Part 3 (2/2)
Owing to tunnels, cuts, and bridges, the construction of the Swiss railway system has been costly; Mulhall's statistics give Switzerland a higher ratio of railway capital to population than any other country in Europe. Yet the service is cheap, pa.s.senger tariffs being considerably less than in France and Great Britain, and, about the same as in Germany, within a shade as low as the lowest in Europe.
Differing from the narrow compartment railway carriages of other European countries, the pa.s.senger cars of Switzerland are generally built on the American plan, so that the traveler is enabled to view the scenery ahead, behind, and on both sides. For circular tours, the companies make a reduction of 25 per cent on the regular fare. At the larger stations are interpreters who speak English. Unlike the service in other Continental countries, third cla.s.s cars are attached to all trains, even the fastest. On the whole, despite the highest railroad investment per head in Europe, Switzerland has the best of railway service at the lowest of rates, the result of centralized State control coupled with free industry under the limitations of that control. In the ripest judgment of the nation up to the present, this system yields better results than any other: by a referendary vote taken in December, 1891, the people refused to change it for State owners.h.i.+p of railroads.
_Mails, the Telegraph, the Telephone, and Highways._
The Swiss postal service is a model in completeness, cheapness, and dispatch. Switzerland has 800 post-offices and 2,000 depots where stamps are sold and letters and packages received. Postal cards cost 1 cent; to foreign countries, 2 cents, and with return flap, 4. For half-ounce letters, within a circuit of six miles, the cost is 1 cent; for letters for all Switzerland, up to half a pound, 2 cents; for printed matter, one ounce, two-fifths of a cent; to half a pound, 1 cent; one pound, 2 cents; for samples of goods, to half a pound, 1 cent; one pound, 2 cents.
There are 1,350 telegraph offices open to the public. A dispatch for any point in Switzerland costs 6 cents for the stamp and 1 cent for every two words.
The Swiss Post-Office department has many surprises in store for the American tourist. Mail delivery everywhere free, even in a rural commune remote from the railroad he may see a postman on his rounds two or three times a day. When money is sent him by postal order, the letter-carrier puts the cash in his hands. If he wishes to send a package by express, the carrier takes the order, which soon brings to him the postal express wagon. A package sent him is delivered in his room. At any post-office he may subscribe for any Swiss publication or for any of a list of several thousand of the world's leading periodicals. When roving in the higher Alps, in regions where the roads are but bridle paths, the tourist may find in the most unpretending hotel a telegraph office. If he follows the wagon roads, he may send his hand baggage ahead by the stage coach and at the end of his day's walk find it at his destination.
There are three hundred stage routes in Switzerland, all operated under the Post-Office department, private posting on regular routes being prohibited. The department owns the coaches; contractors own the horses and other material. From most of the termini, at least two coaches arrive and depart daily. Pa.s.sengers, first and second cla.s.s, are a.s.signed to seats in the order of purchasing tickets. Every pa.s.senger in waiting at a stage office on the departure of a coach must by law be provided with conveyance, several supplementary vehicles often being thus called into employ. A postal coach may be ordered at an hour's notice, even on the mountain routes. Coach fare is 6 cents a mile; in the Alps, 8. Each pa.s.senger is allowed thirty-three pounds of baggage; in the Alps, twenty-two. Return tickets are sold at a reduction of 10 per cent.
The cantonal wagon roads of Switzerland are unequaled by any of the highways in America. They are built by engineers, are solidly made, are macadamized, and are kept in excellent repair. The Alpine post roads are mostly cut in or built out upon the steep mountain sides. Not infrequently, they are tunneled through the ma.s.sive rocky ribs of great peaks. Yet their gradient is so easy that the average tourist walks twenty-five miles over them in a short day. The engineering feats on these roads are in many cases notable. On the Simplon route a wide mountain stream rushes down over a post-road tunnel, and from within the traveler may see through the gallery-like windows the cataract pouring close beside him down into the valley. On the route that pa.s.ses the great Rhone glacier, the road ascends a high mountain in a zigzag that, as viewed in front from the valley below, looks like a colossal corkscrew. This road is as well kept as the better turnpikes of New York, teams moving at a fast walk in ascending and at a trot in descending, though the region is barren and uninhabitable, and wintry nine months in the year. These two examples, however, give but a faint idea of the vast number of similar works. The federal treasury appropriates to several of the Alpine cantons, in addition to the sums so expended by the local administrations, from $16,000 to $40,000 a year for the maintenance of their post roads.
