There is No Free Corn

“Now the wellcome time of harvest aproached, in which all had their hungrie bellies filled.”

Watched an eye-opening video from Izzit the other day. Called Yours and Mine: The Lesson of 1623, the free DVD focused on the early days of Plymouth Colony. Never learned this in school, but apparently the Puritans* who settled there tried –and abandoned– Communism.

Basically, the story is this: When the original colony was founded late fall 1620, it was organized according to principles of communal property and labor: IOW, no private land and everybody worked for the common stores. This was pretty much imposed by the merchants who funded them, but the Puritans themselves were also committed to creating a new “Republic” Plato would have been proud of.

The events of these early years are known through the “journal” of William Bradford, Governor of the settlement from 1621-32 (and many times thereafter), usually called Of Plymouth Plantation.

The Puritans, as Bradford describes them, seem particularly well-suited to a communal lifestyle. They were, of course, people of strong faith who believed they had a special relationship with God (rather than a focus on property and wealth). They were obviously brave and willing to work hard (else why bother to cross the ocean?). But most of all, they were charitable.

There are a couple of examples of Pilgrim selflessness in Bradford’s diary — reducing their own rations to feed the ill-fated Weston (aka Wessagusset) Colonists, for instance, or hurrying off to nurse Massasoit back to health. But the most dramatic instance occurs during that awful first Winter. Amid all the sick and dying, there were a few “sound persons” who risked their own health to care for the sick “willingly & cheerfully,” demonstrating “true love unto their freinds & bretheren.” Even the Mayflower Crew members (who had “scoffed at” the Pilgrims and refused to share their beer with the sick) were treated with “pity” and “compassion.”

Then there’s the “small harvest” of 1621. Ever grateful, Bradford tells how the settlers “had all things in good plenty” — because the group was willing to work, and to share. At least some of the men had gone fishing and fowling on behalf of the group so that “every family had their portion.” (Bradford doesn’t mention this, but apparently some of the women were willing to clean fish and dress turkeys for their brothers and sisters as well).

In other words, if communism was going to work, it should have worked in Plymouth. If ever there was a group for which altruism could have been a way of life, it should have been the Puritans. That they failed at communal living should give us all “food” (you should pardon the expression) for thought.

Bradford as much as says so when he finally gets around to talking about the “comone course and condition” in 1623.

The previous harvest (1622) had not yielded enough corn to last until the next one. After mentioning a few reasons for this, Bradford identifies the “chief” cause as hunger (they were “weak” for “wante of food”) and starvation-driven theft (many ears of corn had been stolen before they were “scarce eatable” –despite the punishment of being “well whipt”).

And so, entering 1623 with a poor crop, constant hunger, and desperate corn thieves, Plymouth’s Leaders had a problem to solve: How to “obtaine a beter crope than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in miserie.” After much debate, Bradford (acting as Governor) agrees to “set corne every man for his owne perticuler, and in that regard trust to them selves.” IOW, give each family a plot of land and let them tend to their own crop.  

This, Bradford reports, “had a very good success.” It made everybody “very industrious” (even women who used to claim to be too “weak” for field work now went “willingly… to set corn…”). And “much more” corn was planted and harvested. In short, from this point on the Colony was a success.

He doesn’t really discuss the communal arrangements of the colony until this point, but once having introduced it, Bradford has a lot to say -– beginning with the observation that this attempt to create “comone wealth” (tried for several years by “godly and sober men”) just goes to show how wrong-headed Plato and his “modern” acolytes were. Rather than making Plymouth “happy and flourishing,” communism only created “confusion and discontent.”

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving

HomeSchool Go 2 Postscript
What Can You Do with this Story?

First watch Yours and Mine for yourself. Izzit is a free service. After you register, you can request your own eye-opening DVD each year, the only obligation being a brief “review” about how you used the material and what your students thought about it. There are a lot of topics to choose from. (And if anyone is willing to share thoughts and experiences about any of the Izzit videos, I’d love to hear from you).

Next, read Bradford himself. This extract (especially the last two sections from 1621 and 1623) is relevant here, but the full publication is available in numerous formats at Gutenberg and there’s a modern English version at the Internet Archive.

More detailed recaps and discussions of the colony, Winter of 1621, the 1623 decision to abandon common ownership, and the results of that decision are posted on several sites — for example here and here and this one by Homeschool Hero “Uncle Eric.”

Plymouth wasn’t the first try at common property in the New World. Several years earlier, the Jamestown colony was organized along similar lines — with similar results. Find out more (and consider comparing these two early English colonies with one another — or with their Spanish and French counterparts).

The “60 lusty men” who formed the Wessagusset Colony came to New England without supplies (and without a clue how to live in the wilderness). They got into hot water pretty quick, which Bradford describes in grim detail. Find some other sources and learn more about this failed settlement.

It may or may not be true that beer (or ale) was safer than water in 1621, but there is no doubt the Pilgrims believed this. Find out why Bradford & Co. considered the Mayflower Crew’s hoarding of the beer so unconscionable.

Bradford is not the source of the “First Thanksgiving” story; that comes from a letter by Edward Winslow (Dec 11 1621), primary author of Mourt’s Relation which was published in London in 1622.

Obviously. Read The Republic.

*
I’m guilty of using the terms Puritans, Settlers, Pilgrims, and Colonists interchangeably. Not everyone at Plymouth was a Puritan, but Puritans were the ones in charge; their beliefs flavored the entire enterprise, and theirs was (is) the dominant voice of the group.