348 children in need were put forward which were a premonitory sign that a purposeful, socially advantageous upbringing neither ought nor could be combined with a demand for the effective utilisation of the pupils’ labour. During the same period of time the tension between the central power and the local communities was brought to the fore. The law makers in 1763 endeavoured to impose a mandatory levy on the parishes for poor relief but was forced to resign itself with a regulation which gave the parishes great roomfor manoeuvre. Around 1800 many parishes introduced provisions prohibiting the poor, the elderly and families surviving on the man’s income alone frommoving to the parish. The private master of the house and the individual parishes began to experience problems in providing for their children. Part V deals with the debate during the 19th century concerning the “social issue”, the interaction between care and punishment, between state and local community together with the revision of the systemof rules up to and including the Penal Code of 1864. Fromthe first half of the 19th century the public debate in Sweden indicated increasingly great anxiety in the face of the “little world” - the family as a cohesive unit for fosterage and production, the guilds, special jurisdictions etc., - began to become increasingly fragmented. State institutions for penal labour, unemployed and beggars formed under a fewdecades under great pressure. Fromthe 1840’s the rules relatingtopoor relief, elementary schools, vagrancy and criminal lawwere revised. This meant that the central power released itself from the burdens of a number of functions concerning social control and care and passed them over to the local communities who were then given greater powers of compulsion as regards the persons receiving assistance. Social problems, poverty and habitual bad behaviour were often presented to an issue of moral, which in turn was considered to warrant measures in order to reformand educate the poor classes. The debate indicates several manifestations of the tendency for intellectual groups of persons with means to force societv’s poor individuals to become more socially well adapted. At the same time as duties increased the local communities’ powers of compulsion grew in relation to persons who habitually misbehaved and persons receiving assistance. The Elementary Education ordinance of 1842 was tied to the State Church’s old tradition concerning fosterage of the people and introduced the possibility for the municipal authorities to take children into compulsory care, particularly frompoor homes and whose parents neglected the school attendance duty. The private master of the house was partially replaced by a public master. It was however not an issue concerning an obligation but rather an issue for the municipalities to resolve as they thought fit and financed within the framework of their powers. The municipalities indicated that they were not clearly prepared to take on the roll of a social master of the house.
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