The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-07-29

CTS and they have been manufactur- CTS and traders since long before the days of the Hanseatic league. About half of the population are farmers, and the other half are engaged in manufacturing and in buying and selling. They have very extensive home industries and there are farm villages whose people make tens of thousands of kroner a year by man ufacturing baskets. faces and carv- ings of one kind or another in their houses. Just now there is revival of rural industrial art and all kinds of handiwork is taught in the schools. They have one system of education which gives 68 exercises in carpen- try for boys from 10 to 14 and they teach weaving, working in iron, and all kinds of embroidery and needle work. There are more workmen in the industries of the country dis tricts than there are in those of the cities and towns.
 ( o O
 Some Big Industries.
 As to the big industries, the coun- try has number of manufacturing centers such as Gothenberg and Es- kilstuna, where they have been carrying on manufactures for gener- ations. Eskilstuna is the Sheffield of Sweden. It is famous for it's knives, razors, and locks and has
 
 fifty years.
 Swedenshas glass factories and porcelain factories famous all over the world. There is a match factory at Jonkoping which. started making matches about the time we were fighting the Mexican war and is still working; it has now one machine that produces 10000 boxes of matches an hour. That town Is at the head of the match making industry of the world.
 The country makes Diesel engines and ballbearings, and it is rapidly go- ing into electro chemicals, increaS- ing it's output of the latter product by millions of kroner a year. It makes powder, dynamite, and muni- tions and all sorts of woodwork as well as wood pulp and paper. It is one of the great timber countries of the world and ships logs and boards to all parts of north Europe.
 Swedish Iron.
 A page of this newspaper might be devoted to the work Sweden has done in her manufacture of fine iron and steel. She has some of the purest ore of the world and the ore still available is said to be more than l.10 0O,000O00 tons, which should yield about 750.00o.oo0 tons of metallic
  than so per cent and she has great beds of new deposits in the north which are far above the ore values of the best of our iron about Lake Su- perior. The Swedes have been niak- ing iron since the days of the Cru saders and in the eighteenth century they were supplying four-fifths of all that metal used by mankind. At that time the ore came from central Sweden and 1t ran 50 or 60 per cent pure. The veins were from 15 to 36 feet in thickness and as a rule about 700 feet long. They are mining iron in the same region today, and it will be long before the ore is exhausted. The smelting was done with charcoal Today Sweden makes 92 per cent of all the high grade iron of Europe Iron Mines Under The Poles.
 The most important Swedish ore of the future, however. will come from the new mines under the north pole Away up above the Arctic circle in Lapland, they have found beds of iron like those we have about Lake Su- perior, where the ore is dug out with giant steam shovels. There is one place where it lies on the top of 8 mountain. The ore block is more than hundred yards wide and three miles In length and it runs down under lake. The percentage of iron in this ore is even higher than that of central Sweden. much of it run ming 70 per cent pure. About two years ago they had already taken more than thirty million tons out of some of these mines, and the total deposits are said to equal more than billion tons.
 O o o The Farthest North Railroad. The railway the Swedes have built to export this iron is farthest north of any on earth. It runs from the Port of Lulea. at the head of the Gulf