The Children of Jamestown 3
meant that millions of English men, women, and children lived in poverty.
War led to disrupted trade, and bad weather resulted in poor harvests, which
pushed people close to famine—sometimes over the edge to starvation.
Smith escaped the fate of many English villeins and yeomen, agricultural
laborers and tenant farmers, by serving as a mercenary soldier. By the time
he returned, in 1606, from years of adventure in Europe, poverty had wors-
ened in England (during the reign of James I), and crime was increasing.
Wandering beggars and petty thieves spilled across England; laws were rig-
orous and punishments were harsh; often panhandlers and thieves were
placed in institutions that went by the names of “hospital,” “workhouse,” or
“house of correction,” where they learned dependence and never-ending
hopelessness, which were not solutions, rather causes for more problems.
John Smith’s experience in Jamestown from 1607 to 1609 and sailing
along the New England coast in 1614 convinced him that the solution to
dependence and poverty—the increasing prevalence in England of the able
poor, the sturdy beggar—was not the institutionalization of the poor rather
their employment in an activity that would fuel an independent, hopeful
mind-set. As Smith coasted the shores of Maine, New Hampshire, and Mas-
sachusetts from May to July 1614, as he fished the waters and traded with the
indigenous inhabitants, he came to know the plenty of the land, where with
but a little work it would be difficult to starve, and with much work it would
be easy to thrive. “So freely,” he wrote in Description of New England, “hath
God and his majesty bestowed those blessings on them that will attempt to
obtaine them, as here every man may be master and owner of his owne
labour and land; . . . if hee have nothing but his hands, he may set up this
trade; and by industrie quickly grow rich; spending but halfe that time wel[l],
which in England we abuse in idlenes[s], worse or as ill.” Smith believed that
God made available a land yet barely touched by the native inhabitants, and
King James I encouraged his people to go forth and make a living, benefiting
themselves and England. The native inhabitants “compare their store in the
Sea, to the haires of their heads: and surely there are an incredible abun-
dance upon this Coast.” What Englishman would not wish to spend days
“fishing before your doors” and “every night sleep[ing] quietly a shore with
good cheare and what fires you will: or when you please [fish], with your
wives and familie.” Boys and girls can be put to work: boys fishing for cod,
mullet, and salmon and, girls spinning fishing lines. New England, he
argued, offers everything the poor of England would wish for: all that is
needed is labor and desire. “All these and diverse other good things do heere,
for want of use, still increase, and decrease with little diminution; whereby
they growe to that abundance you shall scarce finde any Baye, shallow shore,
or Cove of sand, where you may not take many Clams, or Lobsters, or both
at your pleasure; and in many places lode your boat if you please: nor Iles
where you finde not fruits, birds, crabs, and mussels, or all of them for
