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Title: Commercial Geography
A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges
Author: Jacques W. Redway
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Language: English
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COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY
A Book for High Schools
Commercial Courses, and
Business Colleges
by
JACQUES W. REDWAY, F.R.G.S.
Author of "A Series of Geographies," "An Elementary
Physical Geography," "The New Basis of Geography"
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York ... 1907
Copyright, 1903, by
Jacques W. Redway
PREFACE
The quiet industrial struggle through which the United States passed
during the last decade of the nineteenth century cannot fail to impress
the student of political economy with the fact that commercial
revolution is a normal result of industrial evolution. Within a period
of twenty-five years the transportation of commodities has grown to be
not only a science, but a power in the betterment of civil and political
life as well; and the world, which in the time of M. Jules Verne was
eighty days wide, is now scarcely forty.
The invention of the Bessemer process for making steel was intended
primarily to give the railway-operator a track that should be free from
the defects of the soft, wrought-iron rail; in fact, however, it created
new industrial centres all over the world and brought Asia and Africa
under commercial conquest. The possibilities of increased trade between
the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific Coast States led to the building
of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railways. But when these were
thoroughly organized, there unexpectedly resulted a new trade-route that
already is drawing traffic away from the Suez Canal and landing it at
Asian shores by way of the ports of Puget Sound. It is a repetition of
the adjustment that occurred when the opening of the Cape route to India
transferred the trade that had gathered about Venice and Genoa to the
shores of the North and Baltic Seas.
In other words, a new order of things has come about, and the world and
the people therein are readjusting themselves to the requirements made
upon them by commerce. And so at the beginning of a new century,
civilized man is drawing upon all the rest of the world to satisfy his
wants, and giving to all the world in return; he is civilized because of
this interchange and not in spite of it.
The necessity for instruction in a subject that pertains so closely to
the welfare of a people is apparent, and an apology for presenting this
manual is needless. Moreover, it should not interfere in any way with
the regular course in geography; indeed, more comprehensive work in the
latter is becoming imperative, and it should be enriched rather than
curtailed.
In the preparation of the work, I wish to express my appreciation of the
great assistance of Principal Myron T. Pritchard, Edward Everett School,
Boston, Mass. I am also much indebted to the map-engraving department of
Messrs. The Matthews-Northrup Company, Buffalo, N.Y.
J.W.R.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 1
II. HOW COMMERCE CIVILIZED MANKIND 7
III. TOPOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE 17
IV. CLIMATIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE 29
V. TRANSPORTATION--OCEAN AND INLAND NAVIGATION 39
VI. TRANSPORTATION--RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY ORGANIZATION;
PUBLIC HIGHWAYS 62
VII. FACTORS IN THE LOCATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS 81
VIII. THE CEREALS AND GRASSES 88
IX. TEXTILE FIBRES 105
X. PLANT PRODUCTS OF ECONOMIC USE--BEVERAGES AND
MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES 127
XI. GUMS AND RESINS USED IN THE ARTS 141
XII. COAL AND PETROLEUM 147
XIII. METALS OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES 159
XIV. SUGAR AND ITS COMMERCE 185
XV. FORESTS AND FOREST PRODUCTS 193
XVI. SEA PRODUCTS AND FURS 203
XVII. THE UNITED STATES--THE SEAPORTS AND THE ATLANTIC
COAST-PLAIN 211
XVIII. THE UNITED STATES--THE NEW ENGLAND PLATEAU
AND THE APPALACHIAN REGION 219
XIX. THE UNITED STATES--THE BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES
AND THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 227
XX. THE UNITED STATES--THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS AND
TERRITORIAL POSSESSIONS 247
XXI. CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND 261
XXII. MEXICO--CENTRAL AMERICA--WEST INDIES 267
XXIII. SOUTH AMERICA--THE ANDEAN STATES 275
XXIV. SOUTH AMERICA--THE LOWLAND STATES 285
XXV. EUROPE--GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY 295
XXVI. EUROPE--THE BALTIC AND NORTH SEA STATES 310
XXVII. EUROPE--THE MEDITERRANEAN STATES AND SWITZERLAND 320
XXVIII. EUROPE--THE DANUBE AND BALKAN STATES 335
XXIX. EUROPE-ASIA--THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 343
XXX. THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA 349
XXXI. BRITISH INDIA AND THE EAST INDIES 358
XXXII. CHINA AND JAPAN 367
XXXIII. AFRICA 381
XXXIV. OCEANIA 391
APPENDIX 398
INDEX 399
COLORED MAPS
PAGE
PRINCIPAL TRANSPORTATION LINES AND REGIONS OF LARGEST
COMMERCE x, xi
MEAN ANNUAL RAINFALL 28
CITY OF NEW YORK AND VICINITY, WITH HARBOR APPROACHES 49
DISTRIBUTION OF VEGETATION 80
NORTH AMERICA 210
PUGET SOUND 253
MEXICO 268
SOUTH AMERICA 274
BRITISH ISLES 299
GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES 304
HOLLAND AND BELGIUM 314
FRANCE 321
ITALY 326
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 329
TURKEY AND GREECE 338
RUSSIAN EMPIRE 342
THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA 349
EASTERN CHINA 369
JAPAN AND KOREA 375
AFRICA 382
THE COMMERCE OF THE PACIFIC 393
[Illustration: PRINCIPAL TRANSPORTATION LINES AND REGIONS OF LARGEST
COMMERCE]
TO THE TEACHER:--The contents of this book are so topicalized and
arranged that, if the time for the study is limited, a short course may
be selected. Under no circumstances, however, should Chapters V, VI,
VIII, IX, XII, and XIII be omitted. A casual inspection of the questions
at the end of each chapter will serve to show that they cannot be
answered from the pages of the book, and they have been selected with
this idea in view. They are intended first of all to stimulate
individual thought, and secondly to encourage the pupil to investigate
the topics by consulting original sources. The practice of corresponding
with pupils in other parts of the world cannot be too highly commended.
The following list represents a minimum rather than a maximum reference
library. It may be enlarged at the judgment of the teacher. A good atlas
and a cyclopaedia are also necessary.
Industrial Evolution of the United States. WRIGHT. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
History of Commerce in Europe. GIBBINS. The Macmillan Company.
Discovery of America. FISKE. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The New Empire. ADAMS. The Macmillan Company.
Statesman's Year-Book. KELTIE. The Macmillan Company.
Outlines of Political Science. GUNTON AND ROBBINS. D. Appleton &
Co.
The Wheat Problem. CROOKES. G.P. Putnam's Sons.
South America. CARPENTER. American Book Company.
From the Bureau of Statistics, Department of Commerce, Washington,
D.C., the following monographs may be procured:[1]
Commercial China. American Commerce. Commercial Australia.
Commercial Japan. Commercial Africa. Commercial India. Statistical
Abstract. Great Canals of the World. World's Sugar Production and
Consumption.
The following from the Department of Agriculture is necessary:
Check List of Forest Trees of the United States.
Lantern slides illustrating the subjects treated in this book may be
procured from T.H. McAllister, 49 Nassau Street, New York. Stereoscopic
views may be obtained from Underwood & Underwood, Fifth Avenue and
Nineteenth Street, New York.
COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
Commerce and modern civilization go hand in hand, and the history of the
one is the history of the other; and whatever may be the basis of
civilization, commerce has been the chief agent by which it has been
spread throughout the world. Peoples who receive nothing from their
fellow-men, and who give nothing in return, are usually but little above
a savage state. Civilized man draws upon all the rest of the world for
what he requires, and gives to the rest of the world in return. He is
civilized because of this fact and not in spite of it.
There is scarcely a country in the world that does not yield something
or other to civilized peoples. There is scarcely a household whose
furnishings and contents do not represent an aggregate journey of
several times around the earth. A family in New York at breakfast occupy
chairs from Grand Rapids, Mich.; they partake of bread made of wheat
from Minnesota, and meat from Texas prepared in a range made in St.
Louis; coffee grown in Sumatra or Java, or tea from China is served in
cups made in Japan, sweetened with sugar from Cuba, stirred with spoons
of silver from Nevada. Spices from Africa, South America, and Asia
season the food, which is served on a table of New Hampshire oak,
covered with a linen spread made from flax grown in Ireland or in
Russia. Rugs from Bokhara, or from Baluchistan, cover the floors;
portieres made in Constantinople hang at the doors; and the room is
heated with coal from Pennsylvania that burns in a furnace made in Rhode
Island.
Now all these things may be, and usually are, found in the great
majority of families in the United States or Europe, and most of them
will be found in nearly all households. Certain it is that peoples do
exist who, from the immediate vicinity in which they live, procure all
the things they use or consume. In the main, however, such peoples are
savages.
A moment's thought will make it clear that before an ordinary meal can
be served there must be railways, steamships, great manufacturing
establishments, iron quarries, and coal mines, aggregating many thousand
millions of dollars, and employing many million people. A casual
inspection, too, reveals the fact that all of the substances and things
required by mankind come from the earth, and, a very few excepted, every
one requires a certain amount of manufacture or preliminary treatment
before it is usable. The grains and nearly all the other food-stuffs
require various processes of preparation before they are ready for
consumption by civilized peoples. Iron and the various other ores used
in the arts must undergo elaborate processes of manufacture; coal must
be mined, broken, cleaned, and transported; the soil in which
food-stuffs are grown must be fertilized and mechanically prepared; and
even the water required for domestic purposes in many instances must be
transported long distances.
[Illustration: AGRICULTURE AND MANUFACTURE SUPPLEMENT EACH OTHER]
A little thought will suffice to show that not only are all food-stuffs
derived from the earth, but that also every usable resource which
constitutes wealth is also drawn from the same source. The same is also
pretty nearly true of the various forms of energy, for although the sun
is the real source of light and heat, and probably of electricity, these
agents are usable only when they have been transformed into earth
energies. Thus, the physical energy generated by falling water is merely
a transformed portion of solar heat; so also the coal-beds contain both
the chemical and physical energy of solar heat and light converted into
potential energy--that is, into force that can be used at the will of
intelligence. Indeed, the physical being of mankind is an organism born
of the earth, and adapted to the earth; and when that physical form
dies, it merely is transformed again to ordinary earth substances.
The chief activities of living beings are those relating to the
maintenance of life. In other words, animals must feed, and they must
also protect themselves against extermination. In the case of all other
animals this is a very simple matter, they simply live in immediate
contact with their food, migrating or perishing if the supply gives out.
In the case of mankind the conditions are different and vastly more
elaborate. Savage peoples excepted, man does not live within close touch
of the things he requires; indeed, he cannot, for he depends upon all
the world for what he uses. In a less enlightened state many of these
commodities were luxuries; in a civilized state they have become
necessities. Moreover, nearly everything civilized man employs has been
prepared by processes in which heat is employed.
Therefore one may specify several classes of human activities and
employments:
(_a_) The production of food-stuffs and other commodities by the
cultivation of the soil--_Agriculture_.
(_b_) The preparation of food-stuffs and things used for shelter,
protection, or ornament--_Manufacture_.
(_c_) The production of minerals for the generation of power, such
as coal, or those such as iron, copper, stone, etc., required in
the arts and sciences--_Mining_.
(_d_) The exchange of food stuffs and commodities--_Commerce_.
(_e_) The transfer of commodities--_Transportation_.
It is evident that the prosperity and happiness of a people depend very
largely on the condition of their surroundings--that is, their
environment. If a country or an inhabited area produces all the
food-stuffs and commodities required by its people, the conditions are
very fortunate. A very few nations, notably China and the United States,
have such diverse conditions of climate, topography, and mineral
resources, that they can, if necessary, produce within their national
borders everything needed by their peoples.
The prosecution of such a policy, however, is rarely economical; in the
history of the past it has always resulted in weakness and
disintegration. China is to-day helpless because of a policy of
self-seclusion; and the marvellous growth of Japan began when her trade
was thrown open to the world.
For the greater part the environment of a people is deficient--that is,
the locality of a people does not yield all that is required for the
necessities of life. For instance, the New England plateau requires an
enormous amount of fuel for its manufacturing enterprises; but
practically no coal is found within its borders; hence the manufacturers
must either command the coal to be shipped from other regions or give up
their employment. The people of Canada require a certain amount of
cotton cloth; but the cotton plant will not grow in a cold climate, so
they must either exchange some of their own commodities for cotton, or
else go without it. The inhabitants of Great Britain produce only a
small part of the food-stuffs they consume; therefore they are
constantly exchanging their manufactured products for the food-stuffs
that of necessity must be produced in other parts of the world.
The dwellers of the New England plateau might grow the bread-stuffs they
require, and in times past they did so. At that time, however, a barrel
of flour was worth twelve dollars. But the wheat of the prairie regions
can be grown, manufactured into flour, transported a thousand miles, and
sold at a profit for less than five dollars a barrel. Therefore it is
evidently more economical to buy flour in Minnesota than to grow the
wheat and make it into flour in Massachusetts.
All these problems, and they exist without number, show that man may
overcome most of the obstacles that surround him. So we find civilized
man living in almost every part of the world. Tropical regions are not
too scorching, nor are arctic fastnesses too cold for him. In other
words, because of commerce and transportation, he can and usually does
master the conditions of his environment; his intelligence enables him
to do so, and his ability to do so is the result of the intelligent use
of experience and education.
CHAPTER II
HOW COMMERCE CIVILIZED MANKIND
The history of western civilization is so closely connected with the
development of the great routes of travel and the growth of commerce
that one cannot possibly separate them. Commerce cannot exist without
the intercourse of peoples, and peoples cannot be in mutual
communication unless each learns from the other.
=Feudalism.=--When the Roman Empire fell civilization in western Europe
was not on a high plane; indeed, the feudalism that followed was not
much above barbarism. The people were living in a manner that was not
very much unlike the communal system under which the serfs of Russia
lived only a few years ago. Each centre of population was a sort of
military camp governed by a feudal lord. The followers and retainers
were scarcely better off than slaves; indeed, many of them were slaves.
There was no ownership of the land except by the feudal lords, and the
latter were responsible for their acts to the king only.
But very few people cared to be absolutely free, because they had but
little chance to protect themselves; so it was the common custom to
attach one's self to a feudal lord in order to have his protection; even
a sort of peonage or slavery under him was better than no protection at
all. A few of the people were engaged in trade and manufacture of some
kind or other, and they were the only ones through whom the feudal lord
could supply himself with the commodities needed for his retainers and
the luxuries necessary to himself.
Each feudal estate, therefore, became a sort of industrial centre by
itself, producing its own food-stuffs and much of the coarser
manufactures. It was not a very high condition of enlightenment, but it
was much better than the one which preceded it, for at least it offered
protection. It encouraged a certain amount of trade and commerce,
because the feudal lord had many wants, and he was usually willing to
protect the merchant who supplied them.
=The Crusades and Commerce.=--The Crusades, or wars by which the
Christians sought to recover the Holy Land from the Turk, resulted in a
trade between Europe and India that grew to wonderful proportions. Silk
fabrics, cotton cloth, precious stones, ostrich plumes, ivory, spices,
and drugs--all of which were practically unknown in Europe--were eagerly
sought by the nobility and their dependencies. In return, linen and
woollen fabrics, leather goods, glassware, blacklead, and steel
implements were carried to the far East.
Milan, Florence, Venice and Genoa, Constantinople and a number of less
important towns along the Mediterranean basin became important trade
centres, but Venice and Genoa grew to be world powers in commerce. Not
only were they great receiving and distributing depots of trade, but
they were great manufacturing centres as well.
