Excepting in the case of forests, the trend is away from working the lands in common. Examples of the later methods are to be seen in the cantons of Ticino and Glarus, as follows:—
Several communes in Ticino, notably Airolo, have much public wealth. Airolo has seventeen mountain pastures, each of which feeds forty to eighty head of cattle. Each member of the corporation has the right to send up to these pastures five head for the summer. Those sending more, pay for the privilege; those sending less, receive a rental. On a specified day at the beginning of the season and on another at the close, the milk of each cow is weighed; from these amounts her average yield is estimated, and her total produce computed. The cheese and butter from the herds are sold, most of it in Milan, the hire of the herders paid, and the net revenue divided among the members according to the yield of their cows.
In Glarus, the produce of the greater part of the communal lands, instead of being directly divided among the inhabitants, is substituted for taxation. The commonable alps are let by auction for a term of years, and, in opposition to ancient principles, strangers may bid for them. Some of the Glarus communes sell the right to cut timber in the forest under the superintendence of the guardians. The mountain hotels, in not a few instances the property of the communes, are let year by year. Land is frequently rented from the communes by manufacturing establishments. A citizen not using his share of the communal land may lease it to the commune, which in turn will let it to a tenant. The communes of Glarus are watchful that enough arable land is preserved for distribution among the members. If a plot is sold to manufacturers, or for private building purposes, a piece of equal or greater extent is bought elsewhere. Glarus has relatively as many people engaged in industries aside from farming as any other spot in Europe. It has 34,000 inhabitants, of whom nearly 15,000 live directly by manufactures, while of the rest many indirectly receive something from the same source. Distributive coöperative societies on the English plan exist in most of the industrial communes. The members of the communal corporations in Glarus, though not rich, are as free and independent as any other wage-workers in the world: they inherit the common lands; their local taxes are little or nothing; they are assured work, if not in the manufactories then on the land.
Of the poverty that fears pauperism in old age, that dreads enforced idleness in recurrent industrial crises, that undermines health, that sinks human beings in ignorance, that deprives men of their manhood, the Swiss who enjoy the common lands of the Landsgemeinde cantons know little or nothing. They have enough. They have nothing to waste, nothing to spare; their fare is simple. But they are free. It is to the like freedom and equality of their ancestors that historians have pointed. It would be well nigh meaningless to refer to any freedom and equality among other ancient Swiss. The right of asylum from religious oppression is the sole feature of liberty at all general of old. The present is the first generation in which all the Swiss have been free. The chief elements of their political freedom—the Initiative and Referendum—came from the Landsgemeinde cantons. From the same source, in good time, so also may come to all Switzerland the prime element of economic freedom—free access to land.
Poverty is a relative condition. Men may be poor of mind—ignorant; and of body—ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-sheltered; and of rights—dependent. And from the state of hopeless deprivation involving all these forms upward are minute gradations. Where stand the Swiss in the scale?
This the reply: Their system of education gives free opportunity to all to partake of the mental heritage of the ages. Their method of distribution, through the inheritance laws, of private and common lands, has made roughly two-thirds of the heads of families agricultural land holders. There being in other regards government control of all monopolies, the consequence is a widespread distribution of the annual product. Hence, no pauperism to be compared with that of England; no plutocracy such as we have in America. Certain other facts broadly outline the general comfort and independence. As one effect of the subdivision of the land, the soil, so far as nature permits, is highly cultivated, its appearance fertile, finished, beautiful, and in striking contrast with the dominating vast, bare mountain rocks and snowbeds. The many towns and cities bear abundant signs of a general prosperity, their roads, bridges, stores, residences, and public buildings betokening in the inhabitants industry and energy, and freedom to employ these qualities. Emigration is at low percentage, and of those citizens who do leave for the New World not a few are educated persons with some means seeking short cuts to fortune. Much of the rough work of Switzerland is done by Savoyards, as houseworkers, and by Italians, as farm hands, laborers, and stone masons: showing that as a body even the poorest of the propertyless Swiss have some choice of the better paid occupations. Every spring sees Italians, by scores of thousands, pouring over the Alps for a summer's work in Switzerland. Indeed, Swiss wage-workers might command better terms were it not for competing Italians, French, and Germans. In other words, through just social arrangements, enough has been done in Switzerland to raise the economic level of the entire nation; but the overflow of laborers from other lands depresses the condition of home labor. Nevertheless, where, it may be asked, is the people higher in the scale of civilization, in all the word implies, than the Swiss?
To recount what the Swiss have done by direct legislation:
They have made it easy at any time to alter their cantonal and federal constitutions,—that is, to change, even radically, the organization of society, the social contract, and thus to permit a peaceful revolution at the will of the majority. They have as well cleared from the way of majority rule every obstacle,—privilege of ruler, fetter of ancient law, power of legislator. They have simplified the structure of government, held their officials as servants, rendered bureaucracy impossible, converted their representatives to simple committeemen, and shown the parliamentary system not essential to lawmaking. They have written their laws in language so plain that a layman may be judge in the highest court. They have forestalled monopolies, improved and reduced taxation, avoided incurring heavy public debts, and made a better distribution of their land than any other European country. They have practically given home rule in local affairs to every community. They have calmed disturbing political elements;—the press is purified, the politician disarmed, the civil service well regulated. Hurtful partisanship is passing away. Since the people as a whole will never willingly surrender their sovereignty, reactionary movement is possible only in case the nation should go backward. But the way is open forward. Social ideals may be realized in act and institution. Even now the liberty-loving Swiss citizen can discern in the future a freedom in which every individual,—independent, possessed of rights in nature's resources and in command of the fruits of his toil,—may, at his will, on the sole condition that he respect the like aim of other men, pursue his happiness.