There is an abundance of coal in Austria, but most of it is unfit for the manufacture of iron and steel. Steel manufacture, however, is carried on, the industry being protected by the distance from the German steel-making centres. The lead-mines about Bleiberg (or "Leadville") are very productive; at Idria are the only quicksilver-mines in Europe that compete with those of Almaden, Spain. The salt-mines near Krakow are in a mass of rock-salt twelve hundred feet thick.
Most of the manufactured products are for home consumption. American cotton and home-grown wool supply the greater part of the textiles. The flour-mills are equipped with the very best of machinery, and much of the product is for export to Germany and the countries to the south. The manufactures that have made the state famous, however, are gloves and glassware, both of which are widely exported. The sand, fluxes, and coloring minerals of Bohemian glassware are all peculiar to the region, and the wares, therefore, cannot be imitated elsewhere. The gloves are made from the skins of Hungarian sheep and goats.
The railways are not well organized, and the mileage is insufficient for the needs of the country. Ludwig Canal (in Germany) connects the Danube with the Main, a navigable tributary of the Rhine; the Elbe is navigable from a point above Prague to the Baltic; the Moravian Gate opens a passage from Vienna northward; the Iron Gate, through which the Danube flows, is the route to the Black Sea; Semmering Pass and its tunnel is the gateway to the ports of the Adriatic. These great routes practically converge at Vienna, which also is the great railway centre of the empire.
The foreign trade consists mainly of the export of food-stuffs (of which sugar and eggs are heavy items), fine cabinet ware, woollen textiles (made from imported wool), barley and malt, and fine glassware. Much of the German and Italian wine is sent to market in casks made of Austrian stock; the coal goes mainly to Italy. The imports are raw cotton from the United States and Egypt, wool, silk, and tobacco. Coal is both exported and imported. The United States sells to Austria-Hungary cotton, pork, and corn—buying porcelain ware, glassware, and gloves, amounting to about one-fifth the value of the exports.
Vienna, the capital, is the financial centre and commercial clearing-house of central Europe; it has also extensive manufactures. Budapest is the great focal point of Hungarian railways and commerce. Prague controls the coal, textile, and glass trade of Bohemia. Lemberg is the metropolis of Galicia. The states of Liechtenstein, Bosnia, and Herzegovina are commercially under the control of Austria.
The Lower Danube States.—Roumania and Bulgaria, the plain of the lower Danube, are enclosed by the Carpathian and Balkan ranges. They constitute a great wheat-field whose chief commercial outlets are the Iron Gate into Germanic Europe, and the Sulina mouth of the Danube into the Black Sea. The growing of maize for home consumption and wheat for export form the only noteworthy industries. Most of the grain is shipped up the Danube and sold in Great Britain and Germany.
From the Iron Gate to the Black Sea the Danube is held as an international highway, and the control of its navigation is directed by a commission of the various European powers, having its head-quarters at Galatz, Roumania.
TURKEY AND GREECE
In the Balkan Mountains is the famous Vale of Roses which furnishes about half the world's supply of attar-of-roses. The petals of the damask rose are pressed between layers of cloth saturated with lard. The latter absorbs the essential oil, from which it is easily removed. About half a ton of roses are required to make a pound of the attar. Kazanlik, noted also for rugs, is the great market for attar. Galatz and Rustchuk are grain-markets and river-ports; from the latter a railway extends to Varna, the chief port of the Black Sea. From Sofia, near the Bulgarian frontier, a trunk line of railway extends through Budapest to western Europe.