the industrial effects. There is now a measure before the national legislature for establishing a national bank, and this is causing some newspaper discussion. All these are enterprises of the national government.
In the cantons and in the cities there are movements of a similar character. Various cantons and communes have in recent years assumed the burden of burying the dead. They give to all, rich and poor, the same sort of a burial, which is simple and inexpensive. They permit inequalities in life, but are equal in death. The government burial is not usually made compulsory, but our Consul General reports that where it has been adopted it becomes practically universal.
While I was in Geneva the city gained possession of the lighting plant of an outlying district which had previously been in the hands of a company. In my former letter I told you that wherever there was a new building there were smokestacks near, but in Geneva I saw much new building and almost an entire absence of smokestacks. A few years ago the city began to utilize the power of the Rhone river, which comes out of the lake in a mighty torrent. They needed the water of the lake in their streets and houses, and they made the river pump the water. The watch industry was languishing on account of competition with the machine-made watch in America and elsewhere. The city corporation developed a system for distributing power to the local manufacturers through the pressure of water pumped from the Rhone by the Rhone. This gave a great stimulus to many industries, and more and more power was demanded. When experience had demonstrated the economy of electricity as an agency for lighting and for the distribution of power the city gained possession of all electrical appliances and attached them to their mill on the Rhone. By all these demands the power of the river as developed within the city limits was exhausted, and the demand for power to be used in manufacture was rapidly increasing. To meet the new demand the city government secured a site four miles down the river, where they have constructed a dam of stone which
