etc. The wheat he selleth at four shillings the bushell; kills store of
beeves, and sells them to victuall the ships when they come thither; hath
abundance of kine, a brave dairy, swine great store, and poltery. He
married the daughter of Sir Tho. Hinton, and in a word, keeps a good
house, lives bravely, and a true lover of Virginia. He is worthy of much
honour."[6] Many other planters were thriving more modestly, most of them
giving nearly all their attention to the one crop. The tobacco output was
of course increasing prodigiously. The export from Virginia in 1619 had
amounted to twenty thousand pounds; that from Virginia and Maryland in 1664
aggregated fifty thousand hogsheads of about five hundred pounds each.[7]

[Footnote 6: _A Perfect Description of Virginia_ (London, 1649), reprinted
in Peter Force _Tracts_, vol. II.]

[Footnote 7: Bruce, _Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth
Century_ (New York, 1896), I, 391.]

The labor problem was almost wholly that of getting and managing bondsmen.
Land in the colony was virtually to be had for the taking; and in general
no freemen arriving in the colony would engage for such wages as employers
could afford to pay. Workers must be imported. Many in England were willing
to come, and more could be persuaded or coerced, if their passage were paid
and employment assured. To this end indentured servitude had already been
inaugurated by the London Company as a modification of the long used system
of apprenticeship. And following that plan, ship captains brought hundreds,
then thousands of laborers a year and sold their indentures to the planters
either directly or through dealers in such merchandize. The courts took
the occasion to lessen the work of the hangman by sentencing convicts to
deportation in servitude; the government rid itself of political prisoners
during the civil war by the same method; and when servant prices rose the
supply was further swelled by the agency of professional kidnappers.

The bondage varied as to its terms, with two years apparently the minimum.
The compensation varied also from mere transportation and sustenance to a
payment in advance and a stipulation for outfit in clothing, foodstuffs
and diverse equipment at the end of service. The quality of redemptioners
varied from the very dregs of society to well-to-do apprentice planters;
but the general run was doubtless fairly representative of the English
working classes. Even the convicts