Chapter VI: St. Lawrence Town: Its Triumph and Tragedy  (continued)

The March 17 strike was the first of five strikes in 1941, the last of which prompted the appointment of the St. Lawrence Trade Dispute Board on December 6. Considering the miners' numerous legitimate grievances against the Corporation it seems peculiar, not to say ridiculous, that the St. Lawrence Workers Protective Union called its first strike because its members wished a holiday, March 17 being St. Patrick's Day.

The union complained bitterly, and with great justification, of low wages. From the earliest days when miners received 15 cents per hour, wages had scarcely advanced in proportion to the cost of living. In February 1941, the average salary was 28.1 cents per hour. It rose on the day that the union became organized and peaked at 32.6 cents three strikes later;⁽¹⁵⁾ and this was at a time when miners in Buchans were protesting an average wage of 42 cents per hour.

A second grievance concerned the irregular manner of wage payment. Before 1940, miners received cheques; local merchants honoured the pay slips, even though knowing that they would have to remain uncashed until the next sale of fluorspar. After 1940, the Corporation introduced cash wages. This method, however, proved unsatisfactory, as the difficulty of obtaining cash occasionally obliged the Corporation manager to postpone pay day for some days. The procrastination, whatever its causes, did nothing to improve relations between the union and the Corporation.

The Trade Dispute Board report recommended a basic salary of 32.6 cents plus an extra 13 cents reviewable cost of living bonus. It praised the miners, saying:

"...not one of the 90 miners, now working at this operation, had one hour's experience at any other mine in Newfoundland or elsewhere. Even more extraordinary is the fact that, at no time in the Corporation's history, was there a practical and experience miner to train the men..."⁽¹⁶⁾

What the report did not mention was that most miners from 'outside' refused to remain in St. Lawrence, fearing damage to their health and safety from the mine dust and frequent rockbursts.

The union listed miscellaneous other grievances, one of which concerned the quality of mine air. The board investigated the underground workings after the mine had lain dormant for some days, naturally found no trace of dust, and suggested that the steady flow of water purified the air. It advised that dry-drill hammers be used only sparingly, but made no specific recommendations about the mine air or about the miners' request for X-ray examinations.

Time has since shown that the 'purifying' water contained a gas that was far more lethal than the dust it settled and that it produced in the miners a disease which could, in some cases, have been detected by X-ray examinations if they had been performed at the time.

Many alterations in the St. Lawrence Corporation's mining procedure occurred during and after the strikes of 1941; some were immediate and others more gradual.

The most noticeable changes resulted directly from the Trade Despute Board report. In 1942, the company replaced the dry hammers with wet drills and reduced the number of daily shifts to allow dust time to settle. The company also tried to improve medical facilities by hiring a resident doctor for St. Lawrence; he left a few months after his arrival.

A less apparent but more significant change involved a growing preference of the Corporation for the American rather than the Canadian market. The trend began when the United States entered World War II. In a desire to ensure a constant fluorspar supply to American steel plants, the American government contracted with Seibert to finance a new mill for the Iron Springs mine. The Corporation concentrated on producing acid-grade ore for the United States and sold it through an affiliated company in Delaware, St. Lawrence Fluorspar Incorporated.

The Corporation's business with the United States faltered briefly after World War II; but by using threats of closure Walter Seibert extracted a loan from the Newfoundland government in 1950.⁽¹⁷⁾ He then used the money to manufacture even more acid-grade ore for the United States.

The culmination of the Corporation's leanings toward the American market came in July 1952 with a contract between the company and the American government. In return for the Corporation's guaranteeing the government 150,000 tons of acid-grade ore within four years, the government advanced the company $1¼ million to finance a heavy-media separation mill in St. Lawrence and a flotation plant in Delaware.⁽¹⁸⁾ Both plants were completed in 1953.

Superficially, the contract seemed to benefit St. Lawrence; it provided an assured market for the fluorspar at more than double the usual volume of sales. The deal, however, required St. Lawrence to ship ore to Delaware as a low-grade concentrate so that the Delaware plant - not the St. Lawrence mill - could raise it to acid-grade material. More seriously, the contract directed the entire St. Lawrence mining effort toward supplying the American stockpile. Shipments to Canada became non-existent. When the American contract ended in June 1957 the Corporation found itself without business, as its former Canadian customers had established new contracts with fluorspar companies in Spain, Italy, Germany - and Mexico.

Mexican fluorspar in particular posed a double threat to St. Lawrence. The open-pit, dry Mexican mines with their wages of $2 per day produced fluorspar more cheaply than did the underground, water-ridden St. Lawrence mines with their wages of $15 per day. Unlike the impure St. Lawrence ore, Mexican fluorspar was of a high quality much favoured by the steel industry, whose specifications regarding impurities (such as silica) had tightened after 1950. The increasingly large quantities of Mexican fluorspar entering Canada in the 1950s made fluorspar prices drop. The Corporation found it impossible to regain its former profit margin.

An ill-timed disaster at the Corporation's Blue Beach mine in 1957 compounded the company's troubles. One morning in March the miners reported at 8 o'clock as usual to the No. 2 shaft of the mine. Around 9 o'clock they began to notice an alarming frequency of rockfalls in the shaft, and quickly left for the surface. Half an hour later all hell broke loose. Cave-in followed cave-in throughout the day, and by that evening the shaft lay completely buried.⁽¹⁹⁾

The collapse of the Blue Beach mine forebode the end of the St. Lawrence Corporation. Seibert, unable to obtain further American contracts or to compete with the Mexican ore, suspended all Corporation mining efforts on 6 June 1957 and asked the Canadian government to impose a tariff on foreign ore.

Seibert's request ultimately did him harm. In the course of considering his proposal, an inquiry board investigated the St. Lawrence Corporation's activities; it discovered that Seibert owned a major share in a Mexican fluorspar operation and had been soliciting business for the Mexican company, all the while discouraging the sale of St. Lawrence fluorspar in Canada.⁽²⁰⁾ This and other findings led the board to conclude that the Corporation viewed the import duty solely as a means of capturing the Canadian metallurgical-grade market; once having used the Canadian market to regain its financial foothold, said the board, the company would abandon it again for the higher-priced American acid-grade market.

Little wonder that the board advised the government to reject Seibert's request. Seibert's Mexican interests could be argued as being a case of not putting all his fluorspar eggs in the Newfoundland basket; nonetheless it is ironic that some of the profits from the St. Lawrence mines probably helped to finance the Mexican fluorspar industry, which has now rendered the St. Lawrence fluorspar industry inactive.

The suspension of mining by the St. Lawrence Corporation in 1957 traumatized St. Lawrence, not only because of the lost jobs involved, but also because the company had become a constant in the area. Seven years later the Corporation sold all its assets and left Newfoundland. The factors contributing to the sale stemmed from one basic cause: the Corporation ostensibly lacked the money to continue.