NEW VENTURES
No human life can be perfect, or even be lived without troubles. Clams
have their troubles, I dare say. A queer sort of sinking feeling just
like descending in a fast elevator comes over one, as if trouble and
the abdominal viscera had a direct connection. Some one has said that
it must be because that is where the average mind centres. Thus, when
we lost the little steamer Swallow which we were towing, and with it
the evidence of a crime and the road to the prevention of its
repetition, it absolutely sickened me for two or three days, or, to be
more exact, during two or three nights. It was all quite unnecessary,
for we can see now that the matter worked out for the best. The fact
that troubles hurt most when one is at rest and one's mind unoccupied,
and in the night when one's vitality is lowest, is a great comfort,
because that shows how it is something physical that is at fault, and
no physical troubles are of very great importance.
The summer of 1910 brought me a fine crop of personal worries, and
probably deservedly so, for no one should leave his business affairs
too much to another, without guarantees, occasionally renewed, that
all is well. Few professional men are good at business, and personally
I have no liking for it. This, combined with an over-readiness to
accept as helpers men whose only qualifications have sometimes been of
their own rating, was really spoiling for trouble--and mine came
through the series of cooperative stores.
To begin with, none of the stores were incorporated, and their
liabilities were therefore unlimited. Though I had always felt it best
not to accept a penny of interest, I had been obliged to loan them
money, and their agent in St. John's, who was also mine, allowed them
considerable latitude in credits. It was, indeed, a bolt from the blue
when I was informed that the merchants in St. John's were owed by the
stores the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars, and that I was being
held responsible for every cent of it--because on the strength of
their faith in me, and their knowledge that I was interested in the
stores, having brought them into being, they had been willing to let
the credits mount up. Even then I still had all my work to carry on
and little time to devote to money affairs. Had I accepted, on first
entering the Mission, the salary offered me, which was that of my
predecessor, I should have been able to meet these liabilities, and
very gladly indeed would I have done so. As it was I had to find some
way out. All the merchants interested were told of the facts, and
asked to meet me at the office of one of them, go over the accounts
with my agent, and try and find a plan to settle. One can have little
heart in his work if he feels every one who looks at him really thinks
that he is a defaulter. The outcome of the inquiry revealed that if
the agent could not show which store owed each debt, neither could the
merchants; some had made out their bills to separate stores, some all
to one store, and some in a general way to myself, though not one
single penny of the debt was a personal one of my own.
The next discovery was that the manager of the St. Anthony store, who
had been my summer secretary before, and was an exceedingly pious
man--whose great zeal for cottage prayer meetings, and that form of
religious work, had led me to think far too highly of him--had
neglected his books. He had given credit to every one who came along
(though it was a cardinal statute under his rules that no credit was
to be allowed except at his own personal risk). The St. John's agent
claimed that he had made a loss of twelve thousand dollars in a little
over a year, in which he professed to have been able to pay ten per
cent to shareholders and put by three hundred dollars to reserve.
Besides this, the new local store secretary had mixed up affairs by
both ordering supplies direct from Canada and sending produce there,
which the St. John's agent claimed were owed to the merchants in that
city.
These two men, instead of pulling together, were, I found, bitter
enemies; and it looked as if the whole pack of cards were tumbling
about my ears. I cashed every available personal asset which I could.
The beautiful schooner, Emma E. White, also a personal possession,
arrived in St. John's while we were there with a full load of lumber,
but it and she sailed straight into the melting-pot. The merchants,
with one exception, were all as good about the matter as men can be.
They were perfectly satisfied when they realized that I meant facing
the debt squarely. One was nasty about it, saying that he would not
wait--and oddly enough in ordinary life he was a man whom one would
not expect to be ungenerous, for he too was a religious man. Whether
he gained by it or not it is hard to say. He was paid first, anyhow.
The standard of what is really remunerative in life is differently
graded. The stores have dealt with him since, and his prices are fair
and honest; but he was the only one among some twenty who even
appeared to kick a man when he was down. I have nothing but gratitude
to all the rest.
I should add that the incident was not the fault of the people of the
coast. Often I had been warned by the merchants that the cooperative
stores would fail and that the people would rob me. It is true that
there was trouble over the badly kept books, and a number of the
fishermen disclaimed their debts charged against them; but with one
exception no one came and said that he had had things which were not
noted on the bills. I am confident, however, that they did not go back
on me willingly, and when my merchant friends said, "I told you so," I
honestly was able to state that it was the management, not the people
or the system, that was at fault. Indeed, subsequent events have
proved this. For five of the stores still run, and run splendidly, and
pay handsomer dividends by far than any investment our people could
possibly make elsewhere.
