"As regards industries, the disaster is even more complete. Those districts occupied by the Germans, and whose machinery has been methodically destroyed or taken away by the enemy, were, industrially speaking, the very heart of France, the very backbone of our production, as shown in the following startling figures: In 1913 the wool output of our invaded regions amounted to 94 per cent. of the total. French production and corresponding figures were: For flax from the spinning mills, 90 per cent.; iron ore, 90 per cent.; pig iron, 83 per cent.; steel, 70 per cent.; sugar, 70 per cent.; cotton, 60 per cent.; coal, 55 per cent.; electric power, 45 per cent. Of all that—plants, machinery, mines—nothing is left. Everything has been carried away or destroyed by the enemy. So complete is the destruction that, in the case of our great coal mines in the north, two years of work will be needed before a single ton of coal can be extracted and ten years before the output is brought back to the figures of 1913.
Copyright Underwood & Underwood
Samuel P. Gompers
President of the American Federation of Labor.
THE WORK OF REBUILDING
"All that must be rebuilt, and to carry out that kind of reconstruction only, there will be a need of over 2,000,000 tons of pig iron, nearly 4,000,000 tons of steel—not to mention the replenishing of stocks and of raw materials which must of necessity be supplied to the plants during the first year of resumed activity. If we take into account these different items, we reach as regards industrial needs a total of 25,000,000,000 francs. To resurrect these regions, to reconstruct these factories, raw materials are not now sufficient; we need means of transportation. The enemy has destroyed our railroad tracks, our railroad equipment, and our rolling stock, which, in the first month of the war, in 1914, reduced by 50,000 cars, has undergone the wear and tear of fifty months of war.
"Our merchant fleet, on the other hand, has lost more than a million tons through submarine warfare. Our shipyards during the last four years have not built any ships. For they have produced for us and for our Allies cannon, ammunition, and tanks. Here, again, for this item alone of means of transportation we must figure on an expense of 2,500,000,000 francs. This makes, if I sum up these different items, a need of raw material which represents in cost, at the present rate of prices in France, not less than 50,000,000,000 francs."