For generations untold, Labradormen have kept dogs for hauling their loads and the dogs have served them well.  They were not willing to substitute reindeer.  They knew their dogs and they did not know the reindeer, and they refused to kill their dogs.  To educate them to the change it was evident would be a long process.

In the meantime the herd in Newfoundland was growing.  In 1911 it numbered one thousand head, and in 1912 approximated thirteen hundred.  Then an epidemic attacked them and numbers died.  Following this, illegitimate hunting of the animals began, and without proper means of guarding them Doctor Grenfell decided to turn them over to the Canadian Government.

During those strenuous years of war, when food was so scarce, a good many of the herd had been killed by poachers.  Perhaps we cannot blame the poachers, for when a man’s family is hungry he will go to lengths to get food for his children, and Doctor Grenfell recognized the stress of circumstances that led men to kill his animals and carry off the meat.  The epidemic, as stated, had proved fatal to a considerable number of the animals, and the herd therefore was much reduced in size.  The remnant were corralled in 1918, and shipped to the Canadian Government at St. Augustine, in southern Labrador, where they are now thriving and promise marvelous results.

Some day Doctor Grenfell’s efforts with reindeer will prove a great success at least in southern Labrador, where the dogs are less vicious, and play a less important part in the life of the people than on the eastern coast.  Upon these thousands of acres of uncultivated and otherwise useless land the reindeer will multiply until they will not only feed the people of Labrador but will become no small part of the meat supply of eastern Canada.  His introduction of reindeer into southern Labrador will be remembered as one of the great acts of his great life of activity.  Their introduction was the introduction of an industry that will in time place the people of this section in a position of thrifty independence.

There never was yet a man with any degree of self-respect who did not wish to pay his own way in the world.  Every real man wishes to stand squarely upon his own feet, and pay for what he receives.  To accept charity from others always makes a man feel that he has lost out in the battle of life.  It robs him of ambition for future effort and of self-reliance and self-respect.

Doctor Grenfell has always recognized this human characteristic.  It was evident to him when he entered the mission field in Labrador that in seasons when the fisheries failed and no fur could be trapped a great many of the people in Labrador and some in northern Newfoundland would be left without a means of earning their living.  There are no factories there and no work to be had except at the fisheries in the summer, trapping in winter and the brief seal hunt in the spring and fall.  When any of these fail, the pantries are empty and the men and their families must suffer.  But most of the people are too proud to admit their poverty when a season of poverty comes to them.  They are eager for work and willing and ready always to turn their hand to anything that offers a chance to earn a dollar.