The routes over which this enormous commerce was carried were few in
number. For the greater part, the Venetian trade went to Alexandria, and
thence by the Red Sea to India. Genoese merchants sent their goods to
Constantinople and Trebizond, thence down the Tigris River to the
Persian Gulf and to India. There was also another route that had been
used by the Phoenicians. It extended from Tyre through Damascus and
Palmyra[2] to the head of the Persian Gulf; this gradually fell into
disuse after the founding of Alexandria.
The general effects of this trade were very far-reaching. To the greater
number of the people of Europe, the countries of India, China, and Japan
were mythical. According to tradition they were infested with dragons
and gryphons, and peopled by dog-headed folk or by one-eyed Arimaspians.
About the first real information of them to be spread over Europe was
brought by Marco Polo, whose father and uncle had travelled all through
these countries during the latter part of the thirteenth century.[3]
Marco Polo's writings were very widely read, and influenced a great many
people who could not be reached through the ordinary channels of
commerce. So between the wars of the Crusades on the one hand, and the
growth of commerce on the other, a new and a better civilization began
to spread over Europe.
=The Turkish Invasions.=--But the magnificent trade that had thus grown up
was checked for a time by an unforeseen factor. The half-savage
Turkomans living southeast of Russia had become converted to the
religion of Islam, and in their zeal for the new belief, determined to
destroy the commerce which seemed to be connected with Christianity. So
they moved in upon the borderland between Europe and Asia, and one after
another the trade routes were tightly closed. Then they captured
Constantinople, and the routes between Genoa and the Orient were
hermetically sealed. Moslem power also spread over Syria and Egypt, and
so, little by little, the trade of Venice was throttled.
[Illustration: ROUTES TO INDIA--THE TURK CHANGES THE COMMERCE OF THE
WORLD]
Now a commerce that involved not only many millions of dollars, but the
employment of thousands of people as well, is not likely to be given up
without a struggle. So the energy that had been devoted to this great
trade was turned in a new direction, and there began a search for a new
route to India--one that the Turks could not blockade.
=The Search for an All-Water Route to India.=--Overland routes were out of
the question; there were none that could be made available, and so the
search was made for a sea-route. Rather singularly the Venetians and
Genoese, who had hitherto controlled this trade, took no part in the
search; it was conducted by the Spanish and the Portuguese.
The Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, fitted out an
expedition under Christopher Columbus, a master-mariner and
cartographer, the funds being provided by Isabella, who pledged her
private property as security for the cost of the expedition. This
expedition resulted in the discovery, October 10-21, 1492, of the West
India Islands. In a subsequent voyage, Columbus discovered the mainland
of South America.
Even before the voyage of Columbus, the Portuguese had been trying to
find a way around Africa to India, and Pope Eugenius IV. had conferred
on Portugal "all heathen lands from Cape Bojador eastward even to the
Indies." Little by little, therefore, Portuguese navigators were pushing
southward until, in 1487, Bartholomew Dias sighted the Cape of Good
Hope, and got about as far as Algoa Bay. Then he unwillingly turned back
because of the threats of his crew. It was a most remarkable voyage, and
one of the shipmates of Dias was Bartholomew Columbus, a brother of the
discoverer of the New World.
Ten years later, or five years after the voyage of Columbus, Vasco da
Gama sailed from Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope. As he passed the Cape
he was terribly storm-tossed, but the storms carried him in a fortunate
direction. And when at last he got his reckonings, he was off the coast
of India; he therefore kept along the coast until in sight of a port.
The port was the well-known city of Calicut. Two years later he returned
to Europe by the same route, his ships laden with spices, precious
stones, beautiful tapestries and brocades, ivory and bronzes. The
long-sought sea-route to India had been discovered.
[Illustration: A HANSE CITY--HAMBURG, ALONG THE WATER-FRONT]
=Commerce in Western Europe.=--After the discovery of the new route,
Venice and Genoa were scarcely heard of in relation to commerce; they
lost everything and gained nothing. The great commerce with the Orient
was to have a new western terminus, and the latter was to be on the
shores of the North and Baltic Seas.
The commerce between Europe and India stimulated trade in western Europe
as well. As early as the twelfth century the manufacture of linen and
woollen cloth had grown to be a very important industry that had
resulted in the rapid growth of population. The older cities grew
rapidly, and new ones sprang up wherever the commodities of trade were
gathered, manufactured, or distributed.
These centres of trade had two hostile elements against them. The feudal
lords used to pillage them legally by extorting heavy taxes and forced
loans whenever their treasuries were empty. The portionless brothers and
relatives of the feudal lords, to whom no employments save war,
adventure, and piracy were open, pillaged them illegally. Along the
coasts especially, piracy was considered not only a legitimate, but a
genteel, profession. So in order to protect themselves, the cities began
to join themselves into leagues.
=The Hanse League.=--About the beginning of the thirteenth century[4]
Hamburg and Luebeck formed an alliance afterward called a _hansa_; at the
beginning of the fourteenth century it embraced seventy cities, having
the capital at Luebeck. At the time of its greatest power the League
embraced all the principal cities of western Europe nearly as far south
as the Danube. Large agencies, called "factories," were established in
London, Bruges, Novgorod, Bergen, and Wisby. The influence of the League
practically controlled western Europe.
The Hanse League performed a wonderful work. It stopped piracy on the
seas and robbery on the land. Industrially, it encouraged
self-government and obedience to constitutional authority. Shipbuilding
and navigation so greatly improved that the ocean traffic resulting from
the discovery of the cape route to India quickly fell into the hands of
Hanse sailors and master-mariners. The League not only encouraged and
protected all sorts of manufactures, but its schools trained thousands
of operatives. The mines were worked and the idle land cultivated. It
was the greatest industrial movement that ever occurred.
[Illustration: HANSE ROUTES--THE HANSE LEAGUE REORGANIZES THE TRADE OF
THE WORLD]
Socially, the Hanse League brought the wealth that gave those comforts
and conveniences before unknown. The standards of social life,
education, art, and science were raised from a condition scarcely
better than barbarism to a high plane of civilization. Indeed, the
civilization of western Europe was the most important result of it.
It forced the rights of individual freedom, as well as municipal
independence, from more than one monarch, and punished severely the
kings who sought to betray it. It crushed the power of those who opposed
it,[5] and rewarded those who were faithful to it. Its most important
mission, however, was the overthrow of feudalism and the gradual
substitution of popular government in its place.
Having accomplished the regeneration of Europe, the Hanse League died
partly by its own hand, because of its arrogance, but mainly from the
fact that, having educated western Europe to self-government and
commercial independence, there was no longer need for its existence.
Independent cities grew rapidly into importance, and these got along
very well without the protection of the League. The great industrial
progress was at times temporarily checked by wars, but it never took a
backward step. Indeed the progress of commerce has always been a contest
between brains and brute force, and in such a struggle there is never
any doubt about the final outcome.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What were some of the effects of Caesar's invasion of Germanic Europe so
far as commerce is concerned?
What were some of the effects on commerce of the breaking up of the
Roman Empire?
How did the invasion of England by William of Normandy affect the
commerce of the English people?
Who was Henry the Navigator, and what did he accomplish?
How did the blockade of the routes between Europe and India bring about
the discovery of America?
What was the result of the great voyage of the Cabots?
Was the overthrow of feudalism in Europe a gain or a loss to commerce?
Why are not commercial leagues, such as the Hanse, necessary at the
present time?
Why did Spain's commerce decline as Portugal's thrived?
COLLATERAL READING[6]
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Chapters IV-V.
Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. 1--Chapters IV-V.
CHAPTER III
TOPOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE
The great industry of commerce, which includes both the trade in the
commodities of life and the transportation of them, is governed very
largely by the character of the earth's surface. But very few
food-stuffs can be grown economically in mountain-regions. Steep
mountain-slopes are apt to be destitute of soil; moreover, even the
mountain-valleys are apt to be difficult of access, and in such cases
the cost of moving the crops may be greater than the market value of the
products. Mountainous countries, therefore, are apt to be sparsely
peopled regions.
But although the great mountain-systems are unhabitable, or at least
sparsely peopled, they have a very definite place in the economics of
life. Thus, the great western highland of the United States diverts the
flow of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico northward into the central
plain, and gives to the region most of its food-growing power. In a
similar manner, moisture intercepted by the Alps and the Himalayas has
not only created the plains of the Po and the Ganges from the rock-waste
carried from the slopes, but has also made them exceedingly fertile.
Mountain-ranges are also valuable for their contents. The broken
condition of the rock-folds and the rapid weathering to which they are
subjected have exposed the minerals and metals so useful in the arts of
commerce and civilization. Thus, the weathering of the Appalachian folds
has made accessible about the only available anthracite coal measures
yet worked; and the worn folds about Lake Superior have yielded the
ores that have made the United States the foremost copper and steel
manufacturing country of the world. Gold, silver, tin, lead, zinc,
platinum, granite, slate, and marble occur mainly in mountain-folds.
=Mountains and Valleys.=--Mountain-ranges are great obstacles to commerce
and intercommunication. The Greek peoples found it much easier to
scatter along the Mediterranean coast than to cross the Balkan
Mountains. For twenty years after the settlement of California, it was
easier and less expensive to send traffic by way of Cape Horn than to
carry it across the Rocky Mountains.
The deep canyons of mountainous regions are quite as difficult to
overcome as the high ranges. In modern methods of transportation a range
that cannot be surmounted may be tunnelled, and a tunnel five or six
miles in length is no uncommon feat of engineering. A canyon, however,
cannot be tunnelled, and if too wide for cantilever or suspension
bridges, a detour of many miles is necessary. In crossing a deep chasm
the route of transportation may aggregate ten or fifteen times the
distance spanned by a straight line.
Excepting the mining regions, the population of mountainous countries is
apt to be found mainly in the intermontane valleys. A reason for this is
not hard to find; the valleys are usually filled with rich soil brought
from the higher slopes and levelled by the water. The population,
therefore, is concentrated in the valley because of the food-producing
power of the land. For this reason the Sound, Willamette, and San
Joaquin-Sacramento Valleys contain the chief part of the Pacific coast
population. The Shenandoah and the Great Valley of Virginia are similar
instances.
What is true of the larger intermontane valleys is true also of the
narrow stream valleys of mountain and plateau regions. Thus, in the New
England plateau the chief growth during the past forty years has been in
the valley lands. In that time if the uplands have not suffered actual
loss, they certainly have made no material gains. Upland farming has not
proved a remunerative venture, and many of the farms have either been
abandoned or converted to other uses.
=Passes.=--Transverse valleys form very important topographic features of
mountain-regions. Inasmuch as the ranges themselves are obstacles to
communication, it follows that the latter must be concentrated at such
cross valleys or gaps as may be traversed. Khaibar Pass, a narrow defile
in the Hindu Kush Mountains, between Peshawur and Jelalabad, for many
years was the chief gateway between Europe and India. Even now the cost
of holding it is an enormous tax upon England.
Brenner, St. Gotthard, and the Mont Cenis Passes are about the only land
channels of commerce between Italy and transalpine Europe, and most of
the communication between northern Italy and the rest of Europe is
carried on by means of these passes. Every transcontinental railway of
the American continent crosses the various highlands by means of gaps
and passes, and some of them would never have been built were it not for
the existence of the passes. Fremont, South, and Marshall Passes have
been of historic importance for half a century.
The Hudson and Champlain Valley played an important part in the history
of the colonies a century before the existence of the United States, and
its importance as a gateway to eastern Canada is not likely to be
lessened. The Mohawk gap was the first practical route to be maintained
between the Atlantic seaboard and the food-producing region of the Great
Central Plain. It is to-day the most important one. It is so nearly
level that the total lift of freight going from Buffalo to tide-water is
less than five hundred feet.
[Illustration: A PASS--THE ROUTE OF A RAILWAY]
=Rivers.=--River-valleys are closely connected with the economic
development of a country. Navigable rivers are free and open highways of
communication. In newly settled countries the river is always the least
expensive means of carriage, and often it is the only one available for
the transportation of heavy goods.
In late years, since the railway has become the chief means for the
transportation of commodities, river transportation has greatly
declined. The river-valley, however, has lost none of its importance; in
most instances it is a naturally levelled and graded route, highly
suitable for the tracks of the railway. As a result, outside of the
level lands of the Great Central Plain, not far from eighty per cent. of
the railway mileage of the United States is constructed along
river-valleys.
=Plateaus.=--Plateaus are usually characterized by broken and more or less
rugged surface features. As a rule they are deficient in the amount of
rainfall necessary to produce an abundance of the grains and similar
food-stuffs, although this is by no means the case with all.
Most plateaus produce an abundance of grass, and cattle-growing is
therefore an important industry in such regions. Thus, the plateaus of
the Rocky Mountains are famous for cattle, and the same is true of the
Mexican and the South American plateaus. The Iberian plateau, including
Spain and Portugal, is noted for the merino sheep, which furnish the
finest wool known. The plateau of Iran is also noted for its wool, and
the rugs from this region cannot be imitated elsewhere in the world.
=Plains.=--Plains are of the highest importance to life and its
activities. Not only do they present fewer obstacles to
intercommunication than any other topographic features, but almost
always they are deeply covered with the fine rock-waste that forms the
chief components of soil. Plains, therefore, contain the elements of
nutrition, and are capable of supporting life to a greater extent than
either mountains or plateaus. About ninety per cent. of the world's
population dwell in the lowland plains.
The Great Central Plain of North America produces more than one-quarter
of the world's wheat, and about four-fifths of the corn. The southern
part of the great Arctic plain, and its extension, the plains of the
Baltic also yield immense quantities of grain and cattle products. The
coast-plains of the Atlantic Ocean, on both the American and the
European side, are highly productive.
River flood-plains are almost always densely peopled because of their
productivity. The bottom-lands of the Mississippi and the Yangtze Rivers
are among the chief food-producing regions of the world. Lacustrine
plains, the beds of former lakes, are also highly productive regions.
The valley of the Red River of the North is an example, and its wheat is
of a very high quality.
Fertile coast-plains and lowlands that are adjacent to good harbors, as
a rule are the most thickly peopled regions of the world. In many such
regions the density of population exceeds two hundred or more per square
mile. The reason is obvious. Life seeks that environment which yields
the greatest amount of nutrition with the least expenditure of energy.
The study of a good relief map shows that, as a rule, the Pacific Ocean
is bordered by a rugged highland, which has a more or less abrupt slope,
and a narrow coast-plain. Indeed, the latter is absent for the greater
part. The slopes of the Atlantic, on the other hand, are long and
gentle--being a thousand miles or more in width throughout the greater
part of their extent. The area of productive land is correspondingly
great, and the character of the surface features is such that
intercommunication is easy.
[Illustration: A RIVER FLOOD-PLAIN--A REGION ADAPTED TO CULTIVATION]
The result of these conditions is evident. The Atlantic slopes, though
not everywhere the most densely peopled areas, contain the great centres
of the world's activities and economies. In the past 400 years they have
not only overtaken the Pacific coast races, but have far surpassed them.
They are now entering upon a commercial invasion of the Pacific nations
that is resulting in a reorganization of the entire industrial world.
=Topography and Trade Routes.=--As the settlement and commerce of a
country grow, roads succeed trails, and trails are apt to follow the
paths of migrating animals. Until the time of the Civil War in the
United States, most of the great highways of the country were the direct
descendants of "buffalo roads," as they were formerly called.
In the crossing of divides from one river-valley to another, the
mountain-sections of the railways for the greater part follow the trails
of the bison. This is especially marked in the Pennsylvania, the
Baltimore and Ohio, and the Chesapeake and Ohio railways; in some
instances the tunnels through ranges have been constructed directly
under the trails. The reason is obvious; the instinct of the bison led
him along routes having the minimum of grade.
Throughout the Mississippi Valley and the great plains the Indian trails
usually avoided the bottom-lands of the river-valleys, following the
divides and portages instead. This selection of routes was probably due
to the fact that the lowlands were swampy and subject to overflow; the
portages and divides offered no steep grades, and were therefore more
easily traversed.
