Thread by @LarryGlickman

I was surprised to learn from this article that "the origins of free enterprise" is one of five 1619 anniversaries being commemorated in Virginia this year. I'm trying to learn more about they define "free enterprise." 1/
dailypress.com/news/hampton/d…

As I show in my book, many free enterprise advocates in the twentieth century backdated its origins to the colonial era as part of an attempt to create an "invented tradition" of the "traditional American free enterprise system." /2

So i'm curious to know what they mean by the "origins of free enterprise," particularly since the earliest uses I've found (in the 19th, not the 17th c.) were as an individual attribute (the "spirit of free enterprise") or as abolitionist slogan ("free" v. "slave" enterprises) /3

Another version of traditional "free enterprise" is that William Bradford brought it to Plymouth Colony, replacing a failed "socialist" approach with "free enterprise" after several years of collectivist failure. /4
dailywire.com/news/51004/eri…

As far as I can tell, the story of Bradford bring "free enterprise" to America in 1623 was popularized by anti-New Dealers in the late 1930s. Here's Samuel Pettingill in 1939./5
newspapers.com/clip/35433302/

Here's Pettengill seeking the sanction of history for his belief in the American tradition of free enterprise. Rather than a "reactionary" opponent of the New Deal, he claimed to be recapturing the spirit of early American history. /6
newspapers.com/clip/35433421/

Many conservatives began to associate the Thanksgiving holiday with the birth of "free enterprise" after the failure of a short-lived "socialist" experiment. Here's the conservative columnist, George W. Crane, laying out the case in 1968./7
newspapers.com/clip/35433593/

Here's an excellent @joshuakeating piece from 2014 on the persistence of the myth that Thanksgiving is a celebration of the Pilgrims "triumph over socialism."/8
slate.com/human-interest…

@joshuakeating I would modify what Keating says slightly. This myth was initially rooted in the "free enterprise" critique of the New Deal in the late 1930s and early 1940s even before it became a staple of Cold War conservatism. /9

@joshuakeating Throughout the postwar years, there were lots of Thanksgiving columns and supplements promoting the story of how the Pilgrims tried socialism and found it wanting. /9
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@joshuakeating According to this 1977 editorial, the first Thanksgiving became a "prototype for what was to become in the 19th century the world's freest and most productive economy." (The editorial did not mention slavery.) /10
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