- Transcription
THE CENTRAL HIGHWAY
LEXINGTON, N.C.,
October thirteenth,
Nineteen-Thirteen.
Governor Locke Craig,
Raleigh, N.C.
Dear Governor Craig:
I made a good roads talk Saturday at noon at Wild Cat Rock, Brushy Mountain township, Wilkes county. I missed my train Saturday afternoon and was delayed for twenty-four hours and I made an investigation of how the state convicts were being worked on the Watauga & Yadkin River Railway.
I had a talk with Mr. J. V. Bauguss of North Wilkesboro, who has been in charge of the work of convicts and he told me before he found out who I was that they had been using the convicts since July as section hands working up the road bed of Grandin's lumber road between North Wilkesboro and Grandin City. I got this same information from a number of other people, but I was very glad to get the information in an official manner. The Grandin Lumber Company and this railway, which is all the same, have practically quit work, so I am informed. They are not cutting any timber and they are not doing any sawing, and they are not doing any grading on the road because they haven't got the money to buy powder, but they say they are going to begin grading very soon.
I don't think that Grandin has any idea of going to Boone, but that he hopes now to be able to sell his road to either the Southern or the Norfolk & Western. He has been playing both of them. The fact of the matter is I would not be surprised if his road should go into the hands of a receiver. If the Council of State are deeply interested in the wellfare of Mr. Grandin, they ought to make a contribution of enough money to buy powder so this grading can be continued, in order to get the road up through his sixty-eight thousand acre timber tract and be able to get his timber out.
To my mind, it is a very foolish proposition for the state of North Carolina to be boarding, clothing and guarding convicts and giving their labor to a lumber railroad to be used as section hands to keep the road up. From what the Legislature has just done to the big railroads in North Carolina in the way of reduction of freight rates, it seems to me it would be good taste if the state wants to give its convict labor away to divide it up between the Seaboard Air Line, the Atlantic Coast Line and the Southern.
I am writing you this because I think you ought to know, as Governor of the state, what is being done with the convicts.
Very truly yours,
HBV-H.
