How did teachers make a living? The teacher occupation, livelihood diversification and the rise of mass schooling in nineteenth-century Sweden

ABSTRACT Drawing inspiration from the new social history of livelihood, this article examines how rural nineteenth-century teachers made a living by engaging in livelihood diversification. By using a wide variety of source materials from nineteenth-century Sweden, this article shows that, far from specialising exclusively in teaching, teachers were often engaged in multiple occupations as late as the year 1900, and that teachers’ work ranged from activities that were encouraged to those that were frowned upon or even illegal. As a result, this article sheds new light on teaching as an occupation in the nineteenth century and contributes to the discussion of the social and economic positions of teachers. By investigating how teachers earned their livelihoods, this article also addresses the role of teachers’ multiple occupations in the expansion of mass schooling during the nineteenth century.


Introduction
In 1889, the teacher Jöns Johansson wrote an article titled 'How could a teacher survive on a salary consisting of 8 barrels of grains and 53 riksdaler 16 skilling in cash? A question answered'. It was based on Johansson's own experiences from the plains of Scania (Skåne) in the south of Sweden. He described how a teacher required more than just his formal salary to survive. According to Johansson, a teacher needed to be a jackof-all-trades who could perform different types of work and be clever enough to obtain additional income from his surroundings. In contrast to this type of person, whodue to his resourcefulnesscould make a living as a teacher, Johansson described the introverted nature of bookish 'good for nothing' teachers who only had the ability to teach. 1 The main purpose of this article is to explore the issue that Johansson addressed: the livelihoods of nineteenth-century teachers. More specifically, this article examines how the teachers of rural primary schools engaged in multiple employment and livelihood diversification to make a living in Sweden in the period 1840-1900. How common was it for teachers to engage in livelihood diversification? What were teachers' various sources of income, and what was the character of those sources? How were teachers' multiple occupations perceived by contemporaries? In answering these questions, this article indicates that livelihood diversification was a common practice among teachers in rural nineteenth-century Sweden. The multiple occupations of these teachers encompassed a wide range of work, including work that was formal and informal, encouraged and discouraged, legal and illegal, as well as permanent, seasonal and temporary.
Apart from introducing concepts such as livelihood and livelihood diversification to the field of educational history, this article makes several contributions to the history of teachers and mass schooling. By exploring how 'teacher' was a title that by no means encompassed all the work that teachers did to make a living, this article contributes to our interpretation of teaching as a nineteenth-century occupation, and the role of that occupation in teachers' livelihoods. As this article indicates, there was more to teachers' work than their occupational title suggests, and the benefits of being a teacher were not limited to their salaries. In addition, this article examines the role of teachers' livelihood diversification in funding the expansion of mass schooling. The argument put forward in this article is that the practice of multiple employment facilitated the expansion of mass schooling during the nineteenth century by enabling teachers to survive on low salaries, thus reducing school districts' spending on salaries.

The history of teachers, occupational titles and salaries
Despite teachers' vital role in the rise of mass schooling, the history of schooling used to be characterised by the 'virtual invisibility of teachers'. 2 Recent decades have, however, seen an increased interest in their history. 3 This research includes studies of the professionalisation and feminisation of the teaching occupation, as well as studies of the material realities of teachers, teaching, everyday social interaction, teachers' social origins, and teachers' earnings and living arrangements. 4 Within this wealth of historical research, the dominant understanding of the nineteenth-century occupation of teaching reflects the experience of being a teacher today, where teachers normally have only one occupation (as a teacher) and earn a salary that is expected to be their mainand most often, their onlysource of income. This understanding is by no means surprising. Teachers have primarily been a topic in educational history, and historians of education tend to focus on the educational dimension of history. This limited portrayal of teachers' work may also be explained by the available source materials. Payrolls, registers and censuses only present a partial image of teachers' work, and these sources' use of occupational titles conveys the (often) false impression that teachers only had one job. 5 Although some scholars have noted that teachers could have secondary occupations during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 6 there is still a need for further studies that investigate the character, prevalence and role of teachers' livelihood diversification during the nineteenth century. As shown in this article, rural nineteenth-century teachers performed a wide variety of work outside the classroom.
In this respect, this article complements the existing research on teachers' salaries that has acknowledged the generally low salary levels of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and examined various aspects of teacher salary distribution. 7 For example, scholars have analysed wage distribution in Italy and Russia, as well as pay discrimination targeting black teachers in the US South. 8 Studies have also addressed the gender gap affecting teachers' salaries in countries such as England, Hungary, the Netherlands and the US. 9 Although all this research has provided important insights into the quantitative variations in salaries, it still raises questions regarding how teachers managed to survive on often low salaries .
