A Labrador Doctor Part 13

Soon after my arrival on the coast I saw the old Hudson Bay Company's plan of paying in bone counters of various colours; and a large lumber company paying its wages in tin money, stamped "Only valuable at our store." If, to counteract this handicap, the men sold fish or fur for cash to outsiders, and their suppliers found it out, they would punish them severely.

On another occasion, sitting by me on a gunning point where we were shooting ducks as they flew by on their fall migration, was a friend who had given me much help in building one of our hospitals. I suddenly noticed that he did not fire at a wonderful flock of eiders which went right over our heads. "What's the matter, Jim?" I asked. "I settled with the merchant to-day," he replied, "and he won't give me nothing for powder. A duck or two won't matter. 'Tis the children I'm minding." The fishery had been poor, and not having enough to meet his advances, he had sold a few quintals of fish for cash, so as to get things like milk which he would not be allowed on winter credit, and had been caught doing so. He was a grown man and the father of four children. We went to his trader to find out how much he was in debt.

The man's account on the books was shown us, and it read over three thousand dollars against our friend. It had been carried on for many years. A year or two later when the merchant himself went bankrupt with a debt of $686,000 to the bank of which he was a director, the people of that village, some four hundred and eleven souls in all, owed his firm $64,000, an a.s.set returned as value nil. The whole thing seemed a nightmare to any one who cared about these people.

In Labrador no cereals are grown and the summer frosts make potato and turnip crops precarious, so that the tops of the latter are practically all the green food to which we can aspire--except for the few families who remain at the heads of the long bays all summer, far removed from the polar current. Furthermore, until some one invents a way to extract the fishy taste from our fish oils, we must import our edible fats; for the Labrador dogs will not permit cows or even goats to live near them. I have heard only this week that a process has just been discovered in California for making a pleasant tasting b.u.t.ter out of fish oil. Our "sweetness" must all be imported, for none of our native berries are naturally sweet, and we can grow no cultivated fruits. The same fact applies to cotton and wool. Thus nearly all our necessities of life have to be brought to us. Firewood, lumber, fish and game, boots or clothing of skins, are all that we can provide for ourselves. On the other hand, we must export our codfish, salmon, trout, whales, oil, fur, and in fact practically all our products. An exchange medium is therefore imperative; and we must have some gauge like cash by which to measure, or else we shall lose on all transactions; for all the prices of both exports and imports fluctuate very rapidly, and besides this, we had then practically no way to find out what prices were maintaining in our markets.

Government relief had failed to stop the evils of the barter system.

In the opinion of thinking men it only made matters worse. We were therefore from every point of view encouraged to start the cooperative plan which had proved so successful in England. I still believe that the people are honest, and that the laziness of indolence, from the stigma of which it is often impossible to clear them, is due to despair and inability to work properly owing to imperfect nourishment.

Things went from bad to worse as the years went by. The fact of the sealing steamers killing the young seals before they could swim greatly impoverished the Labrador insh.o.r.e seal fishery. The prices of fish were so low that a man could scarcely catch enough to pay for his summer expenses out of it.

With us the matter came to a head in a little fis.h.i.+ng village called Red Bay, on the north side of the Straits of Belle Isle. When we ran in there on our last visit one fall, we found some of our good friends packed up and waiting on their stages to see if we would remove them from the coast. A meeting was called that night to consider the problem, and it was decided that the people must try to be their own merchants, accepting the risks and sharing the profits. The fisherman's and trapper's life is a gamble, and naturally, therefore, they like credit advances, for it makes the other man carry the risks.

We then and there decided, however, to venture a cooperative store, hiring a schooner to bring our freight and carry our produce straight to market; and if necessary eat gra.s.s for a year or so. Alas, after a year's saving the seventeen families could raise only eighty-five dollars among them for capital, and we had to loan them sufficient to obtain the first cargo. A young fisherman was chosen as secretary, and the store worked well from the beginning. That was in 1905. He is still secretary, and to-day in 1918 the five-dollar shares are worth one hundred and four dollars each, by the simple process of acc.u.mulation of profits. The loan has been repaid years ago. Not a barrow load of fish leaves the harbour except through the cooperative store. Due to it, the people have been able to tide over a series of bad fisheries; and every family is free of debt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIRST COoPERATIVE STORE]

At the time of the formation one most significant fact was that every shareholder insisted that his name must not be registered, for fear some one might find out that he owned cash. They were even opposed to a label on the building to signify that it was a store. However, I chalked all over its face "Red Bay Cooperative Store."

The whole effort met with very severe criticism, not to say hostility, at the hands of the smaller traders, but the larger merchants were most generous in their att.i.tude, and though doubtful of the possibility of realizing a cash basis, were without exception favourable to the attempt. This store has been an unqualified success, only limited in its blessings by its lack of larger capital. It has enabled its members to live independently, free of debt and without want; while similar villages, both south and east and west, have been gradually deleted by the people being forced to leave through inability to meet their needs.

During my first winter at St. Anthony, the young minister of the little church on more than one occasion happened to be visiting on his rounds in the very house where we were staying on ours, and the subject of cooperation was frequently discussed over the evening pipe with the friends in the place. He had himself been trading, and had so disliked the methods that he had retired. He would certainly help us to organize a store on the Newfoundland side of the Straits.

At last the day arrived for the initial meeting. We gave notice everywhere. The chosen rendezvous was in a village fourteen miles north. The evening before, however, the minister sent word that he could not be present, as he had to go to a place twenty miles to the northwest to hold service. Knowing for how much his opinion counted in the minds of some of the people, this was a heavy blow, especially as the traders had notified me that they would all be on hand.

Fortunately an ingenious suggestion was made--"He doesn't know the way. Persuade his driver, after starting out, to gradually work round and end up at the cooperative meeting." This was actually done, and our friend was present w.i.l.l.y-nilly. He proved a broken reed, however, for in the face of the traders he went back on cooperation.

As fortune would have it, our own komatik fell through the ice in taking a short cut across a bay, and we arrived late, having had to borrow some dry clothing from a fisherman on the way. Our trader friends had already appeared on the scene, and were joking the parson for being tricked, saying that evidently we had made a mistake and were really at Cape Norman, the place to which he had intended to go.

It was a dark evening, crisp and cold, and hundreds of dogs that had hauled people from all over the countryside to the meeting made night dismal outside. We began our meeting with prayer for guidance, wisdom, and good temper, for we knew that we should need them all--and then we came down to statistics, prices, debts, possibilities, and the story of cooperation elsewhere.

The little house was crammed to overflowing. But the fear of the old regime was heavy on the meeting. The traders occupied the whole time for speaking. Only one old fisherman spoke at all. He had been an overseas sailor in his early days, and he surprised himself by turning orator. His effort elicited great applause. "Doctor--I means Mr.

Chairman--if this here copper store buys a bar'l of flour in St.

John's for five dollars, be it going to sell it to we fer ten? That's what us wants to know."

Outside, after the meeting, Babel was let loose. The general opinion was that there must be something to it or the traders would not have so much to say against the project. The upshot of the matter was that for a long time no one could be found who would take the managers.h.i.+p; but at length the best-beloved fisherman on the sh.o.r.e stepped into the breach. He was not a scholar--in fact could scarcely read, write, and figure--but his pluck, optimism, and unselfishness carried him through.

That little store has been preaching its vital truths ever since. It is a still small text, but it has had vast influences for good. There has proved to be one difficulty. It is the custom on the coast to give all meals to travellers free, both men and dogs, and lodging to boot.

Customers came from so far away that they had to stay overnight at least, and of course it was always Harry's house to which they went. The profit on a twenty-five cent purchase was slender under these circ.u.mstances, and as cash was scarce in those days, a twenty-five-cent purchase was not so rare as might be supposed. We therefore printed, mounted, framed, and sent to our friend the legend, "No more free meals.

Each meal will cost ten cents." Later we received a most grateful reply from him in his merry way, saying that he had hung up the card in his parlour, but begging us not to defer visits if we had not the requisite amount, as he was permitted to give credit to that extent. But when next we suddenly "blew in" to Harry's house, the legend was hanging with its face to the wall.

Our third store was seventy-five miles to the westward at a place called Flowers Cove. Here the parson came in with a will. Being a Church of England man, he was a more permanent resident, and, as he said, "he was a poor man, but he would sell his extra pair of boots to be able to put one more share in the store." What was infinitely more important he put in his brains. Every one in that vicinity who had felt the slavery of the old system joined the venture. One poor Irishman walked several miles around the coast to catch me on my next visit, and secretly give me five dollars. "'Tis all I has in the world, Doctor, saving a bunch of children, but if it was ten times as large, you should have every cent of it for the store." "Thanks, Paddy, that's the talking that tells." For some years afterwards, every time that he knew I was making a visit to that part of the coast, he would come around seeking a private interview, and inquire after the health of "the copper store"; till he triumphantly brought another five dollars for a second share "out of my profits, Doctor."

