8.1. Land acquirement and ownership by timber companies in Northern Finland in 1885–1939

The timber companies in Finland began an intensive campaign at the beginning of the present century aimed at acquiring rights of ownership over considerable areas of land in the most densely forested parts of the country, i.e. the provinces of Mikkeli, Kuopio and Oulu and the eastern parts of the province of Vaasa. Their purchases of farm and forest properties aroused a great deal of discussion, because it was feared that the peasant ­farmers who had sold their land in this way would run into financial difficulties before long, ending up farming rented land or leading vagrant lives, which would in turn give rise to social problems. The numbers of landless inhabitants in rural areas had in any case grown, and it was felt that these purchases by the timber companies would only exacerbate the problem. The polemic may also be looked on as a symptom of the conflict of values that existed between the traditional agrarian society and the manufacturing sector, which was striving to move towards modern industrial capitalism. A corresponding polemic was entered into in Britain and Germany at that time, except that it centred on the customs duties levied on grain.

The companies were free to purchase land as they wished up to 1915, at which point their acquisitions were restricted by law, the aim of such legislation being to avoid the social problems that were bound to arise if agricultural land were to pass out of the hands of the farmers and into the possession of industrial concerns. Companies engaged in wood processing or trading in timber were forbidden under this legislation to acquire land that could be used for agricultural purposes. The ban was not altogether successful, however, as it simply led to the formation of "ghost companies" registered as operating in some other field but which in practice bought up parcels of land on which to engage in forestry. A separate law was then passed in 1925 to reclaim land acquired by these companies in contravention of the 1915 statute for the state, to be used for resettlement purposes. This new law was more powerful than its predecessor, and as a result purchases by timber companies virtually ceased.

The aim of this work was to determine the extent of land ownership by companies in Northern Finland over the period 1885–1939, what companies acquired land, what prices they paid for it and the reasons for them doing this. Attention is also paid to the general and regional causes of these sales of land. The perspective adopted is largely that of the industrial sector, so that the economic and social repercussions are deemed to lie beyond the scope of this work, and even the immediate consequences of the purchases of land are touched on only in passing.

Northern Finland is taken here to imply the province of Oulu as it was at that time, or the provinces of Oulu and Lapland from 1938 onwards. This comprises a land area of 165 641 km, or about half the surface area of Finland as a whole. Since the largest landowner in the region was the state, which possessed over 70% of the land area, and the timber companies" activities were directed solely towards the purchase of private land, they were concentrated on really quite a small area. The state did not sell any land at all to the timber companies.

Natural conditions and the possibilities for gainful human activity varied greatly from one part of the region to another, and it has become customary to recognize five subregions in terms of conditions for economic activity: Lapland and Peräpohjola, Northeastern Ostrobothnia, the Oulu–Raahe district, the Haapajärvi district and Kainuu (Map 1). The economy of Northern Finland at that time was largely dependent on agriculture and forestry, and the only substantial branch of industry represented there comprised the forest industries. The main industrial centres that grew up in the early years of the 20th century were the Kemi–Tornio and Oulu–Haukipudas areas and Kajaani in the interior. The Kemi–Tornio area was the place where the major rivers of Lapland, the Kemijoki, Simojoki and Torniojoki, entered the sea, while the Oulu–Haukipudas area was correspondingly dominated by the estuaries of the Rivers Oulujoki, Kiiminkijoki and Iijoki. Kajaani, in turn, was located on the shore of Lake Oulujärvi, the timber required there being floated to the site along the waterways of Kainuu, while the mill"s products were transported by train to the port of Kotka on the Gulf of Finland for shipment abroad.

The first properties in Northern Finland to be acquired by the timber companies were those that had been owned in their time by the old iron foundries. Land ownership by these works had reached its peak in 1865, when they possessed about 15 000 ha of land in the region. The sales of land negotiated by the iron foundries could scarcely be said to have posed a threat to the structure of land ownership in the region, nor were disputes between their managers and the peasant farmers over the use of the forests particularly common in Northern Finland. The managers of the iron works were industrialists in an all-round sense, and many of them ran sawmills as well. Thus when iron smelting began to die out, the majority of the land owned by the foundries reverted to the sawmills.

The timber companies owned the following areas of land in Northern Finland over the period 1885–1939:

The timber companies were most active in acquiring land in 1900–1920, over which period their holdings increased more than 6-fold. In 1915 the companies owned 3.6% of the total surface area of Northern Finland, 8.8% of the private land and 5.7% of the total number of farm or forest properties. It should be noted, however, that these figures do not include the northernmost parishes, Enontekiö, Utsjoki and Inari, on account of their poor timber reserves.

The main reason for the timber companies" interest in purchasing land was the expansion in sawn timber production, which meant that the volume of timber required for this purpose increased from 2.6 million stems in 1870 to 34 million by 1910. At the same time the pulp and paper industries were also stepping up production. It may be said in general that the increases in demand on the export markets, the liberalization of the economy and the advent of steam engines as sources of power for both sawmills and ships carried the sawn timber industry of Northern Finland forward to successive new production records during this period. One outcome of this growth was nevertheless anxiety over raw material supplies. There was a fear that Finland"s forest reserves would be exhausted by this level of utilization, and this was no idle fear, since the science of forest management was in its infancy at that time and management needs had effectively been ignored, especially in privately-owned forests. The accentuated demand naturally led to a rise in timber prices, and the forest industry companies found themselves subjected to fierce competition, a situation from which they wished to extricate themselves by owning their own forests. The state, as the largest owner of forests, naturally sold its timber to the companies, but trade was always dependent on the necessary political decisions, which made the supply of timber still less reliable.

At the time of this great expansion in the forest industries the peasant farming population of Finland were still living at a more or less subsistence level. Productivity in agriculture was low, poverty and years of crop failure tried the limits of human endurance, and there were few opportunities for the farmers of Northern Finland to gain anything in the way of an income. One possible means of raising some cash was by selling timber from one"s forest or undertaking lumbering work, and another was to sell one"s whole farm to a timber company. Gradually a situation arose in which the peasant farmers became anxious to sell forest land and the industry was eager to buy it.

The chief focus of purchases of land by the timber companies in Northern Finland was in Kainuu, where they owned a total of 292 820 ha at the peak in this trend, in 1920. Over the period 1915–1939 about 60% of the land owned by such companies in Northern Finland was situated in Kainuu, and even by 1915 they had acquired about 27% of all the privately-owned land in the region. Kainuu had traditionally been an important trading area for the merchant houses and sawmills of Oulu, the peasant farmers of that region selling their tar to the Oulu trading houses, which also either ran sawmills or traded in sawn timber. When the tar trade as such died out, it was largely replaced by deliveries of sawlogs. One unfortunate characteristic of the tar trade as far as the peasant farmers were concerned had been the accumulation of debts. It was common for them to ask for advance payments or loans on the strength of future consignments of tar, and if they were unable later to supply tar in the quantities promised, they incurred still further debts. In the worst cases they were forced to use their farms as mortgages and eventually lost their property entirely as their debts increased from year to year. This indebtedness has often been regarded as the main driving force behind the land purchases made by the timber companies, but it should be remembered that the tar producers were not inclined to sell their property to timber companies any more than other landowners were. In the end about 21% of the farms whose owners had accumulated debts and about the same proportion of those whose owners were clear of debt ended up in the hands of the timber companies. One cannot ignore the significance of the tar trade for this land acquisition campaign, however, as it was through these channels that the merchants of Oulu received information in the first place on the forest reserves that existed in Kainuu, the possibilities for transporting the timber and farmers potentially interested in selling their land. Also, the tar trade had in time led to the creation of a ready-made organization for the sale of sawlogs.

Although the indebtedness that arose by virtue of the tar trade will not serve as an explanation for the sale of farms in Kainuu, it is clear that the general socio-economic situation in that region from the late 19th century onwards was conducive to such sales. The loss of income caused by the crisis in the tar trade could not be made up by the sale of agricultural products, for the combination of tar burning and swidden cultivation that had been practised by the peasant farmers of Kainuu had meant a hard way of life for them and had left them poorly equipped to undertake any modernization of their cultivation methods. The situation had been exacerbated further by consecutive years of crop failure, and when the tar trade collapsed they were left with no alternative but either to sell timber from their forests or to sell up their whole farms, forest land and all. This decline in traditional incomes and the occurrence of crop failures happened to coincide with the great expansion of the forest industries, so that the peasant farmers felt the need to sell up at exactly the same time as industry was perceiving a need to ensure good supplies of its principal raw material.

The trading houses and timber companies of Oulu were greatly interested in the forests of the area surrounding Lake Oulujärvi. They were planning to build pulp mills in the area, and naturally had to make sure of an adequate availability of timber. At the same time, excellent conditions were seen to exist for the floating of timber from Kainuu into Lake Oulujärvi and from there down the River Oulujoki to the sawmills in Oulu, and the forest reserves of the region were well suited to the needs of the sawmill industry. One other important consideration was that the entrepreneurs of Oulu had virtually exclusive rights over the timber reserves of Kainuu, as there would have been little possibility of transporting the wood to the south. The situation became more problematical for the merchants of Oulu once the railway was extended to Kajaani, as this provided a direct link from the Lake Oulujärvi area to the principal export harbour for sawn timber, Kotka, on the Gulf of Finland. Thus competition for the timber reserves of Kainuu intensified considerably on completion of the railway line, and the sawmills in Oulu reacted by purchasing more land in Kainuu for themselves. Competition was intensified still further, of course, by the founding of Kajaanin Puutavara Osakeyhtiö, the Kajaani Timber Company, in 1907.

The companies" land holdings in Lapland and the Peräpohjola region were most extensive in 1916, when they amounted to 114 750 ha. Altogether approximately 21% of the total land area owned by them in 1915–1939 was located in these regions, and the situation in 1915 was that 6.3% of the privately owned land there was owned by the timber companies and 1.6% of the entire surface area. In practice, acquisitions were concentrated in the Kemijoki drainage basin, to the extent that the districts of Kittilä, Sodankylä, Kuolajärvi and Kemijärvi accounted for about 82% of this land area. The reasons for this concentration lay in the good conditions for floating the logs on the rivers of the Kemijoki watercourse, the abundance of forests in the districts concerned and the emphasis placed on forestry in the local economies. Environmental conditions in these areas were sufficiently harsh that agriculture could yield little in the way of an income, although admittedly reindeer herding was of considerable significance as a source of revenue for the peasant farmers. On the other hand, the timber companies acquired very little land in the coastal strip of Peräpohjola, as the River Torniojoki was poorly suited to log floating and the forest reserves were inferior to those of the upper reaches of the Kemijoki basin. Agriculture was a more important source of livelihood than forestry for the farmers of the coastal area, especially in view of the demand for such products in the population centres of Kemi and Tornio and the stimulation to trade provided by the proximity of Sweden. Thus the landowners of this area had a wider range of choices open to them and were not obliged to depend exclusively on the forests for their livelihood.

Land ownership by the timber companies in Northeastern Ostrobothnia was similarly at its most extensive in 1916, when 46 300 ha were in their possession. Land in this region accounted for about 9% of their total holdings in 1915–1939, and amounted to 4.9% of the total area of privately owned land in the region in 1915 and 2.1% of the total surface area. Promising conditions existed for the floating of logs down the rivers to Oulu, and the forests of the Iijoki valley were excellently suited to meet the needs of the sawn timber industry. The companies were not so enthusiastic about purchasing whole properties in this region, however, as the privately owned forests of Pudasjärvi and Taivalkoski were in poor condition, the best forests being owned by the state. In addition, the sawmill companies and trading houses of Oulu were inclined to concentrate their land acquisition efforts on the Kainuu region.

Although the opportunities for the peasant farmers to make a living were poorer in Northeastern Ostrobothnia than on the coast, no economic crisis of the kind experienced in Kainuu ever developed, even though the practice of livestock rearing on which the farming of the region was based frequently suffered from shortages of animal feed and grain cultivation was susceptible to the effects of early night frosts. All the time Finland belonged to Russia, cheap grain could be purchased from there, but once Finland had gained independence grain sufficiency became more questionable. Incomes from farming could be supplemented by reindeer herding, however, and this was of crucial importance in the years of crop failure.

The timber companies owned very little forest on the Gulf of Bothnia coast, where a large proportion of the land area was in any case unsuitable for forest growth and the best forest areas had been exhausted by swidden cultivation and the demand for shipbuilding timber. The forest industries of the coastal region were indeed entirely dependent on timber supplies from the interior. Similar, forestry was of little consequence for the farmers of the region, who made their living from agriculture and sea fishing. The rivers crossing the areas to the south of Oulu were unsuitable for log floating, as their water levels tended to drop dangerously low in summer. The maximum area of land owned by the timber companies in the Oulu–Raahe district, again in 1916, was 25 040 ha, and their holdings accounted for about 4% of the total area of land owned by them in 1915–1939. Their lands represented no more than 1.9% of all privately owned land in the district in 1915, and 1.7% of the total surface area.

