A Thanksgiving lesson

The first Presidential Proclamation of a day of Thanksgiving in the United States was made by George Washington in 1789. The day was set aside for prayers and thanksgiving for the new Constitution. Several states continued the practice, each designating its own day.

Abraham Lincoln was the first President to appoint an official Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated yearly on the last Thursday of November. He issued the Proclamation on Oct. 3, 1863. Since that time the nation has joined, on one day, in saying its prayers of Thanksgiving, and in remembrance of the small band of religious fugitives who landed at Plymouth Rock.

A fact too often forgotten concerning the Pilgrim Fathers is their trial - and abandonment - of the communal system of joint ownership and community labor in the colony. A primary reason for their early hardships on that North American continent was the effort to form a Socialist society.

At first the young colony seemed to be working, but following the first "Thanksgiving," the colony went into a tailspin. Many found that under the system all shared equally so that not a few began to absent themselves from their fields. Naturally, they feigned illness and naturally the number of absentees increased.

The crops failed, and the "starving time" soon followed. Things became so bad in 1623, just three years after they landed, that the best they could provide for new arrivals from the mother country was a freshly-caught fish, a lobster, and a cup of water. It was a disastrous come-down after the bountiful feast of 1621, when they had hosted Chief Massasoit and 90 of his braves

And so it was that in that same year of 1623, Gov. William Bradford, at the urging of the governing Council, established the free enterprise system, and the Plymouth Plantation began to grow and prosper.

The Pilgrims had learned their lesson the hard way. But, from the agony of the "starving time" there has grown the most productive and most wealthy civilization that the world has ever known. In Thanksgiving, it has shared the product of its hard work with virtually every nation in the world.