Number nine was on the extreme northern edge of the white settlers at Ford's Harbour. The story of it is too long to relate, but the trade there, in spite of many difficulties, still continues to preach a gospel and spell much blessing to poor people. To help out, we have sent north to this station three of our boys from the orphanage, as they grew old enough to go out into the world for themselves. One disaster, in the form of a shipwreck, overtook the fine fellow in charge of this most northerly venture. For the first time in his life he came south, to seek a wife, his former wife having succumbed to tuberculosis. He brought with him his year's products of fur and skin boots. The mail steamer on which he was travelling struck a rock off Battle Harbour, and most of his goods were lost uninsured, he himself gladly enough escaping with his life. It remained for our tenth venture to bring the hardest battle, and in a sense the greatest measure of success. Spurred by the benefits of the Red Bay store, the people of a little village about forty miles away determined to combine also. The result was a fine store near our hospital at Battle Harbour--which during the first year did sixty thousand dollars' worth of business. This served to put a match to the explosive wrath of those whose opposition hitherto had been that of rats behind a wainscot. They secured from their friends a Government commission appointed to inquire into the work of the Mission as "a menace to honest trade." The leading petitioner had been the best of helpers to the first venture. When the traders affected by it had first boycotted the fish, he had sent his steamer and purchased it from the company. Now the boot was on the other leg. The Commission and even the lawyers have all told me that they were prejudiced against the whole Mission by hearsay and misinterpretations, before they even began their exhaustive inquiry. Their findings, however, were a complete refutation of all charges, and the best advertisement possible. It would not be the time to say that the whole cooperative venture has been an unqualified success; but the causes of failure in each case have been perfectly obvious, and no fault of the system. Lack of business ability has been the main trouble, and the lack of courage and unity which everywhere characterizes mankind, but is perhaps more emphasized on a coast where failure means starvation, and where the cooperative spirit has been rendered very difficult to arouse owing to mistrust born of religious sectarianism and denominational schools. These all militate very strongly against that unity which alone can enable labour to come to its own without productive ability.