In from the Sea

A brighter era is opening for Newfoundland, the oldest English-speaking possession in North America.*After nearly four backward centuries as an isolated British colony, the rugged North Atlantic island --the tenth and youngest Canadian province--is becoming industrialized. Its 361,000 hardy inhabitants, who once looked to the sea for a scant livelihood as cod fishermen, are turning inland to their mineral-rich mountains, their forests and power-packed waterfalls. With these resources, Newfoundland has launched a development program to balance its lopsided maritime economy, and change the sparse existence of its people for a fuller life.

The sparkplug of Newfoundland's drive to the future is a bouncy, bow-tied little (5 ft. 6 in.) man, Joseph Roberts Smallwood, 51, the provincial premier. A onetime radio announcer, Joey Smallwood stumped the island in 1948, and almost singlehandedly broke down its stubborn resistance to union with Canada. Elected the first premier, he set up an economic program that has brought a healthy flow of industry and capital into the province. Newfoundland's low income is already up nearly 300% above the 1939 level, and Joey Smallwood's drive is still going strong. Last week he was bustling around Europe, carrying his sales talk to industrialists in Britain, Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

Smallwood's assignment would stagger any ordinary salesman. The bleak island of Newfoundland and the mainland territory of Labrador, which has been part of Newfoundland for nearly 200 years, are among Canada's most forbidding wildernesses. Much of the land is barren and rocky, dotted with lakes and great bogs. In its 154,734 sq. mi., an area almost as big as California, only three towns have more than 5,000 people. There is still no cross-island highway, only a narrow-gauge railroad that arcs across the island but does not touch one hamlet in ten. Newfoundlanders get around in summer by boat, in winter by horse and dog team over rough bush trails or across frozen bays.

Spruce & Iron. In spite of its backward aspects, Newfoundland is potentially rich. The famed Grand Banks off its southeast coast, discovered for England by John Cabot in 1497, are still the world's greatest cod-fishing grounds. Newfoundland's forests abound with prime black spruce for papermaking; they hold the only big stand of disease-free birch left in Canada. Newfoundland's unharnessed streams can eventually yield an estimated 8,000,000 h.p. of electric energy, nearly one-third the total developed in the U.S. The rocky land is rich in iron; it has proved deposits of lead, zinc and copper, and encouraging indications of nickel and oil. Even Newfoundland's location is valuable. The most easterly point of North America, only 1,600 miles from Ireland, it is a vital outpost of air travel and Western Hemisphere defense.

An important intangible asset is the character of Newfoundland's hardy people. Newfies (a term they use but do not much like) are nearly all natives; 98% were born on the island, mostly of English and Channel Island stock, with generous traces of Irish, Scotch and French. Isolated for centuries, their character tempered by wresting a living from their bleak island and the sea around it, the Newfies have developed into an independent, hardworking, happy breed. Their wit and individuality show strongly in their geographic names. Newfoundland places are called Happy Adventure, Come By Chance, Heart's Delight, Witless Bay, Cuckold's Cove, Naked Woman Point and Horse Chops. Humor and theology are neatly blended in the fact that a harbor with a broad, easy entrance is called Hell's Mouth; another that is narrow and difficult is named Big Paradise.

Pork & Potatoes. "A man's set up in life," says an old Newfie tag, "when he haves a pig an' a punt an' a potato patch." Through most of their history, Newfoundlanders have not had much more than these basic needs. They went out to the grounds and fished for cod. Some of the cod they ate themselves, with "crunchin's" of pork and potatoes. The rest they sold for cash to buy sugar, tea, wool for their homespun clothes, and an occasional keg of "screech" (Newfie for rum).

The 1929 depression cracked even Newfoundland's primitive economy. When the market for salt cod failed, one-third of the island's population was forced on the dole. Payments were only 6^ a day, but even that soon broke the public treasury. Newfoundland had to give up self-government, and a British commission came in to try to get the island on its feet.

World War II temporarily ended Newfoundland's financial troubles. The cod market revived. In 1940, when the Battle of the Atlantic was heating up, Britain gave the U.S. an outright gift of 99-year leases for defense bases on Newfoundland. The big Gander airport was enlarged, and U.S. money began pouring into other defense installations; that gave work to thousands of Newfoundlanders. After the war, Newfoundland had a $29 million cash surplus, and Britain gave the Newfoundlanders three choices: to continue with commission government (which few Newfies wanted), to return to dominion status, or to join Canada.

