The Planters of Colonial Virginia

Transcriber's Notes:
1. Corrections to minor spelling, punctuation, or other errors in the original text appear in a detailed list at the end of this e-text.
4. Notations of inconsistencies in the original text, specifically the Appendix, Footnotes and Index, which have been retained, appear at the end of this e-text.
COPYRIGHT 1922 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
COPYRIGHT 1958, 1959 BY THOMAS J. WERTENBAKER
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 59-11228
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

America since the days of Captain John Smith has been the land of hope for multitudes in Europe. In many an humble home, perhaps in some English village, or an Ulster farm, or in the Rhine valley, one might find a family assembled for the reading of a letter from son, or brother, or friend, who had made the great venture of going to the New World. Land is abundant here and cheap, the letter would state. Wages are high, food is plentiful, farmers live better than lords. If one will work only five days a week one can live grandly.
In pamphlets intended to encourage immigration the opportunities for advancement were set forth in glowing colors. In Virginia alone, it was stated, in 1649, there were of kine, oxen, bulls, calves, twenty thousand, large and good. When the traveller Welby came to America he was surprised to see no misery, no disgusting army of paupers, not even beggars; while Henry B. Fearson noted that laborers were more erect in their posture, less careworn in their countenances than those of Europe.
In Virginia, as in other colonies, it was the cheapness of land and the dearness of labor which gave the newcomer his chance to rise. The rich man might possess many thousands of acres, but they would profit him nothing unless he could find the labor to put them under cultivation. Indentured workers met his needs in part, but they were expensive, hard to acquire, and served for only four years. If he hired freemen he would have to pay wages which in England would have seemed fantastic.