CONDITIONS OF LIFE AND WORK AMONG THE FORESTS 83 



general data thus collected detailed descriptions of certain more limited 

 parts of the zone of enquiry were established. Thus 173 forest holdings and 

 ten charcoalburners' yards, which employed respectively, 8,360 and 151 work- 

 men, were selected on the proposal of the departmental and forest admini- 

 strations and the chief inspectors of forests, as offering types of the different 

 natural and local conditions and the different methods of forestry; and in 

 these in February' and March 1913 an enquiry' was made by some fifty spe- 

 cial agents who collected on the spot, following a detailed questionnaire, 

 data as to the conditions of work, housing and feeding. As regarded certain 

 forest domains taken to be typical, additional individual data, on the subject 

 of the working hours, the wages and the personal confiition of all the employ- 

 ees, were furnished by the respective employers according to a special form. 

 The report, which is mainly based on material thus obtained, first treats 

 of the conditions, the development and the present position of the forest 

 industry in North Sweden. In this connection emphasis is laid on the abrupt 

 and the profound transformation of the whole economic and social life of 

 the population, and similarly of methods of cultvation, owing to the rapid 

 development of the timber industry within a short space of time, that is 

 within two or three generations. It is remarked that in this cirumstance 

 must be sought the origin of the ver}^ complicated social problems, which 

 under the name of the " questions of Norrland " have latterly attracted 

 much attention from the public and from the government. Among these 

 problems is that of the forest workpeople, and it is connected with the 

 problem of improving conditions of life among this most important class of 

 society to which belong, more or less, the whole male rural population of 

 Northern Sweden, some 150,000 persons. 



§ I. The Exploitation of the forests. 



The legal person, whether individual or corporation, who is the true ulti- 

 mate employer of labour on forest holdings is the landowner. Often, how- 

 ever, the landowner sells the standing timber, which is then exploited not on 

 his behalf but on that of the purchaser, who thus becomes the employer, 

 properly so-called. The difference is very important to conditions of work, 

 for it is in the nature of things that a limited liability company, for example, 

 should have more desire and ability to ensure good conditions to its forest 

 labourers, when there is question of a long projected tree-felling within its 

 forests, than when the question is one of making the quickest possible use 

 of a purchased right of exploitation. In 48 per cent, of the hokUngs covered 

 by the enquiry' the owner of the timber was also the landowner ; in 52 per 

 cent, he was not. Of the forest workmen 62 per cent, were employed by land- 

 owners exploiting their own forests and 38 per cent, by purchasers of timber. 

 As regards the different categories of owners of woods the enquiry shows 

 that the State and the communes have never practised tree-felling except 

 on their own lands, and that rural landowners have done so on land not 

 their own only exceptionally. Companies have however cut down purchased 



