Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South [Book Review]

Abstract

Applying to the postbellum South the Marxist penological assumption that legal punishment is "distinct from, and relatively unconnected with, crime," Lichtenstein's deeply researched, well-written book contends that convict leasing and the chain gang "played a central role" in the development of the southern economy and the region's race relations (253, xviii). Although relying heavily on slavery's whips and chains, both of these attempts to economize on prison costs were fostered, according to Lichtenstein, not by benighted southern reactionaries but by "progressives," often from outside the region and often connected with the national government. African-American prisoners kept the coal, brick, and turpentine industries in Georgia (the focus of the study) profitable before 1908, when the abolition of leasing convicts to private companies became a major "progressive reform." Thereafter, the chain gang-over-whelmingly black but with an increasing percentage of whites in the 1920s-was essential in the expanding and paving of rural roads that were necessary for the commercial, industrial, and agricultural development of the state.