 Chapter 33 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. The Helpful Hen and the Cooperative Cow In the little town of Hillarod, in the heart of the island of Zeeland, under the shadow of the mighty castle of Fredericksborg, erected by a king of Denmark, when the pilgrims were climbing out of the Mayflower onto Plymouth Rock, a rite of an egg. It is a big egg, a fresh egg, and moreover an egg of pure gold. It is not, however, the golden egg celebrated in fiction by that Danish creator of fairies, Hans Christian Andersen. That egg was laid by a goose. This one is laid by a hen. I do not know whether she is a black lanschen, a menorca, a leghorn, or a white wyandot, but she is one of the 18 million hens, each of which keeps dropping into the pockets of the Danes from 200 to 250 eggs every year. The Helpful Hen lays in one year more than 600 million eggs for export in addition to those consumed in Denmark, and she has increased her annual product more than one-third in the last decade. There are now something like 60,000 chicken farmers belonging to the Egg Export Association, who raise their chickens according to rule and ship the product in common. They are combined into more than 500 local societies, to which they must deliver every egg laid except those used on their tables, and to which each pays a fine of $1.38 every time he lets a bad one slip in. The Constitution of every society provides that the members collect the eggs daily from the nests and deliver them weekly, and that no egg delivered shall be more than seven days old. Each society is numbered, and the number must be stamped on each egg so that every bad egg can be traced back to the farm and almost to the nest in which it was laid. The result is that the eggs sold are uniformly good and command the highest price on the market. Along about two generations ago, one could buy two eggs for ascent here all the year through. A little later, steamers began to run direct from Copenhagen to England, and these cheap Danish eggs found favor there. Shortly after our Civil War, one million eggs were exported and they brought $8,000. Within 20 years, the number had multiplied 100 times, and now the figure is around 625 million eggs, bringing $0.07 or $0.08 a piece. Today, Danish eggs are used all over England, and millions go to other countries as well. During my motor trips over Denmark, I have visited the egg farms. The chickens are kept in yards surrounded by high fences of wire closely woven. Each pan is about 50 feet square. It is carpeted with grass, and in its center is a little red henhouse made of boards about 6 feet in height, 6 feet wide, and 8 feet long. This contains roosts and nests. It has a number upon it, and by this number, the chickens within are recorded in the stock books of the farm. Each pan contains a rooster and perhaps one dozen hens, and every hen has a little metal anklet about her right leg, upon which is stamped her number so that the farmer can tell exactly to what extent she is earning her living. The chickens are fed on grain and chopped feed. They have also cooked potatoes and tankage in just the right proportion of crushed bone to supply the lime for eggshells. The business has carefully studied and the best breeds are chosen. One of the farmers I visited tells me his best layers are the white leghorn, although he keeps also Plymouth rocks, White Wyandots, Black Blanches, and Menorcus. Here at Hillerode, I have visited the packing establishment of one of the egg export societies. It is a long, low, one-story building filled with cases of eggs, each egg in its little pasteboard compartment, like those used for shipping eggs in the United States. These cases come in from the farms. As soon as they arrive, the eggs are taken out by young women and laid on a network of woven wire fitted into the top of a barrel over two incandescent light globes of 100 candle power. Except for these globes, the room is dark. And as the powerful light shines through the eggs, it shows the least age or defect. Every egg, which has not a translucent red color, is taken out and those which are not perfect are set aside by themselves. If they are bad, they are destroyed, and the farmer must pay as fine. Some of the imperfect eggs are used for pickling, which means that they are packed away in vats of lime water, which serves the same purpose as cold storage, enabling them to be sold as pickled eggs during the winter. After candling, the good eggs are sorted according to size and packed in Excelsior. First comes a layer of Excelsior and then a layer of eggs, followed by another of Excelsior and another of eggs until they fill the box, which is about two feet wide, one foot high, and perhaps five feet in length. The eggs are sold by the pound or by the score, and not by the dozen as with us. They are sometimes packed in small cases of 16 pounds each. They are then ready for shipment to England. The manager of the society tells me he can easily decide the approximate age of an egg by its appearance over the electric light. He showed me how, in a perfectly fresh egg, the yolk lies in the center, and how each egg contains a little pocket of air, which he says is placed there by the Lord to give breath to the baby chicken before it expands its lungs in the open. After the egg attains an age of a week or so, the yolk is apt to leave the center and drop down to the side of the shell. And there are other indications which show the number of days since the egg left the hen. It was just after 12 today, when Valdemar Hansen shut off the gas and put on the brakes of our automobile in front of one of the Danish Cooperative Creamries. The employees, several men and a half dozen women were seated on the grass outside eating their lunch. We photographed them and then went with the manager inside to look at the separators in which the cream is taken out of the milk and at the great churns, each of which makes 400 pounds of butter in about 25 minutes. The cream is chemically soured and churned the same day it is received. The manager tells me he handles milk brought in by 330 farmers, and that the amount he received this morning was just 20,627 pounds. The milk is paid for according to the butter fat it contains, and most of the farmers test their own milk, and some even keep a record of the percentage of butter fat in the milk of each cow. After separating, the skim milk is taken home to be fed to the hogs, which later are sold to the cooperative bacon societies for export to England. Leaving the churning room, we went into the steaming compartment in which cream after sterilization is put up in half pint and pint bottles for export. By this time, the women had come back to work, and we could see how the packing was done. Everything was exquisitely clean. The concrete floors are flooded and scrubbed every morning. The manager and the employees were wooden sold shoes. There are more than 1200 cooperative dairy associations in Denmark, and the farmers belonging to them number about 200,000. They produce in a year, more than 200 million pounds of butter, which is sold through the cooperative societies. It brings in over $2 million a week, or more than $100 million a year. Nevertheless, it is only a few decades since Danish butter had the nickname 40 rod. This came from the fact that it was so bad that the smell could be detected a city block away from where it was kept. The butter was not then known as Danish butter. It was sold to German middlemen of Kiel and Hamburg, who exported it under the name of Kiel butter to England, where it brought about 12 cents a pound. Today, except for New Zealand, no land exports butter so uniformly good as Denmark, and none has cows that produce so much all the year round. The Danes pride themselves on the high average production of all of their cows rather than on that of any individual animal. Everything is measured by butter fat in the average yield of all these cows entered on the official records is now about 440 pounds per cow for every 12 months. The average proportion of butter fat exceeds 4%. Still, Denmark has some good record cows. I have before me the reports of two which competed for a silver cup prize some years ago. Each of these gave more than 40,000 gallons in the first three years of her milk producing life. And one named Silke yielded two pounds of butter a day for every one of the 365 days of her third year with 33 pounds to spare. If they are out in the fields, the cattle of Denmark wear overcoats when it rains or the weather is cold. I have mentioned how they are kept in the stables day and night for seven months every year and fed occasionally out of doors during the day in the other five months of the year. In their grazing, they are not allowed to run wild. As in France, each cow has her halter to which is attached to chain eight feet in length fastened to a stake in the ground so that she can feed only to the length of her chain. After she has cropped her circle as clean as though the grass had been cut by a lawnmower, she moves loudly. And I am told that the farmer knows from this signal that it