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with some degree of advantage and safety. The matter is very simple, and would seem productive of little trouble to the inexperienced in such matters, and to those who do not understand all the opposing influences. It is a matter of ease to methodize on theory when no precedent is at hand to prove its absurdity or when the knowledge of the real facts is not possessed to prove its impracticability. The matter of reducing the labor system may seem easy, from the extreme simplicity of its outline; yet the facts surrounding, when rightly understood, will explain the great and at present and at present almost insurmountable difficulties in the way of successful results.
One of the difficulties in the way of successful results from the labor system is found in the continued misunderstanding and trouble between the employer and the employed. Troubles of this kind are so numerous as to engross a large share of the attention of the Bureau. It is true that these troubles too frequently arise from mutual blame but in the majority of instances coming under my notice and find the origin to be in the bad faith of the employer and his unwillingness to treat the persons employed as freedmen. If a contract is made for a space of six months, it is a common thing at the expiration of a portion of the term, for the employer to ill-use the party employed, for no other purpose, it would seem, than to drive him away, and then to refuse to pay them on the ground that he had failed to perform his contract. And when no inten