[Illustration: WHERE COMMODITIES ARE EXCHANGED--NEW YORK CITY
WATER-FRONT]
=Harbors.=--Coast outlines have much to do with the commercial
possibilities of a region. The "drowned valleys" and similar inlets
along the North Atlantic coast, both of Europe and America, form harbors
in which vessels ride at anchor in safety, no matter what the existing
conditions outside may be. As a result, the two greatest centres of
commerce in the world are found at these harbors--one on the American,
the other on the European coast.
From New York Bay southward along the Atlantic seaboard there are but
few harbors, and this accounts for the enormous development of commerce
in the stretch of coast between Portland and Baltimore. San Francisco
Bay and the harbors of Puget Sound monopolize most of the commerce of
the Pacific coast of the United States. South America has several good
harbors on the Atlantic seaboard, and in consequence a large city has
grown at the site of each. On the Pacific coast the good harbors are
very few in number, and they are not situated near productive regions.
Asiatic peoples, as a rule, are not promoters of foreign commerce, and,
those of Japan excepted, the only good harbors are those that have been
improved by European governments. These are confined mainly to India and
China. The many possible harbors make certain a tremendous commerce in
the future. Africa has but very few good harbors. There are excellent
harbors in the islands of the Pacific, and many of them are of great
strategic value as coaling stations and bases of supply to the various
maritime powers.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
The Pennsylvania Railroad has found it more economical to tunnel the
mountain-range under Horseshoe Curve, near Altoona, than to haul the
trains over the mountains; discuss the details in which there will be a
saving.
Why are rugged and mountainous regions apt to be sparsely peopled?
The first valuable discovery in the Rocky Mountains was gold; what were
the chief effects that resulted?
Would the industries of the Pacific coast of the United States be
benefited or impaired by the existence of a coast-plain?
Which are more conducive to commerce--the large mediterraneans, such as
the Gulf of Mexico, or the small estuaries, such as New York Bay?
Discuss the merits or demerits of each.
What are the chief products of mountains, of plateaus, of lowland
plains?
COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--Chapter I.
Redway's Physical Geography--Chapter IV.
A topographic map of the United States.
[Illustration: MEAN ANNUAL RAINFALL]
CHAPTER IV
CLIMATIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE
In its effect upon life and the various industries of peoples, climate
is a factor even more important than topography. Of the 53,000,000
square miles of the land surface of the earth, scarcely more than
one-half is capable of producing any great amount of food-stuffs, and
only a very small area can support a population of more than one hundred
people to each square mile.
=Climate and Habitability.=--In the main, regions that are inhabited by
human beings produce either food-stuffs or something of value that may
be exchanged for food-stuffs; and inasmuch as food and shelter are the
chief objects of human activity, regions that will not furnish them are
not habitable.
The growth and production of food-stuffs is governed even more by
conditions of climate than by those of topography. Thus the great
Russian plain is too cold to produce any great amount of food-stuffs,
and it is, therefore, sparsely peopled. The northern part of Africa and
the closed basins of North America and Asia lack the rainfall necessary
to insure productivity, and these regions are also unhabitable. The
basin of the Amazon has a rainfall too great for cereals and grasses,
and the larger part of it is unfit for habitation.
All the food-stuffs are exceedingly sensitive to climate. Rice will not
grow where swampy conditions do not prevail at least during part of the
year. Turf-grass will not live where there are repeated droughts of more
than three months' duration, and corn will not ripen in regions having
cool nights. Wheat does not produce a kernel fit for flour anywhere
except in the temperate zone; and the banana will not grow outside the
torrid zone.
The two chief factors of climate are temperature and moisture. No forms
of life can withstand a temperature constantly below the freezing-point
of water, and but few, if any, can endure a constant heat of one hundred
and twenty-five degrees, although most species can exist at temperatures
beyond these limits for a short time.
=Zones of Climate.=--The belt of earth upon which the sun's rays are
nearly or quite vertical is comparatively narrow. But the inclination of
the earth's axis and the fact that it is parallel to itself at all times
of the year create zones of climate. These differ materially in the
character of the life, forms, and the activities of the people who dwell
in them.
In the torrid zone the temperature varies but little. During the season
of rains it rarely falls to 70 deg. F., and in the dry season it is seldom
higher than 95 deg. F. As a result, all sorts of plants that are sensitive
to low temperatures thrive in the torrid zone. It is not a climate
suitable for heat-producing food-plants, and they are not required.
The constant heat and excessive moisture of the atmosphere in the torrid
zone is apt to produce a feeling of lassitude among the dwellers in such
regions, moreover, and great bodily activity is out of question. These
conditions seriously affect the lives of the people, and, with few
exceptions, tropical peoples are rarely noted for energy or enterprise.
Great commercial enterprises are the exception rather than the rule, and
they are usually carried on by foreigners who must live a part of the
time in cooler localities.
[Illustration: THE EFFECTS OF HIGH LATITUDE--TOO COLD TO PRODUCE
BREAD-STUFFS]
Polar regions are deficient both in the heat and light necessary for
food-stuffs. Neither the grasses nor the grains fructify. As a result,
but few herbivora can live there, and these are practically restricted
to the musk-ox and the reindeer, which subsist on mosses and lichens.
The native people are stunted in growth; their food consists mainly of
raw blubber, and they are scarcely above savagery.
The temperate zones are the regions of the great industries and
activities of human life. The larger part of the land surface of the
earth is situated in these zones; moreover, the people who dominate the
world also live in them, and their supremacy is due largely to
conditions of climate. The alternation of summer and winter causes a
struggle for existence that develops the intellectual faculties and
results in industrial supremacy.
=Effects of Altitude.=--There is a decrease of temperature of 1 deg. F. for
about every three hundred feet of ascent. But few people live at an
altitude of more than six thousand feet above sea-level, and in many
cases they depend on other localities for the greater part of their
food-stuffs, because very few of such regions produce food-stuffs
abundantly.
The chief exceptions to this rule are found in tropical regions. The
highlands of Mexico, the plateau-regions of Bolivia and Ecuador, and the
highlands of southern Asia are habitable, but they are not densely
peopled. Because of their altitude they are relieved of the enervating
effects of tropical climate at the sea-level.
Altitude likewise affects the amount of rainfall. Most plateaus are
arid. As a rule, they are arid because of their altitude; and because of
their aridity they are deficient in their power to produce food-stuffs.
They are therefore sparsely peopled.
=Effects of Rainfall.=--Regions having considerably more than one hundred
inches of rain annually are very apt to be forest-covered, and
therefore to be deficient in food-producing plants. Such localities have
usually a sparse population, in spite of the profusion of vegetation. In
some parts of India, lands that have been left idle for a few seasons
produce such a dense jungle of wild vegetation that to reclaim them for
cultivation is wellnigh impossible.
A deficiency of rainfall is even a greater factor in restricting the
density of population than too much rain. With less than fifteen or
twenty inches a year few regions produce good crops of grains and
grasses, and as a result they are sparsely peopled. Some of the
exceptions, however, are important. If the rainfall is not quite enough
to produce a normal overflow to the sea, the soil may be very rich,
because the nutrition is not leached out and carried away.
Many small areas of this character produce enormous crops when
artificially watered, and many of them, such as Persia, parts of Asia
Minor, northern Utah, and large areas of Australia and Chile have become
regions of considerable commercial importance. The products of such
regions are apt to be unique in character and of unusual value. Thus,
the wool of Persia and Australia and the fruit of the Iberian peninsula
are important articles of commerce.
In Egypt one may see the results of irrigated lands. The area of
geographical Egypt is somewhat less than half a million square miles;
the habitable part of the country is confined to a narrow strip, which,
one or two places excepted, varies from three to six miles in width. In
other words, almost the whole population of the country is massed in the
flood-plain and delta of the Nile; the remaining part is a desert
producing practically nothing.
The water that makes these lands productive falls, not in Egypt, but in
the highlands of Abyssinia, 2,000 miles away. The September overflow of
the flood-plain is the chief factor in the irrigation of these lands,
but the area has been greatly increased by the construction of barrages
and dams at Assiut and Assuan.
In the western highland region of the United States considerable areas
already have been made productive by irrigation, and it is estimated
that about two million acres of barren land can be reclaimed by
impounding the waters of the various streams now running to waste.
The distribution of rain with respect to the season in which it falls is
quite as important as its distribution with respect to quantity. In
tropical regions the ocean winds, and therefore the rainfall, come from
the east. The eastern slopes of such regions, therefore, have a season
in which rains may be expected daily, and another in which no rain falls
for several months. In the temperate zones seasonal rains for a similar
reason are on the western coasts.
Thus on the Pacific coast of the United States the rainfall varies from
about one hundred inches in southern Alaska to about twelve in San
Diego, Cal. Practically all the rain falls between October and the
following May; very little or none falls in the interval between May and
October. As a result, ordinary turf-grass, which will not withstand long
droughts, grows in only a few localities of the Pacific slope. It is
replaced by hardier grasses whose roots, instead of forming turf, grow
very deep in the soil.
Common clover will not grow in this region unless irrigated; it is
replaced by burr-clover, a variety of the plant that will not thrive in
moist regions. Now the quality of the merino wool clip of California
depends in no slight degree upon the burr-clover and other food-products
that thrive in regions of seasonal rains; that is, a great commercial
industry exists because of this feature of rainfall, and it could not
long survive in spite of it.
[Illustration: CLIMATICALLY ADAPTED TO CULTIVATION--THE LOWLANDS
PRODUCE BREAD-STUFFS AND FRUIT; THE MOUNTAIN-SLOPES ARE GRAZING REGIONS]
The seasonal rainfall also affects other agricultural industries. The
sacked wheat-crop may be left in the field without cover or protection
until the time is convenient for shipping it. The absence of summer
rains makes possible in California what would be out of question in the
Mississippi Valley, where a rainstorm may be expected every few days.
The quality of certain fruits depends largely on the season during which
the rainfall occurs. Apples, pears, and grapes grown in regions having
dry summers have usually a very superior flavor. The raisin-making
industry of California also depends on the same condition, because, in
order to insure a good quality of the product, the bunches of grapes,
after picking, must be dried on the ground. To a certain extent this is
also true of other fruits, such as dates, figs, and prunes, which
frequently are sun-dried.
The presence of large bodies of water, which both absorb and give out
their heat very slowly, tempers the climate of the nearby land and to
that extent modifies the commerce of such districts. The grape-growing
industry of central New York is a great one and its product is famous.
Its existence depends almost wholly upon the lake-tempered climate.
Elsewhere in the State the industry is on a precarious basis, and the
product is inferior.
=Effects of Inclination of the Earth's Axis.=--The inclination and
self-parallelism of the earth's axis is undoubtedly a very important
factor in climate. Practically it more than doubles the width of the
belts of ordinary food-stuffs by lengthening the summer day in the
temperate zone. Beyond the tropics the obliquity of the sun's rays are
more than balanced by the increased length of time in which they fall.
Thus, in the latitude of St. Paul, the longest day is about fifteen and
one-half hours long; at Liverpool it is nearly seventeen hours long; a
greater number of heat units therefore are received in these latitudes
during summer than are received in equatorial regions during the
twelve-hour day. Moreover, the summer temperature is higher in these
latitudes than in the torrid zone, because the sun is shining upon them
for a greater length of time.
The result of these various influences is far-reaching. Because of the
long summer days and short nights, wheat can be cultivated to the
sixtieth parallel. Corn, which gets scarcely enough warmth and light in
the torrid zone to become a prolific crop, attains its greatest yield in
the latitude of fourteen-hour days.
These factors, it is evident, carry the grain and meat industries into
regions that otherwise would not be habitable. Because the long summer
days produce these great food-crops, commerce and its allied industries
have reached their maximum development in these regions. Human
activities are greatest in the zones bounded by the thirty-fifth and
fifty-fifth parallels, the zone that includes the greater parts of the
United States, Europe, China, Japan. They are greatest, moreover,
because of their geographical position.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What would be the probable effect on the food-crops of the United States
were the main body of the country moved twenty degrees north in
latitude? Which would then be the wheat-growing States, the
cotton-producing States?
Illustrate the connection between occupation and altitude above
sea-level.
What difference would it make to the corn-crop were the days and nights
always twelve hours long?
What would be requisite to make Canada a centre of silk production?
Why is not cod-fishing an industry off the east coast of Florida?
Why is the greater part of the Russian Empire destined to be sparsely
peopled?
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
A rain chart of the world.
A chart of isothermal lines.
CHAPTER V
TRANSPORTATION--OCEAN AND INLAND NAVIGATION
Of all the adjustments which come into the lives of a people none has
been so far-reaching as the gradual localization of industries each in
the region best adapted to it. For instance, manufacturing industries
require power, but not fertile soil; therefore the manufacturing
industries seek nearness to fuel or to water-power, and a position
available for quick transportation.
Farming does not require any great amount of natural power; on the
contrary, level land having a great depth of fertile soil is the
essential feature. The farmer must therefore look first of all to
conditions of topography and climate, and secondly to the means of
transporting his crop.
Mining cannot be an industry in regions destitute of minerals; the miner
must therefore go where the mineral wealth is found, without regard to
climate, soil, centres of population, or topography. But two things are
required--the mineral products and the means of getting them to the
people--that is, ready means of transportation.
A century or more ago, each centre of population in the United States
was practically self-sustaining. Each grew its own food-stuffs, and
manufactured the articles used in the household. But very little was
required in the way of transportation. The means of carriage were mainly
ox-carts, pack-horses, and rafts. There was a mutual independence among
the various centres, it is true, but the independence was at the expense
of civilization and the comforts of life.
[Illustration: OCEAN TRANSPORTATION--ROYAL MAIL STEAMSHIP OCEANIC,
WHITE STAR LINE]
Beyond an independence that is more apparent than real, such a plan of
social and industrial organization has but little in it to commend.
Intercommunication increases knowledge, and under the conditions that
formerly prevailed, there was a lack of the breadth of knowledge that
comes with the mutual contact of peoples.
The utilization of national resources, such as the productiveness of the
land, the existence of iron ore, coal, copper, and other economic
minerals, finally brought about the policy of a territorial division of
industries. This, in turn, made the prompt transportation and exchange
of commodities essential; indeed, without such a plan, industrial
centres could not long exist.
The man whose sole business is manufacture must look to others for his
supply of food-stuffs and raw materials, and these are produced more
economically at a distance from the centre of manufacture. Thus England
must look to the United States for wheat and cotton, to the Australian
Commonwealth for wool, and to New Zealand and the United States for
meat. Her chief wealth is in her coal and iron, and these make the
nation a great manufacturing centre. So, also, the manufacturer of New
York must go to Pittsburg for steel, to Minneapolis for flour, and to
Chicago for beef.
The application of this principle is very broad; it is the foundation of
all commerce, and it underlies modern civilization. For this reason the
question of transportation is just as important to a community as the
industries of agriculture, mining, and manufacture. Food-stuffs are of
no use unless they can be transported to the people who want them; nor
can peoples remain in unproductive regions unless the food-stuffs are
brought to them.
The gross tonnage of goods is transported mainly in one or another or
all of three ways--namely, by animal power, by railway, or by water.
Thus, the cotton-crop of the United States is usually transported by
wagon from the plantation to the nearest station or boat-landing; by
rail or by barge to the nearest seaport; and by ocean steamship to the
foreign seaport.
Water transportation is more economical than land carriage, for the
reason that less power is required to move a given tonnage through the
water than on the most perfectly graded railway. Steamship freights, as
a rule, are lower than those of sailing-vessels, because a steamship has
more than twice the speed, and, being larger, can carry a greater
tonnage. Freight rates on the Great Lakes are higher per ton-mile than
on the ocean, because the vessels are necessarily smaller than those
built for ocean traffic. For a similar reason, river and canal freights
are higher than lake freights. Railway transportation is economical,
partly because a single locomotive will draw an enormous weight of
goods, and partly because of the high speed at which the goods move from
point to point. Animal transportation is more expensive than any other
means ordinarily employed.
