Virginia's agriculture was based on the cultivation of tobacco and corn--both hand-hoed crops, with practically no use whatever of the plow. As land was plentiful and the plantations increased in size, the great and pressing need was always for labor--and more labor. This system of indentured service in Virginia began very early and opened a great supply of labor not otherwise available. There were many in England of the poorer class and even of those once more affluent who had for one reason or another become the victims of misfortune and sought a fresh start in the colonies but were without the money to pay their passage. No small number of those who had become bankrupt became indentured servants. The severe English laws against debtors forced many to fly from that country and Virginia was a safe escape; for in 1642 a law had been passed in Virginia protecting these fugitives from their English creditors.[31] Little social stigma seems to have attached to the indentured servants as such. Frequently they lived with the family of their master, especially so when he was one of the smaller proprietors, and as they became proficient and earned their master's confidence they were often made overseers of their fellow workers. Although by far the greater demand was always for workers on the land, not all of them were so employed; some were artisans, some of the better educated became teachers and it was not unusual for the wealthier planters to seek and purchase these latter for that purpose. George Washington is said to have thus received his earlier schooling. As a whole, they appear to have been well and humanely treated in Virginia, or at least after the earlier days of their introduction, with little or none of the shocking brutality they are known to have met with upon occasion in Maryland, such as called for that Colony's legislation of 1664, 1681, etc.[32] [31] Hening, 256. Also _Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia, T. J. Wertenbaker_, p. 164. [32] E. I. McCormac's _White Servitude in Maryland_, p. 67. That there had been some earlier harshness, but more probably to convicts, is suggested by the effort made by Robert Beverley, in his _History of Virginia_, first published in 1705, to refute rumours of ill-treatment or undue hardship in the lives of these people which had been spread abroad in the England of his day. No doubt the writings of Defoe and other authors without personal knowledge of what they undertook to describe, had had their affect. "A white woman is rarely or never put to work on the ground, if she be good for anything else," Beverley declares and further on has this to say: