Program Information

Tobacco cultivation in early Virginia could be lucrative if one had land and labor. Land was there for the taking. Labor was another matter."Jamestown: A Fruitful Soil" provides a historical overview of the people and events of 17th-century Virginia.

Transcript

Tobacco cultivation in early Virginia could be lucrative if one had land and labor. Land was there for the taking. Labor was another matter.

I’m Steve Clark with Jamestown: A Fruitful Soil, a celebration of Virginia’s Quadricentennial sponsored by Jamestown Settlement, a living history museum in the Williamsburg area of Virginia.

One Virginia colonist wrote, “All our riches for the present doe consiste in Tobacco” and “our principall wealth…consisteth in servants.” Growing tobacco was labor intensive, and production hinged on having enough workers in the field. The land had to be cleared. Starting the seeds began in January followed by planting, harvesting, curing and packing. Virginia planters solved their labor problem initially with indentured servants.

Indenture had grown out of two English systems; trade apprenticeship and a one year period of agricultural or domestic service called “service in husbandry.” The two systems were combined to supply labor for the colony, and in the beginning, when there was no private land ownership; it seems everyone came to the colony as a servant to the Virginia Company.
After 1609 a plan was implemented in which a seven year term of service would earn one share of Virginia Company profits. Since there were no profits by the end of the 1st term, the Company issued land, 100 acres for each share of stock a servant held by 1616. After these land grants, new immigrants could sign on with individual planters, not just with the Virginia Company. Indentured servants usually labored four to seven years, working off their passage to the New World, their food, clothing and shelter.

Between 1620 and 1680 at least half of the Europeans in Virginia arrived as indentured servants. The high death rate, though, discouraged further immigration from Europe, and tobacco planters began importing Africans to make up the labor shortfall.

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