- Transcription
THE CENTRAL HIGHWAY
LEXINGTON, N.C.,
August twenty-ninth,
Nineteen-Thirteen.
Governor Locke Craig,
Raleigh, N.C.
Dear Governor Craig:
I am enclosing letter from Senator Simmons and from the Fourth Assistant Postmaster General from Washington dated the 26th. and 28th., which you can file as a matter of information. I have written them today to find out whether, or not, you would have to designate the other $30,000 to be used on one continuous road or whether it could be divided in lots of $10,000 each.
I should like for you to get this information as early as you can, and if you are going to offer $10,000 to be used on the Central Highway through Davidson county that you will make the proposition to me before the first Monday in September so I can present it to the county commissioners. I want to make the proposition from you to them. Confidentially, I think they will turn it down, but if they do, I want to put them in a hole, put them in good and strong, so they will feel it.
By the way, I haven't seen you to tell you, but I made a short speech at the recent Good Roads Convention in Morehead City on the convict labor proposition, and I never received so much applause in my life. When I got through a man arose in the back of the audience and proposed a resoluting to give me a rising vote of thanks for exposing the present system of leasing convicts to railroads, and thanking you for appointing me to the position as Chairman of the Board. A committee was also appointed that drafted resolutions memorializing the Legislature to annul these contracts and to put the able bodied convicts of the state to building public wagon roads. These resolutions were adopted by unanimous vote.
I am just saying this to you because you ought to know that everybody is opposed to the present system of leasing convicts to railroads and taking worthless stock in payment for same, except the men who are getting this labor for nothing, and a few of their friends who are deluded into believing that it will be of great benefit to their section of country. 98 per cent of the people of North Carolina believe as I do on this convict proposition. As long as this system is continued the Democratic party is making a great mistake. It is playing with fire and doesn't know it. I am very sorry that the Council of State has again extended the time to September 20th. to give these alleged railroads an opportunity to give bond so they can get as many convicts as they want on their various railroads. In doing this, we would lose the opportunity of leasing the convicts for cash to the Hardaway Contracting Company.
Very truly yours,
HBV-H.
