How Christianity Changed the World by Alvin J. Schmidt

Author:Alvin J. Schmidt [Schmidt, Alvin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2009-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

SOCIALISM OF JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH FAILS

The first English settlers in America landed in 1607 and called their settlement in the New World Jamestown. Headed by Captain John Smith, the colonists were economically organized as a socialistic community, requiring all the settlers to give all products of their labor to “the common store.” Individuals had no private property and no economic freedom. This system quickly turned disastrous, bringing famine and starvation. Said an early historian, “It was a premium for idleness, and just suited the drones, who promptly decided that it was unnecessary to work themselves, since others would work for them.”46 Even Smith’s threats that if someone did not work, he would not eat did little to improve the economic malaise. Thus, beginning in 1611, Governor Thomas Dale began abolishing the common store system, and four years later he had the London Company grant fifty acres of land to each colonist if he would clear the trees and farm it. The injection of private property and economic freedom brought about a dramatic change in Jamestown. Now the colonists worked and prospered. The new economic system demonstrated that socialism does not work. It also showed, as one observer once noted, that “Christianity is not a socialistic chimera, intended to renew the customs of the world before changing the heart.”47

A similar situation transpired in Massachusetts among the Pilgrims. When they landed on the shores of Cape Cod Bay in 1620 and set up the Plymouth Colony, they, like the Jamestown colonists, tried to equate Christianity with socialism. Their common store system also failed. The colony was experiencing economic disaster. Something had to be done. The colony’s governor, William Bradford, like Governor Dale in Jamestown, assigned all able-bodied persons or families a portion of land as their own in 1623. Before long the slothful and unproductive Pilgrims turned from laggards and idle-bodies to willing, productive workers. Men who previously “had feigned sickness were now eager to get into the fields. Even the women went out to work eagerly.... They now took their children with them and happily engaged in labor for their own family. The result was that the following harvest was a tremendous, bountiful harvest, and abundant thanksgiving was celebrated in America.”48 With the common stock system, “the Pilgrims had little incentive to produce commodities other than those needed for their immediate sustenance.”49

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