Domestic industries carried on for profit. When domestic sloyd tends
to become a means of pecuniary gain, it often loses what may be termed its
artistic point. It is the purchasers’ taste that is followed; it is the market-
demand that, to a certain degree at least, determines the method of work and
the models used; attempts are made to imitate, as far as possible, popular industrial
productions, but this does not exclude the fact that this form of domestic
industries has, in many places, retained its artistic spirit and its characteristic
patterns, especially in places where they are pursued together with domestic
industries for the supply of home needs.
Certain sloyd-centres, or centres of these domestic industries, have arisen where
certain sloyd-productions are those chiefly produced; this depends on the raw
materials to be had at these places, and on other external circumstances, or on
the character of the inhabitants there. I f such a manufacture is carried on on
a large scale, it often shows a tendency to degenerate into sweated industry,
where the work is carried out to order, while those employed in the work are
likely to be people who have little or no private interest in the land, and
who have domestic industries as their principal means of livelihood.
Spinning, during the 18th century and the first half of the 19:th, was a
domestic industry carried on for the sake of profit to which the Government
gave its special support for the purpose of obtaining home raw-material for the|
weaving-mills, then in course of establishment. At the same time that it was
forbidden to carry on domestic weaving in the towns for purposes of sale, orders
were given that skill in spinning should be encouraged in every possible way.
Sheep-breeding stocks were established, instruction was given in the cultivation
and preparation of flax, and spinning-schools were established all over the country,
to which every parish was obliged to send one person to learn the work, who, on
his return, was bound to spread a knowledge in his native place of the art thus
learned. But as the payment offered by the factories for the yam spun was
very small, the people gradually refused to work for them and spinning gradually
declined, even if home-spun woollen- and linen yarn long remained articles that
the peasants themselves carried to market. In Angermanland and Halsingland,
especially, the cultivation and spinning of flax was carried on on a large scale.
The fine, silvery linen-yam, which, ever since the middle of the 18th century,
has been manufactured in the first-named province, is still unsurpassed in
quality. The high quality of this production depends, to a great extent, on the
suitable soil where the flax is grown and the character of the river-beds in the
streams where the flax is steeped. In our own days there are only a few
places, most of them in Smaland, with a few here and there in the Lansfef
Kopparberg, Gavleborg, Vasterbotten, and Norrbotten, too, where such yamlis
offered at the fairs; otherwise the peasantry itself makes use of its home-spun
yam for weaving purposes. Everywhere complaints are heard of a decrease |in
sheep-breeding and the cultivation of flax; this is due, however, in most places,
on a perfectly natural phenomenon, being the result of the birth of more
thorough systems of agriculture and cattle-breeding, and of a livelier lumber-
trade. The following figures may be given to illustrate the decrease in the
cultivation of linen and in sheep-breeding, and, consequently, to a certain degree
in that of the domestic spinning industry. While, in 1865, the yield of raw
materials for spinning purposes was estimated at 37 840 quintals, in 1911,lit
amounted to only 5 575 quintals; during the same period the number of sheep
had fallen from 1 589 875 to 945 709 head. In 1865, the area of land devoted
to the cultivation of flax or hemp amounted to 0’65 % of the entire cultivated
land of Sweden, while to every 1 000 inhabitants there were 386 sheep; in
1911, these figures had fallen to 0'04 % and 172.
As regards textile productions, it may be pointed out that, just as the cultivation
and spinning of flax had their chief seat in Halsingland and Angermanland,
so too did the weaving of linen reach its highest degree of perfection in
these provinces. Halsingland was well known for its coarse drill ; the worth of
the manufacture amounted in - 1857 to Vs million kronor. In that province,
the wife who ,did not every year provide her husband with at least 1 000
ells of linen 'cloth for sale was considered to be very incapable. The fine
linen cloth of Angermanland was celebrated beyond the borders of the country.
As early as 1751, the four Estates of the Kingdom began to give premiums
for such linen but, in spite of this encouragement, the production, which, in
the' middle of the 19th century was valued at 700 000 kronor, steadily decreased
and is now of little importance in that province. The greater part of
thé Angermanland linen went to Russia, and its sale, like that of the Halsinge
textiles, was carried out by the peasants themselves or by a special class of
pedlars. Vastergotland, too, especially the hundreds of Mark, Kind, Bollebygd,
As$f and Redvag, have long been the seats of the linen-weaving home-sloyd
which is still carried on, on a considerable scale in the hundred of Mark, but
the yarn which is employed nowadays is a factory-product and the industry
has fallen into the hands of middlemen. Cotton-textiles soon took the lead,
however, in these Vastgota country districts, and even to-day it is widely spread
in the hundreds of Mark, Kind and Bollebygd, but it is almost exclusively an
industry that exists by executing the middleman’s orders. Woollen textiles, too,
have been manufactured from very ancient times in these tracts, and the process
of development from a domestic industry proper to a sweated industry has
been the same as for the other forms of textile sloyd carried on there. A large
amount of plain woollen and linen cloth, too, is manufactured and sold in the
Lan of Vasterbotten, while the artistic textile production intended for sale has
its chief seat in the Lan of Kristianstad.
The value of home-woven cloth sold in 1911 is calculated at 2 1/s million
kronOr.
Knitting by hand, as a home industry carried on for profit, has been most
widely spread in the south part of the Lan of Halland, where it is still carried
on, on a small scale, to order. Knitting by machine, also to order, is carried
on, on a large scale, in the districts round Boris.
Bobbin lace-work for purposes of sale has been carried on since the Middle
Ages in the country round the towns of Vadstena, Motala, and Skanninge.
Joinery was formerly carried on extensively in several places where now
it has either been transformed into factory-production, or where it is still
pursued as a domestic industry carried on for profit; it exists chiefly at Oster-
vâla in Vàstmanland Lan, Kyrkefalla in Skaraborgs Lan, Lindome in Halland
Lan and in the hundreds of Ostra and Vastra Goinge in Kristianstad Lan.
The furniture is, as a rule, sold to middlemen, who'sell it either in their own
shops or at fairs.
Casks are chiefly manufactured in the Làns of Kopparberg, Vàstmanland, Örebro,
Halland and Kristianstad.
The carpentry-sloyd carried on for the purpose of sale is mostly carried on
m Smâland, Vastergotland, Halland, and Vasterbotten.
The gross value of carpentry-sloyd articles sold in 1911 is estimated at 3 V2—4
million kronor.
Basket-making is of several kinds. Coarse, so-called coal-baskets, for the use
of the railways, are manufactured mostly in Âlvsborg Lan, south of Alingsâs, and
lu the Làns of Kopparberg, Blekinge, and Kristianstad while baskets made of
chip are. made in the Làns of Kopparberg, Kronoberg, and Kristianstad. Fine
wicker-work baskets are made purely as a domestic industry carried on for profit;
it exists on a large scale in the north-east of Blekinge, and it is here, too,