The Pilgrims’ Real Thanksgiving Lesson
By Mary Theroux • Monday November 22, 2010 4:31 PM PDT • 9 Comments
With Thanksgiving upon us once again, we offer a reminder of the economic lesson that made our first Thanksgiving possible:
The Pilgrims’ Real Thanksgiving Lesson
by Benjamin PowellFeast and football. That’s what many of us think about at Thanksgiving. Most people identify the origin of the holiday with the Pilgrims’ first bountiful harvest. But few understand how the Pilgrims actually solved their chronic food shortages.
Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.
In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on “equality” and “need” as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.” The problem was that “young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.” Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.
Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.
This change, Bradford wrote, “had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.” Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. Once the new system of property rights was in place, “the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.”
Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years. It was only after allowing greater property rights that they could feast without worrying that famine was just around the corner.
We are direct beneficiaries of the economics lesson the pilgrims learned in 1623. Today we have a much better developed and well-defined set of property rights. Our economic system offers incentives for us—in the form of prices and profits—to coordinate our individual behavior for the mutual benefit of all; even those we may not personally know.
It is customary in many families to “give thanks to the hands that prepared this feast” during the Thanksgiving dinner blessing. Perhaps we should also be thankful for the millions of other hands that helped get the dinner to the table: the grocer who sold us the turkey, the truck driver who delivered it to the store, and the farmer who raised it all contributed to our Thanksgiving dinner because our economic system rewards them. That’s the real lesson of Thanksgiving. The economic incentives provided by private competitive markets where people are left free to make their own choices make bountiful feasts possible.
Tags: Agriculture, American History, Civil Society, Economics, Food, Free Market, Liberty, Property Rights 
This is inaccurate, unhistorical ideologically-driven twaddle.
DNS | Nov 24, 2010 | Reply
The story is not nearly as simple as Powell makes out, and the “lessons” are not what he says they are.
Take a look here for some work by actual historians:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/weekinreview/21zernike.html?_r=1
DNS | Nov 24, 2010 | Reply
DNS,
What is “twaddle” is the now discredited and historically inaccurate myth still espoused by the New York Times and various other apologists (such as Richard Pickering) for the standard, “progressive,” corporatist account of Thanksgiving.
The first Thanksgiving was in 1623, not in the famine year of 1621 when half of the colonists died and the survivors were largely lazy thieves. And contrary to Pickerings’s claim, the “biggest problem” was not “the lack of planning” as the entire structure of the colony was a form of centrally planned communalism, with private property rights and markets prohibited. The effects of this collectivism (“tragedy of the commons”) were devastating, and here is how Governor William Bradford, in his History of Plymouth Plantation, described the abandonment of communalism to private property, and the dramatic results:
The bountiful harvest in the fall of 1623 was the result, with the colony then celebrating “a day of thanksgiving,” and as Bradford wrote in 1647 in the final year of his book: “Any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”
Many such “utopian,” socialist, mini-states were established in the early colonies and every one of them failed miserably. In this regard and contrary again to Pickering’s claims, Jamestown (established in 1607) also suffered from the same foolish collectivism/statism, resulting in the population falling from 500 to 160. Then, the switch to a free market occurred in 1614 under Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor. As Hamor noted, after the switch there was “plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily and doth procure.” And he further stated that when socialism dominated, “we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty men as three men have done for themselves now.”
David Theroux | Nov 26, 2010 | Reply
Quoting writers from the New York Times as “actual historians” is quite comical.
KJ | Nov 30, 2010 | Reply
Tell it to the Hutterites (Anabaptists, not Calvinists). They did so well in Canada and the US with their communes that the Province of Alberta actually outlawed for a time their legal right to purchase more land.
They are still doing well — have been for many decades now that the anti-communal forces aren’t persecuting them to death over in Europe from whenst they came.
Your position though is that communal ownership/collectivism never has worked and never can. The Hutterites, and many other groups/communes, are living proof that you are dead wrong and simply repeating false-propaganda ad nauseam, as the Big Lie tactic that it is.
The Pilgrims had problems not because collectivism doesn’t work but because of the particulars of their unique situation (including the “deal/contract” itself; they had to pay too much in labor to repay their travel fare, etc.) and their disposition/mentality in the first place.
Tom Usher | Nov 20, 2012 | Reply
Tom, We would suggest you look more closely to see that the Hutterites most definitely have a system of private property rights. In their three varieties of community structure, Hutterite colonies operate similar to corporations, in which buildings and equipment are owned and operated by the colony and housing units are assigned as “use property rights” to individual families which have exclusive use of them. Contracts are utilized as part of the legal structure among the members and those outside.
The problem here is that “the tragedy of the commons” cannot be avoided (see here, here, here, and here) and those societies that abolish and prohibit property rights have consistently failed because socialism prevents people from being able to choose, adapt, and have the knowledge of how to work cooperatively with others for common purpose.
For a more detailed discussion of why collectivism/socialism always produces “the tragedy of the commons,” please see the following:
Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure, by Randy T. Simmons
David J. Theroux | Nov 20, 2012 | Reply