=Ocean Transportation.=--In many respects, water-routes form the most
available and economical methods of transportation. Intercontinental
commerce must be carried on by means of deep-water vessels. Therefore an
extraordinary development of ocean carriers has taken place in the past
century.
One important period of development began with the rise of American
commerce. Just after the close of the War for Independence, it was found
that deep-water ships could be built of New England timber for
thirty-five dollars per ton, rated tonnage, while a vessel of the same
burden built in Europe cost about forty-five dollars per unit of
tonnage. Two types of vessels came into use--one, the clipper ship with
square sails, was used for long ocean voyages; the other, the schooner,
with fore-and-aft rigging, was employed mainly in the coast-trade.
[Illustration: A SQUARE-RIGGED SHIP--A TYPE NOW BEING REPLACED BY
FORE-AND-AFT RIGGED SCHOONERS]
In speed and ease of management these vessels surpassed anything that
had ever sailed. In time they became the standards for the
sailing-vessels of all the great commercial nations. The types of the
vessels are still standards.
[Illustration: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STEAMSHIP]
=The Development of the Steamship.=--Another important era in ocean
commerce began when steam was used as a motive power for vessels. The
first deep-water vessel thus to be propelled was the Savannah. Her
steam-power was merely incidental, however, and her paddle-wheels were
unshipped and taken aboard when there was enough wind for sailing. Up
to 1860 almost all the ocean steamships were side-wheelers, propelled by
low-pressure beam-engines.
The next most important improvement was the screw-blade propeller,
placed astern. This means of propulsion called for higher speed of the
engines, and in a very short time compactly built high-pressure engines
took the place of the low-pressure engine with its heavy walking-beam.
The latter carried steam at a pressure varying from twenty to thirty-two
pounds; the modern boiler has steam at 260 pounds per square inch.
Ocean steamships have gradually evolved into two types. The freighter,
broad in beam and capacious, is built to carry an enormous amount of
freight at a moderate speed. The White Star liner Celtic is a vessel of
this class; her schedule time between New York and Liverpool is about
nine days. The Philadelphia of the American line, though not the fastest
steamship, makes the same trip in an average time of five and one-half
days.[7]
Twin-screws, instead of a single propeller, are employed on nearly all
the large liners. The gain in speed is not greatly increased, but the
vessel is far more manageable with two screws than with one; moreover,
if one engine breaks down, the vessel can make excellent time with the
other.
Triple-expansion engines are almost universally used on modern
steamships, and a pound of coal now makes about three times as much
steam available as in the engines formerly used. As a result a bushel of
wheat is now carried from Fargo, N. Dak., to Liverpool for about
twenty-one cents--less than one-half the freight tariff of 1876.
[Illustration: THE SCHOONER THOMAS A. LAWSON. THE FIRST SEVEN-MASTED
SAILING-VESSEL]
The fastest liners consume from three hundred and fifty to more than
four hundred tons of coal a day, and for each additional knot of speed
the amount of coal burned must be greatly increased. Freighters like the
Celtic consume scarcely more than half as much as those of the Kaiser
Wilhelm II. type.
=Sailing-Craft.=--In spite of the growth and development of
steam-navigation, a large amount of freight is still carried by
sailing-craft; moreover, it is not unlikely that the relative proportion
of ocean freight carried by sailing-vessels will increase rather than
decrease, especially in the case of imperishable freight.
The square-rigged ship, or bark, has been very largely replaced by the
fore-and-aft, or schooner-rigged vessel. A large full-rigged ship
requires a crew of thirty to thirty-six men; a schooner-rigged vessel
needs from sixteen to twenty. These vessels are commonly built with
three and four masts; some of the largest have six or seven. They carry
as many as five thousand tons of freight at a speed of about ten
knots--only a trifle less than that of an ordinary tramp freighter. Some
of the larger vessels are provided with auxiliary engines and propelling
apparatus, which enables them to enter or to leave port without the
assistance of a tug. Donkey-engines hoist and lower the sails, and
perform the work of loading and unloading. They are admirable colliers
and grain-carriers.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, about ninety thousand
sailing-craft and thirty-five thousand steam-vessels were required to
carry the world's commerce. Of this number, Great Britain and her
colonies register nearly thirty-five thousand, and the United States
over twenty thousand.
HARBOR SAFEGUARDS.--Excepting the open anchorages formed by angles
in coast-lines, the greater number of harbors consist of small
coves and river-mouths. In these, although there may be a
considerable area of water, there is not apt to be much sailing
room; it is therefore necessary to mark off the navigable channels.
For this purpose buoys of different shapes and colors are used by
day; by night fixed and flashing lights are employed.
The buoys of permanent channels are usually hollow metal cylinders
or cones about two feet in diameter, anchored so that the end of
the cylinder projects about three feet above the water. On entering
a channel from the seaward, red buoys are on the starboard, or
right hand; white buoys are kept on the port, or left side. Buoys
at the end of a channel are usually surmounted each by some device
or other fastened at the upper end of a perch. Thus, at the outer
entrance of Gedney Channel in New York Harbor, a ball surmounts the
perch; at the inner entrance the buoy carries a double square.
Sharp angles in a channel are similarly marked. In many instances
the buoy carries, as a warning signal, a bell that rings as the
buoy is rocked by the waves; in others, a whistle that sounds by
the air which the rocking motion compresses within the cylinder;
still others carry electric or gas lights.
The color of a buoy is an index of its character. Thus, one with
black and red stripes indicates danger; one with black and white
vertical stripes is a channel-marker. Temporary channels are
frequently marked by pieces of spar floating upright. In some cases
it is customary to set untrimmed tree-tops on the port, and trimmed
sticks on the starboard.
Light-houses are built at all exposed points of navigated
coast-waters, and beacons are set at all necessary points within a
harbor for use at night. All lights are kept burning from sunset
until sunrise. The color, the duration, and the intervals of
flashing indicate the position of the beacon. In revolving lights
the beams, concentrated by powerful lenses, sweep the horizon as
the lantern about the light revolves. Flashing lights are produced
when the light is obscured at given intervals. Fixed lights burn
with a steady flame. In some instances a sector of colored glass is
set so as to cover a given part of a channel. Range lights, set so
that one shows directly above the other, are used as
channel-markers.
[Illustration: CITY OF NEW YORK AND VICINITY, WITH HARBOR
APPROACHES.]
The use of lights may be seen as a vessel enters New York Lower
Bay. A steamship drawing not more than eighteen feet of water may
enter through Swash Channel (_follow the course on the chart_). In
this case the pilot makes for Scotland lightship, and merely keeps
New Dorp and Elmtree beacons in range, giving Dry Romer a wide
berth to starboard, until Chapel Hill and Conover beacons come into
range on his port side. The vessel is then held on a course between
Coney Island and Fort Tompkins lights until Robbins Reef light
shows ahead.
For the liners that draw more than eighteen feet the task is more
difficult, inasmuch as the channel is tortuous. At Sandy Hook
lightship a course lying nearly west takes the vessel to the outer
entrance of Gedney Channel, marked by two buoy-lights. In passing
between the lights the vessel enters the channel, which is also
covered by the red sector of Hook beacon. The pilot continues
between the buoy-lights until Waacaack and Point Comfort beacons
are in range, and steers to this range until South Beacon and Sandy
Hook light are in range astern. The helm is then turned, keeping
these lights in range astern until Chapel Hill and Conover beacons
are in range on the port bow. Turning northward nearly eight
points, the pilot holds the bow of the vessel between Fort Tompkins
and Coney Island lights, keeping sharply to his range astern, until
Robbins Reef light comes into view through the narrows. From this
point on, the shore lights are the pilot's chief guide.
So difficult are harbor entrances, that in most cases the
underwriters will not insure a vessel unless the latter is taken
from the outer harbor to the dock by a licensed pilot, and the
latter must spend nearly half a lifetime as an apprentice before he
receives a license. The charges for pilotage are usually regulated
by the number of feet the vessel draws. The charges differ in
various ports, but the devices for marking and lighting the
channels are much the same in every part of the world. In the
United States all navigable channels are under the control of the
general Government.
=Inland Waters.=--Lakes, rivers, and canals furnish a very important means
of transportation. In Europe and Canada an enormous amount of slow
freight is transported by their use; in China they are the most
important means of internal traffic.
[Illustration: THE COMMERCE OF THE OHIO--TOWING COAL TO THE STEEL
MILLS, PITTSBURG]
In the United States the Great Lakes with the Erie Canal and Hudson
River form the most important internal water-way, and by them the
continent is penetrated as far west as Duluth, a distance of more than
one thousand three hundred miles. The traffic passing out of Lake
Superior alone is about one-third greater than that passing out of the
Mediterranean Sea at the Suez Canal. Much of this traffic goes across
the continent, and the route in question is one of the great commercial
highways of the world.
The Mississippi River and its branches afford not far from ten thousand
miles of navigable waters. Canals connect tributaries of this river with
the Great Lakes at Chicago and at several points in Ohio. The
development of the navigation of this great water-way was checked by the
Civil War, and after the close of the war the great advance in railway
building kept its improvement in the background. The general government,
nevertheless, has done much to encourage the use of the Mississippi as a
commercial highway, and many millions of dollars have been spent in
widening and deepening its channel.[8] On the upper river grain and
lumber form the chief traffic; on the lower part a large part of the
world's cotton-crop starts on its journey to the various markets.
On account of the soft-coal fields and the steel manufacture in western
Pennsylvania, the commerce of the Ohio River is very heavy, aggregating
not far from fifteen million tons yearly. Much of this traffic extends
to ports on the Mississippi.
The navigable parts of the Hudson and Delaware Rivers are estuaries of
the sea or "drowned valleys." In each case navigation extends about to
the limits of high tide. Both rivers carry a heavy freight commerce; the
Hudson has a passenger traffic of several million fares each year.
Nearly every river of the Atlantic coast is navigable to the limit of
high tide or a little beyond. Navigation extends to the point where the
coast-plain joins the foot-hills. Above this limit, called the "Fall
Line," the streams are swift and shallow; below it they are deep and
sluggish. As a result, a chain of important river ports extends along
the Fall Line from Maine to Florida.
River-navigation in Europe in the main is inseparably connected with the
great canal systems. As a rule, the lower parts of the rivers are
navigable for steamboats of light draught. Some of the smaller streams
are made navigable by means of a long steel chain, which is laid along
the bed of the stream; the boat engages the chain by means of heavy
sprocket wheels driven by steam, and thus wind the boat up and down the
river.
Ocean steamers penetrate the Amazon Valley to a distance of one thousand
miles from its mouth; boats of light draught ascend the main stream and
some of its tributaries a thousand miles farther. The Orinoco is
navigable within one hundred miles of Bogota. Light-draught boats ascend
the tributaries of La Plata River a distance of fifteen hundred miles.
The Asian rivers that are important highways of commerce are few in
number. The Amur, Yangtze, Indus, and Cambodia have each considerable
local commerce. The Hugli, a channel in the delta of the Ganges, has a
channel deep enough for ocean steamships. The tributaries of the Lena,
Yenisei, and Ob have been of the greatest service in the commercial
development of northern Asia from the fact that their valleys are both
level and fertile.
Because of a high interior and abrupt slopes, the rivers of Africa are
not suitable for navigation to any considerable extent; the channels are
uncertain and the rivers are interrupted by rapids. The Nile has an
occasional steamboat service as far as the "First Cataract," but in high
water the service is sometimes extended farther. The Kongo has a long
stretch of navigable water, but is interrupted by rapids below Stanley
Pool. Similar conditions obtain in the Zambezi. The lower part of the
Senegal affords good navigation. The Niger has in many respects greater
commercial possibilities than other rivers of Africa. It is navigable to
a distance of three hundred miles.
=Canals.=--Canals easily rank among the most important means of traffic,
as a rule, supplementing other navigable waters. Thus, by means of an
elaborate system of canals, goods are transferred by water, from one
river-basin to another, so that practically all the navigable streams of
western Europe are connected. Canals are extensively used to avoid the
falls or rapids that separate the various reaches of rivers. The water
itself by means of locks lifts the boat to a higher level or transfers
it to a lower reach, thus saving the expense of unloading, transferring,
and reloading a cargo.
The manner in which canals supplement the obstructed navigation of a
river is seen in the case of the St. Lawrence. This river is obstructed
in several places by rapids, but by means of canals steamship service
connects the Great Lakes, not only with Quebec, but with ports of the
Mediterranean Sea as well; indeed, it is possible to send a cargo from
Duluth, at the head of Lake Superior, to Odessa or Batum, on the shores
of the Black Sea.
The internal water-ways of Canada have been splendidly developed. The
Canadian St. Marys Canal furnishes an outlet to Lake Superior for
vessels drawing twenty-one feet. The Welland Canal connects Lakes Erie
and Ontario. The Rideau Canal and River connect Kingston and Lake
Ontario with the Ottawa, and the latter with its canals is navigable to
the St. Lawrence. With a population of less than six millions the
Dominion Government has spent nearly one hundred million dollars in the
improvement of internal water-ways.
[Illustration: PROFILE OF ERIE CANAL
HORIZONTAL SCALE 100 MILES TO THE INCH, VERTICAL SCALE 1,000 FEET TO THE
INCH]
In the United States the possible development of canals has been
neglected and, to a certain extent, stifled by railway building. The
Erie Canal, built before the advent of the railway, connects Lake Erie
with tide-water at Albany, a distance of 387 miles. For many years it
was the chief means of traffic between the Mississippi Valley and the
Atlantic seaboard, and although paralleled by the six tracks of a great
railway system, it is still an important factor in the carriage of grain
and certain classes of slow freight.[9] The level way that made the
canal possible is largely responsible for the decline of its importance,
for the absence of steep grades enables a powerful locomotive to haul
so many cars that the quick transit more than overbalances a very low
ton rate by the canal.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, designed to connect the Mississippi
Valley with the Atlantic seaboard, fared much worse than the Erie Canal.
Less than two hundred miles have been completed, and practically no work
except that of repair has been done since 1850; the heavy grades between
Cumberland and Pittsburg render its completion improbable.
An excellent system of canals, the Ohio and Erie and the Miami and Erie,
connect the Ohio River with Lake Erie. These canals are in the State of
Ohio and aggregate about six hundred miles in length. They are important
as coal and ore carriers. Several hundred miles of canals were built
along the river-valleys of eastern Pennsylvania before 1840 for carrying
coal to tide-water. Most of them have been abandoned; one, the Delaware
& Hudson Canal Co., survives as a railway. Inasmuch as the coal went on
a down grade from the mines to the markets, it could be carried more
economically by railway than by canal.
Of far greater importance are the St. Marys Canal on the Canadian side,
and the St. Marys Falls Canal on the American side, of St. Marys River.
These canals obviate the falls in St. Marys River and form the
commercial outlet of Lake Superior. The tonnage of goods, mainly iron
ore and coal, is about one-half greater than that of the Suez Canal.
About twenty-five thousand vessels pass through these canals yearly.
The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal,[10] from Lake Michigan to Lockport,
on the Illinois River, was designed mainly to carry the sewage of
Chicago which, prior to the construction of the canal, was poured into
the lake through the Chicago River. The completion of the canal turned
the course of the river and caused the water to flow out of the lake,
carrying the city's sewage. It is intended to complete a navigable
water-way from Chicago to St. Louis deep enough for vessels drawing
fourteen feet. Its value is therefore strategic as well as industrial,
for by means of it gun-boats may readily pass from the Gulf of Mexico to
the Great Lakes.
