North Carolina Will
Sell Halifax Farm in Parcels December 4. . . Prison Farm on Roanoke River
Contains 7,000 Acres. . . Farm to Go at Auction
Raleigh, Nov. 17—North Carolina is going to sell its
7,000-acre farm in Halifax county—is going to sell under the urge of jazz and
the spell of the auctioneer.
The farm will go December 4, with Governor Bickett and the
whole prison board present, and it will be so cut up that the small farmer, the
man of the $300,000 and $400,000 type, can take a shot at the lands and then
leave plenty for his other poor neighbor who has no more land than this fellow.
For two administrations there has been an agitation for the sale of the farm. Governor Kitchin was entirely opposed to it because the administration found it a fine support to the State. Then the governor, who lives in the county and is himself a large farmer, knew something of the value of these grounds. He did not think the State could afford to sell it. Neither does his farm superintendent of that administration, Capt. Joe Laughinghouse. But it is a big place, very large for the penitentiary force which is continually being depleted by a growing humanity and the abandonment of the old plan of making money of convict labor.
And when this farm is sold the State will settle on other
lands smaller in acreage. Durham and Raleigh are rivals in bidding. It is the
purpose of the State to build a smaller farm nearer the central prison, which
is yet the place of execution for all the capital felons. The act which
authorized the transformation of the central prison building into a hospital
for the insane and the removal of the outfit to the farm, failed to change the
place of execution. Similarly it made no provision for performing a miracle,
something necessary if the State converts its central prison building into a
hospital. The construction is against the State’s plan and it will cost as much
to make a hospital of that prison structure as it would cost outright to build.
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