AN INSPIRED MOVE
For centuries weaving had been an important part of life in Mark. In almost every cottage women worked at their looms, often assisted by husbands and children. In the early 1800s, local middlemen began supplying these hand weavers with machine-made yarn, paying them for the finished cloth, which they then warehoused and sold. Progress in weaving technology soon left the hand weavers far behind, and in the latter part of the 1800s textile mills sprang up all over Mark. The industrial age had arrived.
Records show that in 1870 39 weavers from Kungsäter relied on a middleman in Kinna, about 25 miles away. By the turn of the century, however, Gottfried Bergenheim had taken over the role as local middleman. Soon he had some three hundred weavers working for him. He also employed traveling salesmen, among them young Carl Fredrik Lundgren, the son of Carl Magnus Lundgren, who farmed Hultaberg after Baron Falkenberg was forced to declare bankruptcy and leave.
To build a full-scale factory, Bergenheim wanted to buy the land he leased from the vicarage. Ninus Brodin, the vicar, was for the transaction, as was Carl Fredrik Lundgren, who now had become Brodin’s tenant farmer. Bergenheim’s plans, they felt, spelled prosperity and progress for the parish as a whole. But most of the men of the parish council, led by Carl Börjesson, resisted Bergenheim’s proposed purchase. Land, they argued, was for farming, not for factories. Factories, associated with socialism, were breeding grounds for new and dangerous ideas about an international brotherhood, the abolishment of personal property, and the introduction of a new classless society without God.
Bergenheim, however, was to outsmart his opponents. He bought a large piece of land from the owner of Boet, one of the village farms. The river that flowed through part of it would provide valuable power for Bergenheim’s factory. The rest of Bergenheim’s new land bordered on the cemetery and was of no apparent use to him. Bergenheim, however, knew full well that the cemetery was becoming too crowded. The matter had been discussed repeatedly at the parish council — one proposed measure was to add a new layer of soil on top of the old — but the usual reluctance to spend money had left the issue unresolved. Bergenheim, gentleman that he was, offered to give the parish some of his new land in return for the land he now leased from the vicarage. His move was ingenious. Never before, they said, had the parish council been in such an uproar. In the end an exchange took place: future grave sites were secured, and Bergenheim had the land he wanted all along.
Under the name of Marks Linnemanufaktur Inc., the factory opened in 1907. Brodin was chairman of the board; he was the best educated man in the parish and Bergenheim supposedly needed him for his writing skills.
By 1908 sales amounted to about 500,000 crowns. In the weaving room the sound of metal grating upon metal shut down conversation and the smell of lubricating oil clung to hair and skin. Next door the giant mangle rumbled back and forth while workers busily attended to its needs. In the warehouse goods were sorted and packed — mostly towels, tablecloths, sheets, and dress materials. Weavers made about three times as much as they had in the past working at their hand looms. The mill was heated; large skylights made confinement seem less oppressive. The outhouses were private and comfortable. At other mills the seats were made to lean and workers must hold on to side bars so as not to slide off. Smoking a pipe or reading a paper or any other kind of dallying was thus rendered close to impossible.
“We may be for or against industrialism, but no one can deny that the factory has brought good to Kungsäter as a whole.” wrote Carl Fredrik Lundgren in a Varberg newspaper. Not all villagers agreed. There were even a few gripes among the workers themselves. Gottfried Bergenheim’s habit of extending credit at his store, though seductive, also made them more dependent. Hours at the factory were long and irregular. No one left until the church bells rang. When Lars, the bell ringer, walked by on his way to the church, Bergenheim would step out, exchange pleasantries, and offer him a beer (one assumes, out of his private supply). Thus Lars was almost always fifteen minutes late. It all added up; even when Lars was on time, a workday rarely lasted less than 11 hours.
In 1914 there was in fact a small rebellion. I hear about it from Kalle, one of the participants, 14 years old at the time. It emanated from the sewing room, housed in a separate building away from the factory proper. The sewing room specialized in tablecloths, wall hangings, sofa cushions, and draperies, with dotted patterns to be embroidered at sewing bees all over the country. For quite some time, discontent had festered, since the sewing room closed half an hour later than the rest of the factory. Eventually Miss Gunnarsson, the manager, composed a letter of protest. She was from Stockholm, and evidently had a way with words. In the letter, she demanded that employees under her supervision be allowed to keep the same hours as everyone else. Should the demand not be met, she continued, work would come to a halt. Kalle signed the letter, as did all of his coworkers. As soon as Bergenheim received it, Miss Gunnarsson was fired. Also fired were two brothers, relatives of Bergenheim. Suitcases in hand, they had to walk all the way to the railway station in Horred. No one dared offer them a ride.
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