Modern Moses

Antigonish* is a tidy little Nova Scotian town (pop. 2,200) with a picturesque name and a unique university: St. Francis Xavier. To St. F.X., as Bluenoses call it, educators come from all over the world. Last week Jesuit Father Ralph O'Neill, of Philadelphia, arrived. Like the others, he had come to study the Antigonish Movement, to see how adult and cooperative education had bettered the lot of Maritime fishermen and farmers. He wanted to do similar work among the Filipinos.

Poverty for All. Those who come to St. F.X.'s modest brick and wooden buildings soon get to know the broad-minded Roman Catholic priest who is the director of the college's extension department: the Rev. Dr. Moses Matthias Coady. His ringing voice, ruddy features and muscular 250 pounds are familiar all over the Maritimes. He was born on a farm in a Nova Scotian village, tiny Margaree Forks, which had poverty aplenty. He studied in Antigonish, in Rome, and in Washington, taught school, preached, but never forgot his birthplace.

Education for All. In 1926, while teaching education at St. F.X., he decided to put some pet theories into practice. He sold Margaree townsfolk on the idea of a big new school. They raised the money for materials, built the school with free labor. Then Dr. Coady turned to the adults. He organized a study club, explained the co-op way of doing things. Out of that came the Margaree Producers' Association of 30 members.

The idea spread. In Nova Scotia alone there were 35,000 fishermen, farmers, loggers, miners who could neither read nor write. In a year and a half, Dr. Coady's self-help doctrine ("seek, and ye shall find") had sprouted 1,000 adult study clubs with 10,000 members. With adult education came co-op stores, farm and fish producer groups. Impressed, St. F.X. set up a special extension department to carry on the work, put Dr. Coady at the head of it. The Dominion Government picked Dr. Coady to organize the badly exploited Maritime fishermen, some of whom got as little as $75 a year in the hungry '30s. He started the United Maritime Fishermen, saw it grow into the world's largest producer of lobsters.

Plenty for All. In one hamlet 65 fishermen were taught to read and write in a year; in Little Dover a 65-year-old man learned to write. Now the movement has 40 full-time and part-time workers drawn from all creeds (unlike the regular St. F.X. staff of priests).

At 64, Dr. Coady can tot up his successes. Now Nova Scotia has 12,500 members in 73 incorporated co-ops and about a dozen unincorporated ones, which do a $6,000,000-a-year business. It has 33,645 members banded together in credit unions, who have lent one another over $9,000,000. In the Maritimes as a whole 100,000 members have joined coops.

All this impresses others, but not Dr. Coady. Says he: "A people can do ten times what they think they can do."

*Micmac Indian for "the place where branches are torn off the trees by bears gathering beech-nuts."

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