Book Review: Switzerland in Perspective

DOI10.1177/002070205601100314
Published date01 September 1956
Date01 September 1956
Subject MatterBook Review
230
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
ship.
Some
of
the
outstanding
figures
are
summarised as
fol-
lows:
"Over
92%
of
the
Ting
Hsien
families
owned
some
farm
land.
Over
96%
farmed
some
land.
All
but
5.484
of
the
70.034
families
were
land
owners.
All
but
2.475
were
farm
operators.
Only
1.361
families,
1.9%,
reported
no
farming
connection.
The
average land
holdings
were:
owners
21.9
mu,
operators
21.2
mu,
all
families
20.4
mu.
(a
mu
is
roughly
1/6th
of
an
acre).
Just
under
6%
of
the
land
owning
families
rented land
to
others.
Thirty per
cent.
of
the
farming
families
rented land from
others;
12%
of
the
privately
owned
crop
area
was
rented.
Only
4.8%
of
the
farm
operating
families were
full
tenants.
Only
1.3
per
cent
of
the
renters
were
share
croppers.
Only
0.7
per
cent
of
the
families
were
non
farming
landlords."
Land
is
vested
in families.
The
disparity
in
the
size
of land
holdings
as
between
families,
varies
in
almost
direct
proportion
to
the
size
of
the
family,
so
that
conversion
of
the
figures to
per
capita,
rather
than
joint
family
holdings,
brings
the
figures
al-
most
to
parity.
One
scans
these
statistics
in
vain
for
evidence
of
the
existence
of
large-scale landlordism,
and
unless
there
has
been
widespread
alienation of
the
land
since
the
survey
was
made,
it
is
difficult
to
see
which
of
the
landlords
of
Ting
Hsien
would
have
merited
inclusion among
the three
million
"exploiting
landlords"
and
reactionaries
that,
by
communist
admission,
have
been
hailed before
People's
Courts
and
butchered
in
the
last
few
years.
One
wonders
who
the
dispossessed
workers
were,
who
were
reinstated
in
the
ownership
of
the
land
they
worked.
The
conscience
of
the
West
has recently
been
quickened
on
the
subject
of
the
social
and
economic
status
of
the
undeveloped
peoples
of
the
world.
The
Communists have made
great
propa-
ganda
claims
to
have
improved
that
status
in
China.
Mr.
Gamble's
survey
provides
the
right
kind
of
material
by
which
the
problem can
be
understood.
He
provides
too,
a
useful
yard-
stick
by which
communist
claims
can
be
assessed.
Toronto
W.
A.
C.
H.
DOBSON
Swr•aLAND
IN
PsFriVE_.
By
George
Soloveyý.tch•k.
1954.
(Toronto:
Oxford.
vii,
306pp.
$4.25.)
Switzerland
in
Perspective
is
a
well-informed
survey
by
a
Russian
liberal
whose
first
acquaintance
with
Switzerland
came
through
governesses
in
St.
Petersburg
before
1914.
The
liveliest
part
of
the
book
is
devoted
to
Swiss domestic
affairs.
We
are
enlightened
by
apparent
paradoxes
(i.e.,
that
Swiss
democracy
is
sturdy
although
the
country
is
"neither

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