I am in receipt of your letter of the 1st, and in reply will say that I would have written before now following my reply to your telegram, but I have been sick with inflamed eyes since December 23rd. I have been unable to do any reading to amount to anything and very little work.

The Board of Directors of the State's Prison sometime ago instructed Mr. Mann, the superintendent, to take the convicts off the Hickory Nut Gap Road January 15th, and take them to Badin and put them on that work where we can get $1.75 per day cash. The reason the Board did this is because the State needs the money badly, and it looked like an endless job on the Hickory Nut Gap road. They have finished the construction once, and now they are going back for repairs, and by the time they get to the other end of it, the road toward Asheville will need repairs. It looks to me like it would take forever to finish it. I am of the opinion that the county should take charge of the road and be satisfied with what the State has done for them, especially under the present conditions of the depleted treasury.

I am always anxious to put as many convicts to building roads as possible, but I am eternally opposed to any more of it, unless the authorities in charge who get the convicts provide for working them to the very best advantage, and that has not been done on the Hickory Nut Gap road, neither is it being done in Madison County or at Ridgecrest. These forces should now have teams to move dirt, instead of moving it in a wheelbarrow.

I trust that you are enjoying the best of health and that 1916 will be the best year of your life.