( -116A ) 



form of Departmental Forest work with which the writer is 

 acquainted. This intense control is necessary not only to prevent 

 swindling by Works Managers and foreman, but to keep the work up 

 to the mark and ensure that full tasks are done. 



The complete check and inspection of a Forest famine work 

 is a long business ; paragraph 42, Appendix D of Famine Code 

 detail some points to be looked to, but the Forest Officer has in 

 addition to examine and check the technical work. Experience 

 only will show how a famine work should be inspected : it cannot 

 be explained. It takes over three hours to do properly, and is rather 

 an ordeal to carry out day after day in the middle of the hot 

 weather in the pitiless, shadeless ravines- 



> 



Chapter IV. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Cost per acre. 12. There are several miscellaneous points worth recording as 



a result of experience gained in the 1919 famine work. One point 

 is the cost per acre. It must be emphasised that the cost of soil- 

 preparation by ordinary departmental methods is no criterion or 

 standard when estimating for famine work, for several reasons. 

 The main reason is that the work is done far more thoroughly by 

 famine labour than we can possibly attempt to carry out depart- 

 mentally, when the capital cost of creating plantations has con- 

 tinually to be borne in mind. The euorinous ma^s of labour that 

 has to be accommodated at famine time would result, if worked on 

 . ordinary lines, in preparing such an enormous area of new plan- 

 tation that the subsequent sowing up and tending during the 

 rains (when famine labour is no longer available), would be almost 

 impossible. In fact the area worked is kept within workable 

 limits by ina easing the intensity and quality of the tvork. A^aiu, 

 the preliminary soil-loosening is normally done by ploughing in 

 all flattisb art as, and left undone on steep and precipitous slopes, 

 but in famine time digging by hand labour is substituted, and is 

 done everywhere, both CD flat ground and steep slopes. Finally, 

 the employment of numbers of old and feeble folk and young 

 children, and various miscellaneous expenses not usually incurred 

 [e.g., establishment (5 per cent.), mates (5 per cent.), water-supply 

 and well-digging (5 per cent.), etc., add quite 20 per cent, to the 

 cost of the work]. 



The cost per acre varies considerably with the locality, 

 especially with the degree of steepness of the slopes. A calculation 



