and illogical form in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania. Amos W. Butler, Secretary Board of Charities in
Indiana, in an address delivered in one of the churches declared that
we had brought very little understanding to bear upon our treatment
of criminals until recent years. He compared our knowledge of
smallpox, yellow fever and other diseases with crime and concluded
that we made as many blunders in considering the offender as we
formerly made in our attitude toward these mysterious and dreaded
diseases.
“Prisons are the visible signs of our failures. It is now within the
power of man to abolish many diseases from the earth, and so with
crime. Criminals are not sent to prison for punishment, as many
seem to believe, but prisons exist for the confinement of prisoners
for the safety of society and for the reform of the man or woman
there. They should, if possible, be reformed and returned to society.”
The speaker favored the indeterminate sentence. He said you would
not send a diphtheria patient to the hospital for a definite time, say
two or three weeks. Complications might appear and more time may
be required to effect a cure. The same is true of criminals. They
should be sent there until reformed, until fit to be returned.
Indiana has an indeterminate sentence law and in the past twenty
years 11,000 men and women have been released under that law.
Seventy-five per cent. of them succeeded, or made good. Prisoners
there have earned about $3,000,000 for themselves.
The absolutely indeterminate sentence is not yet in vogue in any
State. A criminal under such a sentence would be sent to prison as
to a hospital to remain till cured of his malady. Perhaps, in some
cases he would be subject to some detention as a deterrent to
others contemplating entering upon a criminal career. Specialists
would determine when he was ready to enter the community. We
may at some time adopt such a system when there are enough men
and women having the skill and training necessary to pass on the
mental and moral characteristics of such patients.
Perhaps the best form of sentence is by statutes which fix the time
for any given offense. The time for arson, for instance, may be
placed from two to twenty years. It is the function of the judge or jury
to determine whether the accused is guilty. If found guilty, the
defendant is placed in care of a judicious board of control who will
release the criminal at such time as they may deem best for him and
the community.
Judge Willis, of St. Paul, said that no physician would send a patient
to a hospital for a specified number of days or weeks, yet this very
thing is done daily by judges who send mentally and morally sick
men and women to jail. “A doctor would not presume to predict just
how many days it would take to cure a disease, but a judge daily
uses his prerogative as a diagnostician in sending morally diseased
people to jail, although the records of trials show that no two judges
think alike in the matter. * * * Society no longer tolerates vengeance
in the criminal code. The desire of intelligent people of today is to
restore the criminal to a place in society—an honorable place—and
not only to restore him, but to make him a more valuable member of
society than he was before his incarceration.”

NATIONAL PRISONERS’ AID ASSOCIATION.

This body is an auxiliary of the main organization. Two sessions


were held at which various phases of the work were earnestly
discussed.
The address of the President, Rev. James Parsons, of Minneapolis,
presented a summary of what has been accomplished, and also
some cogent reasons for the existence and maintenance of
organizations having constantly in view the rehabilitation of those
who have violated law. This address is given in another part of the
Journal.
Rev. Charles Parsons, of Des Moines, called attention to the
increase of crime in time of war. “A celebrated doctor declared that

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