Commercial Geography Part 29

_Stockholm_, the capital of Sweden, is the chief financial and distributing centre of the Scandinavian trade. Its railway system reaches about every area of production. Although having a good harbor of its own, it must depend on _Trondhjem_ (Drontheim) for winter traffic, because the Baltic ports are closed by ice three or four months of the year. _Kristiania_, the capital of Norway, is the export market of the fish and lumber products.

_Goteborg_, owing to recently completed railway and ca.n.a.l connections, is becoming an important port of trade. It is convenient to other European ports, and it is rarely closed by ice. _Bergen_, _Trondhjem_, and _Hammerfest_ derive a heavy income from their fisheries and likewise from the tourists who visit the coast during midsummer. The last-named port, although farther north than any town in the world, has an open harbor during the winter.

=Denmark.=--Denmark is essentially an agricultural state, and almost every square mile of available land is under cultivation. Even the sand-dunes have been reclaimed and converted into pasturage. The yield of wheat is greater per acre than in any other country, but as only a small area is sown, wheat and flour are imported.

About half the area of the state is used in growing fodder for horses and cattle. The dairy products, especially b.u.t.ter, are unrivalled elsewhere in Europe. The dairy business is largely controlled by a cooperative a.s.sociation of dairymen and farmers. Pastures, fodder, cattle, sheds, creameries, and all the processes involved are subject to a most rigid sanitary inspection.

_Copenhagen_, the capital, is the financial centre of the kingdom.

Commercially it is one of the most important ports of Europe. Various s.h.i.+pments consigned to Baltic ports are landed at this city; here the cargoes break bulk and are again trans-s.h.i.+pped to their destination. In order to facilitate this forwarding business, the Crown has made Copenhagen a free port. Steams.h.i.+p lines connect it with New York, British ports, and the East Indies.

A great deal of farming and dairy machinery is manufactured; coal, cotton goods, and structural machinery are imported from the United States. Little, however, is exported to that country, almost all the dairy products being sold to Great Britain and other populous centres of western Europe. _Aalborg_ and _Aarhuus_ are dairy-markets.

Greenland and Iceland are colonies of Denmark, and the fis.h.i.+ng industry of the kingdom is carried on mainly along the sh.o.r.es of these islands.

The furs, seal-skins, seal-oil, and eider-down of Greenland are a government monopoly. The mineral cryolite occurs at Ivigtut and is mined by soda-making establishments in the United States. Iceland produces sheep, cattle, and fish; these are s.h.i.+pped from _Reikiavik_. The Faroe Islands produce but little save wool, feathers, and birds' eggs.

=Belgium.=--Probably in no other country of Europe has nature done so little and man so much to make a great state as in Belgium. The lowland region has been made so fertile by artificial means that it yields more wheat per acre than any other country except Denmark. The Ardennes highland in the southeast is naturally unproductive, but it has become one of the great manufacturing centres of Europe. Less than one-twelfth of the area of the state is unproductive.

The coast, more than twoscore miles in extent, has not a single harbor for large vessels, and the two navigable rivers, the Scheldt and Meuse, flow into another state before reaching the sea.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOLLAND AND BELGIUM]

The low sand-barrens next the coast have been reclaimed by means of a gra.s.s that holds in place the sand that formerly s.h.i.+fted with each movement of the wind. This region is now cultivated pasture-land that produces the finest of horses, cattle, and dairy products. The dairy products go mainly to London. The Flemish horses, like those of the sand-barrens of Germany and France, are purchased in the large cities, where heavy draught-horses are required. Many of them are sold to the express companies of the United States.

Bordering the sand-barrens is a belt of land that produces grain and the sugar-beet. Flax is an important product, and its cultivation has had much to do with both the history and the political organization of the state. Before the advent of the cotton industry, woollen and linen were practically the only fibres used in cloth-making. Belgium was then the chief flax-growing and cloth-making country, and all western Europe depended upon the Flemish looms for cloth. This industry, therefore, gave the country not only commercial prominence, but was largely responsible for its political independence as well. Flax is still an important product, and the linen textiles made in the state are without a superior. Much of the flax is grown in the valley of the River Lys.

