In a word, a traveler could find to-day more elegance in a back county of Arkansas than then existed in tidewater Virginia.
The tobacco industry was a culture that required much labor.

In the spring a pile of brush was burned and on the spot thus fertilized and made friable the seed were sowed.

In due course the ground was prepared and the young plants were transplanted into rows.

Later they must be repeatedly plowed, hoed and otherwise cultivated and looked after and finally the leaves must be cut or gathered and carried to the dry house to be dried.

One man could care for only two or three acres, hence large scale cultivation required many hands--result, the importation of vast numbers of indentured servants and black slaves, with the blighting effects always consequent upon the presence of a servile class in a community.
[Illustration: _By permission of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association_ The Mount Vernon Kitchen (restored)] Although tobacco was the great staple, some of the Virginia planters had begun before the Revolution to raise considerable crops of wheat, and most of them from the beginning cultivated Indian corn.