Evening star., 1907-08-24
PILGRIMS AND PURITANS
HISTORICAL OMISSIONS OF THE
PRovINcTowN SPEECH.
President Did Not Mention That John
Winthrop Was Americas
First Trust Magnate.
From the Hartford Times.

| From the Hartford Times.
| President Roosevelt was the "orator Of
| the day. at the ceremonies attending the
| laying Of the corner stone Of a mon
| ument at Provincetown on Cape Cod to
| the Pilgrim Fathers" who landed there on
November q. 1920, more than a month be-
fore John Alden finally stepped foot on
| Plymouth Rock. Those Pilgrim Fathers"
| as every schoolboy is presumed to know,
| were the independents or separatists who
had been living for some years in the coun-
| try from which Mr.. Roosevelt's prokenitors
came a good deal later to this country
| Holland They had not found the warm
| est of welcomes in Holland. They had no
intention of being assimilated into the
| Dutch nation. They wished to continue to
be Englishmen and to speak the English
| language. They sought home where they
| could live and keep the religious faith
which they held. They were not seekers
| that they were about to found a new and
| mighty nation. They were. in fact, very
poor people, and while Brewster, Bradford
and few of them were well educated.
| most Of them were not. They did establish
a colony at Plymouth that was wholly dis
| tinct from the Puritan state which was
| founded at Boston-the- colony Of Massa-
| chusetts Bay-ten years later.
Pur1tanS Had Money.
| The Pilgrims were Puritans-with a diff
ference. and this difference no loyal de-
scendant of Pilgrim or Puritan forbears
| has ever ceased to remember. The Puritan
leaders who came over in 1880, under the
leadership of John Winthrop. were very
different men from the Pilgrims. They
| were men of property and they came with
| two ideas, neither of which animated the
| Pilgrims. One idea was to found theo-
| cratic state and the other idea was to
| amass property, and they succeeded in
doing both. They were business men and
they We're also strict sectarians. The Pill
| grims were not business mer and they were
far more tolerant in their religious ideas
| than were the Puritans Of whom over 500
| came during the summer Of 1880. That the
| Pilgrims were not practical men Of affairs
Is shown by their setting out from South
| they finally effected landing on the in
hospitable shore of the bay they named
| Plymouth, at the beginning of winter.
More than half the men in the company
were under ground within a year. and most
| of the time Of those who survived was
| taken up during the first year in caring for
the sick and burying the dead. No such
| mournful scenes attended the beginnings of
| the Puritan colony which later absorbed
| the Pilgrim colony. whose first approach to
| our shores Is to be commemorated by the
| shaft at Provincetown.
Says Nothing Of Pilgrims.
| All these facts and distinctions are
completely ignored by the President
| in his address. He launches out at
the very opening Of his discourse
into a panegyric Of the high virtues
of the Purtans and their stern deter
mination to regulate conduct for the public
| weal,' spirit which appeals to him great
| ly, and which he. of course, commands US
| to emulate now. Not once does he say a
word about the Pilgrim fathers, of whom
! he might have talked and might have been
expected to talk very interestingly on such
an occasion. One may we'll wonder what
the descendants Of the people who tarried a
| few days at Provincetown while the May
| flower lay at anchor in the harbor in those
4 chilly November days of 1920 thought of
| such queer omission.
In forgetting the Pilgrims and lauding the
| Pur1tanS Mr.. Roosevelt shows perhaps
| congenital blindness to some features of
| the Puritan character. 1t Is true that our
| worthy Puritan ancestors had fine talent
and a stern disposition to regulate the con-
| duct of their fellow men. such their dis
| tinguished public teacher now commends to
! US, but the practical business side of their
| characters included other traits which do
not fit perfectly into the exemplary picture
| which he hollis up to They brought a
lot of wealth with them-Winthrop alone
had an income of $500 a year from his
| capital-but they devoted themselves fer
| VlQly TO SettlnB more anu tney were mo-
nopolists at the very start in trade as we'll
as In religion.
| First Iron Trust.
No sooner did they begin to spread them-
selves out along the Massachusetts, shore
than they discovered iron ore in the bogs
Of Saugus on the land taken up by Thomas
Hudson. friend of John Winthrop's. Back
to England they went for more capital, and
| in the early forties of the seventeenth cen.
tury they had an iron works in full blast in
Saugus, owned by "a company" and the
only establishment Of the kind on the
American continent. Think Of 1t, oh. share
holders in Standard OIL and the Steel Cor
poration-an absolute monopoly of the iron
! business Of the whole continent nearly 800
years ago, created by these Puritan gen.
grims were noD. Mr.. Roosevelt. perhaps.
| could not be expected to think Of such
things 1t did not suit his purpose to point
| out that while the Puritans were narrow
moneymakers from away back" across
| the big pond-that they began to grab the
| earth and drive out the aborigines and pile
| up wealth as soon they got here, and
| that they set an example which a majority
| Of Americans have been following from
| that day to this. Mr. Carnegie and Mr..
| Morgan and Mr.. Rockefeller and Mr.. Har-
riman are doing the same thing on a some
| what larger scale than John Winthrop
and his associates did in 1880 and there
| after, and these very successful Americans
| and all other successful Americans are
| successful chiefly because they had this
| Puritan example set to them nearly three
| centuries ago. There Is an opportunity here
| for Mr.. Roosevelt to write another address,
| when he has no presidential campaign in
| his mind. and has a little more time to
study the real facts about the founding of
| the greatest community of wealth-getterS
| the world has ever seen.