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is not to elevate the freedmen but to depress and keep them down by rendering difficult and almost impossible the accumulations of the property or the realization of any of those benefits of material condition which freedom promised and ought to bring them. The rule is: low wages and oppressive taxes, enforced against the colored man with rigorous severity; while, so far as the experience of this office goes, no single measure has been devised or undertaken for his benefit. The poor law and other ameliorating laws (if any exist)are never construed to give aid to the colored man, and his only shield or protection to-day is in the institutions of the General Government, The tax law directing employers to collect the taxes of employees is studied by the officials charged with its execution to lose no chance of getting money from the colored men. This has led to practices plainly illegal: such as that of collecting taxes from colored hands on steamboats on each trip, and the common practice of planters to charge tax from every colored laborer hired during the year. The apprentice law is taken advantage of to control refractory and discontinued colored