RESEARCH NOTE They Cannot Pay Us in Money: Newman and Company and the Supplying System in the Newfoundland Fishery, 1850-1884 DURING THE 19TH CENTURY THE Newfoundland fishery was conducted for the most part by inshore fishermen who owned and operated small boats and produced salt-cod for export. The merchants who exported the finished product seldom caught or processed the fish themselves but supplied the fishermen who did. Fish went to market only once or twice a year and the problem of maintaining the fishery's labour force over the year was a serious one. As the structure of the fishery developed in the 19th century, merchants extended a range of supplies to fishermen and fishermen came to depend on these supplies for the maintenance of their families and for the conduct of the fishery. Although the role of the exporting merchants in production was indirect but important, these merchants have been seen as doing only what merchants do — buying short, selling long and pocketing the difference. The supplying system has been explained as a means of helping them to do so by enslaving workers and appropriating surplus value through the extension of credit and by dealing, without cash, in truck.1 The classic description (though itself derivative) of the Newfoundland supplying system has been that of Lord Amulree, who wrote that "It was obvious that the fishermen could not conduct the fishery from their own resources and the custom grew up under which each fisherman went to a merchant and obtained from him, on credit, supplies of equipment and food to enable him and his family to live".2 At the end of the season the fisherman returned to the merchant with his catch of fish which was priced by the merchant, as were the supplies he had received. In good years a balance was left to the fisherman, but bad years left him in the debt of the merchant, which debt he had to repay in later years. The merchants, by controlling the accounting of this system, were able to turn it to their profit, whereas the fishermen were denied independence. In essence Amulree regarded the supplying system as a way for merchants to appropriate 1 The characteristics of the supplying system are, with varying emphasis from writer to writer, credit (the issue of supplies in advance of payment), truck or barter (the exchange of goods in kind rather than for cash), debt, exploitation (the charging of exorbitant prices to credit customers), and reciprocity (the obligation of a fisherman to remit his catch to the merchant who supplied him). 2 Report of the Newfoundland Royal Commission (Amulree Report), HMSO, Cmd. 4480 (London, 1933), p. 79. Newman and Company 143 surplus from the fishermen. On the advantages of this system to the fishermen he was less clear, though he noted that they "obviously" could not carry on the fishery from their own resources. Building upon Amulree's interpretation, Cato Wadel has stressed that, in fact, the persistence (rather than the origins) of this system lay in mutual benefit — a supply of fish was exchanged for a share of the risks of the voyage.3 Other analysts have examined why the merchants preferred to deal with independent fishermen instead of hiring labour directly. James Overton, for instance, has argued that having fishermen provide (at least nominally) their own means of production saved the merchants some of the costs of organizing and controlling production. Although they were freed from a direct role in production, merchants retained control over the process by means of credit dealings with the fishermen — credit dealings which allowed the merchants to appropriate surplus value.4 Stephen Antler has also seen credit dealings as a way for merchants to control production indirectly while extracting surplus value through unequal exchange. He explained the predominance of a small-boat fishery and of mercantile capitalism in terms of the problems capitalists faced in trying to extract economic surplus on a frontier. A combination of frontier conditions and a common-property resource led inevitably to the development of small, homogeneous units of production and merchants to exploit them through unequal exchange.5 Rosemary Ommer similarly has emphasized that the fishery was a common-property resource and has generated credit dealings from merchants' attempts to establish property rights in a common resource and prevent the dissipation of economic rent. Credit (or truck, as she prefers) gave merchants a stable, tied clientele and gave fishermen a buffer against the uncertainties of the industry.6 All who have written about the supplying system thus have assumed that credit relationships were essentially distributive. All except Wadel equate debt and obligation and assume that the creditor is, by virtue of the debt, in a position to set the terms on which he deals with the debtor. All assume that the merchant got the better of the exchange, though only some will allege that the system existed for the benefit of merchants. Yet these conventional accounts are based largely upon anecdotal evidence. The notable exception is Ommer's study, for she used the records of the Charles Robin Company's operations in the Gaspé 3 Cato Wadel, Marginal Adaptations and Modernization in Newfoundland (St. John's, 1969). 