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As the 18th century went on, however, the old agricultural community was replaced by a different sort of community with its own values and traditions. Many industrial outworkers had more opportunities than agricultural labourers to think about, and discuss with others, questions of politics and religion. Women gained some financial independence, and formed their own social groups outside their households. Some forms of socially tolerated pre-marital sexual relationships, which had existed in the old community were decriminalised around the time of Bräker's death. This allowed for marriage as a matter more for individual choice, and less as a way of safeguarding property within an extended family.

As Böning says, those who did not own land were forced to find some other way of symbolising status, this might mean extravagance in clothes but could also mean better housing and a higher standard of living. In the middle and upper classes too, status now depended more on wealth than on pride of birth, and the Swiss were gaining a more cosmopolitan outlook and finding new ways to show off their wealth such as spending it on imported goods and indulging new cultural tastes. Efforts to combat sexual immorality sometimes resulted in better provision for leisure activities for young people, including educational readings and discussions of the newspapers, and involving young women as well as men. Manufacturers who had interests in both the town and the country were often moving spirits in bringing the two populations together in activities such as music-making and the foundation and use of libraries.

In the Toggenburg, however, the years immediately after Bräker's death seem to have been somewhat grim. During the French Revolution this region took an opportunity for profitable exports by manufacturing white cravats with a tricolour border. But by 1790, when the mechanical spinning-jenny was introduced, the market for coarse hand-spun yarn collapsed. Those who could changed to higher quality spinning and weaving. The French occupation disrupted the textile industry still further, and by the beginning of the 19th century even formerly prosperous factory owners were going under. One good result of this was that the government began to recognise some responsibility for the plight of those whose poverty was caused by market forces beyond their control, and efforts were made to devise systems of poor relief to replace the work of the churches, which had been adversely affected by the Revolution. Receiving poor relief, however, still carried a social stigma, and in some places could result in loss of political rights. Bankruptcy was also perceived as so humiliating that many preferred to resort to begging.

1817 was a particularly bad year, with thousands begging and starving. Writing a few years later, in 1823, Simond (pp 102, 112-4) says that the people of St. Gallen had aimed too exclusively at success in industry, neglecting agriculture. In Herisau, he saw many beggars, and the textile workers looked wretched: "What we saw might be the population of Rouen, of Manchester, of Leeds or of Abbeville; in better air, no doubt, and better lodged, but pale and thin, and humbled; and, I fear, not very moral." In Wattwil, he heard of people "supporting for some time a miserable existence on scarcely anything but boiled nettles and other herbs", sometimes to the point at which better food came their way too late to save them, as the starvation diet had "impaired their organs" of digestion. The end of the 18th century, however, saw the beginnings of Switzerland's highly successful industry: tourism.

The rise of tourism:

Bräker always admired a "fine prospect", but these views are cultivated land; he had no love of wildness for its own sake. In his diary for October 1795 he explicitly states his preference for a smoothly flowing river over a rough mountain torrent. Yet he had no superstitious dread of the wild, he knew of its real dangers - avalanches, lightning, wild animals - but he did not populate every crag and pool with ghosts and monsters, as many people of his class did.

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