Communism and the Plymouth Pilgrims By Joseph Dillaway Sawyer 1922
Communism for two years had a fair trial at Plymouth. The lazy shared equally with the industrious. Jamestown, Virginia, tried the scheme for two years. In 1623 the inevitable consequences caused Pilgrims to vote the substitution of personal responsibility for that method of raising revenue and drawing from a common stock. Quite naturally, all had proved swift drawers, and just as naturally an appreciable number slow providers. In the new plan each member of a family was assigned lands for planting instead of pursuing a community plan of cultivation. Communism — the argument against human nature — failed on the continent of America, as it had failed repeatedly in Asia, notably the China of the eleventh century, and even, so far as permanence was concerned, within the Christian church in its birth era.
The following account of improved conditions shows that the seventeenth century mind philosophized and bargained and bargained and philosophized on much the same plan as the twentieth.
"The women now wente willingly into the field and took their little ones with them to set corn, when before they would aledge weakness and inabilitie and whom to have compelled would have been thought a great tirinie and oppression."
"Those who had some to spare began to trade one with another for small things by ye quaret, potle, and peck, etc., for money they had none."
Self-interest increased cultivation, prudence in husbanding harvests, and insured well-filled granaries ever after. Character asserted itself even in figures and measures. After the famine year good living evidently aided high thinking. Lord Chatham's judgment, pronounced on the brain power of the Continental Congress, in which unity took the place of division and attractions overcame repulsions, in the interest of a higher evolution, was not far astray, even to the present hour.
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In the Days of the Pilgrim Fathers By Mary Caroline Crawford 1920
Communism for two years had a fair trial at Plymouth. The lazy shared equally with the industrious. Jamestown, Virginia, tried the scheme for two years. In 1623 the inevitable consequences caused Pilgrims to vote the substitution of personal responsibility for that method of raising revenue and drawing from a common stock. Quite naturally, all had proved swift drawers, and just as naturally an appreciable number slow providers. In the new plan each member of a family was assigned lands for planting instead of pursuing a community plan of cultivation. Communism — the argument against human nature — failed on the continent of America, as it had failed repeatedly in Asia, notably the China of the eleventh century, and even, so far as permanence was concerned, within the Christian church in its birth era.
The following account of improved conditions shows that the seventeenth century mind philosophized and bargained and bargained and philosophized on much the same plan as the twentieth.
"The women now wente willingly into the field and took their little ones with them to set corn, when before they would aledge weakness and inabilitie and whom to have compelled would have been thought a great tirinie and oppression."
"Those who had some to spare began to trade one with another for small things by ye quaret, potle, and peck, etc., for money they had none."
Self-interest increased cultivation, prudence in husbanding harvests, and insured well-filled granaries ever after. Character asserted itself even in figures and measures. After the famine year good living evidently aided high thinking. Lord Chatham's judgment, pronounced on the brain power of the Continental Congress, in which unity took the place of division and attractions overcame repulsions, in the interest of a higher evolution, was not far astray, even to the present hour.
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In the Days of the Pilgrim Fathers By Mary Caroline Crawford 1920
As much land was thereupon allotted to each man and his family as he could profitably use. From this he was to retain the entire proceeds, but on the other hand he was to be entirely responsible for his own support. From the spring of 1623 an immediate improvement in economic conditions was noted. Everybody who had worked hard before worked harder now, and those who had not worked at all before began to do their share. It is interesting in a day when the idea of communism is making a strong appeal to many people in America that an experiment in communism should have been tried three hundred years ago in this country and abandoned as impracticable.
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THE PILGRIMS By FREDERICK A. NOBLE 1907
The return of the third spring found the colony prepared to operate on a new system. Hitherto the organization of their industry had been on a communistic basis. It was each for all and all for each by constraint. The plan was tried in some measure by the early disciples. It was tried
very thoroughly by the Pilgrims. If there were ever sets of men and women in the world who might have been expected to work the scheme successfully, it was these — these early disciples and these later disciples who had in them so much of the spirit of the Master, and whose sense of brotherhood was so vital and controlling, and whose motives for coming out ahead were so imperative. But even under these conditions the policy failed. It failed because it could not help failing. It failed because it cuts across the grain of human nature and is at war with human instincts.
"So, ... on the approach of seeding-time, . . . they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done before." "After much debate," it was decided that, while "in all other things" they were "to go on in the general way as before," the growing of corn was to be turned over to individuals. With this end in view parcels of land were assigned to each family, according to the number of each; and all were allowed and encouraged to plant and raise what they could. The new plan succeeded. It appealed to self-respect. It stirred ambition and provoked industry. It allayed discontent and made it an object to do the best one might. It stimulated a healthy rivalry in toil. The more prudent and thrifty could not help feeling a fresh satisfaction and pride in their work. It supplied an adequate motive to the strong to put forth their strength and show what they could do.
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