Workers must be imported.

Many in England were willing to come, and more could be persuaded or coerced, if their passage were paid and employment assured.

To this end indentured servitude had already been inaugurated by the London Company as a modification of the long used system of apprenticeship.

And following that plan, ship captains brought hundreds, then thousands of laborers a year and sold their indentures to the planters either directly or through dealers in such merchandize.

The courts took the occasion to lessen the work of the hangman by sentencing convicts to deportation in servitude; the government rid itself of political prisoners during the civil war by the same method; and when servant prices rose the supply was further swelled by the agency of professional kidnappers.
The bondage varied as to its terms, with two years apparently the minimum.
The compensation varied also from mere transportation and sustenance to a payment in advance and a stipulation for outfit in clothing, foodstuffs and diverse equipment at the end of service.