THE SWISS AND THEIR POLITICS 39
appears as permanent as Niagara Falls, and where they get an immense head of water. This new mill is now nearing comple- tion. From it power will be distributed by electricity and sold to small manufacturers in the city and suburbs. On my return to the city from my visit to the new mill I rode with a manu- facturer from Zurich. He said that their company bought power from a private company and that they paid $3 for power which costs the Genevese manufacturer only $2.
Thus you see that the building of new houses and the absence of smokestacks are satisfactorily accounted for. But as before stated the surprising thing about the matter is the cool and matter-of-fact way in which the government enters upon these various industrial undertakings. A few days before I left Geneva the city government voted to build at once twelve tenement houses to be owned and operated by the city. It was understood that this was only the beginning of an enter- prise which admitted of infinite expansion. Yet it excited no more comment than would the announcement of a vote to build a schoolhouse. If the people did not like it they could have demanded the referendum and have stopped it. Yet, so far as I know, no one thought of such a thing.
From one end of Switzerland to the other there does not seem to be any son of Jay Gould who is ready to stand up and announce in an oracular manner that he believes the interference of the government in their industrial undertaking tends to pro- mote socialism. There is probably no part of Europe where the socialists are having so hard a time as in Switzerland. I found no one in Switzerland who expressed any sympathy for socialism except a Zurich chemist who while a student in Berlin had enjoyed the personal acquaintance of the Socialist Bebel. All the other Swiss with whom I conversed on the topic either knew nothing about it or were opposed to it. The subject seemed to bore them. The idea that the utilizing of the power of the Rhone by the city government for the equal advantage of all the citizens tended to promote socialism seemed to the Genevese utterly ridiculous. They have no intention of surrendering their
