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Crafts in transformation?: Masters, journeymen, and apprentices in a Swedish town, 1800–1850

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Lars Edgren
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Continuity and Change , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , December 1986 , pp. 363 - 383
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

ENDNOTES

1 The literature on artisans in the nineteenth century is quite extensive and no exhaustive listing can be made. Craftsmen in England during the first half of the century are dealt with in lorwerth Prothero, Artisans and politics in early nineteenth-century London: John Cast and his times (London, 1979)Google Scholar, and in several articles by Clive Behagg, e.g. ‘Custom, class, and change: The trade societies of Birmingham’, Social History 4 (1979)Google Scholar. Some of the discussion on the labour aristocracy has focused on artisans both in small workshops and industrial settings, as Gray, Robert Q., The labour aristocracy in Victorian Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar, and Geoffrey, Crossick, An artisan élite in Victorian society: Kentish London 1840–80 (London, 1978)Google Scholar. For France, see books like Moss, Bernhard H., The origins of the French labour movement 1830–1914: The socialism of skilled workers (Berkeley, 1976)Google Scholar; Joan, Scott, The glassworkers ofCarmaux: French craftsmen and political action in a nineteenth-century city (Cambridge, 1974)Google Scholar; Hanagan, Michael P., The logic of solidarity: artisans and industrial workers in three French towns, 1871–1914 (Urbana, 1980)Google Scholar, and Sewell, William H. Jr., Work and revolution in France: The language of labour from the old regime to 1848 (New York, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Germany, see the collection of essays dealing mainly, but not exclusively, with German developments, Englehardt, U., ed., Handwerker in der Industrialisierung: Lage, Kultur und Politik vom späten 18. bis ins frühe 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1984)Google Scholar, and John, Breuilly and Wieland, Sachse, Joachim Friedrich Martens (1806–77) und die deutsche Arbeiterbewegung (Göttingen, 1984)Google Scholar. Also in the USA much recent interest has been devoted to artisans during the early nineteenth century. For a review article of some of these books, see Sean, Wilentz, ‘Artisan origins of the American working class’, International labour and working class history 19 (1981)Google Scholar. See also his book Chants democratic: New York City and the rise of the American working class, 1788–1850 (New York, 1984)Google Scholar. The growing interest in the small bourgeoisie is reflected in Geoffrey, Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard, Haupt, Shopkeepers and master artisans in nineteenth-century Europe (London, 1984)Google Scholar. Wolfram Fischer initiated the modem critique of the thesis of the decline of the handicrafts, ‘Das deutsche Handwerk in den frühphasen der Industrialisierung’, Zeit-schrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaften 120 (1964), 687–93Google Scholar, and ‘Die Rolle des Kleingewerbes im wirtschaftlichen Wachstumsprozess in Deutschland 1850–1914’, in Lütge, F, ed., Wirtschaftliche und soziale Problem der gewerbliche Entwicklung im 15–16. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1968)Google Scholar. An important book arguing along the same lines is Adolf Noll, Sozio-ökonomischer Strukturwandel des Handwerks in der zweiten Phase der Industrialisierung (Göttingen, 1975).Google Scholar

2 Research on the Swedish petite bourgeoisie is currently being carried out by Tom Ericsson which will help to remedy this defect.

3 An interesting attempt to study the intricate connections between family, organisation of production within the crafts, and the rise of class consciousness has recently been made by Birgitta, Skarin Frykman, Från yrkesfamilj till klassgemenskap: Om bagare i Göteborg 1800–1919 (Göteborg, 1985). [‘From occupational family to class community: a study of bakers in Gothenburg 1800–1919.’]Google Scholar

4 Andreas, Griessinger, Das symbolische Kapital der Ehre. Streikbewegungen und kollek-tives Bewusstsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/M, 1981).Google Scholar

5 Jürgen, Bergmann, Das Berliner Handwerk in den Frühphasen der Industrialisierung (Berlin, 1973).Google Scholar

6 See ibid. Prothero, Artisans and Politics. Joan Wallach Scott, ‘Men and women in the Parisian garment trades’, Thane, P., Crossick, G. and Floud, R., eds., The power of the past: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm (Cambridge, 1984)Google Scholar. These references provide examples from three major capitals in Europe; more could easily be cited.

7 The cross-sectional data from 1753, 1820 and 1845 are based on the mantalslängder (yearly listings of the population in November of the previous year for taxation purposes) for the following year. (For example, the data for 1820 comes from the mantalslängd of 1821.) For 1820 and 1845 these records have been combined with the husförhorslängder (running registrations of the population by household made by the parish minister). The household reconstruction has been based mainly on the husförhörslängder, which also yield information on the dates of birth and on civil status. All the individuals in 1820 and 1845 have furthermore been identified in the birth records of their respective parishes of birth in order to provide data on social origin. People have been tracked in the husförhörslängder from 1820 until 1830 to provide longitudinal data. In theory it should have been possible to follow individuals outside Malmö using the information on migration contained in the husförhörslängder, but journeymen are particularly difficult to follow; often they are listed as travelling to an ‘unknown place’. Another important source are the protocols from the guilds. In the case of Malmö, these are fairly well preserved. The taxation, church and guild records are to be found in the Malmö stadsarkiv (the City Archives of Malmö). I have chosen not to make full documentation of my claims in the notes of this essay. This will appear in full in my dissertation which I hope will be published in early 1987.

8 It is assumed here that the rate of leaving remains constant over the whole period of the apprenticeship. The annual rate of leaving would thus be 6.9 per cent. Using an integral, we can now estimate that to maintain the total number of apprentices at, say, 100, 27.6 new apprentices would have to start every year.

9 This figure closely corresponds to calculations that can be made from an investigation of craftsmen in Gothenburg for the same period. Bertil, Andersson, ‘Hantverk i Göteborg: Ekonomiska forhällanden för hantverkare i Göteborg 1806–25’, Historisk Tidskrift (1976), 401–22Google Scholar [Crafts in Gothenburg: economic conditions of craftsmen in Gothenburg 1806–25].

10 Whether there is a significant difference between the two age groups as to the likelihood to leave their trade can be tested using Fisher's exact test. The difference is significant at the 0.01 level.

11 A chi-square test does not reveal this difference to be significant at the 0.05 level.

12 Inge, Svensson, ‘Hantverk och industri’, in Malmö stads historia 3 (Malmö, 1981), 196Google Scholar. [‘Crafts and industry’, in History of Malmö.]; Ernst Söderlund, Hantverkurna 2 (Stockholm, 1949), 273–77. (The Artisans.)

13 The classical article is, of course, Thompson, E. P., ‘Time, work-discipline, and industrial capitalism’, Past and Present, no. 38 (1967), 56–97. The thesis of this article has been documented in many later works.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Griessinger, , Das symbolische Kapital. Ernst Söderlund, Stockholms hantverkarklass 1720–1772 (Stockholm, 1943)Google Scholar. (The Artisan Class in Stockholm 1720–1772).

15 Griessinger, Das symbolische Kapital.

16 The difference is significant at the 0.05 level with a chi-square test. In the county of Malmöhus, where Malmö is situated, 6.0 per cent of all live births between 1826 and 1830 were illegitimate. This is the period during which most of the Malmö apprentices of 1845 were born. Few apprentices were born outside the county.