Everybody's Making Planes (2024)
Plus, did the Ohio Tool Co. pay its convict planemakers?
Almost every year since I launched this newsletter, I’ve put together an annual showcase of planemakers. I love the creativity and passion, the master craftsman’s finesse and the beginner’s curiosity, that’s evident in these tools. Unfortunately, Instagram has made it increasingly difficult to find people making one-off planemaking projects. I hope this isn’t the last year in the series. If you make a plane this year, drop me an email — I’d love to see your work.
Did Ohio Tool pay its convict planemakers?
I'm currently in the middle of a big research project on prison planemaking, and I stumbled on the records for overwork payments the Ohio Tool Co. made to convicts at the Ohio State Penitentiary. Ohio Tool was one of the largest planemaking firms of the 19th century. It used convict labor from its founding in 1851 until 1894.1
Under the contract labor system, a company paid the state a set rate for the work convicts did in the firm's prison workshop. In the late 1860s, Ohio Tool paid between $0.52 and $0.70 per man per day.2 (To put that in perspective, carpenters in Ohio in 1867 made $2.50 a day.3) But under the overwork system — which was in place from 1857 to 1867 — contractors paid convicts for any piece work they did that exceeded that day's quota.
By law, contractors were supposed to pay the same amount for overwork as they did for contract labor. In practice, however, prices for overwork varied based on the type of work performed. The money was held by the state and disbursed either to the prisoner or their family. Convicts also used their earnings to buy books.4
The intent of the overwork system was to help convicts restart their lives at the conclusion of their sentence. At the time, convicts were given $5 on their release — not even enough to get home for many of them. They earned a pitiful rate for overwork, but they left prison with potentially what was then a sizable chunk of cash.
For instance, in the 1866/1867 fiscal year, 162 men and women were paid a total of $8,072 for overwork; almost 65% earned more than $10. For a few it was highly lucrative, with the top 10 earners making between $108 and $298. Ohio Tool paid $1,357 for overwork that year.5 (See chart below for more examples.)
Unfortunately, the overwork records don't include which workshop prisoners were in. And it's unknown what jobs Ohio Tool approved for overwork. Planes were its main focus, but that's not all convicts in its workshop made. The company's contracts in 1868 covered the manufacture of trunk slats, wood-frame saws, skates, "carpenters', joiners', cabinet-makers', wheelwrights' and coopers' tools; and all the tools used by mechanics working in wood," as well as the "grinding and filing of plane irons and mechanics' edge tools."6
Some contractors liked the overwork system, including Ohio Tool's secretary and treasurer. "I thought it had a good effect upon the men," he remembered in 1877. Not everyone agreed. The contractor who ran the carriage-making workshop complained that convicts "were continually quarreling about prices." "We had to keep account with almost every prisoner," he said, "and he thought he was crowded down, or else he wanted to get a day's work that he could do in two or three hours. He would complain if he could not, and then would want to put a big price on his over-work, so that there was a sort of contention all the way through."7
Overwork — also called over-stent or over-stint — was also allowed at various times at Auburn State Prison in New York, where contract planemaking also took place. But it was mostly an ad hoc system dependent on the whims of each contractor. Some contractors only let a small group of convicts in a workshop do overwork. An 1867 state report called those "discriminations" an "endless source of discontent, jealousy, heart-burning and deception. They were the occasion of no small proportion of all the punishments inflicted in the prisons."8
It's perhaps no surprise that Ohio eventually repealed the law allowing overwork. Convicts returned to working six 10 hour days, and getting $5 when they were released. If you’re interested in prison planemaking, back in 2022 I wrote about the conditions convicts worked under in A "Terrible Place of Torture."
I miss writing this newsletter!
— Abraham
The Guide to the Makers of American Wooden Planes lists 1880 as the last year Ohio Tool used prison labor. However, state auditor reports show the firm was a contractor at the penitentiary through the end of the 1894 fiscal year. In 1895, the firm still owed the state money for the use of convict labor in previous years, but Ohio Tool was no longer listed as a contractor.
Annual Report of the Directors And Warden of the Ohio Penitentiary to the Governor Of The State Of Ohio. Board of Directors of the Ohio Penitentiary, 1868.
United States, Dept. of Labor. History Of Wages in the United States From Colonial Times To 1928. Bulletin no. 499, Wages And Hours Of Labor Series, Government Printing Office, 1929.
An Act Related to Overwork in the Penitentiary and Moneys of Convicts. April 1, 1857. Public Statutes At Large of the Sate of Ohio. Ch. 1799.
A Detailed Statement of the Receipts And Disbursements of the Public Money, at the state treasury of Ohio During The Fiscal Year 1867. Auditor of State, 1868.
Annual Report of the Directors And Warden, 1868.
Ohio, House of Representatives, Special Committee on Prison Labor. Minutes Of Evidence. Elifritz & Winters, State Printers, 1877.
Wines, E. C. and Theodor W. Dwight. Special Report On The Prisons and Reformatories Of The United States And Canada. Assembly of the State of New York, 1867.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I really appreciate your curatorial efforts. I’m inspired. Seeing these beautiful tools makes me happy and motivated.
These samples show a very beautiful combination of form and function. Well done on excellent and engaging documentation. Keep up the good work!