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610 did not accept this view, and preparations were begun for exercising the right of purchase in 1898. The federal chambers in 1892 commissioned the federal council to consider measures looking to this end—that is, to prepare legislation that would give the confederation advantages in the transaction. In 1895, a law was passed requiring stockholders to register six months before voting in the company meetings. This, it was thought, would reduce the vote of the foreign stockholders, but it had the opposite effect, for the small Swiss holders would not take the trouble to register, while the large holders abroad did. The same law gave the confederation and the cantons the nomination of representatives who should have power to vote in the companies' directories. In the same year a bill was introduced requiring the railroad companies to present exact accounts of the condition of their lines and their management, with a provision suppressing the special tribunals provided for in some of the charters for the arbitration of differences between the state and the companies, and giving their jurisdiction to the federal tribunal. The purpose of this law of accountability was to meet the stipulation in the charters of the railroads that the state, in buying them in, should pay the companies twenty-five times the value of the net annual revenue of the roads as determined by the average of the preceding ten years, while it should in no case be less than the capitalized value of the plant of the company. It was sought to secure more accurate determinations of the "net annual revenue" and the "value of the plant" on which the amount paid on purchase was to be based. This bill was fought both by the adversaries of purchase and by those who insisted that the transaction should be carried through according to law and without violation of the rights that had been acquired by the existing proprietors of the railways. The latter objected that it modified all in favor of the state clauses of the charters—bilateral contracts that bore the signature of the state. The partisans of the bill denied that the concessions were of the nature of a bilateral contract. They held that a railway concession was a law, an act of the sovereignty of the state which created, it was true, acquired rights, but which the state could always modify so long as it did not violate the acquired rights; and that the proposed law of accountability violated no right. The majority of the chambers took this view, and the act was passed March 27, 1896. A referendum was called for, and the act was approved by the people after an exciting campaign, 223,228 electors voting aye, and 176,577 no, out of a total of 714,033 entitled to vote.

The acceptance by the people of the law of accountability opened the way for ultimately buying in the lines. While some persons probably voted for accountability who did not really favor purchase,