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the freedmen have been persuaded to go to work without making contracts, and the parties persuading them are taking advantage of them. 
I am issuing Rations to about 90 destitutes mostly old and decrepid, and shall need a thousand Rations for the month of May. 

Jas M. Hipkins, Agent for the counties of Macon and Sumner reports as follows.
I find there exists disposition among the citizens to disuade the freedmen from contracting before the Bureau what their idea can be in this is more than I am able to divine. The business of this office during the months has been a general or rather a diverseful one, coming up in all conscievable shapes and forms. 

John Lawrence, Agent for Davidson Co. makes the following report. 
The times are very hard at present and wages are low and work scarse. As a matter of course the pressure of the times is very seriously felt by the freedmen the great body of whom are laborers. Still the suffering is