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1054

with low wages and large families, many working men, even with good health, find it difficult to maintain their families and furnish clothing.
The advantage which employers take of ignorant freedmen; the manner in which they defraud them of their pay, knowing that they cannot resort to law for want of means to employ counsel.  The advantage taken in drawing up and explaining to the Freedpeople contracts which bind them to labor for a whole year for a trifling portion of the crop, all point with gloomy certainty to the fact that after restrictions are removed the colored people will be again reduced to servitude for a compensation of the coarsest food and clothing.  It is also a matter of regret that the civil authorities, take no heed of the looseness in morals by which they are surrounded.  Outside of the Bureau, no efforts appear to have been made to correct this evil.  Although perhaps not quite so bad a formerly, still it exists to a much greater extent than would be tolerated in any well regulated community.
In concluding a service of nearly three

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-12-19 17:35:43