"One Price Only and That the Lowest": Ryan Brothers' Retail Operations in Trinity, 1906-1930‪.‬

IN RECENT DECADES, in an effort to understand and frequently challenge prevailing views of mercantile supremacy in rural Newfoundland, historians have explored how merchants interacted with their clientele, especially fishermen, under the exchange system called truck. The belief that merchants held power in an unequal relationship, keeping fishermen deep in thrall and stifling economic development, had a long history, but, notwithstanding that every good story needs a villain, (1) it came under increasing criticism. One example, Gerald Sider's Culture and Class in Anthropology and History: A Newfoundland Illustration, was a catalyst of sorts. His assertion that merchant capital hindered Newfoundland's economic development through the truck system and reinterpretation of cultural practices spurred responding reviews and research that challenged his views and prompted closer examination of mercantile operations. (2) Among the more notable, Rosemary Ommer used ledgers from a mid-nineteenth-century maritime Canadian firm and, coupled with research on price structures for goods in two early twentieth-century Newfoundland firms, concluded that the presence of truck inhibited local "final demand linkages," so that fishermen were exploited and used an informal economy alongside the more formal structure. David MacDonald's study of a mid-nineteenth-century firm on Newfoundland's south coast concluded that charges levelled against merchants lacked empirical evidence, that attempts to control fishermen through credit were problematic, and that what was called the supply system was productive and a means of investing in the fishery. Sean Cadigan's work has included studying agency, that is, whether fishermen were able to profit from their labour and how, in 1930s Labrador, one merchant tried to keep fishermen satisfied in order to keep their business. David Bradley's study of Bonavista merchant James Ryan's relations with clients (mainly fishermen) in the late nineteenth century also produced evidence that fishermen exercised agency and relations with merchants were less unequal than portrayed. (3) Truck and credit vis-a-vis fishermen as producers and merchants as fish traders are, therefore, prominent in the historiography. This paper takes a different approach. Historians have noted the vast amount of documents a business could produce, and while Armstrong and Jones largely dismissed the use of journals, ledgers and other business documents because they don't explain the why of business operations, Ommer has defended using them and Bradley also suggested further study with these documents, but preferred to pursue "more interesting" ledger entries. Therefore, in-depth analysis using these business documents remains elusive. (4) However, day and shop books, cash books and journals, petty ledgers, personal and business correspondence and their marginalia, generated by Ryan Brothers in early twentieth-century Trinity, Trinity Bay, provide a rich trove of insight into their retail operations. Fishermen formed the largest single client base in rural Newfoundland but if James Ryan, who co-owned Ryan Brothers, had "only two avenues for profit: exporting fish to foreign markets and selling goods in the various communities," (5) the latter deserves greater attention. Consumer history is a relatively recent field and historians such as David Monod, studying Canadian merchants in a similar time frame to this paper, have noted that "Because retailing has attracted so little attention from social, cultural and business historians, it offers enormous opportunities for inquiry broad and narrow." Carla Wheaton's study of St. John's department stores covers the same period and although many trends uncovered in this research were paralleled in her thesis, rural retail practice was beyond the scope of her study. (6) British and North American retail historiography, referenced throughout this paper, confirms Ryan Brothers were exposed no less than their