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.