COMMERCE. As a manufacturing country, Bel gium requires mainly food-products and raw ma terials from abroad in exchange for its manu factures. The chief articles of import include cereals, cotton. wool and flax, metals, chemicals, drugs and resins, mineral substances, lunTher, textiles, oil-seeds, hides, animals and animal products, coffee, eamitehonc, and machinery; while the chief exports include iron and steel with manufactured wares), raw textile materi als, yarn and thread, coal and coke, glassware, railway-ears, machinery, chemicals and dyestuffs, minerals, zinc, cereals, and sugar. The following figures show the growth of Belgian commerce for the greater part of the Nineteenth Century, the larger part of both exports and imports being, not by sea, but by land and river: the privilege of handling its moneys. The hank has numerous branches throughout the country. It also conducts, free of charge, all the financial operations of the State Savings and Pension In The table reveals the remarkable growth of Belgium's commerce since 1835, as well as its unprecedented increase in the last decade of the century, which quite exceeded 100 per cent. both in imports and exports. The only branch of trade that suffered a setback during the last decade was the transit trade, although this also has improved since 1894, when it reached the low-water mark of $224,000,000. An interesting
feature of Belginm's commerce is the large ex cess of its imports over its exports—a condition which has not changed since I8(50. Far from be ing a drawback to the country, this 'unfavor able' balance of trade has been one result of Bel gium's commercial and financial expansion. The investments of Belgian capital abroad, especially in Russia and in Asia, are unusually large, and the surplus imports represent nothing but the materialized profits of foreign investments ac cruing to Belgian capitalists. The principal countries participating in Belgium's trade, in the order of their importance, are France, Ger many, Great Britain, the Netherlands, the Unit ed States, Russia, and Argentina. In the for eign trade of the United States Belgium plays an important part. It ranks fifth in the value of its imports from the United States and seventh in the exports it sends there, being be hind only Great Britain, Germany, Netherlands, and France in imports, and behind these coun tries and Italy and Switzerland in exports.
The following table shows the course of the Belgian-American trade during the last decade of the century: