Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1902-12-27
THE AMERICAN SHOE
Tramping It's Way Into All
Parts Of Europe.
TALK WITH A TANNER
EUROPEANS REAP THE ADVANT-
AGE OF OUR INGENUITY.
What They Think of Our Leather
How to Work the Foreign
Market.
TALK WITH A TANNER
(Copyright, 1902, by Frank G. Carpenter.)

Copyright 1902, by Frank G. Carpenter.)
Special Correspondence of The Evening Star.
MONS, Belgium.
I have come from Switzerland across
France to Belgium, and am now in Mons,
on the southern edge Of this country
Mons has $4,000 people, but the country
about is one continuous village, and l can
see the possibilities Of an enormous con-
sumption of American goods Belgium Is
one Of the most thickly populated parts of
the world. l have Travelled among the mil
lions of China and India but nowhere have
found the people much thicker than here
The country roads are spotted with blocks
of one and two-story houses, and at every
mile or so there is village. l took a days
walk through the country last week. Every
hour or so 1 went by a coal mine with a
mountain Of refuse behind it, and large
collection of miners houses under its
shadow. The roads are thronged with men,
women and children. Nearly all walk, and a
common sight is a woman and dog drag
ging a cart, harnessed up side by side.
Sometimes the dog is in the shafts and the
woman pulls outside with rope, at others
the woman is in the shafts and the dog
tolls along behind under the bed of the
cart, hitched to the axle. The fields are
full of women working. They spade the
ground they dig and they hoe. Sometimes
they carry great loads along the roads or
across the fields on their backs like very
beasts of burden.
American Goods in Belgian Town.
1 doubt if many Americans have ever
been here. The tourists pass Mons by, al
though 1t Is one Of the oldest towns of
northern Europe and full of historic in
terest. julius Caesar had a fortress here
when he was fighting the Gauls, and
Mons was bathed in blood in the struggle of
the Spaniards and William of Orange.
There Is cathedral in the city, which was
building when Columbus started out to dis
cover America, and a monument to Baldwin
TX, who took part in the crusades, and
who in 1908 became Emperor of CONSTANT
nople, while trying to wrest his soul from
the devil and the Holy Land from the
Turks.
The Mons of today, however, is more in
terested in the fires of the living than in
the birthstone fires of the damned. 1t is the
center of the chief coal mining section of
Belgium. Mountains of coal waste rise up
everywhere about it, standing like great
cones high above the fields and villages.
The city is one of hills and hollows. Its
winding streets are of cobbles and its build
ings such as you would expect to find in a
coal mining center.
American Goods in a Belgian Town.
1 took a room at the Grand Hotel de
Schmitz, near the depot, and then started
out to see If 1 could find some evidences of
the American invasion. I did not expect
much, for 1 knew that most of the people
were miners and many of them exceedingly
poor. This is my first city in Belgium, and
as the town has no American consul
could find nothing about it in our State
Department reports. My knowledge of
French is not over good, and that of my
son Jack, high school boy, who Is with
| me- is little better, still We were not long
f,,,1i Ay,,nr tonv tran 1-c Npa ct
store We entered was that of a tobacconist
next door to the hotel. l dropped in and
asked for some American cigarettes. The
| maiden in charge promptly handed me three
different boxes, all made in Virginia, aud
later on told me that she sold chiefly the
wares of our tobacco trust
A little further on I saw large sales
| room filed with American sewing machines
and next door was a store selling photo
graph cameras from Rochester N. Y.
was wondering as to American foodstuffs
when Jack called me across the street &c
| see a grocery where the hens lay eggs fol
| ed in. In the glass window upon a round
crate Of eggs sat what looked like a live
hen in the act of laying. The fowl had
| genuine feathers, a blood-red comb anC
| real hens eyes. The eggs were genuine
and it took me twelve seconds before
/ realized that the dominick was only stuff
| ed and that it was merely to advertise the
| freshness of the eggs. Nearby were yello \
porcelain butter rolls and in an adjoining
| window / saw the words "Weisse Oats
| and some bags of "self-raising four from
| New York.
In the hardware stores found American