Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/21

 fur, and a pair of plain shoes. The under linen was of dowlas and lockram.

The author of Leah and Rachel, a pamphlet published about the middle of the century, denied very emphatically the correctness of the report prevailing at that time in England that the servants in Virginia were compelled to sleep on boards by the fireplace instead of in comfortable beds. The best indication of the treatment which they received in the way of physical comforts, as he averred, was the general satisfaction expressed by all persons of this class who had been recently imported, a satisfaction which had led them to use their influence with friends and acquaintances in the mother country to induce them to emigrate to the Colony. The author of Public Good without Private Interest went so far as to charge the planters with forcing the laborers in their employment to &#8220;lie by all the time of their servitude on ash heaps or otherwise to kennel up and down like dogs.&#8221; If this occurred, it was only in rare cases, for the General Assembly had always shown a remarkable solicitude to furnish every means as a protection for those who