Viewing page 98 of 237

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

gross injustice, at the hands of their Employers in this manner. No matter how just may be the account, some imaginary or trivial grievance is brought into requisition which really or quite counterbalances it - and the colored man anxious for a settlement of some kind readily yields, and he soon finds that if he is not indebted to his supposed debtor he has little or nothing coming to him.

As far as my observation has extended, I believe the freedmen, with few exceptions, are an industrious and hardworking class willing and anxious to do all in their power to elevate themselves from their past condition and become self supporting - but they have difficulties to overcome and obsticles to surmount which the white man has not - hence their comparatively slow progress made in their advancement. Their sudden transition from slavery to freedman found them without knowledge, property, or even implements of agriculture, with nothing but a