is time to change her location. At any rate, he then comes out with a mall like that with which one drives steel wedges in splitting logs. He pulls up the stake and leads the cow to a fresh feeding ground where he pounds the pin down into the ground again. I took photographs today of 10 cows and one bull feeding that way in an unfenced meadow. Each animal had a blanket of canvas covering all of its body but its head, neck, tail and legs below the knees. The cow's mood as we photograph them thinking I suppose that we might be about to give them new circles of pasture. The chief breeds of cattle here are the red Danish and a black and white breed especially adapted to Jutland. The first is the better. There are also a few jerseys and some milking short horns. I saw some of the best Danish cows this afternoon during a visit to the coal coal farm within 10 miles or so of Copenhagen. There were perhaps 100 in the stable and each weighed, I judge, under 1200 pounds. I saw there also some high pedigreed Danish bulls. None of them was half as heavy as the $10,000 short horned bulls on the Carpenter Ross farm near Mansfield, Ohio. End of Chapter 33. Chapter 34 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter. The Slibervox according is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. The Alaska of Europe. I've come from Copenhagen to Christianity to right of the Alaska of Europe. A way up here at the northwestern end of the continent, hanging down like a bulbous nose over the cold face of the new Republic of Finland is a peninsula that corresponds to the territory nicknamed by Secretary Seward's opponents, the icebox of America. This peninsula includes Norway and Sweden and with Denmark is called Scandinavia. It lies in about the same latitude as Alaska. If I should take an airplane and fly west around the world at just the same distance from the North Pole as where I am now, I could look down upon Juno. Stockholm in Sweden is not far above Skagway while Trondheim in Norway a few hundred miles above Christiania is almost as far north as Nome. Hammerfest, the city of Europe nearest the pole has a location corresponding to Point Barrow on our Arctic coast of Alaska and Scandinavia has proportionately about as much land north of the Arctic Circle as we. Our government is bragged of its new line from sewer to Fairbanks as the railway of the North Pole. Scandinavia has a steel road hundreds of miles farther north. It crosses the head of this peninsula, tapping great iron mines inside the Arctic Circle and ending at Narvik in Norwegian port, which although much nearer the pole than bearing straight, has open water all the year round. This Alaska of Europe is only half the size of the Alaska of America. Still it is four times as large as New England. It is so long that if it were laid upon the United States, it would reach from the Gulf of Mexico nearly to Canada and its southern part is as wide in some places as the distance from New York to Pittsburgh. Sweden alone is more than four times as big as the state of Ohio with Massachusetts added there too and Norway only a bit smaller than Minnesota and Iowa taken together. It is as far from Vardo on the Arctic coast of Norway to Lindesnes on the south coast as the latter port is distant from Rome and the trip around the Norwegian coast takes as long as to cross the Atlantic. This great body of land is a mass of some of the oldest rocks known to man with patches of earth here and there and with many lakes and rivers and a vast area of forests. The Norwegian port is mostly a stony plateau cut by long fjords or arms of the sea and the Swedish part is a plain sloping down from this plateau to the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic. The two countries including Denmark which consists of the islands and a patch of land at the foot of the peninsula have about 11 million people making up what might be called the Scandinavians of today. Compared with Alaska Scandinavia is thickly populated. It has 20,000 people where Alaska has one and although it is in the same latitude it supports them all and gives them a good living. Our Alaskans belong to one of the youngest races on earth. These European Alaskans have come down from the oldest. According to some archaeologists their ancestors were in northern Europe when Cheops built the Great Pyramid. They were alive on this spot in the Stone Age and in the Iron Age that followed they sold their wares in other countries of Europe. It was only shortly after Christ came that Scandinavian ships were trading with the Romans and the caliph of Baghdad. They exchanged amber for bronze at just about the time the Chinese began to make literature. They were sowing grain, weaving cloth, and making weapons of metal when Queen Dito laid out her ancient city of Carthage and centuries before Romulus and Remus fed by the wolf had started Rome. They were old when Solomon built the temple and when Confucius first saw the light on the hills of Shantoum. There are scientists who claim indeed that the Scandinavian race which pure and undefiled we have with us still dates back to more than 10,000 years before Christ. Some even believe that the Arian race started here on the shores of the Baltic and that this rather than Asia was the first home of the Whites. At any rate we have very definite records of what the people have done since the days of the Middle Ages. More than a thousand years ago the Vikings who lived in the coves along the Scandinavian coast went out in their ships to trade and fight with the other nations of Europe and sailed as far south as Gibraltar. They were converted to Christianity before the year 1000 AD when they had their first Christian king. And what is of more importance to us it was at about that time that a Norwegian crossed the Atlantic and discovered America beating Columbus by 500 years. The man who made the discovery was a Viking named Leif, the son of Eric the Red. He crossed over to Iceland and Greenland and from there went down the mainland of America and established a settlement which he called Vineland or the Happyland. There is in Christianity at today a ship which is perhaps the exact counterpart of the vessel commanded by Leif. Indeed it may be the very same ship for it is more than 1100 years old. It was dug out of the blue clay of the Kogstad farm a generation ago. This farm is only four hours from where I'm riding and is easily reached by automobile. The ship was brought here from its burial place not far from the sea and it is now installed in a shed in the rear of the university building. It is of oak and the hull and the keel are still in good preservation. By my American tape measure it is 77 feet from bow to stern and just 16 feet wide. In the third plank from the top there are 16 orlocks and the rudder was on the right side. There is no anchor shown with the ship but I venture the one which held it was only a toy in comparison with the one on the bow of the majestic on which I stood before starting for Europe. You could put this boat into the ballroom of the majestic and a hundred couples or so could still Foxtrot round it. Nevertheless it was in such a vessel that Leith Ericsson crossed the Atlantic and established the first settlement on the American coast. It was the Scandinavian who first came to America and if you will examine our records you will find that they continued to come. The Swedes settled on the Atlantic coast almost as soon as the Dutch. They had a colony on the Delaware River known as New Sweden within 15 years after Manhattan Island was bought of the Indians and for two centuries thereafter the Swedish language was spoken in American churches of the Swedish foundation. Many of the first families of Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey traced their descent from these Scandinavians. About a century ago the Norwegian Quakers began to come to the United States and a little later there was a great immigration of the Swedes and then of the Danes. We have in the United States 1100 thousand of these people born in Scandinavia and with their children they probably number five millions or one person in every 20 living under the American flag. There are more Norwegians in the United States by 100,000 than there are in this city of Christiania and we have 200,000 more Swedes than Hestakholm. These Scandinavians are among the best of our citizens. They are far above the average of our other foreign born in education and in mechanical and literary ability. We have no better farmers and as everyone knows they take naturally to politics and have almost as much to do with governing our country as the Irish. Like the Irish they have earned a reputation as fighters. Just now the Scandinavians are at peace but they have had many wars in the past. Until about 1814 the Danes ruled the Norwegians but when Napoleon was conquered they lost out and Norway joined Sweden. These two countries kept together until 1905 when Norway split away and became independent, electing the brother of the present king of Denmark as ruler. End of chapter 34. Chapter 35 