NEWSHOUR'S TIME MACHINE - The American Pilgrims 400yrs Back

"Were pilgrims America’s original economic migrants?" PBS NewsHour 11/26/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Four hundred years ago, a group of pilgrims founded a colony in Plymouth.  But what did they hope to accomplish there, how did they live?  Economics correspondent Paul Solman jumps back in time to 'interview' some of these early settlers and find out how they made a living.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  But first, our money man, Paul Solman, looks at those original Thanksgiving celebrants — the Pilgrims — and the economic pressures that drove them to America, and defined so much of their time here.  It`s part of our weekly series, “Making Sen$e,” which airs every Thursday on the NewsHour.

PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour):  Thanksgiving time at Plymouth plantation, a 17th century living history museum in Massachusetts.  The year?  1624, when, as the story goes:

NARRATOR:  A hundred people landed on a bare and windy shore, seeking freedom from the English church.  For this, they were ready to confront the grim and grisly face of poverty.

MAN:  In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth —

PAUL SOLMAN:  We've long celebrated the religious drive to build a city on a hill for strangers in a strange land.  But it turns out that our pilgrims faced poverty at least as grim and grisly back in Holland, from whence they had fled 16 years earlier to separate from the Church of England.

Patience Prence was among those who came to Plymouth, as played by one of the plantations re-enactors.

PATIENCE PRENCE, Plymouth Colonist, Played by Grace Bello:  We live a humble life, but we work for ourselves.  In Holland, we could put food on our tables, but, it was a very hard labor.

PAUL SOLMAN:  Meanwhile, America was literally, to them, a new world.

GOV. WILLIAM BRADFORD, Plymouth Colonist, Played by Doug Blake:  We will be able to turn a good profit so that it benefits everyone.

PAUL SOLMAN:  The plantation’s governor and chronicler, William Bradford.

WILLIAM BRADFORD:  It might be a place where profit and religion can jump together.  There is no shame in doing well, for one must still exist in this world and thus be comfortable.