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936
XI. COMMERCE! OF SWEDEN.
The inland commerce of Sweden is carried on to a very great extent
by means of our very numerous but frequently small steam-boats, which
maintain a very lively traffic on our exceedingly numerous lakes and
water-courses, and along the coast. During the last few decades,
however, the railroads have in this respect commenced a sharp competition.
The highroads, where in older times gigantic wagon-loads in long
succession were continually moving along — which cartering was the
principal means of livelihood in large districts of the country — have,
on the contrary, more and more lost in importance for the home trade,
with exception, of course, of the more distant parts of North Sweden,
where the conditions in this regard partly have retained the old stamp.
Commercial Education.
As conditions for the right of carrying on commerce in the
kingdom, a Trade Statute of as far back as 1734 established a fixed period
of apprenticeship (generally from 111/s to 12 years), and secondly that
the applicant in question should show himself, on examination by two
business men, to be possessed of knowledge in commercial subjects. The
employers were certainly required to give their apprentices not only
opportunities for practical experience but also theoretical training in
commerce; it is, however, natural that the last-named in reality was
reduced to a mere nothing, and hence, with the growth of trade and
the increasing importance of the body of traders and merchants, the
want of actual commercial schools became more and more keenly felt.
The first educational establishment of this kind of any note must have
been the Commercial School at öringe in Halland, established towards the close of
the 18th century by Wurmb, Secretary to the Board of Trade, doubtless the
same man who had previously aided in the establishment of the Commercial
School at Hamburg. The number of its pupils at one time reached 40, and many of
the prominent merchants in Gothenburg at the beginning of the 19th century had
received their mercantile education there. The school was closed, however, as earlj
as 1790, owing to the bankruptcy of the founder.
The very apparent retrogression of commerce during the whole of the
second and the early part of the third decade of the 19th century, caused
public attention to be directed to the lack of training under which the
commercial classes suffered. The Riksdag, therefore, urged upon the Crown in the
session of 1823 the desirability of the establishment of commercial schools
or of a central Commercial and Navigation Institute. The proposal thus made
was referred to the »Wholesale-Trade Society» in Gothenburg, and gave rise
to the opening, in 1826, of the Gothenburg Commercial College under the
auspices of that society. Since 1829, it has received support to the extent of
3,000 kronor from the Town Council of the place. Not until 1860, however, did
the institution begin to exercise any great activity. On the model of this, Frant
Schartau’s Practical Commercial College was founded, in 1865 in Stockholm,
by the Wholesale-Trade Society of this city. Frans Schartau, after whom the
school was nominated, was a Stockholm merchant, who by energetic intervention,
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