Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Second part - X. Manufacturing Industries. By Å. G. Ekstrand, Ph. D., Chief Engineer, Control Office of the Department of Finance - 11. Other Industries - Graphic Industries - 12. Handicraft and Domestic Industry, by A. Raphael, Ph. D., D. C. L., Stockholm
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896
X. MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES OF SWEDEN.
in Sweden 29 Lithographic institutions with 1,544 workers and a
prodnc-tion value of 2,414,000 kronor. The greatest was the Lithographic
joint-stock company of Norrköping (Norrköpings Litografiska Aktiebolag),
which chiefly fabricates mercantile print in large editions with a real
value of about 700,000 kronor. Then come the Lithographic
printing-office of the General Staff, which mainly makes maps, scientific plates,
and photographic reproductions, especially all the official mapperv of
Sweden, with a production value of 270,000 kronor, and the Lithographic
department of the Central printing-office for music, security, and
mercantile print, with a production value of 250,000 kronor.
The phototype printeries, as a rule, form part of the
photochemi-graphic institutions and are chiefly in demand for reproduction of works
of art and scientific objects as well as of photos.
12. HANDICRAFT AND DOMESTIC INDUSTRY.
The history of handicraft presents in our country much the same
leading features as in Europe in general, especially in Germany, from
which country Swedish industry is well known to have obtained its
earliest impulses.
Just as elsewhere, Swedish professional handicraft leads its origin from the
domestic industry of the towns, where a more numerous population could make a
distribution of work lucrative and supply special craftsmen with a quantity of
customers large enough to provide for their subsistence.
The attention devoted to the revival of the towns, at an early period caused
the authorities to attempt a concentration of commerce in them as well as of
handicraft; already a letter patent of 1315 by Duke Valdemar contains
instructions on this point. The common law of the rural districts (of 1347), however,
grants the artisans a right of carrying on their trades in these districts, and the
urban law does at least not defend this either; only goldsmiths were at this time
absolutely enjoined to live in town.
The first noteworthy technical progress of handicraft, as well as the juridical
forms in which it up to our days has been moving: The Guilds, Sweden chiefly
owes to foreigners — i. e. those German craftsmen who since the middle of the
13th century came to settle in the larger Swedish towns. Already in the
town-law of the celebrated commercial city of Visbv, in the island of Gotland, more than
twenty different guilds are enumerated; in the remaining parts of Sweden, this
institution was most probably not introduced till the beginning of the 14th
century. The oldest Swedish guild document in existence is King Magnus Eriksons
letter patent of 1356 to »the tailors’ company» in Stockholm; the oldest guild
regulations are those for the Stockholm shoemakers (before 1474). Probably the
regulations for the Capital were also valid for the craftsmen of country towns.
A native artisan class becomes the fruit of the industrial policy of King
Gustavi/s Vasa (1523/60), the principle of which was to effect a healthy disposure
of work among the various head trades as well as among their branches mutually-
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