Focus in this presentation is on the interplay between the articulation of the private hygiene of citizens as a social problem, on the one hand, and the proposing of practical solutions to the identified problem, on the other.

"The bath issue" may today sound as something odd, but signified a reality in the growing cities of Swedish society in the later 19th century. Bacteriology as a new way of understanding sickness contributed to making hygiene into a key factor for health on both the individual and societal level. After the articulation of the general problem by medical professionals, municipal politicians and national social policy makers contributed to making "the bath issue" into a part of the over-arching "social issue" around the turn of the century. It was related to "the housing issue" and had the absence of bath-rooms as a starting point. To promote the goal of "a clean people" then came means in the form of, e.g., publically funded bath-houses created by municipal engineers. One problem for bathing reformists was the people's lack of interest and understanding of their own good.

This Swedish trajectory fits into an international pattern. Taking the 1899 founded Deutsche Gesellschaft für Volksbäder as a model, actors from the realms of medicine, social policy, municipal engineering in 1921 founded The Association for Public Baths. The focus initially was urban, but soon interest was redirected towards the countryside, where saunas were seen as the feasible solution of the rural bath issue. The Association collaborated with the State Pension Board and came to channel funding to local actors who wanted to build houses for bathing; these had to be of solid construction to be approved by the Association's experts and get state funding. At the second Bathing Congress in Stockholm 1930, this orientation of activities was challenged. The Swedish Gymnastics Federation argued that distance was the problem in rural areas and that a bath had to be in reach for people to be used; as the houses for bathing had to be many, they had to be simple and cheap. The contending views on the proper bath for the people had immediate implications for sauna design. This controversy came to follow the public baths movement, but eventually became irrelevant when the rising housing-standard paved way for private solutions.