We shall have a better idea of the meaning of Americanism after studying the following six paragraphs.

I. The Pilgrims made the home and its influence the cornerstone of religious and civil government. Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation gives more space to the condition of the children and homes than to any other reason for leaving Holland. The "heavy labors" of the children and especially "the manifold temptations" which destroyed home influence were, says Bradford, "of all

sorrows most heavy to be borne." His statements about the results of child labor and the decline of home influence are modern enough to have been written in the twentieth century. The Pilgrims brought their wives and children on the first voyage and made the home the unit of the colony at the start. Land was assigned to families, not to individuals.

We do not know of any other colony in which the proportion of children was so large. The forward look for the welfare of the home and the child is to-day one of the most important characteristics of Americanism.

II. The Pilgrims tried a new experiment in orderly selfgovernment in both church and state. They were the first successful colonists to govern themselves from the day they landed, without help or suggestion from a colonizing company or king. The early Pilgrim colonists were entirely free to govern themselves because they settled north of the London Company's grant and had at first no assigned land. Their government was not at first so liberal or so democratic as our government was to become during the next three centuries which ended (1920) with giving the ballot to women, but the government of the

Pilgrims was unusually liberal and democratic for that age. They did not hesitate to deport to England a man like Thomas Morton, who was opposed to orderly self-government and who wanted to put firearms in the hands of the Indians. Self-government which is orderly is to-day a characteristic of Americanism.

III. The famous Mayflower Compact, which the Pilgrims signed before landing, was an agreement to "enact" and "obey" "just and equal laws," not class laws. Anyone who to-day wants a law that benefits his class at the expense of another class is not American in spirit. The belief of the Pilgrims in the same kind of simple justice for both the Indians and themselves enabled them to live at peace with the red men.

IV. The Pilgrims made the Ten Commandments their rule of action. One of the oft-quoted clauses of the Constitution of the United States forbids taking "life, liberty, or property without due process of law." This clause embodies the commandments, "Thou shalt not kill " and "Thou shalt not steal."

V. The Pilgrims believed in individual effort and self-reliance. These qualities, coupled with the spirit of brotherhood shown in severe trials in England, Holland, and America, remain characteristics of the best Americanism.

VI. Those who came in the Mayflower gave to their descendants an American title to nobility, new to the English world. This title rests solely on willingness to serve and to do the world's work instead of having it done by others. The Pilgrims attached no disgrace to labor. Governor Bradford worked in the fields like any other man. The women did the home work and made the clothes. Americans are to-day proud to trace their descent from these workers.

Summary of Points of Emphasis for Review.—(1) Who the Pilgrims were, (2) their leaders, (3) their pilgrimages, (4) the struggle of the Plymouth colony to survive, (5) the Pilgrim youth, (6) what Squanto taught the Pilgrims, (7) the first peace pageant, (8) how the Indians helped the Pilgrims, (9) the celebration of the first Thanksgiving, (10) why communism was a failure in the colony, (11) the ideals of the Pilgrims, (12) how a study of the Pilgrims helps to define Americanism.

Activities.-Draw on a map the course of the wanderings of the Pilgrims from the time they first left England until they landed at Plymouth Rock.

Write a clear definition of the word "Pilgrims."

Read The First Landing at Plymouth by Governor William Bradford (1620) in Hart's Colonial Children, 133-136.

Write a letter such as a Pilgrim might have written to a friend in the Leyden congregation at the end of the first winter.

Write a paragraph to tell why the "Pilgrim Youth" rather than the "Pilgrim Fathers " laid the foundation of the Pilgrim colony.

Present the first peace pageant at Plymouth or dramatize either the meeting between Squanto and the Pilgrims or the first Thanksgiving.

Why do you suppose the Indian boys were not permitted to use tobacco? Prove that the Pilgrims could not have survived if they had not followed the golden rule.

State as forcibly as you can the arguments against communism as you might give them to a person who believes that community ownership is better than individual ownership.

Give a three-minute talk on the aims of the Pilgrims.

