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November 25, 2004
Be Thankful For Private Property
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Today I thought I would link to another Caroline Baum article. As she does every Thanksgiving, Baum published her piece showing how incentives had much to do with creating the holiday that is being celebrated across the nation today.
Relying on the log of William Bradford, the second governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony, Baum shows how the transition from harsh winters accompanied by starvation on to bountiful harvests was not a matter of luck. A change from communal farming to a system of private property played vital role.
The land of the colony was at first communally farmed, a common tradition that the Pilgrims had brought with them from England. Bradford writes that such a system:
“was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to [the Pilgrims'] benefite and comforte”
Knowing that something had to be done, it was decided that the land would be divided up, giving each family their own plot. This system, which allowed each individual to grow food for themselves and sell any excess for a personal profit, had an amazing effect. Again Bradford notes:
``This had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted than other ways would have been by any means the Govr or any other could use, and saved him a great deall of trouble, and gave far better content.''
After three horrifying winters, things had permanently changed. As Baum concludes:
Given appropriate incentives, the Pilgrims produced and enjoyed a bountiful harvest in the fall of 1623 and set aside ``a day of thanksgiving'' to thank God for their good fortune.
``Any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day,'' Bradford writes in an entry from 1647, the last year covered by his History.
With the benefit of hindsight, we know that the Pilgrims' good fortune was not a matter of luck. In 1623, they were responding to the same incentives that men and women still respond to almost four centuries later.
This is a lesson that, at least I for one, had never learned about Thanksgiving until I read this piece a few years ago.
Posted by Peter Mork at November 25, 2004 10:33 AM
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