This study of teachers' livelihoods also addresses the link between teachers' salaries and the rise of mass schooling. Vital studies in the history of schooling have indicated that low teacher salaries promoted the expansion of school systems by keeping expenditures down. As Carl Kaestle and Maris Vinovskis showed in their seminal study of education in nineteenth-century Massachusetts, the hiring of female teachers at low wages was a common economic tactic that enabled school committees to control the rising expenditures of the expanding school system. 10 Susan Carter has examined what she describes as a self-reinforcing cycle: high enrolment levels among schoolgirls increased the supply of female teachers, which kept teachers' wages low. This supply of low-paid teachers enabled schools to raise the quality of instruction, which in turn increased enrolment levels among both boys and girls. 11 Sun Go and Peter Lindert have portrayed the link between schooling and salaries in a similar fashion. A low-cost teaching staff, in combination with the autonomy of local school districts and a widely disseminated political voice, was one of the prerequisites for the rise of mass schooling in the northern US. 12 This article will contribute to this discussion by examining the role of teachers' multiple employment in this context of low teacher salaries and the expanding school systems of the nineteenth century.

Investigating the social history of teachers' livelihoods
This study of how teachers made a living is based on the social history of work and livelihood. 13 This strand of research is marked by its efforts to widen the perspective beyond individual employment and its (monetary) remuneration. As a result, scholars have been able to show how individuals in the nineteenth century and the early modern era made their livings from a wide range of sources. From this perspective, scholars have, for example, examined the role of the household, the work of married women and common rights. 14 In this article, I will focus on teachers' livelihood diversification. As the research on livelihood has shown, individuals in the nineteenth century often engaged in multiple employment and obtained earnings from activities that were intermittent, seasonal and casual. These activities could be legal or illegal, formal or informal, and remunerated in monetary or non-monetary forms. 15 This common practice of making a living from multiple sources of income, a diversity of livelihoods or multiple employment is described by the Swedish term mångsyssleri (that is, being occupied with many tasks or activities), which has its counterparts in terms such as the French pluriactivité and the German Mehrfachtätigkeit. 16 Internationally, Olwen Hufton's expression 'economy of makeshifts' has become highly influential in describing the practice of livelihood diversification among poor households. 17 An important consequence of examining teachers' work in terms of livelihood diversification is that a distinction is made between occupational titles and the work that individuals were engaged in. Today, occupational titles commonly designate the work that an individual does for a living. However, during the early modern era, soldiers not only served in the army but also repaired shoes, drilled holes and taught children. Similarly, the title of tailor did not encompass all the work tailors did, which could also include construction work, selling salt and collecting rents. 18 This tension between occupational titles and the actual work performed is an important point of departure for this article.
Compared with an analysis of teachers' formal salaries, a study of teachers' livelihood diversification is extremely challenging because the latter is neither regularly documented in the minutes and account books of school districts, nor is it the self-evident object of official statistics. In addition, it is not always evident who actually performed the workthe teacher or a member of his household. 19 To collect a sufficiently rich corpus of source materials, I have investigated a fairly long time period, and instead of focusing on a specific group of rural teachers, I have gathered examples from a wide variety of teachers. Although my investigation mainly covers married male teachers at permanent regular primary schools (folkskolor), I have included evidence on livelihood diversification from teachers working in other types of primary schools, including ambulatory schools, so-called småskolor (junior schools for the younger school-age children) and mindre folkskolor (minor primary schools intended for remote areas). I have also included both male and female teachers, married and unmarried teachers, and teachers from various regions in Sweden. This approach has enabled an examination of issues that would otherwise be impossible to study, but it has not allowed an in-depth analysis of differences among teacher categories, regional variation or changes over time.
Since evidence on teachers' livelihoods is sparse, I have also employed the strategy of what Swedish economic-historian Janken Myrdal has termed source pluralism. That is, I have handled the lack of sources by investigating a wide range of source materials in the search for rare findings and scattered and fragmentary evidence. 20 In addition to a detailed case study of the minutes and account books of 12 school districts in the Sundsvall region, located in northern Sweden, from 1840 to 1900, the source materials of this study include state school inspectors' reports (1861-1910), government statistics (1847-1859, 1868, 1882-1900) and irregularly conducted surveys of teachers' work and life (1889,1896,1911). A selection of nineteenth-century educational journals also proved particularly valuable. 21 This article also draws on the wealth of school memories and recollections published by the Swedish Society of School History (Föreningen för svensk undervisningshistoria) in their series of yearbooks that started in 1921. Twelve of these volumes have been particularly useful when investigating questions of livelihood. School memories are obviously not the most reliable of sources in several respects, and there are certainly differences between life as lived, life as experienced and life as told. 22 School memories nevertheless provide insights into informal practices that would otherwise be difficult to examine. These main sources have thereafter been complemented by other source materials relevant to the study of teachers' work that include handbooks for teachers, parliamentary debates, newspaper articles and police registers.

The yearly salary of a Swedish teacher
Although it is probable that revenues from teachers' other occupations in some cases exceeded their salaries, teaching salaries generally formed the basis of their livelihoods, whether in restricted economic terms or because teaching was the occupation that enabled other sources of income.