Joey Smallwood, already well known throughout the island as the operator of a St. John's radio program called The Bar-relman, began plugging immediately for confederation, attacking the old prejudice against Canada,*arguing that union was the only sensible course. "We can survive alone," he conceded, "but . . . only at the price of poverty." When the issue was decided in 1948, Newfoundlanders voted . to join Canada by a slim margin: 78,323 to 71,334.

Joey Smallwood's first big decision as premier was to spend the province's cash surplus developing the island's resources. Otherwise, he warned, "Newfoundland will never enjoy more than a meager, peasant economy." His opponents cried havoc, and wailed that the cash should be saved as a nest egg, but Joey retorted: "We will use it to get a goose that will lay us golden eggs."

Smallwood spent his first million on the most thorough set of maps and surveys of Newfoundland's resources ever made. The study convinced him that more mines, pulp mills and diversified industries could be established to lessen the island's dependence on fish. Then he began looking for a man who could turn the paper work into practical projects. Here Smallwood proved himself a rare politician, willing to pay expert helpers more than he makes himself. He hired Alfred Valdmanis, 43, to boss the development plan, is now paying him $25,000 a year, more than double Smallwood's own $10,000-a-year income. Valdmanis, a refugee economist from Coinmunist-occupied Latvia, had been finance minister of his native land at 29; he was recommended by Canada's able Defense Production Minister C. D. Howe.

Three Sample Plants. Smallwood and Valdmanis, working together closely, developed a sales pitch to attract foreign industrialists. Aside from its paper mills, the island had never had any manufacturing industry worth talking about. Smallwood and Valdmanis decided that what they needed first was proof that other industry could be successful in their territory. With another $9,100,000 from the surplus, the government built three sample plants: a $4,100.000 cement factory, a $3,000,000 gypsum mill and a $2,000,000 birch-veneer mill. All three were firmly based on abundant Newfoundland resources: mountains of limestone and shale, rich deposits of gypsum, and dense birch forests. Economist Valdmanis disliked the idea of government-owned industry. Said Valdmanis: "It's a damned bad thing for the government to be in business." But they had to have working models of diversified Newfoundland industry to show to outside investors.

With the plants under way, Smallwood and Valdmanis toured the U.S., Canada and Europe, pointing with pride to the success of the new mills, and inviting private firms to move in and do the same. They hammered away at their theme of Newfoundland's untapped resources, its cheap power, its uninflated wage scales, its crossroads position on trade routes between the U.S., Europe and Latin America. As a final inducement, Smallwood committed the balance of his government's spendable surplus, offering loans of up to half the capital required for any reputable industrialist willing to invest his money and know-how in Newfoundland.

Four New Mines. The drive is getting results. A dozen new industries (e.g., a cotton-rayon textile mill, a machinery plant, a fish oil processing plant), which will employ 9,000 Newfoundlanders, have been set up. Ten major mining firms from Canada, the U.S. and Britain have spent some $3,000,000 on exploration during the past summer; four new mines (asbestos, copper, zinc) are expected to be in production within three years. Newfoundland even found a buyer for one of its sample plants. The government cement factory was sold at a profit to a group of Swiss investors.

Newfoundland also is cashing in handsomely on the $200 million building program at the U.S. bases in the province. Fort Pepperrell, near St. John's, the Harmon air base on the southwest coast, and Argentia naval base, near which Churchill and Roosevelt held their Atlantic Charter meeting in 1941, are all being expanded. Much of the money is paid out directly in wages to Newfoundland workmen. Newfoundland also benefits from the free-spending U.S. troops stationed there.

The migration of workers to Newfoundland's new industries and defense jobs is steadily bringing the island's top-heavy maritime economy into better balance. An estimated 15,000 fishermen have come in from the sea to earn an easier, better living inshore. With fewer hands to man it, the fishing industry itself is being forced to modernize. The trend is to big diesel craft instead of the old dory trawlers, and to fresh-frozen fish packing instead of the wearying process of salting cod by hand.

A minority of diehard Newfoundlanders think that the development program is all wrong--that they should not attempt such a wrenching change in the economy that has kept the island since the time of Cabot. They say that Smallwood has gone "whoring after false gods" in his campaign for industries. Joey Smallwood pays scant attention to such complaints, preferring instead to restate his faith that old Newfoundland is at last beginning to catch up with the rest of North America. "For the first time in our history," he says, "our people have a chance to be healthy, well fed, well dressed, well housed and well schooled . . . Newfoundland is on the march."

*Squanto, the Indian who acted as interpreter for the Pilgrim Fathers in Massachusetts, had learned some of his English in Newfoundland. *Since 1869 a song with the defiant punch line "Come near at your peril, Canadian wolf!" had become an unofficial national anthem of Newfoundland.

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