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the civil authorities to make suitable provisions for the colored population the Bureau can be successfully withdrawn, but how far we can compel them to assume this responsibility I am unable to determine.  When we look at the deplorable conditions of several hundred white families in this city, we cannot expect that the helpless freedpeople will be suitably provided for in the present unsettled condition of the State government, it would simply be acknowledging too much.  Had the whites cooperated with the Bureau in giving the freedpeople employment and protection, we could have more successfully withdrawn the Bureau one year ago, and the colored people would have been better off than now.  The unsettled state of the country has so paralyzed all trades and manufacturing interests in Richmond that at all times since the lose of the war there has been a surplus of labor, this is an indisputable fact now, low wages, enormous rents and the expense of living gives the freedman even when [[larly?]] employed but a precarious livelihood.  Should there be an average demand for colored