With lower postage than any other country, the net earnings of the Swiss postal system for 1889 were $560,000. This, however, is but a fraction of the real gain to the nation from this source. Without their roads, railroads, stage lines, and mail facilities, their hotels, numbering more than one thousand and as a rule excellently managed, could not be maintained for the summer rush of foreign tourists, worth to the country many million dollars a year. The finest Alpine scenery is by no means confined to Swiss boundaries, but within these lines the comforts of travel far surpa.s.s those in the neighboring mountainous countries. In Savoy, Lombardy, and the Austrian Tyrol, the traveler must be prepared to put up with comparatively antiquated methods and primitive accommodations.
Yet, previous to 1849, each Swiss canton had its own postal arrangements, some cantons farming out their systems either to other cantons or to individuals. In each canton the service, managed irrespective of federal needs, was costly, and Swiss postal systems, as compared with those of France and Germany, were notoriously behindhand.
_Banking._
While the Confederation coins the metallic money current in the country, it is forbidden by the const.i.tution to monopolize the issue of notes or guarantee the circulation of any bank. For the past ten years, however, it has controlled the circulation of the banks, the amount of their reserve fund, and the publication of their reports.[H] The latter may be called for at the discretion of the executive council, in fact even daily.
[Footnote H: A vote, October 18, 1891, made note-issuing a federal monopoly.]
There are thirty-five banks of issue doing business under cantonal law.
Of these, eighteen, known as cantonal banks, either are managed or have their notes guaranteed by the respective cantons. Thus, while banking and money-issuing are free, the cantonal banks insure a requisite note circulation, minimizing the rate of interest and reducing its fluctuations. The setting up of cantonal banks, in order to withdraw privileges from licensed banks, was one of the public questions agitated by social reformers and decided in several of the cantons by direct legislation.
_Taxes._
The framework of this little volume does not admit so much as an outline of the various methods of taxation practiced in Switzerland. As in all countries, they are complex. But certain significant results of direct legislation are to be pointed out. In all the cantons there is a strong tendency to raise revenue from direct, as opposed to indirect, taxes, and from progressive taxation according to fortune. The following, from an editorial in the ”Christian Union,” February 12, 1891, so justly and briefly puts the facts that I prefer printing it rather than words of my own, which might lie under suspicion of being tinged with the views of a radical: ”With the democratic revolution of 1830 the people demanded that direct taxation should be introduced, and since the greater revolution of 1848 they have been steadily replacing the indirect taxes upon necessities by direct taxes upon wealth. In Zurich, for example--where in the first part of this century there were no direct taxes--in 1832 indirect taxation supplied four-fifths of the local revenue; to-day it supplies but one-seventeenth. The canton raises thirty-two francs per capita by direct taxation where it raises but two by indirect taxation. This change has accompanied the transformation of Switzerland from a nominal to a real democracy. By the use of direct taxation, where every man knows just how much he pays, and by the use of the Referendum, where the sense of justice of the entire public is expressed as to how tax burdens should be distributed, Switzerland has developed a system by which the division of society into the harmfully rich and wretchedly poor has been checked, if not prevented. In the most advanced cantons, as has been brought out by Professor Cohn in the 'Political Science Quarterly,' the taxes, both on incomes and on property, are progressive. In each case a certain minimum is exempted.
In the case of incomes, the progression is such that the largest incomes pay a rate five times as heavy as the very moderate ones; while in the case of property, the largest fortunes pay twice as much as the smallest. The tax upon inheritances has been most strongly developed. In the last thirty years it has been increased sixfold. The larger the amount of property, and the more distant the relative to whom it has been bequeathed, the heavier the rate is made. It is sometimes as high as 20 per cent. Speaking upon this point, the New York 'Evening Post'
correspondent says: 'Evidently there are few countries that do so much to discourage the acc.u.mulation of vast fortunes; and, in fact, Switzerland has few paupers and few millionaires.'”
Until 1848, each canton imposed cantonal tariff duties on imported goods, and, as is yet the case in most continental countries, until a few years ago the larger cities imposed local import duties (_octrois_).
But the _octroi_ is now a thing of the past, and save in one respect the cantons have abolished cantonal tariffs. The mining of salt being under federal control, and the retail price regulated by each canton for itself, supervision of imports of salt into each canton becomes necessary.
The ”Statesmen's Year Book” (1891) gives the debts of all the cantons of Switzerland as inconsiderable, while the federal debt, in 1890 but eleven million dollars, is less than half the federal a.s.sets in stocks and lands. In summing up at the close of his chapter on ”State and Local Finance,” Prof. Vincent says: ”On the whole, the expenditures of Switzerland are much less than those of neighboring states. This may be ascribed in part to the lighter military burden, in part to the fact that no monarchs and courts must be supported, and further, to the inclinations of the Swiss people for practical rather than ornamental matters.” And he might pertinently have added, ”and to the fact that the citizens themselves hold the public purse-strings.”
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