Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/328

 latter instances. The supreme importance of tobacco as a means of securing a livelihood was indicated in the refusal of the Assembly, in 1629, to prohibit new comers from cultivating it, although at this time the authorities had the strongest desire to diminish the quantity produced. The heaviest punishment which the Assembly supposed they could inflict upon the French vine-dressers, who had been brought into Virginia in the time of the Company, and who had been subsequently accused of concealing their knowledge, was to refuse to grant them permission to cultivate tobacco, to which the vine-dressers, who had leased some of the public lands, had probably turned as the most direct means of earning a subsistence.

One of the most notable results of the fact that an important proportion of the tobacco of the Colony was produced by planters who had recently arrived in Virginia, was the reduction in the average quality of each annual crop. The servants of the new planters were as a rule as ignorant as themselves in the beginning. While some of the immigrants were prudent enough to wait until they had acquired by actual observation, or personal experience in the field, a knowledge of the proper manner