Prior to 1620 a joint-stock company of private investors was chartered by King James to fund voyages from England to start colonies in the New World. The investors expected to earn a return from the produce of the colonies.
A venture capitalist, Thomas Weston, assembled a group of investors offering the Puritans a deal stipulating that everything they produced in the colony would belong to a “commonwealth,” and at the end of seven years, the accumulated wealth would be equally divided between investors and colonists. The deal was the Mayflower Compact.
On the 6th of September 1620 the Mayflower departed, carrying 120 Puritans and nonbelievers, to arrive 66 days later at what is now Massachusetts and establish the Plymouth Colony. Only 44 of them survived the first winter. The Pilgrims were helped by Tisquantum of the Patuxet tribe, nicknamed Squanto, who had been enslaved by English captain Thomas Hunt, taken to Spain and then freed and educated by Catholic friars and subsequently taken to England and brought back to Plymouth as an interpreter. Squanto taught the Pilgrims how to plant, fish and hunt, even brokered a peace treaty with the tribal members of the Wampanoag Confederacy. Pilgrims saw Squanto as having been sent by God. The bountiful harvest credited to Squanto’s help gave rise to the Thanksgiving holiday.
To safeguard the investors’ capital, pursuant to the seven-year contract, colonists were not allowed any personal time to work on any private business. The colony was required to operate communally. Everything was owned by every colonist jointly. No one was allowed to own private land. The word “socialism” didn’t exist yet, but that it certainly was.
The Reason It Didn’t Work
Not all colonists were willing to work hard, or at all, for the “commonwealth.” William Bradford, a signer of the Mayflower Compact and later unanimously voted governor of the Plymouth settlement, admitted, “[S]ome [settlers] doe it not willingly, & other not honestly.” The ones who worked ultimately resented the fact they were burdened with supporting those who would not work. The colony was constantly running out of food.
By 1626 colonists couldn’t produce sufficient return to investors and had to restructure the debt they owed. Conceding the problem, Bradford wisely recognized that a change had to take place, and he gathered the colonists to discuss it. After lengthy debate Bradford and the colonists decided to try turning the communal property into private property, letting everyone be responsible for themselves and their own families’ wellbeing. Bradford noted drastic changes in all the colonists’ behaviors.
“[It] made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. 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.”
[historyofmassachusetts.org/of-plymouth-plantation]
The hardworking and motivated colonists turned Plymouth into a successful free market economy. Private property rights and personal responsibility saved the Plymouth colony from extinction and laid the economic foundation for the beginning of a free and prosperous nation.
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