Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/411

 a spinning-wheel or a weaver&#8217;s frame. The busy hum of the one and the measured rattle of the other were heard in nearly every household. How natural then to expect to find in the homes of the Virginians of the same period&#8212;men and women, who, in many instances, had been born in the mother country and who clung to the habits its well as to the traditions of their race&#8212;rude appliances for the plainest manufactures to cover their simplest material needs. That such appliances were to be found there, will be shown in the proper place.

Let us first inquire into the condition of the mechanical trades in the Colony. The white mechanics of Virginia in the seventeenth century can be divided into two distinct classes. First, there were those who as servants were bound under the terms of their contracts for a certain number of years; secondly, freemen who were skilled in the use of tools and who were prepared to perform any work pertaining to their trade which was given them to do. The class of indented tradesmen was the largest of the two, being recruited from abroad or from among the natives of the soil. There were not, however, as strong motives to influence the handicraftsmen of England to emigrate to Virginia as servants, as existed in the case of its agricultural laborers. The English mechanic belonged to an order enjoying special privileges by the force of legislation; he was carefully trained in his particular craft by an apprenticeship that admitted him into a close corporation, the number of the members of which was not sufficiently great to diminish seriously his chance of obtaining work, by raising up many competitors. If he was skilled in his calling and sober in his conduct, there was little danger of his being thrown upon the parish