Swiss allmends, and a walk to see them

by F. Barham Zincke

The local conditions were very peculiar. Small prairies might be formed in the valley bottoms, and by quarrying the rocks, levelling, surface-soiling, and irrigation, they might in some places be carried a little way up the mountain sides. But if the grass of these prairies were to be consumed by the cattle in the summer, there would be no provision for them in the coming winter. As, then, the prairies could not be fed in summer, what was to be done with the cattle at that season? The mountain pastures, which could not be cut for hay, enabled them to meet this difficulty. The cows of the village community might during the summer be kept on these mountain pastures, and this would admit of the bottom and the irrigated prairies being reserved for making hay, which might support the cows in winter and spring. This, therefore, must be the plan. Everyone must have the right of sending his cows up to these summer pastures. Everyone in summer then would be able to devote himself to keeping up, perhaps to enlarging a little, his prairie land, and to making and storing up hay for winter. But this would depend on a sufficient amount of summer pasturage being kept common. Common property is not generally well looked after, or made the most of: but this is true of Alpine pasturage in a less degree than of other kinds of commonable land, because it does not depend for its produce upon care and labour, as a commonable cornfield or a commonable vineyard would; nor is it easily exhausted, for it is at rest throughout at least two-thirds of the year. It is very different with prairie, that is to say, made and cultivated grass land: its first formation—it is all made land—and the maintenance of its fertility sufficient for the two or three crops of hay taken yearly from it, and the making and storing up of this hay, require an amount of attention and labour it would be vain to expect as a general rule without the stimulus of private property. If common labour were attempted in a matter of this kind, most men would endeavour to throw as much as possible of the work on their neighbours; and as to improvements of the common property, what would then in theory be everybody’s business, would in practice be nobody’s: the labour would be both less in amount, and less enterprising. Clearly the best system with respect to the prairies was that they should be pretty generally private property. The mountain pastures were already formed. They were the gift of nature. They could not be very much improved. Under any treatment they would continue to exist. Not so with the prairies. They could not have been created without a vast amount of labour, and they could not be maintained without its continuance. And so it came to be the established rule, that the natural summer pastures should be common, and that every burger should have as many cows kept upon them in the summer as he had himself kept during the previous winter with the hay he had made from his labour-created and labour-maintained prairies; or, if as yet he had no prairies, with the dried leaves and coarse stuff he had been able to collect from the common forest.

If these mountain pastures had been allowed to become private property in those times when the people were parasites of the cows, the few who had got hold of them would have been very rich, and those who had failed to secure a share in them would have been quite starved out. They would not have been able to have kept cows through the winter, because in the summer they would have been obliged to put them on their little bits of prairie ground, and so could not have reserved their produce for winter.

And in the days anterior to accumulations of capital, this, which is a great point, worked fairly for all. All were placed on about an equal footing. Whatever differences of condition there might have been then, resulted mainly from differences of industry. But these were differences which had play within very restricted limits; for the field for industry had little extent and no variety. The community said to its members: ‘Do what you may your struggle for existence must be hard. It cannot possibly be maintained without cows; and you will not be able to keep your cows in the winter without their having been taken off your hands and off your prairies during the summer; for, throughout the whole of that season, you must be attending to your prairies, and to their produce, which must be reserved for winter. In order that this may be done, the mountain pastures shall be treated and used as common property; so that during the summer the cows of all may be kept upon them. Each shall have the right of sending up to them in the summer as many cows as he had kept from the produce of his prairies through the previous winter.’ As no family could reclaim and keep up more of this prairie land than was sufficient to provide hay for a few cows—an industrious and prosperous family might do this for five or six, a less industrious and less prosperous for two or three—the people were all placed by this system very much on a footing of equality. The system was both necessary and fair. It originated in the nature of the country, and in its then economical conditions; and, in turn, it created the Swiss life and character. It was evidently a form maintained down to our own times, under peculiar circumstances, of the semi-pastoral stage. The common pasturage was the same in both; and the prairies, held as private property and cultivated for hay, were analogous to the enclosed fields, held as private property and cultivated for grain, of that stage. The shifting severalties also of garden-ground, to which we shall come presently, were genuine incidents of it.

I will show presently how, under the altered conditions of the times, the old system of common pasturage has now become both unnecessary and unfair. To the existing circumstances of the country it is not at all adapted; and so, according to the law which makes them sovereign in human affairs, it must die out: but of that anon.

We now come to the second part of the common property of these Cantons—the forests. Under the conditions of the past it was as necessary that there should have been common forests as it was that there should have been common summer pastures. Wood, with the exception, here and there, of turf, and which followed the same rules, was in Switzerland the only fuel. In times when men did not live much, or at all, on wages, and wood was the only fuel, it was necessary that all the members of the community should have the right of taking so much as would supply their absolute wants from the contiguous forest. This also, therefore, must, at all events so far, remain common property. That it should have been so was quite imperative in Switzerland, on account of the length and the severity of the winter. If any members of the community had been excluded from the right of fuel, they would have died of cold. Suppose that these forests had been allowed to become private property: two evil consequences would have ensued; a large part of the existing population would forthwith have been deprived of the means of obtaining fuel; and as a private owner might do with his own what he pleased, his necessities, or greed, or bad judgment, might bring him to cut down, at one time, a large portion of the forest, or might prevent his taking the care necessary for maintaining it in a serviceable condition for the generations that would follow him. These difficulties were overcome by keeping the forest in the hands of the community, and distributing, on a plan which would be fair to all, the amount of fuel that would be necessary for each. It thus became the interest of all to see that the forests were not wastefully used, and were properly maintained; and a regular supply, which was the great point, of what was indispensable was secured for all.

