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by Richard J. Marbury
Each year at this time school children all over
America are taught the official Thanksgiving story, and newspapers,
radio, TV, and magazines devote vast amounts of time and space to it.
It is all very colorful and fascinating.
It is also very deceiving. This official story is
nothing like what really happened. It is a fairy tale, a whitewashed
and sanitized collection of half-truths which divert attention away
from Thanksgiving's real meaning.
The official story has the pilgrims boarding the
Mayflower, coming to America and establishing the Plymouth colony in
the winter of 1620-21. This first winter is hard, and half the
colonists die. But the survivors are hard- working and tenacious, and
they learn new farming techniques from the Indians. The harvest of 1621
is bountiful. The Pilgrims hold a celebration, and give thanks to God.
They are grateful for the wonderful new abundant land He has given
them.
The official story then has the Pilgrims living
more or less happily ever after, each year repeating the first
Thanksgiving. Other early colonies also have hard times at first, but
they soon prosper and adopt the annual tradition of giving thanks for
this prosperous new land called America.
The problem with this official story is that the
harvest of 1621 was not bountiful, nor were the colonists hard-working
or tenacious. 1621 was a famine year and many of the colonists were
lazy thieves.
In his History of Plymouth Plantation, the
governor of the colony, William Bradford, reported that the colonists
went hungry for years, because they refused to work in the fields. They
preferred instead to steal food. He says the colony was riddled with
“corruption,” and with “confusion and discontent.” The crops were small
because “much was stolen both by night and day, before it became scarce
eatable.”
In the harvest feasts of 1621 and 1622, “all had
their hungry bellies filled,” but only briefly. The prevailing
condition during those years was not the abundance the official story
claims; it was famine and death. The first “Thanksgiving” was not so
much a celebration as it was the last meal of condemned men.
But in subsequent years something changes. The
harvest of 1623 was different. Suddenly, “instead of famine now God
gave them plenty,” Bradford wrote, “and the face of things was changed,
to the rejoicing of the hearts of many, for which they blessed God.”
Thereafter, he wrote, “any general want or famine hath not been amongst
them since to this day.” In fact, in 1624, so much food was produced
that the colonists were able to begin exporting corn.
What happened?
After the poor harvest of 1622, writes Bradford,
“they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could,
and obtain a better crop.” They began to question their form of
economic organization.
This had required that “all profits & benefits
that are got by trade, working, fishing, or any other means” were to be
placed in the common stock of the colony, and that, “all such persons
as are of this colony, are to have their meat, drink, apparel, and all
provisions out of the common stock.” A person was to put into the
common stock all he could, and take out only what he needed.
This “from each according to his ability, to each
according to his need” was an early form of socialism, and it is why
the Pilgrims were starving. Bradford writes that “young men that are
most able and fit for labor and service” complained about being forced
to “spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and
children.” Also, “the strong, or man of parts, had no more in division
of victuals and clothes, than he that was weak.” So the young and
strong refused to work, and the total amount of food produced was never
adequate.
To rectify this situation, in 1623 Bradford
abolished socialism. He gave each household a parcel of land and told
them they could keep what they produced, or trade it away as they saw
fit. In other words, he replaced socialism with a free market, and that
was the end of famines.
Many early groups of colonists set up socialist
states, all with the same terrible results. At Jamestown, established
in 1607, out of every shipload of settlers that arrived, less than half
would survive their first twelve months in America. Most of the work
was being done by only one-fifth of the men, the other four-fifths
choosing to be parasites. In the winter of 1609-10, called “The
Starving Time,” the population fell from five-hundred to sixty.
Then the Jamestown colony was converted to a free
market, and the results were every bit as dramatic as those at
Plymouth. In 1614, Colony Secretary Ralph Hamor wrote that after the
switch there was “plenty of food, which every man by his own industry
may easily and doth procure.” He said that when the socialist system
had prevailed, “we reaped not so much corn from the labors of thirty
men as three men have done for themselves now.”
Before these free markets were established, the
colonists had nothing for which to be thankful. They were in the same
situation as Ethiopians are today, and for the same reasons. But after
free markets were established, the resulting abundance was so dramatic
that the annual Thanksgiving celebrations became common throughout the
colonies, and in 1863, Thanksgiving became a national holiday.
Thus the real reason for Thanksgiving, deleted from
the official story, is: Socialism does not work; the one and only
source of abundance is free markets, and we thank God we live in a
country where we can have them.
Pamphlet No. 1078, November, 2000
originally published in
The Free Market, November, 1985
by the Ludwig von Mises Institute
www.mises.org
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