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Writing: The Causes of Emigration

The Causes of Emigration, § 32

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§ 32

Let us see what effect these measures may have on marriages. When agriculture, commerce and handicrafts are accorded the respect they deserve, then a significant number of unemployed men waiting for official appointments would enter the trades, set up households, make a living through work and soon be able to marry, beget children and bring them up to be useful citizens; if their work were to provide them with a better living, respect and reward than before, they would within a short time be followed by others.

As soon as more enlightenment, more freedom and educated sense begin to appear in the productive occupations, the farmer will lack neither examples nor a conviction that the earth produces necessities for us not according to its extent but to the number of those who work on it. He would no longer need to be perplexed as to what he should do with his many children once they have grown to adulthood, either with other people or at home, but would give each of them a plot of land on which to live and work in perpetuity.

When farmhands develop a wish to become seamen, we ought to realize that it is a desire born of their natural yearning for freedom. Honourable compatriots should then counter that by offering freedoms at home, show them the places where they may establish new settlements, crofts and cabins, promise them and their descendants undisputed possession of the land that they clear, support them and in particular persuade them to marry. Nor should wages be restricted as long as we are short of workers; that would be to covet a few öre today and thereby lose an entire plåt tomorrow.

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