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G Carpenter. The Slibervox recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B in Christiania. No wonder the Norwegians feel at home in the United States. Their country is much like our pine lands of Michigan and Wisconsin. The farmhouses are not collected into villages as they are in France, Belgium and Germany. They stand out alone on the fields and most of the buildings are of wood just as with us. The houses of the towns and cities are largely frame and the villas about Christiania have their counterparts in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Indeed, the best residential section here is not at all unlike the best streets of St. Paul. There are many houses with gardens about them and the frame cottage with the multiplicity of gables such as is common all over America is everywhere in evidence. The chief difference is in the roofs. Most of them are of shining tiles usually red but often black or yellow. The store buildings in Christiania are similar to ours as they were before we began to erect skyscrapers. There are four or five or six stories and built in much the same way. The shops look the same except that they are smaller than in cities of the same size in the United States but their windows are well dressed and the merchants are business-like. Indeed, if you could take an airplane and drop down into Christiania out of the darkness you might suppose yourself in an American city. You would find the people big-boned in Husky and the women tall and mostly blue-eyed, fair-haired and attractive. You would find American goods in the stores, American tools on the farms and see that nearly all of the motor parts and motorcycles are of American make. Moreover, you would meet more motor trucks out in the country than in almost any other land of Western Europe. Christiania is situated at the head of a wide and deep fjord which winds its way in and out from here to the North Sea. At the head of the fjord are many little bays forming excellent harbors. These bays are filled with shipping and one may see goods loading for and unloading from different parts of the world. Norway is one of the leading maritime nations of Europe. The Norwegians are natural sailors and their boats ply on all the seas of the globe. They have an enormous carrying trade. They own several thousand steamships and about six thousand sailing vessels which are many millions of dollars in carrying cargoes for traders in all countries. But come to Holmenkolen and see with your own eyes the capital of Norway. We can go there on an electric trolley with a reel on the roof as big as a flower barrel. It will lift us into the air higher above Christiania than the top of the Eiffel Tower is above Paris and we shall have the city and harbor spread out before us. Our way up is past villas and patches of woods and we land in one of the chief pleasure resorts of the Scandinavians. It is evening, the sun is just setting and we have below us one of the fine city views of the world. I have looked down on the capitals of all the great nations. I have stood on the Eiffel Tower and photographed Paris. I have described Rio de Janeiro and its wonderful harbor from the sugarloaf, a mighty rock that rises out of the sea facing the city and have taken snapshots of Santiago de Chile from Santa Lucia, the high bluff crowned with gardens and trees that rises almost straight up in the midst of magnificent buildings encircled by the silver-topped Andes. I have looked down on Constantinople from the hills above Para, upon Cairo with this wilderness of mosques from the Citadel and last but not least upon our own national capital from the Washington Monument. Each of the cities has its own beauty but Christiania compares favorably with all. The mighty fjord on which it is built is here studded with green islands and as many bays backed by forest-clad hills. The houses begin near the water, they rise out of the green, their white walls and roofs of red tile forming a wonderful picture. Such is the view from Holmenkolen in summer. In the winter when everything is covered with snow, it is far finer and the surroundings are then the gayest of all the homes of Jack Frost. On Holmenkolen is held the skiing derby. This is a great Olympic meat of snowshoers and skiers to which sportsmen come not only from Norway but from all other parts of North Europe. The Holmenkolen leap is made from a ledge not far from the site of the view I have described. The man on his skis jumps from this ledge higher over the heads of the spectators gathered on the frozen lake and on the hillsides below and then shoots down the slope. The jump is one of more than 100 feet and is watched by about 40,000 spectators who have seats in the grandstand put up on each side of the course or stand in the bleachers which the space under the ledge may be called. The leap is always attended by the royal family, by the members of Congress and by the high society of Norway. The king himself is fond of skiing and he and the crown prince frequently engage in the sport during the winter. In this they are like some of the monarchs of the Norwegian past who even before the discovery of America were noted for their contests in jumping and gliding on these wooden runners over the snow. By whom the sport was originated no one knows but 600 years before Christ these people were spoken of in the records as those who run on the ski. Skiing might be called the national sport of the Norwegians I am told that the children are taught to ski when very young. They practice jumping over small things at first increasing the extent of their leaps and slides as they grow up. Many of the villages have their ski clubs and every little town has a tourist hut on the hills nearby where the skiers take shelter. There are skiing parties during the winter and young men and women go off together on long ski excursions. This means of locomotion is much used by the farmers of some parts of the country and it is said that the snow is often so deep that from November until March the country folk must go about their business in this way. Skiing forms a part of the training of the Norwegian army. The soldiers must be able to run upon skis and they practice being drawn on them behind a fast horse. Sometimes one man may ride the horse and have behind him several soldiers on skis each of whom holds on to a strap tied to the saddle. The soldiers make charges on skis and run and jump and slide in formation over the snows. When one remembers the winter fighting of the Italians and Austrians he can see how in a mountainous country like Norway such training might be almost invaluable. I have asked some questions as to just how skis are made. They are not like the snowshoes which might be called a framework of strings fastened together somewhat like a tennis racket but are long strips of wood five inches wide and about seven feet in length. The best wood is the ash which can be easily bent so that it turns up a bit at the toe. The ski varies in thickness throughout its length. In the middle where the foot rests it is an inch thick but it grows thinner toward the front curving up at the tip. It is fastened to the foot by straps and it should be well buckled on. On the downgrade the skis are held parallel. The feet must be kept close together and the body well balanced. Sliding downhill the speed may be that of an express train. And there are marathon races in which one man has made the record of 138 miles in a little more than 21 hours. This man was a lap. Their outdoor sports and their mountain climbing have helped to make these Norwegians among the healthiest people in the world. They're also prosperous looking while one sees little display of wealth there is a general look of thrift about them. Paparism seems non-existent yet Christiania like other cities has its charitable institutions. The most famous of these is its great steam kitchen which I have visited. It was established 60 odd years ago by benevolent people to provide wholesome food for the poor at low prices. The charter granted the company limited profits to 6% of the capital invested with a provision that any balance should be paid into the poor fund of the city. For a while there was a deficit every year which was made up by the stockholders but at last the kitchen grew popular and began to pay dividends. It became one of the most profitable enterprises in Europe for the capital involved but that does not change the fact that it has been most beneficial to the poor. Thousands of bachelor students and single working women take their meals there regularly and hundreds of poor families are supplied with wholesome well-cooked food at nominal cost. I found the steam kitchen in an ugly brown building not far from the business center of the city. It was noon when I entered and there were then 500 men, women and children eating at its marble tables. The men had their hats on although many of the women were bareheaded. They were all well dressed for laboring people and all well behaved. Each person waited upon himself taking his plate to the counter to