This Is What We Should Be Grateful For This Thanksgiving

This segment of What’s Ahead celebrates the hard-won wisdom of the Pilgrims, which enabled them to turn hunger and privation into abundance. The original Plymouth Colony nearly collapsed. Food shortages and discontent were endemic. The problem was with their original economic system in which all property was communally owned and cultivated—what today would be called socialism or communism.

Facing chronic hunger, the colony radically changed things. Each family was given their own parcel of land, and whatever they grew on it was theirs to do with as they saw fit. With freedom and the colonists’ rights to the fruits of their labor, deprivation soon turned into abundance.