Wages - Then and Now

Now you talk about, it was only yesterday that i was setting down here thinking about what the wages used to be. I know what I'm talking about. I worked in the woods up in Bonne Bay - little Bonne Bay Pond for a dollar a day. Then you had to work for a month before you got rated. Rated, that meant to see if you had done enough work to keep you on and get paid. Now everybody is getting five or six dollars an hour - not talk of a day.

Sure Manuel, when you started teaching in Daniels Hr. back in 1956 you started of getting $62 a month and then in June you were getting $92 a month. Boy that was good money.

The year before that me and you fished together, lobster fished that is, we got 47 crates - big crates - 140-150 lbs. each. The last nine crates that we shipped away to Boston average $6 a crate. We got $54 total. That year, and I can show you the proof, its all in there, in the room, in the cash box, we cleared up $721 for the two of us.