270 
Modern Business Geography 
quinine, and cigars are manufactured in large quantities because their 
raw materials are grown extensively in the Dutch East Indies. Am- 
sterdam is especially known as a place where great numbers of dia- 
monds are cut. 
The advantages of Belgium in manufacturing. Its position, its coal 
fields, and its iron mines, with the excellent harbor of Antwerp, make 
Belgium a great manufacturing country in proportion to its size. 
Liége, because of its coal fields, is a great steel center like Birmingham 
and Pittsburgh. Belgium leads the world in glass-making, with the 
main center at Charleroi. Ghent, in the center of a flax-growing dis- 
trict, is famous for linen, Verviers in a sheep-grazing district is noted 
for woolen goods, and Brussels for carpets. In no other country are 
intensive manufacturing and intensive agriculture more intimately 
combined. 
Why Switzerland is a manufacturing country. Although Switzer- 
land is an independent country, it is only three fifths the size of West 
Virginia, and is far more rugged. Since coal as well as iron must be 
imported from Germany or elsewhere, the streams. flowing down steep 
mountain slopes have been made to do most of the work that is usu- 
ally done by coal. Thus the industrial workers of Switzerland are as 
numerous as the farmers. In spite of the disadvantages of a moun- 
tainous relief and no seacoast, the earnest, careful, intelligent work of 
the Swiss people has made Switzerland thrive in manufacturing. It 
specializes chiefly in products for which raw materials can be easily im- 
ported and which take up little room in proportion to their value, so 
that their transportation to distant markets is cheap; for instance. 
watches, jewelry, silks, and embroideries. | 
Zurich, a large railroad center at the foot of the Lake of Zurich, 
makes jewelry and is the trading center for watches, which it collects 
from western Switzerland, the watch manufacturing district. St. Gallen 
near the Lake of Constance is famous for embroideries on cotton. 
The United States often imports more than $10.000.000 worth of 
embroideries from Switzerland in a year. 
The mountainous parts of Switzerland support so many cattle that 
great quantities of milk are available for cheese, butter, condensed 
milk, and milk chocolate. The United States imports several million 
dollars’ worth of Swiss cheese each year, and Neufchétel cheese is a 
well known food product in most parts of America.