attempted a similar experiment, laying out the fields in common and
distributing the joint produce of their labor with rough equality among
the workers.

In both colonies the communistic experiments were failures. Angry at the
lazy men in Jamestown who idled their time away and yet expected regular
meals, Captain John Smith issued a manifesto: "Everyone that gathereth
not every day as much as I do, the next day shall be set beyond the
river and forever banished from the fort and live there or starve." Even
this terrible threat did not bring a change in production. Not until
each man was given a plot of his own to till, not until each gathered
the fruits of his own labor, did the colony prosper. In Plymouth, where
the communal experiment lasted for five years, the results were similar
to those in Virginia, and the system was given up for one of separate
fields in which every person could "set corn for his own particular."
Some other New England towns, refusing to profit by the experience of
their Plymouth neighbor, also made excursions into common ownership and
labor, only to abandon the idea and go in for individual ownership of
the land. "By degrees it was seen that even the Lord's people could not
carry the complicated communist legislation into perfect and wholesome
practice."

=Feudal Elements in the Colonies--Quit Rents, Manors, and
Plantations.=--At the other end of the scale were the feudal elements of
land tenure found in the proprietary colonies, in the seaboard regions
of the South, and to some extent in New York. The proprietor was in fact
a powerful feudal lord, owning land granted to him by royal charter. He
could retain any part of it for his personal use or dispose of it all in
large or small lots. While he generally kept for himself an estate of
baronial proportions, it was impossible for him to manage directly any