With the sale of a few investments and some other available property,
the liability was so far reduced that, with what the stores paid, only
one merchant was not fully indemnified, and he generously told me not
to worry about the balance.
This same year, on the other hand, one of our most forward steps, so
far as the Mission was concerned, was taken, through the generosity of
the late Mr. George B. Cluett, of Troy, New York. He had built
specially for our work a magnificent three-masted schooner, fitted
with the best of gear including a motor launch. She was constructed of
three-inch oak plank, sheathed with hardwood for work in the
ice-fields. She was also fitted with an eighty horse-power Wolverine
engine. The bronze tablet in her bore the inscription, "This vessel
with full equipment was presented to Wilfred T. Grenfell by George B.
Cluett." He had previously asked me if I would like any words from the
Bible on the plate, and I had suggested, "The sea is His and He made
it." The designer unfortunately put the text after the inscription; so
that I have been frequently asked why and how I came to make it,
seeing that it is believed by all good Christians that in heaven
"there shall be no more sea."
To help out with the expenses of getting her running, our loved friend
from Chicago, Mr. W.R. Stirling, agreed to come North on the schooner
the first season, bringing his two daughters and three friends. Even
though he was renting her for a yachting trip, he offered to bring all
the cargo free and make the Mission stations his ports of call.
Mr. Cluett's idea was that, as we had big expenses carrying endless
freight so far North, and as it got so broken and often lost in
transit, and greatly damaged in the many changes involved from rail to
steamer, and from steamer to steamer, if she carried our freight in
summer, she could in winter earn enough to make it all free, and
possibly provide a sinking fund for herself as well. There was also
good accommodation in her for doctors, nurses, students, etc., who
every summer come from the South to help in various ways in the work
of the Mission.
All our freight that year arrived promptly and in good condition,
which had never happened before. Later the vessel was chartered to go
to Greenland by the Smithsonian. On this occasion her engine, never
satisfactory, gave out entirely, which so delayed her that she got
frozen in near Etah and was held up a whole twelvemonth. Meanwhile the
war had broken out, and when she at last sailed into Boston, we were
able to sell her, by the generous permission of Mrs. Cluett, and use
the money to purchase the George B. Cluett II.
Illustrating the advantage of getting our freight direct, among the
many instances which have occurred, that of the lost searchlight for
the Strathcona comes to my mind. As she had often on dark nights to
come to anchor among vessels, and to nose her way into unlit harbours,
some friends, through the Professor of Geology at Harvard, who had
himself cruised all along our coast in a schooner, presented me with a
searchlight for the hospital ship and despatched it _via_ Sydney--the
normal freight route. Month after month went by, and it never
appeared. Year followed year, and still we searched for that
searchlight. At length, after two and a half years, it suddenly
arrived, having been "delayed on the way." Had it been provisions or
clothing or drugs, or almost anything else, of course, it would have
been useless. It has proved to us one of the almost _de luxe_
additions to a Mission steamer.
* * * * *
For a long time I had felt the need of some place in St. John's where
work for fishermen could be carried on, and which could be also
utilized as a place of safety for girls coming to that city from other
parts of the island. My attention was called one day to the fact that
liquor was being sent to people in the outports C.O.D., by a barrel of
flour which was being lowered over the side of the mail steamer rather
too quickly on to the ice. As the hard bump came, the flour in the
barrel jingled loudly and leaked rum profusely from the compound
fracture. When our sober outport people went to St. John's, as they
must every year for supplies, they had only the uncomfortable schooner
or the street in which to pass the time. There is no "Foyer des
Pecheurs"; no one wanted fishermen straight from a fishing schooner in
the home; and in those days there were no Camp Community Clubs. As one
man said, "It is easy for the parson to tell us to be good, but it is
hard on a wet cold night to be good in the open street" and nowhere to
go, and harder still if you have to seek shelter in a brightly lighted
room, where music was being played. The boarding-houses for the
fishermen, where thousands of our young men flocked in the spring to
try for a berth in the seal fishery, were ridiculous, not to say
calamitous. Lastly, unsophisticated girls coming from the outports ran
terrible risks in the city, having no friends to direct and assist
them; and the Institute which we had in mind was to comprise also a
girls' lodging department. No provision was made for the accommodation
of crews wrecked by accident, and our Institute has already proved
invaluable to many in such plights.
Seeing the hundreds of craft and the thousands of fishermen, and the
capital and interest vested against us as prohibitionists, it would
have been obviously futile to put up a second-rate affair in a back
street. It would only be sneered at as a proselytizing job. I had
almost forgotten to mention that there was already an Old Seamen's
Home, but it had gradually become a roost for boozers, and when with
the trustees we made an inspection of it, it proved to be only worthy
of immediate closure. This was promptly done, and the money realized
from the sale of it, some ten thousand dollars, was kindly donated to
the fund for our new building.
After a few years of my collecting funds spasmodically, a number of
our local friends got "cold feet." Reports started, not circulated by
well-wishers, that it was all a piece of personal vanity, that no such
thing was needed, and if built would prove a white elephant, to
support which I would be going round with my hat in my hand worrying
the merchants. We had at that time some ninety thousand dollars in
hand. I laid the whole story before the Governor, Sir Ralph Williams,
a man by no means prejudiced in favour of prohibition. He was,
however, one who knew what the city needed, and realized that it was a
big lack and required a big remedy.
A letter which I published in all the St. John's papers, describing my
passing fifteen drunken men on the streets before morning service on
Christmas Day, brought forth angry denials of the actual facts, and my
statement of the number of saloons in the city was also contradicted.
But a saloon is not necessarily a place licensed by the Government or
city to make men drunk--for the majority are unlicensed, and a couple
of experiences which my men had in looking for sailors who had
shipped, been given advances, and gone off and got drunk in shebeens,
proved the number to be very much higher than even I had estimated it.
Sir Ralph thought the matter over and called a public meeting in the
ballroom of Government House. He had a remarkable personality and no
fear of conventions. After thoroughly endorsing the plan for the
Institute, and the need for it, he asked each of the many citizens who
had responded to his invitation, "Will you personally stand by the
larger scheme of a two hundred thousand dollar building, or will you
stand by the sixty thousand dollar building with the thirty thousand
dollar endowment fund, or will you do nothing at all?" It was proven
that when it came to the point of going on record, practically all who
really took the slightest interest in the matter were in favour of the
larger plan--if I would undertake to raise the money. My own view,
since more than justified, was that only so large a building could
ever hope to meet the requirements and only such a comprehensive
institution could expect to carry its own expenses. I preferred
refunding the ninety thousand dollars to the various donors and
dropping the whole business to embarking on the smaller scheme.
That meeting did a world of good. It cleared the atmosphere; and it is
only fresh air which most of these things really need--just as does a
consumptive patient. The plan was now on the shoulders of the
citizens; it was no longer one man's hobby. Enemies, like the Scribes
and Pharisees of old, knew better than to tackle a crowd, and with the
splendid gift of Messrs. Bowring Brothers of a site on the water-side
on the main street, costing thirteen thousand dollars, and those of
Job Brothers, Harvey and Company, and Macpherson Brothers of
twenty-five hundred dollars each, the fund grew like Jonah's gourd;
and in the year of 1911, with approximately one hundred and
seventy-five thousand dollars in hand, we actually came to the time
for laying the foundation stone. The hostility of enemies was not
over. Such an institute is a fighting force, and involves contest and
therefore enemies. So we decided to make this occasion as much of an
event as we could. Through friends in England we obtained the promise
of King George V that if we connected the foundation stone with
Buckingham Palace by wire, he would, after the ceremony in Westminster
Abbey on his Coronation Day, press a button at three in the afternoon
and lay the stone across the Atlantic. The good services of friends in
the Anglo-American Telegraph Company did the rest.
On the fateful day His Excellency the Governor came down and made an
appropriate and patriotic speech. Owing to the difference in time of
about three hours and twenty minutes, it was shortly before twelve
o'clock with us. The noonday gun signal from the Narrows was fired
during His Excellency's address. Then followed a prayer of invocation
by His Lordship the Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda--and then, a
dead silence and pause. Every one was waiting for our newly crowned
King to put that stone into place. Only a moment had passed, the
Governor had just said, "We will wait for the King," when "Bing, bang,
bang," went the gong signifying that His Majesty was at the other end
of the wire. Up went the national flag, and slowly but surely the
great stone began to move. A storm of cheering greeted the successful
effort; and all that was left for our enemies to say was, "It was a
fake." They claimed that we had laid the stone ourselves. Nor might
they have been so far off the mark as they supposed, for we had a man
with a knife under that platform to make that stone come down if
anything happened that the wire device did not work. You cannot go
back on your King whatever else you do, and to permit any grounds to
exist for supposing that he had not been punctual was unthinkable. But
fortunately for all concerned our subterfuge was unnecessary.
