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.