Successful Initiatives 219

It goes without saying that the “other ways” meant farming; in closing, the author writes: “Let us conquer the soil, there lies our salvation” (TR).

Over the years definite attempts were made to modernize the fishing industry. The advent of facilities like refrigerated boxcars en- abled fresh fish and lobster to be transported. But these innovations demanded large capital investments that the majority of the small canneries typical of the Island could not afford.

With the arrival of motor boats, the fishermen’s work was made a little less difficult and less dangerous. By 1920 almost all the sailing boats had been replaced. With a motor boat fishermen could move around faster and fish farther out, even when there was no wind. If a storm came up they could take shelter in much less time than with sails.

The advent of motor boats did not change the fisherman’s life from an economic point of view, however. Markets were still mediocre and prices relatively low. During the 1920s and 1930s, herring was relatively worthless so that fishermen were forced to sell their catches at an absurd price to farmers for use as fertilizer. Félix Gallant, a fisherman from Abram’s Village, recalls these hard times:

The only price paid for herring was fifty cents a barrel, at the beginning of the season, that is, when the herring was scarce. But, later, it went down to thirty cents a barrel. These were sold to trucks for the North Side fishermen. When these fishermen were well supplied, some would sell their herring to farmers at thirty cents a barrel, and others would exchange the herring with farmers for potatoes. The farmers used the herring as fertilizer for their land. The deal being one barrel of herring for one bushel of potatoes, which then was as low as eighteen cents a bushel. Herring had to be fished with the use of gasoline boats, so after gas, oil, and nets were paid, no profit was accomplished.'”°

Fishermen depended above all on lobster fishing in order to derive some sort of income from their work, but even then the net profit was negligible. A fisherman from Mont Carmel, for example, remembers one year when he only had $6.50 left after he had paid his expenses at the end of the season'’’. The meagre income from fishing forced many young men to work for several months at harvest time on the local farms, or leave for the mainland to work in lumber camps, or else as longshoremen in ports like Saint John'*. It should be emphasized that unemployment insurance did not exist at the time.