Wages Kept Back by Fraud.
A Teacher of the Freedmen, writing from Portsmouth, Va., to the American Missionary, says:— "In some respects, this winter has been the hardest for the freedmen, of any since the beginning of the war.
"Perhaps the saddest cry, as well as the most frequent, is that occasioned by unpaid wages. Several tell me they have worked weeks and months, and could not get a cent of their earnings, and did not expect it. Every day brings to my notice many such instances, and there is no doubt that the number of such is very large. What a people is that, who, amid such a pressure and discouragement on every side, still keep heart, looking to Heaven, and struggle patiently on!" Another one writing from Georgia, says:— "There has seemed lately to be an unusual influx of poor, destitute people from the country. 'Soon as we made de crop, dey run us off, and gib us nothin,' is the pitiful story they tell of their cruel masters, too well confirmed by their wretched appearance and tattered dress." As we read these statements, we could but think of the testimony of James, chapter v, 4: "Behold the hire of the laborers, who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped, have entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth." While we have been accustomed to apply this to the colored people in their former condition of open slavery, it would seem to be more applicable to their present condition, than to that. Then, of course they could expect nothing but their bare subsistence; but now they are engaged under agreement for wages, and when they have accomplished their work, or as they say, "made the crop," they are "run off" and defrauded of their pay. How intensely applicable is the language of James to this new villainy of the fiendish slaveholders. Let us be thankful that all these cries enter into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth, and that he will avenge them and that speedily. The exhortation James gives the church in connection with this is, "Be patient, therefore, brethren unto the coming of the Lord."