Chapter 27
CHAPTER XXVII. THE SWISS PEOPLE AND HOW THEY ARE GOVERNED What a busy country Switzerland is! It is the playground of Europe, but it is the workshop of the Swiss. Every one of the natives seems to be busy. The men are doing all sorts of work, and the women knit and make lace, even while they are resting from their other labors. All are well-dressed according to their station. There are no beggars, and no one seems to be
suffering. The cities are clean and well-kept. The houses have gardens about them in which are beautiful roses and other flowers. The stores are filled with fine goods, and all the surroundings are those of thrift and good living. The Swiss, although there are more than three millions of them in their little mountainous country have become the most prosperous people of Europe. They all make a good living, and many grow wealthy. How do they do it? In all sorts of ways.
They are skilled in manufacturing and trading. Their little country is surrounded by rich nations, and they have commerce with all of them, exporting many millions of dollars worth of goods every year. They are one of the chief of the manufacturing nations. They not only work themselves, but make their mountains work for them, using the water power furnished by the turbulent streams to run thousands of factories and mills of all kinds. About Zurich, on a beautiful lake,
cottons, woolens, and silks are produced. At Basel, on the Rhine, ribbons as beautiful as those we saw made in France are woven by hand, and at St. Gaul, trimmings, embroideries, and laces of all kinds are manufactured for export to Europe and the United States. If you want a fine music box, you can buy wonderful ones at Geneva, and as for watches, they are sold at such low prices that we are tempted to carry several home to our friends. In many towns in the Jura Mountains
and about Lake Geneva, nearly everyone seems busy making watches and clocks. Some are filing out the cogwheels, others adjusting the springs or polishing the cases. Swiss watches are sold all over the world, and many are sent to our country. It is really wonderful the different things they do in the villages. Each town has its own specialty. In some places the people are all making leather goods. In others they are carving things out of wood, and in others turning out
manufacturers of metal by machinery and hand. In one district on the south side of the Alps, The people breed silkworms, and in the canton of Grisson, they raise snails for sale. In some mountain villages, the boys learn special trades and go to other parts of Europe to practice them. One town sends out skillful masons and glaziers, another is noted for its fine pastry cooks, another for its chimney sweeps, while others supply waiters for the big hotels all over Europe.
We see the people farming everywhere as we travel through Switzerland. Their country is so small that they have to import much of their food, but they raise all they can. Nearly every family owns some land, and there are 300,000 peasant farmers. We find patches of cabbages and potatoes, little hayfields and pastures, almost to the line of perpetual snow. and every bit of the plains and valleys is given up to orchards and vineyards,
grain fields and hay fields, and gardens raising all sorts of vegetables. We are surprised at the smallness of the farms in the mountains. Some of the fields are no bigger than a bed quilt and others are so steep and rocky that they cannot be plowed, but are dug up with spades and hoes.
The grass must be cut down with sickles or scythes and carried to the barns on pitchforks, or in blankets or baskets on the backs of women and men. We see women and children everywhere working. They tend the cows in the mountains, knitting as they keep them from straying. They carry loads on their backs over the roads, and on some of the farms they really seem to be very beasts of burden. We see them tottering along with heavy baskets
on their backs, held there by straps like knapsacks. There is a family preparing a hillside for planting. The field is so steep we use our alpenstocks to climb it, and yet the women and children are walking up with heavy loads on their backs. They are carrying up the manure from that stable on the other end of the road. The father of the family is loading the stuff with a fork into baskets on the backs of the women and children. That old woman who stands there
may be the grandmother, for her hair is gray and her face is covered with wrinkles. She is leaning down, for her basket is full. Now she totters up the hill, and bending down, pitches her load out on the ground over her head. Now a girl of eight and a boy of ten, each carrying a similar basket, have taken their places at the pile, and the man is filling the baskets, while a woman, who may be their mother, awaits her turn at the work. A little farther on
we see some girls picking up stones, and near them two women are spading the sod. Just across the road a man and a woman are planting a field, and still farther down an ox cart, driven by a boy, is climbing the hill. Here in the mountains are the chief pasture lands of Switzerland. The country is noted for its excellent butter and cheese, which are shipped everywhere. The grass is rich and it has such a sweet smell that the milk and butter are both fragrant and delicious.
We pass many dairies, and we hear the tinkle, tinkle, tinkle of the bells on the necks of the cows. In many villages the pasture lands are held in common, and the cows are sent out to them under the care of the village herdsmen. He drives them to the highlands in the spring, going higher and higher as the snow melts, and coming back in the autumn as the snow falls. He has a house, and sometimes a dairy away up in the mountains, where with his assistance he makes butter and cheese,
sending some from time to time to the village. In the farms farther down, the cheese is often made in the living room of the family, and the hayloft and stables are often a part of the chalet, or cottage, the cows living under the same roof with the people. There are lumber camps and sawmills along the mountain streams, and huts and cottages are to be seen everywhere. In the highlands many of the houses are of only one story, with low, wide, overhanging roofs on which flat
stones have been laid to keep the fierce winds from tearing them off. Almost all the houses are of wood, but they are comfortable, and many are very picturesque. They have roses and other flowers about them, and are often covered with vines. The Swiss of the lower lands, and especially of the cities, dress much like the people of other parts of Europe, but in the mountains there are many strange costumes. The women wear short skirts with their arms bare to the elbows. Their best
gowns have velvet vests decorated with rows of big silver buttons and silver chains. They have curious headdresses of cotton and lace, which vary in the different parts of the country. The men often wear hats with feathers in them and velveteen suits with great silver buttons. The Swiss are a very strong people. They are so noted for their powers of endurance and bravery that in the past the other nations were glad to hire them as soldiers. At Lucerne there is a huge lion carved
out of the side of a rock to commemorate the bravery of the Swiss Guard in defending the King of France at the time of the Revolution. The brave Swiss died at their posts rather than admit the mob, and this monument has been erected at their native place in praise of their devotion to duty. In recent years, the custom of hiring men out to fight has passed away, for the Swiss prefer to remain among their own mountains in the land they so dearly love. They pride themselves
on their freedom and look upon their country as the birthplace of liberty. Switzerland is the oldest of the republics now in existence. Its people governed themselves long before America was discovered, and many stories are told of their independence and pride. We have all heard of William Tell, how he refused to bow down before the cap of Gessler, the Austrian governor, and how, as a punishment, he was required to shoot the apple off his little son's head in the marketplace
of Altorf, near Lucerne. He did shoot at the apple and hit it, but he had also another arrow with which he expected to shoot Gessler if he had wounded his son. There are people who will tell you this story is not true, but the Swiss, who should know, evidently believe it, and in Lucerne, celebrations in honor of Tell are held every year. The government of the Swiss Republic is somewhat different from ours. The little country is divided up into 22 cantons, or districts, each of which
has its own local government, and elect members to a national congress which sits at the capital, the city of Bern. These little cantons correspond to our states, but they are governed differently, and some of them have curious ways of making their laws. In certain cantons, the men all meet together at a fixed time in a large field, and there, out on the grass, they elect their officers and make the laws. In the larger cantons, they choose men to make their laws for them,
but even there, important things must be voted on by the people themselves. At Bern, we learn all about the National Congress, which has to do with matters which concern the whole country, having much the same powers as our Congress. It even elects the President and Vice President and makes all treaties and provisions for the defense of the nation. Switzerland has fortifications at the passes over the Alps and also in some other places.
According to law, a standing army cannot be maintained within the country, but every Swiss serves as a soldier for a part of his life, and every public school has its military drills in which the boys, beginning at eight years of age, are taught to bear arms. So if the nation should be attacked, it could put half a million men at once in the field.
The Congress has charge of the railroads, telegraphs, and telephones, with which the country is well supplied. The Swiss Republic keeps up a good postal system. It has such excellent schools and so many universities that its people are amongst the best educated and most intelligent of Europe. Nearly everyone speaks two or more languages, for the nation has no language especially its own. In most of the cantons of northern and eastern Switzerland, they speak German.
In the districts nearest France, they speak French, and on the southern side of the Alps, many speak Italian. There are so many American and English travelers that English is taught in the schools, and we find people everywhere with whom we can talk. We are delighted with the cities of Switzerland. There are not many of them, for most of the people live in small towns and villages.
Zurich, about the size of Indianapolis, is the largest city. Then comes Basel, noted for its manufacturing, Geneva, the commercial and business center of the country, and then the capital, Bern. We spend some time in Bern. It is a quaint, old-fashioned town, lying under the shadow of the Alps on both sides of the turbulent river R. Its streets run uphill and down, and the houses of the upper level sometimes hang out over those below. The most of the buildings are of gray stone
with roofs of red tiles. The stores front on arcades or cloisters, which seem as dark as a pocket when you enter them from the dazzling sunlight outside. Besides the doors, out in the arcades, are benches or chairs on which women sit knitting while they sell toys, fruit, and laces. We go to the Federal Palace to call upon the President. We visit the public gardens and stop for a moment before the hideous statue of the child-eating ogre.
This is a figure of a giant sitting on a stone column with a bundle of babies beside him. He has taken a baby out of the bundle with his right hand and is putting it into his mouth, while the other little ones calmly wait their turns to be eaten. The giant is horrid, and we may see it again in our dreams, imagining ourselves in his power. We next visit the Bear Pit, a well with a railing about it, where some huge bears are always kept
by the city, in honor of its name Burn, which means bear. For the same reason there are stone bears ornamenting many of the buildings, and also the procession of little wooden bears, which every hour comes out of the great clock on the tower in the center of the city. As the clock strikes, a cock claps his wings and crows, and then the bears come forth and bow their heads, as they march about a figure of old father time, who reviews them.
We buy some bread and apples from an old woman near the bear pit and feed the live monsters, which stand on their hind legs and catch the food in their red mouths as it falls. later on we buy gingerbread bears and bears of white candy with red peppermint tongues at a cook-shop nearby and also toy bears of brass and carved wood to take home as mementos of burn end of chapter twenty seven