Economic conditions for the farmers of the Haapajärvi area were relatively favourable. Agriculture was largely based on livestock rearing, which was highly productive, and timber reserves were also good. The farmers were not so dependent on their incomes from timber sales as those in the agriculturally less productive regions, however, nor were conditions for log floating by any means ideal, as the rivers flowing into the Gulf of Bothnia were shallow. Thus the sawmills of Oulu were not especially interested in the timber of the area, on account of its inaccessibility. Log floating routes to the south also existed, but the timber purchasing operations of the companies in the south of the country only just stretched as far as the parishes of Pyhäjärvi, Haapajärvi and Reisjärvi. Land ownership by timber companies was at its maximum in the Haapajärvi area, as elsewhere, in 1916, when it comprised 37 380 ha, and the area accounted altogether for about 7% of the companies" holdings in Northern Finland in 1915–1939. These holdings represented 6.7% of the privately owned land in the area in 1915 and 4.9% of its total surface area.

After 1915 land purchases were in the hands of "ghost companies" and the proprietors of the timber companies themselves, as the statute restricting such activity did not apply to private persons or to companies operating in branches outside the timber trade and wood processing. By 1920 such instances owned 56 750 ha of land, that owned by ghost companies being primarily located in Kainuu. This region was not the main object of such transactions on a national scale, however, as the land involved there amounted to only 7.6% of that acquired by such means over the whole country. Ownership of land in Northern Finland by ghost companies was most extensive in 1925, when it amounted to 14 650 ha. Under the Land Restoration Law of the same year, the National Settlement Board investigated all land transactions enacted in contravention of the 1915 statute and identified a total of about 30 000 ha of such land in Northern Finland, of which the companies were obliged to forfeit about 11 350 ha, or 38% to the board. No less than 62% of this illegally purchased land was located in Kainuu.

The land holdings of the timber companies decreased from 1920 onwards and became established at around 450 000 ha in the 1930s. This took place through the companies releasing land for settlement purposes, either voluntarily or under the Land Restoration Law of 1925, seeking in this way to rid themselves of land that was of no use to them. Small farms were created, usually comprising a few hectares of arable land and enough forest to satisfy the farm"s own need for firewood and timber. The total areas involved varied between 50 and 70 hectares. These farms were so small, however, that their occupants were unable to subsist on the proceeds of farming alone but were obliged to seek additional incomes from forestry work. The timber companies no doubt improved their image considerably by releasing some of their land for settlement purposes, as they had previously been held partly responsible for the decline in agriculture and accused of depriving the farms of arable land.

At the early stage of the land acquisition operation the farms concerned were normally inhabited, and the former owner remained to cultivate the land as a tenant farmer and work in the forests. Some of the farms were used as lumber camps, however, providing a base and service facilities for felling operations in the surrounding area, and farms located close to the sawmill or pulp mill would often continue to be worked as a source of foodstuffs for the mill"s employees. As sales of land proceeded, however, the nature of the operation altered, and the farms that came into the possession of the timber companies were left unoccupied and regarded exclusively as forest holdings from which timber could be extracted. Thus they became merely reserves of an industrial raw material and the management and exploitation of their forests would be determined entirely by the interests of the companies concerned.

Northern Finland, and Kainuu in particular, were by no means the only parts of the country where this went on. The timber companies owned as much as 18% of the surface area of the province of Kuopio in 1915, for example, and figures of close to 40% were recorded for the parishes of Rautavaara, Ilomantsi and Pihtipudas. By the late 1930s they owned a total of 2.3–2.4 million hectares of land in Finland as a whole, of which Northern Finland accounted for roughly 20%. A still greater level of ownership in relative terms was achieved in Northern Sweden, however, with the timber companies there owning about a half of the land in Väster Norrland and Jämtland, about a third in Kopparberg and Västerbotten and about a fifth in Norrbotten. The process of land acquisition began earlier in Northern Sweden and ownership involved more than 7 million hectares at its maximum extent.

The majority of the company-owned land in Northern Finland was in the hands of the trading houses and sawmills of Oulu, as it was the long-distance transport arrangements that largely determined companies" investments in forest land. Transportation of the timber to the south of Finland was an expensive undertaking, and thus the timber purchasing zones of the companies based in Southern Finland only just touched upon the extreme southern edge of the province of Oulu.

Details of companies" ownership of land in the region in 1915 are provided in the table below:

Thus the largest landowner up to 1915 was Ab Uleå Oy. Having inherited the land holdings of the Oulu trading houses and sawmills J.W.Snellman G:son, G. & C.Bergbom, Uleåborgs Sågverk Ab and Varjakka Trävaru Ab on its foundation in 1912, the company estimated its own properties as amounting to about 237 000 ha in total, including the forest land owned by its managing director, Reinhold Weckman. The land registers for 1915 point to a figure of approximately 209 000 ha in the name of the company alone. The second largest area of land had been acquired by Puutavara Osakeyhtiö Kemi, which owned about 75 000 ha. Altogether about 80% of the company-owned land was in the hands of firms domiciled in Northern Finland, the remainder being accounted for by W.Gutzeit & Co., the Salvesens, Halla Ab and A.Ahlström, all based in the south of the country, their forest holdings being located in southern Kainuu and the Haapajärvi district.

After the law of 1915 had come into effect, forest land was acquired by "ghost companies" and by the proprietors of the timber companies on a personal basis. Prominent among the latter, who owned some 45 000 of land by 1920, were Paavo Paloheimo of Kajaani Puutavara Osakeyhtiö, Gösta Björkenheim of Kymmene Ab, Reinhold Weckman of Ab Uleå Oy and Hugo Richard Sandberg of Puutavara Osakeyhtiö Kemi. All in all, at least 38 company owners had acquired land in Northern Finland between 1916 and 1925, although a half of this area belonged to the above four together. Among the "ghost companies" that were involved in land purchases in the region were Oy Maaomaisuus Ab and Familjeaktiebolaget Björkenheim, both formed by the proprietors of Kymmene Ab, and Oy Metsäpelto, created by W.Gutzeit & Co. With the same end in view, A.Ahlström Oy had founded Satakunnan Maanviljelys Oy and Ab Kaukas had set up Ab för jordbruket och skogkultur. The only company of this kind to be based in Northern Finland was Maanviljelys Osakeyhtiö Vaarainsuo, established by Kajaanin Puutavara Osakeyhtiö. All the above subsidiary companies indicated as their line of business agriculture and forest management.

Subsequent land transactions meant that company ownership of land after 1925 was concentrated in three large concerns. Similarly land held in the names of subsidiaries or proprietors was re-registered as the property of the companies themselves following the National Settlement Board"s investigations into previous irregularities. The most notable transfer of ownership was the sale of the forest land belonging to Ab Uleå Oy to Kajaanin Puutavara Osakeyhtiö, which had acquired about 222 817 ha of land by 1939, i.e. about 50% of the total area in company ownership. Similarly Kemin Puutavara Osakeyhtiö purchased all the farms belonging to Trävaru Aktiebolaget Torneå in 1934, so that it then owned about 84 200 ha altogether, or about 18.8% of the total company-owned area. A third substantial landowner was Kymmene Ab, the holdings of which increased greatly when the land acquired by Gösta Björkenheim personally and by Familjeaktiebolaget Björkenheim reverted to its ownership. In 1939 Kymmene Ab owned 115 farms in Kainuu with a combined area of about 36 600 ha, or 8.1% of the company-owned land. Thus these three major landowners controlled about 77% of the company-owned land in Northern Finland.

Substantial deals in land had also been concluded between the companies over the period 1885–1939. The majority of the land owned by companies in the north of Finland in 1939 had originally been acquired by the trading houses in Oulu, after which the farms bought up J.W.Snellman G:son around the turn of the century were eventually transferred to Kajaanin Puutavara Osakeyhtiö and Puutavara Osakeyhtiö Kemi, while those originally acquired by Uleåborgs Sågverk Ab passed by way of Uleå to Kajaanin Puutavara Osakeyhtiö. Likewise a considerable proportion of the land owned by Kymmene Ab originated from that first acquired by Isak and Otto Ravander and later purchased from them by Gösta Björkenheim. Examined on a fairly broad scale, no major changes in the overall possession of land holdings took place after 1915–1920, the main features of the later period being transactions between companies and the sale of land for settlement purposes.

The timber companies" policy of buying land was severely criticized around the turn of the century, when the press accused them of paying well below the going price for such land, of promoting the degeneration of agriculture and of contributing to vagrancy among the rural population. It was usually only the most blatant and exceptional deals that aroused attention, of course, and it must be remembered that the country was faced with serious social problems at that time in any case, and that the awakening socialist movement was eagerly hunting for adherents and was more than ready to seize upon injustices and irregularities taking place around it. It was easy to brand the timber companies as exploiters of the people, and it was often forgotten in the heat of the discussion that it was precisely they who brought some measure of affluence to the rural areas in the form of income from the sale of timber and wages for forestry work. The mechanization and modernization of Finnish agriculture was to a large extent based in its time on the incomes received from the sale of timber from the farms" own forests. Similarly, the communities that grew up around the pulp mills and sawmills provided an additional demand for agricultural products.

