86 SWEDEN - AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY IN GENERAL 



attendant on labour, the effect of the system of contracts on the price of 

 labour, etc. 



Tree felling takes place principally in winter and the duration of the 

 forestry season depends consequently in the first place on the very variable 

 duration of the snow in different places. It is influenced also by many other 

 circumstances, as by the greater or less amount of local forest enterprise, 

 local customs, etc. In the whole zone of enquiry it may be said that there 

 is a normal forest exploitation season of seventeen weeks or four months, 

 a little less in the more southern and the coast regions and a little more in 

 the north and in the forest regions of the interior. 



It must however be possible only quite exceptionally to carry on the 

 work on all the working da5'^s of this period, which should rather be looked 

 upon as the season in the gross. Farmwork, hoHdays on feastdays, journeys 

 to get provisions and for other reasons, all take time which must be deducted 

 from the actual working days of a forest exploiting season, which actually 

 is far from attaining to its maximum length but covers from fifty to a hun- 

 dred days. 



As regards the average number of working hours in a day these are usually 

 seven or eight in the first part of the season, hours of rest being deducted. 

 When in February the days become lighter the net hours of work are 

 lengthened to an average of nine or ten. 



These data chiefly concern woodcutters. A carter's day is usually 

 longer, carters having to give much time to the care of their horses and means 

 of transport. Special circumstances often make the length of their working 

 days irregular. It appears that they work on Sundays only exceptionally, 

 usually on the execution of repairs or on other tasks enabling the normal 

 course of the weeks' activity. 



Work on forest holdings is almost invariably piece-work and is paid for 

 according to its quantity, irrespectively of the time spent on it. It follows 

 that to establish statistics as to the worknen's wages and earnings is espe- 

 cially difficult and is possible only in a limited degree. To obtain the most 

 certain data possible a certain number of enquiries were however organized, 

 the results obtained being used to check each other, mutually. Thus on 

 the one hand information as to the normal daily wages of carters, woocutters 

 and other workmen were collected from the authorities and from competent 

 persons in the various districts, and on the other hand the local investigators 

 calculated the average amount earned by a day's work in the places they 

 visited. Finally with respect to a certain number of these places the real 

 gross and net earnings of the workmen were established from wages-lists 

 supplied by the employers. From the chief results of the enquiries the fol- 

 lowing averages can be deduced. They do not however show the notable 

 variations in wages according to districts and to individual holdings, or their 

 variations among the different workmen in one place. 



