words in enabling producers to retain the more of their product, was
seen, private as well as public agencies might aid in enlarging the
scope of that effect. The philanthropic might transfer land to the
municipality, preferring to help restore just social conditions rather
than to aid in charities that leave the world with more poor than ever;
the city might provide for a gradual conversion, in the course of time,
of all the land within its limits to public control, first selecting,
with the end in view, tracts of little market value, which, open to
occupiers, would assist in keeping down the value of lands held
privately.
But the more striking results of city public land would lie in another
direction. The spontaneous efforts of each individual to increase and to
secure the product of his labor would turn the current of production
away from the monopolists and toward the producers. With a lot in the
public domain, a wage-worker might soon live in his own cottage. As the
settler often did in the West, to acquire a home he might first build
two or four rooms as the rear, and, living in it, with later savings put
up the front. A house and a vegetable garden, with the increased
consequent thrift rarely in such situation lacking, would add a large
fraction to his year's earnings. Pasture for a cow in suburban city land
would add yet more. Then would this wage-earner, now his own landlord
and in part a direct producer from the soil, withdraw his children from
the labor market, where they compete for work perhaps with himself, and
send them on to school.
What would now happen should the wage-workers of the city demand higher
wages? It is hardly to be supposed that any industrial centre could
reach the stage of radical reform contemplated at this point much in
advance of others. When the labor organizations throughout the country
take hold of direct legislation, and taste of its successes, they will
nowhere halt. They will no more hesitate than does a conquering army.
Learning what has been done in Switzerland, they will go the lengths of
the Swiss radicals and, with more elbow room, further. Hence, when in
one industrial centre the governing workers should seek better terms,
similar demands from fellow laborers, as able to enforce them, would be
heard elsewhere.
The employer of our typical city, even now often unable to find outside
the unions the unemployed labor he must have, would then, should he
attempt it, to a certainty fail. The thrifty wage-working householder,
today a tenant fearful of loss of work, could then strike and stay out.
The situation would resemble that in the West twenty years ago, when
open land made the laborer his own master and wages double what they are
now. Wages, then, would perforce be moved upward, and hours be
shortened, and a long step be made toward that state of things in which
two employers offer work to one employé. And, legal and social forces no
longer irresistibly opposed to the wage-workers, thenceforth wages would
advance. At every stage they would tend to the maximum possible under
the improved conditions. In the end, under fully equal conditions,
everywhere, for all classes, the producer would gather to himself the
full product of his labor.
The average business man, too, of the city of our illustration, himself
a producer--that is, a help to the consumer--would under the better
conditions reap new opportunities. Far less than now would he fear
failure through bad debts and hard times; through the wage-workers'
larger earnings, he would obtain a larger volume of trade; he would
otherwise naturally share in the generally increased production; and he
would participate in the common benefits from the better local
government.
But the disappearance of the local monopolist would be predestined. The
owner of local franchises would already have gone. The local land
monopolist would have seen his land values diminished. In every such
case, the monopolist's loss would be the producer's gain. The aggregate
annual earnings of all the city's producers (the wage-workers, the
land-workers, and the men in productive business) would rise toward
their natural just aggregate--all production. As between the various
classes within the city, a condition approximating to justice in
political and economic arrangements would now prevail.
What would thus be likely to happen in our typical city of 50,000
inhabitants would also, in greater or less degree, be possible in all
industrial towns and cities. In every such place, self-government and
direct legislation could solve the more pressing immediate phases of the
labor question and create the local conditions favorable to remodeling,
and as far as possible abolishing, the superstructure of government.
_Wider Applications of These Principles and Methods._
The political and economic arrangements extending beyond the control of
the municipalities would now, if they had not done so before, challenge
attention. In taking up with reform in this wider field, the industrial
wage-workers would come in contact with those farmers who are demanding
radical reforms in state and nation. As the sure instrument for the
citizenship of a state, direct legislation could again with confidence
be employed. No serious opposition, in fact or reason, could be brought
against it. That the mass of voters might prove too unwieldy for the
method would be an assertion to be instantly refuted by Swiss
statistics. In Zurich, the most radically democratic canton of
Switzerland, the people number 339,000; the voters, 80,000. In Berne,
which has the obligatory Referendum, the population is 539,000. And it
must not be overlooked that the entire Swiss Confederation, with 600,000
voters, now has both Initiative and Referendum. Hence, in any state of
the Union, direct legislation on general affairs may be regarded as
immediately practicable, while in many of the smaller states the
obligatory Referendum may be applied to particulars. And even in the
most populous states, when special legislation should be cast aside, and
local legislation left to the localities affected, complete direct
legislation need be no more unmanageable than in the smallest.
