SWITZERLAND’S ECONOMIC PLIGHT.
In a paper of extraordinary directness, force and brevity, the leading article in flic Swiss Review for June, Colonel P. Pfund, former Chief Instructor in Military Engineering, gives a clear picture of his country’s share in the world’s suffering.
The supreme calamity is the reduction of income from loss of foreign visitors. from 500,000.000 francs to 80.000.000. Exports have fallen from 0,250.000,000 francs in 1920 to 1.750,000,000 in 1921, with a balance of trade against it by reason of hall a! billion larger imports. Three hundred thousand francs a day are being spent in Governmental allowances to the unemployed.
“It is evident that, at this rate, W6 shall in due time reach the bottom of the well, despite our fine national fortune of 12 billion.”
The next sentence. “The exchange is not the only cause of stagnation in our foreign relations,” must refer to condiditions in neighbor lands, since Switzerland. alone of all countries, actually holds U.S. currency at a discount — though only of 3 per cent. 'those in Government employ (which includes the railroads), providers of food, speculators generally, are pros peroute and so contented, though they, too. should see in the proposal of a confiscatory lew on wealth, a near future in which’ they will share the downfall of the bourgeoisie generally. The farmers are voluntarily lowering the war price's, and are ready for union with the bourgeois generally to resist the socialistic terror. There are open, advocates of Bolshevism, and a much larger section of Socialists “wish to socialise, to put under State control, regulate everything, leaving no private individual initiative.” Though a,
minority, as in all truly democratic States, they have had successes through better organisation. With soldierly frankness, errors are confessed which have been committed: on the author’s own side: notably, unfair treatment of skilled workers on piece work, which has driven them into the Labor Unions to light for high day’s wages and 1 short hours for all. Many of the working men can yet be regained from the radicals, if only to act in a special party of their own for common interests. “Materialism, the race for wealth, egotism, have invaded all classes. Preaching will not elevate the general moral level. A hungry 7 man has no ears. We require strong measures to restore normal conditions.”
The author’s first proposal is an issue of 250,000,000 francs in bank notes, whichwill not endanger the present financial equilibrium, forty per cent, of this sum is to pay off th* State debt, and permit the distribution of the present burdensome taxation over a long series of year. The remainder is to be devoted equally to subsidising the factories now idle, and to such public worths, a.s the improvement of the channels! in the Rhine and Rhone.
Proposal IT is “the opening of the frontier” —not to free immigration, of which there is quite too much already, but to food stuffs, raw materials, etc., without the present vexatious taxes and restrictions.
Third comes the repeal of the eighthour law, which, as many workmen already see, benefits *no one, restricts personal liberty, and cripples production.
Fourthly, the railroads and post cilices are to be leased to private enterprise, which will make them more economical, cheaper, and better, and also half the Government officials are to be dismissed, while the pay of the survivors should be increased 20 per cent. Many, however, can be transferred, with ten days’ special training, to the charge of equipment or to direct labor in the new public works. This last suggestion surely seems worthy of a life-long trainer of engineers. There is one characteristic exception to this sweeping reduction : “The personnel of the military de-. partment should be reduced as well a.s the others; but the resultant savings should be returned to the military budget. so as to assure the mequs for raising the army to the utmost efficiency. The army is l the people’s highest school, the bulwark of the government ,the safeguard of national independence. We shall have more urgent need of it than is generaly believed.” The soldierly writer, it is clear, docs not lean trustingly on the special pledge upon which Switzerland consented to enter the League of Nations, namely, that no soldier even of the friendliest bag should ever set foot upon her soil, and no Swiss contingent should be asked to leave their own territory for any purpose whatever. In closing, the writer welcomes the most destructive criticism, well content if a tithe of his proposals shall meet with final acceptance. Lot the men of enlightenment, the savants, the professors, come down into the areng. a.s several of them have done already. The instant for action has arrived. Let us get busy ! Though not here emphasised in the closing words, the edge of the trenchant appeal is the warning of an approaching death struggle between Bolshevistic, or at least, radical socialism —and democracy. It is clearly indicated, also, that large sections of the bourgeoisie are already financially mined, hopeless and, where still capable of doing so, immigrating from the country, while their places are filled twice over by the most undesirable of immigrants. We are given no statistics to pass judgment upon the accuracy of these gloomy views, and. indeed, a slight improvement at the time of writing is cautiously conceded.
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Dunstan Times, Issue 3147, 11 December 1922, Page 7
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887SWITZERLAND’S ECONOMIC PLIGHT. Dunstan Times, Issue 3147, 11 December 1922, Page 7
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