Rock-Hard Labor
lans were already in the works for a new Texas Capitol when a fire burned by Scottish historian Marjory Harper. Meanwhile, conditions for the convicts were harsh: long days in the sun; a diet of cornbread, salt pork, and coffee; and no medical care. The new Capitol opened to great fanfare in 1888, but the lot of prison laborers did not improve until a series of articles by reporter George Waverly Briggs in 1908-09 sparked reforms.
