ABSTRACT
Wilhelm Steinert, a thirty-year-old German school teacher sent to Texas in 1849 to scout it out for potential immigrants, advised his countrymen to mind their tongues as Texans of American extraction were dangerous when provoked. Probably not coincidentally, 1849 was the year that the Texas state prison at Huntsville, soon known as “the Walls,” opened its doors. The Huntsville prison had 225 cells at a spacious 7×5×7 feet, but just three prisoners on opening day. In 1850, when the prison population had reached sixteen, the legislature held their first hearings into how to defer the costs of incarceration. Inmate labor seemed the obvious answer. From the beginning, inmates grew their food and performed all of the carpentry, brickwork, and smithing required by the prison and its staff. In 1854, a cotton mill was constructed on prison grounds where inmates produced cloth for their own clothing and for local sale. The cotton mill was the prison’s first profit-making enterprise. For the first century and more of their history, Texas prisons were expected to hold inmates at as little cost to the public as possible.
