Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America

Abstract

O express a degree of well-being that was both desirable and morally legitimate, early modern Englishmen often chose the term competency. Thus, when William Wood pointed out in i634 that, however rude the circumstances of the first New Englanders might seem, they were well-contented, and looke not so much at abundance, as a competencie, he was trying to strike just such a decently attractive note. To early modern readers, the idea connoted the possession of sufficient property to absorb the labors of a given family while providing it with something more than a mere subsistence. It meant, in brief, a degree of comfortable independence.1 Such an ideal was necessarily imprecise. One man's comforts could be his neighbor's barest needs, and even in the course of a single lifetime people had to shift their standards upward and downward to fit their changing circumstances. A farm that might be judged prosperous enough to keep a young family in relative independence might not serve equally well as children matured. True, most English households survived at levels of competency that were modest at best. Such qualifications being granted, the ideal of competency nevertheless had a broad constituency within the producing ranks of society, and a vast range of behavior spoke