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there was considerable mobility and social fiuidity.\ Battery radios came to the island in
the 30's.
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In the time of the family fishery, oUlport communities were largely self-reliant. Their
subsistence economy made them self-sufficient; the males of every household fished, buill
houses, made boats, traps, and nets; the women, among all other domeslic activities,
tended vegetable-gardens, made the family clothes and quills, wasting nothing. This
independence was largely reduced by the introduction of the merchants' tTuck-system,
whereby fishing gear, foods and clothes were essentially supplied from their slOre to each
family household. Work was cooperative and unspecializcd; every man was a Jack of all
trades.2 Occupational homogeneity and versatility produced an egalitarian society between
the fisher families, and was partly kept in place by the truck-system. 3 At the top of this
egalitarian majority were the one or two local merchants, the priest and the teacher. All,
even when residing in the community, were looked upon as "superiors" and "01ltsiders,"4
This social equality was also consciously maintained by the fishermen themselves: any
attempt or pretence to raise oneself above others in any way was controlled by ridicule and
satire, or verbalized, such as "if you want 10 be different you best leave" and "we all corne
up together or we do not corne up at all,"5 The democratic nature of outport society was
further renected in the infonnality of terms of address used: "boy," "maid," "my dear,"
"my love" between men and women of equal age, "aunt/uncle" and "Miss/Mr." to elderly
persons who not related, but only the latter to the merchant, teacher, mission nurse. 6
Traditional societies such as the outpOrtS were homogeneous not only in occupation
and status but also in terms of belief and ethos. The English and Irish immigrants tended
to segregate themselves geographically from each other as neither group looked forward 10
being neighbours again in Ihe new country.7 Cases of marked violence between the two,
1The Trans-Canada highway crossing the island was laid in the, si: