On the occasion of America’s birthday, it is probably a good time to reflect on this nation’s troubled beginnings and pay homage to the institution of private property that made this country possible. As children we are all told that that the first English colonies in North America nearly failed because the colonists were gentlemen—fellows unfit and unused to labor and more inclined to games of bowls than hacking a new nation from the wilderness. True, the early colonists were lazy, but was it because they were gentlemen? You would think the prospect of starvation would stir even the most indolent Elizabethan dandy to fruitful labor. However, the truth of the matter was that the laziness of these early colonists sprang from their lack of property rights. The Virginia Company expected those it sent to North America to labor on common land and contribute to a central store, which would be shared out accordingly. Not surprisingly, as each individual colonist saw no benefit from his labor but could expect his share of the communal store, then he naturally tended towards idleness. In a desperate move to stave of starvation, the colony resorted to private property.
The historical record remains a little hazy, but the source of the land reforms appears to have been Sir Thomas Dale, who arrived in Virginia as high marshal in May 1611. Sometime in 1612 or 1613, Dale dismantled the system of communal ownership and awarded each man in the colony three acres to till as his own. Of course, the colony still had to pay for itself, so Dale levied a yearly “flat tax” of two and a half barrels of “corne” (wheat). These changes produced immediate effects. Colonists threw themselves into their work and set about innovating, improving their land, and taking up all manners of crafts. In short, they started acting like Americans. By 1616, the Virginia colony was not only out of the woods, but carrying on a brisk trade exporting food to many Native American tribes.
An almost identical situation prevailed in Massachusetts, where communal ownership produced nothing but starvation and conflict amongst “godly and sober men.” Governor Bradford responded by allocating families their own plots of land in the spring of 1623. He recorded the results soon after (updated for spelling and punctuation):
“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 contentment. 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.”
I took these examples from Tom Bethell’s superb book The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity through the Ages. Private property is no tool of oppression, but, rather, the key to a free and prosperous society. Too often we forget exactly how important an institution it is, but without it we would have neither things to eat, nor a country.
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Posted by: Wes Stafford | 24 March 2008 at 08:25 PM