Interesting
article.
The Great
Thanksgiving Hoax By Richard J. Maybury
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
hardworking 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.
Mr. Maybury writes on investments. This article originally
appeared in The Free Market, November 1985.
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