America’s First Lesson in Economics

In the 1620′s the experience of Plymouth Colony proved an economic principle which a part of human nature. Governor William Bradford tells in his journal, Plimouth Plantation, that for three years the colonists lived as a socialist community, putting all their crops in a common storehouse. But each year they faced famine. Then Bradford decided to “assign to every family a parcel of land” from which the family could grow its own produce. “This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious,” and when harvest time came, “instead of famine, now God gave them plentie.” And “some of the abler and more industrious sorte had [produce] to spare and to sell to others.”