United farmers, wage-workers, and other classes of citizens, in the
light of these facts, might naturally demand direct legislation.
Foreseeing that in time such union will be inevitable, what more natural
for the producing classes in revolt than to unite today in voting, if
not for other propositions, at least for direct legislation and home
rule? These forces combined in any state, it seems improbable that
certain political and economic measures now supported by farmer and
wage-worker alike could long fail to become law. Already, under the
principle that "rights should be equal to all and special privileges be
had by none," farmers' and wage-workers' parties are making the
following demands: That taxation be not used to build up one interest or
class at the expense of another; that the public revenues be no more
than necessary for government expenditures; that the agencies of
transportation and communication be operated at the lowest cost of
service; that no privileges in banking be permitted; that woman have the
vote wherever justice gives it to man; that no force of police,
marshals, or militiamen not commissioned by their home authorities be
permitted anywhere to be employed; that monopoly in every form be
abolished and the personal rights of every individual respected. These
demands are all in agreement with the spirit of freedom. Along the lines
they mark out, the future successes of the radical social reformers will
most probably come. But if, in response to a call nowadays frequently
heard, the many incipient parties should decide to unite on one or a few
things, is it not clear that in natural order the first reforms needed
are direct legislation and local self-government?
To a party logically following the principle of equal rights, the
progress in Switzerland under direct legislation would form an
invaluable guide. The Swiss methods of controlling the railroads and
banks of issue, and of operating the telegraph and telephone services,
deserve study and, to the extent that our institutions admit, imitation.
The organization of the Swiss State and its subdivisions is simple and
natural. The success of their executive councils may in this country
assist in raising up the power of the people as against one man power.
The fact that the cantons have no senates and that a second chamber is
an obstacle to direct legislation may here hasten the abolition of these
nurseries of aristocracy.
With the advance of progress under direct legislation, attention would
doubtless be attracted in the United States, as it has been in
Switzerland, to the nicer shades of justice to minorities and to the
broader fields of internal improvement. As in the cantons of Ticino and
Neuchâtel, our legislative bodies might be opened to minority
representatives. As in the Swiss Confederation, the great forests might
be declared forever the inheritance of the nation. What public lands yet
remain in each state might be withheld from private ownership except on
occupancy and use, and the area might be so increased as to enable
every producer desiring it to exercise the natural right of free access
to the soil. Then the right to labor, now being demanded through the
Initiative by the Swiss workingmen's party, might here be made an
admitted fact. And as is now also being done in Switzerland, the public
control might be extended to water powers and similar resources of
nature.
Thus in state and nation might practicable radical reforms make their
way. From the beginning, as has been seen, benefits would be widespread.
It might not be long before the most crying social evils were at an end.
Progressive taxation and abolition of monopoly privileges would cause
the great private fortunes of the country to melt away, to add to the
producers' earnings. On a part of the soil being made free of access,
the land-hungry would withdraw from the cities, relieving the
overstocked labor markets. Poverty of the able-bodied willing to work
might soon be even more rare than in this country half a century ago,
since methods of production at that time were comparatively primitive
and the free land only in the West. If Switzerland, small in area,
naturally a poor country, and with a dense population, has gone far
toward banishing pauperism and plutocracy, what wealth for all might not
be reckoned in America, so fertile, so broad, so sparsely populated!
And thus the stages are before us in the course of which the coming just
society may gradually be established--that society in which the
individual shall attain his highest liberty and development, and
consequently his greatest happiness. As lovers of freedom even now
foresee, in that perfect society each man will be master of himself;
each will act on his own initiative and control the full product of his
toil. In that society, the producer's product will not, as now, be
diminished by interest, unearned profits, or monopoly rent of natural
resources. Interest will tend to disappear because the products of labor
in the hands of every producer will be abundant--so abundant that,
instead of a borrower paying interest for a loan, a lender may at times
pay, as for an accommodation, for having his products preserved.
Unearned profits will tend to disappear because, no monopolies being in
private hands, and free industry promoting voluntary coöperation, few
opportunities will exist for such profits. Monopoly rent will disappear
because, the natural right to labor on the resources of nature made a
legal right, no man will be able to exact from another a toll for leave
to labor. Whatever rent may arise from differences in the qualities of
natural resources will be made a community fund, perhaps to be
substituted for taxes or to be divided among the producers.
