Viewing page 219 of 236

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Report on Bureau Affairs for March 1868.

Bureau R.F. & A.Lands
Head Qurs. 2nd Division 4th Sub Dist. Va.
Goochland C.H. Va. March 31, 1868.

General:

In accordance with Circular No. 6 I most respectfully beg leave to submit the following report.

During the month just elased [[elapsed]] little has occurred differing from the state of affairs as described in former reports. About the usual amount of business has been transacted in the matter of making new contracts and setting up old ones. There appears to be a general disposition among employers to pay as little for labor as possible, and to defraud the laborer out of his little earnings by one pretext or another.

There are honorable exceptions; but there are too many as yet, who seem unable to see and realize that those whose labor has heretofore belonged to them, are entitled to enjoy its fruits.

There is beginning to be manifested a desire in the fact of some of the freedmen and women, to ignore the relation of marriage imposed upon them by the act of the assembly by which those found living and cohabiting together as husband and wife, should be legally regarded as sustaining that relation. I have deemed it important