As manufacturing processes grew more complicated and coordinated, prisoners gained leverage. Individuals or small groups could create bottlenecks that brought production to a halt. Unions ratcheted up their opposition to an arrangement that made a travesty of free labor and was used to break unions. In 1883 voters in New York, which had pioneered large-scale prison labor, voted to abolish the system by a margin of nearly two to one. It was the beginning of the end for use of prisoners for profit in the North.