have it filled with soup or meat. At the same time boys and girls were coming in and going out carrying buckets of soup and meat home for dinner. Dinner is served from 10 in the morning until six in the evening to an average of more than 2,000 people. Some come twice and their food for a whole day will cost them not more than 35 cents. Tickets are sold for the meals to be taken away from the building and there are often bought in bundles by charitable people and given away. Sometimes if a man does some odd job around a house he is paid in cash and meal tickets. It is considered better to give beggars meal tickets than money. In the fruit season the company runs a canning department. At the butcher shop meets their soul and the baking department sells bread at wholesale or retail to the general public. One effect at the steam kitchen is that it has practically abolished the lower class restaurants which used to make money by selling inferior food to poor people. End of Chapter 35 Chapter 36 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter The sleeper box recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B. The land of the midnight farm How would you like to farm in a land where the sun works for you all night long? Where you can harvest oats or dig potatoes at one o'clock in the morning and where the long days make the crops fairly leap from the ground? That is what they have here in Norway where in summer the sun shines at midnight and the twilight is working when the rest of the world is asleep. In the northern part the sun stays up till 12 o'clock. I have seen the same thing on the Yukon in the heart of Alaska and I have read newspapers in both countries by sunlight between night and morning. The shortness of the summer is compensated by the long light and the fact that nature works 16 or more hours every day. This is one of the advantages of Norwegian farming. There are disadvantages as well. One is that there is not much land to farm. The country is so covered with rocks and trees that in every 100 acres only three have been put under the plow and 75 produce nothing of value. There is only one large area of good farming land and that is not half so big as Rhode Island. It lies at the southwestern end of Norway near Denmark which country it greatly resembles. This region is smooth and gently rolling and it produces good crops. Coming northward from Copenhagen to Christiania I rode for four hours through southern Norway. The whole way was spotted with what might be called handkerchiefs of land in the midst of the rocks. In some places the handkerchiefs lay amid half buried boulders of granite and fat black and white cattle were feeding upon them. Some were cultivated and had little crops of oats and potatoes. I was nowhere out of sight of the primeval rock and the land made me think of the half bald head of old mother earth with patches of hair the pine trees scattered here and there over it. The rocks had been scoured by the great ice sheet which rolled from here down over Europe and it reminded me of the Matopos Hills in South Africa where Cecil Rhodes is buried. Every few miles we passed lakes and streams. The ladder were filled with logs of pulpwood floating down to the mills to be made into paper. Now and then we went by a sawmill or a pulp factory and in many places they were shipping lumber and pulp. Since I have been in Christiania I have motored out through the country. The farmers are now gathering in their crops for the winter harvesting oats and digging potatoes. The potato is the chief root crop that can be grown here at a profit and the annual yield is about 25 million bushels. I stopped at a field where men and women were gathering the tubers into barrels for the market. The field contained 60 acres. It was the largest body of farmland I saw during the trip. The chief grain crop of Norway is oats. It has grown all over the country and a large part of it comes from little patches surrounded by rocks. In this ride it seemed to me that every patch of good soil was yellow with oats. Some of the fields made me think of an octopus its back containing the body of the crop and its yellow arms stretching out into the rocks. Where the grain was cut the shocks were no bigger around than my waist and about eight feet in height. There would be scores of these tall golden figures standing like ghosts in one single field. In other places the grain tied in lean sheaves was hung upon racks like so much laundry to dry in the sun and the wind. Posts with projecting pins on them are driven into the ground and long poles are laid on the pins to form racks 10 or 12 feet long. On these the oats sheaves are hung overlapping one another so as to shed the rain. Some of the racks ran across the length of the fields making walls or fences of oats as high as my head. You all remember the poem of the judge in Maude Mueller? Maude Mueller on a summer's day raked the meadow sweet with hay. That is the American version. In Norway it would read when the young judge was seeking votes he saw Maude Mueller binding oats. Every farm in Norway has its Maude Mueller's and they all vote. They are blonde damsels who work bareheaded and bare armed side by side with the men. The whole family of the farmer helps with the harvesting. I stopped at a grain field today where a father his son and two daughters were reaping oats. The son was a husky six footer and the girls 15 or 16 years of age were fair-haired and blue eyed. The boy was cutting the oats with a scythe and the girls followed behind and raked it together binding it in small sheaves with the straw as a binder. At the same time the father was shocking. He did this by making a hole in the ground with the crowbar and then driving down a pole about eight feet in height. When this was fixed firmly he took the first sheaf of oats and pulled it down around the pole to the ground. He then put on another and so continued until the sheaves reached the top of the pole which he capped so that the shock would shed the rain. In the United States most of our oat crop is cut by machinery and often bound and threshed by the reaper. The fields here are too small for heavy farm implements although on the larger estate some reapers and iron hay rakes are used. The first American tractor which was brought here created a sensation and there are now about 300 of them in use. Most of the crops however are still cultivated and harvested by hand. In some parts of the mountains the hay rolled up into bundles slides down on wire ropes to the barns far below. A famous institution among Norway mountaineers is the summer dairy called a satyr. This consists of a sod-roofed hut and cowshed on a mountainside close to a lake or stream. In June or July the farm girls drive the family cows and goats to these pastures and settle down to two or three months of lonely milking and butter and cheese making. The girls are considered by their families to be quite as safe on the mountain sides by themselves as in their own homes. While occasionally for company their sweethearts will climb up on Sunday to see them. In the cool days of September they return to their homes with a winter supply of fine cheese and good butter. But the wages prevailing in tourist hotels are winning Norwegian girls away from the farm and the satyr while every year thousands of them emigrate to the United States and Canada where they are in great demand as housekeepers and farmers' wives. Another farm task in Norway usually turned over to the women is the stripping of mountain ash trees for fodder. In August the leaves and red berries are pulled off and carefully stored away for the cattle to eat during the winter. In much the same way young birch shoots are gathered and fed to the sheep. End of Chapter 36 Chapter 37 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter The sleepervox recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B. Norwegian Woods and Waters I should like to write fully concerning farming on the edge of the fjords and the beauties of this European Northland but scenic Norway is another story. There is no other country on earth where the teeth of old Neptune have so gnawed the gigantic rocks lining the shore until the ocean runs far into the land with cliffs on each side a half mile or more high. None but Alaska has such a necklace of islands and few have pine woods which compare with the forests that half cover this country. In my rides through the farm regions I have been in the woods almost all the time. The pines grow right up to the edge of Christianity and there is scarcely a place where the birch and the fur are not to be found. One acre in every five is covered with woods and among the chief exports are logs, lumber, wood pulp and paper. During the world war Norway furnished a great deal of cellulose an extract of wood pulp used for making explosives. At that time an industry sprang up in Germany based upon a wood wool that might be woven into textiles of one kind or another. The paper clothing used by the Germans was made in this way. The patent for artificial wool has been acquired by Norway