Where there were lobsters, they were getting $35.50 or $35.00 per case of 48 one-pound cans. For cod, $11.20 a quintal of 112 pounds was paid. In 1918 over $15 per quintal was paid.
On the other hand, with pork at $100 a barrel, coal at $24 a ton, and gasoline at 70 cents a gallon, the big prices for fish were matched by an alarming cost of the necessaries of life.
Some fishermen make but $200 a year; a few make as much as $2,000 and even more. The merchant princes as a rule are the store-keepers who deal with the fishermen. There were two big bank failures in St. John’s years ago, and since that time many persons have hidden their money in the ground. One fisherman of whose case I heard had but $35 in cash as the result of his season’s effort, and he had eight to support besides himself. The small amount of ready money on which people can live with a house, a vegetable garden, and a supply of firewood at their backs in the timbered hillsides is unbelievable. If a man was fortunate enough to possess any grassland, he might get as much as $65 a ton for his hay in 1919, if he could spare it from his own cows and sheep. It is too bad that for the sake of the sheep the noble Newfoundland dog that chased them has had to perish. It is almost impossible today to find a pure-breed example of the dog that spread the name of the island to the ends of the earth. Such dogs as there are are remarkably intelligent and make excellent messengers between a man at work and his house.
The “Southerners” go to the Grand Banks for their fishing; the others go to the Labrador. The three classes of fishermen are the shore fishermen, the “bankers,” and the “floaters”—those of the Labrador. Ordinarily the catch is reckoned by quintals (pronounced kentals) of 112 pounds. Those who live on the Labrador coast the winter through are known as the “liveyers”—the live-heres—and those who come regularly to the fishing are “stationers” or “planters.”
During the war big prices have been realized for the fish, and unprecedented prosperity has come to the fishermen. The growth in the number of motor-boats is an index of this condition, though with gasoline at 70 cents a gallon on the Labrador (for the imperial gallon, slightly larger than ours), the question of fuel has been a disturbing one to many. Of late much of the fish has been marketed on favourable terms in the United States and Canada, but before this the preferred markets in order have been Spain and Portugal, Brazil and the West Indies. The three grades recognized, from the best to the lowest, are “merchantable,” “Madeira,” and “West Indies” (“West Injies”), the last-named for the negroes.
An industry of growing importance to the future of the Grenfell mission is the manufacture and sale of “hooked” rugs by the women trained at the industrial school at St. Anthony. Large department stores in the United States have begun to buy these rugs in considerable quantities, and the demand is lively and increasing.
The Doctor’s delightful sense of humour comes to the fore in his designs for these rugs, made of rags worked through canvas. The dyes are vivid green, blue, red, black, brown—the white rivals the driven snow, and the workmanship is of the best. A favourite pattern shows the dogs harnessed to the komatik eager to be off, turning in the traces as if to ask questions of the driver, their attitude alert and alive, while their two masters standing by the baggage on the komatik, in hoods and heavy parkas (blouses) rimmed with red and blue, are discussing the route to take and pointing with their mittened hands. Or the design may show Eskimoes stealthily stalking polar bears upon an ice-pan of a wondrous green at the edges. There is a glorious Turnerian sunset in the background; the sea bristles with bergs arched and pinnacled. The wary hunters approach their hapless quarry in a kyak. One is paddling and the other has the rifle across his knees, and the polar bears are nervously pacing the ice-pan as though conscious of the fate impending. Another motif in these diverting rugs—which are often used for wall adornments instead of floor-covering—is a stately procession of three bears uphill past the solemn green sentinels of pagoda-like fir trees. What an improvement these designs are over the former rugs which showed meaningless blotches of pink and green that might have been thrown at one another, as if a mason’s trowel had splashed them there!
Since the Labrador is innocent in most places of anything like a store where you can go to the counter, lay down your money and ask for what you want, the nearest thing the women know to the luxury of a shopping-expedition or a bargain-sale is a chance to exchange firewood or fish for the old clothing carried on her missionary journeys by the Strathcona.
“Why isn’t this clothing given away?” someone may query unthinkingly.
The object of the mission is not to pauperize, and the pride of the people themselves in most cases forbids the acceptance of an outright gift.