The Swedish teachers' salaries were initially dictated by the school act of 1842, which presented the fundamental organisation of Sweden's primary school system, intended to provide the Swedish population with a basic education. The school act stated that a minimum yearly salary of a teacher in a regular primary school should consist ofin addition to free housing -8 barrels of grain, the value of 8 barrels of grain in monies (approximately 80 Swedish kronor), fuel and cow fodder. When deemed appropriate and possible, teachers should be presented with a land plot, and when school districts were unable to provide cow fodder, the fodder should be replaced with 2 barrels of grain. 23 The in-kind items may be estimated as accounting for 68% of this minimum salary. 24 Over time, the minimum salary of teachers increased. For teachers at regular primary schools, the minimum salary increased to 400 kronor in 1864, 500 kronor in 1874, 600 kronor in 1886 and finally to 700 kronor in 1900. At the same time, the significance of non-monetary remuneration declined, as seen in the removal of grains from the formal minimum salary in 1891 and the abolition of teachers' cow fodder in 1900. 25 As a result, official statistics estimate that, by 1900, only 14% of a rural teacher's salary (regardless of the type of primary school) was paid in-kind. 26 These rising wages and changing salary compositions are vital not only to our understanding of the expansion of mass schooling in Sweden but also to this investigation into teachers' livelihoods. The increase in minimum salaries meant that the role of livelihood diversification may have been reduced, which should be kept in mind when I present data on the prevalence of employment diversification. The significance of inkind payments is of particular interest. Although the teacher's in-kind salary was payment for his work as a teacher, the nature of that salary required certain work from the teacher and his household. The cow fodder meant that teachers often owned a cow that had to be cared for, and when the teacher received the right to an allotted farm, the farm work required by the teacher and his household was probably significant. 27 In such cases, even the teacher's position implied a range of activities in addition to teaching. However, those activities are not the focus of this article.

A jack of all trades
As mentioned above, a diversity of livelihoods, or multi-employment, was common among the labouring classes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Individuals made a living from a multitude of activities, including both formal employment and informal tasks, jobs paid in cash and in-kind, and legal and illegal activities. This practice has been interpreted as a response to hardship, as a method of creating a secure livelihood that did not depend on only one source of income, or as a permanent feature of the early modern era and of nineteenth-century working-class life. 28 As this article indicates, such practices were still prevalent among teachers at the end of the nineteenth century.
Holding a teaching position not only secured a salary but also gave teachers opportunities to take on other types of employment. Since nineteenth-century teachers were intended merely to provide their pupils with a basic education, teaching positions presented them with time for other activities. Estimates have shown that an average school year in 1868 consisted only of 34 school weeks or 89 school days. In the region of Medelpad (in northern Sweden), schools were, for example, open only for 20 to 31 weeks in 1865. 29 That this short school year enabled livelihood diversification was mentioned in teacher journals. Because teachers only worked 34.5 weeks, an author noted in 1898, they had plenty of time to do other work to provide for themselves and their families. 30 In this context, it was also discussed whether school boards could force teachers to teach beyond the normal number of school weeks if the teacher already had other work planned. 31 My investigation shows that Swedish teachers used their time, and sometimes also their teacher training, to earn additional income. Consistent with the characterisationrecurrent in the literatureof teachers as belonging to both a rural and an academic context, teachers' diverse earnings spanned both these spheres. 32 The possible range of occupations was indicated by a manual titled Secondary Occupations for Teachers: Some Advice on How to Raise One's Yearly Salary (1891), which was based on the German handbook they sought to earn extra money. Apart from private tutoring, which according to the manual could generate 150 or even 300 kronor per year, the handbook presented secondary occupations that included penmanship, the collection of pharmaceutical plants, gardening, the sale of school supplies, poultry farming, bee keeping and bird taxidermy. The manual specifically emphasised how lucrative life insurance, beekeeping and willow cultivation could be. Optimistically, the manual stated that there were German teachers who had made several thousand German marks from beekeeping and that one hectare of willows could yield as much as 1,341 kronor in the second season. 33 Being a teacher provided access to certain occupations and tasks. Since they were employed by the same parishes that also hired sextons and organists, teachers had great opportunities to combine these positions, which is evidenced by the statistics presented in a section below. 34 The school act of 1842, and its subsequent revisions in 1882 and 1897, explicitly allowed teachers to combine their teaching positions with serving as a priest or sexton (klockare). 35 Such positions were obviously time-consuming. As a sexton, the teacher had far-reaching responsibilities as the servant of the priest and the parish. In addition to bell ringing and maintenance of the church building, he was to serve at services, weddings, baptisms and funerals, as well as performing various administrative duties. These duties included providing the priest with postal services, which, due to expanding public postal services, became less time-consuming during the investigated period. Sextons were also responsible for medical services, including bloodletting and vaccination. 36 The public character of being a teacher also presented teachers with other opportunities. In teachers' journals, the public position of teachers was a source of concern: it gave teachers a level of visibility that meant their clothing and the behaviour of their children were subject to high standards. 37 However, judging from their livelihoods, this position also made them eligible for a range of public or official positions. Their public tasks included managing auctions, as well as performing as a guest speaker, preacher or sobriety speaker. Their official positions included those of trichinella investigator, telephone station manager, inoculator, taxation officer, librarian, superintendent for poor relief, notary public and postman. 38 This wide variety of occupations was also captured in the recurrent obituaries published in the journal Svensk Läraretidning. An example of this diversity in employment is the teacher Alfred Rosvall (1854-1900). In addition to working as a sexton and organ player at his parish on the island of Gotland, he also worked as an auditor for a local railway company, chairman of the municipal board (kommunalstämman) and accountant for the local bank. 39  teacher was not only rewarded with a salary but also with the other earning opportunities one could pursue as a teacher.
