Free Riders on the Mayflower

Since Thanksgiving just passed us by, it might be worth talking a little about the historical roots and the economic lessons it affords us.

The usual interpretation for what the Thanksgiving holiday commemorates is that the Pilgrims, who came over from the England and settled the Plymouth colony, had a big celebration and a feast in the fall.  They were grateful for the bountiful harvest that they had obtained and they set aside a day in which to thank their God and to share their bounty with the Native Americans, who had helped them get established.

While accurate as far as it goes, the truth of the matter, free from the sanitary influence of Madison Avenue, is much more complex and interesting.  The majority of this information is available in William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation. Bradford was the second governor of Plymouth Plantation and relates the course of its history from beginnings in Europe to the establishment and eventual prospering in the new world.

In order to set the stage, we need to examine the roots of what drove these people from England and made them think that the dangerous crossing of the Atlantic is was preferable to staying in Europe.   The founders of Plymouth colony were separatists from the Church of England and regarded the Anglican Church as still having too many ways of the Church of Rome and being too ‘popeish’.  Facing religious persecution in England, they first moved to the Netherlands in 1609.  But the culture was foreign and the long reach of England was not so easy to escape.

After 10 years, they resolved to leave for the new world and, early in 1619, these separatists, now come to be known as Pilgrims, received a land patent that granted them permission to settle in the new world.

The next question was how to finance the expedition.  They needed to get backing for the passage across the Atlantic, food for their members during the several months required to make the trip, and then supplies sufficient to build a whole new town for themselves and to sustain them until crops could be planted or some other sources of food be found.  Given the technology of the day, their relocation from Europe to North America is akin to picking up a modern suburban community and moving it to Antarctica.

The Pilgrims did find backers in the form of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London.  The Merchant Adventurers were willing to provide the capital needed despite the very tangible risks.  These included the fact that Atlantic crossings often ended in disaster, that the colony could fail and be unable to send back any profit from the New World, and that the Pilgrims, despite their god-fearing ways, may simply choose to not honor their word and refuse to pay back their debt.

The Merchant Adventurers required that the colonists work ‘on company time’, basically 6 days a week, and that at the end of seven years, half of all their property would be surrendered to the company.  Thus from the beginning, Pilgrims were constrained to live under a communal arrangement of property.  That is to say that all of their efforts arranged for the common good.

After surmounting a variety of stumbling blocks, they finally set sail in the late summer of 1620 on the Mayflower, accompanied by their families and servants as well as by some people associated with the Merchant Adventurers (traders and the like, who were called  Strangers by the Pilgrims).  The ship struck land on the 11th of November 1620, but the passengers found that they had sailed too far north from their original aim of Virginia and were near Cape Cod.

After some discussion, they resolved to settle in what is now known as Plymouth and to establish their colony.  It was late in the year, roughly the middle of December, when they had built shelters and finally moved people and cargo to land.  Many of them died during this time from what is thought to be maladies brought on by malnutrition (e.g., scurvy).

But surely, once they survived the winter, they would thrive.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be the case.  The year 1621 saw them barely meeting subsistence, and 1622 saw no better fortunes.  William Bradford, governor of Plymouth from 1621 to 1657, had this to say about the harvest in 1622 (page numbers refer to the PDF version available online)

Now the welcome time of harvest approached, in which all had their hungry bellies filled.  But it arose to a little, in comparison of a full year’s supply; partly by reason they were not yet well acquainted with the matter of Indian corn, (and they had no other), also their many employments, but chiefly their weakness for want of food, to tend it as they should have done. [p224]

 

In the beginning of 1623 Bedford penned:

It may be thought strange that these people should fall to extremities in so short a time, being left competently provided when the ship left them. [p 228]

 

and also

And after they began to come into wants, many sold away their clothes and their bed coverings; others (so base were they) became servants to the Indians, and would cut them wood and fetch them water, for a cap full of corn. [p 229]

 

Clearly the Pilgrims were having a hard time becoming economically viable.  But why?  Well, they had encountered the Free Rider problem.  Since their fortunes were held in common (they all had to work to pay back their debts to the Merchant Adventurers), they had little incentive to take individual responsibility.

Given this economic arrangement, a Pilgrim could reason in the following way.  ‘It is in the interest of my neighbor to make sure our debt is paid back regardless of whether I work to do so.  Therefore, I will not work and my neighbor will cover for me.’  The problem with this logic is that each Pilgrim argued the same way, and no one worked industriously enough to make the colony prosper.

Finally, in 1623, the colony abandoned communal property and farming in favor of individual rights.  Bradford writes:

All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any. So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest amongst them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other thing to go on in the general way as before. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family. This had very good success, for 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.

 

Note in particular, the passage ‘for it made all hands very industrious’.

Bradford then goes on to analyze the societal roots of what the colony had been experiencing.  Clearly, he laid the problem not at the foot of the debt, held in common by the colony to their backers, but in the colony itself.  He identifies how working in common was ‘found to breed much confusion and discontent’.  That the most able bodied young men complained [repined] that they had to ‘spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense’.

The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times; and that the taking away of property and bringing in community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much 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 repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense. The strong, or man of parts, had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes etc., with the meaner and younger sort, thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And for men's wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it. Upon the point all being to have alike, and all to do alike, they thought themselves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so, if it did not cut off those relations that God hath set amongst men, yet it did at least much diminish and take off the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst them. And would have been worse if they had been men of another condition. Let none object this is men's corruption, and nothing to the course itself. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them. [p 234-6]

 

It is also amusing to note that Bradford takes time to mock the Utopian theory of common property found in Plato’s Republic as conceit.  A more detailed discussion of the debate about Plato’s Republic in Bradford’s time can be found in the article entitled How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims.

Bradford had an opportunity to oversee one of the most profound economic experiments of all history – not from curiosity but necessity.  What he found was that human beings function better and prosper when they are afforded private property rights and are allowed to keep the wealth they create.

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