A Real-Time Account of Free Markets Eradicating Poverty

May 6, 2013 by

A few months ago we had a post, along with a video animation, on how free markets wipe out poverty and boost the overall standard of living. Lest one is inclined to think that it’s “just a theory”, read this recent account (“China: A Billion Strong but Short on Workers”, WSJ, 5/1/13) that puts that notion to rest. It’s yet more proof that free markets aren’t an ideology, but rather the natural order of things when government gets out of the way.

Following are excerpts from the above-mentioned account:

“Ms. Cui is contributing to China’s tightest labor market in years, putting upward pressure on wages that already are rising in the double digits annually.”

“The average monthly income for migrant workers rose 12.1% from a year earlier.”

“Creating jobs in hair salons and insurance companies, instead of in steel mills and soccer-ball factories, helps fuel growth in the world’s second-largest economy.”

“When the bra maker set up a factory in southeastern China’s Jiangxi province more than a decade ago, hundreds of people lined up outside looking for work. Today, the manufacturer for Wonderbra and Elle Macpherson Intimates struggles to find enough workers to operate its production lines at full capacity.”

“For years Top Form competed for labor with factories moving inland to take advantage of lower costs.”

 

Filed Under: Corporations, Economic Growth, Living Standards, Poverty

Worst-Timed Articles of the Year?

April 28, 2013 by

Here are two candidates for the worst-timed articles of the year:

“Supremacist Terror Rising, Islamic Extremism on the Decline”
- Huffington Post, April 9, 2013, by SpearIt, assistant professor at St. Louis University School of Law

It ran just six days before the April 15 Boston Marathon terrorist attacks, carried out by two Islamic Extremists. Not only does the article downplay the threat by Islamic extremism, but it based its white supremacist thesis on a Texas murder case in which supremacist allegations were pure speculation. Sure enough, the culprits were a former justice of the peace and his wife, who held a grudge against the victim.

Another candidate is:

“New Study Shows 3 Year Decline In Muslim-American Terrorist Attacks”

- Carbonated.tv, March 8, 2013, by Owen

May have to revisit that one as well.

Filed Under: General, Terrorism

Unleaded Gasoline May Reduce Crime

April 28, 2013 by

Who would have thought that getting lead out of gasoline would have had such an apparently positive impact on reducing crime?

According to a WSJ article, rising levels of lead in the environment from the 1950s through 1970s, in large part due to leaded gasoline, was correlated with rising crime 20 years later. This is because toddlers, who often put their fingers in their mouths, ingested dirt contaminated by air pollution. By the time they were in their late teens and early twenties – the age when violence tends to peak – crime had risen.

Then in the 1970s came the prohibition of leaded gasoline. The article states, “As lead in the environment fell in the ’70s and ’80s—thanks in large part to the regulation of gasoline—violence fell correspondingly. No other single factor can account for both the inexplicable rise in violence in the U.S. until 1993 and the precipitous drop since then.”

It would be interesting to find out if the scientists and policymakers back then knew of the correlation between lead and crime. Probably not. Little did they know of the unintended positive effects of their actions.

Filed Under: Crime, Environment

The Left Abhors Fox News’ Constructive Criticism of Them

April 11, 2013 by

The vitriol on the left against Fox News is astonishing. What’s going on here is the natural human tendency to not like hearing constructive criticism. Just as people don’t like to hear pitfalls pointed out to them about their behavior or their actions, those on the left don’t like to hear pitfalls pointed out to them about their political worldview or that of people they admire. It’s a natural human trait the world over.

And that’s why in the majority of countries of the world, like in Venezuela  – where the last opposition television station is finally throwing in the towel after tremendous harassment from the government – Fox News would be shut down in a heartbeat by the powers that be who don’t like hearing constructive criticism. Fortunately we in this country have freedom of the press.

It and other right-leaning news outlets run stories that left-leaning news outlets would never run because those stories may be critical of or embarrassing to the left. That’s galling to the left, which is why the invective against Fox News is so intense.

