The Wake

by Linden MacIntyre

He calculated that, properly run, St. Lawrence fluorspar mines could pump $200,000 a year into the Newfoundland economy. Seibert needed money badly—at least $150,000 to modernize his mining operation. The commissioner agreed with the estimated need for new capital. He even thought it could come from funds available in Britain. But he was less than confident that Walter could be trusted to make proper use of it.

  By mid-November, Sir John had put his observations and his misgivings on paper for his fellow commissioners. Seibert was developing the resource “spasmodically,” he declared. There was every reason to believe that he was ruining a potentially important opportunity. “He has no capital; indeed, he has been so hard put to it for money that his late manager, Dr. Warren Smith, worked for him for two years without salary on the off-chance of the mine being developed sufficiently in that period to afford him an adequate share of the profits.”

  But worse than this was “the inadequate and irregular payment of the miners.” Sir John wrote, “Mr. Seibert employs men as he can afford it; perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the men undertake to work on the off-chance of their money being paid after the fluorspar which they mine has been sold by Mr. Seibert.”

  The situation was “not only unsatisfactory but unfortunate” because a potentially lucrative resource was being wasted. The solution, he thought, was to find another operator, or failing that, to come up with an arrangement in which the government would properly capitalize the operation and then take control away from Seibert for at least ten years.

  It was particularly important to make this mining venture work. It was a rare example of potential in an otherwise bleak economic and social landscape. Newfoundland, in the absence of major new economic development, was, as Sir John Hope Simpson came to see things during his two-year sojourn in Newfoundland, a lost cause. “Taking the island as a whole,” he wrote shortly before he returned to England in 1936, “it is fair to say that there is a low standard of education, a low standard of living, a low standard of housing, inadequate social life, a low standard of fishing and a low standard of agriculture.”18

  Beyond the walls of the Newfoundland Hotel, it seemed, there were no high standards anywhere.

  The mining industry could, with proper stewardship, become vital to the long-term prospects of the island, Sir John insisted. But his specific proposals for taking more direct control of Black Duck—borrowing enough money from the British government to turn the shoestring operation into a modern and productive mining venture—seem to have gone nowhere. There is no evidence that either the commissioners governing Newfoundland or their political masters in London even read them.

  OMINOUSLY, in 1935, even before Sir John’s visit to Black Duck, the operation had been in the midst of a dramatic shift in leadership. Smith ceased to be the corporation mine manager in St. Lawrence. Before the year was out, he would be in charge of exploration for a group of new investors who were in the process of starting up a different mining venture. Donald Poynter had, as of mid-July, returned to the United States with his ailing wife. It was apparent to everyone who knew the gravity of his family situation that he’d not be coming back any time soon, if at all.

  Seibert had recruited a new manager, an Irish American mining engineer named Cornelius Kelleher. Where Smith and Poynter had established cordial relationships in the town and on the job, Kelleher seemed to have, from day one, antagonized almost everyone who worked for him.

  For the most part he was seen as a loner, a heavy drinker with a mean streak that he might have attributed to the fact that he’d been injured as a six-year-old in Ireland and had spent the next seven years in and out of hospitals. The injury left him with a permanent limp. His father died when he was just fifteen, shortly after the family had immigrated to New York. He found work in an office on Wall Street, where he met a wealthy businessman with mining interests in the west. With the help of this patron, Kelleher became a mining engineer with a degree from Columbia University. He had a promising career, but by the time he got to Newfoundland, it would appear the promise had dissolved in disappointment, which he couldn’t help projecting on the people working for him.19

  His personality and a confrontational approach to management would have a long-term impact on the Black Duck project. He would, in the three years and three months he ran the mining operations in St. Lawrence, effectively eliminate the last vestiges of “the cooperation.”

