I wish to write, and thank you for the stand you took in co-operation with Gen. Davidson as regards this road's contract with the State of North Carolina for convicts.

I am getting better, and came up to address the Banker's Association of this State on the subject of this Freight Rate Discrimination, and what this Company has done is now doing, and proposes to do in co-operation with the good people of this State to stop this freight rate discrimination.

My speech will be published in the Minutes of the Convention, but I will send you a carbon copy of the address for I am satisfied it will give you a better understanding of the conditions prevailing as regards our work that has been so misunderstood by many people in the State, and by some of the officers of the State administration.

No set of men has ever lived more faithful to a State than we have in our work, and in four consecutive sessions of the North Carolina Legislature. They have amended and strengthened the charter and the laws, and granted us every single request that we have made, and there is nothing more for them to do, and it is now in the hands of the officers of this State, and this Company to co-operate to carry out these laws to secure the success of this great and laborious undertaking.

These Bankers were surprised to know of the volume of work that these men in Asheville and your humble servant have been doing and are now doing, and will keep doing until we shall have won success. I am satisfied that your prison board, if they had consulted with General Davidson, or any of your friends, connected with this road, they would not have given out an interview in Newport, Tenn., to the news papers that they were going to take the convicts from this work, which has brought, under the character of the interview, a general misunderstanding, as to the true status of this railroad company throughtout the State, for it has been published in all the leading papers of the State, and went to the Associated Press Dispatch, the day you were having the interview with Judge Mayer from London. I know you have not had time to thoroughly go into this work, and I am enclosing you a copy of the laws and amendments thereto, except the Act of the last Legislature, that said there was to be no interference with these roads that were receiving convicts until their contracts were complete. It is these laws under which I have been enabled to secure the endorsements of the Legislatures of other states for this undertaking for North Carolina's relief. And it has been the faith of the men that have expended the rise of $300,000 in the prosecution of the work above a little the rise of $100,000 cash that myself, with your other friends in Asheville and Western Carolina have put in this work with over eight years of my own work three years educating this State, through its Press and Pamphlets by the thousands up to 1907, when you were appointed as one of a committee to go to Raleigh to help us secure the passage of the bill, or the charter under which in lieu of giving us the four per cent. guarantee, they voted the convicts of this State.

That changed the entire face of our proposition under which the foreign capital was pledged, and there isn't a doubt on earth in my mind, but what we will succeed if we shall have your unqualified aid and support.

I endorse every word that Gen. Davidson said that the State, in its law-making power, has been faithful to us, and we will remain faithful to the State to the last ditch in this fight.