4 James Overton, "Uneven Regional Development in Canada: the Case of Newfoundland", Review of Radical Political Economics, 10, 3 (1978), pp. 106-16. 5 Stephen Antler, "Colonial Exploitation and Economic Stagnation in Nineteenth Century Newfoundland", Ph.D. thesis, University of Connecticut, 1975. 6 Rosemary Ommer, "All the Fish of the Post: Property Resource Rights and Development in a Nineteenth Century Inshore Fishery", Acadiensis, 10, 2 (Spring 1981), pp. 107-23; and "The Truck System in Gaspé, 1822-77", Acadiensis, this issue. 144 Acadiensis region of Quebec. But no scholarly study of a Newfoundland fish-merchant's operations has been published and the conventional accounts are not based upon empirical evidence. It has never been shown that the merchants' motives were those attributed to them nor that their alleged practices could have had the effects attributed to them, let alone that they did. This paper therefore focuses upon one firm, Newman and Company, in the latter half of the 19th century. It suggests that the supplying system can not be seen as a crude exercise of monop- sonistic power over helpless and dependent fishermen.7 The evidence from the Newman papers suggests that the supplying system was not static or unchanging and was probably weaker and less enduring than Amulree and later writers have supposed. Through the supplying system Newmans struggled to control producers and to establish monopsonistic power, but they never fully succeeded. They always faced competitors; large planters and independent traders did not die out by 1850, as some writers have implied. Above all, planters struggled to resist mercantile domination and were sometimes successful. The Newman family were importers and exporters at Dartmouth, Devon, as early as the late 14th century.8 During the next four centuries members of the family traded in partnership with each other and with others as well as on their own accounts and engaged in the fish, wine and shipping trades. The firm later named Newman and Company was formed in St. John's in 1780 and moved to the south coast of Newfoundland late in the 18th century, though it maintained a St. John's office until the 1860s.9 By 1850 Newmans' headquarters were in London and their Newfoundland depots at Harbour Breton, Gaultois and Burgeo were run by salaried agents. In the 19th century Newmans did little fishing on their own account, but supplied independent fishermen (called 'planters') and received their fish in return. This was done on the familiar credit or truck (or, as I prefer it, the supplying) system. After 1850 crucial changes took place in the organization of the fishing industry as Norwegian fish became a serious competitor to the Newfoundland product and a trade in supplying bait to French and American fishing vessels drew planters away from the Newmans' 7 Monopsony: "The market situation in which there is one buyer for a particular commodity", Erwin E. Nemmers, Dictionary of Economics and Business (Totowa, N.J., 1970). 8 Newman, Hunt & Co., The Story of Hunt, Roope and Company (n.p., 1951). 9 Founded as Robert Newman & Company, it was renamed early in the 19th century as Newman & Co., under which name the family firm traded in Newfoundland. The parent firm in London was named Newman, Hunt and Company and their Portuguese wine trade was conducted under the name of Hunt, Roope, Teague & Co. See Margaret Chang, "Newfoundland in Transition: Robert Newman and Company, 1780-1805", M.A. thesis, Memorial University, 1974; Newman, Hunt & Co., Story of Hunt, Roope & Co.; letter to the Honourable A. W. Harvey, St. John's, 21 December 1894, Newman, Hunt & Co. papers, Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador (PANL). Newman and Company 145 main interest, the cod fishery.10 At the same time, competition between merchants for the planters' fish intensified and Newmans' relations with the planters deteriorated. Competition in catching and at market made the fishery harder to manage and Newmans progressively withdrew credit dealings before finally abandoning the fishery shortly after 1900. In 1850 Newmans and Nicolies, a Jersey firm, were the only sizeable traders on the south coast11 and relations between them seem to have been tranquil at the two more easterly stations. At Burgeo, to the westward, it was a different story, for the nearness of Burgeo to the mainland stopped Newmans and Nicolies from controlling the trade of the region.12 Newmans were less worried about rival traders than about Nicolies' reaction to the price-competition that had been introduced to Burgeo.