  THE problems in St. Lawrence had been building for a while. Besides the irregularity of paydays and the unreliability of paycheques that invariably stalled when presented at the bank, by late 1936 there was a new consciousness of the perils in the workplace. On October 24, 1936, Ed Stapleton of Little St. Lawrence—one of the early hopeful recruits to Black Duck—was killed in an underground explosion. He was thirty-two years old. His widow, Evelina, was twenty-one. Their little boy, Edward Jr., was two.

  The Stapleton fatality—which was the first mining death for St. Lawrence—convinced Claude Howse, the government geologist, that Black Duck, now that it was underground, had become exponentially more dangerous. One year earlier, Howse had assured Sir John Hope Simpson that the mine was safe. Since then, he’d lost his confidence in how the place was being managed.

  EVEN if it had been nothing more than a charade, the concept of cooperation had for a while motivated and sustained an extraordinary achievement—the creation of an industry from sweat and sacrifice by labour with very little capital. Kelleher would put an end to the cooperative spirit that had made the effort possible. Whatever cautious goodwill Seibert, Smith and Poynter had fostered in 1932 and 1933, Kelleher totally exhausted it.

  Urla Poynter’s illness couldn’t have happened at a worse time for the mining project. The people of St. Lawrence had welcomed the young Americans in September 1933. They seemed eager to become part of the community. The two Methodists had even bonded with the priest, and it was remarked that Mrs. Poynter had been seen on evening visitations to the parish church with Mrs. Giovannini, and that she, like Mrs. Giovannini, would light candles and sometimes kneel in prayer. The community even celebrated with them when they had a child. And then, suddenly, they were gone. It was awkward timing. The affable Doc Smith had been replaced by an ill-tempered bully. The deeper Black Duck went for ore, the more dangerous and difficult the mine became.

  Either Seibert had no money or he had money he was unwilling to invest to mitigate the dangers and the difficulties in the workplace. Kelleher, who had become mainly an enforcer for the absentee owner, didn’t seem to care.

  Donald Poynter would eventually come back to Newfoundland to face an atmosphere of rancour that would inevitably bloom into bitter confrontation.

  Urla Crammond Poynter would never see the place again.

  Five

  Revolt

  25.

  ST. LAWRENCE, NEWFOUNDLAND

  TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1937

  CLAUDE Howse should have been in an optimistic, upbeat frame of mind when he arrived in town that morning. It was the beginning of summer. He was thirty years old. He had his masters in geology from Dalhousie University in Halifax. He was well regarded by influential people at Princeton University, where he might yet begin studies for a doctorate. But for now, he had a great new job—assistant government geologist for Newfoundland. He was in St. Lawrence for discussions with the principals behind a promising new mining operation in the area.

  He was visiting a place he knew well. He’d been born in Burin. He’d lived in a number of small communities around the island, including Tilt Cove, site of Newfoundland’s first major mining operation. He felt at home here on the Burin Peninsula, where he knew the people, understood the geology, was excited by the potential for mining.1

  His father was a clergyman from whom he’d inherited a set of strong moral scruples and a capacity for outrage when confronted by unfairness. Before this day was done, his optimism would be sorely tested and his sense of outrage mobilized.

  Claude Howse was familiar with the Seibert
mining operation. He’d been a trusted adviser to the first commissioner of natural resources, Sir John Hope Simpson. He had the ear of Sir John’s successor, another Englishman with little knowledge of Newfoundland and even less of the mining business.2 His job was to help these important strangers, and that gave him a great deal of influence—or so he might have thought.

  He’d always been candid in his assessments—Seibert was running a dodgy operation, sustained only by the willingness of local men to put up with conditions that would have been intolerable had they not been desperate for work of any kind. Seibert would have been chased out of Buchans or Bell Island or, when it had been operating, Tilt Cove—anywhere with any history in mining or any depth of expertise in how a mine should operate, how miners should be treated. But the people of St. Lawrence had given him the benefit of all their doubts—reasonable doubt having been suppressed by the urgency of need.