That store is now a limited liability company with a capital of ten thousand dollars owned entirely by the fishermen, it has paid consistently a ten per cent dividend every year, and is located in fine premises which it bought and owns outright.

A fourth store followed near the lumber mill which we started to give winter labour at logging; but owing to bad management and lack of ability to say "no" to men seeking credit, it fell into debt and we closed it up. Number five almost shared the same fate. Unable to get local talent to manage it, we hired a Canadian whose pretensions proved unequal to his responsibility. He was, however, found out in time to reorganize the store; but the loss which he had caused was heavy, and it was his notice of leaving for Canada which alone betrayed the truth to us. The most serious aspect of the matter was that many of the local fishermen lost confidence in the ability of the store to succeed, and returning to the credit system, they found it modified enough to appear to them a lamb instead of a wolf. However, number five is growing all the time again and will yet be a factor in the people's deliverance.

Numbers six and seven were in poor and remote parts of Labrador, very small, and with insufficient capital and brains. One has closed permanently. They were simply small stores under the care of one settler, who guaranteed to charge the people only a fixed percentage over St. John's prices for goods, as the return for his responsibility. Number eight was the result of a night spent in a miserable shack on a lonely promontory called Adlavik.

G.o.d forbid that I should judge traders or doctors or lawyers or priests by their profession or their intellectual att.i.tude. There are n.o.ble men in all walks of life. Alas, some are more liable than others to yield to temptation, and the temptations to which they are exposed are more insistent.

Number nine was on the extreme northern edge of the white settlers at Ford's Harbour. The story of it is too long to relate, but the trade there, in spite of many difficulties, still continues to preach a gospel and spell much blessing to poor people. To help out, we have sent north to this station three of our boys from the orphanage, as they grew old enough to go out into the world for themselves.

One disaster, in the form of a s.h.i.+pwreck, overtook the fine fellow in charge of this most northerly venture. For the first time in his life he came south, to seek a wife, his former wife having succ.u.mbed to tuberculosis. He brought with him his year's products of fur and skin boots. The mail steamer on which he was travelling struck a rock off Battle Harbour, and most of his goods were lost uninsured, he himself gladly enough escaping with his life.

It remained for our tenth venture to bring the hardest battle, and in a sense the greatest measure of success. Spurred by the benefits of the Red Bay store, the people of a little village about forty miles away determined to combine also. The result was a fine store near our hospital at Battle Harbour--which during the first year did sixty thousand dollars' worth of business. This served to put a match to the explosive wrath of those whose opposition hitherto had been that of rats behind a wainscot. They secured from their friends a Government commission appointed to inquire into the work of the Mission as "a menace to honest trade." The leading pet.i.tioner had been the best of helpers to the first venture. When the traders affected by it had first boycotted the fish, he had sent his steamer and purchased it from the company. Now the boot was on the other leg. The Commission and even the lawyers have all told me that they were prejudiced against the whole Mission by hearsay and misinterpretations, before they even began their exhaustive inquiry. Their findings, however, were a complete refutation of all charges, and the best advertis.e.m.e.nt possible.

It would not be the time to say that the whole cooperative venture has been an unqualified success; but the causes of failure in each case have been perfectly obvious, and no fault of the system. Lack of business ability has been the main trouble, and the lack of courage and unity which everywhere characterizes mankind, but is perhaps more emphasized on a coast where failure means starvation, and where the cooperative spirit has been rendered very difficult to arouse owing to mistrust born of religious sectarianism and denominational schools.

These all militate very strongly against that unity which alone can enable labour to come to its own without productive ability.

There is one aspect for which we are particularly grateful. Politics, at any rate, has not been permitted to intrude, and the stress laid on the need of brotherliness, forbearance, and self-development--if ever these producers are to reap the rewards of being their own traders--has been very marked. Only thus can they share in the balance of profit which makes the difference between plenty and poverty on this isolated coast.

