Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/71

 tend or reap his crops or to widen the area of his new grounds. It was not simply the desire to become an owner of a great extent of land that prompted the Virginian in the seventeenth century to bring in successive bands of persons whose transportation entitled him to a proportionate number of head rights. Perhaps in a majority of cases, his object was to obtain laborers whom he might substitute for those whose terms were on the point of expiring. It was this constantly recurring necessity, which must have been the source of much anxiety and annoyance as well as heavy pecuniary outlay, that led the planters to prefer youths to adults among the imported English agricultural servants, for while their physical strength might have been less, yet the periods for which they were bound extended over a longer time.

It can be readily seen that from this economic point of view, the slave was a far more desirable form of property than the white servant. His term was for life, not for a few years. There was no solicitude as to how his place was to be filled, for he belonged to his Master as long as he lived, and when he died he generally left behind him a family of children who were old enough to furnish valuable aid in the tobacco fields. In physical strength he was the equal of the white laborer of the same age, and in power of endurance he was the superior. Whilst some of the negroes imported into the Colony, more especially those snatched directly from a state of freedom in Africa, were doubtless in some measure difficult to manage, the slaves as a rule were docile and tractable, and, when natives of Virginia, not disposed to rebel against the condition of life in which they found themselves. Not only were they more easily controlled than the white servants, but they also throve on plainer fare and were satisfied with humbler lodgings. Nor were they subject to