Those waiting in Leyden objected to this arrangement. The Pilgrims went along because they had little choice. The investors unquestionably had profit in mind when they insisted on common property. Only by insisting that all accumulated wealth was to be “common wealth,” or placed in a common pool, could the investors feel reassured that the colonists would be working to benefit everyone, including themselves. Such private wealth would be exempt when the shareholders were paid off. ![]() How could they be sure that the faraway colonists would spend their days working for the company if they were allowed to become private owners? With such an arrangement, rational colonists would work little on “company time,” reserving their best efforts for their own gardens and houses. But the investors refused to allow these loopholes, undoubtedly worried that if the Pilgrims-three thousand miles away and beyond the reach of supervision-owned their own houses and plots, the investors would find it difficult to collect their due. The Pilgrims would thereby avoid servitude. The colonists hoped that the houses they built would be exempt from the division of wealth at the end of seven years in addition, they sought two days a week in which to work on their own “particular” plots (much as collective farmers later had their own private plots in the Soviet Union). Some historians claim that those who came over on the Mayflower were exploited by capitalists. Carver and Cushman were admonished “not to exceed the bounds of your commission.” They were particularly enjoined not to “entangle yourselves and us in any such unreasonable the merchants should have the half of men’s houses and lands at the dividend.”Įventually, however, Carver and Cushman did accept terms stipulating that at the end of seven years everything would be divided equally between investors and colonists. Those waiting for news in Leyden were concerned that their agents in London would, in their eagerness to find investors, agree to unfavorable terms. The big losses in Jamestown had scared off most “venture capital” in London. Weston and his fifty-odd investors were taking a big risk in putting up the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in today’s money. Eventually Carver and Cushman found an investment syndicate headed by a London ironmonger named Thomas Weston. ![]() This was granted, but finding investors was a problem. First, however, they sent two emissaries, John Carver and Robert Cushman, from Leyden to London to seek permission to found a plantation. The Pilgrims knew about the early disasters at Jamestown, but the more adventurous among them were willing to hazard the Atlantic anyway. His is the only surviving account of these matters. He recorded in his history the key passage on property relations in Plymouth and the way in which they were changed. Thirty years old when he arrived in the New World, Bradford became the second governor of Plymouth (the first died within weeks of the Mayflower’s arrival) and the most important figure in the early years of the colony. There, they could look forward to propagating and advancing “the gospel of the kingdom of Christ.” They longed to start afresh in “those vast and unpeopled countries of America,” as William Bradford would later write in his history, Of Plymouth Plantation. But war with Spain was a constant threat, and the Pilgrims did not want their children to grow up Dutch. They found life in Holland to be in many respects satisfactory. Contrary to the Pilgrims’ wishes, their initial ownership arrangement was communal property.ĭesiring to practice their religion as they wished, the Pilgrims emigrated in 1609 from England to Holland, then the only country in Europe that permitted freedom of worship. The free-rider problem was plainly demonstrated at Plymouth Colony in 1620, when the Mayflower arrived in the New World. ![]() For these reasons, private property is the only institutional arrangement that will permit a society to be productive, peaceful, free, and just. State ownership, as we saw in the Soviet Union, has its own problems. This is the free-rider problem, and it is the most important institutional reason tribes and communes cannot rise above subsistence level (except in special circumstances, such as monasteries). It becomes costly to police the activities of the members, all of whom are entitled to their share of the total product of the community, whether they work or not. But when the number of communal members exceeds normal family size, as happens in tribes and communes, serious and intractable problems arise. Within a family, many goods are in effect communally owned. There are three configurations of property rights: state, communal, and private property.
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