Last year, I wrote about The Real Thanksgiving Story. I just can't come up with an improvement on that, so I hope you don't mind the repeat. Have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.
Image courtesy of Sara.

Everyone who's been to school in America knows the story of the First Thanksgiving, right? The Pilgrims fled religious persecution, settled in Plymouth, had a bad winter, made friends with the locals, learned to farm and fish from them, had a great harvest the next year, threw a big feast to celebrate and invited their new friends. They all lived happily ever after, having a yearly feast of thanksgiving to commemorate their friendship. 

Well, not entirely.

The harvest of 1621 wasn't all that great; the colonists were barely surviving, although compared to their first miserable winter (during which half of them died) it seemed rich.  To them -- deeply religious men and women -- a "thanksgiving" meant spending the day in church... you know, giving thanks.  After another sparse harvest in 1622, the Governor, William Bradford, tried to think of a way "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".  And what he did was abolish Socialism.

When the colony was founded, they did so under an agreement that all goods, crops and property would be held in common, from which everyone would take only what he needed and no more.  Since everyone knew they would be fed and clothed and sheltered whether they worked hard or not, no one did, as is only human nature.  According to Governor Bradford himself:

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 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.