The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

SOCIAL CONDITIONS—OCCUPATIONS.G9easy circumstances, with comfortable dwellings, well ventilated, and furnislicdwith a certain luxury. The national wealth is officially valued at £240,000,000to £300,000,000, or £120 to £150 per head, with a mean annual increase ofabout £8,000,000. Nowhere else is the capital of the savings-bank relativelyso large, and, to judge from this test, the Danes would seem to be the most thriftypeople in Europe. Their average savings per head are about £6 8s., while thoseof Englishmen are not more than £2 2s.In Denmark, as in other Scandinavianlands, the party of progress consists mainly of the peasantry, whereas the ruralclement is generally the least advanced in France and the rest of Europe.The fisheries do not contribute as much as might be supposed to this generalstate of prosperity. The natives of the islands and of East Jylland find areadier livelihood in agriculture than in the perils of deep-sea fishing, whilethe young men of the seaboard show a preference for the certain and regularprofits of the merchant service. Still fishing is far from being entirely neglected,esjjecially on the less productive west coast, where the waters teem with marinelife. At Nyminde-gab, at the mouth of the Eingkjdbing-fiord, over 700,000whiting and 25,000 cod were taken in 1862, and large quantities of herrings andsalmon are brought by the Bornholm fishermen toSwinemiinde, whence they areforwarded to Berlin, Vienna, and Paris.Denmark is not a very industrial country. Except in Copenhagen and sometowns of Fyen and Jylland, the manufactures are mainly restricted to coarsewoollens and distilling, Both coal and water-power are scarce, except atFrederiksvasrk and a few other places where the streams have a rapid fall. Buttheir extensive trade brings to the people all the manufactured goods they require.Compared with the respective populations, the exchanges of the Danish marketare more considerable thanthose of France, and foreign trade has almost doubledbetween the years 1866 and 1875, though the increase is shown chiefly in theimports, amounting to £12,000,000 in a total of £22,000,000. Previous to 1875the bulk of the trade was with Germany, but since then England has occasionallytaken the lead, though Germany still continues to be the outlet for nearly all theDanish traffic with the rest of the continent.The commercial movement being necessarily carried on mainly by sea, theshipping has acquired a considerable development, and vessels of a tonnage of4,000,000, the greater part of which is still represented by sailing vessels, annuallyenter and clear. The mercantile marine amounts altogether to 3,150 vessels, ofabout 253,000 tons burden, all sailing vessels except 188 steamers, of 45,000 tons.Thanks to the numerous straits and fiords, water communication is easy, whilegood roads and numerous railways connect Copenhagen with all the Sjallandports. The postal and telegraph services have also kept pace with the generaldevelopment.Public instruction is also in a flourishing state, attendance at school beingobligatory on all from the seventh to the fourteenth year. In all the large townsthere are public gymnasia, classical and scientific as well as technical schools,and all the villages are provided with lower and higher primary schools, indevol.v. g