184 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Government takes up in the face of the numerous original 

 failures. Many other practical questions of vital importance 

 were pressed into the background by the desire to produce a 

 scheme that would greatly help to solve the problem of un- 

 employment. The witnesses were examined, cross-examined, 

 and re-examined on this point to a tedious extent, evidently 

 in the hope of gathering sufficient support for the preconceived 

 purpose. The Commissioners have, at a cost of much valuable 

 time and labour, succeeded to a certain extent, and by the 

 very magnitude of their proposals, in throwing sand into the 

 eyes of even such a paper as the Times, which hails the scheme 

 as providing employment for many of the men who are 

 at present without work in the towns, and says that even the 

 more feeble and unskilled workers could be remuneratively 

 employed in planting. 



Dr Nisbet makes a very telling remark on this subject, and 

 I may mention that, in order to secure an experienced staff of 

 labourers for cultural operations, a scheme has been introduced 

 in Germany under which work-people, both men and women, 

 who have been employed for three years, obtain an increase 

 in their daily wages of nearly 10 per cent, and a further 

 similar advance after the sixth year. This scheme gains 

 more support daily, and has, in the hope that it will tend to 

 check immigration towards the towns, been extended to all 

 other forest work, even when done under contract. Even during 

 the period of afforestation, however, a considerable number of 

 country people, men, women and youths, living in the vicinity 

 of such cultural work, will find employment, year after year, 

 during periods when other work is scarce. 



Now though it may be unhesitatingly accepted that afforesta- 

 tion of properly selected land, costing even up to ^10 an 

 acre, would be a safe, and under some conditions even a very 

 profitable investment, I feel inclined to believe that some more 

 rational way of effecting this could be found than by the whole- 

 sale expropriation proposed by the Royal Commission, a step 

 which would only be defensible after all other means had been 

 tried and failed. Paragraph 93 of the Report sketches out a 

 plan on the lines of which a feasible scheme might be built up 

 with reasonable hopes of success. Prima facie it seems un- 

 objectionable that the proprietors should give the land, the 

 State providing the cost of afforestation, management, and 



