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A pretended City Govt' has long gone by the board, and during its brief existence its only use was that of a butt for ridicule. We have no Sanitary Police, no Board of Health, no Health Commissioners, and now that Spring approaches I tremble for the consequences. The streets are one mass of filth, the Tenement Houses crowded to excess, giving less than 800 cubic feet to each individual. The owners of these hot beds of disease care for nothing but to collect their rents. I can find no authority for the Bureau being responsible for the sanitary condition of these houses, but have offered to those who pretended to be the proper authorities in such matters to aid them in enforcing any health rules they may establish. They reply, "No these people are under the charge of the Freedmens Bureau we must not molest them." They complain loudly of the number of loafing negroes around town. I have said "If they appear to have no employment, you have laws which allow you to arrest them as Vagrants and make them work on the streets, looking out that you arrest whites as well as blacks" No they reply, if we arrest them the Freedmens Bureau will step in. You will readily see that they make the Bureau an excuse for their great neglect. As this place has often been visited by Cholera, and which existed to such a degree that there were not sufficient in health to bury the dead. I can anticipate nothing less than an epedemic here next summer. As the colored people live generally in Tenement Houses and in the dirty portion of the town they would be the greatest sufferers by an epedemic, therefore, assisted by Dr Turner I shall do all in my power, whether the civil authorities assist or not, to clear away a portion of this filth, though I protest against the Bureau doing the work that the authorities should perform, for it will get no credit or thanks for this service. There is a marked indifference on the part of the Freedmen to adobt

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