The Pilgrim Story / Being largely a compilation from the documents of Governor Bradford and Governor Winslow, severally and in collaboration; together with a list of Mayflower passengers.

by William Franklin Atwood

False Accusations

It has been declared by some commentators that this agreement savored of communism. This interpretation is however unfair. As a matter of record it was not entirely satisfactory to the colonists but was imposed upon them by the Merchant Adventurers who, looking to the final liquidation of their advancements, preferred to hold the community as a whole to meet the obligation. Several letters written by Robert Cushman to his associates in Leyden tend to substantiate this view and emphasize that he had made the best possible terms under the circumstances.

Embarkation, showing buildings and actual wharf from which the Pilgrims departed

Pertinent to the foregoing it is interesting to quote from Young’s Chronicles, page 84, as follows:—“There is no foundation for this charge. The Plymouth people were not ‘misguided by their religious theories,’ nor influenced by an ‘imitation of the primitive Christians,’ in forming their joint stock company. They entered into this hard and disadvantageous engagement with the Merchant Adventurers not voluntarily, but of necessity, in order to obtain shipping for transporting themselves to America; and they put their own little property into a common fund in order to purchase provisions for the voyage. It was a partnership that was instituted, not a community of goods, as that phrase is commonly understood.”