Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/243

 The male inhabitants were divided into officers, farmers or renters, and laborers or servants. It was the duty of each officer to maintain a careful watch over the division of population assigned to him for protection, but this did not relieve him of the necessity of earning his own support. The laborers belonged to two sections, those who were employed in the common garden, and those who were employed in the trades of smith, shoemaker, carpenter, tailor, and tanner, who, however, were not exempted from the task of tilling the ground. At the close of Dale&#8217;s administration there were thirty-eight persons in Henrico, a majority of whom were tenants who held their lands under covenant; the remainder were in part at least their servants. The commander was Captain James Davis. Of the hundred and nineteen inhabitants of Lower Bermuda Hundred, whose commander was Captain Yeardley, seventeen were farmers or tenants. Thirty-one of the fifty inhabitants of Jamestown were tenants, the commander there being Captain Francis West. The farmers at Kecoughtan numbered eleven in a population of twenty. Captain Webbe was the commander here. There were twenty-five persons at West and Shirley Hundreds, all of whom were engaged in planting under the supervision of Captain Madison. These men belonged to the class of laborers who were employed for the public wealth; the restriction of their attention to tobacco shows that it had, only four years after the first experiment of Rolfe, become one of the staple crops of the Colony. The most experienced judges had already recognized the superior quality of the leaf produced in Virginia. John Rolfe ventured, in the light of the improvement made in its cultivation and