Evening Star Newspaper, December 31, 1922, Page 39

t ANK G. CARPENTER. BRUSSELS, Belgium. boat had left the Tartar ue city of Kazan and was steam- slowly toward Samara on the pian sea. s had exhausted thelr ssip and their eyes had watching the great of lumber drifting down am. So the four Americans on ard had sat down to play bridge. o men at the table were all mil- re Indeed. each had so much imoney that his bills bulged out the satehel beside him. The bets were in mill nd they played for ten thousand @ point. Tke game went on with varying fortune, winnings to be cashied in at the end of the voyage. At ery came that the boat Wwas nearing Samara, and they threw their cards on the table and began to count up. ns tast the I venture, had acquired his great sklill in cards by his frequent stays at French Lick. 40,000,000 when 1 rubles, was in an zreat famine of some decades ago, | would hav 000,000 goid. Now, & of the Russian currency, it represents 1o more than $10, or 1,000 cents. Now 4 single cout cquals 40,000 rubles, so that a man is a millionaire if he has 25 cents in his jeans. able in aris the other night an American gave a dinmer with a million-ruble mote at ecach piate as & place card. writing the name of the zuest on its face. I have just re- cetved a letter from Moscow, the stamp upon which represents 200,000 or what notw equals 5 cents. 1en T last visited Moscow bought 2,000,000 such or that sum. This enerm not o sthar European coun the faith of the pea are hoarding such think may sarvive, I are afraid of the paper thrifty peasants have os, e 15 decline of exchange, nts. as they en the French francs, and begun to moneys pack away in their woolen stockings the mnew aluminum-bronze coins, which are now issued for the franc nd hall franc. They are worth no more than the paper currency. but the people imagine ther have intrin- sic value. \ KORF. a high Russian offi- tells me that fear the de- soon as the eir printing faith in the that their k after this had passed ¥. There- a4 them. hiding the tched roofs or dig- * the great brick which they sleep Wwent on it wi that all whisky or vodka in which that liquor was sold the czar government had the under the czar, n to as 1 s sta they had and belie come b bolshevik ¥ but rubles od zar value mi regi they = the hole un it tore paper i Eing out o or stone stoves upo time at found bottle whe night. A moncpoly for its manufacture had disappeared. Those bottles were of white glass and of various sizes. The thorities investigated and found the peasants were stuffing them czar rubles and burying them, corked, in t greatest of safety deposit vaults. old Mother Earth. The corks keep out the mois- ture. and the peasants believe that the money will sprout into a crop of real wealth when normaley returns to their land. I hear similar stories as to the antics of the peasants in Poland and others of the mushroom republics which some of us think may yet be transformed into sturdy oaks in the international forest. One relates to # peasant who lives not far from Warsaw. He had offered to sell his with rightly farm for 50.000.000 Polish marks. Be- | fore the transaction was closed he liecame alarmed at the way the gov- | was rolling out new bills So he went to the ernment from its presses. huyer and said: . ‘I am afraid of this new money, and I would much prefer to have you give me 50,000.000 sheets of blank paper in<tead. “Go away!” eald the buyer. who was a shrewd, thrifty Jew. “You are asking twice as much for your farm.” And the deal straightway fell through. My last story is from Austria, where for several vears the krone has been “on the toboggan™ and is carry- ing the country and people to finan- cial destruction. It has dropped 20, ©00 points within the past week, but 1« stil! something under 100,000 per $1. When I passed through Vienna iong before the world war every krone was worth more than twenty American cents. and 100.000 would have equaled more than $20,000. The story relates to a patient who has been kept for some ten years or more in an insane asylum outside Vienna. He is a man of wealth, and the other day. when he escaped, he had one of the old twenty-kronen gold pieces in his pocket. In his wanderings he met a taxi and took a long ride. When the chauffeur de- manded his pay the figures on the xi meter represented 53.000 kronen. The lunatic threw up his hands in despair as he handed over his gold piece, and he doubted even his own insanity and was sure of that of the chauffeur when the latter handed