WASTE OF CAPITAL 71 



cases was unsaleable before the war. Such a stipula- 

 tion would have also been of the greatest help to a 

 deserving industry in the country that of those 

 nurserymen who devote their chief attention to 

 raising young forest trees. The war found these men 

 with large stocks of mature and maturing plants on 

 their hands which required a certain amount of labour 

 to grow and represented a considerable amount of 

 capital. Considerations of expense, since big plants 

 are unsuitable and also difficult to handle and plant 

 out when it is a matter of dealing with them in large 

 numbers, preclude the carrying over for many years 

 of tree seedlings and transplants in the nursery. 

 When they have reached an age, three to four years 

 usually, or size 18 inches to 2 feet, they must leave 

 the nursery and be put out into the woods. If the 

 nurseryman cannot sell them, since it would not be 

 business to give them away, though generosity has 

 been shown in this respect, he burns them, and the 

 time, labour, and capital of four or five years' work 

 ends in a dead loss. This is an appalling waste of 

 capital, and there has been much of it since the 

 outbreak of war, more's the pity. The argument 

 was put forward that labour was not available, 

 but during the first three years of the war no real 

 effort was made to mobilise women. 1 We now 

 realize that they are competent to do planting work 

 on all save the roughest ground. And the German 

 prisoners were left to grow fat in idleness ! 



Against the immediate replanting of felled-over 



1 I advocated the employment of women early in the war. 

 Vide British Forestry. Part IV. 



