Chapter 8
Crafts and Industry
No, Newfoundland was not the only place dreaming the golden dream.
Across the bridge excitement trailed from lands across the water. Between
1850 and 1900 Britain, France and America burst with new ideas and exploration
and inventions. By 1905 you could feel the thrill in Newfoundland.
The government had planned a big show of home crafts for 1892. It
was proud of work done at home by crafts men and women. It wanted to
show factory made goods as well. It planned contests for the best product
designs. It would show the work of over forty local crafts and trades.
It would celebrate tailors, tinsmiths, printers, and workers in leather
and metal and wood.
Western countries had been having these shows since the 1850s. People
wanted to believe they were in a dream age, when they made whatever
they needed.
But St. John's never had its big show. 1892 was the year of one of
its great fires. Hundreds of little workshops were burnt down. Many
crafts people went away to Boston or Halifax to make a new start. It
was easier for big factories to rebuild. Most of them were owned by
groups of wealthy merchants.
Still, the fire did not end the golden dream in St. John's. By 1900
the city had been rebuilt. Even a great fire could not destroy the spirit
of the age. In 1900 electric streetcars started running in St. John's.
In 1901 the Italian Guglielmo Marconi was running around the top of
Signal Hill with his kites, trying to catch a wireless signal from across
the Atlantic ocean. In 1903 the first two automobiles came to St. John's.
The colonial government wanted Newfoundland to grow. It wanted the
colony to export a lot, and import very little. It put tax on imports
that could be made locally. It kept taxes low on hemp and flax for making
nets, and on supplies coopers needed to make barrels.
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