The French and Belgian troops marched into the Ruhr on January 11. Their first objective was Essen, but in a few days the occupation was extended to the other centers of Westphalian coal production. The German authorities and population did not resist, and the local police coöperated with the invaders in maintaining order. But that was as far as coöperation went. The Kohlensyndicat had already transferred all its records to Hamburg. The German Government ordered the operators not to deliver coal to the French and Belgian authorities even though it were paid for. The mine-owners, at a meeting called by the French authorities on January 15, refused to obey General Degoutte’s order to continue deliveries, on the ground that they had to obey the order of their own Government. It was suggested that negotiation for coal deliveries should be carried on between Paris and Berlin. Thereupon the six largest coal producers were arrested and sent to Mainz for trial by court martial. The miners employed by the arrested men promptly went on strike. Wherever French soldiers appeared in mines or factories the workers quit immediately. There were no exceptions. The solidarity of the workers with their employers and the Berlin Government amazed and baffled the French and Belgians. Threats and arrests had no effect. When the invaders tried to move the coal and coke already mined, the German Government issued orders to railroad and Rhine navigation officials and employees to transport no reparation coal. This measure completely tied up Ruhr traffic, blocked the Rhine ports with barges, and necessitated the militarization of the intricate system of railways. But the French and Belgian Governments did not have the one hundred and twenty thousand trained railwaymen and canal-boat and tug hands to grapple with the situation. The mine-owners paid their striking workmen, and full pay was sent from Berlin to the railwaymen. Where the French succeeded in moving trains and barges, sabotage began. Bridges and locks were dynamited, signal-stations and switches tampered with, and vital parts of machinery removed from locomotives and tug-boats. Efforts, partly successful at first, were made to run locomotives and rolling-stock into unoccupied Germany. The local authorities refused point-blank to coöperate with the French and Belgians, and this movement spread throughout the Rhineland, except in the British zone. (The Americans had withdrawn from Coblenz within a fortnight after the Ruhr occupation.) Hotel- and restaurant-keepers joined with shopkeepers in boycotting the invading troops.