Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum by J. W. Sullivan

Author:J. W. Sullivan [Sullivan, J. W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Reference, Fiction & Literature, Classics
ISBN: 4064066226985
Google: BbJMrgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 34628402
Publisher: Good Press
Published: 2019-12-10T05:00:00+00:00

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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?

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