Oceanic canals are designed both for naval strategic purposes and for
industrial uses. Thus, the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, from the mouth of the
Elbe to Kiel Bay, across the base of Jutland, saves two days between
Hamburg and the Baltic ports. It also enables German war-vessels to
concentrate quickly in either the North or the Baltic Sea. The
Manchester Ship Canal makes Manchester a seaport and saves the cost of
trans-shipping freights by rail from Liverpool. The Corinth Canal across
the isthmus that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece
affords a much shorter route between Italian ports and Odessa. The North
Holland Ship Canal makes Amsterdam practically a seaport.
Probably no other highway of commerce since the discovery of the Cape
route around Africa has caused such a great change and readjustment of
trade between Europe and Asia as the Suez Canal. Sailing-vessels still
take the Cape route, because the heavy towage tolls through the canal
more than offset the gain in time. Steamships have their own power and
generally take the canal route, thereby saving about ten days in time
and fuel, and about four thousand eight hundred miles in distance. In
spite of the heavy tolls the saving is considerable. About three
thousand five hundred vessels pass through the canal yearly.
The Suez Canal, constructed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, for some time was
under the control of French capitalists. Subsequently, by the purchase
of stock partly in open market and partly from the Khedive of Egypt, the
control of the canal passed into the hands of the English. The
restrictions placed upon the passage of war-ships is such that the canal
would be of little use to nations at war.
[Illustration: THE ROUTE OF THE PANAMA CANAL]
The necessity of an interoceanic canal across the American continent has
become more imperative year by year for fifty years. The discovery of
gold in California caused an emigration from the Atlantic to the Pacific
coast which resulted in a permanent settlement of the latter region. A
railway across the Isthmus of Panama and another across the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec have afforded very poor means of communication between
oceans.
In 1881 work on a tide-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama was
begun, but the plan was afterward changed to a high-level canal. The
change was thought necessary partly on account of the great cost of the
former, and partly because of the difficulties of constructing so deep a
cut--about three hundred and forty feet--at the summit of the Culebra
ridge. The construction company, after spending the entire
capital--about one hundred and twenty million dollars--in accomplishing
one-tenth of the work, became bankrupt. The United States subsequently
purchased the franchise.
A canal by way of Lake Nicaragua has also been projected, and two
treaties with Great Britain, whereby the United States agreed to build
no fortifications to guard it, have been made. No work beyond the
surveys has yet been undertaken, however. The cost of each canal is
estimated between one hundred and fifty million and two hundred million
dollars. The Panama route will require about twelve hours for the
passage of a vessel; the Nicaragua route about sixty hours.[11] (_See
map, p. 270._)
The completion of a canal by either route will cause a readjustment of
the world's commerce far greater than that which followed the
construction of the Suez Canal. By such a route San Francisco is brought
nearer to London than Calcutta now is, and the all-water route between
the Atlantic ports of the United States and those of China and Japan
will be shortened by upward of eight thousand miles. The importance of
the Hawaiian Islands, already a great ocean depot, will be greatly
increased, and the latter is becoming one of the great commercial
stations of the world.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What were some of the effects which resulted from the various embargo
and non-intercourse acts that preceded the war of 1812?
What is the effect upon an industry when all means of getting the
products to market are cut off?
In the early history of the country rivers were the most important
highways of commerce; obtain an account of some instance of this in
detail.
Certain commodities have been carried about four-fifths of the distance
between Moscow and Vladivostok by water, across Siberia. Illustrate
this, using the map of the Russian Empire, plate, p. 342.
What has been the effect of cheap steel on ocean navigation?
Discuss the difference between a screw-steamship and a side-wheeler; a
ship and a schooner. How are vessels steered?
How does a triple-expansion engine differ from an ordinary steam-engine?
Cargoes are carried by water across Europe from Havre to Marseilles, and
from The Hague to the mouth of the Danube; illustrate the route on a map
of Europe.
The following instruction occasionally is found in the pilothouse of a
vessel--what is its meaning?
"Green to green and red to red--
Perfect safety; go ahead."
From the chart on p. 49 show how a pilot uses the range lights in
entering New York Harbor.
The new freighter Minnesota is designed to carry a load of 30,000 tons;
how many trains of fifty cars, each car holding 30,000 pounds, are
required to furnish her cargo?
From the map on pp. x-xi describe the new ocean routes that will be
created by an interoceanic canal across the American continent.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Photographs or illustrations of various steam and sailing craft.
An Atlantic Coast Pilot Chart--any month.
A map showing the canals of the United States.
A map showing the canals of Europe.
[Illustration: A MODERN LOCOMOTIVE--THE TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED AT A
SPEED EXCEEDING NINETY MILES AN HOUR]
CHAPTER VI
TRANSPORTATION--RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY ORGANIZATION; PUBLIC HIGHWAYS
In the United States and western Europe, in spite of the low cost of
water transportation, the railways have almost wholly monopolized the
transportation of commodities. This is due in part to the saving of time
in transit--for under the demands of modern business, the only economy
is economy of time--and in part to prompt delivery at the specified
time.
Into a large centre of population like New York, London, or Berlin, many
millions of pounds of perishable food-stuffs must be brought daily for
consumption. Now these food-stuffs must be delivered with promptness,
and no delay can be tolerated. A shipper having half a million pounds of
meat or a hundred thousand pounds of flour or a car-load of fruit to
deliver can take no risks; he sends it by rail, not only because it is
the quickest way, but because experience has shown it to be the most
prompt way; as a rule, it is delivered on the exact minute of schedule
time.
Cargoes of silks and teas from China and Japan might be sent all the way
to London by water, but experience has shown a more profitable way. The
consignments are sent by swift steamships to Seattle; thence by fast
express trains to New York; there they are transferred to swift liners
that take them across the Atlantic to European ports. And although this
method of shipment is enormously expensive as compared with the
all-water route, the saving of time and certainty of prompt delivery
more than offset the extra cost of delivery.
In the last half of the nineteenth century the cost of haulage in the
United States by rail decreased so materially that in a few instances
only--notably the Great Lakes and the Hudson River--do inland waters
compete with the railways.[12] This is due in part to better
organization of the railways, but mainly to the substitution of Bessemer
steel for iron rails and the great improvements in locomotives and
rolling stock.
The use of a steam-driven locomotive became possible for the first time
when Stephenson used the tubular boiler and the forced draught,[13]
thereby making steam rapidly enough for a short, quick stroke. In 1865 a
good freight locomotive weighing thirty tons could haul about forty
box-cars, each loaded with ten tons. This was the maximum load for a
level track; the average load for a single locomotive was about
twenty-five or thirty cars. Heavier locomotives could not well be used
because the iron rails went to pieces under them.
The invention of Bessemer steel produced a rail that was safe under the
pounding of a locomotive three or four times as heavy as those formerly
employed; it produced boilers that would carry steam at 250 instead of
60 pounds pressure per square inch. As a result, with only a moderate
increase in the fuel burned, a single locomotive on a level track will
haul eighty or ninety box-cars, each carrying nearly seventy thousand
pounds.[14]
The application of the double and the triple expansion principle has
been quite as successful with locomotive as with marine engines in
saving fuel and gaining power--that is, it has decreased the cost per
ton-mile of hauling freight and likewise the cost of transporting
passengers. Enlarged "fire-boxes," or furnaces,[15] enable steam to be
made more rapidly and to give higher speed.[16] Only a few years ago
forty-eight hours was the scheduled time between New York and Chicago;
now there are about forty trains a day between these two cities, several
of which make the trip in twenty-four hours or less.
=Railway Development.=--The railway as a common carrier, having its right
by virtue of a government charter, dates from 1801, when a tramway was
built between Croydon and Wandsworth, two suburbs of London. The rails
were iron straps, nailed to wooden stringers. The charter was carefully
drawn in order to prevent the road from competing with omnibus lines and
public cabs.
When the steam locomotive succeeded horse-power, however, there
followed an era of railway development that in a few years
revolutionized the carrying trade in the thickly settled parts of the
United States and Europe. Short, independent lines were constructed
without any reference whatever to the natural movement of traffic. There
seemed but one idea, namely, to connect two cities or towns. Indeed, the
absence of a definite plan was much similar to that of the interurban
electric roads a century later; local traffic was the only
consideration.
At first an opinion prevailed that the road-bed of the railway ought to
be a public highway upon which any individual or company might run its
own conveyances, on the payment of a fixed toll; indeed, in both Europe
and the United States, public opinion could see no difference between
the railway and the canal. The employment of a steam-driven locomotive
engine, however, made such a plan impossible, and demonstrated that the
roads must be thoroughly organized.
At the close of 1850 there were nearly four hundred different railway
companies in England; in the United States about a dozen companies were
required to make the connection of New York City and Buffalo. A few of
these paid dividends; a large majority barely met their operating
expenses, defaulting the interest on their bonds; a great many were
hopelessly bankrupt.
=Consolidation of Connecting Lines.=--Between 1850 and 1865 a new feature
entered into railway management, namely, the union of connecting lines.
This was a positive advantage, for the operating expenses of the sixteen
lines, now a part of the New York Central, between New York and Buffalo
were scarcely greater than the expenses of one-third that number. The
service was much quicker, better, and cheaper. In England the several
hundred companies were reduced to twelve; in France the thirty-five or
more companies were reduced to six in number.
The consolidation of connecting lines brought about another desirable
feature--the extension of the existing lines.[17] The lines of
continental Europe were extended eastward to the Russian frontier, and
to Constantinople; then the Alps were surmounted. In the United States
railway extension was equally great. The Union and Central Pacific
railways were opened in 1869, giving the first all-rail route to the
Pacific coast. Other routes to the Pacific followed within a few years,
one of which, the Canadian Pacific, was built from Quebec to Vancouver.
[Illustration: A TRUNK SYSTEM--THE VARIOUS BRANCHES EXTEND INTO COAL,
GRAIN, IRON, CATTLE, TIMBER, AND TOBACCO REGIONS]
The period from 1864 was one of extensive railway building both in the
United States and Europe. Some of the roads, such as the transalpine
railways of Europe and the Pacific roads of the United States, were
greatly needed. Others that created new fields of industry by opening to
communication productive lands were also wise and necessary; the lands
would have been valueless without them. Not a few lines that were to be
needed in time were built so far ahead of time that they did not even
pay their operating expenses for many years.
Another class of roads was intended for speculative purposes. Thus,
there were instances in which a line occupying a given territory had
antagonized its patrons by poor service, and extortionate charges.
Thereupon another company would obtain a charter--which was then easily
done--and build a competing line in the same territory, the former most
likely having scarcely enough business for one road.[18] The results
were almost always the same; a war of rate-cutting followed; the
stockholders of both roads lost heavily; and one or both went into the
hands of receivers.
=Competition and Pools.=--In many instances the consolidation of roads,
while cutting off disastrous competition in the territory jointly
occupied by the two roads, brought the consolidated road into fierce
competition with another adjacent system. If the roads had practically
the same territory but different terminals the competition was confined
mainly to local traffic. On the other hand, they might have the same
terminals but cover different local territories; in this case the roads
must compete for through traffic. Thus the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy
is brought into competition with the Union Pacific in Nebraska, but
inasmuch as the roads have different and widely distant terminals, their
local traffic is easily adjusted. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and
the Northwestern have common terminals at Chicago, St. Paul, Denver,
Omaha, and Kansas City. They must therefore compete with each other, and
with half-a-dozen other roads for their through traffic.
Competition between railways differs greatly from that between two
firms. If one of two firms cannot afford to compete, the manager may
discharge his help, and close doors; he then does not suffer actual
loss. But a railway, being a common carrier, cannot do this; the road
must keep its trains moving or lose its charter. If it cannot carry
goods at a profit it must carry them at cost or at a loss. Even the
latter is better than not carrying them at all, for the operating
expenses of the road must go on.
So between 1870 and 1880 most of the railway managements were busy
devising ways to stop a rate-cutting and competition that was ruinous.
In many instances great trunk lines would have consolidated had not
State laws prevented. They could not maintain rates because one or
another of the weaker roads would be compelled to lower their rates in
order to meet their operating expenses. Therefore they were compelled to
do one of three things, namely, to divide the territory, to divide
traffic, or to divide earnings. Either of the two latter plans is called
a _pool_.
Of these two forms of pooling the division of the traffic is the easier,
but it is often unsatisfactory to the patrons of the road. The second
plan, the division of the earnings, is a more difficult matter to adjust
because each road is usually dissatisfied with its proportion. As a
matter of fact, however, the first plan of pooling is very apt to grow
into the second.
In several instances pools have been declared illegal by the courts,
but, in general, railway service has been more satisfactory under the
pool system than under any other. They have always aroused popular
suspicion, however, from the fact that they increase power of the
railway itself. In various instances important trunk lines have formed a
general company, each having its separate organization, because they
could accomplish under a combined organization what they could not as
independent companies. The restrictions against pooling have therefore
encouraged combination of competing lines.
Because the railway is an absolute necessity, and because it has power
given neither to individuals nor to other corporations, it is a settled
policy that both the State and general Government should have the power
to regulate its rates, and should in every way prevent unjust
discrimination. Both problems are very difficult, however, and the
unintelligent adjustment of rates has frequently resulted in injustice
both to the roads and their patrons.
A rate per ton-mile for each class of freight is out of question,
because a large part of the cost to the company consists in loading,
handling, and storing the goods. Once aboard the car, it costs but
little more to carry a ton of freight one hundred miles than to move it
one mile. The rates per mile, therefore, are necessarily greater for
short distances than for long runs. A mile-rate based on a ten-mile haul
would be prohibitive to the shipper if applied to a run between Chicago
and New York. On the other hand, were the charges based on the long run,
the local rates would be far less than the cost of the service.[19]
As a result freight rates are based very largely on the cost of the
service, and this is particularly true of local freights. This practice
is also modified by charging _what the traffic will bear_, and, on the
whole, a combination of the two ideas gives the most reasonable and the
fairest method of basing charges. Thus, a car filled with fine, crated
furniture, which is light and bulky, can afford a higher rate than one
filled with scrap-iron. Cars filled with grain, lumber, coal, or ore are
made up in train-loads, and form a part of the daily haul; they can
afford to be taken at a lower rate than the stuffs of which only an
occasional car-load is hauled. In order to adjust this problem it is
customary to divide freights into six general classes.
[Illustration: THE PROBLEM OF FREIGHT RATES]
In handling through freights the problems are many, and, if two or more
roads have the same terminal points, a great deal of friction of
necessity results. The longest roads must either make their through
rates lower than local rates between distant points, or lose much of
their through business. They cannot afford to do the latter and the
statutory laws may forbid the former. As a result the laws most likely
are evaded, or else openly disobeyed.[20]
The difficulties in adjusting the matter of the long and the short
haul, as has been shown, have caused the formation of pools and various
other traffic associations, the object of which has been to prevent
rate-wars. To this extent they resulted in positive good, for a
rate-war in the end is apt to be as hurtful to the community as to the
railway company. The attempt to settle such questions has also resulted
in a great deal of legislation. Some of this has been wise and good; but
not a little has been hurtful both to the railroads and to the
community. The general result is seen in the great combination of
competing lines and, more recently, of competing systems.
=Passenger Service.=--Passenger traffic is more easily managed than the
movement of freight. For the greater part the rates are fixed by law. On
a few eastern roads local rates are two cents per mile; in the main,
however, a three-cent rate prevails, except that in sparsely peopled
regions the rates are four and five cents per mile. On many roads
1,000-mile books are sold at the rate of twenty dollars; on some the
rate is twenty-five dollars per book.