The natural political bond in such a society is plain. Wherein he
interferes with no other man, every individual possessing faculty will
be regarded as his own supreme sovereign. Free, because land is free,
when he joins a community he will enter into social relations with its
citizens by contract. He will legislate (form contracts) with the rest
of his immediate community in person. Every community, in all that
relates peculiarly to itself, will be self-governing. Where one
community shall have natural political bonds with another, or in any
respect form with several others a greater community, the
circumscription affected will legislate through central committees and a
direct vote of the citizenship. Executives and other officials will be
but stewards. In a society so constituted, communities that reject the
elements of political success will languish; free men will leave them.
The communities that accept the elements of success, becoming examples
through their prosperity, will be imitated; and thus the momentum of
progress will be increased. Communities free, state boundaries as now
known will be wiped out; and in the true light of rights in voting--the
rights of associates in a contract to express their choice--few
questions will affect wide territories. Rarely will any question be, in
the sense the word is now used, national; the ballot-box may never unite
the citizens of the Atlantic coast with those of the Pacific. Yet, in
this decomposition of the State into its natural units--in this
resolving of society into its constituent elements--may be laid the sole
true, natural, lasting basis of the universal republic, the primary
principle of which can be no other thing than freedom.
INDEX.
=A=
Aargau, 12, 13
Abolition of the lawmaking monopoly, 100
"A Concept of Political Justice", i
Adams, Sir Francis Ottiwell ("The Swiss Confederation"), iii
Alcohol, State monopoly, Switzerland, 59
Appenzell, 8, 13, 65
Area of Switzerland, 14, 48
"Arena", 27
Army, a democratic, 41, 42
Assembly, Federal, Switzerland, 22, 35
=B=
Bâle, 12, 13, 61
Banking, Switzerland, 54
Berne, 10, 12, 13, 61, 115
Bryce, James, "American Commonwealth", 85
Bürkli, Carl, 16
=C=
Canton, organization of the, 34
Cantons (states), names of the twenty-two, 13
Cigar-Makers' Union, 87, 88
Climate, Switzerland, 48
Communal lands, 63, 70
Communal meeting, the, 7, 32, 33
subjects covered at, 8
organization, 32
Communes (townships) 2,706 in number, 7
Congress (Federal Assembly), Switzerland, 22, 35
Congress, United States, at work, 92
Considérant, Victor, 16
Constitutions, revision of Swiss, 23
spirit of Swiss, 31
=D=
Dates--First Swiss Constitution, 14
Federal Referendum began, 14
Federal Initiative adopted, 14
cantonal Referendum began, 14
progress of cantonal Referendum, 15
French theorists' discussion of Referendum, 14
cantonal Referendum established in Zurich, 16
New England town meeting, 80
Debts, public, Switzerland, 57
Democracy vs. representative government, 5
Dicey, A.V., 28
Diet, 10, 37
Droz, Numa, 19
=E=
Elections, semi-annual, 20
Environment of the Swiss citizen, 31
Equal rights, 107
Executive councils, Swiss, 36, 37, 40
=F=
Facts established by this book, 95
Fiske, John, on town meeting, 80
Freedom in Switzerland, 57
Freiburg, 12
=G=
Garment Workers, United, 88
Geneva, 12, 13, 61
Glarus, 12, 13, 65, 66, 67
Grand Council, 18, 20, 34
Grisons, 12, 13, 61
=H=
Highways, Switzerland, 50
=I=
Illiteracy in Switzerland, 27
Immigration into Switzerland, 70
Initiative and Referendum in labor organizations, 87
Initiative, cantonal, 11
Federal, 22
not a simple petition, 22
what it is, 10
Instruction in Switzerland, 27
=J=
Jamin, P, 17
Jesuits expelled from Switzerland, 58
Judiciary, Swiss, 40
Jurors, Swiss, elected, 40
=L=
Land and climate, Switzerland, 47
Land, tenure and distribution of, Switzerland, 63, 70
Public, 64, 65
Landsgemeinde, 8, 63
Languages in Switzerland, 13
Legislation by representatives, 92
Legislators, pay of Swiss, 35
Legislatures in Switzerland, 34
Local self-government, 101
Lucerne, 12, 13
=M=
Machines kill third parties, 98
McCrackan, W.D., 27
Military system, Swiss, 42, 43
Moses, Prof. Bernard ("The Federal Government of Switzerland"), iii
Municipal land, 110
=N=
Nelson, Henry Loomis, on the town meeting, 79
Neuchâtel, 12, 13, 61
New England town meeting, 72
=O=
Oberholtzer, Ellis P., on Referendum in the United States, 82
Objections to the optional Referendum, 18
Obligatory and optional Referendum, 13, 17
Obligatory Referendum in Zurich, 20
One-man power unknown in Switzerland, 34
=P=
Parliamentary government abolished, 30
Political status in Switzerland, 25
Population, Switzerland, cantons, cities, 13, 14
Post-office, Switzerland, 49
Poverty in Switzerland, 68
