It seemed to Wilfred that this matter had been well discussed before he arrived back in England and that the council had already reached a conclusion. Sure enough, Wilfred was told that the council had decided to appoint Dr. Fred Willway to take over the mission’s work in Labrador and Newfoundland. Wilfred would be allowed to return to Labrador for one last summer to instruct his successor.
Wilfred was disappointed by this turn of events, but he tried to look on the bright side. He admired Fred a great deal and knew that he would make a fine leader for the work. And Wilfred had one last summer to set some of his boldest ideas in motion!
After a quick visit with his mother and brother in Parkgate, Wilfred set out once again across the Atlantic. Fred accompanied him; his wife would join him in Newfoundland later. On the voyage the two men spent many hours on deck discussing the future of the mission’s work in Labrador.
Wilfred longed for a time when there would be no starvation on the coast, when men could find work during the winter months as well as the summer, and when children could go to school. In his mind this all depended on one thing—breaking the power of the schooner owners and fish traders along the coast. In the four years that Wilfred had been working in Labrador, he had learned that certain traders controlled portions of the coastline and that all of the fishermen in that area had to sell their catch to them. The traders set the price, and if the fishermen went looking for a better price somewhere else, they were blacklisted and never allowed to sell their fish to that trader or any of his friends again. Wilfred had seen cases where a desperate fisherman had bartered some of his catch for milk for his children and in retaliation the trader had refused to sell him powder for his gun. This meant that the fisherman could not hunt for food during the winter months.
This all led to a situation wherein the fishermen were virtually owned by the traders who loaned them money to buy equipment at the start of the fishing season and at the end of the season sold them food and supplies at exorbitant prices to tide them over for the winter.
One fisherman acting alone could not break this system; it would crush him. The answer, Wilfred told Fred, was for the fishermen to band together into cooperatives. In fact, Wilfred had already suggested such an idea to the fishermen at Red Bay. He was eager to meet with them again and see how far they were prepared to go in setting up their own trading store in the bay and working directly with merchants in St. John’s.
As soon as they reached Newfoundland, Wilfred and Fred took the Sir Donald north. The ice had receded early, and they had no difficulty reaching Red Bay in good time. At Red Bay, on the north side of the Strait of Belle Isle, Wilfred gathered the men of the community together in an old fish shed.
“Have you thought about what I told you?” Wilfred asked the fishermen.
At first no one said anything; they all just moved uncomfortably in their seats and looked at one another. No one seemed to want to be the first to speak. Wilfred understood why. If it got back to the traders that the fishermen had spoken out against the way they did business, they might retaliate against the fishermen. Finally one old fisherman spoke up.
“I’ve been thinking long about it, Doctor, and I think you be right. It is time for some different way to be doing things. Here be my investment in the co-op. It not be much, and if I had more, I would gladly give ye it.” The man handed eight dollars to Wilfred.
Spurred on by the old fisherman’s example, other men began to stand and affirm the idea, handing over what money they had been able to save toward the project during the previous year.
When everyone had contributed his share toward the cost of establishing the co-op, it totaled eighty-five dollars. It was not nearly enough to cover all the costs, but Wilfred pledged money of his own for the project, and he had already received a pledge from three merchants in St. John’s that they too would support the project.
“I know this step has not been easy for you to take,” Wilfred said. “I respect your courage in deciding to move ahead. With God’s help we will see a wonderful new and honest way of buying and selling develop. Now, let me explain some of the rules of the cooperative to you.”
Wilfred laid out the rules of the new Red Bay Cooperative Society. The members of the society would be the heads of the families of the community, and they would appoint the storekeeper. All goods would be sold for cash; there would be no credit. The goods sold in the co-op store would be sold at cost plus the price of freight from St. John’s plus five percent for the storekeeper and five percent to build up a cash reserve in the society. This would still make goods much cheaper than the price the traders normally charged for them. In addition, the members of the society agreed to sell their fishing catches to the cooperative. The fish would be shipped to St. John’s and sold for a fair price on the market, not the paltry sum the traders gave them for their catch.
The men were happy with these rules, and they elected William Pike, a well-respected fisherman in the community, to be the storekeeper of the new cooperative.
When the meeting was over, Wilfred went outside and in chalk wrote on the side of the building in large block letters, RED BAY COOPERATIVE STORE. The men smiled and clapped each other on the back when they saw it.
It took a good part of the summer for Wilfred to get the cooperative up and running properly. Once it was operating, Wilfred sailed north to visit the Moravian missionaries one last time. When he arrived, Wilfred found his presence was sorely needed. An epidemic of scarlet fever was raging through the community, and he set to work caring for those with the disease.
As summer drew to a close, it was time to turn the Sir Donald around and head for St. John’s again. When Wilfred arrived there, good news awaited. The mission was now officially known as the Royal National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen. The word royal added to the name meant that the mission now carried Queen Victoria’s personal endorsement.
A letter was also awaiting Wilfred, saying that the mission considered this a good time for Wilfred to make another fundraising drive into Canada and the United States before returning to England.