so we may yet have paper coats and trousers from her pines and furs. Most recently cellulose has been used as cattle feed and the industrial chemists have found a way to make alcohol out of the waste. A number of the cellulose mills now have alcohol factories in connection with them and these it is believed will greatly advance the industry which already employs some thousands of the best workers of Norway. On this trip to Europe I have found every country through which I have passed wide awake to its hydroelectric possibilities. The coal shortage during the war stimulated the study of replacing coal with electricity whenever possible. Either by establishing electric works at the mines or by harnessing the waterfalls. I have already written of the great scheme for making the river Rhone run the railways and factories of France and told how Belgium expects to electrify some of her trunk lines. White coal projects are being considered even in Holland and Denmark. Countries which have no coal and are so flat that they have no waterfalls of great value. Here in Scandinavia where the whole peninsula is flecked white with falling water it is one of the live questions of the hour. Norway has more waterfalls than Sweden. It leads all the countries of Europe and comes next to the United States in the extent of its available water power. The government is now investigating the matter and according to the latest surveys there is enough falling water to produce 15 million horsepower. Our available water power is not more than 60 millions and Sweden which ranks after Norway has only half or perhaps two-thirds as much. France has less than six million available horsepower and Spain only five. The Republic of Finland has it is estimated about three millions or twice the power resources of Switzerland where one would naturally expect to find the most extensive falls of the world. 15 million horsepower these are figures for the white coal of this land of granite and pine where the black coal is so poor that it runs out in peat. 15 million horsepower some engineers estimate 10 tons of black coal turned into steam to produce one horsepower throughout every day for a year so that this white coal must be multiplied by 10 to appreciate its value as compared with that of the black coal of the world. On this basis it is annually worth just 150 million tons of soft coal or one-tenth of all the coal product of the whole world today. We produce more coal than any other country turning out annually something like 600 million tons or four times as much in power as Norway's possible product in our waterfall value. England produces only half as much as we do and the other lands of the world produce less. This white coal of Norway lies in waterfalls all over the country and the rainfall and the reservoirs in the shape of lakes and basins which can be filled by inexpensive dams ensure a steady supply of electricity the whole year around. In many other countries the hydroelectric power can be used only six or eight months and for the rest of the year the streams are so low that steam must be used. This is true at the Zambezi Falls the Niagara of South Africa. At times it is said they could reduce what would be 35 million horsepower if the Zambezi kept up but the flow dwindles almost to nothing when the river is low. As to the horsepower already developed Norway has more than 1200,000. This although only about one fourth our development far exceeds that of any country of Europe. Many of these waterfalls are right over the ocean they compare with some we have in southeastern Alaska. The water plunges from the high cliffs directly down into the deep fjords so that the largest steamers can dock near the power stations. The fjords are free from ice throughout the year and the opportunities for large factories are many. Some of the falls on their course from the hills to the sea have a drop of from 1600 feet to more than a mile and the many large lakes enable their discharges to be easily regulated. The falls are scattered throughout the country so that long transmission lines will not be needed to bring the electricity right into the homes of the people. Of the 1200,000 horsepower already developed one fourth is devoted to supplying electricity for lighting for streetcar systems and for household and farm use while the remainder is consumed by large industries. Of the available horsepower about one seventh is owned by the government an equal amount by municipalities large and small and the rest by private companies. The greatest future development will be perhaps in the electrochemical and electro metallurgical industries Norway is now taking nitrogen from the air and by means of her waterfalls is turning it into artificial fertilizers that will compete with the nitrates of Chile. Nitrates of lime and cyanide are also produced in large quantities. There is one firm which uses a quarter of a million horsepower for such purposes. They are making a great deal of calcium carbide and the electrochemical products have reached an export value of more than 100 million dollars. Among the largest of the resources of Norway are those contained in the sea. One of these is fish. These sons of the Vikings are expert fishermen and before the war they were shipping almost two and a half million pounds of dried fish to America. The Norwegian dried cod or split fish goes everywhere. As far back as 1812 Norway exported three million pounds of dried cod and she now sells to other countries more than 30 times that amount. The government considers the business so important that it sends men to lecture to the fishermen and tell them how to split the cod and drive them best for the market. Another big fish export is the herring and just now the whale fishing is paying well. These Norwegians go all over the world hunting whales. Recently their best grounds have been in the Antarctic ocean whereas many as 10,000 whales have been caught in one year. The ships use the harpoon grenade which was invented by a Norwegian. This is a bomb with a time fuse so set that it explodes inside the whale. The harpoon is discharged from a gun mounted on the prow of the ship. The bomb either kills the whale outright or so wounds it that it can be easily taken. A large part of the profit is now coming from the whale oil which by a new invention is hardened into a fat that takes the place of butter and margarine. Scientific tests have proved that this fish butter can be absorbed into one system quite as easily as other edible fats. It is due to this hardened whale butter that Norway was spared the fat famine common to most of the countries of Europe during the war. End of chapter 37 Chapter 38 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter The sleeper box recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. An island city of the north. More than a thousand miles north of Boston about 4,000 miles east of New York and 150 miles nearer the North Pole than Sitka, Alaska lies a city of islands. It is founded on granite ground smoothed by the glaciers when all northern Europe was covered with ice and the rocks upon which it is built are divided by mighty rivers. It has 60 miles of islands between it and one of the greatest salt seas of the world. And behind it is a freshwater lake whose islands by actual count number 1630. The islands in front extend on and on to the Baltic and run north and south and eastward to Finland. The picturesque scenery surrounding the city created by God and improved by man has its counterpart nowhere else in the world. This island city has been called the Venice of the North but the name Venice is much overworked. It has been tacked on to Amsterdam to Bangkok Siam to Suzhou China and to every other municipality that has a dozen or more little waterways in it. The city of which I write has no river narrower than the Grand Canal at Venice and the streams that roll around it and through it are so broad and so deep that steamers plow their course to its heart. The name of this city is Stockholm the capital of Sweden. Venice stands on a marsh. Amsterdam rests upon piles which as they have sunk have made its houses lean backward and forward as though they were drunk. Bangkok built on the windings of the Minam has houses which float and the same is also true of Petrograd which owing to the negligence of the Soviet government is fast sinking back into the morass out of which it rose at the command of Peter the Great. There's nothing unstable about the foundation of Stockholm. Its granite base states back thousands of years to the days when the great ice sheet melted and left these rocks bare. Therefore the buildings are massive. Those near the water are so heavy that they could not keep their heads above it in any of the half floating cities I have mentioned. The Palace of the King is a huge structure of granite covering more than three acres and surrounding a square court. It was built on an island 16 years before we declared our independence of England. Sweden is older than any other state in Europe and has been a kingdom for about 1200 years. The government