Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/425

 taken under the impression that silk culture no longer needed; the support of the Government, and that its propagation offered now a remunerative prospect. In 1668, Berkeley succeeded in sending to the King his proposed gift of three hundred pounds of this commodity, but he accompanied it with a special request that men skilled in the industry should be transported to Virginia, to reside there permanently for the purpose of instructing the natives in it, for this would divert their attention from tobacco. This was a different tone on his part from what the recent action of the Assembly would have led one to expect. Nor was it the last appeal from the Governor, who was in a position to comprehend fully the progress which the Colony was making in the production of silk; at a somewhat later date he wrote, that its culture in Virginia was retarded by the fact that men who could hardly procure for themselves the coarsest clothes by the hardest labor in tending a crop which they understood and were accustomed to, were not disposed to adventure