There’s more to Thanksgiving than multi-colored turkeys drawn around the hands of children. There’s also more to the original Thanksgiving tale than cooperation between peoples that saved the lives of a small colony.
The story surrounding the time of Thanksgiving is a testament to the failure of collectivism, and the power that accompanies individual responsibility.
It’s not one you’ll hear in the mainstream — but it’s true, and needs to be spread far and wide.
Pilgrims emigrated from Europe to Massachusetts in 1620. Half of the pilgrims starved to death or went back to where they came from before the first winter was over, partially due to a particularly bad New England winter and partially due to inadequate farming skills.
As the story goes, the day was saved by Native Americans who taught the pilgrims how to plant corn in the spring, and the resulting harvest was bountiful.
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They celebrated with the feast commemorated by modern-day Americans as Thanksgiving.
There’s a lot ignored in that story, like the fact that it was communal farming that utterly destroyed the colony’s fragile, tiny economy.
The goal was to share the results of labor equally while everybody contributed to the greater good.
That plan went badly. Very badly.
As the Independent Institute reports:
“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 Independent Institute continued. “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.”
It sounds about right. Those who work tend to want to keep the results of that work. And those who don’t have incentive to work, won’t. Funny how that happens.
Governor William Bradford complained that the colony was rife with “corruption” and with “confusion and discontent,” according to the Mises Institute, citing Bradford’s “History of Plymouth Plantation.”
People preferred to steal food than to make it, until radical change was instituted.
In 1623, after years of economic hardship, Bradford decided to create a massive change to how the colony would deal with its resources.
Bradford abolished the colony’s little brand of socialism.
Rather than all that was produced going into a general collection and being doled out as needed, each family was given a parcel of land to farm as best they could. Those who had excess could trade what they wanted.
Essentially, Bradford replaced socialism with the free market, and the change was dramatic.
“This had very good success,” Bradford reflected, according to Townhall, “for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many.”
The first Thanksgiving, the real one in which the governor and colonists had something to truly be happy about, would have been in that fall of 1623. Call it whichever feast you like, but harvest celebrations that fall were the first ones to yield enough to forestall worry for the winter.
Really and truly, the actual reason for Thanksgiving’s continued existence — the reason anyone survived to relate the tale — was the triumph of private property and the free market over socialism.
H/T Freedom Works
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via Conservative Tribune
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