f France
which, on the thirty-first of December, 1914, amounted to only 4,050
millions of francs, amounted to 6,050 millions on the thirty-first of
December, 1917.

And during the first three months of the year 1918, from the first of
January to the thirty-first of March, the surplus deposits made by the
peasants and the working classes in the National Saving Bank was
seventy-five millions of francs, an excess of more than eight hundred
thousand francs daily.

* * * * *

A nation that is worn out and bled white is incapable of manufacturing
and sees its commerce and industry perish. Here is the statement of M.
Georges Pallain, Governor of the Bank of France, representing the
accounting of the Counsel General of the Bank for 1917:

From the industrial and commercial point of view, a
satisfactory amelioration is noticeable. The investigation
of the Minister of Industry in July last permits the
statement that the percentage of factories and business
houses rendering a periodical accounting, of which the
advantage is not yet established, is only twenty-three per
cent; it was fifty-five per cent in August, 1914.

An indication of the development of industrial activity is
furnished by the continued increase of the demand for coal.

Operations for mining ore have been pushed with vigor. Coal
production increased greatly in 1914. On the whole it still
remains less than it was before the war, since the invasion
has deprived us of the valleys in the north and the richest
portion of Pas-de-Calais; but in the regions where mining is
still possible the production exceeds by about forty per
cent the figures for 1913.

This remarkable increase has compensated to a certain extent
for the falling off in the importations of coal from
England; nevertheless it leaves our supply of coal less than
our demand for it.

To remedy this insufficiency and, at the same time, to give
our national industry greater independence, researches and
experiments have been equally intensified with a view to
employing our hydraulic resources. In the Alps, in the
Pyrenees and in the central Massif new installations are
under way, and they have already attracted important
metallurgic and chemical plants.

The development of industrial production has had the result
of an incre