 Chapter 22 of France and Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter This labor box recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Antwerp and Brussels At Antwerp I am in the chief gateway of the center of industrial Europe. This port has more commerce than ever before and is today one of the leaders of the world, being in constant rivalry with Hamburg. She outranks London and now with more than 13 million tonnage of shipping using her harbor, she has even exceeded the port of New York. She not only has the bulk of the commerce of Belgium but is an important transfer station for western Germany, Switzerland and France as well as a national trading center. Come down to the port and stand beside me on the wide, concrete promenade that hangs over the Scheldt and see what God did for Antwerp. We are at a level with the smokestacks of huge ocean liners loading and unloading goods, above warehouses and railways inside of hundreds of electric and hydraulic cranes and near barge elevators which are sucking grain out of the ships by the thousands of bushels per hour. The vessels extend on for miles and looking upstream we can see a very thicket of smokestacks. The river before us is only about as wide as the Potomac at Washington but it is from 25 to 50 feet deep and it high tide off to 19 feet deeper. It is so wide and so deep in the 54 miles of its winding to the North Sea that the biggest of the ocean greyhounds can come right up to our feet and land their freight on the quays extending the miles above and below us. Now stop and think where we are. We are opposite the mouth of the Thames, the gateway to London. We are just above the end of the English Channel on the direct route to New York and within a short distance of Rotterdam, Bremen and Hamburg where ships may stop on their way to the Baltic, that great inland sea of North Europe. Steamers can go from here south through the English Channel tapping its industrial wealth on each side and moving on to Gibraltar. Enter the Mediterranean and have all Southern Europe and Northern Africa of easy access. It can go on to the Suez Canal and down through the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and take in the great trade of South and East Asia. Those Japanese vessels we see moving out of the harbor are on their way there or the ships can steam down the east and west coasts of Africa calling it the trade centers including Boma at the mouth of the Congo whence the two large vessels at our left have just come. There are also regular lines from Antwerp to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. A steamer with a cargo of frozen meat is now coming in from the Argentine port. There are many ships from the United States in the harbor and the familiar red, white and blue at their mastheads is a delight to our eyes. From where we stand it is just 3,325 miles to New York and that big tramp from New Orleans has come only 1,500 miles farther. The vessel loaded with lumber nearby is from San Francisco. It came south on the Pacific through the Panama Canal and thence across the Atlantic make a gun voyage of more than 8,000 miles. But quite as important as these many sea routes are the canals, rivers and railways over which streams of raw materials are continually flowing from all nations through Antwerp and into these workshops of Western Europe. These in turn send back over the waterways manufactured products for England, North America, South America and Asia. Belgium has enough interior waterways connected with her ports to make a continuous stream around the world at the equator. Its canals alone if joined end to end would reach from Philadelphia to the Mississippi River and some of the enormous barges below us now taking on cotton, grain and other produce will travel inland by water to the Rhine and by a canal to the Danube and on that stream past port after port almost to the Black Sea. There are canals from the Shelt and other rivers into France so that goods can be carried to Tornay, Lille and Paris and there is now talk of a complete inland waterway system from Antwerp to Marseille. The plan is to make it wide and deep enough to permit the passage of boats of 10,000 tons and 14 feet draft. A part of this system is provided for in the Peace Treaty of Versailles. It includes the making of a canal from Antwerp to the Rhine, the deepening of the Rhine from Cologne to Strasbourg and the reconstruction of old French waterways from there to the Mediterranean. The Antwerp Rhine canal awaits only money to start its construction. There is talk also of a big ship canal from Antwerp to the North Sea to avoid the necessity of using the Shelt whose passage through Holland is the cause of some friction between the Dutch and the Belgians. In addition to these canals, Antwerp has railways that connect her with all parts of Central and Western Europe. She has three lines to Germany and several to France, one of which goes via Alsace-Lorraine to Switzerland and Italy. By the St. Goddard Tunnel, passengers are carried from Switzerland to Milan and on down to Brindisi at the heel of the Italian boot, where begins the short water route to Asia and the Far East. Milan is more convenient of access to Antwerp than to any other great port of Europe. Do you wonder that a city so situated has become a center of trade? The people here say its original discover was Antigonus, a giant twice as tall as Goliath, who, as I figure it, was just short of 10 feet. Antigonus selected this spot to prey on the traders whose ships passed in and out, cutting off the right hands of his victims and throwing them into the Shelt. From this came Hand and Verpen to throw, the two forming Antwerpen, the Flemish name for Antwerp. The coat of arms of the city still has two hands upon it. Whatever may be the truth about the giant, we know that Antwerp was a rich commercial center when all America belonged to the Indians. In the Middle Ages, it is recorded that 500 wagons passed in and out of it daily carrying goods, and that 500 ships sailed up the Shelt every 24 hours, while 2,500 might be seen there at anchor at the same time. Later, Antwerp surpassed Venice and Genoa, holding fairs that attracted merchants from Europe and Asia. About 75 years after John Cabot had discovered North America, among the city's annual imports were $3 million worth of grain from the Baltic and goods from England were several times that amount. They included also more than $4 million worth of spices and sugar and twice as much in silk and gold embroideries from Italy. Antwerp then had 1,000 foreign firms doing business inside her walls, among them the Fuggers of Augsburg, who were the Rockefellers of that time, and one of whom left a fortune equal to about $5 million, then an almost inconceivable sum. Such were the conditions when the Spaniards under the Duke of Alva, the hangman of Philip II, tried to rule the land. They ruined the country, and within less than a generation, its population dropped more than 50%. In 1790, Antwerp had only 40,000 souls. Later, Napoleon saw the commercial and strategic possibilities of the port, and selected it as the Water Gateway of his future ambitions. He built docks at a cost of something like $10 million, and the city was rapidly regaining its place as the commercial capital of Northern Europe when her progress was stopped by the revolutions that followed his death. A generation or so later, when Belgium separated from Holland, Antwerp again pulled on her seven-league boots and she is now bigger than ever. She has today more than 400,000 people, and with such harbor improvements and such natural advantages, she will inevitably continue her growth. But we have our motor car waiting for us at the foot of the promenade with the former soldier as a chauffeur and guide. For two hours he drives us through the streets in paved roadways that wind about through the shipping and great basins on the banks of the river until we are miles above the promenade from where we started. We are now on the opposite side of the shelt where it is planned to build new docks and quays that will double the capacity of the port. We drive past acres of warehouses by mountains of barrels of oil in and out among long armed cranes and by yard after yard filled with freight of every description. The river has already more than 18 miles of anchorages 40 or 50 feet deep at high tide and when the present plans are completed it will have more than 40 miles with 1500 acres of docks and 42,000 acres of railway sightings and warehouses. It will then be able to handle 40 million tons of freight every year. We pass railway stations and yards covering about 500 acres in which 12,000 cars can be accommodated. We stop now and then to see floating cranes and enormous pneumatic grain elevators each of which handles 5,000 bushels of wheat in one hour or 83 bushels a minute. Antwerp has 12 of these grain elevators and steamers of 8,000 tons are unloaded within the space of two days. The port has 310 hydraulic cranes handling up to two tons of electric cranes each of two tons capacity and larger cranes that will pick up 40 tons at a load. It has some 120 ton shear legs, a coal tipple that will lift a car to the height of a five story house and pipes and tanks for loading petroleum. There are a half dozen dry docks here and a new one has just been completed. In each a great steamer is being repaired. We are now right at the zoo which is again filled with animals brought in from the Congo and other parts of the world. When it was bombarded during the war almost all of the wild beasts were killed. One reason for the slaughter was to increase the meat supply of the city and another the fear that the shells might break the enclosure of the elephants and allow them to roam through the streets. The Antwerp of today has entered the city October 9, 1914 and it was on November 19, 1918 that King Albert and the Queen came back. During the four years of their stay the Germans levied a monthly war tax of about $12 million or $400,000 per day. A motor ride of less than an hour will take us from Antwerp to Brussels the financial center of the country and the government. Brussels is not among the largest of the capitals of Europe but it surpasses most in gaiety, beauty and art. It is bigger than Washington and with its suburbs equals Boston in size. It has many fine parks including the Forest of Swanese of 10,000 acres through which one rides on his way to the site of the Battle of Waterloo and the Bois de la Combre reached by Avenue as wide as Commonwealth Avenue in Boston and more than a mile and a half long. The street is lined with sumptuous mansions where Brussels is a city of magnificent homes. The town is divided into two sections one of which is high above the other. It is in the upper part that the King's Palace and the government buildings are situated and here too most of the foreigners live. The buildings of the lower town many of them decorated with carvings are a delight to the eye and the great Palais des Justices in the upper compares with our capital as one of the finest of national structures. It is much like the capital almost as large and far more ornate. Its cost was over 10 millions of dollars. If I remember correctly the capital at Washington costs 13 millions and far away are other public buildings including the famous art gallery and national palace. I like the statues of Brussels. Their name is Legion and they are all sizes from giants and marble to a little green bronze naked boy about as long as my arm known as the mannequin fountain. The little fellow is one of the greatest of attractions to tourists who are daily taken in parties to see him. We call him the oldest citizen of Brussels from the fact that he was erected in 1619. I like the lace shops of Brussels. The city is a lace center of the world and one can buy most beautiful creations in linen thread from the size of the butterflies which the ladies now wear on their heads, their shoulders or somewhere else on their dresses to the fine wedding gowns that cost almost a King's ransom. This is the patriotism of the Belgians. They are proud of their country and show this in the flagstaffs which on holidays fly the national colors from every second story not only in the capital but throughout the country. This patriotism was the one thing the Germans could not destroy. A notable instance of this occurred in 1916 on what might be called the Belgians Fourth of July which they were forbidden to celebrate as a holiday. The Germans ordered business as usual and that all the shops be kept open. This ordinance was observed in the letter but not in the spirit. The shops were open but the windows were empty except were cartoons or other things ridiculing the invaders were displayed. There were crowds on the streets all dressed in green the color of hope. The men wore green ties and flirted green handkerchiefs. They had knots of green ribbon in their buttonholes and green bands around their hats. Many of the women came out in green