House of Eratosthenes

Thanksgiving Turkey Every year Rush Limbaugh reads over the air, a portion of the sixth chapter of his second book in which he recounts the first Thanksgiving (membership required). The book in question was published in 1993. Wouldn’t it be a devastating broadside to Mr. Limbaugh if someone could take one of his many assertions, and prove it false — or, at the very least, demonstrate his fact-checking to have performed beneath par.

After fourteen years, I know of no such rebuttal having been advanced, let alone having been successful. I’ve been trying to attack this myself here & there, and the only problem I see is that the circumstances surrounding the death of William Bradford’s wife, Dorothy, seem to have been lost to history. The date of the demise is in December, which is compatible with what I assume is Limbaugh’s conjecture. There are alleged to be some bits of semi-contemporary documentation suggesting she died from drowning and not starvation.

My tentative conclusion is that the telling by Limbaugh, and the more conventional Thanksgiving chronicling he attacks, are BOTH guilty of dredging up whatever hard facts may be found and using personal leanings to fill in the blanks. But his overall point is that the conventional chronicling is ripe for revisiting, and that does seem to be the case…and that the revisiting will yield a hearty argument for capitalism and free markets, which also seems to be the case.

The Ludwig von Mises institute has a less entertaining, but perhaps more clinical, essay as of three years ago that inspects the episode and this ends up supporting Limbaugh’s telling of the story, if not of the specific events involved:

The fruits of each person’s efforts went to the community, and each received a share from the common wealth. This caused severe strains among the members, as Colony Governor William Bradford recorded:

” . . . the young men . . . did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. The strong . . . had not more in division . . . 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 . . . thought it some indignity and disrespect unto them. And the 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.”

Bradford summarized the effects of their common property system:

“For this community of property (so far as it went) was found to breed much confusion and discontentment and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort . . . all being to have alike, and all to do alike . . . 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.”

How did the Pilgrims move from this dysfunctional system to the situation we try to emulate in our family gatherings? In the spring of 1623, they decided to let people produce for their own benefit:

“All their victuals were spent . . . 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 . . . the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. . . . And so assigned to every family a parcel of land . . . “

The results were dramatic:

“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.”

Now, if you are within ten years of my age you probably went to school to learn all about how the Pilgrims sat and gave thanks to Squanto for teaching them how to plant corn and catch fish. There may be some truth in this, and to be fair about it it’s not realistic to expect capitalism to be championed over collectivism in a union environment, which after all is what a public school is. Even if the facts would support it. But since Limbaugh’s book came out all those years ago, I’ve been surprised at how little we actually know about the first Thanksgiving, and how much mythology has been inserted where hard facts have been lost.

But from what little we do know, it seems Limbaugh’s right — the original settlers tried a collective economy, it failed, they replaced it with an individualist-based economy, that was a stunning success and then they had their first Thanksgiving. To envision this holiday as a celebration of the wonderful things free markets can accomplish, INCLUDING the feeding of the hungry, would be quite appropriate.

I’ve been wrestling for years now about the whole idea of leaving my son in a public school, and whether I should start going into hock to get him into a private one. I expect many parents are in a similar situation. Whatever is to be decided from one year to the next, this is definitely something that should be evaluated as part of the decision. Intentionally or otherwise, the events from the first Thanksgiving have been distorted by the public school system somethin’ fierce.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

Memo For File XLIXWednesday, November 21st, 2007

Memo For File XLIX
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007