Page:Economic Development in Denmark Before and During the World War.djvu/42

 and fourteen socialists, out of a total of a hundred and fourteen representatives, took their seats in the Lower House. In 1910 twenty-four socialists were elected by 99,000 votes (28 per cent, of all the votes cast). Had the number of candidates elected corresponded exactly to the number of votes received, the party would have seated thirty-two representatives; but the social-democrats voted chiefly in the urban districts, where the number of electors was generally greater than in the country. In 1913 the social-democratic candidates received 107,000 votes (nearly the same proportion as before), and this time won thirty-two seats. The social-democrats now stood second, numerically, in the Lower House. The new Constitution of June 5, 1915, made no essential difference in the comparative strength of the party. In 1918 the social-democrats obtained 262,000 out of 921,000 votes (men and women), or 28 per cent.; and they elected thirty-nine of the one hundred and forty members of the Folketing—likewise 28 per cent. The party now stood second to the 'Left' with its forty-six members, and the 'Radical Left' stood third with its thirty-nine members. Simultaneously with this increased membership in the Folketing the social-democrats also succeeded in entering the Landsting (Upper House), in which the election of 1915 won for them four of the sixty-six seats; and in 1918 they won fifteen seats.

It is almost needless to say that evidences of the growth of the social-democratic party are also to be found in the municipal boards of several towns, not the least in Copenhagen. At the election in 1917 for the municipal board of the capital the social-democrats won thirty out of fifty-five seats; in Aarhus, the second largest town in Jutland, eleven out of nineteen; in Esbjerg, nine out of nineteen, and so on. Employers' Associations The strength of this movement, which held workmen of all occupations in closer union than had ever been the case in the time of the guilds, naturally demonstrated the necessity 