Chapter V: Isle of Iron, Men of Steel  (continued)

The BESCO regime was the worst in the mines' history. Wolvin and McDougall set out to create the company's glory and ended up causing its ruin. They manufactured millions of dollars in watered stock from the merger until the company began to topple from overcapitalization, at which point they tried to forestall its collapse at the expense of the miners. They reduced their wages, their work-weeks and their numbers. Caring nothing for the miners and war veterans involved, Wolvin went so far as to complain that during the war the miners had "grown to like working in the sunlight and do not take kindly to their old tasks, which is... a great hardship on us."⁽¹⁹⁾

Bell Island miners reacted to BESCO's hostile attitude by forming the United Mine Workers of Wabana in 1924. BESCO promptly hired non-union labour. The miners then announced their intention of going on strike, should BESCO reject a demand for higher wages. BESCO not only refused their request, but pointedly shut down the Sydney steel mill a day later. The miners decided not to strike. In February 1925, however, their anger rose again when BESCO introduced punch clocks to Wabana. Only after considerable government intervention did the company abolish the clocks.

The Newfoundland government regarded BESCO with a mixture of fear and exasperation. Their relations had commenced in 1921 with the company suggesting that the government pay it a bounty on ore exported from Bell Island rather than enforce the 25-cents-per-ton royalty imposed in 1920. That tactic failing to work, the company took to closing the mines each winter and refusing to reopen them in the spring until the government waived the annual royalty. The government, afraid of losing its Bell Island votes, agreed to the company terms.

Emboldened by their successful bluffing, Wolvin and McDougall approached Newfoundland's Prime Minister Monroe in 1925 asking for numerous concessions, including waived ore royalties for the next 50 years. This modest request and its companions became known as the "BESCO resolutions" and arose in the House of Assembly in the spring of 1926 for approval. BESCO ignored-and earnestly hoped that the government would ignore-the fact that an act passed in 1920 required the company to build an iron ore refinery in Newfoundland; notification of intent to build was to have been given in January 1926, and BESCO, needless to say, had given no such notification.⁽²⁰⁾

For once, however, the government opposed the company and refused to pass the BESCO resolution without substantial compromises from Wolvin. He, however, was in no position to compromise: BESCO had accumulated massive debts and was under pressure to reorganize its structure. The government's unexpected stand hastened the company's demise. In July 1926 BESCO ceased to function and relinquished its troubled coal and iron mines to its mortgager: the National Trust Company Limited.

The National Trust Company managed the Wabana mines from 1926 until 1930. Its brief reign may be summarized by two anecdotes, of which one describes its relations with the miners and the other its relations with the Newfoundland government.

In 1928 the Trust company opened up a night school for the miners. On one particular evening the following exchange took place between an ore shoveller and a teacher:

Teacher: "Can you do do arithmetic?"
Shoveller: "What's that?"
T.: "Can you do sums?"
S.: "All I know is how to load twenty (ore cars)."
T.: "If Mr. Bishop gave you $5 and I gave you $5, what would you have?"
S.: "I'd have a fit."⁽²¹⁾

The night school's existence demonstrated the company's tentative attempts to better the miners' lots; but the tone of the dialogue's conclusion revealed that on essential issues such as wages the company remained negligent.

The story involving the Newfoundland government depicts one of the brilliant moments in the mottled career of Sir Richard Squires. The National Trust Company copied its predecessor's tactics and between 1926 and 1928 refused to pay any ore royalties. Then in November 1928 Sir Richard was reelected as prime minister. He vowed to force the trust company's hand. He ordered customs officials to immobilize the first ore carrier that arrived at the Bell Island loading pier and to hold it as ransom on the unpaid dues. On May 2 the officials seized the S.S. Boulderpool; and on May 9 the company posted a bond for the taxes.

Squires followed up his victory with a new royalty agreement in July 1929 in which royalty rates were lowered, giving the company no excuse for tardy payment. However, before the agreement could be enacted the Bell Island iron mines changed hands once again: in June 1930 they passed over to the Dominion Steel and Coal Company Limited (DOSCO) of Nova Scotia. In the same year, the Depression struck Newfoundland with full force.

The extent to which the Dominion Steel and Coal Company initially underestimated the seriousness of the Depression is shown by its announcement in July 1930 that it would spend $6 million on expanding the Bell Island mining facilities. Within months of the statement, two of the Wabana mines were closed; the remaining two were limping by on a two-day week. Those miners lucky enough to retain their jobs worked for a fraction of the normal salary and spent their spare time tending vegetable plots on land leased without fee from DOSCO. Unemployed miners compensated for lost pay by catching seals, seabirds and rabbits. The island of necessity became agriculturally self-sufficient at this time, an admirable position that it unfortunately lost when conditions improved later.

The plight of Bell Island in the early 1930s stemmed primarily from the severely restricted demand for iron ore. What had supported the island's whole modus vivendi was no longer required. Captains of ore boats returning from Holland and Germany described how the previous year's shipments still lay untouched on the European docks. The countries lacked the money to manufacture steel, to transport the iron ore to steel mills and to pay dock workers.

It was distressing, but typical, that the British industrial community could have helped Wabana and chose not to. British steelmakers with vested interests in Spanish and Moroccan iron deposits imported more than a million tons of iron ore from those countries in 1932: none from Newfoundland. Despite pleas from the Newfoundland government and promises from British industry,⁽²²⁾ Britain's imports of Newfoundland iron ore remained minimal until 1937. Had it not been for the German market between 1931 and 1937, the Wabana mines might have folded altogether.

Throughout the 1930s, Germany displayed an insatiable appetite for Newfoundland iron ore to the point where DOSCO had to reopen all four Wabana mines in 1938 to keep up with German demand. The late '30s were happy days for Bell Islanders; after seven years of deprivation they had enough jobs, enough money and a victorious hockey team. (In 1938 the Bell Island Miners won the Conception Bay division of the Newfoundland Amateur Hockey Association.) Germany, meanwhile, was steadily converting iron ore into steel tanks, hand arms and submarines. And on 1 September 1939, a few days after purchasing its last order of Wabana ore, Germany invaded Poland and precipitated World War II.

Bell Island's involvement in World War II at first entailed sending iron ore to Britain and men to battle, but in 1942 the war came to Bell Island. German captains, some of whom had piloted ore ships into Conception Bay in the 1920s and '30s, returned in 1942 with submarines and an intimate knowledge of the Bell Island area.