him vack bills to the amount of 147,000 kronen as change. * ok ok x LL this is a preface to some in- 4 X vestigations I have been making these past two weeks regarding your mortgage on Belglum. Tt shows why I dare not give you the figures in this Buropean currency. and why all wy calculations must be in American dollars and cents. According to fig- ures furnished me by the Treasury Diepartment at Washingten on the i3th of last May, Belgium owed the United States just about $429,000,000. It is not much, perhaps. in the total more than $12,000,000,000 which the several forelgn nations owe us, but it represents more than $21 per family, and would be a tidy little sum to put irto public improvements it we could have the spot cash. Four hundred and twenty-nine million dol- dals would make 10,000 miles of new raflways at $42,900 a mile. It would make more than 28,000 miles of first- «lass motor highways at $15,000 a mile, or enough to reach around the world at the equater and build also a first Roosevelt route from Seattle to Boston. With this money that Belgtum, swes u¥, which we raimed % Jur lberty vpads and which is'1n addition to the many millions we gave in charity to feed the Belglans during the war, Uncle Sam could create a system of new motor roads, zigmegging this <5 I could stamps | in Russia but also in many | s trying to | and they | e | way and that, taking in almost every 'prin ipal city of the United States. The road might start at Boston and | g0 via New York, Philadelphia, Balti- : more and Washingtoy, through Pitts- | burgh, Wheeling, Cincinnati, and on through Louisville, Nashville, Mem- {phls and Birmingham to New Or- |leane. This first lap is less than 2,000 | mites. - | From New Orleans the fino mew | highway could be pushed on to Dallas and EI Paso and thence over the mountains to Los Angeles, north to | {San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, |and still not use up the 4.000 miles | which, for easy figuring, we will es- timate for the next lap. From Seattle it could run on east over the Cas- | | cades to Spokane, and thence over the Rockies on to 8t. Paul, a distance of |less than 2,000 miles. where, turning | | south, it might take in Sioux City. | The winner was a former | Omaha, Kansas City and St. Louis and | ror 3 road from Boston to Panama suvernor from the United States, who, | #8ain reach New Orleans, with per-iand run two tracks through our zone | haps 2,000 miles more. ‘The fourth section would be another Peoria and perhaps Indianapolis, and cqualed more than $30,- | éxtending from Chicago east to De- |Guam and Samoa and the Hawailan the collapse |troit and along the shore of Lake|Irlands on the way back. |Erfe to Toledo, Cleveland and Buf- falo, and thence going on to Albany and Boston, easily covered in an al- lotment of 1,500 miles more. THE SUNDAY Dilemma. jalong the canal. Or. suppose Wwe |could bridge the Pacific, the extra | His winnings werc just | 1,000 miles of the best road road going | 15,000 miles would allow us to motor | amount which, |{rom New Orleans northward through the | on our own roadway from San Fran- amara during the | Mississippl valley to Chicago, taking in|cisco via Honolulu to Manila, wl!h' | more than 8,000 miles over to take in All this might be done with the money we have loaned to the Bel- glans, which I, for one, hope they will pay. They are supposed to get it | So far we have used up less than back as a first lien on the German 13,000 miles of our new automobile reparations, and much of what they highway. We might double its have already recelved is now going | length, and, could we bridge the At- {lantie, still have enough money left i | “BELGIUM IS FAMOUS FOR ITS BREEDS OF HEAVY DRAFT HORSES. BUT NOT EV ! MALS COULD PULL SUCH BIG LOADS OF FLAX WERE IT NOT FOR THE & Appeals to‘}.Fo;lfd Totalslx Mllllon Dollars a Month BY S. S. MARQUIS, D. D. (Continued freim last Su | HE following story told by man who was not in the em ploy of the company will serve to illustrate what I know was the effect of the spirit of the company upon its employes in hundreds of in- stances: “Beside me in a street car.”” So the story runs, “there sat a man past fifty vears of age. He was a foreigner. and | by the badge he wore I knew he was a Ford employe. A woman entered the car with two small children. Both ch dren were poorly clad. Their stockings | were full of holes, their shoes worn. The mother took the smallest of the | children on her lap, and by doing o ex- posed two large holes in the knees