SOUTHERN GOOD ROADS

LEXINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA

May nineteenth,
Nineteen-Thirteen.

Governor Locke Craig,
Raleigh, N.C.

Dear Governor Craig:

I am in receipt of your letter of the seventeenth, and in reply will say that it is going to be mighty hard to give the Watauga Railway any more convicts soon. When we do, I don't think we ought to give them more than twenty more, as they now have thirty, making fifty in all. We now have in the State Treasury $242,825.52 worth of worthless paper, which we have received in payment for convicts. I understand that the State Treasurer claims that the State Prison's bank account is overdrawn about $50,000, so it looks to me like it is very poor business to continue to go down in the Treasury and get money to pay for feeding, guarding and clothing convicts to work on these railroads for nothing.

What do you think about our making tour of the various camps and investigating these propositions? Do you want me to do this? If so, do you want to have a talk with me about it before I start? If so, I will come down within the next day or two. I am going to speak in Davie county on good roads from the 23rd. to the 30th., inclusive, and I can't make this tour of the camps before the first of June.

I am very anxious to put the required number of convicts on the Hickory Nut Gap road, and I am also anxious to give the number designated by the Legislature to Madison county, who have had the courage to vote a $300,000 bond issue. I believe that the state should help them who help themselves.

With kind regards, I am,

Very truly yours,

H B Varner.

HBV-H.