ten men who had found the difficulties of life too great for them—under-nourished, ill-clad and with obviously lowered morale due to years of partial or complete unemployment.²

Under-nourished means under-fed. Morale is spirit or confidence.

Lodge wished the men luck, but he expected at least half of them to give up and come back to St. John's. He thought they would find the work in Markland too hard.

At first, the men lived in tents. They cleared some land near the road with hand tools-axes, picks and shovels. It was hard work, but in a few weeks, they cleared about half an acre. Then the Fishermen's Protective Union (the FPU) offered to loan them a tractor. It was shipped from Port Union on the railway. The tractor made work easier.

Thomas Lodge was not the only one who had doubts. In a report to the Commission of Government, the four trustees later wrote that most of these men had been living in poverty for more than three years. Before they left to go to Markland, the trustees found:

that many [of the men] had...no worldly goods of any kind. Others had to be provided with clothing before they could even proceed to Markland to begin work. A large proportion of them had been unable to let their children leave their homes in cold weather, as the children were so scantily clad.³

The trustees worried about what they-called the "moral recovery" of these men. They thought that living on the dole might have made them too weak and too dependent on handouts. Maybe these men would not be willing or able to work hard.

Thomas Lodge left Newfoundland for two months after the men went to Markland. When he returned, he went to visit Markland. He later wrote, "when I saw the men again I was profoundly impressed by the moral transformation which had taken place...These ten Newfoundlanders proved themselves ready to work to the limit of their physical powers."⁴ All that summer, the men worked from 6:30 in the morning until dark. When enough land was cleared, they began to build houses. Most of the men did not know how to do carpentry. The men who did were put into different groups so that each group had one man who knew what he was doing.