THE RESULTS OF INTERIOR COLONIZATION IN FINLAND III 



The animal gross profits of the colonists' farms are employed as follows : 

 i) the colonists' families have their livelihoods ; 



2) they discharge their liabilities ; 



3) they receive 5 per cent, interest on the capital invested in the 

 farm, household and secondary businesses as well as 



4) a yearly surplus averaging 355 Finnish marks for a lot. 



* 

 * * 



The author also endeavours to bring the amount of the net profits, as 

 these vary with time, into relation with the factors influencing the farming 

 of colonists, in order thus to establish a certain relation of cause and effect 

 between these factors and the increase in the value of the property. 

 General conclusions cannot here be drawn because the material for research 

 and the data derived from bookkeeping are relatively too slight. It has been 

 possible to discover only a tendency and to offer a cursory introduction 

 to later studies. 



Next the size of the lots is considered, and the absolute conclusion is 

 at once made that the yearly increase in net profits rises with an extension 

 in the area of the farms. But the development shows a tendency to an equal- 

 ization of net profits with the original net profits of the time when the land 

 was taken over. 



If taken absolutely the original net profits are directly related to the 

 yearly increase : the greater thej^ are, by so much the greater are the yearty 

 net profits. If taken relative^ the increase is found to be greater in farms 

 which had at first little value. 



The available labour power in colonists' families has not notably 

 influenced either absolutely or relatively the yearly increase in net profits. 

 If the family be large it uses a proportionately large amount of the farm 

 products, and various of its members must find exterior employment which 

 seldom offers opportunities for saving. The amount of consumption and 

 the available labour power of the families have however influenced the an- 

 nual increase of net profits in the sense that the latter is proportionate to 

 consumption. This relation, the connection between the growing value 

 of the propert}' and the needs it supplies, cannot be explained by the ma- 

 terial of the enquir}^ 



The relation of the net profits to thedift'erent origins of single colonists' 

 farms is shown as follows. The highest annual increase in value, absokite 

 and relative, occurs in farms established on former sites of the dwellings 

 of cottagers and labourers. Next come such farms as stand on laud previously 

 cultivated but having had no buildings ; thirdly the farms formed on land 

 which had not been cultivated previous!}^ ; and lastly those on the sites 

 of the labourers' leaseholds, the earlier torps, which show the least increase 

 in annual profits. 



Here also no general conclusions can be made ; first because the num- 

 ber of the inve.stigated lots is too small ; and secondly because the effects 