today is a constitutional monarchy with a rick's dog or Congress of two chambers. The first has 150 members who are elected by certain town and county councils for terms of eight years and the second has 230 members chosen in general elections every four years. Women have the right to vote and there are some in the rick's dog. On another island a pistol shot away are the houses of parliament which cost several million dollars. A few more islands beyond is one which has the new city hall with a high tower surmounted by a Greek temple of copper ending in a great ball of gold hanging like a full moon in the sky. Above this golden ball at the end of a golden staff are the three gold crowns that form the coat of arms of the nation. The city hall is a massive 10 million dollar structure of red brick with a roof of bright copper here and there turned green by the weather. The copper was laid on in plates each of which represents the patriotic spirit of the citizens. During the world war when taxes went up and the price of copper rose to the skies the city council decided that the red metal roof must be abandoned on account of the cost. There upon the stock homers began to subscribe. Individual after individual put his hand in his pocket and brought out six dollars to buy one of these copper shingles as we might call the plates which cover the building. Nobody was allowed to give more than one plate but thousands contributed and thus the building was roofed. The name of each donor is engraved on the plate he paid for. It was in the motor launch of the United States minister with the American flag flying at the stern that I made my way through this city of islands. Suppose you sit down beside me and we shall make part of the journey over again. The launch is what is called an outside archipelago boat. This means that it is big enough and strong enough to travel the seas and that in it one could if he would venture across the Baltic to Finland. The launch is about 40 feet long and 10 or more feet in width with the gasoline engine not far from the center. It uses its 60 cent gasoline without a carburetor and it is run by a Swedish engineer. We started the Grand Hotel Royale an immense building facing the quay and go upstream past the palace. We pass a dozen little steamers in from the Baltic and glide under the granite arches of the bridge to the island of Staden. We just grazed the boat of a fisherman who is using a windlass to cast a net 10 feet in diameter into the water. Scores of men like him may be seen fishing here at any hour of the day. On the right we can see the Royal Opera House where last night we heard Battistini the successor of Caruso in Rigoletto and beyond it the King's Garden the chief winter promenade of the capital. Still further on are the foreign offices banks and other large structures while in the rear along narrow streets is the business section with its many stores filled with fine goods. As we move onward we go by island after island each rising from its smooth rock of granite. On some there are factories on others warehouses and great lumber yards. On one we see the city prison and on another the military academy or West Point of Sweden which here faces the water as does our great school on the Hudson. There are private schools on the same island with an athletic ground near the water where two score blue-eyed light-haired children are playing. We stop and photograph the girls and their ring around the rosy and snap the boys running back and forth in association football. The children look and act the same as our school children at home only they are much more polite. Every boy raises his cap when we leave and as we chug away from the wharf they give us a hearty class yell of rah, rah, rah. The Swedes are a cultured people. The University of Uppsala was founded before Columbus discovered our hemisphere and has 2,500 students today. There are all sorts of schools and academies and a common school education is compulsory. The percentage of illiteracy is far lower than in the United States and one may travel for days and not find a man or a child who cannot read and write. The women are well educated and some have made their mark in literature. Selma Lagerlof is one of the leading women writers of today. One of her stories has been translated into 12 languages and her fairy tale The Wonderful Adventures of Nils which tells how a Swedish boy turned to a pygmy and took a ride over Sweden on the back of a wild goose. Ranks with the stories of Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. It is now used in the reading and geography classes in the primary schools. The Selagerlof has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and is the only woman among the 18 immortals elected to the Swedish Academy. Besides viewing the city from the waterways I have spent much of my time on the streets. Among the things that I like here are the telephones of Stockholm. Many of them stand alone on the street corners or in the parks looking like sentry boxes walled with glass. Each has slots for small coins and in each is a printed card giving the rates for Stockholm and all Sweden. There are telephones in the restaurants where some of the tables have telephone extensions. Suppose you are sitting there and want to send a message home or to ask a question of someone in another part of the country. All you do is to crook your finger the waiter brings a phone to your table and you call up whom you please. The hello girls here are government employees where the government runs the telephones. They are very polite and you don't have to ring more than once. They pronounce the word hello as though it were spelled hallou with the accent on the last syllable and they never tell you the line is busy when it is not. Another thing I like here in Stockholm is the food. These sweets are among the best livers of modern humanity. They eat early and late and take snacks between times. One curious feature of their gastronomy is known as the smorgasbord a sort of appetizer eaten before the regular luncheon and dinner. This is sometimes served at the dinner table and sometimes at a separate table in another room or in the dining room itself. Imagine a longboard covered with scores of dishes filled with all sorts of relishes salads and salt meats fish and cheese. The guests are supposed to step up and help themselves to any or all of the dishes set out. The idea being to work up an appetite for the real meal to come. I dined the other day at the opera house restaurant and paid a small extra charge for the smorgasbord. Besides hams, pickles and dried fish there were dried reindeer meat from northern Sweden, caviar from Russia, half a dozen salads, bread and butter and four kinds of drinks. The Swedes are great eaters indeed but they are now trying to decrease their drinking. They have worked out a new method of regulating the sale of intoxicating liquors which they think is much better than our form of prohibition. The country has had different kinds of temperance legislation in the past and recently on a straight referendum four or against prohibition 51% of the votes cast were wet and 49% dry. The result of that vote was to continue the system of strict regulation which many conservative Swedes consider preferable to ours. This is to sell no drinks except to those who have what are known as mat books. These are given out by local liquor societies authorized by law to decide just who may have the right to buy liquor and how much he may buy. The most anyone can have is four leaders or less than a gallon per month and he has to be beyond suspicion to get that. The mat book which is about the size of a savings bank passbook is issued only upon application and investigation. The applicant must write down full information concerning his birth, antecedents and residents and record the amount of his assessed income and the rent he pays. If he is behind in his taxes he will not get a book and if he has been arrested for drunkenness his chances are slim. If his application is granted he fills out and signs a card which is filed in the store where he buys his liquors. Each time a sale is made a detachable slip upon which the owner signs his name is left as a receipt for the liquor delivered and his signature must be verified with the card in the store bearing his name. His book shows the record of just how much he has bought and there's no chance for him to run over the quota allotted to him. Only one of these Mott books is given out to the head of a family husband or wife and none to anyone under 21 years of age. The law also provides regulations for the restaurants and cafes selling liquors. I am told that drunkenness has greatly decreased since the inauguration of the Mott book system and that the amount of alcohol sold illicitly has dwindled more than one half. I have before me a card giving a diagram of the decline in street drunkenness in the number of hospital alcoholic cases and in the cases of chronic alcoholism in the city of Stockholm over an eight year period. The street drunkenness declined 67 percent. The hospital