Il8 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



and other necessaries, for which he claimed a lien on the 

 year's catch, everything from Governors down to liens being 

 annual in the colony. The relation of the ship-owners and 

 boat-owners to their employees was different. Ship-owners 

 paid their employees part profits ; but profit-sharing began 

 to be regarded as an anachronism in the inshore fisheries. 

 Captain Lee wrote : ' the ships from Bideford and Barnstaple 

 are the only ships that go on shares with their companies 

 now' (1735); and that these ships sought new shores in 

 Placentia Bay, while other similar ships sought new seas on 

 the Grand Banks. The new industrial system drove the old 

 system out into the ocean, or else into unfrequented nooks 

 and corners. Under the new system three partners owned 

 a boat and had two employees, whom they paid in fixed 

 amounts of cod or of merchant's bills, both of which were 

 only convertible into necessaries at the merchant's store ; or 

 else of ' necessaries which is generally rum at a very extra- 

 vagant price '- 1 If the payment was made in cod, it was clear 

 that the employees were still part-owners and profit-sharers, 

 taking an invariable instead of a variable share of the produce 

 of their fishing; and if the payment was made in bills or 

 necessaries, it was equally clear that the employer only 

 meant to repurchase the employees' share of the produce at 

 a valuation. The authors and actors in the new system were 

 only conscious of substituting certain for uncertain profits, 

 but contemporary commentators described the new system as 

 the substitution of wages for profits. In many respects the 

 new system of certain profits resembled a wage-system in 

 which rum was the wage-fund. Moreover, the fixed price 

 was reckoned, although it was never paid, in money ; and its 

 money value was assessed at from 7 to 25 a season. 

 Further, the employees from England bore a nearer re- 



1 So Lord Vere Beauclerk, Sept. 26, 1730. Compare Captain Percy, 

 Oct. 13, 1720; Captain Bowler, Oct. 9, 1724; St. Lo, Nov. 15, 1727 ; 

 Captain Lee, Sept. 29, 1735. 