  Claude Howse, like most people in St. Lawrence, was a realist. Until Seibert came along, the people who were now his miners had been idle fishermen. The timing couldn’t have been worse for them—the fishery was flat, Seibert was too young to have the right connections for proper financing and, in any case, capital markets were chaotic.

  There would be growing pains. Hiccups. There would be tension from time to time.

  Looking on the bright side, which Claude Howse was temperamentally inclined to do, Seibert’s representatives in St. Lawrence, Donald Poynter and Doc Smith, were reasonable and competent and had kept the job on track. Black Duck mine was still a mess, but there, and everywhere, you could see the potential for improvement. Iron Springs would benefit from what the managers and miners had learned in the early struggles at Black Duck. The fluorspar beneath St. Lawrence and its surrounding barren lands seemed limitless. If there was a cloud on the horizon, it was in the form and face of the Irish-born American manager who had replaced Doc Smith in the operation, Cornelius Kelleher.

  Kelleher had been on the job for more than a year, and Howse had become familiar with his style and personality. Kelleher had a severe limp, and Howse respected that he had overcome some daunting challenges to become a mining engineer.

  Obviously, he knew the mining business. But there were apparent personal flaws that deeply troubled the young government geologist. Howse had no tolerance for alcohol abuse, and Kelleher was clearly a heavy drinker—even while on the job. People in town quietly referred to him as a drunk. People who worked for him thought he was a bully, quick to discipline and dismiss, always ready to remind a worker with a grievance, no matter how legitimate, that there was no shortage of people willing to replace him.3

  Howse was hardly on the ground that morning when he realized that there was something seriously wrong.

  He asked around.

  The miners at Black Duck, who hadn’t seen a paycheque for a month, had just walked off the job. June 1 was supposed to be another payday, but the miners had been informed that morning by Seibert’s proxy, Kelleher, that they’d have to wait at least two more weeks for their money.

  This was serious. Howse had known for a long time that Seibert seemed to consider wages an option to be exercised only when he had spare cash. It was well known that he paid his workers below the going rates for miners elsewhere on the island. It was scandalous that he routinely missed paydays, and that his cheques usually bounced or were held up at the bank for weeks at a time.

  Howse decided on the spot to change his plan, which had been to meet with the people who were about to start a new mining operation in the area. Instead, he’d try to get to the bottom of what he now saw as a crisis at the Seibert project.4 He spoke to many of the striking miners. He met with local merchants. He dropped in on Father Thorne. And he had a heart to heart with the mine manager, Cornelius Kelleher.

  Kelleher was defensive. The miners, he told Howse, were being stirred up by the merchants. “But for the agitation of the merchants there would be no trouble with the men,” Howse wrote, paraphrasing Kelleher’s analysis.5

  But even if they were troublemakers, the merchants had a valid point. “He [Kelleher] admits that cheques are issued before there is money in the bank to cover them. He believes that the men have no reason for complaint as their only alternative is the dole and they are better off working for the company than living on dole.”

  The merchants were indeed complaining about “what is to them an unjust charge on their accounts” because of the weird bookkeeping practices of Walter Seibert, who was, after all, an accountant and should have known better. He should have realized that sooner or later, his cavalier approach to paying bills would blow up in his face.

  The men had grumbled many times before, even downed tools once or twice because of paydays without pay. This time, although they were disorganized, they were determined to change the intolerable situation. They had the backing of the merchants and the citizens. And perhaps to their surprise, they would find an outspoken advocate in young Claude K. Howse.

  He listened to all sides carefully, and when he reported to St. John’s on the uprising in St. Lawrence, he was unable—or unwilling—to suppress his anger. “[T]here are people in St. Lawrence today hungry, but with a month’s work to their credit with the St. Lawrence Corporation,” Howse wrote. “Five years ago, when the operations began, the men were prepared to accept reverses, hoping that conditions would improve. They have tried to help Mr. Seibert and have worked willingly with no prospect of immediate payment. However, conditions are quite as bad now as they were five years ago. The miners are going gradually in debt.”6

  Some of the harshest language in his report was directed at the mine manager, Kelleher—in particular, his boozing on the job: “I have seen the manager go underground only once during my whole series of visits, totalling over three months, and he was then revoltingly drunk.

  “I have wondered if we should entrust the lives of our people to a man of such calibre,” Howse wrote. Then he added a parenthetical reference to the recent death of young Ed Stapleton in an underground explosion: “There was a fatal accident in the Black Duck mine last fall which should never have happened if the miners had been instructed in decent mining methods.”

  He described women in church, praying for deliverance from Walter Seibert’s hegemony in the local mining business, and for the success of the proposed new mining venture. “I have seen men in tears because they could not feed their families. I have seen a people generally lose hope, people absolutely at the mercy of an absentee owner who has held up the development of an important material resource and has kept a community in the depths of poverty, not because he could not get capital, but because his avarice dictated terms which no capitalist could accept.”

  Howse pointed out that Seibert had, in the previous five years, turned down “liberal offers” from at least five prospective buyers—any one of whom would have done a better job of managing the resource and the legitimate interests of people working for him.

  Seibert, Howse wrote in his long memorandum to the government on June 8, “has taken advantage of the economic condition of the people knowing that they could not get dole while he offered them work, no matter at how small a pittance.”

  Summing up, he assured his superiors in St. John’s that he was not overstating the crisis: “This is not a melodramatic picture of the situation in St. Lawrence. These are cold hard facts which have to be faced. To deal with them is the problem and the duty of the commission of government.”

  Howse then listed his recommendations: pay should immediately rise to twenty-five cents per hour; miners should be paid regularly and in cash; Kelleher should be removed. “My personal regard for Mr. Kelleher as a man,” he wrote in reference to his final recommendation, “cannot affect my opinion that a man with his weakness for alcohol is not fit to have the lives and safety of other men entrusted to him.”

  Howse urged that it be made bluntly clear to Seibert that the government was on to him, and mightily unhappy. It was a draft ultimatum to Seibert to clean
up his act.

  If the Howse memorandum of June 8 wasn’t enough to persuade his bosses in St. John’s that there was a problem brewing in the Seibert operation, the plight of the local merchants and miners was underlined dramatically the next day by a St. Lawrence merchant, L.J. Saint, in a letter to his creditors in the city—a letter that found its way to the desk of the new commissioner of natural resources, Sir Robert Ewbank.

  Hungry miners, Saint reported, were being turned down when they applied for dole—technically they had jobs, even if they weren’t getting paid—“and then had to mortgage their sheep or cow to get necessary food . . . [T]he people are being treated like a bunch of coolies and have to accept it owing to the depression and nothing else to earn.”7

  EVEN given the times and the normal attitude of deference by politicians and bureaucrats towards businessmen like Walter Seibert, the Howse memorandum might have sparked outrage among responsible people, perhaps a political awakening of sorts.

  It didn’t, really. The response and subsequent developments were cautious and slow in coming. It would be three more years before the miners’ pay reached twenty-five cents an hour—and then only after they had formed a union.

  The commission government drafted a letter to Walter Seibert after the Howse wake-up call. It essentially boiled down to a significantly less passionate summary of the geologist’s suggestions—that Seibert pay his miners a living wage on the appointed paydays, that he fire Kelleher and that he find ways to stabilize the company’s finances. “I am to warn you,” an unidentified secretary to the commission wrote in a draft letter, “that the government is concerned.”8 That pallid warning was about as threatening a tone as the commission government could muster.

  Miners should be paid promptly and in cash “on a scale which would enable them to live without public assistance,” the letter insisted. The government was concerned that “a valuable natural resource of this country is being exhausted in a manner which is considered wasteful and, in some cases, dangerous to those employed.”