AFFORESTATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 627 



where more scientific and intense forestry is established. This, 

 however, is not so marked : in Germany insurance statistics 

 show that from 125 to 175 acres of State forest provide employ- 

 ment for one labourer for a year of 300 working days. Some 

 explanation is no doubt to be found in the fact that those re- 

 turned in the United Kingdom as woodmen are employed on 

 work not strictly speaking of a forest nature, or on areas not 

 included in that returned as woodland, but the fact remains that 

 established forests do not in themselves provide employment for 

 much labour. But this is not the whole case for afforestation. 

 In the first place much of the mountain and heath land which 

 might be afforested now only provides employment for one man 

 to every 1,000 or 2,000 acres, while the preparation and initial 

 stocking of this land with trees requires more labour than forest 

 land which can be re-stocked by natural regeneration, sowing or 

 indeed even by planting. Taking the average cost of clearing 

 the ground, fencing and draining where necessary, raising the 

 plants, putting them out and replacing any casualties at £6 \os. 

 per acre, £^ 105. of this may not unfairly be taken to be spent 

 directly on labour. The Royal Commission assumed £^/\. to be 

 a reasonable annual remuneration for forest labour including 

 housing and other incidental expenses, so that based on these 

 figures the initial work of afforestation on 6 acres should pro- 

 vide employment for one man for the six months' duration of the 

 planting season. With, say, 6,000,000 acres of land to be 

 planted in sixty years, employment for six months would be 

 provided by the initial work of afforestation for 16,000 men, or 

 double of what the whole 6,000,000 acres are providing now. 

 Great as this increase is, the number of persons dealt with by 

 the distress committee has often recently exceeded 100,000, so 

 that even if such labour were suitable, relief could only be 

 provided for a small proportion. Apart from this, the margin of 

 profit in forestry necessitates the greatest economies, particularly 

 at the beginning of the rotation ; for with an eighty-year 

 rotation, the original outlay mounts up to nearly eleven-fold by 

 the time the crop has reached maturity, when calculated with 

 3 per cent, compound interest. And apart from the probable 

 increased cost of unemployed labour as such, there can be no 

 doubt that the greatest economy is effected by initial success in 

 planting and it requires but little practical experience of this 

 operation to know that success is only ensured when skilled 



