Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1942, Qupperneq 118

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LE NORD
towns and population centres to different communes where they
are needed most, whilst other bodies in towns and population
centres make propaganda for labour in agriculture and for this
purpose are in touch with the Agricultural Societies. The question
of female and juvenile labour is of great importance. Posts for
the latter have been organised separately. This organisation is
called “The Shock troops of the Finnish Youth.” Steps have also
been taken to set industrial workers to help with the harvest, al-
though the difference in the standards of payment, the long work-
ing hours, the different housing conditions and food in the coun-
try together with transport difficulties and the town workers’
limited physical powers make this difficult.
It has heen possihle, hy means of extra lahour and mutual
help, to ease considerahly the agricultural lahour situation which
has been most difficult in the eastern border areas and in north
Finland. In the immediate neighbourhood of war operations and
in evacuated areas other steps have been necessary, in that men
and horses from the Army have been used in agriculture. Extra
help from the Army has been possible in north Finland where
harvesting the hay in large natural meadows requires rather much
labour.
In spite of the labour difficulties it has been possible to har-
vest the crops except in a few areas. Favourable weather con-
ditions facilitated this work while poor hay crops in great parts
of west Finland considerably diminished the demand for labour.
The situation was much more serious during the ordinary
harvesting time in August—September, which normally demands
rather much labour. Most of the agricultural workers were in
the Army and to replace them was by no means easy. Threshing
was very difficult, hecause the machines require experienced and
skilled handling; also the amount of petrol distributed for thresh-
ing was very small. In Finland only about a third of the whole
crop can be threshed by electric power, and methods not requiring
liquid fuel are limited owing to the rapid development of mecha-
nised threshing; it was therefore necessary to store more unthresh-
ed crops than usual and to postpone some of the threshing. More-
over the frequent rains hindered the work and considerably in-
creased the demand for labour; also owing to the rains the crops
could not everywhere be harvested in good condition. The tem-
porary storing of corn demanded much more work than usual,
and it dried and deteriorated and so caused a certain amount of