Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/635

Rh special organizations and offices. Further, great advantages would be gained in the matter of support and supervision of the lines, the security of the traffic, easier adjustment of time schedules, and international relations, if a single administration was created. The local service would be ameliorated, for a single administration would be able to give the unproductive lines advantages realized on the productive ones, while private companies would naturally serve the productive lines first, and do no more than was indispensable—often, indeed, than the least provided for in the concessions—for the secondary lines.

To the advantages derived from consolidation would accrue those arising from administration by the state, which would look to securing a working advantageous to the whole public, while to private companies the advantage of stockholders would always be sought first. It would be able to effect desired reforms in rates, making them uniform where they were now various, often to a considerable degree, with inconvenient complications arising.

The necessity of gradually extinguishing the capitalized obligations of the railways was insisted upon. By about the middle of the next century the countries around Switzerland would be in possession of unincumbered systems, provisions to bring such a result about being already in operation in France, Prussia, Austria, etc. Switzerland ought to follow the example of these nations, else it would then find itself in an inferior position as to them. They would be able, among other things, to make great reductions in their tariffs, which, if Switzerland could not meet them, would expose it to disastrous competition. The extinction of the railroad debt should be attended to now. If it was put off till the next time purchase would be possible, or till 1913, there would be no possibility of completing the enterprise before the middle of the century. It was further held to be necessary to rid the railroads of the foreign influences to which they were subject because of so large a part of their stock and obligations being held by capitalists abroad, a condition politically mischievous and humiliating to the country; and the flow of money out of the country in dividends to these alien holders would be stopped.

Other arguments were addressed to particular classes, especially to the men employed on the lines, to whom the particular advantages of state service over private were held out in all their tempting aspects.

The law of repurchases having passed, October 15, 1897, the opposition to it canvassed all the cantons in order to obtain the thirty thousand signatures required by the Constitution of the republic to secure its reference to a direct vote of the people.