1909] on Afforestation. 641 



estimate of cost and prove the capacity of labour. An official 

 review of the world's timber supply would do much to remove 

 the plausible timidity of national financiers, and a careful survey of 

 lands in the United Kingdom would demonstrate our potentialities. 

 Most of all, such experiment may be hoped to educate public opinion 

 and enlist popular sympathy. I venture to appeal to you and to all 

 interested in the welfare of the land and the rural community to 

 give the subject your attention. A broad view of economics cannot 

 exclude from its cognisance the grave national charge which un- 

 employment, with all its concomitant results, involves, to say 

 nothing of the personal deterioration by which it is often accom- 

 panied. No other proposal with which I am acquainted offers so 

 fair a prospect of healthy and wholesome occupation. No other 

 device for dealing with slack trade and want of work can be pro- 

 vided at so little ultimate cost to the community. Even if you think 

 under these conditions afforestation will not pay, there will be some 

 return. Contrast this with the two millions of local loans sanctioned 

 last winter by the Local Government Board. No one can say that 

 this expenditure is in any sense reproductive. An analysis will 

 reveal the fact that, save where work was anticipated, which in 

 itself will have an injurious result on employment in the future, no 

 gain except those of local amenities, such as parks and gardens, was 

 achieved. 



To sum up, a national scheme of afforestation claims that it will 

 contribute towards the solution of unemployment, if only by checking 

 the rural exodus to the towns. It will provide a safe and reasonably 

 remunerative investment for capital, and it will, in days when 

 the world's timber supply is sensibly diminished, make our home 

 industries to a great extent independent of foreign supjilies. Were 

 it to achieve only one of these results, it Avould still be well worth 

 undertaking. 



[I.C.G.] 