of to cover these holes, but the little dress was too short to conceal them. Each time the mother tried to hide the holes the old man next to me shifted rest- lessly in his seat. Presently the woman got off the car and the old man followed her. My curiosity was aroused, and T also followed. At the curb he spoke to her. I could not hear what he said, bu from gestures made toward the little ones, T gathered that he was Interested in them. After talking with the woman | for a few minutes he accompanied her to a nearby store. I followed and stood lat a distance so that they would not know they were being observed. Stock- Ings, shoes and rubbers were purchased. | Also some underwear, and a coat for | the smaller child. He left the store with the woman, doffed his cap to her at the door and said ‘Good-bye.” The woman stood dazed, apparently unable to express the gratitude she felt. T fol lowed the man and spoke to him. “ *That your daughter?” I asked. “*‘Who? he said. ““The woman with the babi 0, I don't know her. But did you see dem poor kids? I got myself four children, and was poor like that. Now 1 work at Ford's and make good living. When T see dem poor kids it make me think of mine, and I help ‘em a little it “What was the woman’s name?" T don't know.’ Where does she live™ T no ask her." { “‘What Is your name?" i “He locked at me sharply and su { ‘You one of dem newspaper men. You |wfl(e it in de paper. My wife find out, 1 and 1 catch hell. She no belleve me and get jealous. I no give my name.' “I endeavored to convince him that he was mistaken. It was no use. He hurried away, looking back occasionally to see if I were following him. ‘There was something in the spirit of those days that called out of men the finest and best in them. One caught a glimpse of a new era in industry. And perhaps the dawn is there—behind the clouds. CHAPTER XI. THE FORD CHARITIES. \/ R. FORD hates the word charity VI ana ait that i¢ stands for.- He gives generously to friends and em- ployes, but it is in recognition of services rendered. He gives peither & stone nor money to the man who asks bread, but & job. “No man ever helped another by stving money,” he insists. I have heard him say that the only man on whom he ever bestowed a aj | the child’s stockings. She made attempts | ‘jor three of them, or even forty or into new roads. Would it not be bet- ter from now on for Uncle Sam to | cha STAR, spend more of his money on our pub- ways about the best paved on earth? * Kk k¥ A to the highways of France and Belgium, T know whereof I speal have been motoring back and forth across little Belgium, making at times more than 200 miles in one day. Some of my travels have been in a Benz limousine, left here by the Germans —a seven-passenger car of " fif lhorsepower, with a first-class Belgian uffeur, pamed Jules. We THESE FINE ANL- SMOOTH. HARD ROADS. ‘WASHINGTON, D. C. Frank G. Carpenter Gives Some Motor-Car Views of the Country asa Finan- cial and Industrial Asset—Farms Which Average 37 Bushels of Wheat, 50 Bushels of Barley and 300 Bushels of Potatoes Per Acre—Crops Nursed Like Babies and Every Shock Capped—Elephants in Horse Hide—The Stone Roads of Belgium and What the Debt Might Do for America—How to Be Richer Than Rockefeller. A Card Game on the Volga Which Netted Sixty Millions—Farms Offered for Sheets of Blank Paper—An Austrian Lunatic at Large and His Financial miles made, as a rule, about thirty | lic roads rather than lend it to other an hour, and all the way have found | countries to use in making their high- { good roads of macadam or well paved with stone blocks. | Belgium has enough public roads to reach twice as far as from Phila- | delphia to San Francisco, notwith- ! standing the country all told Is not than the distance between Philadclphia and Baltimore. It covers an area about one-fourth that of Pernsylva It is less than ! third the size of Indiana 4nd only a little larger than Massachusetts with Delaware added thereto. The land for the most part is flat, although the one- | DECEMBER _ 31 1922—PART‘ 4. rise in places to the | Blue Ridge of Virginia. height of the Belgium, |1ike Holland, is made up largely of | ! the rich earth washings brought down | by rivers and streams from the high |1ands, and it is cut up by canals. We crossed a canal every few miles, and this necessitates bridges which in | During the past month or s0'I have much longer one way than from Bal- | most cases are of stone or concrete. motored through = great part of|timore to New York and not