Now, the President presides at the meetings of this Federal Council. There is also a Vice-President. The election of these two officers is characteristically Swiss, and is designed to create as little disturbance as possible in the governmental machine.

Every year the two legislative houses designate from among the seven members of the Federal Council the two men who shall act as President and Vice-President. In point of fact, therefore, the President of the Swiss Republic is only the chairman of an executive board; he sits at the head of the table; he receives a salary of $2,160, while his colleagues must content themselves with $1,920; he acts as a figurehead, to which foreign nations can address themselves; but he cannot be his own immediate successor. The members of the Federal Council also have the right to introduce bills or resolutions into the two houses, and to speak upon such bills or resolutions, though not to vote upon them. In return they may be interpellated upon any question.

Translated into the terms of American political life, the Swiss system means that the Senate and the House of Representatives, united in joint session, elect every three years a Cabinet of seven members, not more than one member from the same State. Every year Congress also designates the two men among the seven who shall act as President and Vice-President. The members of the Cabinet have the right to introduce bills into Congress, but not to vote. They can be called to account for the conduct of their offices.

Once elected, the seven members of the Swiss Federal Council distribute the work to be done into seven departments of (1) Foreign Affairs; (2) Interior; (3) Justice and Police; (4) Military; (5) Imposts and Finance; (6) Industry and Agriculture; (7) Posts and Railroads. The President, of course, holds one of these portfolios. A quorum consists of four members.

This Swiss Executive is quite unique among the various types of government. It seems to combine much of the stability of monarchical forms with the elasticity of the purest democracies. It is essentially a business arrangement. Should the bills introduced by members of the Federal Council be defeated, that body does not resign, as would be the case with ministries in England, France and other European countries. Indeed, one of the chief merits of the Federal Council is its independence of party mechanism. The seven members are not the nominees of one political party, but are recruited from several by mutual compromise, in order to represent various parts of the country and different interests. Moreover, the existence of the Initiative and Referendum also tends to free the Federal Council from the dictates of party bosses, for refuge can always be had in a popular verdict.

The Initiative means that fifty thousand voters shall have the right to initiate or propose the enactment, the abolition or the alteration of certain articles of the Federal Constitution. But, as the Swiss Constitution is comparatively loosely drawn, almost any subject may thus be introduced into legislation.

The Referendum means that Federal laws shall be referred to the people for acceptance or rejection, if the demand is made by thirty thousand voters or by eight Cantons.

Another characteristic of the Swiss people is their horror of anything like one-man power. Only once during their history have they accepted the rule of a chief magistrate, and that innovation was forced upon them by

Napoleon I. during his career of conquest in Europe, when he held undisputed sway in Switzerland. But no sooner had he fallen at Waterloo, than they straightway abolished the office. In the same way, the Cantons of the Republic, corresponding to our States, are administered by executive boards in which the chairman is called sometimes Landammann, sometimes Schultheiss, or merely President; but in no case do his powers approach those of one of our State Governors.

Turning from the executive power in Switzerland to the corresponding factor in the government of the United States, we are confronted by a very interesting contrast. Is it possible that two countries, calling themselves Republics, can vary so much in the attributes of their Presidential offices?

The President of the United States is commander-in-chief of the army and navy; possesses a suspensory veto upon federal legislation and the privilege of pardoning offences against federal law; and finally is intrusted with an appointing power, unparalleled in any free country. He invites certain of his political friends to form a cabinet around him-his control over them being absolute. They are responsible solely to him, not to the nation. He furthermore appoints the Justices of the Supreme Court, so that even the highest judicial authority in the land is to some extent under his influence.

But, as though these sovereign attributes were not sovereign enough, a tendency has shown itself recently to invest the President of the United States with military powers in times of peace, never yet accorded to the head of any constitutional country. The financial policy of the United States is also being shifted by degrees into his hands, to be shaped by him, if he chooses, in entire disregard of the legislative branch of the government. This drift might not be so disastrous, were our successive Presidents in any sense true representatives of the nation. Unfortunately they must remain partisans, even while in office, by reason of the manner of their election. They are obliged to consult the demands of their particular factions, at the expense of public interest, if need be, because they cannot escape pre-election pledges or party pressure.

In dwelling upon these characteristics of the Presidential position, the writer does not wish to be understood as referring to any particular incumbent of that office, past or present. The purpose in view is merely to point out that the requirements are entirely beyond the capabilities even of our great men. No one can be expected to possess the profound and diversified knowledge of men and things which, to speak of but one difficulty, the wholesale distribution of offices, for example, presupposes.