Certainly, as in all news outlets, one could find areas of legitimate criticism, such as lack of coverage of a certain something, biased coverage of something, or what not. But the broad-based name-calling and efforts to try to pass it off as a “faux” news or “propaganda” organization is rampant. To the left, such “propaganda” is simply legitimate news that they would rather not hear.

I got into a Facebook back-and-forth on this topic. After expressing my disapproval of a Facebook friend (whose identity has been withheld to protect the innocent) “liking” a foul-mouthed, hate-filled Jim Carrey press release directed against Fox News, he acknowledged my point and “unliked” the press release, but then went off into a tirade against Fox News, calling it “faux” news, a propaganda outfit, and – this was a new one on me – even a cult.

I asked him to jump to Foxnews.com and tell me now the dozens stories posted on its website aren’t legitimate news. (True, even I would take issue with some of its gossip/celebrity coverage as being legitimate news, but that certainly isn’t part of the left’s gripe with it.)

The only thing he offered up was a story on the big controversy surrounding Google’s decision to highlight in its logo the leftist labor leader Cesar Chavez on Easter Sunday. I pointed out to him that that wasn’t faux news or propaganda, but rather legitimate news. When Google, which usually dresses up its logo with a theme relating to the particular big holiday, instead highlights something totally unrelated to that holiday, then that’s big news. It didn’t even show an Easter bunny.

My Facebook friend didn’t provide a counter-argument. Conclusion? That the Google story, and the dozens of other stories (except perhaps some of the gossip coverage) were not propaganda, not faux, not a cult, but legitimate news.

Filed Under: Media Bias

The North Korean Appeasement Routine May Not Work This Time

March 30, 2013 by

Many believe that the recent troublemaking by North Korea is a repeat of that country’s tried-and-true pattern of threats and military muscle-flexing followed by appeasement in the form of food and energy aid by the free world.

This time, however, there’s a key difference: North Korea has a new leader. He’s young and inexperienced, and probably hotheaded and cocky, without the learning that comes with years of governing. And there’s probably no elder around to give him wise counsel, because in North Korea all power is in the single leader. It is presumed by North Koreans that he is all-knowing, and there’s likely no one whose rank and status are close enough to his to be in a position to give him that counseling. Perhaps if a cooler head tried that, he’d be purged or shot.

Now we, and especially South Korea, should start to worry. North Korea announced that it’s tearing up the armistice between it and South Korea. It’s done that before, but not with a brand new inexperienced leader. Last Saturday it announced it had formally entered a “state of war” with South Korea, and that and “all matters between the two Koreas will be handled according to wartime protocol.”

That was talk, but now there’s action. There are reports of a big jump in activity at North Korean missile sites.

This is serious. A wrong move by either side could turn into a hot war. The way Kim Jong Un has been acting, that even may be what he wants. After all, a long-held goal of the North is reunification with the South. Under Communist rule.

Given that there’s probably no one within the North Korean government with the rank or stature to counsel Kim Jong Un with the right advice, China needs to send emissaries there to do so. And/or Russia. And if the Obama administration isn’t already urging China and Russia to use their clout with the North Korean leader to help defuse this situation, then it most certainly should start doing so.

Filed Under: National Security/Foreign Policy

Obama’s Selective Speech Police

March 5, 2013 by

Where’s the Obama speech police?

Saturday Night Live recently featured a skit that mocked Jesus, depicting Jesus slaying with a sword Roman soldiers. “He’s risen from the dead,” said the narrator, “and he’s preaching anything but forgiveness.” Apparently it caused enough of a hoopla to prompt Sears and JC Penney to pull their advertising from the show.

Last year the Obama administration strongly supported a U.N. Human Rights resolution (# 16/18)  that  “deplores” and “condemns” advocacy of “religious hatred”.

At a U.N. “High-Level Meeting on Combating Religious Intolerance” last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration would use “some old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming” against those who do “what we abhor.”

So did the Obama administration use old-fashioned techniques of peer pressure and shaming against Saturday Night Live? Did it bring peer pressure or shame upon artist Andres Serrano or those who exhibited his “Piss Christ” in New York City last fall?