much|There are more than 1.000 miles of | France, and within the past fortnight | wider canals and five rivers that are used as commercial waterway The Scheldt, which would not be consid- ered a large stream in the United Stgtes, has on its banks three cities— Antwerp, Ghent and Tournai. It has been a water highway for centuries, and boats were paying toll upon it have ' Ardenne mountains at the southeast'as far back as A. D. 1000, The freight " American Mortgage on Belgium Covers Live, Going Concern now carried by water runs annually into the hundreds of millions of tons, and in some years to more than 1,000,000,000. There are flve ship canals, having a length, all told, six- teen miles greater than our big ditch at Panama. In addition, there is a network of railways a little less than 5,000 miles long, which it is now proposed to electrify From this you will see that your mortgage on Belglum covers a live. going concern, and that the property, and safest of tho twenty international loans we have made. But wo can see all this better from our Benz limousine. The car weighs two tons, and its cushions are roft, for they were made for a high Ger- | man general and well cared for dur- |ing the war. We ask Jules to throw !back the top and speed up the motor. | We go like the wind and feel richer |a roadway of square stone blocks. Rockefeller cannot buy a more com- fortable car, a brighter sky, nor lungs {that can breathe better the cham- | pagne of this air. According to cur- | rent reports. he has no easy stomach, jand T am sure he has never seen more beautiful views than those we are now paseing through. The country is one vast truck gar- cov- den, cut into small fields, ercd with the richest of crops. T are no fences, and the grass, grain and vegetables extend on and on, with green trees lining the roads as far ax our eyes can reach. The crops are even heavier than those we saw in now “THE SMALL FARMS OF BELGIUM LEAD THE WORLD IN WHEAT, PRODUCING 37 BUSHELS TO THE ACRE. LOOK LIKE HUTS!. ST AN AVERAGE YIELD OF 15 BUSHELS IN THE UNITED STATES. Many Persons Among Those Who Seek Financial Assistance for Various Causes Ask for Motor Cars—Bishop Wanted Two Carloads of Cars for Missions in Order That Work Might ’ Be Greatly Increased—Ford Seldom Places Money Gift in Any Manner That Puts It Beyond | € 1€ : : PR OERt = = [charity was ruined by it The, amount given in this case wa as 1j recall it, about $17. The 'mvezumentl of that $17 has saved him millions. | Just another example of a wise pse of money for which he has become | famous. Mr. Ford has no use for the ordi- nary channels of charity and philan | thropy. Such matte taken care of by other members of the family. !To the Red Cross. the communlty | | fund, to people destitute on account {of sickness or the infirmi {and to many charitable institutions Mrs. Ford and Edsel give generously. Thousands of people, high and low, | great and small, known and un- known. make pilgrimages to Detroit | to obtain money from Mr. Ford for every concelvable object under the sun. Many thousands more write let- | ters asking his financial support. It: 1s railroad fare and postage wasted. A great deal of my time, before 1, went with the Ford Motof Company and since, has been taken up by peo ple out to get money from Mr. Ford. and who insist that either I put their ase un to him or obtain for them an, {interview in order that they may jplead their ow As a matter of curiosity I kent for a time a record of the sums thus sought. The total was close to $4,000,000 a year. The requests for money coming into | his own office average, so I have been informed, over $6,000,000 a month. » One reuest that frequently came under my notice was for a Ford car. The entire output of the factory, It often seemed to me, would hardly meet the demand if every request; were to be granted. Charitable, reli- | glous and philanthropic institutions | {and organizations were in need of a { Ford runabout or truck—possibly two | se. jfifty of them—right away. Some- i times it was a member of the parish iwho wanted to “surprise our dear minister”. by making him a present of a car. Not infrequently the mln-' Ister made bold to state his ownj needs. 