This film shows the growth of cooperatives in the Maritime provinces and how they brought new life and hope to poverty-stricken fishermen. While we glimpse many aspects of the cooperative movement in Cape Breton and all through the Maritimes, the major part of this story deals with the fishing folk (one-sixth of the Maritimes' population) and shows how, thanks to the cooperative effort, fishermen such as Willie Leblanc have come from the hungry, hopeless years of the 1920s to better times.