gowns and some wore green hats and carried green parasols. The people came by thousands to the cathedral where Cardinal Mercier preached a sermon denouncing the Germans and this was followed by the singing of the national anthem to the accompaniment of the great organ. In the end of the chapter 202 and the end of the chapter on the II of books and led by Frank G. Carpenter. We can find the text on the screen that describes the history of the emerging Russians. The Germans were 눌러かった Take a seat beside me in the airplane of your imagination while we fly over Holland. We are high up in the skies and so near Amsterdam that should we drop a stone overboard it might hit one of those canal boats entering the city. We left Brussels two hours ago and passed Rotterdam within 20 minutes. We could see the Hague, Leiden, and Harlem on our left as we flew. The air trip from London to Amsterdam takes three and one-half hours and that from Paris takes four. We can fly from here on to Denmark in 80 minutes and as we have chartered the plane shall keep on our way through the skies moving this way and that to get a bird's eye view of the country. It is a big job this cramming a kingdom into the eye of your mind in time that might be numbered by minutes. But one can fly across Holland from the North Sea to Germany in a little more than an hour and from Denmark to Belgium in less than two. The longest distance across Holland from east to west is only a little greater than that from Philadelphia to Washington and from northeast to southwest is not much farther than that from Baltimore to New York. All Holland, including the fresh waters inside its borders, is only about as large as Massachusetts and New Jersey combined. It is equal to one-third of Pennsylvania or one-half of South Carolina and if you could cut California into ten equal parts each would be only a little larger than the great flat land below us. Nevertheless, this country supports as many people as we have in New England and next to Belgium it is the most thickly populated country of Europe. It has an average of 542 persons per square mile. As we have come north we have flown over all the big cities. Rotterdam on the river Moss which forms one of the mouths of the Rhine is about as big as Buffalo, San Francisco or Washington. The Hague is in the same class as Cincinnati, Kansas City or New Orleans and Amsterdam is nearly the size of Pittsburgh or Los Angeles. We shall see many small cities as we fly over the country. Two out of every five Dutchmen live in big towns and the homes of the others are in villages, in farmhouses or in houseboats and barges on the canals. Holland is like Bangkok, Siam in that it has tens of thousands who spend their lives on the water. We now take our field glasses and look far and wide over the country. We can see the waves of the North Sea rolling in against the sand dunes and dikes at the west and on the east pick out villages which we know belong to the Germans. Almost everywhere between there is water. Those three great rivers at the south filled with shipping are the Rhine, the Moss and the Shelte. We spy lakes here and there and look down upon great sheets of silver such as the Zyder Z where the ocean runs in at the north. As we look we are reminded of the saying that Holland is a kingdom afloat yet at anchor. In the time of Julius Caesar it was a swamp and today one third of the land is so low that if it were not for the embankments and dikes it would again belong to the ocean. The fight with the sea continues day and night and every day throughout the year. The annual cost of patching the dikes is six or seven million dollars. The government has a department known as the Waterstatt devoted to the care of the dikes and a core of engineers has kept busy superintending them. The Dutch say God made the sea, we made the shore. This statement is physically true. More than one half of Holland has been reclaimed from the rivers and ocean by embankments and works of one kind or another. The Dutch began to build dikes more than ten centuries ago and they are still building them. All along the North Sea the sandhills have been connected by walls of earth that keep old Neptune out and the government is now planning a great wall with gates across the Zydersee which will reclaim 500,000 acres of arable land. It is proposed to divide the Zydersee into two parts by a heavy dike and then make four great ponds ranging in size from 54,000 to 269,000 acres. These will be pumped out and turned into farms. The job will take 70 years and will cost over 70 millions of dollars. This seems a long time, but a decade in the sight of these Dutch is, but as yesterday when it is passed and as a watch in the night. The proposed dam includes Vieringen, the island where the Dutch interned the Crown Prince of Germany and will make the southern part of the Zee, a vast lake with the polders or reclaimed lands in four grade blocks around it. There will be a passage through the dam by locks to Amsterdam, but that city already has a shortcut to the coach at Emuden by the North Sea. This canal when completed some years ago was large enough and deep enough to admit the biggest ocean going ships of that day. It is now far too small and only second class steamers can pass through it. The canal is to be widened and deepened and a new lock 300 feet longer than the longest one at Panama is to be built. Now the great ocean liners which come into Holland make Rotterdam their port of call. When the North Sea canal has these improvements Amsterdam shipping will revive and the port will contend with Antwerp and Hamburg or transatlantic and other oceanic trade. All my life I have been reading about the wonderful dykes of the Dutch. As a schoolboy I cried over the oft quoted story of the little lad who went a hole broke in the sea wall thrust in his arm half up to the elbow and stayed there all night keeping out the great ocean and thus saving his country until his people woke up and repaired the damage. This is one of the many misleading fairy stories on which much of our education is based it did not come from the Dutch. The dykes are not built in that way most of those along the ocean or walls of stones brought in ships from other lands and dumped into the sea or laid up carefully like the wall of the house except that they are sloping. Other dykes are of concrete and others of stone banked with earth enclosed in a network of willows which take the place of the iron rods in reinforced concrete. In some places great beds of woven basket work are stretched along the sides of rivers and canals to hold the land and mats of willows are sunk on the sides of the waterways to be filled in with the silt in the same way as in the jetties that border the passage from the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans. I have used the word polder. This is a term employed by the Dutch for land redeemed from the water. There are two classes of polders sea polders and pond polders. The sea polders comprise the lands which have been reclaimed from the sea by the embankments that keep out the ocean. One third of all Holland is of this character. If you could cut down the sand dunes and break up the dykes something like five thousand square miles attract of land one eighth the size of Ohio would disappear under the billows. To see these lands we must leave our airplane and to keep our feet dry we must even put on wooden clogs which in some places are still the foot gear of the peasant. We shall find most of the polders however as dry as a bone. They are kept so by continual pumping some by hundreds of windmills and some by the most modern centrifugal steam pumps. The pumping goes on day and night all the year through. In making a sea polder after the dykes have been built the water must be pumped out into basins and canals and carried away. More water will keep on seeping in and this must be taken out right along while the land is being built up. It is the same with pond polders which are the reclaimed lands of the swamps and small streams and rivers building embankments around the spaces to be reclaimed and keeping the water pumped out. But the making of a polder it's division into farms so that each will be at the right level to carry the water into the basin or canal from which it goes by two or three pumpings into higher canals and finally gets off to the sea. The transformation of the mud into arable soil and the building up of live agricultural and municipal communities into a kingdom like this forms a story that would take volumes to tell. I can only say that the Dutch understand this science better perhaps than any other people. What they have done well deserves the respect of the world and the study of those of our own people who are concerned with problems of irrigation and drainage. End of chapter 23. Chapter 24 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Betty B. Through the canals to Rotterdam. Holland has more canals than any region I know except the Yangtzee-Kiang valley about Shanghai, Hangchao, and Tsuchiao in China. It has enough to make a navigable stream from New York to Denver and it is efficient to extend it 3,000 miles farther. Include the mouths of the maus, the shelt, and the Rhine and also the Zyder Zee and other places where the North Sea runs into the land. On a trip by boat from Antwerp to Rotterdam we steamed across the Belgian boundary and through the province of Zeland where most of the land lies below the sea level and is walled by dikes to keep out the waves of the ocean. It is composed of nine islands all protected by great embankments. We started on the river Shelt which as we approached the Dutch frontier was walled with stone held between piles. We were high above the rest of the country and the roofs of the barns and the houses were even with the top of the dikes. There were storks nesting on some of the roofs or standing on one lake on the chimneys. On the other side of the river the top branches of the tallest trees showed out like bushes even with the banks and at times we could look down into the fields under the walls and see the cattle feeding upon them. Every field has its little waterway around it separating it from the others and the long lines of trees marking the roads make one think of the lines in Macbeth about Burnham Wood marching to Dunzenaing. Leaving the Shelt we came to the locks leading into the great canal of south Beveland. Many of these are still operated by hand by quaint Dutchmen in caps, roundabouts, and fat pantaloons and at every stop picturesque Dutch girls still bring out fruits and knickknacks to sell to passengers. The girls wear short skirts, white clogs, and black stockings. Some have on bright vests and there are horns coming out of their foreheads. The horns are spirals of gold wire twisted about after the style of an old-fashioned bedspring. One of these little horns stands out over each eye being fastened to a gold or silver helmet fitted tight over the hair and showing out through the lace cap. I tried to buy one of the metal headdresses but the owner would not sell. Some of the craft on the canals are towed by tugs and others are pulled by men and women who walk on the banks harnessed to ropes. Some are hauled along by horses. Now and then we also pass to sailing vessel and with my glass I could see schools of black seals on the sand flats. In the fields hundreds of black and white Holstein cattle were lying out in the sun grazing or eating chop feed out of big yellow tubs. It seems strange to see gates standing alone in the fields without fences or anything to show why they were there. As we came closer however I found that each gate was built on a little bridge that crossed a canal and that the water was the only thing that fenced in the fields the gardens the farms and even the houses. Many of the canals are crossed by draw bridges which are raised after the cattle go in and let down again when they are driven home to the barns. Some of the fields had wheat, oats, and flax. Others were covered with potatoes or turnips while along the roads there were lines of poplars. Their trunks often trimmed so that the sprouts at the top branched out like those of a palm tree. Here, there, and everywhere I saw willows bordering the canals and stretching out in long rows until they met the horizon. The willow trees are like nothing we have at home. Their trunks are as big around as a two gallon crock. They are often not so high as your shoulder but at the top they bulge out into gigantic drum major caps of hundreds of sprouts. If you will put a green hog's head on the top of a gate post and imagine the hog's head a green porcupine showing all of his quills you may have some idea of how a Dutch willow tree looks. There are millions of such willows all over the Netherlands. Their roots aid in holding together the banks of the canals and the sprouts are cut off year after year for weaving the mats and other material used in reinforcing the dykes. The farms lying below the level of the sea