One of the most productive coal-fields of Europe stretches across Belgium, and a few miles south of it are the iron-ore deposits that extend also into Luxemburg and Germany. In addition to these, the zinc-mines about Moresnet are among the richest in the world. Belgium is, therefore, one of the great metal-working centres of Europe. A small portion of the coal is exported to France, but most of it is required in the manufactures.

_Liege_, _Seraing_, and _Verviers_ are the great centres of the metal industry. They were built at the eastern extremity of the coal-field, within easy reach of the iron ores. Firearms, railroad steel, and tool-making machinery are the chief products of the region, and because of the favorable situation, these products easily compete with the manufactures of Germany and France.

_Ghent_ is the chief focal point for the flax product, which is converted into the finest of linen cloth and art fabrics. Much of the weaving and spinning machinery employed in Europe is made in this city.

_Mechlin_ and the villages near by are famous the world over for hand-worked laces.

Expensive porcelains, art tiles, gla.s.sware, 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 ca.n.a.l 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 steams.h.i.+ps of American, and of various other lines. It is also the depot of the Kongo trade. s.h.i.+p-ca.n.a.ls deep enough for coasters and freighters connect _Ghent_, _Bruges_, and _Brussels_ with tide-water. These are about to be converted to deep-water s.h.i.+p-ca.n.a.ls.

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, gla.s.sware, 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 b.u.t.ter 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.

Holland is a great commercial country, and for more than five hundred years the Dutch flag has been found in almost every large port of the world. Much of the commerce is derived from the tobacco, sugar, and coffee plantations of the Dutch East Indies.

A very large part of the commerce, however, is neither import or export trade, but a "transit" commerce. Thus, American coal-oil is transferred from the great ocean tank-steamers to smaller tank-boats, and is then carried across the state into Germany, France, and Belgium, through the numerous ca.n.a.ls.

This trade applies also to many of the products of the German industries which will not bear a heavy freight tariff, such as coal, ores, etc. It reaches the Rhine and Rhone river-basins and extends even to the Danube.

Both Switzerland and Austria-Hungary send much of their exports through Holland. All trade at the various ports and through the ca.n.a.ls is free, it being the policy to encourage and not to obstruct commerce.

_Amsterdam_, the const.i.tutional capital, is one of the great financial and banking centres of Europe. The completion of the Nord Holland ca.n.a.l makes the docks and basins accessible to the largest steams.h.i.+ps.

Diamond-cutting is one of the unique industries of the city. Since the discovery of the African mines its former trade in diamonds has been largely absorbed by London.

More than half the carrying trade of the state centres at _Rotterdam_.

By the improvement of the river estuaries and ca.n.a.ls this city has become one of the best ports of Europe, and the tonnage of goods handled at the docks is enormously increasing. _Vlissingen_ (Flus.h.i.+ng) and the _Hook_ are railway terminals that handle much of the local freights consigned to London. _Delft_ is famous the world over for the beautiful porcelain made at its potteries.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

How has the topography of each of these states affected its commerce?

How is their commerce affected by lat.i.tude and climate?

How has the cultivation of the sugar-beet affected the cane-sugar industry in the British West Indies?

From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports and imports of each country.

From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of the United States with each of these countries.

FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE

Adams's New Empire--pp. 153-159.

Gibbins's History of Commerce--Book III, Chapters I and VIII.

CHAPTER XXVII

EUROPE--THE MEDITERRANEAN STATES AND SWITZERLAND

The Mediterranean states are peopled mainly by races whose social and economic development was moulded largely by the Roman occupation of the Mediterranean basin for a period of more than one thousand years. The occupations of the people have been shaped to a great extent by the slope of the land and by the mountain-ranges that long isolated them from the Germanic peoples north of the Alps.

=France.=--The position of France with respect to industrial development is fortunate. The North Sea coast faces the ports of Great Britain; the Atlantic ports are easily accessible to American centres of commerce; the Mediterranean ports command a very large part of the trade of that sea.