The rule generally observed in the distribution of the produce of the common forests was, that each family should have an allowance of fuel, and of timber for repairs, in proportion to the size of his dwelling house and byre; so many solid klafters for the former, and so many hewn timber trees, generally fir, for the latter. In the days before accumulations of capital, when, through the condition of each being mainly the result of his own industry and actual manual labour, all were kept pretty much on an equality, this method of distribution was fair enough. Its principle was analogous to that which was observed in the use of the common pastures.

Under the circumstances of time and place the maintenance of common property in the forests was a matter of life and death. In these valleys at that time there were no ways of earning the means for buying fuel. The people had in summer to be attending, each to his little bit of prairie land, to his hay-making, and to his little plot of corn; and in winter he must still be at home, looking after and tending his cows, and doing the many things requisite for the maintenance of his family; and which, under the circumstances of the time and place, would not have been done at all if not done by himself.

What has now been said about the mountain pasture and fuel fully explains the disabilities laid on residents who had come in from other cantons, or communes. They were excluded from political rights, and from participation in the common property, not out of any mean and unreasonable jealousy, but because the common property was barely sufficient for the existing burgers—population always increases up to, it might be more truly said down to, the means of subsistence—and increase of numbers would have destroyed the action and benefits of the system: the only system then and there possible.

We still have to consider a third kind of commonable land—the garden-ground. This was, originally, as necessary as the other two kinds. It would amount for each to shares of an acre or two. It completed the support of the family. It was an indispensable supplement to the cows and the fuel. And even in these times, when money can be earnt in many ways, the quarter, or half, of an acre, in some places still the whole acre, which can be assigned to each member of the commune, has some advantages. It enables the family to secure a sufficient supply of cabbages, onions, haricots, flax, hemp, potatoes, and occasionally, a serviceable amount of wheat or maize. Formerly there was no other way for the household to procure these articles: though, indeed, in these days, this obvious advantage is sometimes counter-balanced by greater, but less obvious disadvantages. The old rule was that every commune should have a certain amount of terre laborable; and that this should, at stated periods, say every year, every five, ten, or twenty years, as might be the local arrangement, be reportioned among those who would themselves cultivate their lots. The community must have hands and hearts to protect it, indeed even to enable it to be a community; and these hands and hearts must have the means of living; and if all the terre laborable had been allowed to fall into the condition of private property, many would have been deprived of a necessary ingredient in the means of living. And here again, if Beisassen had been admitted to a participation in the communal garden-ground, the aim and object of the system would, so far as that went, have been defeated. In many, probably in all communes, it was the rule that new comers might purchase the position and rights of burgers, when, but only when, the old burgers were in favour, unanimously, of their admission. This wise requirement of unanimity upon the question of the admission of a new burger secured the community against the action of a cause, which, if unrestricted, would certainly and rapidly have reduced the severalties of its members in this, and all other kinds of their common property, to insufficiently small dimensions. It is true that they have at last been overtaken by this inconvenience; but it has been brought about by the action of a natural cause which could not have been met and obviated in any way: for it has been the result of an increase of population; and that increase of population has been the result of an increase of wealth; which again, in turn, was the result of an increase of variety in the ways opened for obtaining a living. Our porter from Meiringen to Brieg, Jean Ott, a burger of Im Hof, has ten children. He obtains his livelihood by carrying travellers’ knapsacks. Those knapsacks therefore have ultimately been the cause of the existence of the ten children. The boys will all be burgers of Im Hof. Their existence will lessen the value of the severalties of the common property of Im Hof. In this way, everywhere, the severalties are being so reduced as to be no longer sufficient for the support of families. Thus they become only prophylactics, if that, against pauperism.

The four parts then of the system we have been considering, the common summer pastures, the reclaimed appropriated prairies, the common forest for fuel, and for building and repairs, and the common terre laborable, hung together inseparably. Each was necessary under the circumstances of the character and natural formation of the country; and of the absence of accumulations of capital, and of anything else to give employment, the existence of which would have meant that there were other sources than land for supporting life. The Switzer—that is the governing fact—was the parasite of the cow. He could not have existed without it. But he could not have kept cows without their having been taken off his hands during the summer by their maintenance on the common mountain pastures. This was necessary for enabling him to form and maintain the prairie land, and to make hay from it. Otherwise the cows could not have been supported in the winter. But these prairies could not, as a general rule, have been formed without the stimulus of private property. Many families could not have existed unless they had had a supply of fuel from the common forest. An assured amount of garden-ground was almost as necessary as an assured amount of fuel.