and the canals make up a large part of the country. In many places the fish in the canals and the river swim about above the level of the chimneys. The whole of Holland is flat except for the southeastern portion which slopes upward to an altitude in places twice as high as the Washington monument. But even this section is cut up by the Great Rivers on their way down to the North Sea. The remainder is so gently sloping that from an airplane one can see no elevations except the embankments which surround the polders or join the sand dunes or carry the highways and railroads across country. The hole is a network of silvery waterways shining like diamonds under the sun and enclosing great patches of emerald fields and farms. The Dutch canals are almost as thickly populated as the waterways of China. Every barge we passed had its family upon it. Thousands of Dutch families live and die upon boats. Babies are born upon them and many have no other homes. We frequently saw children trotting up and down the roofs of the barges within six inches of drowning and now and then a little one tied with a rope to the mast. On many of the boats the women were cooking. On some they were hanging out the washing and on one a little Dutch girl held up her doll baby and left as we went by. Usually the cargo is carried in front and the owner and his family live in the stern. In winter the canal boats are frozen in tight but in summer they move about all the time. Every village along the canal has its own boats tied to the banks and the larger towns are cut up by canals so that boats from the main canals can be taken into them by means of locks. At one of them, door direct, I stopped for a time. In the Middle Ages this place was one of the richest of all the Dutch cities. It had palaces then and today its buildings are medieval and extremely quaint. Everyone is heard of the windmills of Holland. They are to be seen everywhere and give a great charm to the landscape. Along some of the canals there are hundreds of them. They spot the farms and one sees them on the edge of the towns where they grind flour, saw lumber and do all sorts of things. They look so alive that I don't wonder Don Quixote took one for a giant and wanted to fight it. These mills are all old and it must have caused many millions of dollars to build them. Their day, however, is past and but few new ones are being built. The gas engine and the steam engine have taken their places and the time may yet come when we shall have a Holland without windmills. Leaving the south Beveland canal we entered the Oosterchelt, a sort of branch of the sea and then went on between the islands of Dolph Land and Tholen into the Moss canal. The waters of the Oosterchelt are wide and spotted with islands. We passed into the Hollandisch Dieppe and then into the canals and mouths of the Moss, now going by villages on the banks and now seeing the second stories of other village houses which were apparently looking over the dykes and watching us go by. Finally we came to anchor in the midst of the great canal city of Rotterdam. I have explored the wide waterways of Rotterdam, the gateway to the Rhine, the Moss and the Shelte, where the huge ocean liners come to anchor in the midst of the city and something like six million tons of shipping go in and out every year. I have crossed its many bridges a thousand times busier than was the Rialto of Venice in the days of Antonio and Shylock and have watched the crowd going over them including 14,000 bicycles and 60,000 pedestrians each day. I have seen its great harbor and its shipbuilding works which made millionaires just after the armistice. I've also gone out to the municipal aviation field from which Rotterdam expects to compete for the trade of the air as on the Moss she competes for that of the water. Rotterdam is a city of canals and canalized rivers. The Moss has been so dredged that it now permits the largest of ocean ships to come into Rotterdam and its connections with the Rhine and other parts of Europe have made the city one of the chief ports on the continent. Thousands of tons of goods are here trans shipped into huge barges from 200 to 300 feet long in which they are carried up the Rhine. The river frates are exceedingly low and the Rhine trade is enormous. There are canals connecting the Rhine with the Sen and the Elbe and Rotterdam is the focus of a network of waterways which embraces almost all Central Europe. The city is about 16 miles back from the sea and is built upon piles on both banks of the Moss. The piles are driven as much as 50 feet into the soil and upon them have been constructed miles of stone quays and enormous warehouses. Rotterdam is one of the quaintest cities of Europe and at the same time one of the most businesslike. It is somewhat like Venice but more like Venice in the height of its prosperity in the Middle Ages. Almost the whole city is a quay or dock. It is cut up by canals which lead in and out through the Moss and one wanders through street after street of tall lean buildings finding barges, launches and sailing boats almost everywhere. Along the quay and in the islands of the Moss are enormous ships of every description and in the canals smaller vessels abound. Venice is a town of gondolas. Rotterdam is one of business craft. The canals have big draw bridges and swinging bridges and when you are walking or driving along you frequently find yourself suddenly in front of a blank wall of boards 20 feet high. The whole street, car track and all has noiselessly risen in front of you to let a string of boats or barges pass through the canal over which you are going. Some of the bridges swing upon pivots, some divide in the middle and rise upward. Others are stationary or suspension bridges in passing under which the smokestacks, masts and spars of the barges swing back upon hinges. What a jargon the Dutch tongue seems to an American. It is not English, it is not German or French and it seems to be a mixture of all. For instance, when I arrived in Rotterdam and wanted my trunks brought to the hotel I was advised to get a man from the Niederlandsche Möttschappetat Algemin Dienzver Richting. I was almost stunned when the policeman rattled out the name and was surprised to learn that it meant only a porter with a push cart and that not withstanding his title his charges were about 15 cents for the service. About an hour later, I wanted to go to see a factory making machinery and was told that the Niederlandsche Wur Sheeps on Werktwig-Bu Fiesjenord was one of the largest. Some of the store signs look like English on a spree and I have to study to make out what they mean and I'm proud of myself when I guess some of the easiest ones. Over a jewelry store are the words new, silver, metal-wearing, and a grocery store sign may read Boeter on Kass. Anyone can see that the first sign means silver and it is not hard to translate the second as butter and cheese. It is more difficult when you spell drugstore, Droger region, but anyone could tell that shoe-wearing means shoes, coffee, coffee, and cigar and cigars. A most interesting feature of this Dutch city are the Judas glasses or mirrors about as big as a sheet of note paper hung to the wall just outside the windows so that one can sit within and see all who pass up and down the street. These mirrors are usually at such an angle that they show the front door and unwelcome callers can therefore be seen and the servant told to say that the hostess is not at home. Rotterdam has the tallest building in Holland. It is known as the American Skyscraper and is actually seven stories. It is built up porcelain tiles and stands upon piles. End of chapter 24. Chapter 25 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter. The sleeper box recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B. Where the Mayflower pilgrims prayed. At Delftchaven, a village on the Moss near Rotterdam, I visited the church where Elder Brewster, Miles Standish, John Alden, Priscilla, and the rest of the pilgrims worshiped before they left Holland for their voyage to the new world. You will recall how they sailed from Holland on the Speedwell to South Hampton where they got the Mayflower which landed them at Plymouth and on its famous rock. They had been driven from England to Holland where they settled at Leiden and lived for 12 years. The Dutch treated them well but they wanted a land of their own. They bought a vessel at Delftchaven and upon it made their start for America. They remained at Delftchaven some time before sailing and during that time worshipped in this old church. Delftchaven was, a few centuries ago, one of the important cities of Holland but is now almost forgotten except for its blue porcelain dishes and tiles. Delftchaven is the port of the old city of Delftchaven and has today but a few hundred people. It is composed of two and three-story Dutch houses old and black and quaint in the extreme. The roofs are steep and ridge-shaped with the little dormer windows poking their heads out here and there. The houses are flushed with the sidewalks. A canal running through the chief street is filled with barges and fishing boats upon which the boat families were cooking their suppers at the time of my visit. The old church stands facing the canal just below the drawbridge which crosses it. There are old houses on each side of it and the street looks as though it were a slice taken out of the middle ages and dropped down into the present. The church is made of well-burnt brown bricks with door and window frames painted white. The windows are arched and have many panes. The church has a clock tower and a cupola and in its day it must have been considered a fine building. The sexton lives in a little house next door. She is a kind old Dutch lady who would be good looking if it were not that she has lost her front teeth. She has the widest of caps, the rosiest of cheeks, and a most pleasant smile. She took me through the church and showed me its treasures including the pulpit Bible which dates back to 1628 or eight years after the pilgrims left Holland. She pointed out a stone in the wall which was sent to the church by some of the people of Chicago and said that the Chicagoans had taken away in exchange a stone from the floor. She said that two of the gravestones had been bought by a Philadelphia man for the New England Society of Pennsylvania and that this society also had the old alms box. This old church has been used ever since the pilgrims left. It has seats for about 200 people. Quaint oak benches with reading desks in front of them upon which lie many Bibles. The Bibles are printed in Dutch and look as old as the church itself. Underneath each bench is a little square box-like footstool with auger holes in the top. These stools are the only heating arrangement of the building. Before service the sexton puts a little pot of glowing charcoal or peat in each stool and the women put their feet on the top of the stools and thus keep them warm during the long sermon. The peat must be well lighted and glowing or it will smoke making one think that the church is on fire. When I went up into the pulpit I noticed there were holes in its floor and was told that boxes of burning charcoal or peat were placed below it to keep the domini comfortable. The collections are taken up in little black bags fastened to long poles which the elders carry about during each service. There are always two collections one for the poor and the other for the church and the elders. The elders have seats of honor not far from the pew of the person. The poor are given the least desirable seats being shoved away on benches behind the preacher. I took a look at the records of the church some of which chronicle the leaving of the pilgrims on July 22nd 1620 and then wrote my name in the signature book as all Americans who honor the pilgrim fathers and appreciate the hospitality of the hollanders are requested to do with a donation. I also gave the donation. As regards churchgoing the Dutch are very much like other nations. The country people attend more regularly than those of the city. The village churches are full in the morning and not withstanding the long sermons the people usually sit out the service. The first chapter is read by the schoolmaster and in some churches a part of the collection is given to him. The offerings are more often copper than silver and in the poorer villages a penny is a common donation. The preachers are not very well paid especially where they depend upon the people for their salaries. The government gives certain yearly allowances to the different churches. The Protestants who are in the majority get a little over half a million dollars a year. The Roman Catholics not have so much and the Jews only about five thousand dollars. All religions are tolerated but the royal family and most of the people belong to the Dutch Reformed Church which is organized rather like the Presbyterian Church. Holland was one of the first countries to separate its schools from the