As is evident from these examples, teachers' academic skills gave them access to additional sources of income. Although the literacy of the rural population in Sweden increased during the investigated period, parishioners often required expert help when formal documents needed to be drawn up. 40 In this rural context, state school inspectors noticed that teachers added to their meagre salaries by compiling estate inventories, assisting farmers with penmanship, working as private teachers, conducting inventories and documenting inheritance cases (see Figure 1). 41 Journals listed occupations such as lawyer, commissioner and penman, and teachers' memories include notes about copying minutes, transcribing court documents, and providing accounting services to the municipality and local companies. The latter source materials do, for example, provide an example of the delight a teacher felt when he received an assignment to manage the account of the parish granary (sockenmagasinet) for a much-needed yearly compensation of 2.5 barrels of grain. 42 In addition to the work directly linked to teachers' training and their public position, teachers also received revenues from other sources. Some worked as craftsmen, earning money from painting, glazing, tailoring, carpentry, shoemaking, barbering, organ construction and various types of wood-and needlework (Figure 2), including the making of tobacco pipes. 43 A teacher's son remembered, for example, that his father worked as a tailor in his spare time, charging 50 öre for a pair of trousers and between 1.50 and 1. 75 Swedish kronor for a coat. 44 Sources also registered teachers as making money from selling flowers and cabbage plants, carpentry, the clothing trade, insurance and butchery. 45 Teachers also made a living from farm work, including digging ditches, animal husbandry and various cultivation tasks. 46 Although such work did not require any academic qualifications, it was at times dependent on a teaching position. As mentioned above, teachers' minimum salary included cow fodder, and teachers could receive the 40  right to work farm lands as part of their salary. As has been noted in the social history of livelihood, having access to land generally gave individuals additional opportunities to support themselves. 47 This was certainly the case for nineteenth-century teachers.
Thus, examples are recorded of teachers performing a multitude of tasks on their allotted farms to make them more profitable. For example, one teacher worked his lands 'as if farming was his prime source of income', and another teacher was presented with a forested area that he transformed into 1.5 hectares of fields and meadows. Teachers also employed other strategies to make their farming ventures more profitable.
These included buying what was deemed a medium-sized farm; renting the minister's allotted farm; adding pigs, goats and sheep to the cows that the teacher fed on the cow fodder included in his teaching salary; and taking advantage of price fluctuations to make a living buying and selling horses. 48 As indicated by the examples presented above, the work teachers engaged in to support themselves and their families varied in character and duration. While some activities were certainly permanent or seasonal, teachers were also engaged in more temporary tasks that provided additional revenue. Examples of the latter are provided by the diaries of the teacher Lars Jansson (1810-1886), who lived in the mining district Bergslagen, north of Lake Mälaren. Jansson made additional income from writing legal documents, minutes, wedding verses and letters to Swedish emigrants living in the USA. According to his own estimates, he manufactured 372 greeting cards and 89 board games, texted 49 coffin panels, officiated 156 church services, sang or read at 86 funerals, managed 64 auctions and wrote a total of 68 estate inventories. 49 Thus, Jansson's livelihood also provides superbly detailed examples of the various ways in which teachers could earn money from their literacy skills. Last but not least, teachers took advantage of rural resources. In the above-mentioned article, published in 1889, the teacher Jöns Johansson described how teachers made a living from harvesting the grass that grew on dykes and terraces, a practice that was also debated in the Sundsvall region. 50 Memories also mention teachers receiving the right to harvest reed as remuneration for helping farmers. 51 In addition to these sources of income, teachers added to their salaries by hunting. A teacher's diary included notes on 43 'big birds' killed in the autumn of 1860, as well as a variety of wood grouses and two rabbits. 52 Although the significance of such activities is difficult to determine, they are nevertheless vital reminders of the diverse nature of teachers' livelihoods, which encompassed activities linked to the teachers' rural setting, their academic qualifications and public position. Apart from indicating the sheer range of work teachers were involved in, the examples presented in this section reveal the special position that teachers occupied. Although teachers' salaries were low, even compared by contemporaries to the salaries of farmhands, their practices of livelihood diversification indicate that teachers also benefited from their position because it presented them with opportunities to increase their income. 53 'Teacher' was consequently not an occupational title that necessarily denoted an entire livelihood; instead, this title indicated a position that gave access to several sources of income.

