The Road Back

From the days when their forebears followed John Cabot to carve a rocky cornerstone for Britain's overseas empire, Newfoundlanders have been a hardy, God-fearing, independent people. Their neighbors in the Dominion of Canada have long reserved a place for them as the tenth and easternmost province, but the islanders have always elected to go their own way.

That way has often been hard and rocky, beset by depressions and a virtual government dictatorship. But last week Newfoundlanders once again were promised a chance to vote on their future.

Heart's Content. The Newfoundlanders have lived simply, in such villages as Heart's Content and Heart's Delight, Seldom Come By and Come By Chance. They dotted their 6,000 miles of deeply indented coastline and the spruce and fir-studded hinterland with modest frame houses, often surrounded by little flower and vegetable gardens. Most made their living by codfishing; others went down into the submarine depths of Bell Island to mine iron ore. Still others cut pulpwood for the paper mills at modern Grand Falls and Corner Brook.

They asked little of life but independence, and that had a price. Through the '20s and '30s Newfoundlanders knew hard times. Their underdeveloped, underpopulated (300,000) island has never been self-sufficient. They imported much of what they ate. When world markets dried, and the full impact of depression was felt, Newfoundland went steadily downhill, hurried along by shortsighted leaders who ran her national debt from $43 million to $100 million in twelve years. In 1933 the treasury had $8 million in revenue to meet an expenditure of $11 million ($5 million in interest charges alone). Then there were no more lenders.

To help the hard-hit islanders become self-supporting again, the British Government agreed to pay deficits, made gifts and loans. But in return Britain demanded control. To replace Newfoundland's freely elected Assembly and Legislative Council, the British Dominions Office appointed three English civil servants and three Newfoundlanders to form, with the governor, a Commission of Government. The Commission turned out to be a dictatorship, however benevolent, and it never won public approval. Moreover, it could not lift the island out of the economic doldrums.

Arms & Surpluses. What finally did the trick was the war. Several months before Pearl Harbor, American servicemen joined Canadians in transforming the island into a Gibraltar. Before war's end, the U.S. and Canada poured hundreds of millions into Newfoundland for bases, barracks, dockyards, airports.

The Americans discovered Newfoundland, found its rivers teeming with trout and salmon, its interior full of moose, caribou and partridge. They found "the latch is off the door" truly expressive of the hospitable islanders.

As U.S. money flowed freely, things picked up for the Newfoundland treasury. In four years of balanced budgets, it piled up a tidy surplus of $22 million.

When the Ice Breaks. This was the reason which last week compelled Prime Minister Clement R. Attlee to announce that Newfoundland was to be given another chance at self-government, if the people want it.

Next spring, when the ice drifts offshore and northern sea communications are reopened, the islanders will go to the polls for their first national vote in 14 years. They will select 50 members to represent them in a National Convention which in turn will choose a form of government and refer it to a referendum.

Conceivably they could vote to retain Commission of Government, to join Canada or link with their newly appreciated neighbor, the U.S. Best guess: a start on the long road back to full self-governing Dominion status, which had long been their pride.

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