ef were provided
with work in public employments, and the wholesome warning was added
that those who refused such work would under no circumstances be
entitled to relief. Governor Cochrane did not shrink from indicating
the real cause of the distress. "Those who are upon wages," he wrote,
"receive a sum during the summer months, which, if properly husbanded,
would, together with the produce of their own exertion after the
fishery has ceased, be fully adequate to the support of themselves
and families for the following winter. Yet I am led to believe that a
large portion of this is dissipated before many weeks or days have
elasped after the fishing season has terminated, and in consequence of
such profusion many families are left to want and misery."

The generality of the system destroyed in time that healthy dread of
pauperism which, as an economic factor, is of the highest national
importance. The receipt of poor relief lost the stigma assigned to it
with rough justice by Anglo-Saxon independence, and in 1863, out of a
total public expenditure of L90,000, the astounding proportion of
L30,000 was expended upon the necessities of the poor.

Far-seeing observers had long before pointed out that the remedy for
these disorders must be a radical one. Improvidence among the poorer
classes is familiar to economists in more experienced societies than
that of Newfoundland, and may be accepted as a permanent element in
the difficulty. The real hope lay in opening up, on remunerative
lines, industries which would occupy the poor in the lean months. Nor
was Newfoundland without such resources, if the capital necessary for
their development could have been found. A penetrating railway system,
by its indirect effects upon the mining and agricultural interests,
would have done much to solve the problem of the unemployed. The
difficulty was that the state of the public finances was in no
condition to undertake costly schemes of betterment. In a later
chapter we shall see the Government, after exhausting the resources of
loans, looking to a desperate remedy to conquer its powerlessness for
enterprise.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[40] Prowse, p. 473.

CHAPTER VIII

MODERN NEWFOUNDLAND

In 1869[41] took place a General Election, in which great Imperial
interests were involved. Governor Musgrave, in 1866, had advised
Federal union with the Canadian provinces--then about to federate
among them