Accepted, encouraged and questioned practices
The fact that teachers engaged in various types of work was well known to contemporaries. Although there were critical voices, as discussed below, the practice of multiple employment was also accepted, and even at times encouraged. Those in favour argued mainly from an economic standpoint. Secondary employment was often perceived as a response to the difficult economic situation experienced by many teachers. An article discussing the expenditures of a teacher and his family noted, for example, that the difficult economic situation of many teachers forced them to search for secondary occupations whenever possible. 54 Livelihood diversification was, however, portrayed not only as something forced upon teachers by poverty but also as a means of elevating their economic position. This was, for example, evident in a proposal to revise the school act of 1842, submitted to the parliament of 1850-1851. Instead of allowing teachers to work as sextons, the proposal suggested that the school act should prescribe that combination of employment when possible. The purpose of this proposal was to facilitate the recruitment of new teachers by raising their yearly income. In the Swedish parliament, where the population was represented by the four estates (Nobility, Clergy, Burghers and Peasants), this proposal was approved by the peasant estate but rejected by the other estates. 55 Similar opinions, which also noted the non-monetary benefits of livelihood diversification, were voiced in other forums. At a teachers' conference in 1897, speakers argued that the physical labour of some secondary occupations gave teachers a healthy complement to their mental efforts. 56 Articles in the journal Svensk Läraretidning similarly described the pleasures and profits of beekeeping, as well as teachers' experiences with profitable poultry farms. The journal also featured encouraging advertisements, including those for the above-mentioned handbook on secondary occupations, insurance sales and tricot (trikåvaror) sales, promising notable (and inexplicably high) yearly earnings of between 500 and 1,000 kronor in the last case. 57 Despite such positive attitudes towards multiple employment, still voiced in the late nineteenth century, there were also opponents of this practice. They focused mainly on the issue of time. When discussing the combination of teacher and sexton positions, some members of the parliament argued that the position of a sexton was too timeconsuming to be suitable for teachers. 58 Articles in the journals Svensk läraretidning and Tidning för folkskolan claimed that the habit of multiple employment was detrimental to teaching, hindering teachers from preparing their lessons and causing them to lose interest in teaching. In this respect, critics argued, parishioners could expect the teacher to change as his family grew. From being a devoted teacher, he would transform into a carpenter, an auctioneer and 'everyone's counsel and literate friend' to provide for his family. 59 Consequently, an article in the newspaper Aftonbladet argued that teachers should remain teachers in a restricted sense. Although they should be allowed to vaccinate the occasional child, they should not become a know-it-all gardener, agronomist, inoculator, sexton, organist, penman and quack. 60 This opinion seems to have grown stronger during the end of the investigated period. The primary school teachers' union (Sveriges allmänna folkskollärareförening) noted in 1900 that, much to teachers' bitterness and sadness, there were increasing demands on teachers to limit their extra-curricular activities. 61 School inspectors also voiced unease over teachers' multiple employment. A school inspector in Västerås diocese, for example, politely questioned whether a teacher in his region really had time to spare for teaching when his portfolio of work also included organ player, sexton, parish penman (sockenskrivare), glazier, farmer and fisherman. 62 The problems that school inspectors identified varied. Apart from lamenting that teachers neglected their teaching, a school inspector in Skara diocese noted that teachers with multiple occupations hired substitute teachers who were not always capable. 63 A school inspector in Uppsala diocese was concerned with the quality of the teaching. He argued that teachers too occupied with other tasks performed their teaching duties in a mechanical and routine fashion. 64 A similar issue was noted by a school inspector in Karlstad diocese, who argued that secondary occupations reduced the teachers' energy for and commitment to teaching. 65 Apart from these opinions on teachers' multiple employment in general, authors addressing the subject distinguished between suitable and unsuitable secondary occupations. In these cases, multiple employment was an issue not only of time but also of the character of the occupations. For example, the prolific textbook writer Oscar Dahm encouraged multiple employment in his handbook on the art of being a schoolmaster, granted that the employments did not threaten the teacher's respectability. Thus, he argued that teachers should avoid questionable businesses such as quackery, dubious legal practices (pettifoggery) and the operation of pubs. 66 Such opinions were also voiced by school inspectors. A school inspector in Strängnäs diocese noticed that, while parishioners generally did not blame teachers for having multiple occupations, they nevertheless found some occupations problematic. For example, there were complaints about a teacher who too often worked as an auctioneer, and the inspector noted that all teachers who were passionate hunters had been criticised because of the difficulties of combining hunting trips with teaching. 67 In his report on the years 1893-1898, a school inspector in Skara diocese noted a positive development in this respect. Instead of working as an auctioneer or a lawyer, which the inspector claimed were unsuitable occupations for teachers, teachers were earning extra money through positions as organ players, sextons, beekeepers or post station managers. 68 Carl Kastman, educationalist and state school inspector, expressed similar concerns. Kastman was generally positive regarding teachers' multiple employment, but he also encouraged caution, noting that some occupations were either unsuitable for teachers or too time-consuming. While noting that there were no formal limitations in Sweden on the work teachers could perform -Kastman claimed that, in the German city of Hanover, teachers were required to file an application if they wanted certain secondary occupations and that teachers were forbidden to work with legal matters following decisions in 1880all occupations were nevertheless not fully suitable for teachers. The latter category included occupations that could tempt the teacher with dishonesty (retailer, legal counsel), occupations that could create conflicts with parents (country constable (fjärdingsman), auctioneer) and jobs that were deemed ethically problematic, such as pawnbroker or running a brewery. 69 As indicated above, and in line with existing research on the livelihood of labouring classes, teachers' multiple employment transcended distinctions between the encouraged and discouraged and the allowed and not allowed. 