Wooden shoes have not gone out of style in Holland. They are still worn generally in the country, and by the poorer children and men in the cities. They are cheap, which is a big recommendation to the Dutch. They are warm, said to be much warmer than leather. It does not hurt them to be wet, a very desirable feature in this water-soaked country. These are all good reasons, and as soon as you get used to the clatter and the apparent awkwardness you appreciate the fact that the “klompen,” as the Dutch call them, are a reasonable style for Holland. They are not worn in the house but dropped in the entryway, and house shoes or stocking feet go within. The Dutch farmer is proud of his clogs, paints them, carves them, and scrubs them. A man with idle time, like a fisherman, will often spend months decorating a pair of wooden shoes. They are considered a proper present from a young husband to his bride, and she will use them when scrubbing, which is a good part of the time. The shoes are generally made of poplar, and to the size of the foot. When the foot grows you can hollow out a little more shoe. Wooden shoes are as common here as overalls in America, and they will not grow less popular unless Holland goes dry—of which I see no indication.
The farm-houses are usually built in connection with the barns, the family living in front and the stock and feed occupying the rear. This is rather customary in cold climates, and you must remember that Holland is farther north than Quebec. The winters get very cold and the canals and rivers freeze over. Skating is the great national sport. There does not seem to be much summer sport except scrubbing. All through the summer the people dig and weed and fertilize and prepare for market. The dikes and canals must be maintained and the best made of a short season. In the winter they can live with the pretty black-and-white cattle, the sheep and the horses, and have a good time.
Amsterdam, and Others
Amsterdam, July 27
This is the largest and most important city of Holland. It has about as much commerce as Rotterdam, and is longer on history, manufactures, art, and society. It was the first large city built up on a canal system, and its 600,000 population is a proof that something can be built out of nothing. Along about 1300 and 1400 it was a small town in a swamp. When the war for independence from Spain began, in 1656, Amsterdam profited by its location on the Zuyder Zee. The Spaniards ruined most of the rival towns and put an end to the commerce of Antwerp for a while, and Amsterdam received the mechanics and merchants fleeing from the soldiers of Alva. The name means a “dam,” or dike, on the Amstel river. The swamp was reclaimed from the water by dikes and drainage canals, but even now every house in the city must have its foundation on piles. The word dam, or its inclusion in a name, means just about what it does in English, provided you refer to the proper dam, not the improper damn. As nearly all of the Dutch towns are built on dam sites a great many of them are some-kind-of-a-dam. Amsterdam is built below the level of the sea, which is just beside it, and the water in the canals is pumped out by big engines and forced over the dike into the sea. If this were not done the water would come over the town site and Amsterdam would go back to swamp and not be worth a dam site.
Amsterdam is the chief money market of Holland, and one of the financial capitals of the world. It is the place an American promoter makes for when he is out after the stuff with which to make the female horse travel. A large part of its business men are Jews, and their ability and wealth have maintained the credit of Dutch interests in all parts of the globe. At a time when the Jews were being persecuted nearly everywhere they were given liberty in Holland, and much of the country’s progress is due to that fact and to the religious toleration of all kinds of sects.
The canals run along nearly all the streets, and are filled with freight-boats from the country and from other cities. Thousands of these canal boats lie in the canals of Amsterdam and are the homes of the boatmen, who are the commerce carriers of Holland. Under our window is tied up a canal-boat which could carry as much freight as a dozen American box cars. The power is a sail or a pole or a man or a woman, whichever is most convenient. The boatman and his wife and ten or fifteen children, with a dog and a cat, live comfortably in one end, and we can watch them at their work and play. A dozen more such boats are lying in this block, some with steam engines and some with gasoline engines. The Standard Oil Company does a great business in Holland, and as usual is a great help to the people. It is introducing cheap power for canal-boats by means of proper engines, and in a short time will probably free the boatman and his wife from the pull-and-push system received from the good old days.