History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends Geschiedenis van de Familie Adriaens | Page 69

Informatie over Vlaanderen in het Vlaams-Engels :
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOUTH-EAST-FLANDERS
According to a written eyewitness report, at the end of July 1845 a plague distroyed first the early white, and then the
red potatoes, which became that bad that even feeding to the cattle was not recommended. The same witness
described the famine which followed as far worse than the one of 1816. In Geraardsbergen, where 30% of the
inhabitants received support from the local welfare, starveling unemployed attacked the potato-market in 1846. In
1832, 1849 and 1866 cholera raged through the region.
Except for a remarkable revival from the 1850s in the villages surrounding Sint-Maria-Oudenhove thanks to the
gloves industry, the cottage industry was declining in most of the country. Thousands inhabitants from South-EastFlanders commuted daily or weekly to the coal mines of the Borinage (Province of Hainaut, Belgium), factories near
to Brussels or brickyards in Boom (Province of Antwerp, Belgium). Since 1870, seasonal labor in the sugar beets
sector in France became popular in South-East-Flanders. Around 1900 42% of the rural labors of the Province of
East-Flanders performed seasonal labor in France. Villages like Velzeke, where 20% of the population choose for this
type of labor in France, were like deserted during the summer and autumn seasons. Every year a few hundred laborers
from the region of Geraardsbergen left by boat for Chicago to work in the local cigar industry.
In South-East-Flanders itself, the cities of Geraardsbergen and Zottegem had a local attraction to labor thanks to
respectively the cigar, matches, lace and musical instrument industr