No, but it certainly did against the filmmaker of “Innocence of Muslims” – the amateurish YouTube video that the administration erroneously claimed sparked the attack against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which three Americans including the ambassador died. The filmmaker was sentenced to a year in jail. To be sure, the charges didn’t pertain to the content of the film, but it’s doubtful  he would have been arrested if not for the film.

In other words, such shame and peer pressure is only reserved for those who criticize Islam.

This is certainly not to suggest that the Obama administration should go after those who mock or criticize Christianity. Instead, it should refrain from condemning the mocking of any religion, be it Christianity or Islam – because apart from implicit restrictions on freedom of speech, it could lead to explicit ones. Condemnation should come from those outside of government.

So here we have a situation where the U.S. government vows to speak out against the mocking of Islam, yet provided funds and sponsorship for the mocking of Christianity (when the National Endowment of the Arts sponsored the “Piss Christ” exhibition).

When it comes to matters involving religion, the Obama administration is not an equal-opportunity shamer.

Filed Under: Free Speech, Religion

Adding a Log to the Distrust of the Media Fire

March 2, 2013 by

Overwhelming majorities of Americans say they don’t trust the media because of instances like this:

In covering remarks by President Obama, NPR reporter Ari Shapiro commented, “The American people agree with the president’s solution to the problem, combining spending cuts with tax revenues. Even a majority of Republican voters support that approach.”

That statement is suspect. It appears to be based on old polls taken prior to the Jan. 1 tax hike. I did a Google search for polls taken within the last month regarding support for further tax increases, and came up dry.

Moreover, you’ve probably noticed that any commentary that NPR adds to news stories, such as in this instance, is leftward biased. They want to try to make the listener think that the tax increases are right because that’s what “the American people” supposedly want.

Prior to conducting open heart surgery, does a heart surgeon take a poll to find out what the American people think is the best way to conduct the operation? Prior to building a bridge, does a bridge engineer take a poll to find out what the American people think is the best method to construct it? Prior to designing a new piece of software, does a computer programmer take a poll to find out what the American people think is the best software code to use?

So if the American people as a whole aren’t qualified to offer advice on the nitty-gritty of surgery, engineering, or computer programming, what makes NPR think that the American people are qualified to offer advice on the nitty-gritty of economics? Raising taxes is an intensely economic undertaking, with economists going to years of schooling in order to best analyze what effects raising taxes will have on the economy and society.

Moreover, of course a majority of the American people would like to sock it to the rich. Such a thought is emotionally satisfying to most people. Shadenfreude, particularly directed at the rich, is a common human trait. But economic policy should not be based on emotion, especially based on the emotions of a majority of the American people. In other words, NPR’s commentary that it snuck into its news story is not only suspect in terms of its accuracy, but it’s also absurd.

 

Filed Under: Media Bias, NPR/PBS

Rise of the Reformists

February 17, 2013 by

— OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT —

Let it be known that from this day forward, the scribe whose words you are at this moment reading will rechristen himself – drum roll please – “reformist”.

As a former editor who takes the meanings of words seriously and often literally, I’ve always had a problem with the terms liberal and conservative. Yes, I know that even many liberals think liberal is a dirty word, which is why they rechristened themselves the woefully inaccurate term “progressive,” as if imitating the pre-crisis public policies of Greece is “progress.”

But as a former liberal myself (up through around grad school), I never regarded it as a dirty word for the most part, except in the sense of overdoing something like “spend liberally”. It’s also supposed to mean well-rounded and open-minded, although many “liberals” are some of the most closed-minded people I know. It has a positive connotation in the sense of “liberal arts education,” or “classical liberal” – i.e. the Adam Smith sense of free markets and free trade.

“Conservative” isn’t a dirty word except perhaps among lefties. Righties are proud to describe themselves as conservative and use the term all the time.

Even so, conservative – and liberal – mean different things at different times, and in different places. In China and Russia, a conservative is someone who wants to revert to the far-left policies of old, and a liberal is someone who wants to enact free-market reforms. In the United States, by contrast, the situation is reversed.

Conservative can mean keeping things as they are – which is just how it should be for many of our age-old institutions. But for other phenomena, such as decades-old, ossified government programs that are bankrupting the country and that are in serious need of reform, would it not be “conservative” to keep the programs as they are?