CHAPTER XIII

THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM

The argument for cooperation had been that life on the coast was not worth living under the credit system. A short feast and a long famine was the local epigram. If our profits could be maintained on the coast, and spent on the coast, then the next-to-nature life had enough to offer in character as well as in maintenance to attract a permanent population, especially with the furring in winter. For the actual figures showed that good hunters made from a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars in a season, besides the salmon and cod fishery. There was, moreover, game for food, free firewood, water, homes, and no taxation except indirect in duties on their goods.

These same conditions prevailed on the long, narrow slice of land known as the "French sh.o.r.e" in northern Newfoundland. There the people were more densely settled, the hinterland was small, and many therefore could not go furring. Moreover, the polar current, entering the mouth of the Straits of Belle Isle, makes this section of land more liable to summer frosts, with a far worse climate than the Labrador bays, and gardening is less remunerative. We puzzled our brains for some way to add to our earning capacities, some cooperative productive as well as distributive enterprise.

The poverty which I had witnessed in Canada Bay in North Newfoundland, some sixty miles south of St. Anthony Hospital, had left me very keen to do something for that district which might really offer a solution of the problem. I had been told that there was plenty of timber to justify running a mill in the bay; but that no sawmills paid in Newfoundland. This was emphasized in St. John's by my friends who still own the only venture out of the eleven which have operated in that city that has been able to continue. They have succeeded by adopting modern methods and erecting a factory for making furniture, so as to supply finished articles direct to their customers. We knew that in our case labour would be cheaper than ordinarily, for our labour in winter had generally to go begging. It was mainly this fact which finally induced us to make the attempt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. ANTHONY]

Having talked the matter over with the people we secured from the Government a special grant, as the venture, if it succeeded, would relieve them of the necessity of having poor-relief bills. The whole expense of the enterprise fell upon myself, for the Mission Board considered it outside their sphere; and already we had built St.

Anthony Hospital in spite of the fact that they thought that we were undertaking more than they would be able to handle, and had discouraged it from the first.

The people had no money to start a mill, and the circ.u.mstances prohibited my asking aid from outside, so it was with considerable anxiety that we ordered a mill, as if it were a pound of chocolates, and arranged with two young friends to come out from England as volunteers, except for their expenses, to help us through with the new effort. At the same time there was three hundred dollars to pay for the necessary survey and line cutting, and supplies of food for the loggers for the winter. Houses must also be erected and furnished.

Ignorance undoubtedly supplied us with the courage to begin.

Personally I knew nothing whatever of mills, having never even seen one. Nor had I seen the grant of land, or selected a site for the building. This was left entirely to the people themselves; and as none of them had ever seen a mill either, we all felt a bit uneasy about our capacities. I had left orders with the captain of the Cooperator (our schooner) to fetch the mill and put it where the people told him; but when I heard that there was one piece which included the boiler which weighed three tons, it seemed to me that they could never handle it. We had no wharf ready to receive it and no boat capable of carrying it. I woke many times that summer wondering if it had not gone to the bottom while they were attempting the landing. There was no communication whatever with them as we were six hundred miles farther north on our summer cruise; and we had not the slightest control over the circ.u.mstances in which we might become involved.

It was late in the season and the snow was already deep on the ground when eventually we were piloted to the spot selected. It was nine miles up the bay on a well-wooded promontory of a side inlet. The water was deep to the sh.o.r.e and the harbour as safe as a house. The boys from England had arrived, and a small cottage had been erected, tucked away in the trees. It was very small, and very damp, the inside of the walls being white with frost in the morning until the fire had been under way for some time. But it was a merry crowd, emerging from various little hutlets around among the trees, which greeted the Strathcona.

The big boiler, the "bugaboo" of my dreams all summer, lay on the bank. "How did you get it there?" was my first query. "We warped the vessel close to the land, and then hove her close ash.o.r.e and put skids from the rocks off to her. On these we slid the boiler, all hands hauling it up with our tackles."

Having left the few supplies which we had with us, for the Strathcona has no hold or carrying s.p.a.ce, we returned to the hospital, mighty grateful for the successful opening of the venture. The survey had been completed and accepted by the Government, and though unfortunately it was but very poorly marked, and we have had lots of trouble since,--as we have never been able to say exactly where our boundaries lie, nor even to find marks enough to follow over the original survey again,--yet it enabled us to get to work, which was all that we wanted at the moment.

