officials and employers of the company were given one hundred acres each for meritorious service and could secure the second allotment by the erection of a house within three years. Any person who paid the passage of a laborer, either bond or free, to the colony, received fifty acres by "Head Right," and after 1618 this became the common method of obtaining land. As labor was in great demand, the practice became a system of investing in labor and having a piece of land thrown in to make the bargain a good one. Finally the payment to the Secretary of an amount equal to the passage money of a laborer would secure title to a tract of land and "Head Rights" passed by purchase.
Wherever there are free lands in abundance free labor is difficult to secure. The laborer can usually make as much working for himself, if he has an outfit, as anyone else is willing to pay him, and this was especially so in Virginia. Laborers came under bond to work a certain time to repay their passage money and pay for tools, seeds and provisions to make a start for themselves, and when this time was up became farmers on their own account, so there was really no paid labor in the colony worthy of mention. When a Dutch ship landed a cargo of negro slaves at Jamestown in 1619, the labor problem was practically solved for the colonists. It also solved the question of small land holdings, for we find records showing larger and larger tracts being patented every year. In 1619 the patents averaged about one hundred acres; in 1626, about one hundred and fifty acres; in 1636, about three hundred and fifty acres; in 1642, about five hundred and sixty
