hites. Yet more than a third of the food
issued was to whites, and without it many would have starved. Numerous
Confederate soldiers on the way home after the surrender were fed by the
Bureau, and in the destitute white districts a great deal of suffering
was relieved and prevented by its operations. The Negroes, dwelling for
the most part in regions where labor was in demand, needed relief for
a shorter time, but they were attracted in numbers to the towns by free
food, and it was difficult to get them back to work. The political value
of the free food issues was not generally recognized until later in 1866
and in 1867.

During the first year of the Bureau an important duty of the agents was
the supervision of Negro labor and the fixing of wages. Both officials
and planters generally demanded that contracts be written, approved, and
filed in the office of the Bureau. They thought that the Negroes would
work better if they were thus bound by contracts. The agents usually
required that the agreements between employer and laborer cover such
points as the nature of the work, the hours, food and clothes, medical
attendance, shelter, and wages. To make wages secure, the laborer was
given a lien on the crop; to secure the planter from loss, unpaid
wages might be forfeited if the laborer failed to keep his part of the
contract. When it dawned upon the Bureau authorities that other systems
of labor had been or might be developed in the South, they permitted
arrangements for the various forms of cash and share renting. But it
was everywhere forbidden to place the Negroes under "overseers" or to
subject them to "unwilling apprenticeship" and "compulsory working out
of debts." The written contract system for laborers did not work out
successfully. The Negroes at first were expecting quite other fruits of
freedom. One Mississippi Negro voiced what was doubtless the opinion of
many when he declared that he "considered no man free who had to work
for a living." Few Negroes would contract for more than three months and
none for a period beyond January 1, 1866, when they expected a division
of lands among the ex-slaves. In spite of the regulations, most worked
on oral agreements. In 1866 nearly all employers threw overboard the
written contract system for labor and permitted oral agreements. Some
states had passed stringent laws for the enforcing of contracts, but in
Alabama, Governor Patton vetoed such legislation on the ground that it