Thanksgiving Lesson from the Pilgrims: When individuals control the fruits of their labor, society prospers.
(This is intended to be a five-minute lesson that you can use at your monthly book club meeting or scout meeting or other group meeting. Hand out small stones with the letter “P” on them to all the participants. I went to Walmart and bought a bag of dark-colored pebbles sold in the silk flower department to go in the bottom of a vase, and I bought a silver Sharpie marker and wrote the letter “P” on each pebble.)
The lesson:
We all know about the Pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock in 1620. These stones symbolize a piece of that rock and I hope they will serve as a reminder of a lesson the Pilgrims learned in their struggle to survive. The “P” can serve as a reminder of “Plymouth Rock” and “Pilgrims”. Please listen closely to see what else this letter “P” represents in the Pilgrims’ story.
The Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod on November 9, 1620. The winter was harsh, food was scarce, and the living conditions were unhealthy, so about half of the Pilgrims died during the following winter.
The next spring (1621), the survivors were able to plant crops. They had a communal arrangement by which they all worked, and everything they produced went into a common storehouse and was shared equally by everyone. No matter how hard a Pilgrim worked and how much food he produced, he received the same amount of food as everyone else. This caused the Pilgrims to be unhappy and unwilling to work hard. As a result, the first harvest was very disappointing. The Pilgrims knew they would be going hungry that winter. The situation was repeated the next year as well, so the winter of 1622 also was very difficult, with the Pilgrims nearly starving.
Governor Bradford recognized that the communal arrangement they were using took away individual dignity and did not encourage people to work hard and be productive, even though they all knew that their very survival was at stake.
Governor Bradford wrote in his diary: The strong… had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.
Governor Bradford finally decided to establish a private property system, giving each family one acre of land per person on which to grow food, and respecting each family’s right to keep what it produced. This made everyone much happier and more productive.
Governor Bradford wrote in his diary: This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been…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; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”
When the ship Anne arrived that summer (1623), bringing 60 more people into the colony, there was no worry about having enough food, and there continued to be plenty of food for everyone from that time on. The Pilgrims learned, through tremendous struggle, suffering, and many deaths, that the key to prosperity and mutual respect among people is to allow people to have control over what they produce (i.e. to respect private property rights).
Since the time of the Pilgrims, many other people have promoted and tried various types of communal property arrangements. These arrangements have gone under various names, such as Marxism, collectivism, communism, socialism, Nazism (National Socialism), “The Great Society”, “The Welfare State”, Crony Capitalism, State Capitalism, Progressivism, and so forth. Some versions involve the government owning land and factories, but most involve heavy taxation and government regulation and control of private property. Regardless of what it is called, the results are the same. Respect for the dignity of each individual person is reduced in favor of the collective, and people are less free, less productive, and less prosperous.
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Now look at your stone with the letter “P” on it. What does the letter “P” represent to you? Plymouth Rock? The Plymouth colony? Pilgrims? Private Property? Prosperity?
Note: This and other lessons can be found at JeffersonReview.com. You have permission to copy and share.
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