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Show MUNITION TOWN OF FRANCE Le Creusot and the Immense Ordnance Factories Started There by the Schneiders. Le Creusot is the center of France's war munition works. Like the fatuous Krupp works of Germany, Le Creusot's vast ordnance factories owe their origin to the organizing and inventive gonitis of one family the Schneiders. At the outbreak of the war the Schneider Iron works employed more than lo.UK) workmen and their great shops, covering hundreds of acres of ground, were connected by a network of nearly 4U miles of railroad tracks. Since the war this plant has been enormously increased, says a National Geographic society bulletin. Le Creusot owes its Importance In the manufacturing and foundry industry indus-try to the fact that it is in the center of one of thi! richest coal and iron mining min-ing districts of France. The coal beds of this region were discovered in the thirteenth century, but It was not tin-till tin-till f.oo years later, iu 1771, that the first iron works were established. Sixty years later the Schneiders, Adolphe ami F.ugene, established their first workshops here, and the little hamlet, formerly known as Charbonniere, began be-gan to grow. In 1SU it was a town of 4,(100 people; just before the war there were ;!.". OHO inhabitants, nearly half of whom were employed In the armor-plate armor-plate factories, the gun shops, the locomotive lo-comotive works and the ordnance plants. "It was one of the Schneiders, incidentally, who revolutionized warship war-ship armament in 1S7G. Up to that time the most progressive nations used wrought iron for protective armor on their ships. Schneider proved the superiority of steel in resisting the penetrating power of projectiles. Le Creusot is admirably situated with respect to the French frontier, for while It Is not so far from the tiring tir-ing line as to occasion undue delay In the transportation of munitions, It Is sufiicii'iil ly removed to be well beyond the danger zone. It is .1 :." miles, in an airline, southwest of Belfort, a fortress of the first class on the Alsace front, and Is 175 miles south of Verdun. Ver-dun. While Le Creusot lias practically no historical associations of Its own, It is only a few miles southeast of Auttin the famous Augustoduiium of the 1U mans, celebrated for Its ancient schools. |