Fertile farms in this vicinity have been combined into one magnificent estate. In a few years it will be one of the most beautiful parks found anywhere. Aside from the building to be erected for prison purposes, prisoners will build roads and bridges, remove unsightly objects from farms, trim out forests into sylvan retreats and in a thousand ways add to the work of nature. How long it will take to complete the entire plan of Warden John Francies is even with him a matter of much conjecture. He does not believe the plant will be ready to transfer the entire prison body from the Woods Run institution to the Centre county farm for several years. While there are 130 men now employed at the work there, this number will be increased from time to time, but he believes it will be several years before the plans are worked out. Warden Francies hopes in the future to see the prisoners of the new penitentiary manufacturing such goods as are required in State institutions. He believes that it would be better for the State if furniture for use in State institutions were manufactured in the prison than to send to Michigan for such furniture, and that shoes for the State’s charges could also be made by prison labor instead of the money being sent to Massachusetts, the seat of the shoe industry. Should he be able to work out his plans with the aid of the State governing bodies, he hopes to be able to pay each prisoner for labor, deduct the amount of the prisoner’s keep from his earnings and turn over to those dependent upon the prisoner the surplus, thus preventing the privation to families and saving the State and municipal governments money spent through charity departments for the maintenance of those families. Events leading up to the acquiring of the land for penitentiary purposes were by no means favorable. Even after the Board of Prison Inspectors had decided to adopt the farm idea, many obstacles were to be overcome. Warden Francies, in asking the legislature on February 14, 1911, to pass a bill which had been drawn up authorizing a purchase of land and the erection of a penitentiary and other necessary details, opened his address by declaring “if the Western Penitentiary was not a tragedy it would be a screaming farce.” The legislature, after listening to his arguments, passed the bill without a dissenting vote, there being no semblance of party feeling. With the act signed by Gov. Tener, the matter of a location was then taken up and in all over 200 sites were offered. All of these had to be examined and the merits and defects of all gone into carefully.