Our First Thanksgiving by Chuck McGlawn  11-24-2010

The Pilgrims landed, as we all know, on Plymouth Rock in the middle of December 1620, and on 

Christmas Day, in the words of Governor William Bradford, they “began to erect the first house for

 common use to  receive and distribute their goods.”

Three years later, when the plentiful harvest of 1623 had been gathered in, the Pilgrims “set apart a day

 of thanksgiving,” but what of the intervening years? After all, there were harvests gathered in 1621 

and 1622.

In the following excerpts from his History, Governor Bradford vividly describes the conditions of the 

Pilgrims during these early years. Three years of near starvation—and then decades of abundance. Was

this a miracle? Or is there a rational explanation for this sudden change in the fortunes of our

Pilgrim forefathers? 

Please note, these Christian brothers and sisters, as they were in sight of land made a pact; history has

called it the Mayflower Compact. In it, each promised to all the others that they would work

hard to make safe this Christian community. 

Specific plans were drawn. A common house was to be built to receive the harvest all gathered 

foods including game. This common house would serve to dispense the food necessary for the survival of

 all. This was 228

 years before the publication of The Communist Manifesto but somehow this Christian Community 

adopted the Marxist/Socialist, “to each according to his needs, and from each according to his 

abilities.” Let me say, if at any time in history or at any place on the planet that 

Socialism would have worked, it would have been in this small group of Christians dedicated to 

brotherly love. 

To summarize Bradford’s writings, “The experience that was had in this common course and condition, 

for three years among godly and sober men, was proof that Plato’s and other ancients were wrong about 

e taking away of property, and bringing it into a commonwealth, would make them happy and flourish. 

For

 this community found itself filled with confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that 

would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men that were most able and fit for labor 

and service did display an unwillingness to spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives 

and children, without any recompense.” “And the wives commanded to do service for other men, 

cooking meals washing their clothes, etc., seemed a kind of slavery. The condition was established 

that no matter how much you contributed the amount you received remained the same.”

You see under the, “to each according to his needs and from each according to his ability”,
 system the strong, received no more food or clothing than the weak that produced a quarter of
the output of the strong.[This is the vaunted “equality of outcome” so clamored for by some
recent Presidential candidates.] (Can you say, Hillary and Sanders?) Again somehow, over 150
years before Adam Smith observed in The Wealth of Nations the wealth-creating value of
specialization, division of labor and comparative advantage, [Or as it is described today
 “equality of opportunity”.] Continuing to summarize, Bradford made a shift in the work
assignments. He decided that. “Each man or family would, hunt and gather or grow in a
manner of his own choosing, and the results of his efforts would be his own to provide for his
own family. This plan had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious. 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.”

The Importance of Property Rights
This new policy of allowing each to “plant for his own particular needs” produced such an
abundance at harvest time that Governor Bradford could say, “This harvest brought instead of
famine, they had plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of
many, for which they blessed God.”

Our first Thanksgiving should, therefore, be interpreted as an expression of gratitude to God,
not so much for the great harvest itself, as for granting the grateful Pilgrims the perception to
grasp and apply the great universal principle that produced that great harvest, that each
the individual is entitled to the fruits of his own labor. Property rights are, therefore,
inseparable from human rights. The majority of those who landed from the Mayflower in
December 1620 perished prior to that first great harvest of 1623. For two years they followed
the age-old custom prevalent in England of “farming in common”—and they starved. Through
suffering, starvation, and hardship, they learned and applied the fundamentals of freedom—and,
 instead of starvation; they grew crops sufficient not only for their own needs but to spare,
enabling them to exchange their surplus with the Indians for beaver and other furs.

If Pilgrims Had Received “Foreign Aid”?
But suppose some foreign country, or their mother country, had taken pity on them in their
misery and sent them ample food supplies during those first terrible years; this would have
been impossible, for England herself was virtually on a starvation diet, as were most of the
countries on the continent of Europe. But suppose it had been possible; suppose they had
received such “foreign aid”. Would not the Pilgrims have continued to “farm in common”?
Would they not have continued to follow the practice that more than two centuries later was to
become a basic tenet of Marxian philosophy, “From each according to his ability, to each
according to his need”?

The American nation grew and prospered because for more than a century and a quarter
the sanctity of property rights was recognized as being indispensable to human rights; because
her people were free to “plant for their own particular”; because of the resultant “free market
economy” invited domestic and foreign capital seeking a profit.

What of Today?
Is America, today, still abiding by these principles? Not only is the answer “No!” but there is
evidence on every hand that we are re-enacting the very mistakes our Pilgrim Fathers made
during their first years of “farming in common,” [Today it is called redistribution of wealth.]
mistakes which produced naught but disaster, re-enacting in the new World the age-old
miseries of constant hunger and starvation that continued to plague the Old World for some
two centuries.

Our present tax structure is a case in point. Its aim is not to finance the costs of a
strictly limited government, but rather to reform society, to remold our lives, and to
redistribute our wealth according to the ideas of economic and social planners
dedicated to the socialization, the communization, of our once free America.

Our first Thanksgiving, in fact was, an expression of gratitude, gratitude not so much for the great harvest itself but for the blessings to this Christian community afforded by the abandonment of the age-old failure SOCIALISM and the adoption and implementation of the principals of LIBERTY and a free market. This new paradigm recognized that each individual is entitled to the fruits of his own labor, and produced not only abundance but also surpluses that could be traded. That wealth and abundance are the natural results of liberty and the recognition of property rights. Liberty continues to lift more people from crushing poverty to a tolerable life condition, and on to prosperity.

So as we set down on this day of thanks, let us be reminded of just what we are celebrating, and 

for what we are being thankful.