The production of armaments became the highest economic priority in
the belligerent countries, and the need for factory workers in such industries
exploded. Enemy occupation of France's great industrial bastion meant that
new centers of heavy industry had to be created in Paris and in the central
and southern provinces. By the close of 1915, the population of Paris stood
at nearly double its prewar size. A belt of cities stretching from Rouen in
the north to Marseilles and Grenoble in the south now provided much of
France's industrial strength. In the southern city of Toulouse the prewar
gunpowder factory employed 100 workers; by November 1918, it required
30,000. In Britain the population of London swelled steadily, and the new
munitions centers set up by Lloyd George in 1915 continued to draw in
workers. But the flow of migrants moved in other directions as well: the call
for agricultural workers drew Englishwomen out of the cities and onto the
land. In Germany, industrial centers like Essen and Dortmund and shipyard
cities like Danzig and Kiel grew. Meanwhile, the call-up of men reduced
the population of Berlin and Hamburg.
France became, next to the United States, the most important destination
in the world for foreign migrants. A flood of laborers, half a million strong,
poured in, the majority coming from Spain, China, and the Asian and
African portions of France's empire. In the small industrial town of Le
Creusot, the working population in the spring of 1918 included 1,700
Chinese, 240 Algerians, and over 400 workers from the Iberian peninsula.
Without counting prisoners of war, also an outside presence in the community,
the total foreign work force reached 2,770.
World History
