Commercial 91 formed in 1885. In 1888, it asked the Government for a bonus to carry lines to the rural areas. Souris is listed as a Station in the 1889 Directory. In an interview in January 1952, Colonel Dan MacKinnon said he left school and went to work for J.H. Hooper , druggist, in a small shop next to the J.G. Sterns store. Hooper was agent for the Telephone Company. As recorded: "It was in the time of all iron wire. Hard to hear. My hearing was better than Hooper's so I generally operated. The calls to Souris were mainly long distance at that time. In 1890,1 went back to school and in 1891 went to work for Hughes in Charlottetown ." Later, the telephone exchange was moved to the west corner of Main and Prince Avenue— Minnie Seaman , operator.79 A look at the 1889 Directory, mentioned earlier, shows that, out of 53 names listed for Souris West , there were 37 farmers, 3 fishermen, 3 carpenters, 1 joiner, 3 seamen, 1 merchant, 1 teacher, 2 captains, 1 shoe¬ maker and a mariner. The Directory describes Souris West as "an important village." At Souris East , among the 224 listed, there were 58 farmers, 19 fishermen, 6 labourers, 30 merchants (of one kind or another), 4 traders, 11 carpenters, 6 carriage makers, 5 coopers, 1 cabinet maker and 1 boatbuilder, 14 black¬ smiths, 8 hotel keepers and 2 restaurant owners, 5 captains and 8 mariners, 3 engineers, 2 plasterers, 6 shoemakers, a barber, 2 tailors, a clock repair man, 2 harness makers, 2 truckmen, 2 butchers and a pork packer, a painter and a mason, a steward and 9 widows. There were 3 doctors, 4 druggists, a photographer, station master, con¬ ductor, lighthouse keeper, wharfinger, section foreman, customs collector. James R. MacLean is listed as N. Public . The Directory describes Souris East in glowing terms: "The commercial metropolis of the east....a walk through its streets reveals the energetic and enterprising character of its merchants and the prosperity and comfort of the general inhabitants." Clearly, Souris East had won the race. Most of the newspaper reporters of this period appear to have been local people. They, too, write reassuring columns about Souris merchants and the general economy. The Weekly Examiner January 6,1888 reports: " Business is rushing in that enterprising place....cash being paid for everything. More people in Souris yesterday than on any other day in her history." The Directory itself sounds like a tourist brochure, which perhaps it was. But historians have recorded that a change in the Island economy was taking place beginning in the 1880s. Economic Decline The boom in shipbuilding was over. In the period 1864 to 1867, the indus¬ try was worth two million a year to the Island. The Souris River contribu¬ tion to that amount was considerable.In 1889, twenty years later, only the Kickham shipyard remained. Many of the workers and specialists had moved away to find work in other places.80 In the years 1881 to 1891, the Island fisheries declined 50%. In agriculture, "Island farmers, unable to produce profitably at competitive prices, left the industry and often, the Island." The irony was that they left on the railway for the now prosperous West, or other places in where the economy was good.81