4 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



forests. From nowhere can reliable census information be 

 obtained, because forests are largely worked by the people 

 who own or rent agricultural subjects, and these people are 

 included statistically under Agriculture. So far as can be 

 traced, only in Bavaria was the actual situation investigated, 

 and there 75,000 people were engaged on 1,800,000 acres of 

 woods, and more than half that number were smallholders. But 

 we find in Fernow's Economic Forestry that the thirty-five 

 million acres of German forest contributed annually in wages 

 in pre-war days over ;£7, 000,000, and that ;^2 1,000,000 was 

 the wage-earners' quota in wood-working industries. In all 

 ;^29,ooo,ooo was the yearly contribution of the forests to 

 labour. 



The question arises by what method can afforestation be 

 extensively advanced at least expense to the State. I suggest 

 a limited contribution in money to planters on prescribed 

 conditions as the first. To take a specific case. If the present 

 temporary Unemployment Grant of ^^3 was continued per- 

 manently for each acre afforested, a plantation of a thousand 

 acres would cost the State only ;^3ooo. The immediate result 

 would be a cent, per cent, expenditure by the planter which 

 practically all passes to labour, and over sixty or seventy years 

 the woods established will make good a paysheet totalling at 

 least ;^9o,ooo. Can any other known encouragement to rural 

 industry show anything approaching this result? Objections 

 have been raised to any contribution by the State to the owners 

 of land, but these owners, pubHc and private, have fallen heir 

 to the heaviest obligations experienced in recent years, and 

 it may be fairly contended that given a promising scheme of 

 rural development, such as afforestation, it is not in the interest 

 of the State or of the people to exclude any particular section 

 of the community from assistance if that assistance will benefit 

 the nation as a whole, and, without the co-operation of owners, 

 the industry cannot expand properly. In every European 

 country where forestry is recognised and prosecuted by the 

 State, such aid is given to the planter. The sum required 

 in this country to assure the making of forests by the method 

 suggested need not exceed say jT^i^o^ooo annually, it might be 

 less, but it must have some permanency, for the process of forest 

 formation has to be carried over at least twenty years. This 

 sum would fix an annual planting of 30,000 acres, and a labour 



