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are thus at their mercy. Further, as money payment is impossible, it is partly by hiring or binding out to the landlord, one, two, or more of their children for the year, and partly by working it as a small (2 of 50 [[?]] - di[[?]]) that the rent is made up. Thus, probably, a large amount of labor is secured for a minimum of wages; the colored man is not practically his own master, and children are trained according to the wretched domestic system of the South. Such labor as is thus obtained is not hearty and cheerful, is not and cannot be steady and reliable; the whites complain of poor labor, the blacks of under-pay. The houses occupied by freedmen are generally substantial frame buildings; which, with one or two acres, seldom rent for less than $45, sometimes for $60 per year, are often greatly crowded to the detriment of all decency and morality.

It is certain that the landholders dictate rents and price of labor without reference to freedmen, and to suit themselves, in the arrangement of which the mental and moral well being of freedmen are unknown quantities. They, palpably, have no active interest in their improvement and do not care nor think it best that freedmen