Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, December 7, 1902, Page 26

T he question as to government con trol ec¢f railroad came up and I asked President Zemo what he thought of it He replied “It is g0 far only In its experimental A STRE (Copyrigit, 192, Ly Frank (. Carpenter.) ERNE, Nov. 2i-(Special Corr spondence of The Bee.) 1 have Just had an interview with the president of Switzerland He s the national representative of this littie republi ind as such ranks among the rulers of Europe. His power is noth Ing like that of President Roosevelt. The Swiss have a more democratic governme nt than ours and they are more strictly publican I The country is divided up into cantons or states, and these cantons holl to their sovereignty much more than do the states of our union, and they have r leased but few of their rights to the tional government Switzerland has a congres just have, but its congress «lects na as we a federal council of seven membere, whose busine It is to execute the law The council has to a large extent the same powers a our president, and the president of the Swiss republic is only one of its members and its presiding officer The council is elected for thy years, the president for one. He is chosen, not by the ballot of the people, but by that of the Swiss con Br he cannot hold two terms in succession 8, and the constitution provides that The president has no veto, no appointing power and he cannot even nominate a man for any position His only distinction as regards the other members of the fed eral council is that he gets $300 more p year, and that he receives the foreign min isters on ceremonial occasions and is ad dressed as his excellency You might think that the Swiss govern ment would be an expensive one, inasmuch as seven men are required to do what one exceutive dc in the United States. It is not. The council acts about as our cab inet ministers, and altogether, it receives only about one-third as much as Presidem Roosevelt Each member gets only $2,316, and the Swiss president less than $2,700 the extra $300 being for entertainment This makes a total of a little over $16,000, or not one-third as much as we annually pay our president The membe of the national Parliamen receive $6 a day for the time that they are in session, with thelr traveling expense for the distances between _aeir homes and the capital at 3 cents a mile 1 doubt whether there is any state in the unic that is governed so cheaply and 1 am sur there are few states anywhere governed so well But let me tell you about my talk with the president The man now in offce | Joseph Zemp of Entlebunch, a little town of about 3,000 people lying in a valley be tween here and Lucerne Mr mp ha been long known as one of the leading statesmen. He has served in the national congress and as a member of the federal council again and again and he was presi dent of the republic in 1895 He h offices in the national capital, and it was there that I met him and chatted with him over the present condition of Switzerland Shortly after the opening of our conver sation I asked as to the American inva sion, and whether it might not be increased for the benefit of both countries I'he Swiss president replied that he was anx fous to see closer trade relations be tween the two republics He said that Switzerland regards the United younger and greater sister, and that the tates as ite sgpirit of democracy ought to bring us eve closer together He spoke of the Swiss who were living in the United States and of the high estimation m which they held our country He objected to our tariff as being too great on many of the Swiss ex ports and thought a mutual reduction migh be made in the interest of international trade. I asked him as to the Swiss tariff meas. ures which are now before the country but he would not prophesy whether they will be accepted or rejected stage as regards I} BEKNE Switzerland, but 1 believe that it wi'l be a complete SUCCess Our govern ment is taking in the railroads We have already three of the five principal lines and we shall in time acquire the re mainder We do not want to make money out of the railroads, nor by them to in ore the government revenues We are operating them for the good of the people The earnings will be applied to improving the service, extending the lines and to cheapening transportation. This we are now doing, and we can continue to do &0 and at the same time make such profit that the whole cost of the roads and the interest upon the debt will be paid back within sixty years, and the roads then belong to the government free of incumbrance,' President Zemp told me something as to the extent of the roads. There are now about 2,500 miles of rails and 200 miles of tramways. One of the queer propositions in regard to the lines is to run them by ciectricity As now constituted the roads tequire 30,000 horse power, and it (8ti- mated that double that power will be needed for a high-tension alternating elec triec current tem The engineers have alreadv figured upon