They used to say that while France furnished mankind with their luxuries, Belgium supplied them with their necessities. But this is not wholly true, for the smaller country is celebrated for its exquisite lace and superb tapestries, while the gardens of Ghent raised orchids, azaleas and camellias for the flower-markets of France, Germany, England and even America.
These were the exports of Belgium, in the order of their importance: coal, iron, steel and zinc; firearms; glass; cement; ceramics; cotton, wool and flax; furniture and lace.
The centers of the metal, coal and glass industries were in the Walloon districts, especially in Charleroi and Liège, while the textile centers were, for the most part, in Flanders.
The story of how coal was first discovered in Belgium has been told a thousand times, but rarely, I think, in America. It seems that in a village not far from Liège there lived--some seven hundred years ago--a poor blacksmith named Houllos. One day he found himself quite out of money. He could not work to earn more, because he had no wood to heat his forge. While he sat bewailing his fate a mysterious stranger appeared and asked the cause of his woe. When he had heard the mournful story, "Take a large sack," said he, "and go to the Mountain of the People. There you must dig down three feet into the earth. You will find a black, rocky substance, which you must put into the sack and bring home. Break it up, and burn it in your forge." This is the reason why, in Belgium, coal still bears the name of _huille_, in memory of the blacksmith of Liège. Some think the stranger was an Englishman, since coal was already in use in London. But tradition has insisted that _ange_ and not _Anglais_, is the proper word, and that Houllos entertained an angel.
Near Mons are the great mounds of slag which were begun in the earliest times and look today not unlike the pyramids of Egypt. Whatever the origin of the mining industry in Belgium, there is nothing idyllic about the conditions there in modern times. The coal region of the Borinage is known as Le Pays Noir, and it certainly deserves the name.
The miners are called _Borains_, or coal-borers. "They live both on the earth and in the earth, delving amid the black deposits of vast primeval forests." Owing to their former long hours, which have been somewhat shortened in late years, the present generation is dwarfish, the men often under five feet and the women still less. Most of them cannot read or write, and they have little pleasure save what comes from beer. (More beer was sold per head in Belgium than even in Germany.) Of the hundred and twenty-five thousand miners in the country, three-quarters belonged to Hainault.