70 On the local school district level in the Sundsvall region, sources reveal tasks that were deemed to be suitable. These included the chores listed in school districts' building accounts, which show that teachers were paid to transport building materials, as well as to do roofing and construction work with timber and lime. 71 School districts could also be accommodating; a district even rearranged the school schedule to avoid interference with a teacher's duties as postilion. 72 When discussed in the school districts of the Sundsvall region, teachers' secondary occupations were, however, usually considered a problem. The school board in Attmar lamented that the female teacher had ordered older children to teach their younger friends while she devoted herself to needlework. In Tynderö, the teacher was accused of mending shoes on the school's upper floor while his sons taught the children in the classroom below (an arrangement that was discovered when his sons attacked a school girl with a clock chain). 73 In Sättna, a school inspector criticised the teacher for working as sexton, manager of the parish granary, lawyer and testament executor. The inspector particularly mentioned that the teacher failed to show up on the day of inspection, and instead chose to complete his county sheriff (länsman) degree in the city of Härnösand. 74 Examples from other parts of Sweden also indicate that teachers were occupied with activities that were frowned upon, such as selling hard liquor, pawnbroking, working as a lawyer or using the school as a store. 75 At times, teachers even drew revenues from illegal activities. Although petty crimes have been investigated and analysed in terms of livelihood and an economy of makeshifts, rural teachers' criminal behaviour is a dimension of the social history of teachers that has yet to be written. 76 Judging from the few cases of criminal activities registered in my source materials, teachers' criminal offences were of various types. Apart from tickets for drunkenness and arson, many of the offences were part of teachers' efforts to earn some additional money. These efforts were often linked to teachers' secondary occupations. A teacher was, for example, penalised for not covering manure during transport. Some offences were linked to teachers' literacy skills. 77 Teachers did, for example, earn money from embezzlement. The journal Svensk Läraretidning reported on a teacher sentenced to four years of hard labour due to frauds committed as a bank accountant, and another teacher/bank accountant was reported to have embezzled 4,078 kronor. The latter teacher explained his offence by the unfortunate combination of a large family and a small salary. The journal also reported on a teacher who, working as a manager of the postal station, disappeared after stealing money and registered letters. Finally, the journal reported the utterly tragic case of a teacher who committed suicide when his teacher son was sentenced to prison for embezzling funds from a postal station. 78 My investigation also includes teachers who earned extra money through counterfeiting. State school inspectors as well as Svensk Läraretidning reported several cases of teachers being found guilty of this crime. In Visby diocese, for example, two out of five teacher dismissals in 1877-1881 were caused by counterfeiting offences. In the registers of the Norrköping city police chamber for 1874-1879, six teachers were listed: three for counterfeiting, two for theft and one for arson. 79 Although such criminal offences were probably quite rare, they do indicate the wide range of legal and illegal activities that teachers engaged in to earn their livelihoods. They also show how the teacher's position created opportunities for additional income that also could be abused.
As evident from the above, there certainly existed varying opinions on teachers' practices of livelihood diversification. Apart from those who emphasised how valuable secondary occupations could be for teachers, there were also critics who argued that at least certain tasks were detrimental to the work that teachers did at schools. The impact that livelihood diversification had on teaching practices is beyond the scope of this article. A reasonable hypothesis is, however, that secondary occupations did not interfere too much with teaching duties when the school weeks still were comparatively few in the mid-nineteenth century, but became increasingly problematic during the investigated period. In the section below, however, I will address one aspect of the relationship between teachers' livelihoods and schooling, namely the economic role of livelihood diversification in the expansion of mass schooling.

The prevalence of multiple employment
Although journals, newspapers, state school inspector reports and teacher memories indicate teachers' wide range of earnings and contemporaries' perceptions of those earnings, those source materials do not provide detailed insight into the prevalence of the practice of multiple employment. However, various attempts were made to map the revenue sources of teachers during the investigated period, and the resulting data do shed some light on this issue. During the first half of the investigated period, data were collected on the extent to which teachers combined their position with that of priest or sexton. These data were part of the statistics on the development of the Swedish school system that the Ministry of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs (Ecklesiastikdepartementet) collected every third year. These statistics indicate that it became less common for priests to serve as teachers. Although the number of teachers increased, the number of teacher priests declined from 211 in 1847 that is, 8% of all teachersto 157 in 1859. 80 However, the tradition of combining the positions of teacher, sexton and organ player remained strong. The number of teachers also occupying any of these positions increased from 521 in 1847 to 968 in 1859, an increase from 21% to 23%. In 1882, when data on sextons were still included in printed statistics, 1,241 male teachers in regular primary schools, that is, 33% of this category of teachers, were also occupied as sextons. 81 A teachers' roll of regular primary schools indicates that the number of male teachers also working as sexton, organ player or cantor was 1,724 in 1889, that is, 31% of the 5,602 male teachers listed. 82 The first statistical data covering other earningsapart from those of the sexton, cantor and organ playerare found at the end of the investigated period. When teachers' salaries were discussed in the 1890s, secondary occupations were an important issue, partly because their existence was used to question the need for higher teacher salaries. To investigate this issue, the Ministry of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs conducted a survey targeting the school district's chairmen. The survey included questions regarding the salaries and livelihoods of Sweden's 6,364 male and female teachers in the regular primary schools of 1896. 83 This survey showed that multiple employment was a widespread practice, especially in rural areas (see Table 1). In 1896, 57% of the male and female rural teachers had earnings in addition to their teacher salaries, while merely 17% of urban teachers benefited from additional income. In total, 47% of all teachers had secondary occupations.
