Evening star., 1922-10-29

a family of five for every four acres,
and that notwithstanding there were
no large cities or towns in our sense
of the word.
Four of the states or departments
were almost as busy as the region
around Pittsburgh. They were bee
hives of factories and foundries of
steel works and glass works and
great textile mills. From under
their surface came 80 per cent of the
iron ore and more than half of all the
coal produced by France. They made
more than three-fourths of the pig
iron. 1t is in these four states that
now find the most active rebuilding
going on.
In the whole Of the devastated re-
gion, not one-tenth as big as Mis-
souri,. there were 1900 factories, out
of which came % per cent OF the
wooden goods and 60 per cent of the
cottons which France made for ex-
port and domestic consumption, and
1t produced also seven-tenths of the
beet sugar consumed by the people.
All together, it had more than $4,000
industrial establishments represent
ing one-third of the wealth Of the
French. In the mills about 100000
men were at work and 10000 men
were employed in the mines. Several
hundred thousand were engaged in
spinning and weaving.
X \ X
Nov look at the conditions after
l Y the armistice, when France began
to count up its losses. Remember, I
am giving the figures prepared by the
government department that has
charge of this vast work of recrea-
ton. When the Germans left the
population of the ten departments
had so shrunk that there were only
two out Of every five people left.
Take two out of every family in Bos-
ton, Washington. Cincinnati, st. Louis,
Cleveland and Philadelphia. and those
cities would be reduced to the condi-
tion of this territory at the close of
the war One thousand communes or
counties had been completely de-
stroyed and 1000 more badly dam
aged. Out of the whole only 374 were
not single village was spared. aud
in the four principal ones 100000
houses were completely destroyed.
1s4, 900 badly damaged by projectiles
and more than 25O,00O seriously in
jured in one way or another.
One Of the great calamities was the
ruination of the water supply. These
French villages relied largely on
wells or the hydrants on the corners
of the streets. There is no running
water in the home of the average
French peasant. He goes to the viii
lage we'll or to the hydrant to get the
water he drinks and uses in cooking.
l saw men, women and children draw
ing water in every town 1 passed
In the devastated regions
about 10000 wells were totally de-
stroyed, more than $4,000 had been
poisoned, while more than 100000 had
to be cleaned up. In addition, 1t was
necessary to clean out 5000 acres of
ponds and so many streams that if
they were joined together they would |
fill a canal longer than from Kansas
City to Paris.
1nOuSdnuS oI dCTeS OIL lHo
were entangled in network of
barbed wire. Vast areas which had
been plowed up by shells were as
hilly as prairie-dog village, and |
other tracts had holes so big that |
they would make grave for an ele-
phant or even take in the cubic con-
tents of our national Capitol at Wash
Ington. About 5000, 900 acres of land !
were thought to be ruined, and two
thirds of this had been under the |
plow. A vast territory had been sown |
with projectiles, some of which were |
live shells, which blew up so many !
who played about in the |
fields that when the work of recon-
struction began the little ones had to
De guarded and kept away from the ,
workers. The dug-outs and trenches .
formed a great network that had to /
De filled There were $4,000, 900 cubic
Itch yard wide. yard deep and
more than 100000 miles long. If Old
Mother Earth had a waist belt of dry
and, you might have dug a ditch
around her three feet wide and six
'eet deep, and the work of filing that
hitch would be just about one-fourth
hat of fling the dug-outs left here
n France. Yet France has nearly
1nished this part of the job.
AS to the roads. there were so
many destroyed that Joined together
hey would have made ten automo-
pile highways from New York to
seattle, and most of them were in
better condition than the best tourist
-outes of New England. On these