Jamestown weekly alert. [volume] (Jamestown, Stutsman County, D.T. [N.D.]) 1882-1925, 1920-09-02
FRANCES VICTORY
OF PEACE SECOND
MIRACLE OF MARINE
New York Publisher Tells Of
Remarkable Work Done
Toward Rehabilitation "
Former Devastated Regio
in Less Than Two Years :

~ new IUfh, Aug. Ho'-H =
victory of peace" in her reconstruc-
ton mails the lie that her people
are not working" Herbert S. Hous-
ton, New York publisher declares
after / period of research at Parls
whence he recently returned:
Offering statistics showing re-
markable rehabilitation in former
devastated regions, where German
divisions wrought havoc in indus
trial, farming and mining sections.
Mr.. Houston scharacterizes the recov-
cry of the French people as another
I"miracle of the ,Marne." In an ar
ticle in the current issue of World S
Work he says:
( With government support, includ-
ing loans totalling 9,609,0S2,9l6
francs for agricultural and indust-
rial reconstruction in devastated de
partments,," the French people have
reopened 5,345 out of. 6,445 schools
existent before the war; built or
rebuilt 2S,2OO. temporary wooden
and 16,S0O permanent stone dwell
ings, and erected : 2S,5O0 wooden
barracks to replace houses destroy
ed; 3,339,000 hectares "a hectare is
about 21h acres) out of $3.50, 900
of barbed wire and trenches; er-
ployed 1900 men pumping out and
cleaning up flooded mines; rebuilt
ATS out of 600 railroad bridges,
with 80 more in course of construc-
tion; reopened virtually all of LOO
kilometers of canals destroyed and
rebuilt 1876 wharves and built %
new ones. To-day, less than two
years from the Armistice, the popu-
lation of the invaded regions has
grown from less than 100000 to
more than 100000 approximately
three-quarters of the pre-war popu-
lation," Mr.. Houston says, adding
that the return was 'tnOt that of the
prodigal son."
American committees have done
much to help France rebuild, Mr..
Houston declares adding that intro
duction of farming machinery to the
French peasant probably was Amer.
ica's best contribution.
"As result to a considerable de-
gree of this mechanical assistance,
greatly increasing the producing
power of the fewer workers, the de-
vastated regions in 1920 will raise
enough crops for food,'' he predicts.
On the industrial reconstruction
of France, Mr.. Houston asserts that
100000 workers now are employed
in French mills and 2,627 of the 81
sos factories destroyed in the war
have resumed production. During
the war the destruction in mill CEN
ters was very great, 80 per cent of
the textile mills in Lille having been
destroyed; all 40 mills in Armen-
there's wiped out; in Fourmies only
$4,000 bobbins remained out of
100000 and Roubaix and Turcoing
had the same degree of destruc-
tion.''
$50 it was throughout the whole
industrial region of the north, the
great workshop of France" Mr..
Houston says. '.1The tale of rebuild
ing, now to be added to Frenchman's
annals, will always be chapter Of
achievement, almost as important
and vital as the defense against the
German INVASION" e
BY 1922, Mr.. Houston asserts,
France hopes to have her mines pro-
ducing again, with about 5000 min
ers working where $4,000, labored
before the war. Within five or six
years after that she expects to be
working up to three-quarters of be-
fore-the-wa1 production.
-, The lie that France is not at
work should be scared on the lips
of everyone who utters it, writes
Mr.. Houston. ''If she is not at work,
how can she be reclaiming her fields.
rebuilding her roads and houses and
factories and towns, and reestablish-
ing the shattered life over one-fifth
of her territory? That she is doing
that, anyone can see who visits
France or who takes the small troub-
lie to look up the facts. And she is
doing it before she has received the
indemnity pledged to her by the
Peace Treaty and repledged again
and again by everyone of her allies. :"