4. In many cases prison labor is “hired” out to major companies to produce their goods or services for as little as 4 cents an hour to . $1.15 an hour which in slave labor terms is considered top pay. The inmates are forced to spend most of what they do earn just for the necessities like toothpaste and deodorant at inflated prices. They are fortunate if they have anything left to send home to help support the family which creates another major problem. At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that remove jobs from the private sector to avoid paying employment taxes, payrolls taxes, benefits and social security. They mount their operations inside state prisons tax free Double click to view video Corporations that participate in hiring prison slave labor Double click to view video

5. To understand how this happened let’s look at the history of prison labor in the U.S. Prison labor has its roots in slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution of America permits prison slavery Double Click to view video After the Civil war a system of hiring out prisoners was introduced to continue the slavery tradition. On the local level, most southern towns and municipalities passed strict vagrancy laws to control in influx of black migrants and homeless people who poured in these urban communities in the years after the Civil War, In Mississippi, for example, whites passed the notorious “Pig Law” of 1876, designed to control vagrant blacks at loose in the community.

6. Within two years, the number of convicts in the state penitentiary increased from under three hundred to over one thousand. It was this law in Mississippi that turned the convict lease system into a profitable business whereby convicts were leased to contractors who sub-leased them to planters, railroads, levee contractors and timber jobbers. Almost all of the convicts in this situation were blacks, including women, and the conditions in the camps were horrible in the extreme. It was not uncommon to have a death rate of blacks in the camp at between 8 to 18 percent. Freed slaves were charged with not carrying our their sharecropping or petty thievery which were almost never proven and were hired out for cotton picking, working in mines and building railroads Double click to view video Double click to view video Modern Day Chain gang 2008

7. Greed often times leads to corruption, indifference, crimes against humanity, poverty and sometimes even murder. It has been the driving force behind the genocide of nations. It has mask itself in many different forms. It has been embedded in the very foundation and principles for which this country was founded and if we are not all prayerful it will be the primary cause for the down fall down fall of this great nation. “ For the love of money is the root of all evil”. . .