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Planters profiting by the experience that so high a rate of wages could not be sustained and laborers being unwilling to contract at reasonable prices the system of contracts on shares was adopted in 1867, which although specious at first view is mainly in the interest of the landlord as he without risk is certain of some return while the laborer invests his labor and his credit upon the uncertainties of the season, the price of his productions and all the other accidents incident to agricultural pursuits.-

This system however proved very attractive to the freedmen, to whom the indistinct prospect of some great gain in the future is far more attractive than moderate wages paid at stated periods. The harvest demonstrated that the entire cotton crop, the only marketable production of the State, was insufficient to pay for the supplies already consumed by its inhabitants and which had been procured from Commission Merchants on its