In Alabama

Some 800 Negroes lined up at a coal mine office in Flattop, Ala., last week, to turn in their lamps and shovels. They were the last convicts in the U. S. whose labor had been sold by the State to private interests. Work for the State on convict farms and highways awaited them.

Alabama was the last of the States to abolish the leasing of convict labor. Agitation for the reform began in 1915 but progressed slowly in the State whose senior Senator is James Thomas ("Tom Tom") Heflin. In 1923 the Alabama Legislature passed the reform law. Not until last year and this, under Governor Bibb Graves. were the State's penal facilities built up to accommodate all the State's prisoners.