By 1620, the Virginia Company had organized an effective system that enabled poorer Englishmen to sail for America. These Englishmen, often skilled workers that were victims of England's widespread unemployment, considered America as the Land of Opportunity. Company agents, as well as private recruiters, impressed Brits with promises of land and other benefits for several years of servitude. According to agents, benefits included, travel, trade, and land. Typically, the Virginia Company sent servants over to Virginia to be "sold" to planters, who would reimburse the Company for the servants' passages. More often than not, the indentured servants were shocked by their new conditions. Rather than finding venues in which they could practice their profession, like gardens and orchards, overseers marched servants out to the fields. Many died, attempted to return, or ran away. In addition to mistreatment, many servants also encountered contract extension, a popular punishment of planters for rowdy indentures. However, even the worst human abuses did not take the mortal tolls that the mere climate of Virginia claimed. The temperate springs and falls, and sweltering summers in the New World, created a market for fresh servants.

Due to the abundant land and the availability of a profitable staple crop tobacco, the demand for labor was high. In fact, one scholar estimates that 75% or more of Virginia's settlers in the seventeenth century were servants.

Sources: Dabney, V. (1971) Virginia: The New Dominion. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press; Galenson, D.W. (1981) White Servitude in Colonial America, New York: Cambridge University Press; Smith, A.B. (1947) Colonists in Bondage, The University of North Carolina Press, North Carolina.

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