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Articles by Paul Ortiz

Profits First! Convict Labor in America, book: Twice the Work of Free Labor (Book Review)

A. Lichtenstein

The United States, in the throes of a vicious social war against the poor, is poised on the brink of dismantling New Deal legislative prohibitions such as the Ashurst-Sumners Act which made the interstate transport of prison-made goods a felony offense. [In 63 years, not one person has ...

Book Reviews

Profits First! Convict Labor in America

Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (London and New York: Verso, 1996).

Matthew J. Mancini, One Dies Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South (Columbia S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, ...

Profits First! Convict Labor in America, book: Worse than Slavery, D. Oshinsky

In Worse than Slavery, David Oshinsky writes about a world of forced toil with which we are more familiar: the great agricultural slave labor camp of Parchman Farm in the Mississippi Delta. Actually, Oshinsky's canvas is much wider than Parchman itself. Indeed, he seeks to provide the reader with a ...