{"id":48,"date":"2025-05-06T07:31:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T11:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/people.bsu.edu\/econbriefs\/?p=48"},"modified":"2025-05-06T07:31:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T11:31:39","slug":"economics-in-plymouths-cornfields-by-dr-cecil-bohanon-and-dr-john-horowitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.bsu.edu\/econbriefs\/2025\/05\/06\/economics-in-plymouths-cornfields-by-dr-cecil-bohanon-and-dr-john-horowitz\/","title":{"rendered":"Economics in Plymouth’s Cornfields \u2013 by Dr. Cecil Bohanon and Dr. John Horowitz"},"content":{"rendered":"

For Thanksgiving, we enjoy sharing the story of how changing economic incentives influenced the English colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to which we trace the holiday. Like many economists, we have interpreted this history as a movement from common property to private property, from socialism to free markets. However, the historian Jeremy <\/span>Bangs, who recently passed away and was likely the most prominent expert on the history of the Plymouth colony<\/span><\/a>,<\/span> claimed this was just a transition from one kind of capitalism to another.<\/span><\/a> Bangs said that since shareholders in England funded Plymouth, the colonists had to pay the English shareholders before they could own the land as private property.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Plymouth colony was initially organized as a large-scale farming operation where managers assigned the necessary farming tasks to the other colonists. William Bradford, governor of the colony, reported in his memoirs, \u201c\u2026 the young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine [i.e., complain] that they should spend their time and strength to work for other mens [sic] wives and children, without any recompense.\u201d The harvest was small, and Bradford noted that by winter, \u201cAll there victuals were spent…. (and they) led a miserable life.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So, in the spring of 1623, the colonists \u201cbegan to think how they might raise as much corn as they could \u2026 that they might not still thus languish in misery.\u201d The solution? They \u201cgave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular [private] use \u2026 And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number for that end.\u201d This solution \u201cmade all hands very industrious.\u201d Bradford noted, \u201cThe women now went willingly into the field and took their little ones with them to set corn, which before\u2026to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.\u201d As a result, after the fall of 1623, \u201c\u2026any general want or famine has not been among them since to this day.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Assuming Jeremy Bangs is correct that Plymouth Colony moved from one form of capitalism to another, the core of the economic story is still that individual incentives were at the heart of Plymouth\u2019s history and that economic incentives have a powerful effect on people\u2019s behavior. One of the many things we are grateful for is that we have the freedom to access and incorporate new perspectives into our cherished narratives!\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Thanksgiving, we enjoy sharing the story of how changing economic incentives influenced the English colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts, to which we trace the holiday. Like many economists, we have interpreted this history as a movement from common property to private property, from socialism to free markets. 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