There you have some of the problems surrounding the use of the terms “conservative” and “liberal.” Again, as a former editor I take the meanings of words seriously. So a much more accurate description of where I stand politically is “reformist”.

Reform means changing something for the better. And there are lots of programs and institutions in this country that need to undergo such overhauls. (Note that some things erroneously get labeled as “reform” even though they’re change for the worse, like Obamacare.)

So I hereby declare that henceforth I shall describe myself as a reformist. And if you, reader, are of a like-minded persuasion, then you should rechristen yourself reformist as well.

— END OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT —

Filed Under: General

If the NYT Won’t Expose It, Then Someone Has To

February 17, 2013 by

The New York Times is complaining that the inquiry on Democratic Senator Menendez over allegations of soliciting prostitutes in the Dominican Republic “started with a partisan push.” The reformist-leaning (some people call it conservative-leaning) National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) apparently was first to uncover the alleged hanky-panky. The Times writes that the episode “illustrates the often-hidden role that partisan players have in helping push the major news media to dig into ethical allegations lodged against sitting members of Congress.”

The tone is the article suggests that exposing wrongdoing of lefties by groups funded by righties is scandalous in and of itself. Of course, oftentimes the only way wrongdoing by lefties is ever going to be exposed is through right-leaning investigators. It’s obvious that the New York Times didn’t take the lead in investigating and exposing the story, and there’s a reason for that.

Given that the vast majority of news outlets consist of left-leaning employees, they’re significantly less eager to dig up dirt on their allies in the political world. So if they’re not going to do it, then someone has to. That’s why there are watchdog groups like NLPC.

Filed Under: Media Bias

Mugged By Obamacare, then Hugging the Mugger

January 26, 2013 by

There’s the old adage that a conservative is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. A twist on that is a liberal is a liberal who’s been mugged by reality. That is, even those who are victims of measures that they support are so stuck on their ideology that they keep supporting those same measures.

A recent WSJ article (“Health Law Pinches Colleges”) describes colleges and universities that are cutting back on the hours of their adjunct professors in order to avoid having to provide them with health insurance coverage under Obamacare. The article points to a professor whose hours are being cut, resulting in a salary cut of $2,000. The professor said in response, ”I think it goes against the spirit of the [health-care] law,” Mr. Balla said. “In education, we’re working for the public good, we are public employees at a public institution; we should be the first ones to uphold the law, to set the example.”

That sounds like somebody who was a big supporter of Obamacare. And I bet that person is still a big supporter of Obamacare. He seems upset with his employer for not abiding by the spirit of Obamacare. He probably doesn’t realize that his employer, also probably run by Obamacare supporters (given that it’s a college), just cannot afford to abide by that spirit and has no other choice but to cut his hours. The alternative would be to resort to more drastic measures like laying people off.

I bet lots of Obamacare supporters who’ve been victims of Obamacare are thinking in the back of their mind, “I’m a sacrificial lamb for the public good; there must be a greater good in Obamacare despite being personally negatively affected.”

Little do they realize there are millions of sacrificial lambs all across the nation. So many such lambs mean that Obamacare is not a public good, but a public bad.

Filed Under: Obamacare

Envy/Jealousy Behind Virginia Tech and Newtown Shootings?

January 25, 2013 by

Arguably the worst evil committed in the world stems from the dual emotions of envy/jealousy. The tens of millions of people who died under Communism during the 20th century did so at the hands of people who largely were motivated by envy against the rich or at least against those better off than them. That same emotion in large part brought about the murder of millions of Jews under National Socialism, as they typically were wealthier (thanks to their emphasis on education).

At the individual level as well, terrible crimes have been committed based on envy/jealousy. For example, particularly in Asian countries, there are instances of women throwing acid on other women’s faces in order to erase their physical beauty.

The Virginia Tech shooter in 2007 was motivated in part by envy. His so-called multimedia manifesto was laden with expressions of hatred for the rich. “Among the materials was a DVD with 27 QuickTime video files, totaling about 10 minutes, showing Cho talking directly to the camera. He does not name anyone specifically, but he mentions ‘hedonism’ and Christianity, and he talks at length about his hatred of the wealthy,” according to an MSNBC article.

