Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1938, Page 169

INTER-NORTHERN COMMERCE
H9
As far as Denmark is concerned, a decrease of animal husbandry
and dairying in favour of a return to corn-growing would i. a.
mean a decline in the production of manure, which in its turn
would make it difficult to keep up the present yield per acre. It
would furthermore mean that Danish agriculture would become
less industrialized than it is, in so far as it would involve a decrease
in the production of a worked up product and a corresponding
return to primary production. It is a well-known fact that the
corn-exporting countries were those that were first and hardest
hit by the world crisis 1929 and the following years.
If the Northern countries were effectively shut off from the
rest of the world their trade with each other would necessarily
increase. Such a result, which was brought about by the blockade
and the universal scarcity of goods during the period at the end
of the Great War, might perhaps also be produced by a high and
carefully watched tariff wall. But such a system would be felt
as an intolerable compulsion on the part of the Norwegians who
would be forced to buy their rye in Denmark and the Danes who
would be forced to buy their industrial goods in Sweden. The
feeling of Scandinavian brotherhood, which indeed, as history
shows, has never been promoted by unions, would be seriously
impaired.
During the period when Denmark and Norway constituted
one political and economic unit, they used to supplement each
other’s economies, in approximately the same way as the province
of Skáne and the rest of Sweden do now. The States of Denmark-
Norway and Sweden were both at that time practically self-suffi-
cient and supplied themselves with the greater and most indis-
pensable part of their necessaries of life. But under modern eco-
nomic conditions all States find it more difficult to supply their
own needs than in the i8th century, and this applies especially
to the smaller States. For Denmark and Norway, economic self-
sufficiency is more completely out of the question than for Swe-
den. Nevertheless, the attempt to establish an economic union be-
tween the Northern States for purposes of commercial policy
would probably meet with greater practical difficulties than it
would have done in the i8th century. For at that time a united
North would have been practically self-sufficient, seeing that’
Denmark-Norway and Sweden, even taken separately, had al-
ready a considerable degree of self-sufficiency. Nowadays, on the
other hand, participation in the world trade is a condition of the
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