Jasper County Democrat, Volume 23, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 May 1920 — BELGIUM’S QUICK RECOVERY [ARTICLE]

BELGIUM’S QUICK RECOVERY

Hardest Hit Country In War Is First to Reach Normal State. Belgium, all but about one-eleventh of whose territory of 11,373 square miles had been for four years occupied, pillaged, devastated, combed for its last stand of flax, sifted for its last speck of gold by the Germans, with a seventh of its population toiling like slaves in Germany and the balance kept alive at home by food largely contributed by the United States, has been first to reach a normal state, and, after 16 months of feverish activity, now leads all the European belligerents in rehabilitation. One year after the armistice Belgium was the first to cease rationing her people. She had reduced the cost of living from 1,110 per cent above normal to 244 per cent. At the end of the war nearly 1,000,000 persons were out of work. By February, 1920, no one was out of work unless he wished to be. Eightyseven per cent of the coal mines, 100 per cent of_ the railways and 75 per cent of the textile factories had recovered their pre-war activities.

The tax returns for the first six months of the fiscal year 1919-20 had been estimated at $60,000,000; the actual returns were nearly a third over that sum. In the year before the war the trade of Belgium, export, import and transit, amounted to $1,725,000,000; in 1919 it amounted to $1,022,000,000. In 1913 imports worth $100,000,000 came from the United States; in the first 10 months of 1919 Imports from the same country were valued at $300,000,000. Incidentally, Belgium has killed profiteering by co-operative buying and selling. She borrowed $250, i ■ 000,000 at 5 per cent from Great "Britain and used $55,000,000 of it to purchase material from the departing American army. The net profit, exclusive of the loss of that distributed freely, was $5,000,000. —Current History.