Many of the teachers earned significant sums from their extra work: 37% of all teachers had other incomes that exceeded 100 kronor, or 14% of the total income of a teacher with the stipulated minimum wage of 600 kronor in 1896. When combined, the additional sources of income could play an even bigger role. A teacher claimed that he, in addition to his teacher salary, also received 100 kronor for teaching the children of maritime pilots, 120 kronor for managing a telephone station, and 100 kronor in revenues from his garden. If the teacher was on a minimum salary, this would account for 35% of his total income. 84 Whether a secondary occupation was comparatively common among teachers in rural Sweden from an international standpoint remains to be determined because only a few studies have addressed the subject. Ingrid Brühwiler's study of Swiss primary school funding does, however, indicate that approximately 90% of Swiss primary school teachers had a secondary occupation around the year 1800, usually within the church or in agriculture. In comparison, Phil Gardner's study of elementary schools in Victorian England quotes a report from London in the early 1840s that shows that 48.1% of 540 schoolmasters and -mistresses had secondary occupations, including shopkeeping, needlework and washing. 85 There is also evidence of this practice prevailing into the twentieth century. Marjorie Lamberti's study of the partnership between Church and State in Prussia shows that, as late as 1901, 20% of male primary school teachers in Prussia still worked as church organists. 86 In Sweden, as is evident from Table 1, positions such as sexton and organist remained common among teachers still in 1896. In total, 23% of all male and female teachers enjoyed these positions. In rural areas, almost every third teacher (31%) had any of these occupations that could yield a significant salary: 44% of these teachers earned more than 300 kronor per year from their secondary position. Apart from these positions, teachers were also employed either by the State, Church or municipality, or outside of those entities. Occupations within the municipality included the positions of treasurer, vaccine officer and librarian. Teachers working for the State were mainly managers of postal and telegraph stations, and teachers' occupations in other sectors included journalism, accounting, farm work and gardening. 87 Although the survey of 1896 showed that 57% of rural teachers had secondary occupations, this figure may underestimate the prevalence of livelihood diversification during the investigated period. Multiple employment was probably more common in the 1840s and 1850s, when teacher salaries were lower. The survey probably also underestimated the significance of teachers' secondary occupations in 1896. While the chairmen of school districts were familiar with teachers' employment in the parish and municipality, teachers were probably reluctant to inform the chairmen of their extracurricular activities and the revenues they yielded. The political context is also important: the investigation was launched at a moment when teachers' multiple employment was an argument against raising their salaries. 88 The opposite was true for the investigation conducted by the Swedish Teachers' General Association in 1911. Instead of targeting school boards, this investigation was based on the bookkeeping of 625 teachers from all parts of Sweden, which enabled the detection of income sources that the previous survey would have missed. Because secondary occupations at that time were an argument for increased teacher salaries, and the investigation of 1911 was intended to provide the basis for such a proposal, this investigation was certainly not inclined to underestimate the value of teachers' secondary occupations. 89 The survey of 1911 showed that secondary occupations were still common in the early twentieth century. Judging from the investigation into the bookkeeping of 435 male and female rural teachers of regular primary schools, secondary employment contributed, on average, to 28% of the income of married male teachers, 18% of the income of unmarried male teachers and 6% of the income of unmarried female teachers (see Table 2).
In combination with the analysis of the previous section, the data behind Tables 1 and 2 make several contributions to my interpretation of teachers' livelihood diversification. The investigation of 1911 seems to support the thesis that livelihood diversification was a permanent feature of the teaching position rather than merely a response to hardship. Instead of being a practice mainly found among the poorest teachers, the male teachers in the highest salary grade had greater income from secondary occupations than did teachers at the lowest salary level. In addition, such evidence might suggest that secondary occupations were something that a teacher accumulated over the years. Among married male teachers, teachers in the first salary grade (up to 5 years of impeccable service) had 442 kronor in additional revenues, while teachers in the fourth and highest salary grade (more than 15 years of impeccable service) had 588 kronor. 90 In terms of gender, Table 2 indicates that there was not only a gender gap in salaries, as, for example, Margareta Mellberg has shown in the Swedish case, but that female teachers also received lower revenues from their secondary occupations. 91 This fact may be related to prevailing perceptions of gender and the range of secondary occupations available. Because neither public positions nor jobs as manual labourers were perceived as suitable for women, opportunities for female teachers were probably comparatively scarce and limited to work deemed fit for women, which included (as mentioned above) needlework. 92 The prevalence of secondary occupations, indicated by the tables, also questions the recurring descriptions of teachers' solitary position as lower-ranking academics in rural areas, withdrawing from society to an idyll of beekeeping and eccentricity in isolation, as Thomas Nipperdey has portrayed the situation of German teachers. 93 Judging from the case of rural nineteenth-century Sweden, this seems not to have been the case. Although teachers could feel lonely, they were, judging from the prevalence of multiple employment, active participants in the local community; they appear as rather practical individuals who earned their living not only from teaching but from many other activities. In this respect, the common practice of livelihood diversification indicates the resourcefulness and the abilities required from nineteenth-century rural teachers.
