Switzerland

While the industrial development of Saxony, on the whole, was stimulated by the Continental System, in certain regions in Switzerland the result was quite the opposite, the situation there being far more complicated. And what is now to be said about Switzerland applies also in large measure to the Black Forest and, peculiarly enough, to Geneva as well, though the latter was incorporated with France. In the Swiss and Baden regions (with the exception of one single branch of production) there was a violent decline in the previously well-marked industrial development and a distress which was widespread, and, in certain districts, frightful. Nevertheless, it is a great mistake to regard the blockade as the sole cause of this devastating backward movement. The character of Swiss industry made it peculiarly susceptible both to the revolutionary influence of the great inventions and to the changes undergone by the general economic position of Europe toward the close of the Napoleonic wars.

About 1770 Switzerland was the pioneer country in the European cotton industry, with both spinning and weaving highly developed under the forms of home industry, for which the country was uniquely adapted. Shortly afterwards the machine-spun British yarn began to penetrate into the country, but this development was checked by the obstacles which the course of the French Revolution placed in the way of intercourse with England. Also, when Napoleon began to close the land frontiers more and more tightly a new change took place in the situation. The importation of raw materials for all the Swiss textile industries—cotton, flax, hemp, raw silk—was rendered difficult, while the calico-printing works of Geneva, on the contrary, suffered through being placed within the French customs frontier and thereby being shut off from the supply of unprinted cotton from Switzerland. The severance of the many ties that connected Switzerland. The severance of the many ties that connected Switzerland with all the bordering countries was thus primarily responsible for the confusion that prevailed during the first five years of the nineteenth century. The earlier years of the Continental System brought about, as we already know, the closing of the Italian market, but, on the other hand, they led to what were sometimes great sales in Germany. We are told that at the Easter Fair at Frankfurt, in 1809, the Swiss completely dominated the market. They left the town after having sold their stocks, but furnished themselves anew and had an equally sweeping success with their new supplies and at equally good prices. Until this time Switzerland had had no very great difficulty in providing herself with raw cotton or even with British yarn, especially because the important port of Trieste was still open. It is true that a shortage of Brazilian cotton had made itself felt, but this had been partly replaced by North American cotton.

What really caused suffering during this period was not the general state of the trade, but the hopeless struggle that hand-spinning was carrying on against machine-spinning, hastened, as it was, by the importation of yarn and also by the increasing necessity to fall back on the short-stapled Levantine cotton; for this quality did not admit of the spinning of fine numbers of yarn, which otherwise constituted the only chance left to hand-spinning. The misery of the Swiss hand-spinners would seem, as regards the range of the injury, to surpass considerably what we know of the corresponding effects of the industrial revolution in Great Britain. But it is in the very nature of the case that we here have to deal with sacrifices for what cannot possibly be looked upon as anything but lasting material progress. The definitive introduction of machine-spinning went on in Switzerland, as in Saxony, under the protection of the Continental System, but on a foundation which had been laid beforehand in both countries—in the year 1801. In Switzerland, in much the same way as in Saxony, the new branch of production had been in the way of falling a victim to British competition; but it was saved and now developed itself, partly under Saxon influence, by means of a spinning-machine industry. The last-named industry gradually became independent, and acquired a great reputation, like machine-spinning itself. It maintained its prosperity, not only under the Continental System, but also after its fall, though it suffered a momentary dislocation. Probably the manufacture of spinning-machinery in its turn is connected with the manufacture of cast or crucible steel at Schaffhausen, and possibly also with the general development of the engineering industry in Switzerland that has played an important part in the economic history of the country during the nineteenth century.

However, Napoleon, the 'mediator' of the Swiss Confederation, undeniably had an eye on its industry; and there was no comparison between his ruthless and continuous intervention in Switzerland and his relatively mild treatment of Saxony. This fact explains many of the dissimilarities in the consequent evolution of the two countries. The Emperor never neglected an opportunity to make Switzerland, a dangerous competitor that was politically powerless, feel the whole weight of the measures both of the Italian and of the French governments; and the states of the Confederation of the Rhine, especially Bavaria, were not slow to follow suit. In 1809 occurred the incorporation of Trieste, which was a hard blow for both the imports and the sales of Switzerland; but it was the years 1810-11 which, so far as external policy is concerned, gave the decisive turn to events. It was then that the last measures were taken in Italy which definitively shut off the south of Europe. At the same time the Trianon tariff led both to repeated and violent ransackings of Switzerland for British goods and to prohibitions on the transport of colonial goods (cotton) from the states of the Confederation of the Rhine, and finally also to the decline both of the Frankfurt and the Leipzig Fairs, so that sales for the north were rendered difficult at the same time that sales to the south were strangled. Nevertheless, we do not form the impression that these external events were the main cause of the almost all-embracing crisis which now broke over the whole of Swiss economic life. Of the seriousness of this set-back there does not appear to be any doubt. The Landammann (President) summed up the situation in April 1812, in the distressful proposition that 'the industries of Switzerland are now nearing their end'; and a considerable emigration took place, among other places, to the left bank of the Rhine.

The fundamental cause of this hard blow seems rather to have been the general distress which now spread over Europe, and which struck Swiss industry with particular severity because most of its branches were concerned with the production of luxuries. In the cotton industry this especially held good of the manufacture of muslins and embroidered goods, in which Switzerland and Baden had been beyond the reach of competition on the Continent and had suffered no inconvenience worth mentioning from the Continental System. But it was just here that a devastating crisis broke out which put an end forever to these branches of production in certain districts, and for the moment practically everywhere. To a somewhat smaller extent the position was the same for calicoes and coarser unprinted cottons. Outside the sphere of the cotton industry, both the silk manufacture and the making of watches and jewellery obviously satisfied what was in the main a demand for luxuries. The most highly developed watch industry, that of Geneva, is stated to have declined to a tenth of its former magnitude. Evidently it will not do to see in this an effect of the Continental System; and the fact that Switzerland during the recent war, despite far greater difficulties in the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs, was yet able to avoid such great dislocations as in 1811-13 is evidently connected with the fact that it has now, not only industries that supply the luxury demand but also, and perhaps to a still greater extent, other kinds of industries.

To outward appearances, consequently, the difference between Switzerland and Saxony is very great. If one tries to get to the bottom of the significance of the Continental System for Switzerland, the dissimilarity, however, will diminish considerably. In both countries machine-spinning secured a firm foothold, while the weaving industry could not maintain itself in either country. But things were undeniably far worse in Switzerland for three reasons; because of the much greater ruthlessness of the Napoleonic policy there; because of its more intimate connexion with surrounding countries; and, above all, because of the fact that Swiss industries were far more concerned with the production of luxuries.