I have omitted so far to state one of the main reasons why the
Institute to our mind was so desirable. That was because no
undenominational work is carried on practically in the whole country.
Religion is tied up in bundles and its energies used to divide rather
than to unite men. No Y.M.C.A. or Y.W.C.A. could exist in the Colony
for that reason. The Boys' Brigade which we had originally started
could not continue, any more than the Boy Scouts can now. Catholic
Cadets, Church Lads Brigade, Methodist Guards, Presbyterian Highland
Brigade--are all names symbolic of the dividing influences of
"religion." In no place of which I know would a Y.M.C.A. be more
desirable; and a large meeting held in the Institute this present
spring decided that in no town anywhere was a Y.W.C.A. more needed.
In another place in this book I have spoken of the problem of alcohol
and fishermen. A man does not need alcohol and is far better without
it. A man who sees two lights when there is only one is not wanted at
the wheel. The people who sell alcohol know that just as well as we
do, but for paltry gain they are unpatriotic enough to barter their
earthly country as well as their heavenly one, and to be branded with
the knowledge that they are cursing men and ruining families. The
filibuster deserves the name no less because he does his destructive
work secretly and slowly, and wears the emblems of respectability
instead of operating in the open with "Long Toms" under the shadow of
the "Jolly Roger."
As a magistrate on this coast I have been obliged more than once to
act as a policeman, and though one hated the ill-feeling which it
stored up, and did not enjoy the evil-speaking to which it gave rise,
I considered that it was really only like lancing a concealed
infection--the ill-feeling and evil-speaking were better tapped and
let out.
On one occasion at one of our Labrador hospitals a beardless youth,
one of the Methodist candidates for college who every year are sent
down to look after the interests of that denomination on our North
coast, came to inform me that the only other magistrate on the coast,
the pillar of the Church of England, and shortly to be our
stipendiary, who had many political friends of great influence in St.
John's, was keeping a "blind tiger," while many even of his own people
were being ruined body and soul by this temptation under their noses.
"Well," I replied, "if you will come and give the evidence which will
lead to conviction, I will do the rest."
"I certainly will," he answered. And he did. So we got the little
Strathcona under way, and after steaming some fifteen miles dropped
into a small cove a mile or two from the place where our friend lived.
In the King's name we constrained a couple of men to come along as
special constables. Our visit was an unusual one. To divert suspicion
we dressed our ship in bunting as if we were coming for a marriage
license. When we anchored as near his stage as possible, we dropped
our jolly-boat and made for the store. The door was, however, locked
and our friend nowhere to be seen. "He is in the store" was the reply
of his wife to our query. We knew then that there was no time to be
lost, and even while we battered at the door, we could hear a
suspicious gurgle and smell a curious odour. Rum was trickling down
through the cracks of the store floor on to the astonished winkles
below. But the door quickly gave way before our overtures, and we
caught the magistrate _flagrante delicto_. We were threatened with all
sorts of big folk in St. John's; but we held the trial on board
straightaway just the same. When court was called, the defendant
demanded the name of the prosecutor--and to his infinite surprise out
popped the youthful aspirant to the Methodist ministry. When he
learned that half of his fine of seventy dollars had to be paid to the
prosecutor and would be applied toward the building of a Methodist
school, his temper completely ran away with him; and we had to
threaten auction on the spot of the goods in the store before we could
collect the money. We left him breathing out threatenings and
slaughter.
[Illustration: THE INSTITUTE]
Only once was I really caught. Two mothers in a little village had
appealed to me because liquor was being sold to their boys who had no
money, while people were complaining simultaneously that fish was
being stolen from their stages. No one would tell who was selling it,
so we had a systematic search made of all the houses, and the guilty
man was convicted on evidence discovered under the floor of his
sitting-room. The fine of fifty dollars he paid without a murmur and
it was promptly divided between the Government and the prosecutor. It
so happened, however, that he had obtained from us for a close
relative a new artificial leg, and there was fifty dollars owing to
us on it. Unknown to us at the time, he had collected that fifty
dollars from the said relative and with it paid his fine. To this day
we never got a cent for our leg, and so really fined ourselves. Nor
could we with any propriety distrain on one of a poor woman's legs!