These states, like Great Britain and Germany, belong to Germanic Europe, and their situation around the North and Baltic Seas makes their commercial interests much the same. From the stand-point of commerce Holland might be regarded as an integral part of Germany, inasmuch as a large part of the foreign commerce of Germany must reach the sea by crossing that state.

Sweden and Norway.—Sweden and Norway occupy the region best known as the Scandinavian peninsula. The western side faces the warm, moist winds of the Atlantic, but the surface is too rugged to be productive. The lands suitable for farming, on the other hand, are on the east side, where, owing to the high latitude, the winters are extremely cold.

The plateau lands are in the latitude of the great pine-forest belt that extends across the two continents. The forests of the Scandinavian peninsula are near the most densely peopled part of Europe, and they are also readily accessible. Moreover, the rugged surface offers unlimited water-power. As a result Norway and Sweden practically control the lumber-market of Europe, and their lumber products form one of the most important exports of the kingdom. Norway pine competes with California redwood in Australia. The "naval stores," tar and pitch, compete with those of Georgia and the Carolinas. The wood-pulp from this region is the chief supply of the paper-makers of Europe. Next to Russia, Sweden has the largest lumber-trade in Europe. The Mediterranean states are the chief buyers.

The mineral products are a considerable source of income. Building stone is shipped to the nearby lowland countries. The famous Swedish manganese-iron ores, essential in steel manufacture, are shipped to the United States and Europe. For this purpose they compete with the ores of Spain and Cuba. The mines of the Gellivare iron district are probably the only iron-mines of consequence within the frigid zone. The ore is sent to German and British smelteries.

The fisheries are the most important of Europe, and this fact has had a great influence on the history of the people. Centuries ago the people living about the vigs or fjords of the west coast were compelled to depend almost wholly on the fisheries for their food-supplies. As a result they became the most famous sailors of the world. They established settlements in Iceland and Greenland; they also planted a colony in North America 500 years before the voyage of Columbus. Herring, salmon, and cod are the principal catch of the fisheries, and about four-fifths of the product is cured and exported to the Catholic European states and to South America.

South of Kristiania farming is the principal industry. Much of the land is suitable for wheat-growing, but the productive area is so small that a considerable amount of bread-stuffs must be imported from the United States. On account of the high latitude the winters are too long and severe for any but the hardiest grains. Dairy products are commercially the most important output of the farms, and they find a ready market in the popular centres of Europe—London, Hamburg, Paris, and Berlin.

The lumber, furniture, matches, fish, ores, and dairy products sold abroad do not pay for the bread-stuffs, coal, petroleum, clothing, and machinery. In part, this is made up by the carrying trade of Norwegian vessels; the rest of the deficit is more than met by the money which the throngs of tourists spend during the summer months.

The United States buys from these countries fish and ores to the amount of about three million dollars a year; it sells them cotton, petroleum, bread-stuffs, and machinery to the amount of about twelve million dollars.

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

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

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

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

Copenhagen, the capital, is the financial centre of the kingdom. Commercially it is one of the most important ports of Europe. Various shipments consigned to Baltic ports are landed at this city; here the cargoes break bulk and are again trans-shipped to their destination. In order to facilitate this forwarding business, the Crown has made Copenhagen a free port. Steamship lines connect it with New York, British ports, and the East Indies.

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

Greenland and Iceland are colonies of Denmark, and the fishing industry of the kingdom is carried on mainly along the shores of these islands. The furs, seal-skins, seal-oil, and eider-down of Greenland are a government monopoly. The mineral cryolite occurs at Ivigtut and is mined by soda-making establishments in the United States. Iceland produces sheep, cattle, and fish; these are shipped from Reikiavik. The Faroe Islands produce but little save wool, feathers, and birds' eggs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ghent is the chief focal point for the flax product, which is converted into the finest of linen cloth and art fabrics. Much of the weaving and spinning machinery employed in Europe is made in this city. Mechlin and the villages near by are famous the world over for hand-worked laces.

Expensive porcelains, art tiles, glassware, and cheap crockery are made in the line of kilns that reaches almost from one end of the coal-field to the other; these products, moreover, are extensively exported.

The railways are owned and operated by the state. They are managed so judiciously, moreover, that the rates of carriage are lower than in most European states. The Scheldt is navigable for large ocean steamers to Antwerp, and this city is the great Belgian port for ocean traffic. The city owes its importance to its position. One branch of the Scheldt leads toward the Rhine; the other is connected by a canal with the rivers of France; the main stem of the river points toward London. It is therefore the meeting of three ways. It is the terminal of the steamships of American, and of various other lines. It is also the depot of the Kongo trade. Ship-canals deep enough for coasters and freighters connect Ghent, Bruges, and Brussels with tide-water. These are about to be converted to deep-water ship-canals.

The foreign commerce of Belgium is much like that of other European states. Wheat, meat, maize, cotton, and petroleum are imported mainly from the United States; iron ore is purchased from Luxemburg and Germany, and various raw materials are brought from France. In exchange there are exported fine machinery, linen fabrics, porcelains, fire-arms, glassware, and beet-sugar. From the Kongo state, at the head of which is the King of the Belgians, are obtained rubber and ivory. The rubber is sold mainly to the United States.

Brussels is the capital and financial centre. On account of the state control of the railways, it is also the directive centre of all the industries pertaining to commerce and transportation.

Holland.—The names Holland and Netherlands mean "lowland," and the state itself has a lower surface than any other country of Europe. Nearly half the area is at high-tide level or else below it. A large part, mainly the region about the Zuider[71] Sea, has been reclaimed from the sea.

In the reclamation of these lands stone dikes are built to enclose a given area, and from the basin thus constructed the water is pumped. The reclaimed lands, or "polders," include not only the sea-bottom, but the coast marshes as well; even the rivers are bordered with levees in order to prevent overflows. Windmills are the machinery by which the water is pumped from the polders into the sea. In no other part of the world is wind-power so extensively used. Almost every acre of the polders is under cultivation, and these lands grow a very large part of the vegetables and flowers consumed in the great cities of England, France, and Belgium.

The coast sand-barrens have been converted into pasture-lands that produce draught-horses, beef cattle, and dairy cattle. The horses find a ready market in the United States and the large European cities; the dairy cattle not needed at home are exported, the United States being a heavy purchaser. The beef cattle are grown mainly for the markets of London. Dutch butter is used far beyond the boundaries of the state, and Edam cheese reaches nearly every large city of Europe and America.

The sugar-beet is extensively cultivated, in spite of the great trade resulting from the cane-sugar industry of the East Indies. It is more profitable to import wheat from the United States and rye from Russia in order to use the land for the sugar-beet.

Practically no timber suitable for lumber manufacture exists, and building material therefore must be imported. Pine is purchased from Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States. Stone is purchased wherever it may be obtained as return freight, or as ballast. The coast fisheries yield oysters, herrings, and "anchovies," which are not anchovies, but sprats.

For want of coal and iron there are few manufactures, and the garden and dairy products are about the only export articles. There is an abundance of clay, and of this brick for road-making, tiles for building purposes, and porcelains are made. But little of the raw sugar is refined; most of it is sold to foreign refiners, and the United States is one of the chief customers.

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

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

This trade applies also to many of the products of the German industries which will not bear a heavy freight tariff, such as coal, ores, etc. It reaches the Rhine and Rhone river-basins and extends even to the Danube. Both Switzerland and Austria-Hungary send much of their exports through Holland. All trade at the various ports and through the canals is free, it being the policy to encourage and not to obstruct commerce.

Amsterdam, the constitutional capital, is one of the great financial and banking centres of Europe. The completion of the Nord Holland canal makes the docks and basins accessible to the largest steamships. Diamond-cutting is one of the unique industries of the city. Since the discovery of the African mines its former trade in diamonds has been largely absorbed by London.

More than half the carrying trade of the state centres at Rotterdam. By the improvement of the river estuaries and canals this city has become one of the best ports of Europe, and the tonnage of goods handled at the docks is enormously increasing. Vlissingen (Flushing) and the Hook are railway terminals that handle much of the local freights consigned to London. Delft is famous the world over for the beautiful porcelain made at its potteries.

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