permanent colony, with women and children, called pressingly for attention to raising food and building homes. The "supplies" expected from the London partners came, from year to year, in too meager measure to care even for the new immigrants who appeared along with them; and the crops of European grains failed season after season. Fortunately, during the first winter, the colonists found a supply of Indian corn, for seed, and a friendly native to teach them how to cultivate it; and the old cornfields of the abandoned Indian villages saved them the formidable labor

of clearing away the forest. The slow progress, even then, toward a secure supply of food is shown vividly in a letter from Edward Winslow at the end of the first year:

"We have built seven dwelling houses, and four for the use of the plantation [for common use, that is, as storehouses, etc.], and have made preparation for divers others. We set, the last spring, some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and pease. . . . God be praised, we had good increase of [the] Indian corn, and of our barley, indifferent good, but our pease not worth the gathering." [Winslow explains this failure of the European seed by the colonists' ignorance of the seasons in America.]

DISAPPOINTMENTS AND HARDSHIPS

57

In the first year, then, the settlers had built only eleven rude cabins and had brought only twenty-six acres of land into cultivation. Winslow was writing to a friend in England who expected soon to join the colony. The following advice in the same letter suggests forcefully some features of life in the new settlement:

"Bring every man a musket. Let it be long in the barrel, and fear not the weight of it; for most of our shooting is from stands [rests]. If you bring anything for comfort [that is, anything more than bare necessaries], butter or sallet oil . . . [is] very good. Bring paper and linseed oile for your windows, and cotton yarn for your lamps [for wicks].'

..

For long the governor's most important duty was to direct the work in the fields where he toiled, too, with his own hands, along with all the men and the larger boys. But even among these "sober and godly Failure of men" the system of industry in common proved common a hindrance:

industry in

"For this communitie was found to breed much confusion and discontente, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte. For the yung-men, that were most able and fitte, . . . did repine that they should spend their time and strength to worke for other mens wives and children. . . The aged and graver men, to be ranked and equalised in labours and victuals, cloaths, etc., with the younger and meaner sorte, thought it some indignitie and disrespect unto them. And for mens wives to be commanded to doe service for other men, as dressing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemed it a kind of slaverie; neither could many husbands well brooke it."

In the third year, famine seemed imminent. Then Governor Bradford, with the approval of the chief men of the colony, set aside the agreement with the London partners in this matter of common industry, and assigned to each family a parcel of land "for the time only." Such trade and fishery as were carried on remained under common management; and even these parcels of land did not then become

private property. Only their temporary use was given. But, says Bradford, "This had very good success,".

"for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted then other waise would have been, by any means the Governour or any other could use. . . . The women now wente willingly into the field, and tooke their litle-ons with them to set corne, which before would aledge weakness . . . whom to have compelled would have bene thought great tiranie."

Success,

and settle

ment with

the English

partners

For other reasons, too, the danger of failure passed away. The Pilgrims were learning to use the opportunities about them. In 1627, when the partnership was to have expired, little had been done, it is true, toward repaying the London merchants. But the beginning of a promising fur trade had been secured; and Bradford, with seven other leading men, offered to assume the English debt if they might have control of this trade to raise the money. This arrangement was accepted by all parties. It took Bradford fourteen years more to pay the merchants. But meantime the merchants at once surrendered their claim upon the colony; and the lands, houses, and cattle were promptly divided among the settlers for private property.

The

The political development of Plymouth may be summed up briefly. Governor Carver died during the first spring. Political de- The next governor, William Bradford, was revelopment elected year after year until his death, in 1657, except for five years when he absolutely refused to serve. Assembly was the essential part of the government. For many years it was, in form, merely a town meeting, a mass meeting of the voters of one small village. Soon after 1630, other settlements grew up in the colony, but even then the Assembly continued for a time to be a meeting of all male citizens, held in the oldest town. However, this clumsy and unfair system could not last among Englishmen. In 1636 the three chief towns sent representatives to sit with the governor and Assistants to revise and codify the laws. The same device was used the next year in assessing taxes among

DEMOCRACY IN RELIGION AND POLITICS

59

the towns. And in 1639 it was decided that thereafter the Assembly should be made up of such representatives, with the governor and Assistants. There was never a division into two "Houses."

As other villages grew up about the original settlement at Plymouth town, their constables and other necessary officers were at first appointed by the central Assembly. But, soon after the central government became representative, the various settlements became "towns" in a political sense, with town meetings and their own elected officers, after a method introduced just before in Massachusetts Bay (p. 88).

The first voters were the forty-one signers of the Mayflower Compact. Twenty-five adult males did not sign. Some of these were regarded as represented by The fathers who did sign, and eleven were servants or franchise temporary employees; but the absence of other names can be explained only on the ground that certain men did not wish to sign or that they were not asked to do so. Those who did sign made up the original Assembly. Thereafter, the Assembly admitted to citizenship as it saw fit. For a time it gave the franchise to nearly all men who came to the colony. But in 1660 a law required that new voters must have a specified amount of property; and after 1671 the franchise was restricted further to those who could present "satisfactory" proof that they were "sober and peaceable" in conduct and "orthodox in the fundamentals of religion.' In practice, this limited the franchise to church members.

democracy

Political democracy at Plymouth was an outgrowth of economic and social democracy. There were no materials for anything else but democracy. Robinson, in a The causes farewell letter (Pastor Robinson remained with of political the main congregation at Leyden), regards it a misfortune that the Pilgrims "are not furnished with any persons of spetiall eminencie above the rest, to be chosen into offices of governmente." Had such persons been present, public feeling would probably have made them an aristocracy of office. In that day, democracy rarely went further than to suggest that common men ought to have a voice in select

ing their rulers: the actual rulers were to be selected from the upper classes. But in Plymouth no one was rich, even by colonial standards; and, more than in any other important colony, all the settlers came from the "plain people." Hardly any of them except Winslow and Standish would have ranked as "gentlemen" in England. Bradford, there, would have remained a poor yeoman, and John Alden a cooper.

But, in even greater degree, democracy in politics at Plymouth resulted from democracy in the church, and

this ecclesiastical democracy was the essence of the Pilgrim experiment. Plymouth was, first, a religious society; then, an economic enterprise; and, last, and incidentally, a political commonwealth.

Plymouth never secured a royal charter,

Charters and land titles

GOVERNOR EDWARD WINSLOW, at the age of 57. From a portrait (now in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth) painted in England in 1653 while Winslow was detained there on a diplomatic mission, to arrange relations between Plymouth and the new Puritan Commonwealth. This was one of his four missions to England. Bradford was the administrative head of Plymouth; Standish, its military chief; Winslow, its statesman and man of affairs. He is the only Pilgrim of whom we have an authentic portrait.

and its government remained upon the basis of the Mayflower Compact until King William III annexed the colony to Massachusetts in 1691. Nor did the early settlers have legal title to their land. In 1630, however, the proprietary New England Council granted the territory to Bradford as trustee for the colony. Bradford kept the grant until he and his seven associates had paid off the huge debt they had assumed