It is no exaggeration to describe the President of the United States as a Partisan-King.

The question, then, naturally arises, whether the Swiss Federal Council does not present valuable suggestions to us in our Presidential predica

ment.

Here is the oldest Republic in existence, whose governmental experiments necessarily cover a wide field, managing to elect every three years a strong, able executive board of seven men, without a popular upheaval, without the expenditure of vast sums of money, or the wholesale distribution of spoils! It is satisfied to leave the choice of this board to the discretion of the representatives elected by the people. It finds plenty of men of ability and integrity, who feel honored to serve their country on this board for a small salary, because there is no mud slinging before election, and no persecution by hungry office seekers afterwards. It has discovered

that national interests are best served by the retention of well-tried officials. As a bank, or any other business concern, prospers year in and year out under the management of the same Board of Directors, so does the Swiss Government under a Federal Council which rarely changes.

Switzerland's nominal head, this President of no importance, is an official who has no ex-officio rank in the army, who cannot launch a veto, or pardon a criminal; who has no offices to distribute, never chooses his associates in the Federal Council, and would consider it a public crime to try to influence the judiciary. As an individual, he cannot declare war or make peace; nor could he, by himself, determine the financial policy of the country. In fact, his position will even appear to many to be that of a political nonentity, until it is remembered that the Federal Council, of which he forms a part, is in reality an exceedingly powerful body, in whose hands the supreme direction of the country rests.

In their general political make-up, the Swiss Republic and the United States resemble each other more nearly than any two countries in the world, so that the two can well afford to learn from each other, without lowering their dignity. It may not be generally known that the bi-cameral system of the Swiss Government, for example, is a direct copy of our own Congress. Up to 1848 the Swiss had always contented themselves with one legislative body (such as the Cantons have to this day), but when the revision of the Federal Constitution was undertaken in that year, students of international politics, men like Bluntschli and Rüttimann, declared themselves in favor of the creation of a second body. They pointed especially to the Senate of the United States. As a result, Switzerland adopted a bi-cameral system, consisting of a National Council, chosen in the ratio of one member for each twenty thousand persons of the total population, fractions of upwards of ten thousand persons being reckoned at twenty thousand; and of a Council of States, consisting of two representatives from each Canton, making a total of forty-four members.

The lesson which the Swiss Federal Council teaches us at this hour is that a Republic can unite incongruous, often antagonistic, elements in population, such as Switzerland possesses, and protect itself from foreign complications without indulging in a powerful and spectacular public head. Instead of increasing the responsibilities and sovereign attributes of the Presidential office, as we in this country seem inclined to do under the stress of military excitement and of financial fear, let his prerogatives rather be checked and his official burdens lightened. At present none but a mental, moral, and physical giant can ever hope to fill the office satisfactorily.

W. D. MCCRACKAN.

THE NECESSITY OF LIMITING RAILWAY COMPETITION. THE interstate commerce law, during the nine years since it was placed upon the statute book, has accomplished much that tends to justify the hopes of its advocates, and has even obtained from many of its opponents tardy acknowledgment of the wisdom and justice of its fundamental principles. The practice of charging more for a short intermediate haul of freight or passenger traffic than for a longer one in the same direction, which was among those appearing most unjust and consequently obnoxious to the general public, has been restricted to fewer instances and to those in which the circumstances of competition afford more apparent justification.

The subjection of particular communities to disadvantage, by means of unjust discriminations in the relative adjustment of railway rates, has been discontinued in numerous instances to the practical benefit of the localities formerly discriminated against, and of the entire country, which is thus assured a more natural and symmetrical development. The tendency toward harmony in the charges for carrying competing commodities, different grades of the same article, and raw materials and their finished products, has been intensified by the acquiescence of railway managers in the spirit of the law, and its operation mildly accelerated by the adjudication of the complaints presented to the Commission created for its enforcement. The custom of making special rates to favored shippers, so prevalent prior to the enactment of the law that regular charges were exacted only from occasional and unsophisticated shippers, has been so far corrected that the vastly greater portion of all traffic is now charged full published rates and the law deviated from only in cases of most strenuous competition, when failure to yield to the force of conditions imposed by an unnatural, extravagant and wasteful rivalry, that is itself the creature of unwise legislation, would entail serious financial loss. Doubtless the preservation of railway properties from a threatened bankruptcy that, besides injuriously affecting all business enterprises, would inevitably bring ruin to thousands of innocent children and defenceless women-whose small investments in railway stocks and bonds were made largely because of the reasonable belief that the Government would not legislate so as to destroy or seriously cripple an industry created by private means to perform a necessary public service-does not justify the violation of a statute that forbids acts which, independent of legislation, involve no element of turpitude. Yet, upon the other hand, justice to those who were active in supporting those portions of the law which have resulted in preventing the railways from mitigating by agreement the force of competition for traffic, demands that we shall presume this effect to bave been undesired and unanticipated.