church. As early as 1806 secular schools were established and since then public instruction has been fostered by the government and private instruction is paid for from public funds if approved by the state. The Dutch are noted for their intelligence and learning. Between the ages of six and 13 education is compulsory. Holland has five universities with more than five thousand students in attendance. Its classical schools have five thousand students and there are academies and schools of all kinds. It has a national academy of art a royal school of music a horticultural school and a national normal college for drawing teachers. There are also night schools for the working classes industrial schools for women and in Amsterdam there is a school for the training of women chemists. Women are admitted to every profession. The Dutch feminist movement is well advanced. The Dutch have housekeeping schools for girls, schools for butter and cheese making, fruit growing, horse doctoring and horseshoeing. In short schools for almost everything under the sun. Lectures on agriculture are given to the farmers at the expense of the government and in Utrecht the night schools have classes for carpenters, bricklayers, stone cutters, goldsmiths, sculptors, painters and lithographers. Holland has also schools for the training of boys who expect to enter the government service especially in the colonial branches. In these schools the languages of Sumatra, Java and others of the Dutch East Indies are taught. The boys learn all about the chief religions of the natives. They study their laws, their prejudices and customs so that when they are sent out to govern them they are able to do so intelligently. I doubt in fact whether any government service has men so well educated and so efficient as that of the Dutch East Indies. Take for instance a retired Colonel official who was with me during this trip to Delftchaven. As we were riding back to Rotterdam he told me that he spoke German, French and English as well as Dutch and that he could write and speak two of the languages of Java. He had to pass an examination in these languages before he was sent out to the East Indies and this is the case with every man who represents Holland in her Asiatic colonies. End of chapter 25. Chapter 26 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B. The Queen and Her Realm. I am enjoying the week in The Hague the most beautiful capital in Europe where the Dutch government has its headquarters and where Andrew Carnegie's red brick and white stone palace points its crimson finger toward heaven crying out as did Jeremiah the prophet peace peace when there is no peace in all the world. Many of the richest merchants and bankers of Rotterdam and Amsterdam have homes here and go daily to their places of business by train. It is only a half hour from Rotterdam and about an hour from Amsterdam and the railroad service is excellent. This city has no factories to speak of and is much like Washington a residence social and official center. It has been called the largest village of Europe but it is growing like a green bay tree and it now has almost as many people as Minneapolis. The Hague has wide canals running through it and many of its public buildings face on a great expanse of water covering several acres and known as the fish pond. It is within two miles of Scheveningen the famous Dutch Seaside Resort and so situated as to get the benefit of the tonic breezes from the North Sea. Holland is nominally a monarchy governed by a queen but it is practically a republic with a congress much like ours. This congress known as the state's general has an upper and a lower branch and makes all the laws just as our congress does. The state's general sits at the Hague in the Binnenhof a great building looking out on the fish pond. I went through the two houses today the first chamber which corresponds to our senate has 50 members elected by the provincial states. The second chamber corresponding to our house of representatives is elected by the people. It has just twice as many members as the senate. All citizens both men and women 25 years of age or over can vote for members of the lower house. Only the ministers and the members of the second chamber can introduce new measures. The upper house can reject or approve and is not the privilege our senate abuses of adding amendments to bills that come in from the popular body. It is considered a great honor to sit in the Dutch congress and as far as I can see the members get little more than honor out of it. The senators receive about four dollars a day while they are in session and the representatives have two thousand dollars a year and their traveling expenses. The senators are elected for nine years and the elections are held so that one third of the body goes out every three years. The representatives are elected for four years. Women are eligible for election to both houses. The queen can dissolve either house at will but must then call new elections within 40 days. The executive branch of the government consists of the queen with her cabinet. The queen is rather a figurehead and the cabinet of 11 ministers each of whom is paid seven thousand five hundred dollars a year does the work. You have all heard of the burgo masters. They have a part in nearly every Dutch story. The usual idea of them is that they are old fellows in long coats full pantaloons short vests and quaint hats with pipes a yard long in their mouths. It is supposed that they preside over the cities or villages rather than the country districts as they actually do. The real burgo master or mayor of today is more likely to be a man of 30 or 40 than 60 or 70 years of age and dresses like any American businessman. The burgo masters are appointed by the queen although they are paid by the localities which they govern. They do not make the laws but merely aid in carrying them out. The real local government of Holland is much the same as that of the United States. The country is divided up into communes or local districts according to population. Sometimes a commune will be only a part of a city like one of our city wards or it may be a village and again it may be village and surrounding country combined. There are more than 1,100 such communes each of which has its own council elected by its citizens. These councils have to do with certain classes of taxes. They issue licenses and levy petty dues. They control the streets and the roads and for the uses of the commune can add to the taxes on property and on rents or on the number of chimneys or the number of servants a man has as well as on the many other things for which the Dutch are taxed. There are also provincial or state councils. Holland has 11 provinces each with its own representative body to deal with provincial matters. Thus you have in Holland a congress much like ours a set of provincial assemblies much like our state legislatures and a set of communal councils much like our city councils all elected by the people. Holland seems to be very well governed. One finds perfect order everywhere. There are no beggars and few poor houses. Bag of bondage is treated as an offense and persons convicted of vagrancy are placed in some of the state workhouses. The government runs the railroads the telegraphs and the telephones and it makes money out of them giving good service at comparatively low cost. The state railway receipts are steadily increasing. The Dutch are a nation of patriots. There are free people governing themselves although they love and respect their queen the good Wilhelmina. I have called her the good. I might also call her the pious who it is said that she now and then opens her cabinet councils with prayer. At any rate the people adore her. Her birthday occurred during my stay and every town and village was covered with flags. The people went about wearing orange colored buttons and everywhere there were processions of school children carrying flags and singing songs and praise of the queen. That day I had the good luck to be in Volendam and Marken on the side or Z where I photographed the little ones in their gala day costumes. The love of the people for Wilhelmina began when she was a baby and increased when at the age of 10 upon the death of her popular father William the Third she became queen although her great mother Queen Emma directed the government for eight years thereafter. Even as a girl Wilhelmina was democratic they tell how at five years of age when she was rolling a hoop over the paths of the park which surrounds her palace just outside the hake she met another little girl in clogs trundling a hoop. The two were soon busy chatting and they rolled their hoops together although neither had any idea with whom she was playing. At another time one of her ministers was lecturing her on some matter of conduct. She had a doll in her hand at the time she listened to the great man's complaint and then showed him the doll saying sir you had better take care my doll has the measles. I'm told that the queen has great personal magnetism and that she knows just how to do the right thing at the right time. Her majesty speaks English, German, French and Italian. She's well read in history and knows all about her country including the Dutch East Indies where she has about seven times as many subjects as in Holland itself. I first saw Wilhelmina just after her marriage as the fruit of the wedding she had had only one child the princess Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina or as she is sometimes familiarly called Juliana Lou. She's said to be quite as democratic as her mother and full of the common sense characteristic of her family. She is greatly beloved by the people and at the time of her birth celebrations took place throughout Holland and in the Dutch colonies. We have in the United States villages named Juliana in honor of the future queen of the Netherlands and I may be pardoned for quoting this little poem from one of our newspapers published at the time of her birth. It is entitled The Queen and Her Realm Juliana Lou. The Holland folk are tickled much because they've got a princess dutch a brand new blue-eyed baby girl to keep their loyal hearts a whirl an heiress for their little throne that they can call their very own who soon will rule them as she likes as little princess of the dykes and for her name this very same is christened by her subjects true as Juliana, Juliana, Juliana Lou. Oh Juliana Lou we doth our caps to you a princess fair you truly air oh Juliana Lou someday you'll come into your place as ruler of the Holland race and as a queen serenely calm you'll rule over giddy Amsterdam and Rotterdam and Potterdam and all the other Dom's there be along the beautiest dams and sea and as you walk your regal ways may all your sauce be hollandaise and may you never use a crutch because somebody's beat the dutch but rule serene a happy queen your days all through oh Juliana, Juliana, Juliana Lou oh Juliana Lou we doth our caps to you a princess fair you truly air oh Juliana Lou. End of chapter 26 Chapter 27 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G. Carpenter The sleeper vox recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B around about the Zyder Z the man on the street thinks it takes a whole bolt of cloth to make a pair of dutch trousers and that all the men here wear short jackets and wooden clogs the truth is the hollanders of the city's dress just as we do and they are so like us that an Amsterdam or Haig crowd drop down in New York would not be out of place the men are tall big bone and husky and the women especially large and fine looking the people look capable and are most intelligent the quaint dutch character shown in the advertisements and pictured so widely in all travel books are confined largely to the fishing villages along the ocean and in the islands of the Zyder Z where the customs change but little from generation to generation I have visited most of these places during my stay each village has its own costumes and a common headdress is a helmet of thin beaten silver or gold that fits over the hair and comes out to the front of the ears to this in some districts are added gold corkscrews or spirals that fasten the lace cap on each side of the eyes and also high collars of coral beads and great silver or gold brooches at the neck and sometimes at the waist they are very similar to the headgear I have described in the story of my trip from Antwerp to Rotterdam along the Zyder Z the girls wear short and very full skirts coming halfway down the calf below which are woolen stockings and great wooden shoes the skirts are often numerous reminding one of the song in Miss Hook of Holland I have one little petty from Peter and another little petty from John and another bright yellow from some other fellow and one that I haven't got on on the island of Markin where I spent some time the men were bloomers so full at the hips that a dress skirt could be made out of one pair of them men and boys have