cases an equal amount and chronic alcoholism was reduced by 80 percent. The first figures were taken from the books of the police and the last two from hospital records. A curious condition was produced here by the almost absolute prohibition caused by the blockade in those war years when almost no liquor could be brought in and legally sold. This the authorities claim had much the same effect of increasing drunkenness as our own wets maintain that prohibition is had in the United States. As soon as the people here found they could not buy all the liquor they wanted at reasonable prices. Illegal stills were set going and the private manufacturer and bootlegger flooded the market so that drunkenness increased by leaps and bounds. It kept going until liquor was supplied by the Mott book system and then drunkenness began to decline. Now that the people can get liquor legally the bootleggers have vanished. Dr. Ivan Bratt who is the originator of this Mott book system and at the head of the movement for the regulation of liquor in Sweden tells me that because of the illegal selling always arising out of total prohibition he believes strictly controlled legalized trade in liquors is best. He says there are many factors that prevent prohibition from being entirely prohibitive and that no law can be enforced unless there is a general sentiment in its favor. Otherwise he says it will have the opposite effect from what was intended. He does not believe prohibition as it now exists in the United States can be a permanent success. End of chapter 38 Chapter 39 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Betty B. Industrial Sweden These Swedes have business ability. They know how to make money and save it. Although like us Americans they are always trying to get something for nothing and oftentimes fail. They are good farmers and have been manufacturers and traders since long before the days of the Hanseatic League. About half of the population are farmers and the other half are engaged in manufacturing and in buying and selling. Sweden is one of the big countries of Europe. It is not quite equal to France or Germany and it is small in comparison with Russia but it is about 300 miles wide and almost as long as the distance from Cleveland to New Orleans. It is about half as large again as Great Britain and Ireland and if you could cut it into patches and lay it on the United States it would cover Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and New York. It is about as many people as Belgium and more than twice as many as Switzerland. The latitude of Sweden corresponds generally with that of Alaska. Our icebox of the north dips farther south but Sweden reaches also into the lands of the midnight sun and there is one town Lulia from which the railroad starts on its way to Narvik in Norway which has a summer day 23 hours long and still Sweden supports just about 6 million people who live better than most of the inhabitants of Europe. They have comfortable homes as in Norway the houses of the cities are much like those of the United States and those of the country are frame cottages which compare favorably with the homes on our farms. The people are famous for their health and longevity and the population is increasing almost as fast as that of any country of Europe. According to statistics the Scandinavians live longer on the average than any other people of the world. They are a big people and look like giants compared with the French and Belgians and the sawed off inhabitants of the Balkans and some parts of Poland. They have the fairest hair the bluest eyes the longest skulls and the best lungs of any race on the face of the earth. In going through the country I have been surprised at the small extent of farmland in Sweden in comparison with the number of farms. There are altogether 428,000 agricultural holdings and of these one fourth are under five acres and more than 200,000 range from five to 50 acres in size. As far as I can see the soil is rich it is black and it raises big crops of clover and oats. Wheat, rye and potatoes are grown. There is plenty of hay but there is so much rain that the hay is often put on racks to dry and then stored away in barns. Every haycock has a stick in it to give it air and in some places the hay is dried on wire fences like clothes on a line. Everything looks thrifty there are many red wooden houses with white shutters and trimmings and along the railroad are fences of stones, boards and rails. One thing that has had a great effect on farm and country life is the revival of home industries. Throughout the middle ages the cottages of Sweden hummed with all sorts of handicraft spinning, weaving, basket and lace making and metalworking. But modern conditions tended to discourage these cottage industries until Arthur Hazelius devoted himself to the revival of what he feared were becoming lost arts. He gave all his money to the cause and went about asking others to give with so much earnestness and such good results that he was called the Prince of Beggars. There was set up at Stockholm, the Northern Museum in which are reproduced the household life, furniture, dress, customs and arts of practically every part of Sweden. In the park of Skansen on the heights overlooking Stockholm is a kind of annex to the museum. Here farmhouses transplanted from the various provinces have been fitted up with the typical products of home handicraft and are occupied by people living and working just as they would in their own homes. In a special camp there are even laps settled here with their reindeer and dogs and making knives of horn and shoes of deerskin. Skansen, the first open-air museum of the sort in Europe is the model for like ethnographical collections in other countries. As a result of Hazelius' efforts interest in the old home industries has revived and they are now taught in the schools. One course of instruction gives 68 exercises in carpentry to boys from 10 to 14 and weaving, working in iron and all kinds of embroidery and needlework are taught. In some villages men, women and children now go to church every Sunday in garments woven and dyed at home and one of the Swedish princesses favors peasant costumes for her ladies in her summer home. Tens of thousands of kronor are earned by the country people every year by the sale of baskets, lacework and carvings made in their homes and there are more workmen engaged in the industries of the rural districts than in the shops of cities and towns. As to the big industries the country has a number of centers such as Gothenburg and Eskilstuna where manufacturing has been carried on for generations. Eskilstuna is the Sheffield of Sweden. It is famous for the knives, razors and locks which has been turning out for 150 years. One of our presidents had seven razors sent him by a friend from the steel factories at Eskilstuna. Each was marked with his name and a day of the week and he was supposed to use a different one every morning. I don't know whether he ever made a mistake and shaved with Thursday's razor on a Monday. I've taken the trip over to Gothenburg Sweden's chief seaport. It is also the terminus of the Gotha Canal which goes right through Sweden crossing lakes Venner and Vetter the two largest lakes in the country. Gothenburg has as many people as Atlanta and it grows like one of our big towns of the west. It is a manufacturing center making iron, steel and machinery as well as sugar and beer. It has cotton factories and also shipbuilding works. The town is perhaps the most enterprising in Sweden and in many respects surpasses Stockholm. Sweden has glass factories and porcelain factories famous all over the world. There is a famous factory at John Copping which started making matches about the time we were fighting the Mexican war and is still working. It has now one machine that produces 40,000 boxes of matches an hour. That town is at the head of the match making industry of the world. This country makes diesel engines and ball bearings and it is going into electrochemicals increasing its output of the latter product by millions of kroner a year. It makes powder, dynamite and munitions and all sorts of woodwork as well as wood pulp and paper. It is one of the great timber countries of the world and ships logs and boards to all parts of northern Europe. Many pages might be devoted to telling what Sweden has done in her manufacturers of fine iron and steel. She has some of the purest ore in the world and that still available is said to be more than 1100 million tons which should yield about three quarters of a billion tons of metallic iron. Some of her ore grades more than 80% pure and she has great beds of new deposits in the north which are far above the ore values of the best of our iron about Lake Superior. The Swedes have been making iron since long before the days of the Crusaders and in the 18th century they were supplying four fifths of all that metal used by mankind. At that time the ore came from central Sweden and ran from 50 to 60% pure. The smelting was done with charcoal. The veins were from 15 to 36 feet in