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many desire more for seed, fodder and implements of labor than one-fourth: several land-holders in Matthews Co. told me one-fourth would not pay, but it seems to be the rule in Gloucester.

Very few own land, freedmen complain that whites will not sell it especially for church or school purposes: they live in tenement houses built by employers, often shabby huts that the freedmen are expected almost to rebuild: but everywhere in my command better than the cabins in the vicinities of Hampton and Yorktown.

The freedmen are sadly addicted to moving about from year to year.  As a class they do not realize the advantage of sticking to one place and at one thing: neither do the whites encourage this, for, what with unfair division of crops, non payment of wages, disagreements growing out of all defaced contracts, these annual migrations are almost inevitable.  There is fault on both sides, and, wherever it is, it tends to unsettle the laborer, to keep him poor, and swinging around the circle of misfortune, poverty compelling him to revolve about the land-holder, and ignorance depriving him of any centrifugal inclinations.

The whites say that contracts are seldom made