Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 218, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 September 1916 — MUNITION TOWN OF FRANCE [ARTICLE]

MUNITION TOWN OF FRANCE

Le Creusot and the Immense Ordnance Factories Started There by the Schnefders.

Le Creusot is the center of France’s war munition works. Like the famous Krupp works of Germany, Le Creusot’s vast ordnance factories owe their origin to the organizing and inventive genius of one family—the Schneiders. At the outbreak of the war the Schneider Iron works employed more than 15,000 workmen and their great shops, covering hundreds of acres of ground, were connected by a network of nearly 40 miles of railroad tracks. Since the war this plant has been enormously increased, says a National Geographic society bulletin. Le Creusot owes its importance In the manufacturing and foundry industry to the fact that it is in the center of one of the richest coal and iron mining districts of France. The coal beds of this region were discovered in the thirteenth century, but it was not untill 500 years later, in 1774, that the first iron works were established. Sixty years later the Schneiders, Adolphe and Eugene, established their first workshops here, and the little hamlet, formerly known as Charbonniere, began to grow. In 1841 it was a town of 4,000 people; just before the war there were 35,000 inhabitants, nearly half of whom were employed in the armorplate factories, the gun shops, the locomotive works and the ordnance plants. It was one of the Schneiders; Incidentally, who revolutionized warship armament in 1870. Up to that time the most progressive nations used wrought Iron for protective armor on their ships. Schneider proved the superiority of steel in resisting the penetrating power of projectiles. Le Creusot is adpiirably situated with respect to the French frontier, for while It is not so far from the firing line as to occasion undue delay in the transportation of munitions, It Is sufficiently removed to be well beyond the danger zone. It is 135 miles, in an airline, southwest of i Belfort, a fortress of the first class on the Alsace front, and is 175 miles south of Verdun.

Supplementing its railway connections, Le Creusot enjoys the transportation facilities of the Canal du Centre, five miles to the east. This waterway joins the Saone and the Loire. Th® former, rising to the north in the Fauci lies mountains a few miles below Epinal, flows south and mingles Its waters with the Rhone at Lyon. The Loire, the longest river in France, rises to the south and flows northwest into the Atlantic. ; ■■■ , .■■■■ While Le Creusot has practically no historical associations of its own, it is only a few miles southeast of Autun, the famous Augustodunum of the Romans, celebrated for its ancient schools. The 62 towers and most of the old walls have disappeared, and the town now occupies only about half the area of its most prosperous days.