'One bishop wrote asking that two carloads of runabouts be sent to him at once. He had in his diocess a large number of missions and a small pumber of missionaries. Give each of them a runabout and their work could be quadrupled. It was a fine ddea. But it was not altogether original. We had been confronted with something like it before. But it required more than one letter to con- vince the good bishop that if the thought was an inspired one, then inspiration as to the value of Ford runabouts, sedans and trucks in reli- glous, charitable and .philanthropic work had become too general for the Ford Motor Company alone. to cope with it. It was necessary to sell a few cars in order to keep goin Next to a runabout for the parson seemed to be the need fot “a bell for ® - I©. His Personal Interest or Direction—Insists Upon Self-Support. ' ONE OF THE FEW PHOTOGRAPHS OF MRS. HENRY FORD. our new church.” One was almost forced to the conclusion that if every 'R. FORD once made a contribu- tion toward the furnishing of a IV SETERWEEE he only thing T can give you that | would mean anything would be my i Mr. Ford seldom places a gift in the way of money in a manner that {puts it beyond his personal interest and direction. He took over a hospi- ital at a time when it was in financial difficulties. He put millions into it. Lut before doing so he paid back to others who had previously put money the institution their contribu- tions in full. . then I am going to control it.” he said to me As to the manner of using his money for the benefit of others, Henry | Ford has his own ideas. They are not | of the conventional sort. Few of his {ideas are. His theory that wealth | should be amassed in a way that will |not create poverty, and so make | charity necessary; that the profits of industry are not so much of a private !and personal affair as to justify any lone man | thropic di proper disposition of such profits is to |put them back into industry for the | benefit of labor, is a theory fundamentally sound that I see much to justify the criticism that ,is made of it. Tts weakness, it ap- pears to me, is that it overlooks the fact that we have not vet reached the | industrial millennium in which there is work for all all the time; that accl- idam or old age may render even a | Ford employe helpless in the struggle for existence; that there are thou- sands of peopde in this world now, |and thousands more will yet be born, mentally and physically unequal to do |anything that will give them ade- auate support. Charity of the kind Losp that Henry Ford decries, and which we all decry for that matter. is, as things are. a necessity, and there seems to be no good reason why he should not bear his portion of it. His failure to do so, however, should not blind us to the great good he is doing in his own way. We could even afford to have a few more billlonaires like him. But until the millennium arrives we need a few people of means who will accept our modern organized charity as one of the necessary evils, and give it their support. In accordance with Mr. Ford's idea as to the best way to help the other fellow. two rules were fundamental in the sociological department of the parson had a Ford car, and every puilding which I was fitting out for | company. ‘The first was that no prob- church a bell, the pressing religious | recreational purposes. When he was lem was to be solved by the use of problems of the country would be at!making out the check for the sumjmoney when the solution could be 4n end. A man of wealth is confronted by no problem more difficult than that of making a wise use of a portion of his wealth for charitable pur- poses. To give to. ease one's con- aclence or to avoid criticism is not a difficult matter. It can be done by a man who has plenty of money with- out thought of sacrifice. | pledged he paused and, looking up at me, raid: “I might as well make this out for a thousand or two more while 1 am at it/ “No,” I replied, “the amount you are giving is sufficient. 1 am not going to expend more than 1s necessary just because I can get it" “Well,” he said, “if you want more you might as well have it. The gift of money means nothing to me. reached through work. The second was that no case should be under- taken that could not be put ulti- mately upon a self-supporting basis. Thousands of cases of destitution were relieved by gliving the head of the family, or some member of it, em- ployment. There was a time when all applicants for employment were looked up before they were hired in, “If 1 am to support that | in making even a philan-! tribution of them: that the 50 mnear cannot | THE GRAIN STACKS and preference was given to the most needy. to men of large families | rather than to men with few depend- ents, and to married men rather than to single men. The fact that special