Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/69

 CHAPTER XI

SYSTEM OF LABOR: THE SLAVE

introduction of the African into Virginia was an event that was certain to occur in time. The institution of slavery sprang up there under the operation of an irresistible economic law, and was to continue in undiminished vigor until it vanished in the conflagration of battle. A few negroes doubtless would have been brought into the Colony in the seventeenth century even if its soil had been incapable of producing tobacco. In this respect, the history of New England would have been repeated. The enlargement of the area under cultivation in that plant in Virginia signified an enormous increase in the number of imported slaves as soon as the proper facilities for their transportation had been established; it was not until the last quarter of the seventeenth century was reached that these facilities had been established on a scale fairly commensurate with the demand for labor in the Colony. The institution of slavery played there but an insignificant part in the course of the greater portion of this century, not because the African was looked on as an undesirable element in the local industrial system, but because the means of obtaining the individuals of this race were very limited. The value of the negro as an agricultural factor was clearly understood. The strongest competitors of Virginia in the production of its principal commodity were the Spanish Colonies in the South, where the plant was