The Massachusetts Bay Colony of Pilgrims, had arrived at Plymouth Bay late in 1620. Winter was setting in quickly. Aboard the Mayflower, they had signed the Mayflower Compact...a utopian document which committed each adult to share equally in everything they produced. Of 104 adults, 51 died of starvation and disease over the first brutal winter. Why? Because sharing in everything equally, whether one worked hard or not, was no better than the life of serfdom they had risked all to get away from.
There was no incentive to produce an excess because it was taxed away. Those few who survived until Spring got together with Gov. Bradford and said something had to change. It did.
