Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Page 43

INSTITUTE OF ECONOMICS AND HISTORY
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of the attitudes of the opponents of trade unions. A final chapter
describes the organization and activities of the unions as well as
their relations with the then swiftly-growing social-democratic
movement.
The purpose of Bruun’s book is to describe the early years
of organized labour movements. Another historian, Georg Norre-
gaard, took upon himself to paint a picture of the actual working
conditions in shops and factories during the latter part of the
I9th Century in a volume, published in 1943, which contains
a great amount of information collected through painstaking
research from widely-scattered printed and unprinted sources7).
Another aspect of the social question treated by the Institute
is the methods employed by public authorities to aid those
citizens who, due to unemployment, illness or old age, were un-
able to subsist themselves, or support their families by the work
of their own hands. Thus, a study of the historical development
of Danish poor laws’ administration during the i9th Century
was included in the original program of the Institute and actually
published in 19408). The author, Harald Jorgensen, divides his
book in two distinct parts; in the first he gives an account of the
attitude of the central government to the question and analyzes
the various statutes and ordinances dealing with it. In the second
part he describes the ways in which the poor laws were admin-
istered by the local authorities and shows that they were much
less generous to those in need than the officials of the central
government in Copenhagen.
Related in its subject to the book on the poor-law problems,
is a treatise on the first Danish sickness insurance act of 1892
and its historical background, which was written to form the
introductory part of a work published by the State Directorate
of Sickness Insurance in 1942 to celebrate the joth anniversary
of the act of 1892.
Studies of Modern Danish Economic Conditions
Besides the above-mentioned books on wages and prices, the
Institute has made other useful contributions to the study of Dan-
7) Georg Norregaard: Arbejdsforhold indenfor dansk Haandværk og In-
dustri 1857—1899. (1943).
8) Harald Jorgensen: Studier over det offentlige Fattigvæsens historiske
Udvikling i Danmark i det 19. Aarhundrede. (1940).
Le Nord, 1944, 1-2
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