David Fowler President

November 23, 2009

Thanksgiving is a national holiday that cannot help but bring to mind the Pilgrims and Plymouth Plantation. But there is a little known aspect of the Pilgrim experience that we would do well to remember in these days of “hope and change” in which the federal government now effectively owns our financial institution, automobile industry and will, soon enough, own our health care system. Would the Pilgrims have found much “hope” in these kinds of “changes?”

As we seek to answer that question, it is most likely that all we may remember is that the Pilgrims suffered terribly through their first winter in America. About half of them died from sickness, starvation or exposure. Even though Squanto and other friendly Indians taught the Pilgrims how to grow corn and helped them with hunting, trapping and fishing, the harvest of their crops had yielded barely enough to support the colony. The next fall, 1621, the situation was still very tough, but they were thankful for what they had and declared a three-day feast which they shared with their Indian friends, who contributed deer and wild fowl. Remembering only that part of the story, however, won’t answer our question.

What We've Forgotten about the First Thanksgiving

But here is the rest of the story—the part we have forgotten and that we’d better remember before President Obama’s promised “change” destroys us.

The following year, in 1622, the Pilgrims again failed to produce enough food to adequately sustain themselves. But what we have forgotten, assuming we were ever even taught it by our government-owned schools, is that the reason their productivity was so low was due to the practice of socialism.

William Bradford, the first governor of Plymouth Colony, wrote in his history of the Colony that the colonists struggled because they refused to work in the fields. After their first winter on American soil, Bradford assigned a plot of land to each of the surviving families and “all profits & benefits that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be deposited into a common storehouse and that “all such persons as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all provisions out of the common stock” (emphasis added). This meant that each member of the community was entitled to take what they needed regardless of how much or how little they contributed.

Pilgrims Learned the Hard Way about Socialism

As Governor Bradford recorded in his journal, this effort to spread the wealth “was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.” In other words, there was no incentive for people to work any harder than necessary, for they knew they could reap the benefit of another’s labor.

After the dismal harvest of 1622, Governor Bradford said, “They began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop.” As a result, Bradford and the other leaders of the Colony scrapped their socialist policy of production and adopted a free-market plan that allowed the colonists to own their land and the means of production and to keep what they produced to feed themselves or for trading.

The harvest of 1623 proved that such market incentives work. Bradford wrote, “This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any other means the Governor or any other could use …” (emphasis added).

Bradford acknowledged, “Instead of famine now God gave them plenty and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many.” In the words of Solomon, “A worker’s appetite works for him, for his hunger urges him on” (Proverbs 16:26).

Socialism in Plymouth Colony was a complete and tragic failure. But after the colony implemented a free-market system, Bradford wrote that from that point, “Any general want or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.” In fact, the harvest of 1624 was so plentiful that colonists were able to start exporting corn to England.

As you gather with family and friends this national day of Thanksgiving to give thanks to Almighty God for His blessings on America, you should also give thanks for Governor Bradford and the Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth Colony. They laid out for us in a demonstrable way the kind of harvest we will reap from the socialism that is creeping upon us. And let’s “hope” we can “change” the direction in which we’ve headed these last 11 months before we have to relearn a lesson the hard way.