220 THEISLAND ACADIANS 
     
    
   
   
    
     CO-OPERATION 
     
    
   
   
    
     In comparison to farmers, fishermen enjoyed neither the same 
     
     benefits nor the same favours. We saw how, after the middle of the 
     
     nineteenth century, farmers began uniting to help each other and 
     
     educate themselves. Acadian farmers established the Farmers’ Bank 
     
     of Rustico, granaries, and later on, agricultural clubs. Agricultural 
     
     issues were promoted in temperance societies and debating clubs. 
     
     Therefore it was the farmers, not the fishermen, who enjoyed the 
     
     support of the Acadian leaders who were often themselves model 
     
     farmers. Nevertheless, some members of the elite did take an interest 
     
     in the fishing industry, but being fish-plant owners they were not 
     
     inclined to support the organization of fishermen. 
     
    

    
     There were other factors to be taken into account. For quite 
     
     some time the majority of fishermen had no control whatsoever over 
     
     the means of production. While farmers owned both their land and 
     
     their farm implements, most fishermen owned neither boats nor even 
     
     fishing gear; they were merely employees, often indebted to their 
     
     employer. This situation did not facilitate the formation of fishermen’s 
     
     groups, particularly since they had no educated leaders who shared 
     
     their position. Moreover, government support similar to that given 
     
     to farmers was a long time in coming. 
     
    

    
     In 1909, thirty-nine fishermen in North Rustico were the first in 
     
     the province to join forces in order to run their own cannery because 
     
     they were dissatisfied with the price paid by the local buyers. This 
     
     regrouping turned out to be possible because, unlike Acadian fisher- 
     
     men elsewhere, the majority of the fishermen in North Rustico owned 
     
     their boats'?’. The experiment brought about definite advantages, even 
     
     though the group still had to negotiate with the local dealer who 
     
     continued to fix prices. He was the one who bought the canned 
     
     lobster, sold the fishing gear, and who sold supplies on credit during 
     
     the off-season’®. 
     
    

    
     It was in Tignish in 1923 that the first real fishermen’s union 
     
     was born. Under the leadership of a local lawyer, Chester P. McCarthy, 
     
     a group of Acadian and anglophone fishermen founded their own 
     
     company in the form of a co-operative. By 1925 they were packing 
     
     their own lobster and marketing the product themselves, bringing in 
     
     much more than the prices private companies were paying"'.