The Bedford Gazette

The Need of A Freedmen's Bureau.

REAU. -- We give the following article from the Richmond Enquirer as illustrating the need of a Freedmen's Bureau in the South. The incident is, we suppose, one of ten thousand similar ones, of daily occurrence in that section:

A gentleman from one of the neighboring counties, who desired to obtain a number of able-bodied negro laborers for his plantation, visited Richmond to procure them, having learned that there were hundreds of unemployed blacks lounging idle about the city. The morning after his arrival he was directed to one of the localities where large quantities of bread and soup are daily distributed by the Freedmen's Bureau. He found a ragged, hungry horde, of nearly five hundred persons, assembled to receive the usual supplies of food. To his astonishment, the applicants for soup and bread were not all women and children. He counted one hundred and eight able-bodied negro men, capable of performing every variety of farm labor. There they were with every conceivable variety of vessel, waiting hours to be fed by the Bureau. To many of these hulking idlers he offered the highest wages paid to agricultural laborers, and abundant rations of good, wholesome food. But they all refused to enter his service, alleging among other reasons, that they were fed by the Bureau, and did not wish by leaving Richmond to forfeit their right to vote.