Viktor Mataja, Falkner, Roland P., Die Arbeit in den Gefängnissen [Rezension] (1888)

Viktor Mataja’s review examines Roland P. Falkner’s account of prison labour and its competition with free industry. It first outlines the book’s three-part structure—American prison arrangements, European conditions, and conclusions concerning competition—before challenging its economic reasoning. Mataja’s central argument is that prison labour’s small share of national production does not establish its harmlessness: its effects are concentrated in particular markets, while access to convict labour gives selected entrepreneurs advantages created by state institutions.

As Mataja reconstructs it, Falkner’s defence breaks the supposed chain from low prison wages to low production costs, lower selling prices, and damage to free industry. Lower productivity and institutional inconveniences may offset cheap labour; reduced costs may increase profits rather than lower prices; and prison output is too small to determine market prices. Mataja accepts the need to correct exaggerated complaints, but rejects the assumption that refuting their customary formulation disposes of their substance:

Bei der Bekämpfung einer derartigen, dem praktischen Leben entstammenden Bewegung darf man sich auch nicht auf die Beschwerden in ihrer üblichen Formulierung beschränken; denn diese ist natürlich oft schief und übertrieben. Mit ihrer Widerlegung ist daher auch noch nicht die Sache erschöpft.

English translation: In combating a movement of this kind, sprung as it is from practical life, one must also not confine oneself to the complaints in their customary formulation; for that formulation is of course often distorted and exaggerated. With its refutation, therefore, the matter is by no means yet exhausted.

This methodological objection guides the review: practical grievances require investigation into business conditions, even when their stated economic explanation is defective. Mataja consequently changes the scale of analysis from aggregate national production to the specific products and sales opportunities exposed to competition:

Die Arbeit der Strafanstalten tritt niemals in Konkurrenz mit der gesamten produktiven Thatigkeit, sondern nur mit einzelnen Industriezweigen, und auch da regelmässig nicht mit deren gesamtem Arbeitsgebiet, sondern nur hinsichtlich bestimmter Artikel, oft auch nur hinsichtlich bestimmter Absatzgelegenheiten.

English translation: The labour of penal institutions never enters into competition with productive activity as a whole, but only with individual branches of industry, and even there, as a rule, not with their entire field of work, but only in respect of particular articles, often only in respect of particular opportunities of sale.

Falkner’s Belgian tailoring example illustrates the problem with averages. An equal distribution of prison output would leave each free tailor only six additional garments to produce annually. Yet bespoke tailors serving wealthy customers and repair tailors face no equivalent loss; competition falls on a narrower group, for whom it can be severe. Small aggregate effects can thus conceal substantial distributive harm.

Mataja’s second objection concerns the restricted competition for prison labour itself:

Die Konkurrenz um die Straffingsarbeit ist von vornherein beschränkt, weil die Eigentümlichkeiten des Betriebes in einer Strafanstalt nicht jeden Unternehmer in Mitbewerb treten lassen.

English translation: Competition for convict labour is restricted from the outset, because the peculiarities of operating within a penal institution do not allow every entrepreneur to enter into the bidding.

Contractors must generally employ numerous workers, provide continuous employment, produce for stock, and furnish security—conditions that largely exclude small businesses. This helps explain why prisons can struggle to place their workforce while outside producers complain of exceptionally cheap labour. Moreover, prisons favour activities in which large and small enterprises already compete, rather than work requiring either costly industrial installations or an indispensable small-workshop organization.

Under customer work, where prison officials supervise production and customers supply materials and pay piece rates, access can be still more uneven: officials’ capabilities limit the kinds of orders accepted. Mataja compares the resulting inequalities to preferential transport charges and inappropriate tax assessments. The grievance concerns not simply price competition, but unequal production conditions generated by public institutions, benefiting entrepreneurs who are hardly the most in need of protection.

The review closes with a qualified endorsement. Falkner usefully counters exaggerated estimates of prison labour’s influence, and his American evidence is a valuable contribution. What Mataja finds missing is sufficiently close attention to commercial detail. The review’s significance lies in this distinction between the limited overall importance of prison production and its potentially serious, institutionally distributed effects on particular producers.