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11

(1914) [MARC] Author: Joseph Guinchard
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THE VIGOUR OF THE SWEDISH RACE.

11

the time to come. If these hopes are fulfilled, few European countries
will possess such excellent natural conditions as Sweden does for creating
such an industry.

Another future industry, for which South Sweden especially has very
great advantages, is the production of fresh water fish on a large scale.
Owing to an increasing demand from a growing number of consumers,
created by a raised standard of living, fish will find an increasingly large
market. The forward march of fish cultivation, rationally ordered, is
long and difficult, but promising.

The development of the Swedish west-coast fisheries have proved that
purposeful energy can deal with those riches of nature, whose existence
has long been doubted. In 1860 they yielded only a little over half a
million kronor, but now they produce about 8-5 mill. kr. Natural resources
existed then as now; the difference is that methods have been found and
used to find them in the proper places, out in the open sea, and to take
possession of them there. The whole coasts of Bohuslän and North Halland,
thanks to the growing utilization of this source of wealth, have been
exalted to a prosperity scarcely dreamed of before.

Brief reference has previously been made to the breeding of domestic
animals. On the credit side are to be placed relatively good pasturage;
on the debit side, a long winter with indoor feeding. When the old native
strains, tough and hardly, but for centuries scantily fed, have been
improved, and the good qualities of suitable new breeds have been thoroughly
crossed into them, a very respectable place in cattle-breeding will be
taken by, at any rate, South Sweden.

The vigour of the Swedish Race.

Whoever will estimate the material influence of Nature on Man, in
the case of Sweden, must not overlook the effect of the former on the
Swedish race.

It has with some truth been remarked that Sweden is not a very rich
country, and, in coming from the favoured climes of Western Europe,
one is struck by the contrast between, on the one hand, their wide
cultivated stretches and the great industrial districts created by the coal and
iron there, and, on the other, the hilly and thinly populated forest-land
of the North.

Yet culture has not anywhere waxed higher than in Sweden, and few
people in the world live better than the Swedish. How is that possible?
Only one answer can be given. The people established here for some
thousands of years, has to 1-ive under conditions which have favoured its
development into a race attaining a high standard both materially and
intellectually. This testimony is completely proved to be true out in
America, where the Scandinavian race tends to fight its way into the

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