Besides exporting manufactures, Belgium, like England, sells coal. Thousands of tons of it go each month to Holland, France, Switzerland, Argentina, and even to Rumania.
447. Reasons for growth of manufacturing industries.—Four advantages fit this region for manufacturing: (1) Good, healthful climate, much like that of England (Sec.
416). (2) The coal field that stretches across northern France, Belgium, and into the Rhine Valley of Germany. (3) The much used Rhine River and its valley. (4) Splen did agriculture.
It is a great advantage to a manufacturing region when food for the workers is produced near the factory districts. (Sec. 443.) Because of these four advantages, the Low Countries became a great manufacturing region when England was still a farming country. Three hundred years ago there was much more machinery in the Low Countries than there was in England, for in the Low Countries, in addition to hand machines, windmills were used to grind grain and pump water.
448. Manufacturing and cities.—Across the neat fields of Holland and Belgium, one often sees the high smokestacks of some manufac turing town in the distance. From the deck of a steamboat on the Rhine, one may see a kind of procession of smokestacks as the boat passes town after town and city after city.
The factories, like those of England, import many of their raw materials. Iron ore from the French province of Lorraine is carried by boat and train to supply the manufacturing districts of France, Belgium, and the lower Rhine. These rich ore fields are near this region but not in it.
The greatest iron production of this dis trict (the Pittsburgh of the continent) is near Cologne, at Essen and neighboring towns. These cities are on or near the Ruhr, a navigable branch of the Rhine. Thus boats can come close to the great fac tories. The famous Krupp gun works, one of the world's greatest manufacturing plants, is at Essen. Since the World War this factory makes locomotives and many other kinds of machinery. This region with its steel industry resembles Pennsylvania. It also resembles New England, because there are many textile factories at Cologne and other Rhine cities. In Belgium, the cities of Ghent and Brussels are textile centers, while Lille in the north of France is famous for woolens and cottons.
One coal field lies under three of the countries h this region. Reaching from Lille, France, to the Rhine, it feeds many factories that make iron, cement, and glass. Belgium is one of the great glass manufac turing countries of Europe. Much of the glass, cement, and iron are exported.
The chief manufacturing citiesof Belgium are Ghent, Liege, and Brussels. Brus sels and Cologne are the largest cities of the region. Both are larger than San Francisco. Like Amster dam, Rotterdam, and many smaller towns, they are neat, well-kept cities, with many beautiful buildings, some of them several hundred years old. One such is the Cathedral of Cologne.
449. Intensive wom en, especially the Belgian women who live on the farms, often make lace by hand. A few cents' worth of thread is turned, by much labor, into dollars' worth of beautiful handmade lace. (Fig. 369.)
Holland is so poor in raw materials that she has to buy even stone and logs from Vorway and Switzerland, with which to build the dikes that keep the sea from over flowing her land. Nevertheless, her people are such skilful and industrious workers that the little country has prospered.
Amsterdam is the great center of the world's diamond trade. It has a diamond exchange with hundreds of members. Diamonds are bought and sold every day. In their shops near by, skilled diamond cutters change the rough-looking pebbles that come from Africa into flashing jewels, which are sent to every part of the world.
450. People and dif ferent peoples, speaking four different lan guages, living in four different countries, inhabit this one small district. The German and Dutch languages and peo ples are somewhat alike. The Flemings —the people of Flanders, a part of Bel gium—resemble the Dutch. French is the language of Brussels, and the official language of Belgium. Because these four peoples live so close together, well-educated people speak more than one language. Most traders of Holland or Bel gium doing business with the people of other coun tries speak German, Eng lish, and French.
The people of this whole region are industrious, thrifty, and saving. Their houses, gardens, and vil lages are neat, and the fields are free from weeds. In many sections of Holland and Belgium the people still wear native costumes of ancient and picturesque styles.
Holland and Belgium are each about the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut com bined. In the two countries there are 14,000,000 people, a number twice as large as all the population of New England. If we should add the population of the German and French parts of this small region, there would be as many people as in all the terri tory of the United States west of the Missouri and the lower Mississippi rivers.
Holland and Belgium are small countries, but their people are very patriotic. The Dutch love their queen, and the Belgians love their king very much, although as a matter of fact the people really rule themselves, through their parliaments, which pass all the laws, and even give the king and queen the money they spend. Both Holland and Bel gium have colonies many times as large as the mother country, and with more people than the mother country. Name them. (Fig. 10.) 451. Future.—England farms so little of its land that it can increase its food production, but the Low Countries and the Lower Rhine Valley use their land so fully that there can not be much increase in food production. The population, however, has long been steadily increasing because of the growth of cities and trade. The people here, like those in the United Kingdom and in New England, buy much of the food they eat, and also have raw materials brought from distant lands. (Sec. 446.) As long as this great trade continues, the number of cities that can grow up in the manufacturing places is almost without limit.