it, and they find that there are twentyv-one waterfalls in the Alps already used for eleetrical generation, which can prodice 100 horse power. The engineers es!imate that it would take $30,000,000 to apply this rower to the railroads. and hat in addition It could run numerous factories At present Switzerland is operating its roads with coal brought in from Ensland and the continent. It is thus entirelv de- pendent upon outside countries, and if its foreign coal supply was cut off its rail roads would gtop. The matter is a very im portant one, and T understand some of the parties interested have applied to the gov- ernment for the right to build an eleetric tandard gauge railway twelve miles long tor experimental purposes. Th's will prob ¢bly be granted, and, if a success, it may le that the waterfalls of the Alps will haul the trains up and down the sides of the mountaing Switzerland finds that ¢ pays the govern- ment to own the telephones and telsgravh President Zemp told me that they were operated without difficulty, and that th government administration of them had proved satisfactory The telephones ho are connected with the Postoffice depart ment, and almost every postoffice {3 a tel graph office as well. The country is small but it has 318 central ations and morve than 82,000 miles of wire. In 1900 ther were more than 25,000,000 eonvers: fons and the telephone receipts were more than double those of the telegraph, amounting to $1,200,000 This is so notwithstanding the telephone rates are among the lowest of the world. For certain distances it costs vou less than a cent a message This is the charge in towns and cities. You can have a telephene in your house or business place tor frrom $10 to $20 a year 4 leng-distance message to any part of Switzerland for 15 cents The telegraphs are equally cheap. A nessage costs you 6 cents as ir, and you can sead ground tax nd in addition only 1 cent fc every two words; that is, a message of ten words to tny part of Switzerland costs 11 cents, a message of twenty words 16 cents and of fifty words 31 cents. It costs only 2 cents L word to telegraph from here to Germany or France in addition to the 10 cents which is the ground tax charge for the for elgn serviee lephoues have been used in Switzerland for more than twenty years. The Bell tel hone was the fir instituted, but after that the Swiss began to make tele phones of their own. The government took charge of the service in 1886 buying the instru ments and wires of the private companies The usual number of calls now allowed is 800 to each subscriber, and all beyond that are charged for at the rate of 1 cent each ent Talk 11on 1A of the American Invasion CAPITOL PRESIDENT All telephone offices receive telegrams and telegraph I was talking of this today Frankenthal importations of all into Switzerland parts of Europe, rcontinent our supply makes this chickens and eggs with my letters on delivery themselves perhaps worth $1.20 in our Swiss papers approval, takes only a postal card to give institution to be adopted had such Switzerland scll $1,000,000 worth international whole continent to all small articles is strange the Swiss do replied Consul Frank- apparently incubators notwithstanding grandfathers Switzerland completed surrounds than $1,000,000 ers several acres mountains throughout equal to that have for the fre and beautiful father land I spent some time in going through the capitol building and during my stay 1 cok a look a th ress Th House of Reor sentatives is built in - Swiss cor the shape of a half moon, with the seats rizing in concentric rows from front to back The president sits on a raised platform somewhat like our speaker's seat with a clerk on each side of him The press galleries ar at the front, so that the newspaper corre- spondents face the members. Each mem- ber has his own desk and chair, and the Louse, when in session, looks not unlike one of our legislative assemblies A curious feature of the Swiss congress is the public translator. These people have more different languages than the Cana dians. The eastern part of the country is German, the western French and the south ern Italian. About 70 per cent of the peo ple speak German, 20 per cent French and about & per cent Italian, with 2 per cent speaking other languages In western vitzerland nearly all the signs arc French, in the eastern states they are all German and in Ticino they are Italian. Th government r wts are printed in German and French, and the speeches here are made in either German or French for nearly all the members understand hoth languages. The orders of the president are translated by the official interpreter, and all of his messages are furnished the press In the two languages The upper house or state council hall is much like our senate chamber Both chambers are lighted from the ceilings and in addition have electric lights The Swiss republic has a number of features which are not found in that the United States. All citizens who are over 20 have the right to vote and