Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/499

Rh gradually the principle of private property was introduced and the ownership of land became fixed. But this change did not affect pasture or forest land. The result of all this has been the retention of the communal idea in regard to the so-called village rights which belong to the citizens of E——, but not to all its inhabitants. There are only sixty-six of these rights, and this number can not be increased or diminished, so that only a small part of the six hundred inhabitants of E—— are citizens. Each one of the rights can be halved—thus, of course, also halving the privileges of the possessor, but the subdivision can go no further. Each right gives its possessor the privilege of grazing a certain number of sheep, cattle, geese, and swine on the public pasture; of mowing a certain amount of meadow-land, and of getting stone and clay for building from the village pits, besides a considerable amount of wood each year from the communal forest. Village rights have thus a considerable value, and are sold at prices ranging from two hundred and twenty-five to three hundred dollars each. In order to possess a right a man must own a house in the village, and he can not own more than one right unless he increases the number of houses he owns in the same proportion.

Since the number of rights can not be increased, and since each one can only be halved, there must, of course, be numbers of people in the village who are not corporators. Such persons have none of the privileges belonging to the rest except the permission to graze cattle on the common pasture when they have paid to the commune authorities a fixed price per head for each animal thus fed; nor have such persons any vote when communal affairs are to be passed upon.

E—— is entirely independent of the neighboring city of G——, but offenses against the law are tried by an inferior court sitting in the latter place. Each male in E—— who has attained the age of thirty years, and who is not a pauper or criminal, has a single vote in the election of, those officers who are to govern his village. These officials are, first, a Bauermeister, having the combined powers of sheriff and town clerk; under him are two deputies and a Council of twelve men, all elected for a period of six years. The Bauermeister, who is generally one of the wealthiest and most intelligent of the citizens, keeps the village accounts; makes the state and military reports; registers births, marriages, and deaths, also sales and rentals of land; places criminals and insane in safe keeping; receives applications from the village poor; gives notice of the commencement of military service, to which each young man is bound; and reports to the state at specified times upon communal and village affairs. He is also President of the Council and of all village meetings. For all this hard work he receives only forty dollars a year, and his assistants get nothing but the barren honor of election. Over the Bauermeister is placed a state official who has control of a number of villages. Provincial and village taxes are collected by an officer elected for a term