Viewing page 62 of 135

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

111

Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands,
HEAD QUARTERS ASSISTANT COMMISIONER STATE OF VIRGINIA,
Richmond, Va., May 7th, 1866.

CIRCULAR No. 17.

I. The following Act of the General Assembly of the State of Virginia is published for the information of the Officers and Agents of this Bureau. 

"An Act to regulate Contracts for Labor between White and 
Colored Persons, and to impose a Fine on Persons enticing Laborers from the Service of their Employers under such 
Contracts." -Passed February 20th, 1866.

"1st. Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no contract between a white person and a colored person, for the labor or service of the latter for a longer period than two months, shall be binding, unless the contract be in writing, signed by such white person, or his agent, and by such colored person, and duly acknowledged before a Justice, or Notary Public, or Clerk of the County or Corporation Court, or Overseer of the Poor, or two or 
more credible witnesses, in the County or Corporation in which the white person may reside, or in which the labor or service is to be performed. And it shall be the duty of the Justice, Notary Clerk or Overseer of the Poor, or the witnesses, to read and explain the contract to the colored person, before taking his acknowledgment thereof, and to state that this has been done in the certificate of the acknowledgment of the contract.

2nd. If any person shall entice away, from the service of 
another, any laborer employed by him under a contract, as provided by this Act, knowing of the existence of such contract, or shall knowingly employ a laborer bound to service to another under such contract, he shall forfeit to the party aggrieved not less than ten nor more than twenty dollars for every such offence; to be recovered by warrant before any Justice of the Peace.

3rd. This Act shall be in force from and after the 1st day of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-six, and the first section shall not apply to any contract made prior to that date."