Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/160

 them to build framed dwellings. Whitaker had already set the example. Sandys probably anticipated that a concentration of the population would diminish the expense of securing plank, not only by promoting the establishment of saw-mills, but also by reducing the expenses of transportation. As it was, the plantations soon again became too widely dispersed to justify the erection in convenient numbers of mills of this character, and it grew to be almost as expensive to procure finished plank as it was to obtain bricks. Governor Butler, who visited Jamestown and its vicinity not long after the massacre, declared in his pamphlet Virginia Unmasked, that the houses of the people were the &#8220;worst in the world,&#8221; and that the most wretched cottages in England were equal, if not superior, in appearance and comfort, to the finest dwellings in the Colony. No doubt this statement was substantially correct, although it was made in a sinister spirit. The houses were mean in the beginning, and in the damp climate of Virginia, easily fell into decay unless carefully repaired. The Governor and Council, replying to the strictures of Butler, while they acknowledged that the dwellings which had been erected had been built for use and not for ornament, asserted that those occupied by workingmen, which the great majority of the inhabitants professed themselves to be, excelled the homes of the same class in the rest of the English dominions. The houses in which persons of quality resided had many points of advantage over the cottages and cabins of the laborers, and no criticisms of importance could be justly passed upon them in the light of the surrounding circumstances.