Experience has demonstrated that the prohibition of pooling tends not only to deprive the railways of sufficient revenue to pay fair wages and reascnable dividends and interest, but also to foster unjust discriminations between competing localities and shippers, and to impose upon the entire public the permanent burden of meeting, by charges higher than those neces sary under better conditions, the wasteful expenses incurred to maintain a competition that is effective at a few points only, and often for but few shippers, that is at once the prolific parent and devoted slave of trusts and combinations, and is beneficial to no one except the soliciting agent, the ticket scalper, the parasite.

The word "competition" is not correctly applied to the business of moving persons and property by rail, and, when suggested as having regulative value and importance, is deceitful, dangerous, and vicious; for however closely one line parallels another there are always many stations that are wholly dependent upon the facilities afforded by a single road, and no matter how actively the rival carriers struggle for supremacy at adjacent "competitive" points such local stations will remain at the mercy of a monopoly whose desire for gain is not diminished by losses sustained elsewhere. Not infrequently this pseudo-competition is for the traffic in a single important commodity, as grain, lumber, live stock, dressed meats, salt, or sugar; and the reduced rates, often secret, upon this commodity destroy, so long as they continue, the relative adjustment of charges and produce unjust dis

criminations against competing commodities which may materially and sometimes irretrievably injure those dealing in them. There have also been notorious instances of rates lowered to secure competitive traffic that have been accorded only to a single shipper of a particular commodity, thus excluding and discriminating against all other shippers and articles of traffic

Unification of interest is the alternative to competition. This does not require the actual merging of all railway corporations in a single organization, though it may finally appear that the most satisfactory results are attainable only in that way. The most practicable step in advance at present is the consolidation of railway interests, through legalized agreements, providing for the division of competitive traffic, made enforceable between the parties thereto and operating under the constant supervision of public authorities, acting not only in the interest of passengers and shippers but of the whole people, including those who own and operate railways. Contracts of this nature, popularly called "pooling" agreements, became common in this country during the years from 1870 to 1887 when the passage of the in. terstate commerce law made their discontinuance necessary. Though there were conflicting opinions, they were generally regarded as contrary to the policy of the common law and consequently not enforceable by judicial process, their observance depending wholly upon the good faith of the parties. As railway managers were so far impressed with the correctness of this view that they seldom, if ever, ventured to appeal to the courts for the enforcement of such contracts, it is practically correct to affirm that the legally recognized right to pool traffic or earnings has never existed in the United States, and therefore the proposition to permit and make them enforceable by the courts is one to endow railway corporations with a power never possessed by them in this country, a power to act in a manner expressly prohibited by comparatively recent legislation, and to invoke the aid of the United States courts in the enforcement of a class of contracts which from the foundation of the government has been regarded as opposed to public policy.

But the statement of the radical nature of the proposed legislation or the extent of its divergence from precedents, though frequently forced to serve in that capacity, is not an argument against it, but, on the contrary, imposes the duty of carefully scrutinizing the evidence upon both sides and of promptly acting in accordance with reason and justice. Those against it are uniformly vague, indefinite, or mendacious, and, in their most popular form, consist of statements of the vast capital, the large annual aggregate earnings, and the important public services performed by the railway system.

To those who advance these arguments it has apparently never occurred that the magnitude of the business and the importance of the services per formed is a most cogent reason for bringing the railway system out of a state of chaotic internal warfare to a condition of compact, homogeneous autonomy. Nearly all of the difficulty attending satisfactory railway regulation arises from the existence of the former condition, which is also responsible for all unjust discriminations and the cause of many wasteful expenditures that result in exorbitant charges or bankruptcy. As ninety-five per cent. of all railway stations must, under any circumstances, be dependent upon a single line, and any desire to exact high rates is undoubtedly strengthened by losses at competitive points, it seems undeniable that the abolition of competition at the relatively few points where it now exists