thickness and as a rule about 700 feet long. Iron is still being mined in the same region and it will be long before the ore is exhausted. Today Sweden makes 92% of all the highest great iron ore of Europe. The most important Swedish ore of the future however will come from the new mines under the North Pole. A way up above the Arctic Circle in Lapland there are beds of iron like those we have about Lake Superior where the ore is dug out with giant steam shovels. There is one place where it lies on the top of a mountain. The ore field is more than 100 yards wide and three miles in length. The percentage of iron in this ore is even higher than that of central Sweden. About two years ago more than 30 million tons had already been taken out of some of these mines and the total deposits are said to equal more than a billion tons. The railway the Swedes have built to bring out this iron is the farthest north of any on earth. It runs from the port of Lulia at the head of the gulf of Bathnia a long arm of the Baltic across the Scandinavian peninsula to Narvik in Norway. Where owing to the influence of the ocean currents the harbor is open all the year although it is farther north than Arctic Alaska. This road is almost 300 miles long and is run entirely by electricity. It is the second longest electric road in the world being surpassed only by the electrified stretch of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul in the United States. The power comes from the poor whose falls which serve the iron mines also and they furnish enough power to run the whole road with plenty to spare. The porches plant is one of the giant hydroelectric stations of the world. It has an 80,000 volt transmission line and can develop 50,000 horsepower for the greater part of the year. The construction of the dam and power station which was accomplished in the space of a few months was one of the great feats of hydroelectric engineering. The long darkness of the winter days was dissipated by a perpetual glare of electric light over the dam and the mushroom town of red frame houses. The intense cold and the ice were fought by running electrically heated rods through the back water of the dam and by heating shelters for the army of workmen employed. There are other waterfalls nearby which will yield 180,000 horsepower and the Lulia River alone it is said can develop more than 300,000 horsepower in turbines. Around Karuna are some of the largest and richest iron deposits of the world. The town lies at the foot of an iron mountain and the ore veins run down under a lake which thus may be said to have an iron bottom. The length of the ore vein is about three miles and the deposits are more than three quarters of a million tons. 30 years ago Karuna had not a single house. Now it is a town of 10,000 people and has moving picture shows. The farthest north trolley cars in the world and a salvation army headquarters. Most of the people were brought in from the south as the laps who live in this region cling to their nomadic life in the open. The Laplanders are scattered all the way from Russia to Norway. Their total number is probably less than 10,000. They are Mongols but shorter than the Tartars of Northern China. The women are less than five feet in height. The laps have yellowish brown skin but their eyes do not slant. Some of these people have permanent habitations but their dwellings are usually huts of mud or turf or a birch trunks set close together and covered with earth. Some of the sod huts have glass windows and in those close to the towns or railroad one sometimes finds a sewing machine or an alarm clock. In their wanderings the laps usually make a wide swing around Karuna and other settlements putting up their tents of skins and living largely on milk and dried reindeer meat. The Swedish government makes little effort to get them to change their ways but is teaching them how to handle the reindeer and to raise larger herds somewhat as the United States Bureau of Education is doing with the Eskimos of Alaska. Most of the laps in Norway have been induced to settle down as small farmers but of the 6,000 of these little people living in Sweden more than half are still nomads. Sweden has practically no black coal worthwhile but its white coal is equal in energy producing value to 67,500,000 tons per annum. This alone is equal to more than one tenth the annual product of our coal mines. Sweden has available water power approximating 7 million horsepower of which more than 1 million horsepower belongs to the state. The country is undergoing an extensive hydroelectric development and plans have been made for its gradual electrification. The southern part which includes the best farmlands is covered with transmission lines which give power and light to most of the people. The development is now being extended throughout central Sweden and later will go on to the settlements of the north. There are few countries so blessed in water power. Sweden consists of a plane sloping from the Norwegian plateau down to the Baltic with streams running across it like the ribs of a leaf. These rivers roll over rocks and can be made to yield water power every few miles. There are 10,000s of lakes and ponds which serve as basins and the streams can be easily dammed. On my trip to Gothenburg I visited at Trollhattin the Falls of the Goethe Alve River considered by many the finest in Europe. This river forms the outlet of Lake Venner and the Falls are far superior to those of the Rhine at Schoffhausen. There are six different cataracts and numerous rapids distributed over a distance almost a mile long. The fall is only 106 feet in all but the water foams and boils as it dashes over the rocks into the cauldrons below. Here there are great pits of boiling waves speckled with foam. A little farther on the torrents dash down mighty cliffs with a deafening roar. And then flow on into the Green River below. The force is so great that it gives a water power equal to 200,000 horses all pulling at once and the biggest power plant of South Sweden is located here. A number of factories have been built to take advantage of this power and Trollhattin is fast becoming an industrial center. Just after the World War many people of Sweden found themselves in severe financial straits. Shortly after its outbreak the country was swept by tidal waves of gold from Russia and Germany. A neutral she sold to the Allies as well as to the Kaiser supplying raw materials in the way of iron and timber as well as steel bars and other stuff for munitions. To Germany she sent wrought iron cast iron in pigs and cellulose which was made into clothing. The result was that all the industrial stocks rose in value and speculation was rife. New companies were organized by the hundreds and the market was flooded with millions of new shares. During the four years of the war the bank clearings increased 500 percent. The deposits were doubled and the savings accounts grew by hundreds of millions of dollars. The people were shut off from investing abroad and bought local stocks. They kept on buying thinking that the higher the stocks rose the more money they were making. Then the war neared its close. Sweden was cut off from the rest of the world and its business dwindled to nothing. Everything fell. The company stopped paying dividends and those who owned shares were forced to sell to be able to live. There was no demand for the stocks outside of Sweden. They dropped lower and lower and thousands were ruined. The money of Sweden is on a goal basis and for this reason the lands of inflated paper currencies could not trade with her. And so good hard money here caused ruin while just across the Baltic cheap paper was bringing a light condition to Germany. Truly the economic situation of Europe passeth all understanding. But a country like this cannot be permanently injured by any temporary money depression. Swedish business is based upon gold and the national debt is only $350 per family. The country has assets of three or four billions of dollars and obligations of only about one tenth that amount. The government has a surplus of more than 500 million gold dollars. The farm products of Sweden bring in half a billion dollars per annum and its 10,000 factories annually make goods approximating three quarters of a billion dollars in value. The forest industries of Sweden alone produce something like one hundred million dollars every year and from its waterfalls it is now getting about a million and a quarter horsepower with upward of five million more horsepower yet to be developed. The government itself has properties valued at more than eight hundred million dollars and before the world war these were annually yielding a revenue of about half a billion dollars. The income from them was then equal to two and one half times the interest on the national debt. At that time the national wealth was increasing and in as much as it lies largely in natural resources and national thrift it is bound to continue to grow. End of chapter 39 End of From France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter