APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200090017-8
summers. Over a quarter of all Swedish families spend several idyllic summer weeks and more spring and fall weekends in private cabins on the lakes, by the sea, or deep in the northern woods. At least as many more have the use of similar public facilities gratuitously or at very low cost. State-run cabins along the cross-country ski trails provide some respite from the winter confinement.
The rapid industrialization of Sweden in the 20th century has not only provided the consumer society with the world's second highest per capita distribution of automobiles, telephones, and all manner of labor-saving appliances, but has enabled the Swedes to enter the world market competitively with the finest steel, sophisticated fighter planes, automobiles, ships, electronic equipment, and capital goods such as pulpmaking and papermaking machinery. Partly, such technological prowess stems from the entrepreneurial and organizational skills that continue to surface in an economy still largely in private hands. The long-lived Social Democratic government wisely eschewed public ownership of the means of production. With 90% of the labor force and over 80% of the retail trade subject to competitive forces, efficiency has been assured, while the strong cooperative movement (embracing about 5% of the labor force and 16% of the retail trade) helps guard against the development of monopolistic practices. And two-fifths of the extensive research and development is defrayed by the government with fully one-fifth carried out in the public universities.
As recently as the early 1960's most authorities still concurred with the U.S. journalist and author Marquis Childs that Sweden was showing the world the "middle way." Even before the labor unions effectively came to power through their political arm, the Social Democratic Party, they had demonstrated their ability to close ranks in confrontation with management and blend force with reason. After having gained full legal recognition as the spokesman for labor, the unions, notably the mammoth Swedish Trade Union Confederation, came gradually to renounce the strike, except as a weapon of last resort. The famous Saltsjobaden Accords between organized labor and management, signed in 1938 at that seaside resort, inaugurated a period of labor peace that remained generally intact until the early 1970's. Although the number of man-days lost because of strikes in 1969 increased tenfold over the previous year, it was still the lowest in the Western world, averaging 0.15 days per 1,000 inhabitants compared with 243.6 days per 1,000 inhabitants in the United States.
The cooperative movement in Sweden, much of its organizational scheme imported from neighboring Denmark, developed in the latter 19th century to pool resources for the mechanization of farming and to break the retailing monopolies and their practice of price fixing. By the 1920's the cooperatives had become an important force in the economy, contributing notably to the modernization of agriculture and the evolution of an efficient retailing industry. As the developing manufacturing cartels were then attempting to allocate and control markets, new battle lines were drawn. The huge umbrella Cooperative Federation launched a number of small factories for the manufacture of margarine, flour, soap, rubber shoes, and lightbulbs. The small Luma Lightbulb Works was to provide one of the more dramatic contests. Taking on the great international cartels, it was shortly placing quality bulbs on the market at near cost, forcing its competitors to reduce prices by an average 37%. Luma continued to flourish and soon became a major producer. By the latter 1930's its burgeoning plant had become an industrial landmark in Stockholm. Most of the cooperative-run factories, however, did not attempt to compete seriously once the objective of fair prices had been obtained. In 1970 about 4% of the labor force in manufacturing was employed in cooperative-run enterprises.
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200090017-8
