Nation: A Season for Taking Stock

Despite the economic uncertainties, it is, indeed, a time for thanksgiving

Having passed a new Bill of Rights, established a Supreme Court and performed various other wonders, the U.S. House of Representatives paused, in late September of 1789, to consider whether it should declare a national day of thanksgiving. Congressman Elias Boudinot of New Jersey thought it should. He introduced a resolution asking President Washington to proclaim a day in which the people might acknowledge, "with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God." There was immediate opposition. Congressman Thomas Tucker, wary of the threat of Big Government, declared that the House "had no business to interfere in a matter which did not concern them." Added he: "Why should the President direct the people to do what, perhaps, they have no mind to do?"

Boudinot's view prevailed, however, and so Washington issued a declaration naming the last Thursday in November as something that would later always be special in American life. The day was "to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be ... rendering ... humble thanks for [the] conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquillity, union and plenty, which we have since enjoyed."

Thanksgiving Day was even then an old tradition, of course. The first one had been celebrated in 1619 at the Berkeley settlement near Jamestown, Va., and this year the same feast was re-created at Berkeley Plantation, as it traditionally is, with an outdoor turkey roast on the first

Sunday in November. But folk tradition —New England tradition, at least—considers the first Thanksgiving to have been the conciliation in 1621 between the hungry Pilgrims at Plymouth and the Wampanoag Indians, who had helped them to grow food. At Memorial Hall, near Plymouth Rock, this week, some 2,000 people will gather at the customary turkey feast that has come to be shared across the land as a kind of national communion. Says Carolyn Kneip of Plymouth: "If the Pilgrims returned today to see what they had started, they would be dumbfounded—and rilled with pride."

The season is traditionally a time for taking stock, for judging and assessing. This year, although there is widespread anxiety about the current inflation, and about the ability of the Carter Administration to control it, the nation is undeniably prospering. This year's unemployment rate is the lowest since 1974, and 95.2 million people are at work, more than ever before. The output of the nation's industries last month was a healthy 6.8% higher than a year ago. And the crops are in, a record, silo-bursting harvest —an estimated 6.8 billion bu. of corn, 8% more than the 1977 mark, and 1.8 billion bu. of both wheat and soybeans.