To protect the growing German steel industry, German coal producers—whose directors also sat on the boards of the German state railways and German steel companies—began to increase shipping rates on coal exports to France.[4] In early 1923, Germany defaulted on its reparations and German coal producers refused to ship any more coal across the border. French and Belgian troops conducted the Occupation of the Ruhr to compel the German government to resume shipments of coal and coke. Germany characterized the demands as onerous under its post war condition (60 per cent of what Germany had been shipping into the same area before the war began).[5] This occupation of the Ruhr, the centre of the German coal and steel industries outraged many German people.