The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1923-01-07

old-time methods, they raise twice a
his family on less than five acres.
of Germany, and just twice that of
Great Britain and Ireland. The only
country that approaches Belgium in
density is Holland, which has one
hundred and TWENTY-FIVE less people
for every $40 acres inside its bound
rates.
Most of the Belgians live in viii
lagos and work on the land. There
are only four cities of more than one
hundred thousand inhabitants. Brus-
sells, the largest and finest, with its
suburbs is almost as big as ST Louis,
Antwerp is the size of Cincinnati, and
Client and Liege have about the same
population as Memphis. Maiines has
sixty thousand, Bruges is a bit
smaller. and Ostend and Louvain
smaller still.
Rich Country
These people, so closely crowded
together, are rich in comparison
with most of humanity, Before the
war the savings banks took in every
year several hundred million dol
lars. Today more than half of the
school children have their own saw
ings bank books and the deposits of
the primary students amount to more
than five dollars each. The people
are we'll clad, and however lean they
may have been during the war, they
run to fat now
have told you something of these
farms that raise twice as much grain
to the acre as we do. There are
patches which produce two tons OF
tobacco CT eight hundred bushels of
carrots Per acre. 1 am told that
prior to 1914 farmer was able to
support himself. his wife and three
children en- less than three acres.
and any surplus of land brought
clear profit
Iron and Steel Coming Back
Belgium has also coal and iron.
Before the war 1t was selling iron
and steel to all parts of the word
and in 1919 its production of pig iron
was half that of France. Leige was
not hurt in the first military attack,
but later the Germans took first the
copper, then the machine tools, and
finally whole plants and factories.
where theeowners or operators would
not work them, and slipped them off
to Germany. Before the war Belgium
had fifty-four blast furnaces. and
at its close only four remained intact,
Last January 2S were again
ton of the steel industry-the coun-
try expects greater export trade
than ever before. Belgium is now
making steel rails for Great Britain.
China, South America and the Dutch
East Indies. and the quotations for
the rails for the British were forty
per cent under the price given by
the factories in England. Before the
war Liege was exporting over $780,
600 weapons a year, most of which
were made in the homes of the wor..-
crs and only assembled in the fac
tories. This business is being resumed
and greatly increased by standard
fed machinery and labor efficiency.
The New Wooden and Linen Mills
Belgium hag great textile in
dustry which in 1913 made goods for
export to the amount of almost
eighty million dollars per. annum 1t
had a big flax industry including
twenty-five mills making linen
thread or tow. The linen spindles
numbered 375, coo and the cotton
spindles more than one million and a
half. These industries were much in
jured during the .War. but the cotton
factories are fast coming back and
the linen spindleS already number two
hundred thousand. A great deal more
1laX mas been painted OF account VI
the loss Of the Russian product. and
in 1919 the acreage had grown to
l25 900.
The wooden mills of Belgium were
famous during the Middle Ages, and
before the war the country had one
hundred and ten weaving mills from
which the Germans took great part
of the machinery. Much of this has
come back and in 1920 the country
was handling about three-fourths the
amount of wool used before the war
There are certain streams along
which the mills are located whose
waters give the Belgian wool a pecu-
liar brlliancy and softness not
found elsewhere on the continent.
Before the Germans invaded Bel
GUM. she was exporting glass of all
kinds to nearly part of the world.
Liege was making over sixty million
pounds of table glass per annum, and