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is true that laborers here do not obtain fair compensation for their services. The men are generally industrious and sober, working early and late, living habitually on the plainest and coarsest fare: their wives generally wash, and if not encumbered with too many small children, are out all day at service - Their children from the earliest age are made useful. With all this industry and patient toil, their condition is that of abject poverty, and a few days sickness is sufficient to exhaust their slender savings.

It is to be hoped that as the freedmen become more enlightened, and more accustomed to rely upon themselves that the surplus labor will remove to where it can find work; but now, no matter how poor; it is seldom one can be persuaded to accept northern or western homes; The last three years has perceptibly improved their circumstances as a body and no dout each succeeding year, will show increasing prosperity.

The cause of temperance has few friends here, and though the freedmen are seldom seen in a drunken condition, the attempt to organize this