Long-distance rates involving passage over several roads are somewhat
less than the local rates. These rates are determined by joint
passenger-tariff associations. Each individual road fixes its own
excursion and commutation rates; one or another of the joint passenger
associations determines the rates where several roads divide the
traffic. The latter are usually one, or one and one-third fares for the
round trip.
Except on a few local roads in densely peopled regions the passenger
service is much less remunerative than freight business, and not a few
railways would abolish passenger trains altogether were they permitted
to do so. Rate-cutting between competing roads has not been common since
the existence of joint passenger associations. It is sometimes done
secretly, however, through the use of ticket-brokers, or "scalpers," who
are employed to sell tickets at less than the usual rate; it is also
done by the illicit use of tickets authorized for given purposes, such
as "editors'," "clergymen's," and "advertising" transportation.
In many instances, where several roads have the same terminal points, it
is customary for the road or roads having the quickest service to allow
a lower rate to the others. Thus, of the seven or eight roads between
New York and Chicago, the two best equipped roads charge a fare of
twenty dollars on their ordinary, and a higher rate on their limited,
trains. Because of slower time the other roads charge a sum less by two
or three dollars for the same service. This cut in the rate is called a
"differential."
=Railway Mileage.=--The railways of the world in 1900 had an aggregate of
nearly four hundred and eighty thousand miles distributed as follows:
North America 216,000
Europe 173,000
Asia 36,000
South America and West Indies 28,000
Australasia 15,000
Africa 12,000
In western Europe and the eastern United States there is an average of
one mile of railway to each six or eight square miles of area. In these
countries railway construction has reached probably its highest
development, and the proportion seems to represent the mileage necessary
for the commercial interests of the people.
The railways of the United States aggregate 193,000 miles--nearly
one-half the total mileage of the world. Over this enormous trackage
38,000 locomotives and 1,400,000 coaches and cars carry yearly
600,000,000 passengers and 1,000,000,000 tons of freight. They represent
an outlay of about $5,000,000,000. Owing to the absence of the
international problems that have greatly interfered with the
organization of European railways, the roads of the United States have
developed "trunk-system" features to a higher degree than is found
elsewhere.
In the United States and Canada the farms of the great central plain,
together with the coal-mines, are the great centres of production, while
the seaports of the two coasts form great centres of distribution. Most
of the trunk lines, therefore, extend east and west; of the north and
south lines only two are important. The reason for the east-west
direction of the great trunk lines is obvious; the great markets of
North America, Europe, and Asia lie respectively to the east and the
west.
[Illustration: THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE RAILWAYS OF THE UNITED STATES
THEIR POSITION DEPENDS ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE LAND]
=Railway Ownership.=--The ownership of railways is vested either in
national governments or else in corporate companies; in only a few
instances are roads held individually by private owners, and these are
mainly lumber or plantation roads. Thus, the railways of Prussia are
owned by the state; most of those of the smaller German states are owned
either by the state or by the empire; still others are owned by
corporate companies and managed by the imperial government. In their
management military use is considered as first in importance.
In France governmental ownership and management have been less
successful. Plans for an elaborate system of state railways failed, and
the state now owns and operates only 1,700 miles, mainly, in the
southwest. Belgium controls and operates all her lines, but as the
latter are short and the area of the state small, there are no
difficulties in the way of excellent management. In Great Britain all
the railways are owned and controlled by corporate companies. The great
transcontinental line of the Russian Empire was built by the government,
but the latter does not own it.
In the United States the railways are now owned by corporate companies.
Some of the western roads were built by Government subsidies;[21] other
roads were built by the aid of States, counties, or cities, which
afterward sold them to corporate companies. The first transcontinental
railways required Government assistance, and could not have been built
without it; nowadays, however, corporate companies find no difficulty in
providing the capital for any railway that is needed.
Inasmuch as the railway is a positive necessity, upon whose existence
depends the transportation of the food daily required in the great
centres of population, the charter of the railway gives the company
extraordinary powers. Most steam railway companies are permitted by the
State to exercise the power of _eminent domain_--that is, they may seize
and hold the land on which to locate their tracks and buildings, if it
cannot be acquired by the consent of the owners; they may also seize
coal and other materials consigned to them for shipment if such
materials are necessary to operate their lines.
Therefore, in consideration of the unusual powers possessed by the
companies, the various States reserve the right to regulate the freight
and passenger tariffs. They may also compel the companies to afford
equal facilities to all patrons, and take the measures necessary to
prevent discrimination.
The control of the railways by the government may be absolute, as in the
German state of Prussia; or it may consist of a general supervision, as
in the case of the Canadian railways. In almost every European state
there is a director or else a commission to act as a representative
between the railways and the people. In the United States the various
States have each a railway commission, while the general Government is
represented by the Interstate Commerce Commission.
=Electric Railways.=--The use of electricity as a motive power has not
only revolutionized suburban traffic but it has become a great factor in
rural transportation as well. The speed of the horse-car rarely exceeded
five or six miles per hour, while that of the electric car is about ten
miles per hour in city streets and about twice as great over rural
roads. As a result, the suburban limits of the large centres of
population have greatly extended, and the population of the outlying
districts has been increased from four to ten fold.
[Illustration: ELECTRIC RAILWAY--ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
[Illustration: ELECTRIC FREIGHT LOCOMOTIVE--ERIE RAILROAD]
From some of the larger cities the electric roads reach out to
distances of one hundred miles or more and have become the carriers of
perishable freight, such as fruit and dairy products. These are not only
delivered just as promptly as though they were sent over the steam
roads, but the delivery is more frequent. Indeed, the marvellous success
of the electric interurban railway is due mainly to the frequency of its
service.
=Public Roads and Highways.=--Carriages propelled by steam, electric, and
gasoline motors have become an important factor in the delivery of goods
in nearly every city of Europe and America. They are not only speedier
than the horse and wagon, but their keeping costs less. They are
economical only on good roads. The bicycle, no longer a plaything,
exerted a very decided effect on transportation when the "pneumatic" or
inflated rubber tire came into use. Through the bicycle came the demand
for good roads; and several thousand miles of the best surfaced roads
are built in the United States each year.
The ordinary highways or roads, the paved streets of the large cities
excepted, are popularly known either as "dirt" roads or "macadamized"
roads, the latter name being applied to about every sort of graded
highway that has been surfaced with broken rock. Most of the roads of
western Europe are of this character. They are laid out with easy
grades, and a thick foundation of heavy stone is covered with smaller
pieces of broken rock, the whole being finished off with a top-dressing
of fine material. Once built, the expense of keeping them in good order
is less than that of keeping a dirt road in bad order.
Most of the country highways of the United States are dirt roads that
are deep with dust in dry weather and almost impassable at the breaking
of winter. Roads of this character are such a detriment that grain
farming will not pay when the farm is distant twenty miles or more from
the nearest railway. Many a farmer pays more to haul his grain to the
nearest railway station than from the railway station to London.
Since it has become apparent that the commercial development of many
agricultural regions depends quite as much on good wagon roads as upon
railways and expensive farming machinery, there has been a disposition
to grade and rock-surface all roads that are important highways.
Intercommunication becomes vastly easier; the cost of transportation is
lessened by more than one-half; and the wear and destruction of vehicles
is reduced to a minimum. In every case the improvement of the road is
designed to increase traffic by making a given power do more work in
less time.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What have been the effects of Bessemer steel on the carrying power of
railways?--on cheapening freight rates?
What would be some of the effects first apparent were a large city like
London or New York suddenly cut off from railway communication?
What is meant by a tubular boiler?--by a forced draught?--by a
switch?--by an automatic coupler?
Ascertain from a railway official the various danger-signals as
indicated by lights, flags, and whistle-blasts.
Why should not crated furniture and coal have the same freight rate?
What is meant by a pool?--by long haul and short haul?--by rebate?
If the rate on a given weight of merchandise is one dollar and fifty
cents for five miles, should it be three hundred dollars for one
thousand miles?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Hartley's Railroad Transportation.
American Railways.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF VEGETATION]
CHAPTER VII
FACTORS IN THE LOCATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS
The population of the world is very unevenly distributed. Not far from
nine-tenths live in lowland plains, below an altitude of 1,200 feet, in
regions where food-stuffs grow. The remainder live mainly in the
grass-producing regions of the great plateaus, the mining regions or the
flood-plains and grassy slopes of the higher montane regions.
=Communal Life.=--In each of these regions, also, there is a very unequal
massing of population. In part, the various families live isolated from
one another; in part, they gather into cities and villages. In other
words the population of a habitable region may be classed as _rural_ and
_urban_. In the United States and western Europe, agricultural pursuits
encourage rural life, each family living on its own estate. In Russia,
the agricultural population usually cluster in villages.
The farmer or freeholder who owns or controls his estate, exemplifies
the most advanced condition of personal and political liberty. Only a
few centuries have elapsed since not only the land but also the life of
a subject was the property of the king or the feudal lord, and in those
days about the only people living in isolation were outlaws. In most
cases the communal system, best exemplified in Russia, marks an
intermediate stage between a low and a high state of civilization; in
other instances it is necessary in order to insure safety. German
farmers in Siberia usually adopt the village plan for this reason.
For the greater part, the non-agricultural population of the civilized
world is massed in villages and cities for reasons that have nothing to
do with either civilization or self-defence. The causes that bring about
the massing of urban population are many and their operation is complex.
In general, however, it is to facilitate one or more of several things,
namely--the receiving, distribution, and transportation of commodities,
the manufacture of products, the existence of good harbors, and the
existence of minerals and metals necessary in the various industries.
=The Beginnings of Towns and Cities.=--The "country town" of agricultural
regions in many ways is the best type of the centre of population
engaged in receiving and disbursing commodities. The farmers living in
their vicinity send their crops to it for transportation or final
disposition. The country store is a sort of clearing-house, exchanging
household and other commodities, such as sugar, tea, coffee, spices,
drugs, silks, woollens, cotton goods, farming machinery, and furniture
for farm products. A railway station, grain elevator, and one or more
banks form the rest of its business equipment.
Usually the town has resulted from a position of easy access. It may be
the crossing of two highways, a good landing-place on a river, the
existence of a fording-place, a bridge, a ferry, a toll gate, or a point
that formed a convenient resting-place for a day's journey. The towns
and villages along the "buffalo" roads are examples almost without
number.
The "siding" or track where freight cars may be held for unloading, has
formed the beginning of many a town. The siding was located at the
convenience of the railway company; the village resulting could have
grown equally well almost anywhere else along the line.
[Illustration: THE EFFECT OF POSITION--BUFFALO IS AT THE FOOT OF LAKE
ERIE AND THE HEAD OF ERIE CANAL; AN EXCELLENT HARBOR FACILITATES ITS
COMMERCE]
In the early history of nearly every country, military posts formed the
beginnings of many centres that have grown to be large cities. Thus,
Rome, Paris, London, the various "chesters"[22] of England, Milan,
Turin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburg, and Albany were established first as
military outposts. The trading post was most conveniently established
under the protection of the military camp, and the subsequent growth
depended partly on an accessible position, and partly on the
intelligence of the men who controlled the trade of the surrounding
regions.
=Harbors as Factors in the Growth of Cities.=--A good harbor draws trade
from a great distance. Thus, with a rate of 14-1/2 cents on a bushel of
wheat from Chicago, New York City draws a trade from a region having a
radius of more than one thousand miles. In its trade with Chinese ports,
Seattle, the chief port of Puget Sound, reaches as far eastward as
London and Hamburg.
=Water-Power as a Factor.=--The presence of water-power has brought about
the establishment of many centres that have grown into populous cities.
The water-power of the New England plateau had much to do with the rapid
growth of the New England States. At the time of the various embargo and
non-intercourse acts preceding the war of 1812, a great amount of
capital was thrown into idleness. The water-power was made available
because, during this time, the people were compelled to manufacture for
themselves the commodities that before had been imported.
The manufacturing industry at first was prosecuted in the southern
Appalachians as well as in the New England plateau. It survived in the
latter, partly because of the capital available, and partly owing to the
business experience of the people. In the meantime villages sprang up in
pretty nearly every locality in which there was available water-power.
Since the use of coal and the advent of cheap railway transportation,
steam has largely supplanted water-power, unless the latter is unlimited
in supply. As a result, there is a marked growth of the smaller centres
of population along the various water-fronts. In such cases the
advantages of a water-front offset the loss of water-power.
=The Effects of Metals on the Growth of Cities.=--The character of the
industry of a region has much to do with the character of its
manufactures. Thus, coal is absolutely essential to the manufacture of
iron and steel; and, inasmuch as from two to eight tons of the former
are necessary to manufacture a ton of steel, it is cheaper to ship the
ore to a place to which coal can be cheaply brought.
The coal-fields are responsible for the greater part of Pittsburg's
population, and almost wholly for that of Scranton, Wilkesbarre, and
many other Pennsylvania towns. Iron and coal are responsible, also, for
many cities and towns in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. Birmingham,
Salford, and Cardiff in Great Britain, Dortmund and Essen in Germany,
and St. Etienne in France have resulted from the presence of coal and
iron.
In many instances man is a great factor in the establishment of a centre
of population. Chicago would have been quite as well off in two or three
other locations; its present location is the result of man's energy and
is not likely to be changed. St. Louis might have been built at a dozen
different places and would have fared just as well; the same is true of
St. Paul, or of Indianapolis.
Leavenworth at one time was a more promising city than Kansas City, but
the building of an iron bridge over the Missouri River at the latter
place gave it a start, and wide-awake men kept it in the lead. It has
grown at the expense of Leavenworth and St. Joseph, neither one of which
has become a commercial centre. Cairo, at the junction of the
Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, has the geographical position for a great
city; it waits for the man who can concentrate the commerce there.
=Adjustment to Environment.=--San Francisco was wisely located at first,
but its grain trade was more economically carried on at Karquinez
Strait, while its oriental trade is gradually concentrating at Seattle.
Philadelphia lost its commercial supremacy when the completion of the
Erie Canal gave return cargoes to foreign vessels discharging at New
York City. Oswego, N.Y., had the advantage of both harbor facilities and
water-power, but Syracuse, with practically no advantages except those
of leadership, has far outstripped it.
Such instances of the readjustment of centres of population have been
common in the past; they will also occur in the future. In nearly every
case the readjustment results from economic causes, the opening of new
lines of transportation, the lowering of the cost of the production of a
commodity, the discovery of new economic processes--all these cause a
disturbance of population, and the latter must readjust itself to new
and changed conditions.
Not all peoples have the necessary intelligence and training at first to
adapt themselves to their environment. For the greater part, the
American Indians were unable to take advantage of the wonderful
resources of the continent in which they lived. The Boers occupied about
the richest part of Africa, but made no use of the natural wealth of the
country beyond the grazing industry; in fact, their nomadic life reduced
them to a plane of civilization materially lower than that of their
ancestors.
People of the highest state of civilization do not always adjust
themselves to their environment readily. The people of the New England
plateau were nearly a century in learning that they possessed nearly all
the best harbors of the Atlantic coast of North America. When, however,
the great commerce of the country had been wiped out of existence, it
did not take them long to readjust themselves to the industry of
manufacture, the water-power being the natural resource that made the
industry profitable.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Were the middle Atlantic coast of the United States to undergo an
elevation of 100 feet, what would be the effect on New York City?
Find the factors that led to the settlement of the city or town in which
or near which you live. What caused the settlement of the three or four
largest towns in the same county?--of the following places: Minneapolis,
Fall River, New Haven, New Bedford, Cairo (Ill.), Cairo (Egypt),
Marseille, Aix-la-Chapelle, Alexandria (Egypt), Washington (D.C.),
Columbus (O.), Johannesburg (Africa), Kimberley (Africa), Albany (N.Y.),
Punta Arenas (S.A.), Scranton (Pa.), Vancouver (B.C.), San Francisco,
Cape Nome?