The fresh problems at the hospital, and the constant demands on our energies, made Christmas and New Year go by with our minds quite alienated from the cares of the new enterprise. But when after Christmas the dogs had safely carried us over many miles of snow-covered wastes, and our immediate patients gave us a chance to look farther afield, I began to wonder if we might not pay the mill a visit. By land it was only fifty miles distant to the southward, possibly sixty if we had to go round the bays. The only difficulty about the trip was that there were no trails, and most of the way led through virgin forest, where windfalls and stumps and dense undergrowth mixed with snow made the ordinary obstacle race a sprint in the open in comparison. We knew what it meant, because in our eagerness to begin our dog-driving when the first snow came, we had wandered over small trees crusted with snow, fallen through, and literally floundered about under the crust, unable to climb to the top again. It was the nearest thing to the sensations of a man who cannot swim struggling under the surface of the water. Moreover, on a tramp with the minister, he had gone through his snow racquets and actually lost the bows later, smas.h.i.+ng them all up as he repeatedly fell through between logs and tree-trunks and "tuckamore." His summons for help and the idea that there were still eight miles to go still haunted me. On that occasion we had cut down some spruce boughs and improvised some huge webbed feet for ourselves, which had saved the situation; but whether they would have served for twenty or thirty miles, we could not tell. Not so long before a man named Casey, bringing his komatik down the steep hill at Conche, missed his footing and fell headlong by a bush into the snow. The heavy, loaded sledge ran over him and pressed him still farther into the bank. Struggling only made him sink the deeper, and an hour later the poor fellow was discovered smothered to death.

No one knew the way. We could not hear of a single man who had ever gone across in winter, though some said that an old fellow who had lived farther south had once carried the mails that way. At length we could stand it no longer, and arranging with four men and two extra teams, we started off. We hoped to reach the mill in two days, but at the end of that time we were still trying to push through the tangle of these close-grown forests. To steer by compa.s.s sounded easy, but the wretched instrument seemed persistently to point to precipitous cliffs or impenetrable thickets. There were no barren hilltops after the first twenty miles. Occasionally we would stop, climb a tree, and try to get a view. But climbing a conifer whose boughs are heavily laden with ice and snow is no joke, and gave very meagre returns. At last, however, we struck a high divide, and from an island in the centre of a lake, occupied only by two lone fir trees, we got a view both ways, showing the Cloudy Hills which towered over the south side of the bay in which the mill stood.

A very high, densely wooded hill lay, however, directly in our path; and which way to get round it best none of us knew. We "tossed up"

and went to the eastward--the wrong side, of course. We soon struck a river, and at once surmised that if we followed it, it must bring us to the head of the bay, which meant only three miles of salt water ice to cover. Alas, the stream proved very torrential. It leaped here and there over so many rapid falls that great canyons were left in the ice, and instead of being able to dash along as when first we struck it, we had painfully to pick our way between heavy ice-blocks, which sorely tangled up our traces, and our dogs ran great danger of being injured. Nor could we leave the river, for the banks were precipitous and utterly impa.s.sable with undergrowth. At length when we came to a gorge where the boiling torrent was not even frozen, and as prospects of being washed under the ice became only too vivid, we were forced to cut our way out on the sloping sides. The task was great fun, but an exceedingly slow process.

It was altogether an exciting and delightful trip. Now we have a good trail cut and blazed, which after some years of experience we have gradually straightened out, with two tilts by the roadside when the weather makes camping imperative, or when delay is caused by having helpless patients to haul, till now it is only a "joy-ride" to go through that beautiful country "on dogs." There is always a challenge, however, left in that trail--just enough to lend tang to the toil of it. Once, having missed the way in a blizzard, we had to camp on the snow with the thermometer standing at twenty below zero. The problem was all the more interesting as we struck only "taunt" timberwoods with no undergrowth to halt the wind. On another occasion we attempted to cross Hare Bay, and one of the dogs fell through the ice. There was a biting wind blowing, and it was ten degrees below zero. When we were a mile off the land I got off the sledge to try the ice edge, when suddenly it gave way, and in I fell. It did not take me long to get out--the best advice being to "keep cool." I had as hard a mile's running as ever I experienced, for my clothing was fast becoming like the armour of an ancient knight; and though in my youth I had been accustomed to break the ice in the morning to bathe, I had never run in a coat of mail.