President of the Confederation, 38
Press, the Swiss, 26
Principles of a free society, 25
Proportional representation, 117
=R=
Railroads, Switzerland, 49
Referendum, Federal, Switzerland, 21, 22
in labor organizations, 87
instrument of the minority, 22
in the United States, 72
in various states, cities, etc., 82
not the plébiscite, 29
obligatory, 13, 17, 20
optional, 13, 17, 18
what it is, 10
Rittinghausen, 16
Rockland, Mass., town meeting, 73
Rotation in office a partisan idea, 39, 83
=S=
Salaries of Swiss officials, 35, 36, 38
Salvation Army, Switzerland, 58
Schaffhausen, 12, 13
Schwyz, 8, 12, 13, 65
Senates, no cantonal, 34
Soleure, 12, 13
Stage routes, Switzerland, 52
State religions, Switzerland, 33
St. Gall, 12, 13, 65, 66
Statistics as to Switzerland, 13, 14
Summary of results of direct legislation in Switzerland, 70
Sunday, votings and communal meetings on, 8
Switzerland long undemocratic, 60
=T=
Table--Population, languages, form of passing laws, year of entering
Switzerland, 13
Tariff, protective, Switzerland, 58
Taxes, Switzerland, 52
Telegraph and telephone, Switzerland, 50
Thurgau, 12, 13
Ticino, 12, 13, 59, 66, 67
Typographical Union, 89
=U=
Unterwald, 12, 13, 65, 66
Urgence, 17
Uri, 12, 13, 65
=V=
Valais, 12, 13, 61, 66
Vaud, 12, 13, 66
Vincent, Prof. John Martin ("State and Federal Government of
Switzerland"), iii
references to, 8, 32, 34, 61
Vote-buying, 20
=W=
Wage-workers in the majority, 106
Wages and political conditions, 103
"Westminster Review", 28, 45
Winchester, Boyd ("The Swiss Republic"), iv
reference to, 63
Wuarin, Louis, 30
=Z=
Zurich, 13, 16, 20, 21, 61, 65, 115
Zug, 12, 13
=Liberty=
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"American Federation of Labor,}
"New York, May 17, 1892. }
"_Mr. J.W. Sullivan_:
"DEAR SIR:--I have had the extreme pleasure of reading your
book, 'Direct Legislation,' and beg to assure you that it made a deep
impression upon my mind. The principles of the Initiative and Referendum
so often proclaimed find sufficient elucidation in concise form. The
facts that you have massed together of the practical application of
these principles give the best evidence of thorough research and study.
It is the first time that the labor reformers and thinkers generally
have had this subject presented to them in so able and readable a
manner. Every man who believes in minimizing the evil tendencies of
politics as a trade or profession, cannot fail to be highly interested
as well as pleased upon reading your book.
"In many of the trade organizations the Initiative and the Referendum
are applied, and I have no doubt in my mind whatever that with the
growth and development of the trades-union movement, much will be done
to apply the principles to our political government.
"I am led to believe that now in the New England states, particularly in
Massachusetts, where the town meetings exert a large influence upon the
public affairs of their respective localities, much could be done to
bring the subject of the Initiative and Referendum to the attention of
the masses. I think the trades-unionists of that section of the country
would be more than willing to co-operate in an effort to demonstrate the
practicability as well as the advisability of the adoption of that idea.
"Again assuring you of the pleasure I have had in perusing the work, and
thanking you earnestly for your contribution toward the literature upon
this important subject, I am fraternally yours, SAMUEL GOMPERS,
_President American Federation of Labor_."
* * * * *
"What! abandon legislatures and politicians and caucuses and all the
paraphernalia of elective and debating bodies? Well, not quite; still
very much curtailing the functions of these bodies and making laws by
the direct action of the people themselves and curtailing the
interference of professed legislators ... The little volume is worthy of
study, if only to know how some communities get along without the
trouble and contradiction involved in the systems of other popular
constituencies."--_New York Commercial Advertiser_.
"Certainly the author is to be commended for contributing many facts to
our political knowledge--not the least of which is that we are no more,
as we were fifty years ago, leaders of the world in genuinely popular
government--for simplicity of treatment, and a most direct and lucid way
of pointing out the results of certain measures."--_Chicago Times_.
"The author is eminently qualified to describe the working of a law to
which the attention of the electors of this continent is being largely
directed."--_London (Canada) Daily Advertiser_.
"We would recommend the book to every one desirious of learning in brief
terms just what the Referendum is all about, and what good it would
do."--_New Nation_.