Social Assistance
Labour unions began to talk about the amount of money people needed to survive. In the 1920s, this was $20 a week for a family.¹⁹ Today, we call this the poverty line. This idea is important. In those days, people who were old or did not have an income could get some government relief. But it did not provide enough money to keep people alive. The government was afraid that people would never get off relief if it did. In the 1930s, the old age pension and the allowance for widows was $50 a year. It would have been hard for anyone to live on even twice as much money.

Changes After World War II
By the time World War II ended in 1945, some things were better. All the milk sold in Corner Brook and Grand Falls was pasteurized. So was about 70% of the milk sold in St. John's. (See Picture Four.) Bad housing was still a problem in St. John's though. In 1945, there were still about 900 houses in the city that did not have sewer connections.

In the same year, about three times as many people died from tuberculosis in Newfoundland as did in Canada.²⁰ Two doctors from England, Thomas Garland and P. D'Arcy Hart, tried to decide why tuberculosis was such a problem in Newfoundland. In other countries, tuberculosis was spread in milk, but in Newfoundland this was not a problem. Bad housing helped to spread tuberculosis in St. John's and also on Bell Island. But in most of Newfoundland, bad housing was not a problem either.

Doctor Garland and Doctor Hart found that many people could not afford to eat well. This was because the amount of money paid to people on relief was too small. If the person who earned most of the money in a family got tuberculosis, government relief did not give enough money to allow the other members of the family to eat well. Soon, they became weak and caught tuberculosis too. These doctors believed that better social assistance would help prevent sickness.²¹

Unions, private charities and doctors all began to understand that the government could solve many health problems by protecting people from poverty and starvation. When Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949, unemployment insurance programs and new social assistance programs were set up. These provided people with enough money to survive. Laws were made about minimum wages for workers. Other laws were made to prevent landlords from renting houses that are not fit to live in. Today, people can complain if the housing they rent is bad. Landlords can be fined. Public health programs also make sure that children get shots to protect them from infectious diseases.