To return to Merry Mount, however, it must be conceded that there were more serious things wrong there than merely heavy drinking and loose living. Morton, led by cupidity, had made the fatal error of selling fire-arms to the Indians. Needless to say, the profits, in beaver, of such a trade, were enormous; but it threatened the life of every white man on the coast, and residents of the scattered settlements asked Plymouth to join with them in suppressing the deadly mischief. Morton, after a brief struggle, of which he gives an amusing account, was taken into custody, and shipped to England with a complaint to the Council for New England. The cost of the expedition, which had been led by Standish, amounted to a little over £12, borne by eight settlements, of which the inhabitants of Plymouth outnumbered all the other seven together.[256] That colony, however, contributed but one sixth of the money spent, for which several reasons might be suggested. During the years of its existence, it had received practically no help from the capitalists at home, subsequent to the first fitting out, and the really great achievement of its leaders had consisted in maintaining, for the first time, the existence of a plantation in a wilderness by its own unaided efforts. The three main points of interest in that connection were the abandonment of the common-stock theory, the growth of trade, and the buying out of the interest of the capitalists, which latter transaction foreshadowed the transfer to America of the Massachusetts charter. Footnote 256: Bradford, _Plymouth_, pp. 240 _ff._; _cf._ also Bradford, _Letter Book_, in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series I, vol. III, p. 63. The theory of a common-stock as a necessity for the profitable operation of colonies was the accepted one of the day, in spite of repeated failures due to human nature. That failure had been as evident in Plymouth as elsewhere. Young unmarried men objected to having the fruits of their toil go to support other men's wives and children. Married men disliked having their wives sew, cook, and wash for the others. Hard-working men thought it unfair that they should support the more idle or incapable. The older men, or those of the better class, declined to work for the younger or meaner. The pinch of hunger, in 1623, finally decided the colonists to set aside their agreement, in the interests of the capitalists as well as their own, in the one particular of raising food. The immediate result was a greatly increased production, so that many had a surplus and trading began among themselves, with corn as currency. The following year, one acre of land was confirmed to each individual in severalty.[257] Footnote 257: Bradford, _Plymouth_, pp. 134, 167. The list of lots, with their owners, is in _Plymouth Records_, vol. XII, pp. 1-6.