c o n t i n u i t y a n d c o n t r ac t 123 matters, for example the employee’s right to protection of employment or salary during sickness, he showed a remarkable uncertainty.This vagueness, however, is quite understandable considering the great importance, which he attached to respect wellestablished customs as an important legal source. At the time of the publication of Winroth’s book, Sweden was no doubt in a transition period, but still in the main a pre-industrial society.Working life was dominated by agriculture and lacked firmly established customs between employers and workers.251 Furthermore, during the last decades of the 19th century, the participants in the new sectors of the Swedish labour market tended to be very reluctant to use the courts for solving disputes concerning the interpretation of contracts of employment. Accordingly, there was a lack of sociological information about people’s way of living or the courts’ decisions which could be used for supporting the existence of a custom, established enough to legitimise a “general principle” of law.Winroth’s summary conclusions in 1878 on what rules concerning the master-servant relationship that ought to be “natural” and applicable to the free labour contract thus might be interpreted as reflecting the unclear situation of the Swedish working life at that time. This state of things was to become even more unclear during the formative period of Swedish labour law, 1885-1930. 251 Ågren 1992, pp. 30-31. See also Taussi Sjöberg 1981, p. 30; Peterson, C, 1984, pp. 5-6; Nygren 1982, pp. 199-200.
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