consideration was given to old men and cripples brought hundreds of applications from these classes. It was impossible, of course, to take on all who applied. but every effort was made to find places for as many as possible. It was ne ry to select special jobs for the old and the physically handi- capped. The work must be light and as far removed from danger as pos- sible. ever received an additional while in the employ and the only instance on record of injury to an old man was the case of one who went to sieep and fell off hi chair. Over 1.700 cripples were in the cim- . ploy of tiie company at the outbreak of the war. In addition to these. | some four or five thousand more men, | disabled more or less by diseas d who for that reason would be reject- | ed by industry, were on its pay roll | After the war the company agreed to | take a thousand handicapped men as | fast as they came out of hospitals ury * % k¥ done as a charity in the ordinar sense of that word. The company prided itself on the fact that it could place these men so that they could earn the wage paid them. Cripples, because of the difficulty they experi- ence in getting a job, as a r their appreciation by doing well the work given them. By way of illus- tration 1 recall the case of a blind |man hired in and put to work. A few days later his foreman brought two men with perfect vision and sound of body to the employment manager: “Here,” said the foreman, “take these men and transfer them to some other department. I don't need them. That blind man you gave me the other day is doing their work |and his, too, and they are only in his |{way. And what's more, he keeps singing all the time he is working.” He had been a piano tuner. to my office and told me his story. had been able to make enough mone jto buy food, but friends or family had to help out from time to time in the matter of clothes and room rent. He would like a chance to make his own way in the world. It was given him. And he made good. Mr. Ford lifted to the level of self- support hundreds of people who oth- erwise would have been living on the charity of others. Employes {1l and in hospitals, with their savings exhausted, had their hospital bills paid by the company, and in addition to this a weekly al- lowance, cqual to half pay, was given the family. I have known hospital care at the expcuse of the company to extend in some instances over a period of more than two years. Just so long as the physician stated the jman had a chance to recover and re- turn to work he was regarded as a Ford man and was taken care of. in all cases where it was possible, how- ever, some member of the family of a sick employe was given work until the employe himself was able to re- — (Continued on Slxth Page.) although small, is one of the richest.' than Rockefeller as we fly along over | 1 do not recall that a cripple | of the conipany. | Let one suppose that all this was| show o He came ! He ! r r France. The sho in the whea |fields are ®o thick they stand ow liko soldiers dressed in the yellow uniform of Eelgium. In places they have been carricd to the sides of the fields, *0 as not to interfere with the plowing, which often results here it two erops a vear. Sce how well-kept everything is There are no weeds anywhere. There are no tools lying about, und the grain Is protected in shock and ir stack. Those oats shocks on ous right are each made up of eigh sheaves with cap sheaves on top. The wheat shocks on our left are cappeé the same way. The sheaves are smal and the straw is long. Each sheaf i as big around as a three-gallor bucket, and when T lean one agains my knees it reaches as high as my walst, The grain is exceedingiy heavy, for the production here pm acre of wheat, cate, barley, rye anc potatoes exceeds that of any othe: wilized country. The wheat vield i | thirty-seven bushels per acre, whils our average is only fifteer. Befors the war Belglum imported abou! three-fourths of her wheat, but her production of other foodstuffs, in cluding meat, was sufficient for the whole population, and she cxporter sugar, potatocs. draft horses, frui and vegetables. She produced more than 600,000,000 pounds of iret this year. URING the war the Germans ca ried away 92000 horees, 560.06( cattle, 350,000 pigs and 1.630.000 fowls They have since brought back more than 14,000 horses. 