roundabouts or short waistcoats of black wool with silver buttons as big as the saucer of an after-dinner coffee cup the trousers stop just above the ankles and below are woolen stockings and clogs as to clogs they are worn very generally by both the poor and the well-to-do outside of the cities I bought a pair the other day for 40 cents and expect to take them home to use as flower pots they are made of light wood cut out by a carpenter and whitened with chalk Dutch tell me that clogs are warmer than boots and as they are perfectly waterproof they are especially desirable in a country below the level of the sea where the earth is often moist and spongy the clogs are clumsy and noisy and therefore are not worn in the house they are slipped off on the doorsteps and the people walk over the spotless floors of the kitchen and other rooms in their stockings schoolchildren lead their clogs in the hall and sit at their desks in their stocking feet it is wonderful how the boys and girls play in these wooden shoes I have seen them riding bicycles in them and racing each other on foot along the canals just yesterday I saw one climbing a pole in his clogs these wooden shoes do not mean that the Dutch peasant is poor he is rich Holland has more than two and one half million savings accounts which means that more than one in every three of the whole population is laying up money our proportion is not one in nine the accounts in the Dutch postal savings bank alone equal more than 100 million dollars the national debt is less than a billion whereas Belgium of about the same size and not many more people owes four times as much and France daggers along loaded with bonds that exceed 50 billions in other words we Americans owe just about 240 dollars the Belgians about 533 dollars and the French 1250 dollars for every man woman and child in their country the debt of little Holland is not quite 123 dollars per capita it is one tenth as much as that of France one fourth that of the Belgians and only a little more than one half as much as our own the houses of mark in our low one and a half story buildings with ridge roofs painted black built along narrow streets and little villages here and there over the island I entered one at the invitation of the owner an old Dutchman who wore a pair of trousers each leg of which was as big as a two bushel bag his whole house which was not more than 24 feet square was so clean that you could see your face in everything in it the floors were scrubbed like a kitchen table on saturday night and the plates on the walls fairly shown about the room were cupboards each containing a bed with the whitest of pillows and quilts beautifully embroidered the kitchen utensils were of copper and two brass candlesticks which shown like gold stood on a shelf under the plates on my way to mark in I stopped at bruk a little farming town in the midst of the meadows to see a cheese factory the factory was house stable and cheese making establishment combined which is characteristic of the dairy regions of Holland the hay was stowed away in the garret and one half of the house was given up to the cows which are brought indoors during the winter the stable part of the house had accommodation for 30 cows two for each stall and it was cleaner than the average american kitchen the cows were out during my visit but I walked with clean feet from stall to stall making notes of the arrangements the walls of the stalls were painted black to the height of the cows and white above that in front of each stall there was a window with lace curtains over it and at the back a drain six inches deep which was flooded daily with water and kept so clean that there was little odor perceptible but as for that the Dutch say that cow smells are helpful and the farmers do not mind them at all every Dutch cow is well bedded and has a rope the size of a clothesline with a strap loop at its end to hold up its tail one end of the rope is fastened to the rafters just over the cow so raising the tail that there is no danger of its being flirted through the milk or into the eye of the milker adjoining the stable was the cheese room with 100 balls of fresh edam cheese on the racks the cheese was of a rich yellow color and more delicious than any we get in the united states the cheeses are painted red before they are exported more than half of the farmers of Holland own the lands which they farm but the holdings are comparatively small there are not in the whole country 200 farms of more than 250 acres indeed a large part of Holland is made up of tracks of heath or of swamp and water which are good for nothing there are two and one half million acres in pasture and more than 600 000 acres in forests so that the land actually cultivated does not comprise more than one third of the country the people are more interested in stock farming and daring than in tilling the soil the country raises excellent grass and there are now here something like a million and a half cattle chiefly holsteins there are a million and a quarter hogs more than a half million horses and 750 000 sheep some of the chief dairy regions are in the north and at alkmar is a famous cheese market to which the people from 70 or 80 villages bring in their cheese for sale each cheese is marked with the initials of its maker the stock is spread out on waxed cloths and is bought by wholesale merchants who ship it to all parts of the world thousands of tons are sold at alkmar the cheese is being brought in in wagons on barges up the canals and by the small farmers and dog carts the price of cheese makes good or bad times in the dairy regions and the rise or fall of ascent or so a pound makes the farmer happy or miserable the farmers are everywhere thrifty nothing goes to waste the haystacks are roofed with boards or thatched in such a way that the thatch can be lowered as the hay is fed out all woodwork is painted and rot and rust are nowhere to be seen the dutch make money out of gardening and especially flower gardening they raise vegetables and fruits for england but their peaches and pears lack flavor though they are full of juice they taste to me much like the fruits of japan which has about the same climate there are parts of holland however where the earth laughs in flowers more splendid than Solomon in his glory in the region about Harlem more bulbs are raised than in any other place in the world and 50 million pounds of them are sent every year to england and the united states the dutch are competing with the greenhouses of brussels paris and london and they now send cut flowers by airplane reaching those cities each morning in time for sale side by side with the blossoms clipped from the gardens hard buy the soil around Harlem is a mixture of sand and loam just fitted for the best tulips hyacinths and gladiolae there are syndicates and individuals at Harlem who do a big business in bulb raising they have fields of tulips hyacinths and other bulbs acres in extent the hyacinths load the air with their perfume and at certain times of the year passing through the fields on the railroad is like traveling over a crazy quilt more gorgeous than any ever put together in reality there are in all about 2000 different kinds of tulips raised here 2000 varieties of gladiolae and 1700 hyacinths the bulbs are planted in trenches with the large plants in the center and the small ones at the side the varieties are kept separate and each row is labeled it was at Harlem that the best tulips were raised when the great craze for them swept the country and many bulbs brought their weight in gold that was about the only time that the Dutch lost their heads and went wild over speculation during the tulip mania which came along about the time when Boston was started one Harlem tulip ball brought 1500 dollars with a team of gray horses and a carriage thrown in and an Amsterdam bulb was sold for 12 acres of land both of these bulbs were of the variety known as the Semper Augustus of which there were only two in existence at the same time other varieties brought enormous sums tulip buying was a regular business and men grew rich or poor from the trade some Dutchman mortgaged their houses to buy tulips and the loss of a pack of bulbs caused one man's ruin the Dutch tulips now sell for ordinary prices but they are still handled on business principles and both cultivation and marketing have been reduced to a science the bulbs are set out in September and October they are carefully cultivated by skilled workmen many of the farms employing hundreds of hands they are well packed for the market and are shipped to seed and flower dealers all over the world end of chapter 27 chapter 28 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G carpenter this Libra Vox recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B Diamond cutting in Amsterdam Amsterdam is one of the richest cities of Europe it has some of the chief banking firms of the world and its stock investments are almost as varied as those of New York or London the foundation of the wealth of this city was laid when the Dutch gained control of the spice trade with the East Indies and today the bulk of the stocks of the great corporations developing the riches of Netherlands India are held here the Dutch are also making fortunes out of diamonds they buy them in the rough and cut and polish them for jewelers in every country on earth they have been doing this for generations and have made Amsterdam the chief diamond market of the world this is a matter of much interest to us for the United States buys more diamonds than any other nation before the world war our purchases of diamonds range from 20 to 30 million dollars a year but following the peace they went up enormously in a single year we bought 65 million dollars worth of diamonds from Amsterdam alone exclusive of those imported from the dealers in Antwerp though the big diamond firms here look on America as their probable best customer for some years to come our purchases fluctuate with good and bad times and in periods of depression shrink to a fraction of those of fat years the war which sent the prices of everything else to the heavens flooded the market with precious stones it impoverished the stable old families of Paris Berlin and Vienna and their heirlooms found the way to the pawn shops it threw kings queens and princes out of a job and they pledged their crown jewels to keep soul and body together more than all else the Bolsheviks stole the great store of diamonds from the palaces and churches of Russia and surreptitiously scattered them far and wide over the earth but the flood from these various fountains finally ran its course and just now the demand again exceeds the supply moreover there is serious talk of a combination of the cut diamond dealers into a trust like the great rough diamond syndicate which for decades has controlled the output of the minds of South Africa and other diamond fields of the world this information comes to me from the diamond magnets of Amsterdam and Antwerp the two great centers where the finest and most costly stones are cut for the principal markets it was at Amsterdam that the great Cullinan diamond the largest ever discovered was cut up and polished and I have had the good fortune to meet the man who did the work on the magnificent stone also when in South Africa I had a talk with the Irish laborer Wells who found the Cullinan diamond in the Pretoria mine I met to Mr. Cullinan the owner of the mine the jam was found shortly before the time of my visit the miners were just ending their work for the day and the last rays of the sun were shining on the side of one of the excavations when Wells saw a ball of fire as big as his fist in the midst of the stones he rushed across the great hole where he was standing climbed up and grabbed the huge crystal in his two hands he then ran with it to the office of the company and gave it to Mr. Cullinan it was weighed and pulled the beam at 3025 carats Mr. Cullinan told me that they sent the diamond to Europe through the mails it was registered and arrived safely the next thing in order was the cutting of the huge stone this was done here at Amsterdam by the firm of IJ Asher company who have perhaps the largest and best known diamond factory in the world it was first split into two large and several smaller stones the largest was polished first and from then the work went steadily on the several pieces being sawed and ground and polished into the shapes they now have in the collection of the crown jewels of old England the splitting was performed by Joseph Asher himself whom I met today and it was with his brother that I went through their establishment and saw scores of experts at work transforming rough stones into gems for the market before starting I was shown a model of the Cullinan diamond as it came from South Africa the stone was about the size of a large dinner goblet it was of the color of frosted glass and had a rather greasy appearance but Mr. Asher said that one could see the fire