all voters with the exception of clergymen are eligible to congress Representatives are chosen at the rate of one representative for every 20,000 souls, this rule covering the whole Swiss republie The members of the state ccuncil, or senate, are elected by the cantons, or states, two for each can- ton. Each state pays the salarics of its senators, but the salaries of the repre- sentatives are paid by the national gov- ernment. All laws are made by congress, but if the laws are not satisfactory to the people upon the application of 30,000 petitioners or of eight of the state governments they must be submitted to the popular vote, and if this is against them they cannot go into effect. This is what is known as the refer- endum and it one of the characteristi features of the Swiss government In addition to this they have here what called the initiative This provides that if a petition signed by 0,000 people is presented to the government asking for an amendment to the constitution, that amendment must be at once submitted to vote If there is a majority in the affirma tive congress has to modify the constitu tion ac rd y In many of the Swiss cantons it used to be that all political matters were settled by a viva voce election of the people. All Lme ther in the open ai speech were made and the questions submitted to vote At present such thing gen erally done in council chambers ities have their own aldermen, and some of the states have their own legislatures The laws are administered here in a way different from that of the United States We appoint ou 1 zerland they are elected by e« eral judges n Swit T The reme court ¢ f nine judges and nine alternate for terms of six years. Any man 1 clergyman can be chosen, and it makes no matter whether he is a lawyer or not. The court, however must be so that three of the judges can French, three German and three Italian The Swiss judges receive only one-fifth as much salary as the memt of ou upreme court. They are h 1 $2.000 a vear, with $3 a day extra for traveling expenses while absent on judicial busi n ss from the capital A SWISS POITOFFICE Our supreme court judges are elected for elected for a term of six years and the constitution provides that their vacations shall not exceed four weeks of the year. Their juris- diction extends to the same matters as the supreme court of the United 8 including all questions of disputes between life, those of the Swiss ates, the cantons, or states, all matters of treason and international law, and also certain cases of appeal FRANK CARPENTER College Slang In every university,” said a collegian quoted by the Philadelphia Record, “there is a slang word, ‘bone,” that means to study Do you know how this word origi- nated? It came from ‘Bohn'—from the Bohn' books that are so familiar to stu dents—and in the beginning it was spelled ‘Bohn,’” and 1ts significance was easily un- derstood, but now that it is spell ‘bone’ the significance is lost. The derivation of other pieces of college slang is not so easily traced back, Thus, there is the word *pole,’ poler,” ‘a gre v poler,” which at high means a hard student It would be hard to say whence that word comes. There is rush,” to ‘rush a freshman,” a Cornell phrase, which means to seek to induce a freshman to join fraternity—another hard word To ‘bust’ at Cornell means to fail, or flunk cow juice’ means milk; a ‘pony means a device for cheating at examina- tions; a ‘log wagon' means a lunch wagon Those words have their derivation patent on their face; but where, I wonder, can ‘to gray' have come from? ‘To gray,’ at the University of Virgina, means to get drunk.” A “Tip for the Waiter Brooklyn gle “Everything all right, sir?"”" asked the waiter The patron nodded, but still the waiter hovered near Stcak cooked too much to suit you, sir he asked again presently Again the patron nodded Potatoes the way you like ‘em. sir? Yes.” Another period of silence I hope the service is satisfactory, sir?" Are you bidding for a tip?" demanded the patron ‘Well, sir, of course, we get tips some times, and I've got to go to the kitchen for another party, so—"" So you'd like a tip now, to be sure of it Well, I'll give you one Yes, sir.” ‘Here is the tip; 1 have a large strident ice that I am able of using If anything is wrong I'll let out a roar yeu can hear in the kitchen If you don't hear it you can know I am dining in peace and comfort, and not in the least regretting your absence It no fun to have to pass ve ment on every mouthful 1 eat But the tir al judg That's the tip, and a mighty good one it is, too Pointed P Chicag ragraphs News It doesn't take marksman to draw a bead much of a t on beer The price paid to quiet conscienc mighty few people poor CeSs you must | through a door labeled “Push When money is tight it makes itself arce, but it's somewhat different with \ famine o1 silver dimes annoys the iverage man more than the scarcity of $1.000 bills When a man compliments a woman ehe t satisfied unless she can Induce him to repeat it at least seven times