What circumstances connected with commerce led to the passing of the
following-named places: Palmyra, Carthage, Babylon, Genoa, Venice,
Ancient Rome, Jerusalem?
COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Any good cyclopaedia.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CEREALS AND GRASSES
Of all the plants connected with the economies of mankind the grasses
hold easily the first place. Not only are the seeds of certain species
the chief food of nearly all peoples, but the plants themselves are the
food of most animals whose flesh is used as meat. Wheat, maize, and rice
are used by all except a very few peoples; and about all the animals
used for food, fish and mollusks excepted, are grain eaters, or grass
eaters, or both.
The grasses of the Plains in Texas, the Veldt in South Africa, and the
hills of New Zealand by nature's processes are converted into meat that
feeds the great cities of western Europe and the eastern United States.
The corn of the Mississippi valley becomes the pork which, yielded from
the carcasses of more than forty million swine, is exported to half the
countries of the world. Even the two and one-half billion pounds of wool
consumed yearly is converted grass.
=Wheat.=--The wheat of commerce is the seed of several species of cereal
grass, one of which, _Triticum sativum_, is the ordinary cultivated
plant. Wild species are found in the highlands of Kurdistan, in Greece,
and in Mesopotamia, that are identical with species cultivated to-day.
It is thought that the cultivation of the grain began in Mesopotamia,
but it is also certain that it was grown by the Swiss lake-dwellers far
back in prehistoric times. It is the "corn" Joseph's brothers sought to
buy when they went to Egypt, and the records of its harvesting are
scattered all over the pages of written history.
[Illustration: THE GRAIN CROP--MODERN METHODS OF CULTIVATION AND
HARVESTING]
Of the one and one-half billion people that constitute the world's
population, more than one-third, or about eight times the population of
the United States, are consumers of wheat-bread; and this number is
yearly increasing by twelve million. Moreover, each individual of this
aggregate consumes yearly very nearly one barrel of flour, or about four
and one-half bushels of wheat. In other words, it requires somewhat more
than two billion three hundred million bushels of wheat each year to
supply the world's demand.[23] As a matter of fact the world's crop is
yearly consumed so nearly to the danger-line that very often the
"visible supply," or the amount known to be in the market, is reduced to
a few million bushels.
Wheat will grow under very wide ranges of climate, but it thrives best
between the parallels of 25 deg. and 55 deg. In a soil very rich in
vegetable mould it is apt to "run to stalk." A rather poor clay-loam
produces the best seed,[24] and a hard seed, rather than a heavy stalk,
is required.
In the latitude of Kansas the seeds planted in the fall will retain
their vitality through the winter; in the latitude of Dakota they are
"winter-killed," as a rule. Because of this feature two broad classes or
divisions of the crop are recognized in commerce--the winter and the
spring varieties. In general, the spring wheats are regarded as the
better, and this is nearly always the case in localities too cold for
winter wheat. There are exceptions to this rule, however. In the main,
winter wheat ripens first, and is therefore first in the market.[25]
[Illustration: WHEAT]
In Europe the plain that faces the North and Baltic Seas, and that part
which extends through southern Russia, yield the chief part of the
crop, although the plains of the Po, the Danube, and Bohemia furnish
heavy crops. Russia, France, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy are all
wheat states.
In a normal year all Europe produces a little more than one-half
(fifty-five per cent.) of the world's crop. Russia and France excepted,
scarcely another state produces as much as is consumed. Great Britain
consumes her entire crop in three months; Germany in about six months.
France sends a part of her crop to Great Britain and buys of Russia to
fill the deficiency. Russia consumes but very little of her wheat-crop;
it is nearly all sold to the states of western Europe. All Europe
consumes about one billion seven hundred and ten million bushels, but
produces about one billion two hundred and fifty million; the remainder
is supplied by the United States, India, Argentina, Africa, and
Australia.
[Illustration: WHEAT IN UNITED STATES]
In the United States the great bulk of the crop comes from the upper
Mississippi valley and Pacific coast States. About one-third is
consumed where it is grown; more than one-third is required for the
populous centres of the east; a little less than one-third is exported,
of which about ninety per cent. goes to Europe.
[Illustration: WHEAT PRODUCTION]
Much of this, especially the Pacific coast product, is sold unground,
but each year an increasing amount is made into flour. The flour
manufacture of the United States aggregates somewhat more than
160,000,000 barrels yearly--the output of 16,000 flour-mills; the
Pillsbury mills of Minneapolis alone have a capacity of 60,000 barrels a
week. In Europe the Hungarian mills and their output of Bohemian flour
are the chief competitors of the United States.
[Illustration: WHEAT]
The wheat-crop of the Pacific coast has usually been a factor by itself.
On account of the absence of summer rains, the kernel is both plump and
hard. After the threshing process it is sacked and stored in the fields
in which it has grown.[26] Heretofore much of the sacked wheat has been
shipped to European markets by the Cape Horn route, but in late years a
yearly increasing amount is made into flour and sold in China, Japan,
and Siberia. In 1900 nearly two million barrels were thus sent.
East of the Rocky Mountains, after the grain is harvested much of it is
sold to dealers whose storage elevators[27] are scattered all over the
wheat-growing region, and at all great points of shipment, such as
Duluth, Minneapolis, Buffalo, and the eastern seaports. Before the grain
is transferred to the elevators it is inspected and graded, and the cars
which contain it are sealed. This wheat constitutes the "visible
supply." All the business concerning it is transacted by means of
"warehouse receipts," that have almost the currency of ready money.
Banks loan money on them almost to their market value.
Under normal conditions, the cost of growing and harvesting a bushel of
wheat--including interest on the land and deterioration of the
machinery, etc.--is between fifty and fifty-five cents. The market
price, when not affected by "corners" and other gambling transactions,
usually varies between sixty-two and eighty-five cents. The difference
between these figures is divided between the farmer and the "middlemen,"
the share of the latter being in the form of commissions and elevator
charges.
[Illustration: STORING PACIFIC COAST WHEAT]
In addition to bread-making wheat, certain varieties of grain known as
macaroni wheat have a certain importance in the market. Several
varieties are so hardy that they easily resist extremely cold winters;
they will also grow in regions too dry for ordinary varieties. In this
respect they are well adapted to the plains at the eastern base of the
Rocky Mountains. The only detriment is the lack of a steady market.
Macaroni wheat has a very hard kernel and is rich in gluten. It is used
mainly in the manufacture of macaroni paste, but in Europe, when mixed
with three times its weight of ordinary soft wheat, it is much used in
making flour. The small amount now grown in the United States is shipped
mainly to France.
The yield of wheat varies partly with the rainfall, but the difference
is due mainly to skill in cultivation. In western Europe it is from two
to three times as great as in the United States; in Russia and India it
is much less.[28]
The yearly consumption of wheat is increasing very rapidly both in the
United States and in Europe; moreover, China is becoming a
wheat-consuming country. In the United States the consumption is
increasing so rapidly that unless either the acreage of the crop, or
else the yield per acre, is materially increased, there will be no
surplus for export after the year 1931.
[Illustration: THE WHEAT INDUSTRY--GRAIN ELEVATORS AT BUFFALO, NEW
YORK]
In the United States the acreage may be somewhat increased by the
irrigation of arid lands now uncultivated, and by the reclamation of
overflowed and swamp lands. There are far greater possibilities,
however, in the employment of methods of cultivation which will double
the rate of present yield. It is doubtful if there can be much increase
of acreage in the States of the Mississippi Valley, where the acreage
will of necessity be lessened rather than increased.
In western Europe there can be no material increase of the acreage or
the rate of yield; in Russia both are possible. The plains of Argentina
now yield a notable quantity--about one hundred million bushels--and the
amount may be increased. Moreover, a large product may be obtained from
both Uruguay and Paraguay, and southern Brazil, neither one of which
produces a considerable quantity. At the present rate of the increase in
consumption, all of the available land, yielding its maximum, will not
produce a sufficient crop at the end of the twentieth century.
=Corn.=--Maize or Indian corn is the seed of a plant, _Zea mays_, a member
of the grass family. It is not known to exist in a wild state. The
species now cultivated are undoubtedly derived from the American
continent, but evidence is not wanting to show that it was known in
China and the islands of Asia before the discovery of America.[29] The
commercial history of corn begins with the discovery of America. Next to
meat it was the chief food of the native American; next to wheat it is
the chief food-stuff in the American continent to-day.
Corn requires a rich soil and is not so hardy as wheat. It thrives best
in regions having long summers and warm nights. The growing crop is
easily injured by too much rain. It is an abundant crop in the central
Mississippi Valley, but not near the coast; it is very prolific in
Nebraska, but not in Dakota; it thrives in Italy, Austria, and the
Balkan Peninsula, but not in the British Isles and Germany. It is a very
important crop in Australia, and is the staple grain of Mexico. It is
the crop of fourteen-hour days and warm nights.
[Illustration: CORN]
The United States is the chief producer of corn, and from an area of
80,000,000 acres--about that of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
combined--more than two billion bushels, or four-fifths of the world's
crop, are produced. In the past few years the area planted with corn has
not materially increased, and it is likely to be lessened rather than
increased in the future. From the same acreage, however, the annual
yield, now about twenty-five or thirty bushels per acre, can be more
than doubled by the use of more skilful methods of cultivation.
Corn contains more fatty substance, or natural oil, than wheat, and
therefore has a greater heating power. For this reason it is better than
wheat for out-of-door workers, and it is almost the only cereal
food-stuff consumed in Spanish America. It is also a staple food-stuff
in Egypt. Corn has been used as a bread-stuff in the United States,
Italy, and Rumania[30] for a long time. In recent years, however, its
use has become very popular in Europe.
[Illustration: CORN PRODUCTION]
In the United States by far the greater part of the crop is consumed
where it is grown, being used to fatten swine and cattle. The market
value of a pound of corn is about one-third of a cent; converted into
pork or beef, however, it is worth five or six times as much. By feeding
the corn to stock, therefore, a farmer may turn an unmarketable product
into one for which there is a steady demand.
[Illustration: CORN]
Although corn is not so essential a staple as wheat, it has a much wider
range of usefulness. The starch made from it is considered a delicacy
and is used very largely in America and Europe as an article of food.
Glucose, a cheap but wholesome substitute for sugar, is made from it;
from the oil a substitute for rubber is prepared; smokeless powder and
other explosives are made from the pith of the stalk; while a very
large part of the product is used in the manufacture of liquor.
=Rye.=--Rye is the seed of a cereal grass, _Secale cereale_, a plant
closely resembling wheat in external appearance. Rye will grow in soils
that are too poor for wheat; its northern limit is in latitudes somewhat
greater than that of wheat, also. It is an ideal crop for the sandy
plain stretching from the Netherlands into central Russia, and this
locality produces almost the whole yield. The world's crop is about one
and a half billion bushels, of which Russia produces nearly two-thirds.
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Japan grow nearly all the rest. It is
consumed where it is grown. In the United States the yearly product is
about twenty-five million bushels, about one-tenth of which is exported
to Europe. Rye-bread is almost always sour, and this fact is its chief
disadvantage.
=Barley.=--Barley is the seed of several species of cereal grass, mainly
_Hordeum distichum_ and _Hordeum vulgare_. It is one of the oldest-used
of bread-stuffs. It can be cultivated farther north than wheat, and
about as far within the tropics as corn; it has, therefore, very wide
limits. Formerly it was much used in northwestern Europe as a
bread-stuff, but in recent years it has been in part supplanted by wheat
and corn. Barley is a most excellent food for horses, and in California
is grown mainly for this purpose. Its chief use is for the manufacture
of the malt used in brewing.
The world's crop of barley is not far from one billion bushels, of which
the United States produces about sixty million bushels. Most of the crop
is grown in the Germanic states of Europe, and in Russia.
=Oats.=--The oat is the seed of a cereal grass, _Avena sativa_ being the
species almost always cultivated. It is not known where the cultivated
species originated, but the earliest known locality is central Europe,
where it was certainly a domestic plant during the Bronze Age. It seems
probable that the species now cultivated in Scotland at one time grew
wild in western Europe; certain it is that wild species are found in
North America.
[Illustration: OATS PRODUCTION]
The oat grows within rather wider limits of latitude, and thrives in a
greater variety of soils than does wheat. Grown in a moist climate,
however, the grain is at its best. The oat-crop of the world aggregates
more than three billion bushels, surpassing that of wheat or corn in
measurement, but not in weight. A small portion of this is used as a
bread-stuff, but the greater part is used as horse-food, for which it is
remarkably adapted.
[Illustration: OATS]
In Europe, Russia is the greatest producer, and its yearly oat harvest
is about one-quarter of the world's crop. The states of northwestern
Europe yield about half the entire crop; the wheat-growing area of the
United States produces the remaining one-fourth. Russia and the United
States are both exporters, the grain going to western Europe. By far the
greater part of the grain is consumed where it is grown.
=Rice.=--Rice is the seed of a cereal grass, _Oryza sativa_. It is claimed
to be native to India, but it is known to have been cultivated in China
for more than five thousand years. It grows wild in Australia and
Malaysia.
Rice requires plenty of warmth and moisture. It is cultivated in the
warmer parts of the temperate zone, but it thrives best in the tropical
regions. In China a considerable upland rice is grown, but for the
greater part it is grown in level lowlands that may be flooded with
water. The preparation of the fields is a matter of great expense, for
they may require flooding and draining at a moment's notice. The crop
matures in from three to six months. After threshing, the seed is still
covered with a husk, and in this form it is known as "paddy."
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why is not wheat-growing a profitable industry in the New England
States?--in the plains at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains?--in
the southern part of the United States?
What are meant by the following terms: No. 1 spring, a corner, a disk
harrow, a cradle, a flail, a separator, futures, warehouse certificates?
In 1855 the price of a barrel of flour in New York or Boston was about
twelve dollars; at the close of the century it was less than five.
Explain how the lessened price came about.
From a census or other report make a list of the ten leading
wheat-producing States; the ten that produce the most corn.
Why are the foreign shipments of oats less than those of wheat?
What are the prices current of wheat, corn, oats, and barley to-day?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain samples of the different kinds of wheat, oats, barley, corn,
millet, and rice. Put the grain in small, closely stoppered vials;
attach the heads of the small grains to sheets of cardboard of the
proper size.
Read "The Wheat Problem"--Chapter I.
[Illustration: PICKING COTTON, ALABAMA]
[Illustration: TRANSPORTING COTTON FROM WHARF, CHARLESTON, S.C.]
[Illustration: COTTON PRESS YARD, NEW ORLEANS, LA.]
CHAPTER IX
TEXTILE FIBRES
Under the term "textile" are included the fibrous substances that can be
spun into threads, and woven or felted into cloth. Some of these, like
the covering of the sheep, goat, and llama, or the cocoon of the
silk-worm, are of animal origin; others, like cotton furze, the husk of
the cocoanut, and the bast of the flax-plant are vegetable products.
Their use in the manufacture of cloth antedates the period at which
written history begins; it probably begins with the time when primitive
man gradually ceased to have the hairy covering necessary to protect him
from the conditions of climate and weather.
As body coverings all these substances are dependent on a single
principle, namely--they are poor conductors of heat; that is, they do
not permit the natural heat of the body to pass away quickly, nor do
they allow sudden changes of the temperature to reach the body quickly.
In other words, because of the artificial covering which mankind alone
requires, bodily heat is not dissipated more rapidly than it is created;
if it were, the covering would be worthless. A suit of clothes made of
steel wire, for instance, because it conducts heat so rapidly, might
chill, or perhaps heat the body more quickly than the open air.