The prevalence of teachers' secondary occupations also sheds new light on the role of livelihood diversification in the funding of mass schooling. As in other nineteenthcentury primary school systems, teachers' salaries were the main operational cost in Sweden. 94 If as much as 57% of rural teachers enjoyed secondary occupations in 1896 and 28% of married male teachers' income still came from secondary occupations in the early twentieth century, these occupations were a significant resource for the entire school system. Teachers' livelihood diversification enabled them to survive on lower salaries, which in turn facilitated the rise of mass schooling by reducing the expenditure on salaries that this educational revolution inevitably implied. Consequently, this article indicates that teachers' secondary occupations not only enabled teachers to make a living but also facilitated the funding of the nineteenth-century expansion of mass schooling. In this respect, this article emphasises that mass schooling was not only built on taxes, as has been commonly stated, 95 but also depended on the extra-curricular activities of teachers.

Conclusion
In this article on rural teachers' livelihoods in nineteenth-century Sweden, I have shown how, in addition to their formal salaries, teachers made their living from multiple sources of income. Although it is impossible to determine the exact importance of those other sources of income, evidence suggests that teachers' secondary occupations could have been quite significant. In 1882, 33% of male teachers also worked as sextons, and in 1896, 57% of all rural male and female teachers in regular primary schools still had additional occupations; when teachers in urban areas are included, the percentage was still an impressive 47%.
These insights into teachers' livelihood diversification affect our perception of the teaching profession in the nineteenth century. This article suggests that 'teacher' was an occupational title that by no means encompassed all the work that a teacher performed to make a living in the nineteenth century. Judging from evidence in a wide range of source materials, Swedish teachers held a variety of jobs in addition to their teaching duties. These additional jobs included not only formal and well-considered permanent positions (such as sexton or organist) but also diverse occupations that involved labour that was casual, recurrent, seasonal or permanent; academic or rural; allowed or not allowed; formal or informal; and even legal or illegal. The modern teachers of the late twentieth century (who were expected to devote most of their time to the teaching profession from which they were expected to earn their living) had not yet been fully established in nineteenth-century Sweden. Although further studies are required, evidence from England, France, Germany and Switzerland, referenced in this article, strengthens the argument that a reinterpretation of the nineteenth-century teacher occupation may be required.
This questioning of a common-sense understanding of the teacher occupation in the nineteenth century also affects our perception of teachers' social position. Although teachers may have felt lonely or isolated, those feelings do not seem to have been based on their livelihood. Partly because their multiple occupations involved social interactions and partly because teachers had many sources of income, teachers earned their living in a way that did not differ that much from their neighbours. By forcing teachers to diversify their livelihood, low teacher salaries may have helped to strengthen the teachers' social relations with the local community. In this respect, teachers' secondary occupations performed a function similar to the role that existing research has ascribed to evening entertainment and an active social life in Austria, Finland and France. 96 An analysis of teachers' livelihoods also affects how we interpret teachers' salaries and their financial situation. If we do not expect a teacher's salary to provide their entire livelihood, then it does not appear as low as it has often been considered. Rather, a teaching position appears to be a stable foundation that presented individuals with opportunities to add additional earnings to their income. In addition to a salary, teachers received access not only to employment in the parish (such as sexton or organist) but also to other official or public positions, including those for which their academic training had prepared them. Although teachers' livelihood diversification was at times portrayed as a response to hardship, the prevalence of this practice among both lower-and higher-salaried teachers, combined with the public debate surrounding it, create the impression of multiple employment as a permanent feature of a teacher's position in nineteenth-century rural Sweden. However, whether teachers' multiple occupations added up to a decent living, or whether teachers nevertheless remained poor, is a question that cannot be answered without additional investigation.
Finally, this article influences how we interpret the role of teacher salaries in the expansion of mass schooling. Low teacher salaries have, as mentioned in the article's introduction, been regarded as one of the factors that promoted the development of mass schooling in the USA by reducing the levels of educational spending. Although this article does not question that thesis, I have shown how low salaries presupposed teachers' practices of livelihood diversification that enabled them to survive on a meagre monetary salary. In this respect, this article indicates that the rise of mass schooling was not only funded by central government grants and by local monetary and non-monetary taxes, but also sponsored by teachers' income from multiple employment. This article, I believe, may serve as an introduction to this joint history of schooling and teachers' livelihoods.