n
sections of the coast. When two bad seasons come in succession,
starvation looms on the horizon.

Seasons when the ice held in, Skipper Tom could not set his cod trap.
When this happened he was as badly off as any of his neighbors. In a
season when there were no fish to catch, it goes without saying that
his trap brought him no harvest. Fishing and trapping is a gamble at
best, and Skipper Tom, like his neighbors, had to take his chance, and
sometimes lost. If he accumulated anything in the good seasons, he
used his accumulation to assist the needy ones when the bad seasons
came, and, in the end, though he kept out of debt, he could not get
ahead, try as he would.

The seasons of 1904 and 1905 were both poor seasons, and when, in the
fall of 1905, Doctor Grenfell's vessel anchored in Red Bay Harbor he
found that several of the seventeen families had packed their
belongings and were expectantly awaiting his arrival in the hope that
he would take them to some place where they might find better
opportunities. They were destitute and desperate.

There was nowhere to take them where their condition would be better.
Grenfell, already aware of their desperate poverty, had been giving
the problem much consideration. The truck system was directly
responsible for the conditions at Red Bay and for similar conditions
at every other harbor along the coast. Something had to be done, and
done at once.

With the assistance of Skipper Tom and one or two others, Doctor
Grenfell called a meeting of the people of the settlement that
evening, to talk the matter over. The men and women were despondent
and discouraged, but nearly all of them believed they could get on
well enough if they could sell their fish and fur at a fair valuation,
and could buy their supplies at reasonable prices.

All of them declared they could no longer subsist at Red Bay upon the
restricted outfits allowed them by the traders, which amounted to
little or nothing when the fishing failed. They preferred to go
somewhere else and try their luck where perhaps the traders would be
more liberal. If they remained at Red Bay under the old conditions
they would all starve, and they might as well starve somewhere else.

Doctor Grenfell then suggested his plan. It was this. They would form
a company. They would open a store for themselves. Through the store
their furs and fish would be sent to market and they would get just as
big a price for their products as the tr