CONDITIONS OF T^IFE AND WORK AMONG THE FORESTS 93 



quantity of dead trees, standing or fallen, which cover large areas in the fo- 

 rests of Norrland. 



The employer in the case of charcoal-burning of this type in the forests 

 is generally a firm owning a sawmill, a charcoal company or some indivi- 

 dual — a cultivator landowner, a leaseholder or a rural tradesman who trades 

 in charcoal to a greater or less extent. In certain districts, especially in 

 Upper Norrland, charcoal production is undertaken as a domestic industry 

 by labourers and small cultivators who buy dead wood and other waste 

 in the State forests, cut it up, burn it, and sell the charcoal to traders or 

 to ironworks directly. 



Small cultivators as well as landless workmen take part in the char- 

 coal-burning in the forests. The proportion in which the different social 

 groups are represented in the industr3' appears from the following figures : 

 of 151 workmen employed in ten charcoal-burning yards which were the 

 object of an especial enquiry, sixty-seven belonged to the landowners' 

 class, eight to that of the leaseholders, seventy-six to that of the labourers. 

 The chief group of labourers employed on charcoal-burning is that of the 

 charcoal-burners , each of whom usually contracts to manufacture a fixed 

 quantity of charcoal for a fixed payment. Where charcoal is manufactured 

 in the forests by a more or less primitive method the charcoal-burners cut 

 the wood for themselves and with their own or with hired horses transport 

 it to the stacks, whence they also transport the charcoal, when it is ready, 

 to the loading places. Where the technique of charcoal-burning is more ad- 

 vanced the charcoal burners generally engage special carters, woodcutters 

 and other workmen whom they pay themselves and who should be consid- 

 ered as being in some degree their assistants. 



The charcoal-burning season ordinarily lasts about six months in the 

 forests of Norrland. It was sufficiently difficult to obtain precise informa- 

 tion as to the length of the working day, but as far as cutting and transport- 

 ing the wood, setting up the stacks and transporting the charcoal are con- 

 cerned, the work generally coincides with that of exploiting the forests 

 as we have described it. When however charcoal burning is in progress 

 the work is more irregular, for at certain times it is necessary to watch the 

 stacks night and day. On these occasions Sunday work is inevitable, but 

 it is always exceptional. 



As regards pay, the workmen employed on charcoal-burning generally 

 earn from three to four crowns a day, approximately, and the carters about 

 twice as much for the work of a man and his horse. On the whole charcoal- 

 burning in the forests seems to be a little less profitable to the workmen than 

 tree-felling, especially where natural conditions are not very favourable, 

 and where the industry' is relatively new and the population not very fa- 

 miliar with the process of making charcoal.- The work is however sufficient- 

 ly sought after ; a circumstance explained by the fact that for reasons of 

 transport it is limited to the neighbourhood of means of communication, 

 namely the district within one or two Swedish miles of a railway station, 

 and the workmen usually live at home or in the vicinity and are employed 

 on agricultural labour at certain times of the year. 