shining out through the rough surface he says the model is a fair representation of the diamond when found it seems strange to think of sawing and splitting diamonds like so much stovewood but that is what they really do here in the Asher factory at least they saw and split the rough stones which all agree are the hardest things known to man I watched the whole process today from the making of the saws and axes to the cutting of the diamonds the saw is circular in shape it is a disc as thick as a playing card and about four inches in diameter the metal is phosphor bronze and looks just like copper this thin saw is fastened between two round metal plates beyond which the disc extends perhaps one fourth of an inch there is a hole in the center of the saw and when put on the wheel it flies around at the rate of over three thousand revolutions a minute or more than 50 times between watch ticks but only a diamond will cut a diamond it is the prints of gems and can be cut only by a member of its own royal family one must have a diamond saw to cut a diamond and the bronze disc must have a diamond edge before it can cut this is put on by dipping it into diamond dust mixed with oil the diamond to be sawed is embedded in wax on the end of a stick as thick as a broom handle and pushed against the revolving cutting edge until the saw gradually works its way through this may take hours or even several days depending on the size of the stone I watched the saws working they went so fast that I could see no motion whatever and was tempted to touch one to see if it were actually moving Mr. Asher warned me however that if I acted on this impulse I would lose my finger it surprised me to learn that diamonds are like wood in that the grain runs but one way and that the sawing is done across the grain and the splitting is done with the grain any boy who has had to split kindling for the family fire knows what splitting with the grain means diamonds as they come from the mine are more or less irregular in shape they often have flaws and must be divided into two or more parts to make the beautiful regularly shaped gems sold by the trade it is necessary first to study the diamonds to see how each can be cut to the greatest advantage the stone must be divided at the flaws so that they may be cut out after flaws are split off the diamond is shaped and polished it may be again sawed or cleft the artist who studies the stone draws the dividing lines upon it with black ink the splitting is done through the flaws and with the diamond acts or at least the axe makes the notch by which with a soft metal chisel the diamond is split the axe used for cutting the notch has a blade on a wood handle the blade is a diamond stuck in cement on the end of a stick which is not unlike the handle of a shoemaker's all the stone is so inserted as to leave a sharp surface exposed as the cement hardens the diamond axis firmly held the rough diamond to be split is next fixed into a similar tool and the cutter scratches the ladder again and again at the flaw making a noise as though sharpening a gritty slate pencil within a moment or so a notch is cut the man then sets the stick with the rough diamond on it into a hole in a lead plate on the table before him he picks up a blade of steel about an inch wide and about three inches long and fits its blunt edge into the notch he gives the blade a slight tap with a steel bar about a foot long and the wedge splits the diamond into after a diamond has been split it must be cut or rubbed into facets so that it may have the greatest brilliancy when the light strikes it here again one diamond is made to cut another the polishing being done on a flat round plate covered with oil and diamond powder this plate is a sort of grindstone it flies around more than 33 times in a second and the diamonds are fixed in frames so that they rest just at the right angle upon it the stones are so inclined that they are ground by the diamond dust into the shapes best adapted to each individual gem some are cut into rose diamonds some into square or irregular cubes and some into the emerald cut a normal stone even one of infinitesimal size has 58 sides or facets about half the weight of each stone is lost in the cutting and polishing during my stay I handled some great diamonds as thick as the thumb of a giant and others down to the size of the point of a pin Mr. Asher told me that their value ranged from $350 to $7,000 a carrot he laid before me a small teaspoon full of diamonds each no bigger than the smallest crystal of sugar looking at them through a strong microscope I saw that they had been accurately and symmetrically cut I was shown cube diamonds no larger than the head of the smallest pin you have in your cushion but nevertheless each had 58 sides some of these cubes are so small that it takes 200 of them to weigh one carrot after the stones are cut and polished they must be marketed this brings buyers from all parts of the world to Amsterdam to look over the stock of gems and consult experts in making their purchases some of the experts tell me that diamonds are as different as apples potatoes or even human beings there are no two alike each stone has its own value its own characteristics its own color and its own points of excellence the experts are like the tea tasters who can tell it a sip just where the tea comes from and what it is worth they know diamonds as the tea men know tea they're called in by buyers and sellers and one of them presides at every transaction he is supposed to protect both parties and to answer any questions either may ask he gets one percent commission from each party or two percent of all the money that passes the diamond cutters of Amsterdam are much more trusted than the men who work in the minds of South Africa of course great care is taken in admitting strangers to the factory but the cutter himself gives only a receipt for such diamonds as he is to handle during the day and this must be checked up when he leaves the factories are not surrounded by guards day and night as are the floors or great fields in South Africa where the diamond studded clay lies out under the sun the cutters are not compelled to live in the works as in the kimberley diggings nor are they stripped to the skin and searched from toes to crown when they leave in fact thefts of diamonds by the men and women who cut and polish these valuable stones amount to less on the average than the losses through the clerks of our banks end of chapter 28 chapter 29 of France to Scandinavia by Frank G carpenter this lever box recording is in the public domain recording by Betty B a sane nation in the madhouse of Europe the Danes are one of the few sane peoples in the great madhouse of Europe the Russians seem stark crazy the Germans but little better and almost every other nation is cutting fantastic pranks before high heaven here in Denmark the people are buying and selling and getting gain from their farming manufacturing shipping and merchandising as they have done in the past they're taxed a bit more and have had to raise their wage level to meet the high cost of living but are paying their debts in good gold and cronin they are still thrifty and cheerful and expect to continue upon the wonderful course of prosperity they have pursued during the last two generations the story of this country's rise from the ashes should bring hope to every people in the dumps of despair at the close of our civil war the condition of Denmark was so desperate that no nation in Europe was poor enough to do her reverence like the Germany of today she had long since fallen from her place as one of the richest and most powerful nations of the world more than 100 years before Columbus discovered America Denmark had swallowed Norway which she kept until she sided with Napoleon and the battle of Waterloo sounded what seemed to be her death now in the revolution that followed Norway was taken from her and given to Sweden the wars had ruined her trade and her debt was enormous then her people were half slaves as were the peasants all over Europe and the kings and nobility ruled as time went on matters grew worse and in 1864 Prussia that glutton of kingdoms gobbled Schleswig Holstein part of which by the treaty of Versailles she has had to disgorge the country grew poorer and poorer and at the time of the Franco-Prussian war it seemed hopelessly bankrupt the land was suited to nothing but farming and the United States was supplying Europe with great quantities of its farm products at cheap prices Germany had shut out Danish exports by a high protective tariff and even God seemed to frown for he sent droughts and floods and cattle diseases the condition of Denmark then was really almost as bad as out of Austria and Hungary after the peace indeed it was worse for these countries are naturally rich in good soil and other resources now look at the Danes of today they are among the richest healthiest and happiest people of the whole world they stand high in education and culture their women have equal rights with the men and hold a place in every profession and are a part of every university their king has lost his power and become a figurehead and the people have a democracy as free as that of our union although their country is only a patch compared to ours it would take 200 Denmark's to equal the United States including the lands of Schleswig brought back by the plebiscite it is half the size of Indiana and a little more than twice that of Massachusetts it exceeds Belgium and Holland by only a state or so as large as Rhode Island and it has less available good soil than either the country is low and flat it floats as it were on the sea almost blocking the entrance to the Baltic geographically Denmark belongs to Norway nine or 10 000 years ago at the time of the glacial period the site of Copenhagen was a part of the great reef of chalk and lime upon which now stands the kingdom of Denmark then the whole country lay under the sea but the huge ice sheets as thick as those that cover the green land of today moved down from Norway carrying earth and stones with them they were several miles thick and when they struck this chalk reef they dropped the earth and stones upon it and thus built up the land today the scientists can follow the furrows plowed by the rocks and the beds of the glaciers all the way from Norway to Germany and in my motor travels across country I have looked down through the green waters of many of the lakes and seen the original white chalk of that mighty reef of the past a land formed in that way could not have very good soil and were it not for the fertilization and intensive cultivation practiced by the Danes many of their farms would be producing as little as the worst patches of our rocky mountain highlands for a long time much of the country was like the marshes between New York and Newark and it was about the worst of all the starved crow farms of continental Europe much of the soil was too poor to grow trees and even now only about one-twelfth of the country is wooded yet the great success of the Danes has come from the land they are a nation of intensive farmers who like the good servants and the parable of the talents have taken what the master has given them and by brains industry and business efficiency have multiplied at many fold they have thrown off the shackles of the nobles reduced the greatest states to small holdings and by scientific farming and stock raising have made every one of their two hundred and fifty thousand farms produce exports which equal fifty dollars a month all the year through the land not only supports the farmers and gives the country its food but yields a surplus worth seventeen dollars per annum for every farm acre this the Danes have done by teamwork in which the whole nation has gone into the harness and labor together they have studied their land and the markets and have raised only the things they could produce at a profit when Denmark found that with her limitation of soil and area she could not compete with the United States and other lands in the production of oats wheat rye barley and such crops she did not sit down in wine and ask other countries to help her but only buckled in her waist belt to make her stomach the smaller countered assets and figured out what she could do her people did not even ask the government to help them by protective tariffs but everyone did his part and all work together she had several great thinkers and with them in time she planned out a scheme of agricultural production that has made the whole country rich she looked at her location it was just across the North Sea from London the biggest city on earth and from Great Britain full of factory workers who for years have been spoon fed by outsiders it was just over the border from Germany with its vast standing army that needed horses and its many industrial laborers who were consuming far more foodstuffs than the German farms could supply Denmark studied the wants of these neighbors she enriched the