Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Social Movements - 1. Labour Questions and Social politics - Labour Conditions and Workmen's Wages. By B. Nyström
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labour conditions and workmen’s wages.
637
in different parts of the country. With regard to the fixed {fast) day-labourers,
who have as a rule engaged to work under a certain employer for a year or at
least for the six summer months, the summer day-wage in 1913 was on an
average 2’B4 kronor for men and l’6i kronor for women, whereas for the small
holders (småbrukare), cottage men (husmän) or casual labourers (lösarbetare),
who render occasional assistance now to one now to another farmer, the
corresponding daily wages amounted to 2’97 kronor and 1’77 kronor respectively (cf.
the accompanying map, which shows for 1911 how wages vary in different
parts of Sweden). During the winter months the daily wage was considerably
reduced, and the difference between the summer and the winter wage may
amount to 30 % and over in districts in which during the dead season for
agriculture there is but little prospect for earning a wage in other occupations.
Alongside of the settled day-labourers there occur migratory labourers
(vandringsarbetare) from the forest tracts of Sweden and (especially since 1904)
from Poland and Galicia, who in the busy season of the agricultural year migrate
to the agricultural districts of Southern Sweden, where the very laborious
cultivation of root-crops in particular is very widely diffused. These season labourers
are not only paid by the day or by the hour, but also by the piece (på ackord).
There are other groups of labourers who in certain cases are paid for milking,
hay-making, bringing in the corn, and the like by the piece, without regard to
the time they take over their work.
From ancient times in Sweden greater agriculture has contrived to secure a
reliable supply of labour by the crofter system (torparsystemet) which
practically means the conveyance of the right to cultivate ground on estates (hemman),
as well as other advantages, to persons who engage by contract to execute a
certain amount of agricultural labour on the main estate. The crofter’s double
capacity of agricultural labourer and small holder has however proved more and
more difficult to maintain with regard to the larger crofts; hence there has
been an ever increasing tendency for the crofts to be converted into tenant
farms (arrendegård), for which the rent (avgäld) is paid not in labour but in
money.
However, if the crofts do not grow to such a size that the holder can look
after them in his spare time with the assistence of his family, and if the crofter
system is brought into line with modern requirements in other respects as well,
the crofting system should have prospects of surviving as a system of labour for
agriculture on a larger scale. One proof of this is that in recent years endeavours
have been made to apply the leading principle of the crofter system also to
certain other groups of agricultural labourers. The creation of such
"lantarbetar-småbruk" or agricultural labourers’ small holdings, has been regarded in Sweden,
as in other countries, as a good method for improving the position of the
agricultural labourer, both socially and economically. At the same time the presence
of a link of this kind should considerably facilitate a step of great importance
for the solution of the agricultural labour problem, namely to render it as easy
as possible for an agricultural labourer to rise in the social scale from a mere
workman without a particle of ground of his own to the position of small holder
and small peasant-farmer (småbonde).
Forest Labourers. The 21 million hectares of productive forest soil, of
which about V5 are State, etc. property, are at present cultivated chiefly by casual
labourers, recruited from different ranks of society. Thus among the seasonal
labourers who in the timber-cutting districts of Norrland and in other parts of
Sweden in winter time cut and dress timber, and convey it to the waterways
down which it is floated, and who in the milder season of the year float it
down to the saw-mills, we shall find an entire social scale of population with
the well-to-do farm-owner (hemmansägare) at the top and the ordinary tramp at
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