CONDITIONS OF I,IFE AND WORK AMONG THE FORESTS 9I 



rect outlets to the open air. Yet even if the huts be judged as temporary 

 lodgings and with due regard to the special conditions of forest life, a large 

 number of those at present existing must be held to be decidedly inadequate 

 and a larger number to be extremely overcrowded. 



§ 2. Timber floating. 



When in spring the workmen employed on the winter tree-felling are 

 distributed over different branches of labour, about a tenth of their number 

 seize the opportunity for work offered by timber-floating, which industry 

 is generally managed in this country, technically and economically, not by 

 the private owners of woods but by timber floating societies formed accord- 

 ing to certain rules. The work is one which needs much strength and endu- 

 rance, and it is therefore the young foresters who become floaters. Conse- 

 quently a relatively large number of the floaters belong to the class of la- 

 bourers ; while in the class of forester landowners and leaseholders not the 

 heads of families but their sons and other relatives, who are not absolutely 

 needed for agriculture in the floating season, engage on the work. 



The conditions of timber-floating are characterized, like those of forest 

 exploitation, by the independence and respousibiht}^ of the labourers, or 

 rather of the working gangs, as a consequence of the small number of work- 

 men and the scattered and changing places of work. These circumstances 

 determine the character of the labour contracts customary in the case of 

 timber floating. They are usually contracts for piece-work concluded with a 

 land-owning cultivator or a leaseholder living near the stream of water, or 

 with some other person accustomed to the local timber-floating. The con- 

 tractor undertakes to ensure the floating of the wood in a certain district, 

 he employs his servants and neighbours or engages additional labour for the 

 purpose. These contracts are also concluded with gangs of a greater or 

 less number of workmen who assume collective responsibihty for the work 

 which they do under the direction of a foreman chosen by themselves. 



On the streams and the affluents the work generally lasts about four 

 weeks, from the middle or end of May to St. John's day. On the large rivers 

 the season is longer, but it is by no means the same along the whole course 

 of a river : in the lower reaches the larger quantity of floated timber leng- 

 thens it, so that near the mouth, especially near the barriers where sorting 

 takes places, it often lasts throughout the summer. An average working 

 day lasts 12.4 hours on the smaller streams, 11. 7 hours on the large rivers ; 

 but these averages are highly abstract for the work is most irregular. Some- 

 times the floaters merely supervise; sometimes even, for days together, 

 they are quite idle; but at other times their working capacity is taxed to 

 its utmost physical limits, on occasion for several days and nights on end. 



Although timber-floating is mainly piece-work the wages and earnings 

 of those engaged on it are far less easy to discover than the earnings of the 

 other forest labourers. The regular average daily wages of timber-floaters 

 in the different departments appear from the following table : 



