A CONDEMNED INDUSTRIAL CENTER

The Death of Creusot

I indicated in this place the scandal of the measures taken to make the Creusot factories benefit from transport tariffs and that the certain deficit of their exploitation was borne by the railway companies, and through the Companies, thanks to the game of the guarantee of interests, by the State, I said that the scandal. it was less about wanting to artificially maintain a doomed industrial center than about using this hypocritical method of diverted subsidies. I specified that if reasons of national defense could militate in favor of the artificial maintenance of the Schneider factories - which I do not consider to be demonstrated in any way - the necessary sacrifice had to be discussed, evaluated by: Parliament then, by his care, included in the budget. I want to indicate today why this public discussion and evaluation would be necessary.

It must be said, in fact, that by writing for the first time in a Parisian newspaper this truth, that the industrial center of Le Creusot is condemned to disappear and that the Schneider factories can no longer be maintained in Le Creusot except by supporting blows of millions to maintain what has become an economic heresy, I am not making an original discovery. The recovery of Alsace-Lorraine could make France the leading metallurgical power in Europe. But this recovery imposes new conditions which must be taken into account and we must not want to bring about this union of iron and coal in the very place where there has never been iron and where there is, for so to speak, no coal. This is not a new truth either. She was known to Le Creusot, as well as to the Comité des Forges, so well known that public opinion still remembers this press campaign born from certain imprudent words attributed to the most qualified representative of the said Comité des Forges.

The incident dates from the start of the Great War. In the words of this representative we thought we saw the expression of the fear of a possible return of Alsace-Lorraine to France, a return which, precisely, by moving the centers of meeting of iron and steel, by bringing us back to powerful industrial centers. would disrupt the economic map of Europe.

I recall this incident to clearly show that the Forges Committee, that the managers of the Schneider factories knew, at all times, that one of the direct consequences of our victory would be the condemnation of the industrial center of Le Creusot.

Now, since they knew, why did they take no account of this knowledge which could be so precious to them? The Creusot factories were, in pure and sound logic, condemned to certain death, there is no doubt on this point. So why didn't they take precautions? I fully admit that. for reasons of a military nature, we did not want to bring back to the East, towards iron and coal, national defense factories which must be kept, as much as possible, out of reach of the invader , but then, there was something else to look for. Since we could not go towards black coal, why did we not go towards white coal, getting closer, without any risk, this time, to the Alps or! of the Pyrenees? No, the period of fabulous profits passed calmly and without foresight. We distributed dividends and as for the formidable part of the war profits that we wanted to wrest from the tax authorities, this part that we would have so well reused in the transfer of factories to the electrical force born from waterfalls, we distributed it. has simply transformed into gigantic expansions of these paradoxical factories which must, today, fetch their iron and coal from hundreds of kilometers away. So, since we knew and did nothing, why would the Nation pay today the costs of this improvidence which does not even have the excuse of ignorance?...

Alexis CAILLE