Chapter 9

The Lean, Mean Years

“Come and Laugh the Depression Away? called out the advertisement for the show “Cotton Cuties” at Kinkora Hall in September 1932] As entertainment the show was rated‘ ‘a high success”, with several encores for the song “River Stay Away from My Door”. 2 But it would take more than song and laughter to survive the 1930S, a decade of economic hardships from which it would take P.E.I. many decades to recover.

Joe Trainor, a young farmer in Shamrock at the time remembered the meager prices farmers received for their produce: “1 sold a nice, fat cow, about 1100 pounds, for $8.00, and that included delivering her to the buyer in Freetown. Beef prices were about half what they were in the previous decade?3 Mrs. Annie Duffy remembered “cutting back on everything; lemons, cherries, nuts, all those sorts of things had to be left off the grocery list. You never bought a stick of furniture. There was no fixing up around house or barn. There just was no money. One year Earl (her hus— band) got $85. 00 for his whole crop of potatoes of about eight carloads”4

Throughout much of the decade farmers could not even recover the costs of production from the sale of their pro— ducts. In December, 1934 they were getting 10¢ per bushel for potatoes, while the cost of production was about 80¢ per bushel, the cost in 1936.5 Farmers reacted by joining the National Potato Marketing Board which helped to fix the minimum price at 55¢ per 80 pounds.6 During the decade

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potato prices averaged only 60¢ per 100 pounds, compared with an average of 95¢ per 100 pounds during the 1920s.7 P.E.I. potato farmers were particularly vulnerable because few, if any, had frost—proof facilities in which to store potatoes during the cold months, so they often had to sell their crops in early autumn. Other prices were equally low. In 1939 the net price for the 88,646 lbs. of cheese produc— ed in the Kinkora Cheese Factory was 12¢ per lb. compared with 26¢ per lb. in 1919 and 17.5¢ in 1929.8 The net farm income for P.E.I. farmers in the 19305 averaged $2,962,000.00 per year, compared with an average of $7,364,000.00 in the last four years of the 19203.9 Farmers were forced to find alternative work, or sell their farms. Some 70 men from the five communities earned a little money from working on the roads during those yearsJ° Two of Kinkora’s big potato producers, M.J. McIver and T.A. McIver, sold their farms and left the community. M.JZs large home was purchased by the Sisters of St. Martha, and nam— ed St. Stanislaus Convent.

Difficult as these conditions were, Islanders were not suffering as greatly as Canadians in Western Canada. “At least we had foodi’ recalled Laurena Shreenan; “things were much worse in the West; we helped as best we could; we knitted socks and mittens; some women sewed their names in these, and got thank you notes back from the people who received them?’11

High unemployment rates throughout Canada brought an end to the steady migration of young Islanders off the Island. As a result the decline in P.E.IZs population was reversed, and by 1941 P.E.Iis population had risen to 95,047 from 88,038, a decade earlier!2 Both townships 26 and 27 had increases in population: Twp. 26 reached 1348 the largest number it ever had or would have; Twp. 27’s popula— tion rose by a few dozen persons to stand at 1292 in 1941, but this was below the largest number for that township,