The Seeding of New England 73 



tragedy, for one clammer, too weak from long starvation to 

 run before the advancing tide, was caught in the mud and 

 drowned before his comrades' horrified eyes. 



Clams and corn saved Massachusetts, as oysters saved the 

 later colonists on Long Island on more than one occasion. 

 The Dutch had a saying, that "if oysters had legs, Long 

 Islanders would starve." 



The Massachusetts settlers starved, but they survived. They 

 drew their wide leather belts tighter about their gaunt frames, 

 and spoke yet more grimly of the providence of God and His 

 benefits to the godly. And when the Anne, on which Mr. 

 Winthrop had sailed with beaver to sell in London, and with 

 orders to make arrangements for further supplies to be sent 

 the colony, did not come over the sea's rim, they took their 

 axes, and summoned what strength they had, to fell more 

 trees, to widen their clearings wherein to plant more and yet 

 more corn, "that they might not still thus languish in miserie." 



What discontent with the communal principles on which 

 the colony was founded had arisen before this year is not 

 recorded. But as they realized that their existence in the new 

 land depended on their corn crop above all else, and as they 

 struggled to extend the cornfields, the men of Massachusetts 

 declared themselves unqualifiedly against the communal sys- 

 tem. A delegation waited on the Governor and Council with 

 request that the article of the charter which made all lands 

 communal and forbade private ownership of land be abolished 

 straightway. 



Why should not every man seed and hoe and tend his own 

 cornfield? Why should not every man support himself and 

 his family by his own labors? Why should the strong in body 

 and spirit be broken down to carry the faint-hearted and care- 

 less? By following such a plan to its inevitable end, the repre- 

 sentatives argued before the Governor, there would be none 

 left to carry on. 



The Governor did not yield without much debate and con- 

 sideration of the merits of communism versus individualism. 



