Develop or Perish
is an illustrated companion to Escape Hatch by Gerhard P. Bassler. Most of the
pictures in this book were offered for publication by the more than 100
immigrants and Newfoundlanders interviewed about Newfoundland’s New Industries
of the 1950s and 1960s. The immigrant interviewees included German, Austrian, and
Latvian workers and managers, as well as some of their wives and adult
children. Premier J.R Smallwood had recruited them from Germany, along with 15
of the 17 industries that employed them, to industrialize Newfoundland after it
had joined Canada in 1949. Along with additional images from archives and
newspapers, these photos provide a unique pictorial record of the New
Industries story.
