THE SUMMER OF '34

Bill Whelan

2024 05 09

William Currish was spokesman.   These men had done everything they could, he told the authorities, to avoid boarding the train without the money to pay their fares.   The 70 men belonged to various outports: Fortune Harbor, Garnish, Heart's Content, Frenchman's Point, and others.

William Currish said that these men had paid their own way to the logging camps, a considerable distance from their homes, and were expected to pay their own way home.  That was all very well, paying their own way home after a successful season logging.   However, this would not be a success.   It could not be.  When they had arrived at the camps the men were faced with piece work that paid $1.32 per cord.

Logs for pulpwood were cut in 4-foot lengths in 1934.  A stack of these logs that was 4 feet high and four feet wide and 8 feet long made a cord of wood.  This would be converted to pulp and then to paper, the sort of paper, called newsprint, that makes your daily newspaper. These men of the summer of '34 might each cut one cord per day.  That paid $1.32.   There were deductions for living expenses, amounting to 60 cents per day.  There were certain other deductions, unspecified. That left less than 72 cents per day for a man.  At best.   In fact, the men were likely to go seriously into debt. The men worked three days, then left.   They boarded the train at Grand Falls, Bishop's Falls, Badger.   They had no money for their fares.

A posse of police, as one St John's paper called it, was sent to arrest these men.   The prisoners reached St John's by train at noon on Saturday, the 14th, and were marched to the Police Station.  In the afternoon they were arraigned before Judge Morris.  Each man was fined $15. Or 30 days prison.  None paid.   All were taken to His Majesty's Penitentiary during the afternoon.

Judge Morris was sympathetic.  He imposed the smallest fine possible under the circumstances, he said.  He appeared to think that this might all have been avoided if only the man had appealed to someone in authority and explained their situation.   He did not say who that someone might be.  But no, they had broken the law and must pay.

However, they were not required to pay in full.   Instead of thirty days, they served ten.  Then they were released by the Governor as an act of clemency. How did those poor loggers in St John’s make their way to their outport homes? They were penniless, near enough.

The San Francisco General Strike happened in that same summer. This is the Big Picture.  Police armed with submachine guns faced the strikers in what became a major step in the labour history of the USA. Nothing like that happened in Newfoundland.