The Pilgrims set certain standards for what we call 'Americanism'." Let this be the opening sentence of a paragraph which you are to finish in such a way as to explain the meaning of the sentence.

Select from Longfellow's Courtship of Miles Standish passages which show (a) the character of the Pilgrims, (b) their manner of life.

References for Teachers.-Andrews, The Fathers of New England (Chron. of Am.), 1-20; Greene, Foundations of Am. Nationality, 87-95; Channing, Hist. of the U. S., I., 293-317; Tyler, England in America, 149-182; Goodwin, The Plymouth Republic; Lord, Plymouth and the Pilgrims; Thwaites, The Colonies, 116-124; Bradford, Hist. of the Plymouth Plantation; Burgess, John Robinson, Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers; Arber, The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers; Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 149–187.

For Pupils. Usher, Story of the Pilgrims; Gordy, American Leaders and Heroes, 42-79; Foote and Skinner, Explorers and Founders, 136-148; Southworth, Builders of Our Country, I., 89-100; Tappan, American Hero Stories, 59-72; Otis, Mary of Plymouth; Austin, Standish of Standish; Dix, Soldier Rigdale (fiction).

CHAPTER VI

PURITAN COLONIES IN NEW ENGLAND

The Puritans. Those Englishmen who wished to "purify" the Church of England were called Puritans. They disliked the sign of the cross in baptism, the use of the word "priest," the wide authority of the bishops, and the reading of prayers. They wanted a stricter Sunday and better preaching. The Puritans were reformers who wished to make changes in both church and state; they demanded for themselves free souls and free bodies.

The Puritans at first wished to remain in the Church of England and purify it from the inside. The Pilgrims, on the other hand, were Separatists-persons who thought it their duty to separate from that church and found a new one. One reason why the Puritans did not come to America so early as the Pilgrims was because the Puritans waited to see if they could not reform the church without leaving it. Let us find out what happened in England while they waited.

The divine right of kings. We cannot understand the reason for the rapid colonization of New England ten years after the Pilgrims settled there, unless we know the events that took place in England. Queen Elizabeth was succeeded by her cousin's son, James I (reigned from 1603 to 1625), who was already the king of Scotland. His son, Charles I, was the next king of both England and Scotland. This Stuart line of monarchs, as they were called, believed in the "divine right of kings." A clergyman of the Church of England thus stated this belief: "We believe and maintain that our kings derive their titles not from the people but from God. That to Him only are they accountable. That it belongs not to subjects, either to create or censure, but to honor and obey, their sovereign." Let

us see how attempted enforcement of this belief led to the colonization of New England.

Persecution. James I declared that he would drive out of the kingdom those who did not accept the service of the Church of England. He required preachers to take oath that they believed that everything in the Prayer Book agreed with the teachings of the Bible. Hundreds refused to do this and were not allowed to preach. Under Charles I the persecution was still worse. William Laud, the archbishop of Canterbury, was determined to have religious uniformity of the narrowest kind. Those who insisted on preaching new doctrines were silenced. Some who criticized his religious tyranny were thrown into prison, or had their ears and nostrils mutilated.

There was also civil persecution. Men were thrown into prison for insisting that the king should govern according to the English constitution, which ordered that he should not tax the people without the consent of Parliament (pärʼli-ment). When he assembled Parliament, it would not vote him money for waging war or paying the other expenses of government unless he agreed to obey the law. He promised, but he thought that a king need not keep his promise, and so he broke it. He raised money in various ways and threw into prison those who complained that he taxed the people without consent of Parliament.

The resistance of the English people.-The English showed their objection to the doctrine of the divine right of kings in two ways. (1) Thousands of the best people left for New England. (2) The Puritans started a revolution in England. It may almost be said that the American Revolution began in England, since the Puritans fought as hard against tyranny in England as the colonists later fought against it in America.

In the second quarter of the nineteenth century, a Boston school boy delivered before visitors, one of whom happened to be an Englishman, a speech which began: "For eighteen hundred years the world had slumbered in ignorance of liberty and of the true rights of freemen. At length America arose in