soil with the gray matter in the heads of her farmers and decided she could make a living in supplying Great Britain with bacon and butter and eggs and Germany with cattle and horses she had once sent out commissions to these and other countries to study the markets and the methods of producing these commodities and at the same time began to reorganize the country on the new basis the commissions reported that England was getting breakfast supplies largely from Ireland they looked into the irish production and suggested new methods with the result that in a short time the Danes were offering better bacon better butter and better eggs than the Irish it was the same with the Germans and other markets all over the world Denmark in proportion to her size and population is now selling more and better bacon butter and eggs than any other country within less than a generation she has increased her annual exports of farm products from a value of about 25 million dollars to more than three hundred and eighty million dollars of which nearly half go to England I have not yet tried the bacon although I have visited the piggeries and the slaughterhouse where it is killed but I eat a lot of the butter with the two eggs that I get from my early breakfast each morning this is the first country I've visited in my tour where I've been given enough butter to supply the appetite of even the daintiest American girl here in Europe the hotels serve one's first meal in his bedroom this consists of a little pot of coffee and some bread and butter with eggs upon order for an extra charge in Paris my butter consisted of three or four shavings no bigger than the corkscrew curls with which some of our girls adorn their foreheads or instead as many balls of butter each as big as the end of my middle finger this it must be remembered was at the high-priced hotels where once room and meals cost as much as in the first-class hotels of new york they do it far better in Denmark end of chapter 29 chapter 30 of france to scandinavia by frank g carpenter this labor vox recording is in the public domain recording by betty b copenhagen the gate to the Baltic the c is a big factor in the success of the Danes the descendants of the vikings for more than 1000 years they have been going down to the sea and ships and doing business in great waters turn to the map in this book and see just where Denmark lies it consists of a long narrow tongue known as jutland extending out from the northwestern part of the continent almost blocking the entrance to the Baltic that great Mediterranean sea of the north and licking with its tip the gulf into which one steams up to christiania the capital of norway in addition to this tongue the country consists of about 500 islands on one of the largest of which stands the capital copenhagen there are straits around the tongue through which all ships must go in entering the Baltic except the few that pass through the Kaiser Wilhelm canal thus they pass right by copenhagen making it the natural stopping place for the shipping of scandinavia finland russia latvia estonia lithuania poland and north germany copenhagen is a port of call for all these countries and it does an enormous business in transferring goods it has weekly sailings to and from the united states and i have seen ship after ship from new york discharging passengers and freight which are here transferred to other ships for the lands farther east denmark itself has nearly 4 000 vessels and she owns steamships that go regularly to north and south america asia and africa and to most of the ports of this continent of europe every year more than 23 000 vessels from foreign countries come here i drove for several hours along the quays yesterday and saw everywhere quantities of united states goods the ships were unloading grain cotton seed oil raw materials of many kinds farming machinery automobiles automobile parts in fact nearly everything we make or produce more than a thousand tons of automobile parts come from new york to copenhagen each week they are sent by the company that makes the fliver and are assembled here before trans shipment to the lands of the baltik its copenhagen factory puts together one car every six minutes all the day through this is done in the free port which allows the selling and transfer of goods without payment of duty an arrangement by which copenhagen hopes to compete with haumburg the free port is a great factory and warehouse as well as an international merchandising district it includes almost 130 acres of land and 83 acres of anchorage and has scores of electric cranes and other modern equipment for loading and unloading goods there are grain elevators which cover acres and factories making goods for both domestic and foreign consumption copenhagen is one of the liveliest cities of northern europe most of its half million people are as well-dressed as any you will find on the continent it has some magnificent buildings and the cleanest streets outside of holland every man here has to see that the street and the pavement in front of his house is kept clean the asphalt is brushed several times every day and a regiment of able-bodied paupers is always at work on the squares the capital of denmark is full of red blood and the vigor of youth the people on the streets go about with a smile and seem to be prosperous i have been here for a week and have not yet seen a beggar there are no blind men on the corners peddling matches and notions and no haggard old women selling newspapers the shops of copenhagen are full of fine goods and their window dressing compares with that of our principal cities walking through the chief business centers is like visiting an exposition and moreover all of the prices are marked in plain figures i spent this afternoon in one of the big department stores here it reminds me of those of boston philadelphia detroit cleveland and other american cities of the same size it has an abundance of everything and the finest wares from all over the world are displayed it has a book section with books in all languages and especially english including poetry fiction economics and travel the thor waldson museum is one of the finest on the continent and singularly enough it is devoted to the works of one sculptor thor waldson was educated at the academy of copenhagen and later on in rome he soon developed into a great sculptor his works which are of wonderful beauty are famous all the world over among the exhibits in the museum here is a model of the swiss lion which he carved out of the rock at lucerne in memory of the swiss guards defense of the twilleries another great man of copenhagen was hans christian anderson whose fairy stories delight every child there is a monument to him in the heart of the city on one side of the pedestal of which is engraved a picture from the ugly duckling and on another side is the figure of a little child riding on the back of a stork anderson was born in the small danish town of odense his father was a shoemaker and his mother wanted to make her boy a tailor young hans however had a bookish bent and his ambition was to become famous by writing he left home with five dollars in his pocket and with that as a start worked his way through school in copenhagen he had some talent for singing and hoped to make a place for himself on the stage he tried for one of the theaters of copenhagen but was rejected his talent was brought to the notice of the king through whom he was placed in an advanced school at public expense later on his poems and stories became noted and during his latter years he received an annuity from the danish government the people here are very proud of him and tell many stories of his simplicity and kindness end of chapter 30 chapter 31 of france to scandinavia by frank g carpenter this libre vox recording is in the public domain recording by betty b where the farmer is king in the reference books denmark is recorded as under the sovereignty of christian the tenth this is a mistake christian the tenth is only a figurehead the real ruler of denmark is the farmer he owns the country he elects the congress he makes the laws the germans called the united states a monarchic democracy this land is a farmer's democracy denmark does not bow down to the farmer for the farmer is denmark his union is stronger than any labor organization of our country or england he combines for everything and all of his class work as one there is no country in the world so built upon agriculture as this and none in which the science and ethics of farming have so firm a foundation the people worship three gods like jarobom the king of the jews they have erected two golden calves at each end of their country and like the ancient egyptians they worship the cow they bow down also to the chicken the cock whose third crow made peter weep had not a greater place in the conscience of that saint than that which the danish hen occupies in the minds of the thrifty poultry men of denmark the third and last god is the pig a yorkshire of the bacon variety for it is his streak of lean and streak of fat produced largely from the skimmed milk of the cow that brings much of the money which supports the danes danish bacon and butter and eggs bring in annually hundreds of millions of dollars and from england in one year alone denmark has received thirty eight million dollars for bacon forty million dollars for butter and thirty five million dollars for eggs the land in fact is one great factory devoted to turning out these three special products this factory has more than a quarter of a million owners each running a little branch independent of the others yet all are joined together in four thousand cooperative agencies and other cooperative societies the whole being better organized than any system of chain stores in the united states by this i mean that every farm is a plant that works according to rules made by the farmers themselves they buy and sell only in combination and have such common standards of production that all of the output is equally good in short they operate as though the whole country were a single big farm the danes have often been called a nation of farmers their little country is divided up into a quarter of a million farms or one farm for every 12 persons if the united states were apportioned according to its area in the same ratio it would have about 50 million farms instead of a little more than six million as now nine out of every ten farms in denmark are owned and operated by the men who live on them and most of the owners have no other means of support there are 70 000 holdings of less than two acres and i have seen statements that a man can live and support his family on three or four acres this i believe to be a mistake my information from the government officials and from farmers large and small is that he needs two or three times this amount of land but i'll agree that 10 acres is quite enough to enable a man to make a decent living and educate his children they say that the farmer who has 30 acres is well to do while one who has from 50 to 100 may be called almost rich the men who live on the very small holdings say of two acres thrive by raising several cows a dozen pigs and a good flock of chickens but they must work also for their neighbors to piece out their incomes more than half the farms are less than 13 acres and comprise about three fifths of the land there are more than 100 000 farms which range between 13 acres and 150 acres the owners of which might be called the backbone of the country most of them are scientific agriculture they know all about plants and plant breeding they are skilled mechanics and often good chemists many of them are graduates of agricultural schools and socially and politically they're of a higher grade perhaps than any other farmers on earth they are usually men of some means they are interested in the savings and credit associations and to a large extent run the cooperative societies they control the politics of the sections in which they live it is through the farmers that the railroads are operated in the interest of the farmers not to make money but to haul passengers and freight as cheaply as possible it is through the farmers that the land has been broken up into small holdings that credit banks have been established that only two and one thousand of the people are unable to read and write and that most of the homes even out in the country have telephones and electric lights the climate and soil are such that only a small part of the feed of the livestock can be raised on the land for five months of every year the cattle can sometimes be grazed in the fields and for the other seven they must be kept all the time in the barns and stall fed the country is so thickly settled that there is not enough land to raise hay or grain for the animals and a great part of the feed is brought in from the united states and other countries every week ships from new york bring grain especially corn and cottonseed meal cakes as food for the cattle and in addition there must be tank food bone dust and other articles which help in the production of eggs every farmer knows the feeding value of all he buys while through the cooperative associations the purchases are made at wholesale prices and so distributed that the farmers practically eliminate the middleman and have all the profits themselves it is the same with the sales there are cooperative egg societies cooperative butter societies and cooperative bacon societies through which almost all the selling is done these associations have their agencies and branch houses scattered over denmark and their representatives in london and all the chief markets in this way farmers get the highest prices for everything while their rules require that the products be standardized and have a high quality throughout there are about four thousand cooperative associations and of the two hundred and fifty thousand farmers more than two hundred and forty four thousand belong to these selling societies there are fifteen cooperatives devoted to the purchase of goods and they have seventy thousand members there are seventeen hundred breeding societies interested in the various kinds of stock from chickens to cattle the net business of the cooperative societies of the country amounts to a quarter of a billion dollars a year and there is a baker's dozen of credit associations which have outstanding loans to the amount of more than five hundred million dollars the farmers buy all their goods through the wholesale associations and the goods are distributed through retail cooperative societies in such a way that the farmers get the profit made on all their own purchases there are stores with a total membership of three hundred thousand this means that there is one store membership to every two families or twice as many as in england and three times as many as in germany in proportion to the population there is one of these cooperative stores in every village the cooperative wholesale society in Copenhagen sells in the neighborhood of twenty five million dollars worth of goods per year it has acres of warehouses and factories the business of its factories amounts to five million dollars per annum and it makes a net profit of five percent and a gross profit of seven or eight percent this wholesale organization is made up of representatives elected by the retail cooperative associations it has no individual or personal owners and its profits all go to the retail societies so far as i am told none of the stockholders has had to put up any money for shares in this wholesale association each retail association after careful investigation is allowed to subscribe for a certain amount of stock and the subscription is carried on the books until the profits pay for it since i have been in Denmark i have gone through the buildings of this big wholesale cooperative association at Copenhagen they are situated near the wars and the railroad cars come right to the factory so that freight is most economically handled this association sells no feeding stuffs grain or farm tools which are dealt in by other associations the establishment is much like a wholesale department store and serves about 1600 local stores scattered over Denmark in the sample rooms i was shown every sort of household utensil and all kinds of things in wood china and glass there were ready to wear goods of every sort dolls and toys for the christmas tree and even cameras and opera glasses a large building is devoted to seeds of everything from clover to wheat rye and oats and especially to rutabagas and mangle wordsel beats both of which form a large part of the food for the cattle another great building is filled with coffee and tea for the establishment has its own coffee roasters and a third has a large force making shoes the latter covers about an acre and is equipped with american machinery the shoes turned out are of every grade and style from those of course hide to find high-heeled shoes for women the workmanship is excellent and the prices are considerably lower than in the united states the society has factories for making candy and chocolate tobacco cigars and cigarettes it has chemical works it makes hosiery and ready-made clothing as well as bicycles and soap one of the most important factories of this wholesale association is devoted to margarine an article which takes the place of butter for most of the people of danmark although the danes make about the best butter on earth and export tens of millions of dollars worth the farmers eat margarine that they may have more butter to sell one of the officials tells me he estimates that 98 percent of the dairy farmers sell all the butter they make end of chapter 31 chapter 32 of france to scandinavia by frank g carpenter this libra vox recording is in the public domain recording by betty b how they do it in danmark this morning i invite you to join me in a trip into the country to see how the danish farmer gets fat on 40 acres valdemar hansen who was brought up on a farm will be our chauffeur we ride out of copenhagen over a brick paved road with a bicycle path on each side there's also a car line and a way for foot passengers we pass many beautiful villas and on the edge of the city see great tracks of truck gardens each having a shack put up by the municipality for the poor people to come out and live in during the summer every family has its garden and house free and thousands are accommodated in this way going on we drive through the suburbs of the capital and finally reach the country where there are farmsteads large and small with grain fields and pastures covering the landscape the buildings are all painted white many of the houses and barns are covered with a straw thatch turned velvety brown by the weather the thatched roofs which are often a foot thick extend out over the white walls below the brick chimneys which come up through the thatch are white the barns are all built around yards they often consist of a single long low building with wings at each end most of the barns are about one story and cover a great deal of ground others are smaller but all are well kept and scientifically arranged let us visit one of these farmsteads a place of 40 acres the owner keeps nine cows in full milk and has five calves growing up he also has chickens and pigs and is laying by money we go with him first into the cow stable like thousands in denmark it has large windows and most of it is floored with thick concrete the cows stand upon boards with their heads in stanchions and behind runs a drain that saves every bit of the manure the stalls are washed out every morning and the water and dirt go into the farm cistern once the contents are pumped out and taken directly to the fields over each stall is a blackboard about as big as a school slate on which we see in chalk the cows diary it is a record of the amount of milk she gave the previous day together with the butterfat it contained this is kept for every cow and each one must earn her living if she falls off the farmer may change her feed and if she does not come up she goes to the scrap heap by which is meant she is sold the authorities tell me that the average life work of a cow in denmark covers only five years at the end of that time she is sold and probably goes off to germany fully ten percent of all the dairy cows are disposed of in that way every year our next visit is to the pigory this is of concrete and kept so well drained that the pig pens are dry like the stable and indeed all the other buildings on the farmstead it is lighted by electricity the current coming over a long transmission line from sweden the pigs are Yorkshire's clean fat and rosy eight white with the complexion of a newly washed baby shining through the silvery bristles when Denmark started in the dairy business and began to raise pigs for export she was selling less than two million pounds per annum outside her own country now her exports of bacon and ham amount to nearly 200 million pounds and her hogs number about one million and a half nevertheless she raises no corn or other hog food to speak of and the pigs are fattened on skim milk and chop we are the greatest hog food producing country on earth and have on our farms just now 60 or 70 millions of swine if in proportion to our area we had as many hogs as has Denmark the number would be 300 millions and we could probably produce many more leaving the pigory we go to the barn proper where are stored the grain and other produce raised by the farmer this building has a thick roof of gray thatch and although of but one story in most parts it is filled to the roof with food of one kind or another at the side of the door is what might be called a baby threshing machine with a portable electric motor in a box by its side the motor is run by electric current generated in sweden and as it is raining and he cannot work outside the farm hand is threshing wheat he stands at one end of the machine and feeds in the sheaves which he has pulled down from the loft the electricity does the work and the clean brown wheat rolls out of the funnel into a sack below before leaving I took a picture of the farmer and his wife standing in front of their dwelling it was a picture ask white one-story cottage with the roof of red tiles looking out on the barns there were lace curtains in the windows flowers in the yard and ivy which had crept up hugging each side of the door when I went in I found the house well furnished and equipped with books and magazines and many farm journals it seemed a most comfortable home and far better than that of the average 40 acre farmer of the united states it is no wonder that the danish farmer and his wife do so well on 40 acres for both have been specially trained for their jobs the danes go to school more than any other people in europe and as I have said there are only two in a thousand of them who cannot read and write this is a better showing than in england germany france or switzerland and much better than in the united states where 77 in every thousand are illiterate the danes is a good farmer because he has studied the expert production of the thing he sells in the words of pope he holds the eel of science by the tail the country has schools of every kind all children are compelled to go to school until they are 14 years of age and their teachers are better paid and more respected than with us the average farm boy has a course in an agricultural college after he leaves the common schools and there are also the people's high schools for the grown-ups the people's high schools are a special institution of denmark they're attended by the men in the winter when the farm work is light and during the summer by women and girls the winter term is from november to may most of the pupils live in or near the schools and may have rooms and board in the establishments at very low rates about three fourths of the students are middle class farmers and small landholders four fifths of the students are from 19 to 25 years of age but there is no age limit a farmer can start in at any time and take a special course in almost any branch he chooses there are more than a hundred of these high schools in denmark and in addition there are 19 agricultural schools there are also schools for wives or schools of household economics these are attended largely by girls preparatory to or in anticipation of marriage they are taught everything connected with housekeeping and the purchase of domestic supplies the schools are in fact somewhat like the domestic science schools and colleges of the united states they are large and small and public and private i have visited several during my motor car tours one situated about 20 miles from Copenhagen is surrounded by a beautiful garden it consists of a large two-story house divided up into living rooms classrooms and a large number of bedrooms it has a commodious and well-lighted kitchen in which at the time of my call 30 young danish girls are from 18 to 21 years of age were engaged in the preparation of dishes of one kind or another some of them had their sleeves rolled up above their elbows and the faces of others were rosy from hanging over the stoves three were cleaning fish a half dozen were peeling potatoes and others were compounding the ingredients of sweet meats and cakes with meticulous care one of the teachers took me through the house and showed me the rooms of the girls everyone was exquisitely kept and all were beautifully furnished and without the knickknacks and crazy bric-a-brack affected by the american college girl indeed it seemed to me that a man must be very particular if he could not be satisfied with such housekeeping and when i think again of how the girls looked with such sweet good housekeeping wives upon leaving my young secretary took a photograph of the kitchen class on the front doorsteps and he would not be contented until the teacher allowed him to pose one maiden especially attractive with her bread mixing bowl in her hands end of chapter 32