The low prices paid per hectare did not necessarily imply purchase at below the going price, as the price of forest land was made up of a number of components, of which the volume of growing stock, particularly of stems suitable for sawlogs, carried the most weight. Another factor was ease of transportation of the timber, first out of the forest and then to the mill. Although the land might be fairly close to a river capable of being used for log floating, it also had to be possible to move the timber economically from the forest to the river bank, which meant in practice hauling with horses, whereupon the maximum viable distance was about six kilometres. Thus the prices paid per hectare do not necessarily tell the whole story. For instance, substantial felling may have just taken place before sale of the forest land to a timber company, so that there was no longer very much in the way of sawlogs to be extracted. If this was the case, given that the land as such was of little value and that there was little or no market for the smaller assortments of timber, the companies would not be prepared to pay very high prices. This meant that some quite large properties were bought up very cheaply and the average price per hectare could be extremely low. Another factor was the proportion of unproductive wasteland included in the forest holding, and again, the larger a holding was, the more likely it was to include large amounts of wasteland. When new holdings or farms were formed, this wasteland was similarly divided up between them, so that the poorer the land was the more of it had to be assigned to each property.

The prices paid for the land were in the majority of cases not low in relation to the market situation at that time, and probably only a very small proportion of the farmers were induced to sell at a price below the going rate at the time of concluding the deal. The first purchases that the companies made were evidently the most advantageous for them, as the demand factor had not yet come to influence price levels. The value of these cheaply acquired holdings increased later, however, as long-distance transport possibilities improved and markets opened up for pulpwood. By then more remote areas of forest land could be exploited economically, and those who had sold their holdings in the first wave, before prices had risen, naturally felt that they had been cheated.

The state also exercised some influence over the market price for timber in Northern Finland. As the major landowner in the region, it sold large amounts of timber, mostly by auction, either locally or on a more general basis. These consignments of timber offered for sale by the National Board of Forestry were so large that by no means all of them could be sold. This meant that the companies had no reason commercially to pay prices that were any higher than those applying on the open market, since there was always timber available at the state actions.

The timber companies were certainly not inclined to act as benefactors, nor would they pay any more for a parcel of land than was absolutely necessary. They were competing on the world market with other Finnish suppliers of sawn timber and many foreign ones as well, and the prices fetched by their products were not always what the sawmill owners would have liked. Thus the companies, too, were constantly beset by problems of low prices and unfulfilled expectations. It was not a feeling that was exclusive to the peasant farmers who had sold their land. The companies cannot be accused of having cheated or indulged in speculation, and the source material contains no evidence of dishonesty or even any intention to deprive the farmers of what was justly due to them.

The timber companies were accused in public of taking advantage of the depression of the 1930"s. It is true that the peasant farmers suffered economically and that many properties in the rural areas had to be auctioned off, but the companies actually bought very little land during that period and certainly could not be accused of speculating in this way. It must be remembered, of course, that they suffered from the effects of the depression, too, and any profits that they were able to make went on maintaining other lines of production that were operating at a loss. In addition, the acquisition of land was restricted by the law of 1925 and by a separate law regulating compulsory sales of property by auction, designed specifically to prevent farms from falling into the hands of speculators.

As timber prices rose, transportation became easier and forest management techniques improved, the forest land acquired by the timber companies at the beginning of the century proved to have been a good investment, even though not a single company could be said to have solved its raw material supply problems in this way. As the wood processing sector expanded, these forest holdings of their own were a valuable source of timber for the companies, but they were still obliged to buy from private forest owners and from the state.

It must also be said that in spite of the low prices paid per hectare, the peasant farmers obtained a great deal of money by selling their land. The mean income per person from agriculture in Kainuu in 1913, for instance, was only 127 Fmk, and the wage paid to a forest worker at the turn of the century was 3 Fmk a day. By comparison, the sums running into thousands or even tens of thousands of Fmk that were paid for whole farms would undoubtedly have proved tempting to many owners. There was no other way of raising that kind of money at the time, and many a small farmer struggling against poverty and frost damage to his crops would have been all too happy to sell the house and farm that he had inherited from his parents simply in order to "begin a better life".

Source: Suomen kartasto vuodelta 1910. Suomen maantieteellinen seura. Kartta N:o 1. – The Map Antero Tervonen.