FORESTRY. 11 
exactly the same as from the Novar woodlands—Il1s an acre. 
Here, then, we have this result, that land which, for agricultural 
purposes, is not worth at the highest estimate more than 2s an 
acre annually, has been made to return an annual nett profit 
of Ils an acre. I say, then, that money so invested cannot 
be regarded as unprofitable. Moreover, these results were 
obtained upon the prices of timber current at the close of last 
century, whereas all indications point to a considerable rise in 
that price. The German official returns show that during the 
last forty years the nett profit per acre has been steadily 
increasing, owing to rise of prices and the establishment of 
pulping mills and chemical works. 
BRINGING THE PEOPLE BACK TO THE LAND. 
All I ask, then, is that the State should invest £10,000 a 
year in the purchase and planting of land. At the end of fifty 
years it would have made a progressive investment of half a 
million sterling—the cost of four days’ campaign against the 
Boers. The property which it had acquired on the rent basis 
of 2s an acre would be yielding 11s an acre, a rise in value of 
590 per cent., and this assuming, against all appearances, that 
the price of timber will continue stationary for half a century. 
But that is not all the advantage to be gained. The minds of 
politicians and sociologists are grievously exercised just now, 
and justly so, about the physical deterioration of our population 
owing to the concentration of the working classes in our large 
towns. No greater boon can be devised than healthy and 
remunerative work in the open-air of the country. Suppose my 
fifty thousand acres to have been planted by the State. Instead 
of a rural population of one shepherd to 1000 acres of pasture 
—950 shepherds on the whole extent—you will have established 
one woodman to every 100 acres, or 500 woodmen on the whole 
ground. Then there are the forest industries which will spring 
up; each requiring a number of hands. In the whole United 
Kingdom there is not a single pulping mill; we import 
£3,000,000 worth of wood pulp and wood paper annually. 
The first pulping mill was established in Saxony in the year 
1854, fifty years ago. There are now 600 pulping mills at work 
in the German Empire alone. 
