II 



You may recollect that during the war there was a los. flat rate 

 for pitwood which meant the sale of props, which meant planting, 

 which meant employment, while the raising of the rates means 

 no sales, no planting, and unemployment. You have got to 

 remember that it costs 28s. a ton from Inverness or Aberdeen 

 to the principal areas where sales can be carried out, and when 

 you work that out, it means that for Scots fir, the haulage by 

 railway costs three times the profit, that is to say, out of every 

 IS. 4d. you get, you have to pay is. in freight. Well, you 

 cannot carry on business in that way. But planters as you 

 know are optimists, they need to be, and they have got great 

 faith. We plant by faith, and we prune and thin in hope, and 

 if we do our part, we believe that Providence will do the rest. 

 But I think it is only fair, if Providence and we do our parts, 

 that the Government should also step in and help. Anyhow we 

 must look for better times. When things were looking rather 

 at their worst, when we were all saying that we should have 

 to discharge practically the whole of our men, and that nothing 

 could be done in the way of planting for economic reasons, 

 help did arrive. In adversity we found that there was some 

 good, for under the Government employment scheme— we must 

 give the Forestry Commission credit for it — we have been able 

 to do a great deal. I know that in my own case it practically 

 meant that I have been able to keep in employment generally 

 one hundred men at least, whom I could not otherwise have 

 employed. It has bridged the gap. But quite apart from the 

 question of employment that it is giving to these men, I would 

 remind you that the Government are not throwing away their 

 money, are not putting it into the gutter, if there is anything in 

 forestry at all, because they will get it back in future prosperity, 

 in employment, in trade, and in taxation, and in maintaining 

 a population in districts where the population would inevitably 

 have required to leave if something was not done. And they 

 are enabling the wastage of war to be made good. Landowners 

 were prepared to put down a good deal. They were prepared 

 to put down from ;;£s, to ^-j an acre, but not ^10 or ;!^i2 

 which would make forestry absolutely impossible ; and the mere 

 fact of this grant means that in two months something like 

 15,000 acres have suddenly been prepared and planted by the 

 landowners themselves, and up till then practically nothing was 

 being done. The forestry scheme before, through no fault of 