70.000 cattle and 54.000 fowls. The country has now more than 2000600 horses, 1500000 cattle and aimost 1.000,000 pigs. But 1o return to the crops througk which we arc passing. Here anc there we sce a wheat stack. It it beautifully rhaped and the cap ie s¢ io is tied « ost like two rowe straw rope taken as to the flax, which the great crops of Belgiu industry being famous all over the The flax is cut with sickles ¢ little stalks, not much bigges knitting needles. are proppeé i ne another so that thes look, like 5o many vellow dunce caps care is one ol . its lines world and than After drying they are put up ir shedves of double story. like the wheat aud oa 11 carefully capped and later are carried in huge cariy to the mitls near the streams in which the flax must be rotted to get out the fiber. Belgium makes quantities of linen, and she exports more thar $16.000.000 worth of flax in one year As we go on we pase flelds of pota- toes w ich are growing 300 bushely per u patches of barley which vield fifty bushels and great quanti- {ties of zreen hops trained on tal po w This is a land of good bee: v costs ubout 10 cents a pint greedily drunken. fo far ohilition las not corked up the Belgium throat. is s '« dragging huse wagons of wheat to pass by Eacl wagon Lolds from three to five tons but two horses pull it with ease over these smooth Belgium blocks. S teams haul two loaded wagons, the tongue of the second tied to the back of the first. The wagons themselves weigh half a ton, and some are sc heavily loaded that an American team could not budge them on one of the rough country roads of the states. The Lorses are enornfous. They look like elephants in horsehide, anc some of the best will weigh a tor each. 1 see even bigger horses pull- ing the drays of the cities and porta They still compete with the trucks Before the war draft stallions to u value of $10,000.000 per annum wers | annually exported from here to Greal Britain. Oxen aleo are used, and eves cows, donkeys and some Americau mules which were left over from thy world w There are but few t tors. although thev are gradually coming in to those parts of the coun- try where the coil is heavy. and 1 farms of 100 acres or more. The {principal work for which they are emploved is In deep plowing. | o ox % O of the surprising features of our travel through Belgium is the multitude of small farms and alse the intensive cultivation. Before the war out of less than 7.500.000 ueres of total area about 5.000,000 wcres were tilled. Much of the ground iy worked with the hoe and the spade, and no less than one-sixth of the people are classed as agricultural L borers. Out of every 100 persons em- ploved on the farms only sixteen arve paid wages. The others are proprie- tors or members of the family, most of whom live in farm villages of one or two story brick houses, whence they go out to work their smali | patches of land As to the size of the holdings. the average tract to each laborer is only four acres. while in other lands it iy from thirty to one hundred acres, and as time goes on these farms will nd smaller unless the n the inheritance laws, ussed lis 1T nave this wubject with one of the leading real estate lawyery of Brussels. He tells me that a ma must leave one-fourth of his prop- erty to his wife, and that the balance must be divided among his children, according to the number he has, oniy a fixed portion being left that he mav will away. If he has but one child, half of the residue after his wife has her fourth goes to that child, and h may will away the remainder. If ha has two children, one-third of the balance goes to each child, and he has one-third to leave as he pleases, If he has three children or more, hu {can dispose of only one-fourth of tin balance after his wife has her sl lund the remainder must be div | equally among the ghildren. Suppose. for instance, a man dies leaving a 120-acre farm. Thirty acres must go to the wife, and if he has but one child it gets forty-five acres and the remaining forty-five acres can be disposed of by will. If the may has four children, the wife still re ceives her thirty acres, but he can devise only twenty-two and a halt acres or one-fourth of that remalning, and the rest (sixty-seven and one half acres) must be divided oq among the four children, giving child less than seventeen he has six children, cuci jreceive a ligle more than eleve ! As cvery child wants, if pos Fyible, an outlet to the roud, the fleld- |facing the highways are often mer. ribbons. In my future letters I shall write concerning other aspects of your mortgage on Belgium. (Carpenter's World Trayels. by Frank G re doo e acres 1t 4 woul Copywight, 1928, Carpenter.)