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XII. SYNOPSIS OF TRADE AND INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION.
Private Organizations.
In certain departments connected with this matter attempts have been made
to supply, by means of private organizations, what is lacking in the provisions
secured by legislation. Of great importance in this respect are the Merchants’
Associations and the Swedish Advocates’ Union.
The Merchants’ Associations, of which the most important are the Stockholm
Merchants’ Association (founded in 1858) and the Gothenburg Merchants’
Association (founded in 1857), are associations of wholesale merchants in the different
places, formed with the object of protecting the members’ interests in the matter
of insolvent clients and of preventing or reducing the losses inseparable from
the credit-system which prevails in the wholesale trade. With this purpose in
view, the associations have organized a corps of reliable legal representatives in
different places in the country, whose duties are partly to collect and
communicate information about the traders in their respective districts, partly to enforce
payment of debts and to conduct legal proceedings. The legal representatives
are remunerated according to a fixed scale. In the case of a trader in a
particular district suspending payment or being made bankrupt, the legal representative
for that district is generally entrusted with the duty of winding up the estate
of the debtor. A list of the legal representatives of the association is generally
inserted in a periodically published calendar (e. g. The Commercial Calendar of
Sweden). In 1907 the activities of the merchants’ associations were considerably
extented by the institution by the Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö associations
of so-called Composition- and Bankruptcy departments. Within these departments,
bureaus have been set up, which, partly, by means of their officials, directly
wind up the estate in the event of a trader in -whom the members of the
association are interested compounding with his creditors or being adjudged
bankrupt, and partly examine and control the estate by means of inspectors.
The departments co-operate with each other, but each one has a special district
within which its activities are exercised. The composition and bankruptcy
departments have proved to be of great service for wholesale trade. (Cf. p. I, 324.)
The Swedish Advocates’ Union was formed in the year 1887 and is an
association of the country’s professional advocates. The union has a governing bodj
in .Stockholm, which conducts the affairs of the union, examines applications
for membership, exercises disciplinary authority over the members of the union,
and adjudicates in the case of disputes arising between advocates and their clients
as to the remuneration for services rendered. The members of the union bind
themselves to accept without appeal the awards made, when a client calls for
such adjudication. At the end of the year 1914 and the beginning of the year
1915, the number of members amounted to 220, residing in 42 places; of these
members, 101 were in Stockholm, 28 in Gothenburg, and 13 in Malmö. For the
guidance of the public in the choice of a legal representative, the union publishes
an annual list of its members, which is included in the Swedish State Calendar.
(Cf. p. I, 318).
Patents.
In Sweden, as in several other countries, the origin of the patent system
can be traced to the privileges, called privilegia exclusiva, which the
Government in earlier times granted by way of reward and encouragement
to a person who had either made some invention himself which could be
advantageously employed in home manufacture, or had started some kind
of trade which had hitherto not been carried on in Sweden.
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