Envy/jealousy is an incredibly powerful emotion and explains a lot of evil in this world. It could help explain one of the most evil actions of recent times, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot to death 20 mostly first graders along with many of their teachers and administrators. According to FoxNews, “Two law enforcement sources said they believed Nancy Lanza had been volunteering with kindergartners at the school. Most of Lanza’s victims were first graders sources believe Nancy Lanza may have worked with last year….Adam Lanza believed she cared more for the children than she did for him….”

If the report is accurate, then it appears Adam Lanza thought his mom loved him less than she loved the kids, prompting him to kill them.

That’s what jealousy does. That’s what envy does. That deadliest of the seven deadly sins gets nowhere near the media attention it deserves. There should be a national discussion on the evil that results from envy, in an effort to try to tamp down on some of the emotions that drive people to do terrible deeds.

Filed Under: Envy

Visitors to Air and Space Museum Made Parking Attendant Rich

January 20, 2013 by

Have you ever been to the new Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Va. near D.C. – the one near Dulles Airport that features the Space Shuttle, the Concorde, the Enola Gay, and a lot more? If you did you may recall that the $15 parking fee is a bit steep. You also may not be aware that your money wasn’t necessarily going to help fund the museum. It was going to help fund the lifestyle of the parking attendants.

Smithsonian visitors unknowingly gave Mr. Meseret Terefe a total of nearly $500,000 over the course of his duties. Two other parking attendants were guilty of the same thing.

I live only a mile from the museum. I went there a lot during his three-year tenure, but fortunately he never got any of my money. That’s because of you’re a local like me, you know that parking is free after 4:00 pm, until when the museum closes at 5:30 pm.

Seems he was “unplugging the electronic vehicle counters installed in the parking booths” or “not handing customers a serialized parking ticket to display” in order to pull off his embezzlement.

Still, it makes one wonder. Couldn’t the management of the Air and Space Museum have been more vigilant over those three years? I mean $500,000 – that’s a helluva lot of revenue to let go down the drain. Couldn’t someone working there have entertained the possibility that an enterprising parking attendant could theoretically get away with something like that, and that therefore he or she should be monitored for possible discrepancies? Couldn’t someone have done an occasional estimate of the number of cars in the parking lot for a given day, and figure out that revenues were far less than what they should have been?

According to court documents, shortly after Terefe started working there in 2009, Ms. Freweyni Mebrahtu told him he was putting her and others at risk by not stealing, because the number of cars he was reporting was higher than others’ reported numbers. Not long after he got on board with the scheme, one of his managers – who court documents only identify as A.H. – insisted on getting half of the ill-gotten gains. Another participant in the scheme was Ms. Genete Yigzu, who according to a Department of Justice spokesperson has since passed away.

If Terefe noticed that the number of cars he was reporting was significantly higher than those of booths manned by other co-workers, why didn’t anyone at Udvar-Hazy or PMI (the parking contractor) notice that as well?

Rule 1 is to always assume or at least entertain the possibility that anyone accepting cash that doesn’t belong to them may not always act honestly, and that extra efforts should be made to keep tabs on that person or persons.

Carrying out periodic visual car counts, especially using video surveillance footage, and comparing that with the number of reported vehicles should have been a no-brainer. Another mistake was badly designed parking booths. The embezzlers unplugged the vehicle counter whenever they pocketed the cash.

So have redundant vehicle counting mechanisms in place, for starters. Separate the vehicle counters from the booths, as well. Do adequate background checks on workers. Consider moving to a non-cash system, like what Metro did in 2004 after millions of dollars went missing from its lots. And keep better tabs on workers, especially those handling cash.

* * *

BTW the museum is known as the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum. No, Udvar and Hazy aren’t the names of two great scientists who discovered a comet or whatever. Udvar-Hazy is the last name of the main donor to the museum. A pet peeve of mine is that on the nearby highways, signs for the museum state “Udvar – Hazy Air and Space Museum.” First of all the signs have bad punctuation. It should be Udvar-Hazy not Udvar – Hazy. Second of all, except for one of the newer highway signs on the Beltway near Tysons Corner, nowhere do the signs say that it’s the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. So motorists may be thinking it’s just another air and space museum, not the Smithsonian air and space museum. Talk about poor marketing skills of whoever made the signs,  and of whoever has left the signs that way for the past seven years or however long the museum has been around.

