Microcosm in the New Land

The early Pilgrims were on the edge of the modern world. Somehow, inherent to us, when given the choice we often default to wild optimism. Perhaps it is the legacy  of the Middle East religions. The Pilgrims had inherited ideas about individualism and property from the English and Dutch trading empires but, for some reason, they tried socialism first when they arrived in the New World. They decreed that each family would get an equal share of food, no matter how much work they did. In fairness, this was part of their charter, created by businessmen who should have known better. This was the same plan as tried by the settlers at Jamestown.
The results were disastrous.  Gov. William Bradford wrote, “Much was stolen both by night and day.”  The same plan in Jamestown contributed to starvation, cannibalism, and death of half the population.
So Bradford decreed that families should instead farm private plots.
Success is currently attributed to luck and birth as much as process and work. This is a good example of the conflict. The first process, the communal holding of land, did not work. Nor has it worked in modern states with a lot more threat available. The private ownership did work.
Its success was--and is--not luck.

 

From pages 1338-1339 of Robert Ellickson’s landmark 1993 Yale Law Journal article “Property in Land"

To finance their voyage, the Pilgrims formed a joint stock company with London investors.  At the investors’ insistence, the settlers agreed to pool output, land, capital, and profits during their first seven years abroad.  From this “common stock,” residents of the colony were to receive food and other necessities, and at the end of the seven-year period, the land and other assets were to be “equally divided betwixt” the investors and the settlers.  The colonists initially complied with the spirit of this contract.  Although they planted household gardens almost from the start, they collectivized initial field and livestock operations.  The setters had some agricultural successes, but they were unable to grow corn in their common field.  Within six months of reaching Plymouth, almost one-half of the population had perished from disease.

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In 1624 the Plymouth colonists deviated from the investors’ plan and assigned each family from one to ten acres, depending on the number of family members.  This greatly increased productivity.

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[Parcelization] had very good success; for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted then other waise. . . .  The women now wente willingly into the field, and tooke their little-ones with them to set corne, which before would aledg weaknes and inabilitie; whome to have compelled would have bene thought great tiranie and oppression. ( William Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation)