Viewing page 234 of 235

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

is there a population that needs more special attention than that on the Eastern Shore.

The General Condition of the freedman in this division is bad: worse, all things considered, than anywhere else in this sub-district. Money is scarce, trade is dull, wages are low, (from $8 to $10 per month, or 50 cts per day, with rations), often irregularly paid; those cultivating land on shares pay one-third of the crop for the use of the land, elsewhere but one-fourth; on this side of the bay labor is equivalent to one-half the crop, there to one-third of it. Land in large lots sells for from Twenty-Five ($25) to Fifty Dollars ($50) per acre, yet the average annual rental of an acre with an indifferent tenement house is Thirty-Five ($35) Dollars: this too all over the county, on poor lands, in rough lots, in the woods. Rents are exhausting, out of all reasonable proportion to value of land or price of labor. The poor of both classes are compelled to these rates. They strongly feel the injustice of them, but say they must live and can do no better; their little years gain is absorbed in rents, and it is impossible to get ahead. The sheriff of Accomac told me that nine-tenths of the tenement houses were owned by land holders: the freedmen