Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1886 — IMPENDING STARVATION. [ARTICLE]

IMPENDING STARVATION.

By the Failure of the Labrador Fisheries Thousands Are Made Destitute. [Halifax (N. 8.) dispatch.) Alfred B. Morrine, member of the Newfoundland Legislature for Bonavista, now here, says: “The Labrador fisheries are an entire failure; at their best they afford but a bare subsistence Thirty thousand people go from Newfoundland to Labrador for ti*h eveiy year. This year they have not caught enough to pay the cost of transportation and supplies. At least 20,000 more people are dependent upon the success of the above-mentioned 30,000. The total failure of the shore fishery this year renters 70,000 people destitute, only 20,000 of those depending upon them being pr pared to sta d the loss of a year’s labor. The peop’e have barely enough for the present necessities, and no means of earning a dollar. The only relief to this picture is the fact that ti e potato crop, the only crop raised on the island, is turning out well, and will yield about a peck per head of population. This seems highly colored, in Y.ew of the recent fabrications of starvation stories among the Labrador Esquimaux, but it is the pla n English of actual facts and inevitable consequences.”