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THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF SWEDEN.
The more investigation penetrates into questions respecting the conditions
and possibilities of culture, so much the more does the connection
between nature and culture manifest itself. Human knowledge
and activity cannot, beyond a certain degree, overcome the difficulties placed
in their way by nature. As culture advances, the distances between
points on the earth’s surface are of less importance, and as nations increasingly
coalesce into one humanity, the irresistable divisions of labour
among the various regions of the world emerge all the more clearly. Every
region has its own special task in the economy of mankind, dictated
by the natural resources which are to be found in it. In the presence of
such a conception, and not least during the production of such a work as
the present one, we are. met by the question “What are, in an objective
sense, the possibilities of Sweden, compared with those of other countries?”
This enquiry shall receive a brief reply here, so far as is possible at the
moment.
The natural resources at the disposal of a nation consist partly of mineral
wealth, partly of the production of mechanical power, as well as of vegetable
and animal products, which are conditioned by physical features, soil, and
climate; and partly, perhaps not least, of the innate power of the people
itself, which ultimately has its roots in the character of the race and the
reaction which nature and climate exercise upon it during the lapse of
centuries..
Sources of mechanical power.
We commence with the sources of mechanical power, inasmuch as
these have proved themselves, in the development of modern culture, to
be of such pre-eminent importance for the utilizing of all other resources.
Setting aside for the moment the muscular strength of men and draught
1—133179. Sweden. II.