Commercial Geography / A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges

by Jacques W. Redway

Expensive porcelains, art tiles, glassware, and cheap crockery are made in the line of kilns that reaches almost from one end of the coal-field to the other; these products, moreover, are extensively exported.

The railways are owned and operated by the state. They are managed so judiciously, moreover, that the rates of carriage are lower than in most European states. The Scheldt is navigable for large ocean steamers to Antwerp, and this city is the great Belgian port for ocean traffic. The city owes its importance to its position. One branch of the Scheldt leads toward the Rhine; the other is connected by a canal with the rivers of France; the main stem of the river points toward London. It is therefore the meeting of three ways. It is the terminal of the steamships of American, and of various other lines. It is also the depot of the Kongo trade. Ship-canals deep enough for coasters and freighters connect Ghent, Bruges, and Brussels with tide-water. These are about to be converted to deep-water ship-canals.

The foreign commerce of Belgium is much like that of other European states. Wheat, meat, maize, cotton, and petroleum are imported mainly from the United States; iron ore is purchased from Luxemburg and Germany, and various raw materials are brought from France. In exchange there are exported fine machinery, linen fabrics, porcelains, fire-arms, glassware, and beet-sugar. From the Kongo state, at the head of which is the King of the Belgians, are obtained rubber and ivory. The rubber is sold mainly to the United States.

Brussels is the capital and financial centre. On account of the state control of the railways, it is also the directive centre of all the industries pertaining to commerce and transportation.

Holland.—The names Holland and Netherlands mean "lowland," and the state itself has a lower surface than any other country of Europe. Nearly half the area is at high-tide level or else below it. A large part, mainly the region about the Zuider[71] Sea, has been reclaimed from the sea.

In the reclamation of these lands stone dikes are built to enclose a given area, and from the basin thus constructed the water is pumped. The reclaimed lands, or "polders," include not only the sea-bottom, but the coast marshes as well; even the rivers are bordered with levees in order to prevent overflows. Windmills are the machinery by which the water is pumped from the polders into the sea. In no other part of the world is wind-power so extensively used. Almost every acre of the polders is under cultivation, and these lands grow a very large part of the vegetables and flowers consumed in the great cities of England, France, and Belgium.

The coast sand-barrens have been converted into pasture-lands that produce draught-horses, beef cattle, and dairy cattle. The horses find a ready market in the United States and the large European cities; the dairy cattle not needed at home are exported, the United States being a heavy purchaser. The beef cattle are grown mainly for the markets of London. Dutch butter is used far beyond the boundaries of the state, and Edam cheese reaches nearly every large city of Europe and America.

The sugar-beet is extensively cultivated, in spite of the great trade resulting from the cane-sugar industry of the East Indies. It is more profitable to import wheat from the United States and rye from Russia in order to use the land for the sugar-beet.

Practically no timber suitable for lumber manufacture exists, and building material therefore must be imported. Pine is purchased from Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States. Stone is purchased wherever it may be obtained as return freight, or as ballast. The coast fisheries yield oysters, herrings, and "anchovies," which are not anchovies, but sprats.

For want of coal and iron there are few manufactures, and the garden and dairy products are about the only export articles. There is an abundance of clay, and of this brick for road-making, tiles for building purposes, and porcelains are made. But little of the raw sugar is refined; most of it is sold to foreign refiners, and the United States is one of the chief customers.