Selected Articles from the LAND Newsletter

PILGRIMS AND PROPERTY RIGHTS

By LeAnn M. Harner, LAND Executive Director

Everyone knows the story of Pilgrims and Thanksgiving, but few remember that the Pilgrims learned the hard way about the importance of private property ownership.

In return for financing the Pilgrim’s emigration, colonization speculators required the settlers to sign the “Mayflower Compact.” This document required common ownership of property and helped lead to the starvation and death of over half the settlers.

Throughout the colony, there was dissention and irresponsibility which encouraged dependency and penalized initiative. Something had to change.

Less than three years after landing, the settlers developed a private enterprise system with individual responsibility, which resulted in the great Thanksgiving feast of 1623.

The Pilgrims learned that private property ownership, free enterprise, and capitalism bring about the consequences of industriousness, responsibility, harmony, happiness, health, and wealth.