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4

black man could receive.)
[[strikethrough]] 3rd   It may be argued by those not acquainted with the circumstances that after two years of free labor, the freed people should be able to subsist themselves and to procure medical care at their own expenses. But such is not the case, last year the crops were so small that neither the Planter or Freedman realized anything, and this year the crops sell at such a low figure that the planting expenses will not be paid. The freedpeople having contracted for a share of the crop are as destitute now, as they were at the close of the war. There is not one in every hundred of the able bodied freedmen who is able to pay for medical aid for himself & family. Besides this, there are a large number of aged freedpeople many of whom are invalid & women with large families of small children who could not provide themselves with medical aid even if the country was in a most prosperous condition. In short, the freedpeople are in no better condition to day to pay for medical aid, than they were, when the Bureau was first established. The citizen physicians are not in a condition to give their services and their medicines gratuitously to so large a class of people, even were they so inclined, & unless medical aid & medicines are [[/strikethrough]]

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