That’s the government for ya.

Filed Under: Crime Tagged With: 1 Comment

Stray Dog Strut

December 8, 2012 by

It seems like an innocent enough article in today’s WSJ:  there’s an excess of Chihuahuas in the Los Angeles area so they’re air-lifting them to the East Coast and elsewhere for people who want a dog.

But there’s an alarming story here below the surface. A characteristic of many less-developed countries is that there are a lot of ownerless dogs running around in the cities. I noticed that while living in Mexico City way back when. I was curious as to why there were so many dogs, many of whom looked sickly, and who didn’t seem to have owners. The reason, to my understanding, is because people can’t afford to spay or neuter dogs, so millions of them are abandoned. And there isn’t government money to keep them in shelters.

Well now that’s happening here in the United States. “Southern California shelter officials attribute a soaring Chihuahua population to non-neutered and non-spayed dogs in low-income communities. More Chihuahuas and other pets have landed in shelters as foreclosures ballooned. Meanwhile, budget cuts have made it tougher to staff shelters.” The article continues, “Many shelter dogs come from communities where people don’t have the money to neuter or spay pets, according to Alana Yañez, who runs the Humane Society of the United States’ Pets for Life program in Los Angeles.”

A large abandoned dog population is a characteristic of third world countries. Now, pockets of America are taking on that characteristic. Not an encouraging sign.

Filed Under: Urban Issues

How Free Markets Help the Poor

December 2, 2012 by

(To watch a video animation of the following, click here.)

Do you know what’s by far the most powerful force in lifting the poor out of poverty and raising the incomes of everyone else? Free markets. The government getting out of the way and letting businesses flourish results in jobs and rising wages.

No, it’s not labor unions that make wages rise. They only help a relatively small segment of workers at the expense of everyone else. If anything, they impede business creation. And that’s a tragedy, because the more businesses there are, the more competition there is for labor.

In order to attract the best workers and prevent them from working somewhere else, business owners are forced to raise wages and benefits. The result is an overall rise in the general wage rate and standard of living.

Let me illustrate. Start with a poor country. There are lots of people either unemployed or working in the agricultural or low-wage informal sector. But then the government opens the area to foreign or domestic investment. A shoe factory moves in, and people get jobs. Because it’s low-skilled labor, the jobs aren’t high-paying but they pay a lot better than what the people were earning before.

More factories move in and more people get jobs. And then, another factory moves in and finds that it’s having a hard time hiring good labor. So how does it attract workers? You guessed it: it’s forced to raise wages.

But it doesn’t stop there. In order to prevent their workers from going to the other factory and to hire new workers, all of the other businesses have to raise their wages as well. The average income and standard of living of the population go up.

In addition to enjoying higher wages, the people are learning new skills. There are more semi-skilled and even high-skilled people around. That attracts the attention of industries that require higher-skilled labor, like assembly plants and parts manufacturers. They pay even higher wages in order to attract top talent. Pretty soon more of them move in, and the low-skilled manufactures can’t compete so they move out, to other areas of the country where low-skilled and low-wage labor is still abundant. Then the virtuous cycle begins there, too.

This is happening in places like China and India. Just a few of decades ago southern China was poverty-stricken. Now it’s becoming a bustling and prosperous high-tech metropolis, thanks to this process of businesses competing for labor, and ultimately thanks to the government’s decision to let the free market flourish.

A similar thing happened in America as well. To once again get low unemployment and rising wages for the poor, the government has got to get out of the way.

*** Update – May 6, 2013 ***

The above is by no means just a theory. It’s what’s happening in practice. All of the above is reflected in this news article.

Following are excerpts:

“Ms. Cui is contributing to China’s tightest labor market in years, putting upward pressure on wages that already are rising in the double digits annually.”

“The average monthly income for migrant workers rose 12.1% from a year earlier.”

