An indication of the development of industrial activity is furnished by the continued increase of the demand for coal.
Operations for mining ore have been pushed with vigor. Coal production increased greatly in 1914. On the whole it still remains less than it was before the war, since the invasion has deprived us of the valleys in the north and the richest portion of Pas-de-Calais; but in the regions where mining is still possible the production exceeds by about forty per cent the figures for 1913.
This remarkable increase has compensated to a certain extent for the falling off in the importations of coal from England; nevertheless it leaves our supply of coal less than our demand for it.
To remedy this insufficiency and, at the same time, to give our national industry greater independence, researches and experiments have been equally intensified with a view to employing our hydraulic resources. In the Alps, in the Pyrenees and in the central Massif new installations are under way, and they have already attracted important metallurgic and chemical plants.
The development of industrial production has had the result of an increase in the volume of commercial transactions. These continue to look after themselves and, for the most part, they are on a cash basis. The gradual resumption of credit operations, which former years signalized, is still on the increase. In 1917 the receipts from commerce were thirty-seven per cent greater than in 1916. There is a notable progression of discounts, while the total of our delayed payments has been brought back to 1,140 millions.
A nation that is worn out and bled white is unable to bind up its wounds or relieve its bed of suffering. France has not waited for the end of the war and the evacuation of her territory to bring in life where the Germans thought they had left only death.
In eighty-four of the liberated cantons the work of reconstruction has already commenced. Commissions have been appointed. These commissions have proceeded already to the evaluation of the damage done and, without waiting for authorization, the administration has paid advances amounting to a not inconsiderable figure. Thus a sum totalling more than one hundred and forty millions francs has been expended for the reconstruction of the liberated regions. Seventeen millions have been expended in cash for repairs; in advances to the farmers for work or supplies, twenty millions; in advances to workmen, a half million; for the circulation of funds to the farmers, merchants and small manufactures, two millions; under the heading of reconstruction of buildings or the rapid reinstallation of the evacuated population, one hundred millions.
An Office National de Reconstruction for the villages has been established, and an agricultural Office National de Reconstitution has been organized; great things have already been realized from private organizations. This is the account of what one of them, the organization of National Nurseries, sent in 1914 to the front and into the liberated regions:
These plants have been divided up into 2,436 shipments, and they have sufficed to nourish not only the people who have returned to the devastated villages but also the troops at the front.