Читать книгу Economic Development in Denmark Before and During the World War онлайн

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As the populations of the towns increased, the living conditions of the lower classes grew worse and worse. In the middle of the century the housing question in Copenhagen as most discouraging. Little attention was paid to the unhealthy condition of the overcrowded tenements in some quarters of the city, and still less to other evils resulting from it. The cholera epidemic in 1853 created some alarm, to be sure, but did not lead to the adoption of any vigorous ​measures to prevent another similar occurrence. The Building Act of 1856 did not provide sufficient protection against these nuisances, and the consequences were quick to appear. Poor and inadequate as were the wages and housing conditions of the working people, the latter were nevertheless increasing in number, and it was obvious that they would not long remain satisfied with the indifference manifested by the government toward social questions. In the Emancipation Acts they could see advantages for their employers, masters or manufacturers, but it was difficult for them to see the merits of a legislature which provided for them only the poorhouse and otherwise mostly left them to shift for themselves. Thus the circumstances of the tradesmen remained wretched; and after the abolition of the guild system by the Trade Act of 1857 they were left without any real organization, even though the old guilds lived on as purely voluntary institutions.