Ships and Cargoes : 189 



to the colony, brought skilled workers to establish industries. This 

 was in 1608 when the vessel returned with dressed timber such as 

 wainscoting and clapboards but the cargo also included extracted 

 materials such as pitch and tar and raw materials like iron ore. A 

 glass works was established in Jamestown in 1609 and the first iron 

 works in Virginia commenced operation in 1619. Laudable efforts 

 were made to estabUsh a variety of industries in Virginia. It turned 

 out, however, that the only cargo sent back to England which found 

 a ready and profitable market was tobacco. 



Tobacco grew wild in Virginia as elsewhere but careful cultivation 

 of the plant was first undertaken by John Rolph in 1612. Tobacco 

 had been coming into Europe from the West Indies for over a century 

 but the use of tobacco was growing and the supply from this quarter 

 was not sufficient to meet the increasing demand. Rolph's experiment 

 showed that the soil and climate of Virginia were ideally suited to 

 produce a superior tobacco. 



Officially, both King James and Governor Dale tried to discourage 

 the preoccupation of the Virginia colonists with the growing of 

 tobacco but when the colonists found out that an acre of tobacco 

 would yield six times as much revenue as an acre of corn or other 

 grain, the expansion of the tobacco industry in Virginia was inevita- 

 ble despite any official taxes and other impediments imposed upon it. 

 At about this time tobacco was occasionally sold in London at the 

 high rate of $12 a pound. Of course, Virginia agriculture and industry 

 did furnish the English market with other articles of trade but to- 

 bacco long continued to be the cornerstone of prosperity in this col- 

 ony. The intent in Virginia was to develop industries with diversified 

 products but Virginia became largely an agricultural region, special- 

 izing in tobacco. 



The Plymouth and other New England colonies reversed this proc- 

 ess. It was thought at the beginning that they would establish planta- 

 tions and would prosper on agriculture but the soil and climate of 

 New England were not hospitable to the rapid development of pros- 

 perous agriculture. The colonists who could develop their farms so 

 that they could be maintained on a self-sustaining basis were rela- 

 tively fortunate and in time they learned to live well. When it came 

 to products that they could use and trade with England and other 

 countries, they had to look beyond agriculture. 



The waters of the rivers, of the bays and of the banks were fortu- 

 nately continually alive with fish. They traveled in such great schools 

 that some of the captains reported that their vessels were "pestered" 



