Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Second part - VI. Agriculture and Cattle-Breeding - 4. Public and Private Institutions to the Advancement of Agriculture - Agricultural Meetings, by Captain V. Nauckhoff, Stockholm - 5. Agricultural Labourers. By Captain U. von Feilitzen, Löfvingsborg
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610
VI. AGRICDLTURE AND CATTLE-BREEDING OF SWEDEN.
held in 1901 at Gefle, were sent, among other things, 528 horses, 962 head of
cattle, 2,900 products and expedients of agriculture and its by-trades, and 691
machines and tools. At this meeting, 72,639 kronor were distributed as prizes,
and the expenditure for the meeting was 339,270 kronor, of which the State
contributed with 109,500 kronor. — Besides this, meetings are called at certain
intervals, and shows are arranged within the Läns; also smaller meetings are
held within the subdivisions of the Agricultural Societies.
5. AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS.
The assistants of agriculturists in Sweden are of four different
classes: a) Servants, i. e. unmarried hands (men and women) boarding
and lodging with their employers; b) Tenement-labourers, married, with
homes apart, and with wages paid partly in money, partly in kind;
c) Crofters, who rent for themselves small parcels of land belonging to
their employers on the condition of rendering a certain number of days’
work on the estate; finally d) Day-labourers, who are engaged for shorter
periods on day-wages, more especially during harvest-time.
A) From the beginning, and for thousands of years, Servants have
formed the’ most immediate and constant assistants in agricultural
work.
As låte as up to the decade of 1841/50 the greater part of the
country-homes of Sweden annually lodged, fed, and partly clad (at the employer’s expense)
just as many servants of both sexes as the kitchen of the house could hold at
the five daily meals. Money-wages were low, scarcely one-third of what they
now are; the food was coarse but plentiful; the clothes of the homeliest kind,
but strong; but little occasion for extra expenses, in consequence of which money
could even be put by. Change of servants was far from being so common as it
is now. Quitting service was mostly a consequence of serious differences, some
wrong-doing, or else marriage. Those servants who remained unmarried very
often grew gray in service.
During the last sixty years, all this has been completely changed. Mistresses
do not care to board and lodge a single man-servant, and no more women-servants
than are rendered necessary by the cooking and house-cleaning, while the
maidservant declines to do any other kind of work. The management of the cow-house
has everywhere come into the hands of man-servants. It is only exceptionally
that any of these men board and lodge with the employer. Unmarried labourers
lodging with the farmer, are nowadays found almost exclusively on old-fashioned
farms, or still within the household of the crofter, and then often engaged for but
the half-year, from spring to winter. The official census confirms a continuous
decline in the number of household servants engaged in Swedish agriculture:
between 1880 and 1890, for example, from 216,000 to 159,000, or of 26*4
The loss of 57,000 such servants amounts, however, to 18,240,000 days of work
annually. For, including some work on holidays, such a hand has about 320
work-days per year.
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