“Creating jobs in hair salons and insurance companies, instead of in steel mills and soccer-ball factories, helps fuel growth in the world’s second-largest economy.”

“When the bra maker set up a factory in southeastern China’s Jiangxi province more than a decade ago, hundreds of people lined up outside looking for work. Today, the manufacturer for Wonderbra and Elle Macpherson Intimates struggles to find enough workers to operate its production lines at full capacity.”

“For years Top Form competed for labor with factories moving inland to take advantage of lower costs.”

 

Filed Under: Economic Growth, Labor Unions, Poverty Tagged With: , , ,

Pilgrim Food for Thought

November 21, 2012 by

As we settle into this Thanksgiving, it’s worth remembering some of what the second permanent English settlers in the New World (the first being the Jamestown settlers) went through in order to lay the groundwork for what later was to become the United States of America. Here’s some food for thought, courtesy of the History Channel DVD Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower.

* The Pilgrims spent 10 years living in the Netherlands (where there was more religious freedom than in England), before deciding to set off to the New World.

* About half the passengers were non-Pilgrims who just wanted to go to the New World as well, whom the Pilgrims called the Strangers – although after two months of crossing the Atlantic in close quarters it’s doubtful that they were considered strangers anymore.

* They were victims of a bait and switch deal where the investors who financed the voyage at the last minute demanded that the Pilgrims had to work six days a week for them after getting to the New World – like indentured servants. By that time the Pilgrims were too deeply into the project (e.g. had sold their land and many of their possessions) to back out.

* Just before departing they had to sell off literally tons of supplies in the ship in order to pay additional bills.

* They wanted to leave in spring or early summer but were beset by delays so they finally set off in August, with the Mayflower and Speedwell. But the Speedwell started taking on too much water so they turned back to have it repaired. After waiting a few weeks they set off again and had to turn back yet again, finally deciding that the Speedwell was just too unseaworthy. They lost a month that way, so had to set off in September, one of the worst possible times not only because of the Atlantic gales revving up, but because that meant they would arrive in the New World in November at the beginning of winter.

* During a storm, a main support beam cracked, threatening the integrity of the whole ship. But they managed a make-shift solution.

* According to the agreement with the investors, they were supposed to arrive and settle in the Hudson River Valley – not far from present-day New York City. They reached landfall around Cape Cod, then headed south toward the mouth of the Hudson, but got caught in the Pollock Rip Shoals off of Cape Cod where many many ships have gone down. They were in grave danger but fortunately the wind direction shifted and they managed to turn back.

* A schism broke out, with some of them saying their special laws drawn up for their venture will be invalidated if they don’t settle within the Virginia Colony, which at that time encompassed part of the Hudson River Valley. That’s what led to an onboard agreement – now called the Mayflower Compact – in which they drew up special rules and regulations to abide by in lieu of the Virginia Colony laws.

* They originally tried to settle down on Cape Cod but realized they had antagonized the Nauset tribe too much by digging up their mounds containing stored provisions and disturbing grave sites. So they settled on the mainland at what they called Plymouth, which turned out to be a poor choice for settlement compared to the present-day Boston Harbor 40 miles to the north. They chose a spot where a group of Wampanoags called the Patuxet had lived. They villages were deserted, because four years earlier in about 1616, almost all of the Patuxet along with thousands of others up and down the northern coast had died from plague, probably from germs brought over by a French ship.

* By February or March, only a little over half of the original 102 passengers were still alive. Most had died from scurvy and other diseases, including their governor, John Carver.

* Several months after arriving they finally established relations with the Wampanoag. Squanto, one of the few surviving Pautuxet, chose to live with them and taught them a lot about surviving in the new world. Squanto already could speak English, because several years before, he was captured by traders/slavers and sold as a slave in Malaga, Spain, where he escaped to London and made his way back to his homeland.

* That spring, the Mayflower and its crew headed back to England, many months later than what they originally planned. It only took a month to go back, versus the two-month journey the way there. When it arrived in London, the investors were expecting the ship to be loaded with valuable goods from the New World. It was only loaded with rocks, for ballast.

Filed Under: General 3 Comments