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ESTIMATES OF PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRY.

It is extremely difficult to form any estimates of the possible productive industry of Military Asylums. At best these estimates can only be conjectural, and having no data upon which to proceed, we shall be compelled to draw light from such sources of information as present the most commendable features for analogy.

We may safely venture the assertion at the outset, that labor performed by invalids can not be made as remunerative to government as convict labor is to a State. Bearing in mind always the difference between the two classes of institutions, and the higher aim embodied in the Invalid Home, it will be seen at a glance that every advantage in a monetary point of view is decidedly in favor of penal institutions. On one side is enforced labor, on the other quasi-enforced labor, but always graduated in tenderness to the ability of the workman, and in that sense largely purged of the character of constraint, the laborer having also a share in the profits to operate as an incentive to industry.

In State Prisons, the services of convicts are let to contractors, who pay a per-diem for each laborer hired. Thus in Massachusetts, in 1859, 332 convicts were employed, and yielded by their services to the State, as follows:

Thus averaging for each man employed a gain of $175 34 per annum. The average number of inmates of the institution was, for the whole year, 510; the expenditures for the same time, $87,821 88. Besides the above sum of $58,217 07, the labor department was credited, from various sources, with the further sum of $11,478 57, making, in all, $69,695 64. This, deducted from the expenditures, left $9,173 97 as the deficit of the year. But during the next year (1860), the expenditures fell to $80,243 11, while the receipts rose to $80,747 97, an excess of $504 86. Had all the inmates of this institution labored during the year 1859, and earned the same average amount as did the 332, then, instead of $69,695 64, the amount would have been $89,423 40 -- an excess of $1,601 52.

It would, of course, be erroneous to suppose that any parallel course could be followed in a military asylum, or any parallel gains derived from the labors of its inmates. The relation of the government to invalid soldiers is so entirely dissimilar, as to forbid any direct attempt at imitation. The difference and the advantage on the score of profit are all on the side of penal institutions, which, as the foregoing estimates show, may be made entirely self-supporting. Such a degree of prosperity could hardly be expected to occur in an eleemosynary institution, the majority of whose inmates, being sick and disabled men, could, as a class, perform but a slight amount of labor, and that possibly only at irregular intervals. Yet something could be done, however small, and that amount might be turned to profit by the Government, in such a way, as to re-imburse itself partially. How this labor is to be regulated, and to what purposes subsidized, is a question of internal administration, which need not here be enlarged upon. It is sufficient to say that there might be attached to each asylum one or more Government workshops, in which every workingman should receive a certain per diem as wages. In these establishments, work suited to the strength of invalids might be carried on, and much now purchased from individuals be directly manufactured by the Government. Clothing of all kinds for the army and navy; shoes, saddlery, equipments, repair of arms, etc. -- all these necessities of an army might be met and provided for in this way. The men, according to physical ability, might work and be paid either by the hour, day, or piece. Not feeling the risk of competition, yet assured of fair wages, they would labor of their own accord and without compulsion; and what was originally a rule in the establishment, would pass into such a custom, that it would be felt a degradation not to work, in all who were capable.

As to the tariff of wages, it could not reasonably be expected to be high. If, at the Massachusetts State Prison, contractors can afford to give only from forty to sixty cents per day for healthy men working ten hours, it should not be expected that the Government placing itself in the position of a manufacturer, could give its invalid workmen such wages as these. At the Soldier's Home in Washington, twenty cents a day are given for work done on the farm. Probably in workshops from twenty to forty cents a day might be given, or possibly more. But whatever the amount, it should never be looked at nor measured by the standard of out-door market prices. It is an act of kindness on the part of Government to give employment to those whom it is already supporting. Therefore, however slight the gains it enables them to make, the benefaction embodied in its course of dealing should silence discontent and criticism.