Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Manufacturing Industries. Introd. by [G. Sundbärg] K. Åmark - 12. Handicrafts and Domestic Industries. [By A. Raphael] - Domestic Industries. By S. Odén
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492
vii. manufacturing industries.
sense of the word are, that it rarely occupies the whole time of the worker,
but is rather carried on as a subsidiary employment, usually side by side
with agriculture, and also that, in general, it is based on inherited designs
and models characteristic of the district in which it is carried on.
It is clear that, in our own clays, domestic industry no longer forms an
essential proportion of the productions of the land as a whole. The rise of
the towns and of handicrafts, and, above all, the improved communications
of later times, modern industrialism, together with the taste for change
and alterations in domestic utensils, clothing, etc., which the former
phenomena, in their turn, called forth among the agricultural population, too,
and which is not so easily satisfied by home industries, are factors that,
in most places in Europe, have more or less completely exterminated
domestic industries, unless the?’ have degenerated into house-industries
or "sweating", with an unscrupulous exploitation on the part of capitalist
middle-men.
1 Among the few countries where domestic industries have succeeded in
retaining their position to any great extent, Sweden is, beyond possibility
of contradiction, one of the principal. The reason of this is partly the fact
that from ancient times the Swedish nation, with its love of work and sense
of beauty, has been able to produce designs and models of rare beauty and
originality, especially as regards textiles and carpentry-sloyd, and that
it has since, with unswerving conservatism and devotion, held fast to the
work and methods of work handed down from ancestral times. But the
chief reason why domestic industries have survived in Sweden is, we think,
to be found in the position and natural features of the country. In thinly
populated districts, where the communications are but little developed, it
is greatly to the economic advantage of the rural population, even to-day,
to supply their own needs, as far as certain branches of production
are concerned, and in tracts where the soil is not very fertile, or where the
climate is less suitable for agriculture, domestic industries carried on for
profit form a by no means contemptible minor source of income. When,
during four to seven months of the year, cold and the short daylight
prevent any very great amount of agricultural work being done, during the
afternoons at least, domestic industries, especially if there be no
forest-work or other suitable winter occupations to be had, give a welcome
addition to the limited income derived from work, and prevent many a one
from idling his time away. The great economic and ethical importance
for Sweden of domestic industries has, too, of låte years, although as yet
still insufficiently, in an ever-increasing degree awakened the attention of
the authorities and private individuals, this attention finding expression
in the adoption of various measures for the encouragement and promotion
of home-sloyd.
Domestic industry for domestic supply. It is in the very nature of
things that it is within the domestic industries that are carried on to supply
domestic needs, rather than in similar industries carried on for the sake of profit,
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