Wilfred was glad for the opportunity to visit many old friends, and he set off enthusiastically on a fall tour. His journey took him from Halifax to Montreal, and then on to Boston, where the Reverend Carpenter and Emma White had once again arranged a busy schedule of meetings for him. Another Christian man was holding meetings in Boston at the time—none other than Dwight L. Moody. It had been fourteen years since Wilfred had heard Moody speak in East London, but he had never forgotten what Moody had said. Now Wilfred determined to go and thank the man for the way his message had changed not only his life but also the lives of countless others through him.
It was a blustery Thursday night when Wilfred made his way to Tremont Temple, where D. L. Moody was to preach. Wilfred explained who he was to one of the ushers at the door. He was quickly whisked backstage to talk to the famous evangelist before the service began.
Dwight Moody looked a little older and broader, but other than that, he was much as Wilfred remembered him. After a brief introduction, Wilfred got straight to the point. “I want to tell you that fourteen years ago I received inspiration from you to serve Jesus Christ,” he said.
“Wonderful,” Moody replied. “And what have you been doing since?”
“Well,” Wilfred said, “I have been preaching the gospel on the Labrador coast. I became a doctor so that I could tend men’s bodies and a preacher so that I could touch their souls.”
“Very good,” Moody said as he straightened his tie.
An assistant popped his head around the curtain and said, “It’s time to start, sir.”
“Just give me a minute,” he replied. Then D. L. Moody turned to Wilfred and asked, “And do you regret that you are not a successful Harley Street doctor, eating delicate dinners and wearing a silk beaver hat?”
“Not at all,” Wilfred said. “I have no regrets.”
“Well, then, Doctor,” Moody said as he slapped Wilfred on the shoulder, “come out there with me and tell the people what a joy it is to serve Jesus Christ.”
The next thing Wilfred knew he was on stage, singing his favorite hymns along with an audience of hundreds. When the singing was over, Dwight Moody introduced him to the crowd, and Wilfred got his opportunity to speak.
Wilfred started by briefly describing his mission work along the Labrador coast. Then he went on to say, “I am grateful for Mr. Moody’s life. Everything that I have done that is worthwhile in this world I owe to his preaching. When you and I come to the end of life, supposing that we had had all the wealth in the world, would we look back and say that that brought us satisfaction? Can you measure success in that way? If there is a poor child in Labrador dying because he has no food or a young fellow here in Boston going down to hell because he has no one to show him the way to heaven, wouldn’t serving those people be a better way to live than hoarding wealth?
“Looking back on the little things in life, I had rather have them than all the gold. When we come before the judgement seat at the day of reckoning, we shall measure our success in no other way than by what the gospel of Jesus Christ has enabled us to do. Christ has led me to some of the bleakest places on earth, but I have never been sorry that I obeyed His call. The truth is, I don’t have to wait until heaven to get my rewards. I get them every day in the satisfaction of helping people and knowing that I am doing something the Master approves of. That is what He did while He was here on earth—He helped people, and if we want to follow Him, that is what we have to do, too.”
Wilfred was glad that he’d had the opportunity to meet D. L. Moody again and thank him for being a link in the chain of people who had helped him find his life’s work.
In Boston Wilfred also spoke at Harvard University, and then he traveled on to speak at Yale. His final stop in the United States was New York City, where large crowds came out to hear him speak.
On February 14, 1897, Wilfred Grenfell watched the Statue of Liberty disappear from view over the stern of the steamer. Once again he was headed for England, ready to take up the challenges that lay ahead for him there.
Chapter 12
A Single Letter Changed Everything
Wilfred had been back in England for only six months when he picked up his pen to write an article for Toilers of the Deep. He began, “Obviously the most important problem the mission has to solve in the near future is how shall we adapt ourselves to the exigencies of steam trawling.”
It was a problem that had gripped Wilfred from the moment he set foot back on English soil. The old sailing smacks were now a thing of the past. In just a few years, they had gone from being the mainstay of British fisheries, setting sail with great fanfare and flag waving, to rotting away at their docks in ports around the country. Steam trawlers, with their iron hulls and bright lights, were able to weather all conditions and trawl for twenty-four hours a day until their holds were filled and they returned home with their catch. Because of this, the fishermen did not have time for the mission ships to visit, nor could the mission ships, which were still mostly sailing vessels, keep up with them. It was time for a change in strategy.
Wilfred and the mission committee wrestled with the problem for a year before agreeing to move the mission’s emphasis to land. They decided to build bigger and better recreation/mission halls in port cities so that fishermen would have an alternative to frequenting the hundreds of pubs that vied for their business.
While he was touring the British Isles raising money for the new mission halls, Wilfred never forgot to mention the doctors and nurses who were working faithfully across the Atlantic Ocean in Labrador. He desperately wanted to send a well-equipped hospital ship to aid their work, and he set about raising the three thousand pounds needed to buy such a vessel.
