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A Thanksgiving Lesson.

Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford's take on how the early pilgrims overcame socialism and famine is an important read:

A few lessons from Bradford's writings:

When the first Pilgrims founded the Plymouth Colony, all property was taken away from families and transferred to a “comone wealth.” In other words, the Pilgrims tried to do away with private property. The results were disastrous. According to Bradford, the stronger and younger men resented working for other men’s wives and children “without any recompence.” And the women forced to cook and clean for other men saw their uncompensated service as “a kind of slavery.” The system as a whole bred “confusion and discontent” and “retarded much employment that would have been to [the Pilgrims’] benefit and comfort.” Unable to produce their own food, some settlers “became servants to the Indians,” cutting wood and fetching water in exchange for “a capful of corn.” Others tragically perished.

It was not until private property rights were restored and every man was allowed to “set corn for his own particular” that prosperity came to the colony. Bradford reported, “This had very good success for it made all hands very industrious. … [M]uch more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. … Women went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn.”

A profoundly religious man, Bradford saw the hand of God in the Pilgrims’ economic recovery. After witnessing this experiment “amongst godly and sober men,” Bradford concluded that the elimination of private property was incompatible with human nature. He described those who thought they could make men “happy and flourishing” by taking away their property as “vain … as if they were wiser than God.”

The lesson of the first Thanksgiving is not exactly the romanticized Hollywood version. Our nation survived and later flourished on free enterprise:

What private property does -- as the Pilgrims discovered -- is connect effort to reward, creating an incentive for people to produce far more. Then, if there's a free market, people will trade their surpluses to others for the things they lack. Mutual exchange for mutual benefit makes the community richer.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Posted by Will Franklin · 25 November 2010 10:35 AM

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