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(historik)
complete industrial liberty. We have referred to the
gradual abolition since 1857 of restrictions on the
saw-mills. Not long afterwards it was declared
permissible for everybody to enter into commercial and
industrial business if he merely reported himself to the
authorities, and either paid a tax in the town or, if he
were in the country, paid a certain fee for a licence.
Finally, in 1879, complete industrial liberty was
granted by the abolition of the old guilds or close
corporations, and of the privileges of the towns.
Practically there is no hindrance to the formation
of joint-stock companies. Only Finlanders, however,
can be directors. While in Russia it takes a year
to get through the formalities of formation, and costs
generally more than 1000 marks, it costs in Finland
six marks, and is done in a week, or at the utmost
in one month’s time. The worst remaining hindrance
is the protective tariff. In this matter little progress
and even some retrogression has taken place. This
is in consequence of the peculiar arrangement by
which, according to the old Swedish constitution,
tariff-regulation does not come within the powers of
the Diet. There is no doubt but that this protective
tariff imposes on the people a tax of many million
marks a year, and of more than the taxes paid by the
same articles to the Treasury. It would be interesting
and not impossible to calculate how much of the
increased price of various goods is due to this tariff
protection, which is the worst possible system under
which manufactures can develop.
The extension of the field of protective duties is
often a means of producing greater liberty. The
amalgamation of the Finnish tariff with the Russian,
to which we shall have to come back, would be a step
in the opposite direction, and an enormous diminution
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