bakers, gun-founders, ploughwrights, brewers, sawyers, fowlers, each plying his trade in the New Brittania.

But how different was the reality. Virginia became, not an industrial, but a distinctly agricultural community. For more than a century it could boast not a single town worthy of the name.[2-14] It was but a series of plantations, not large in extent, but stretching out for miles along the banks of the rivers and creeks, all devoted to the raising of tobacco. The population of the colony was but the aggregate of the population of the plantation—the owner, the wage earners, the indentured servant, a few slaves. Virginia in the Seventeenth century, despite the design of its founders, developed a life of its own, a life not only unlike that of England, but unique and distinct.

Immigration, like everything else in the colony, was shaped by the needs of tobacco. For its successful production the plant does not require skilled labor or intensive cultivation. The barbarous natives of Africa, who later in the century were imported in such large numbers, eventually proved quite adequate to the task. But it does require the service of many hands. For decades after Rolfe's discovery had opened a new vista of prosperity for Virginia, fertile land was so cheap that a person even of moderate means might readily purchase an extensive plantation,[2-15] but it would be of little service to him unless he could find hands for clearing away the forests, breaking the soil, tending and curing the plants.

Of the three requirements of production—natural resources, capital and labor—the fertile soil furnished the first in abundance, the second could readily be secured, but the last remained for a full century the one great problem of the planters. From the days of Sir George Yeardley to those of Nicholson and Andros there was a persistent and eager demand for workers. Of this there can be no better evidence than the remarkably high wages which prevailed in the colony, especially in the years prior to the Restoration. In fact, it is probable that the laborer received for his services four or five times the amount he could earn in England. Even during the time of the London Company we find George Sandys writing to a friend in London to procure indentured servants for the colony as the wages demanded were intolerable. A day's work brought, in addition to food, a pound of tobacco valued at one shilling, while in England the unskilled worker considered himself fortunate if he could earn so much in a week.[2-16]

In his efforts to solve this acute problem the planter found little hope in the aborigines. The Spaniards, it is true, had made use of the Indians to till their fields or work in the gold and silver mines, but the Pamunkey and the Powhatan were cast in a different mold from the Aztec and the Peruvian. To hunt them out of their native lairs and bind them to arduous and ignominious servitude was hardly to be thought of. Their spirit was too proud to be thus broken, the safe refuge of the woods too near at hand. One might as well have attempted to hitch lions and tigers to the plough shaft, as to place these wild children of the forest at the handles. At times it proved practicable to make use of Indian children for servants, and there are numerous instances on record in which they are found in the homes of the planters.[2-17] But this, of course, could be of little service in solving the pressing labor problem, in clearing new ground or tilling the idle fields. The Virginia landowner was forced to turn elsewhere for his helpers.

In 1619 a Dutch privateer put into the James river and disembarked twenty Africans who were sold to the settlers as slaves. This event, so full of evil portent for the future of Virginia, might well have afforded a natural and satisfactory solution of the labor problem. Slaves had long been used in the Spanish colonies, proving quite competent to do the work of tending the tobacco plants, and bringing handsome returns to their masters. But it was impossible at this time for England to supply her plantations with this type of labor. The slave trade was in the hands of the Dutch, who had fortified themselves on the African coast and jealously excluded other nations. Thus while the demand for negro slaves remained active in the colony, they increased in numbers very slowly. The muster of 1624-25 shows only 22.[2-18] During the following half century there was a small influx of negroes, but their numbers were still too small to affect seriously the economic life of the colony.[2-19]

The settlers were thus forced to look to England itself to supply them with hands for their tobacco fields. They knew that in the mother country were many thousands of indigent persons who would welcome an opportunity to better their lot by migrating to the New World. And the English statesmen, feeling that there was need for blood letting, welcomed an opportunity to divert the surplus population to the new colony in America.[2-20] The decline in English foreign trade and the stagnation of home industry had brought unemployment and suffering to every class of workers. Wages were so low that the most industrious could not maintain themselves in comfort, while to provide against want in case of sickness or old age was hardly to be thought of. Every parish, every town swarmed with persons stricken with abject poverty. In some parts of the country no less than 30 per cent of the population were dependent in part upon charity for their daily bread, while many were driven into vagabondage and crime, becoming an element of danger rather than of strength to the nation.[2-21] It seemed to the planters that the mother country constituted an abundant reservoir of labor, a reservoir already overflowing and capable of supplying indefinitely their every need.

The only drawback was the long and expensive voyage across the Atlantic. The fare, even for the poorest and most crowded accommodations, was no less than six pounds sterling, a sum far beyond the means of the thriftiest laborer.[2-22] Obviously some scheme had to be evolved to overcome this difficulty before Virginia could