This picture shows how ore was loaded in the Bell Island mines after the "expansion programme" of the 1950's. The machines were produced by the Joy Manufacturing Company and were known as Joy loaders. The pick and shovel were now but symbols. Yet the heritage of the men who had used them lingered into an age of automation. To change implements is one thing; to change men another. Nor did mechanization remove the fear that had haunted Bell Island from its earliest days as a mining town - the threat of layoffs and shut-downs. Indeed, such fear was justified; for in the same decade that the Bell Island operation was brought to its peak of productive efficiency, other mines came into production which provided severe competition for the local product in the world market place. Ironically, one of the most important of these new ventures was partly located in the Province of Newfoundland - in western Labrador, astride the Quebec border. The Labrador mines were cheap open pit operations and the ore they produced was of a much higher quality than the phosphorus-laden haematite found beneath Conception Bay. The corporate connection which the Bell Island operation enjoyed with the Nova Scotia steel industry offered some protection against market forces, but in the long run this was not enough to avert catastrophe.