With respect to warming qualities wool surpasses all other textiles. It
is employed for clothing in every part of the world and by nearly all
peoples. Cotton is used mainly also for body coverings, but it is
inferior to wool for protection against cold. It is used by practically
all peoples, savage and civilized, outside of the frigid zones. Linen
is inferior both to cotton and wool for clothing; its use is also
restricted by its great cost. Silk is used mainly for ornamental cloths.
Hemp is used mainly for cordage, and the use of ramie, jute, and sisal
hemp is confined mainly to the manufacture of very coarse cloths and
rugs.
=Cotton.=--The cotton fibre of commerce is the lint surrounding the seeds
of several species of _Gossypium_, plants belonging to the same natural
order as the marshmallow and the hollyhock. The cultivated species have
been carried from India to different parts of the world, but
cotton-bearing plants are also native to the American. A native
tree-cotton, known as Barbados cotton, occurs in the West Indies; a
herbaceous cotton-plant is known to have been cultivated in Peru long
before the discovery of Columbus.
[Illustration: COTTON-PRODUCING REGIONS]
More than four hundred years before the Christian era Herodotus
describes it and mentions a gin for separating the lint from the seed.
Nearchus, an admiral serving under Alexander the Great, brought to
Europe specimens of cotton cloth, and in the course of time it became an
article of commerce among Greek and Roman merchants.
The cotton-plant requires warmth, moisture, and a long season. It also
thrives best near the sea. It grows better, on the whole, in subtropical
rather than in tropical regions, and the difference is due probably to
the longer days and higher temperature of the subtropical latitudes. In
the United States the northern limit is approximately the thirty-eighth
parallel. The seeds are planted, as a rule, during the first three weeks
of April and the first two of May. The plants bloom about the middle of
June; the boll or pod matures during July, and bursts about the first of
August. The picking begins in August.
[Illustration: COTTON IN THE UNITED STATES]
The yield and the quality of the textile depend not only on conditions
of the soil, but on locality. In the river flood-plains of the southern
United States the yield is about two bales per acre; on the bluff lands
it is but little more than one, unless unusual care is taken in the
preparation of the land. The islands off the Carolina coast produce a
very fine long-staple variety, commercially known as _sea island
cotton_. A district in China produces a good fibre of brownish color
known as _nankeen_, named for the city of Nanking, whence formerly it
was exported. The valley of Piura River, Peru, produces varieties of
long-staple cotton that in quality closely resemble silk.
The fibre of ordinary American cotton is about seven-eighths of an inch
long; it is made into the fabrics commercially known as "domestics" and
"prints," or calico. If the fibre averages a little longer than the
common grades it is reserved for canvas. Ordinary Peruvian cotton has a
fibre nearly two inches long; it is used in the manufacture of hosiery
and balbriggan underwear, and also to adulterate wool. The long-staple
cotton of the Piura Valley is bought by British manufacturers at a high
price, and used in the webbing of rubber tires and hose. Egyptian cotton
is very fine and is used mainly in the manufacture of thread and the
finer grades of balbriggan underwear. Sea island fibre is nearly two
inches long and is used almost wholly in the making of thread and lace.
The introduction of cotton cultivation resulted in very far-reaching
consequences both from a political as well as an economic stand-point.
The invention of the steam-engine by Watt gave England an enormous
mechanical power. To utilize this the cotton industry was wrested from
Hindustan; the mills were concentrated in Manchester and Lancashire; the
cotton-fields were transferred to the United States.
As a result, the plains of Hindustan were strewn with the bodies of
starved weavers and spinners, but a great industry grew into existence
in England. The invention of spinning machinery by Arkwright, Crompton,
and Hargreaves, and the gradual improvement of the power-loom, greatly
reduced the cost of making the cloth and, at the same time, enormously
increased the demand for it.
[Illustration: COTTON PRODUCTION]
In the United States the consequences were far more serious. The
invention of the engine or "gin" for separating the lint from the seed
made cotton cultivation highly profitable.[31] The negro slaves, who had
been scattered throughout the colonies and the States that succeeded
them, were soon drawn to the cotton-growing States to supply the needed
field-labor; and, indeed, white workmen could not stand the hot, moist
climate of the cotton-fields.
The cotton-mills grew up in the Northern manufacturing States. The
Northern manufacturer needed a tariff on imported goods to protect him
from European competition; the Southern cotton-planter who purchased
much of his supplies abroad was hurt by the tariff. After about sixty
years of strained relations between the two sections there occurred the
Civil War which wiped out nearly one million lives, and rolled up a
debt, direct and indirect, of nearly six billions of dollars.
The world's cotton-crop aggregates from twelve million to fifteen
million bales yearly, of which the United States produces, as a rule, a
little more than three-fourths. Egypt is rapidly taking an important
place among cotton-producing countries, and, with the completion of the
various irrigating canals, will very soon rank next to the United
States. India ranks about third; China and Korea produce about the same
quantity. There are a few cotton-cloth mills in these states, but in
Japan the manufacture is increasing, the mills being equipped with the
best of modern machinery. Brazil has a small product, and Russia in Asia
needs transportation facilities only to increase largely its growing
output.
[Illustration: COTTON]
The cotton-crop of the United States is quite evenly distributed;
one-third is manufactured at home; one-third is purchased by Great
Britain; and the remaining third goes mainly to western Europe. In the
past few years China has become a constantly increasing purchaser of
American cotton. New Orleans, Galveston, Savannah, and New York are the
chief ports of shipment. The imported Egyptian and Peruvian cotton is
landed mainly at New York. Most of the cotton manufacture is carried on
in the New England States, but there is a very rapid extension of cotton
manufacture in the South.
=Wool.=--The wool of commerce is a term applied to the fleece of the
common sheep, to that of certain species of goat, and to that of the
camel and its kind. There is no hard-and-fast distinction between hair
and wool,[32] but, in general, wool fibres have rough edges, much
resembling overlapping scales which interlock with one another; hair, as
a rule, has a hard, smooth surface. If a mass of loose wool be spread
out and beaten, or if it be pressed between rollers, the fibres
interlock so closely that there results a thick, strong cloth which has
been made without either spinning or weaving.
This property, known as "felting," gives to wool a great part of its
value, and is its chief distinction from hair. Some kinds of hair,
however, have a slight felting property, and if sufficiently fine may be
spun and woven. The hair of the common goat is worthless for this
purpose, but that of the Cashmere and Angora species have the properties
of wool. The hair of the Bactrian camel, and also that of the llama,
alpaca, and vicuna is soft and fine, possessing felting qualities that
make it very superior as a textile.
[Illustration: WOOL PRODUCING REGIONS]
The quality of wool varies greatly according to the conditions of soil,
climate, and the character of the food of the animal. In commerce,
however, the fleeces are commonly graded as "long-staple,"
"short-staple," "merino," and "coarse."
In long-staple wools the fibres are from four to eight inches long;
they are more easily separated by a process much like combing, and are
therefore called "combing" wools. The cotswold, cheviot, and most of the
wools of the British Isles are of this kind; indeed, in fairly moist
lowland regions such as Canada and the United States, there is a
tendency toward the development of a long-staple product. The English
long-staple wools are largely made into worsted cloth, the Scotch
cheviot into tweeds, and the French into the best dress cloth.
If the fibres are materially less than four inches in length, the
product is classed as a short-staple or "carding" wool. By far the
greater part of the wool of the United States, Canada, and Europe is of
this class. It is disposed of according to its fineness or fitness for
special purposes, the greater part being made into cloths for the medium
grades of men's clothing.
The finest and softest wool as a rule is grown in arid, plateau regions,
and of this kind of staple the merino is an example. The fibres are fine
as silk, and the goods made from them are softer. The Mission wool of
California is the product of merino sheep, and, indeed, the conditions
of climate in southern California and Australia are such as to produce
the best merino wool. The famous Electoral wool of Saxony is a merino,
the sheep having been introduced into that country from Spain about
three hundred years ago. The merino wools, as a rule, are used in the
most highly finished dress and fancy goods.
The coarse-staple wools are very largely used for American carpets,
coarse blankets, and certain kinds of heavy outer clothing. The Russian
Donskoi wool, some of the Argentine fleeces, such as the Cordoban, and
many of those grown in wet lowlands are very coarse and harsh. The
quality is due more to climatic conditions and food than to the species
of sheep; indeed, sheep that in other regions produce a fine wool, when
introduced to this locality, after a few generations produce coarse
wool.
[Illustration: SHEEP FEEDING ON ALFALFA]
[Illustration: SHEEP RANGE, UTAH]
[Illustration: SHEEP IN FEEDING YARD
THE WOOL-GROWING INDUSTRY]
The rug wools grown in Persia, Turkestan, Turkey in Asia, and the
Caucasus Mountains are also characteristic. They vary in fineness, and
because they do not readily felt they are the best in the world for rug
stock. The "pile" or surface of the rug remains elastic and stands
upright even after a hundred years of wear. This quality is due mainly
to conditions of climate and soil.
[Illustration: WOOL PRODUCTION]
In some instances the wool is obtained by a daily combing of the
half-grown lambs. This process, however, is employed in the rug-making
districts only; in general, the fleeces are clipped either with shears
or machine clippers. In the United States the latter are generally
employed, and but little attempt is made either to sort the fleeces or
to separate the various qualities of wool in the same fleece.
The raw wool always contains foreign matter such as burs and dirt; it is
also saturated with a natural oil which prevents felting. The oil,
commonly called "grease," or "yolk," is an important article of
commerce; under the name of "lanolin" (_adeps lanae_) it is used in
medicine and pharmacy as a basis for ointments.
The world's yearly clip is a little more than two and one-half billion
pounds, of which the United States produces about one-eighth. In Europe
and the United States, owing to the increasing value of the land, the
area of production is decreasing; in Australia, South Africa, and
Argentina, where land is cheap, it is increasing. From these three
regions wool is exported; most European countries and the United States
buy it. In the latter country the consumption is about six pounds for
each person.
[Illustration: WOOL]
The wools of the Mediterranean countries--France, Spain, Italy, Algiers,
Egypt, etc.--are the best for fine cloths; those of central Asia for
rugs and shawls; the others are used mainly in medium and low grade
textiles.
=Other Wools.=--The Angora goat, originally grown in Anatolia (Asia
Minor), and the Iran States (Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan),
furnishes a beautiful white wool, commercially known as "mohair." Smyrna
is an important market for it, and England is the chief buyer. The
Angora goat has been introduced into South Africa and California, where
it is successfully grown. From the former country there is a large
export of mohair.
Cashmere wool is a fine, downy undercovering, obtained by combing the
fleece of a goat native to the Kashmir Valley in India. A single animal
yields scarcely more than an ounce or two, and the best product is worth
about its weight in gold. It is used in the manufacture of the famous
Cashmere shawls, which are sold at prices varying from five hundred to
five thousand dollars. They are made in Persia and India.
Llama and alpaca wool are fine textile obtained from animals of the
camel kind native to South America. The wool is either black or brown in
color. A considerable part is used for native-made articles, such as
saddle-blankets, etc., but much of it is exported to England.
Most of the "camel's hair" of commerce was originally worn by goats,
being called by its commercial name because of a similarity in texture
to that of the camel's hair. The camel of Turkestan, however, furnishes
a silky textile that is much used. The brown wool often found in Hamadan
rugs is natural camel's hair, and a considerable amount mixed with
sheep's wool is used in certain textiles. The camel's hair of China is
made into artists' brushes.
=Silk.=--The silk of commerce is the fibre spun by the larvae or
caterpillars of a moth, _Bombyx mori_, as they enter the chrysalis stage
of existence. The silk-growing industry includes the care and feeding of
the insect in all its stages. The leaves of the white mulberry-tree
(_morus alba_) are the natural food of the insect, and silk-growing
cannot be carried on in regions where this tree does not thrive. Not all
areas that produce the mulberry-tree, however, will also grow the
silk-worm; the latter cannot exist in regions having very cold winters,
and therefore the industry is restricted by climate.
The moth, shortly after emerging from the chrysalis stage, lays from two
or three hundred to seven hundred eggs. These are "hardy"--that is, they
will remain fertile for a long time if kept in a cool, dry place;
moisture will cause them to putrify, and heat to germinate. If well
protected, they may be transported for distances.
In rearing the silk-worm, as soon as the latter is hatched, it is placed
on mulberry-leaves, and for five weeks it does nothing but eat, in that
time consuming many times its weight of food.[33] Then it begins to spin
the material that forms its chrysalis case or cocoon. The outer part of
the case consists of a tough envelope not unlike coarse tissue-paper;
the inner part is a fine thread about one thousand feet long that has
been wound around the body of the worm. This thread or filament is the
basis of the silk textile industry.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1898, by Nature Study Pub. Co._
SILK INDUSTRY
1. Silkworm Eggs
2. Fourth-stage Worm
3. Pupa in Cocoon
4. Cocoon
5. Male Moth
6. Female Moth
7. Unspun Silk
8. Raw Manufactured Silk
9. Manufactured Silk]
[Illustration: SILK PRODUCING REGIONS]
At the proper time the cocoons are gathered and, if immediately to be
used, are plunged into hot water. This not only kills the chrysalids but
softens the cocoons as well, so that the outer cases may be removed. The
cases removed, the rest of the cocoon is soaked in warm water until the
gummy matter is softened and the fibres are free enough to be reeled. In
the latter process the ends of a number of cocoons, varying from five to
twenty, are caught and loosely twisted into a single strand. The silk
thus prepared forms the "raw silk" of commerce. Sometimes a number of
strands of raw silk are twisted into a coarse thread, thereby forming
"thrown silk." For convenience in handling, both raw and thrown silk
are made into large skeins called hanks, and most of the silk product is
exported in this form.
A given quantity of cocoons yields scarcely more than one-tenth its
weight in good raw silk. The remaining part, consisting of broken fibres
and cases, is shredded and spun into silk thread of inferior quality.
This material, commonly called "husks" or "knubs," forms an important
item in silk manufacture, and much of it is exported to Europe and
America.
[Illustration: SILK PRODUCTION]
According to traditions, not wholly trustworthy, eggs of the silk-worm
were smuggled to India in the head-dress of a Chinese princess. Thence
sericulture slowly made its way westward to Persia, Asia Minor, and the
Mediterranean countries. Wild silk, a coarse but strong product, is
grown in many of these countries, but mainly in China, where it forms an
important export. The Chinese product is commercially known as "tussar"
silk. Of the product of raw silk, about thirty-five million pounds,
China yields about two-fifths, Japan and Italy each one-fifth. The
remainder is grown in the Levant, Spain, and France.
Most of the raw silk of China is exported from Shanghai and Canton; that
of Japan is shipped mainly from Yokohama. Among European countries Italy
is the first producer of raw silk, and France the chief manufacturer.
By the operation of a heavy tariff a considerable manufacture of silk
textiles has grown up in the United States. New York City and Paterson,
N.J., are the chief centres of the industry.
The southern part of the United States offers an ideal locality for
sericulture. Various attempts at silk-worm breeding have failed from
lack of training, but not on account of geographic conditions.
=Flax.=--The flax of commerce, the basis of linen cloth, is the bast or
inner bark-fibre of an annual plant (_Linum usitalissimum_, _i.e._, most
useful fibre), native probably to the Mediterranean basin. It ranks
among the oldest known textiles. Bundles of unwrought fibre have been
found in the lake dwellings of Switzerland, and linen cloth constituted
a part of the sepulture wrappings of the ancient Egyptian dead.
Flax has a very wide range, thriving in the colder parts of Europe as
well as in tropical Asia; it does equally well in the dry summers of
California or the moist regions of the Mississippi Valley. The chief
requisite is a firm soil that contains plenty of nutrition.
After the stalks have passed maturity they are pulled up by hand;
"rippled," or deprived of their seeds and leaves; "retted," or moistened
in soft water until the bast separates; "broken" and "scutched" by a
machine which gets rid of the woody fibres; and finally the loosened
bast fibre is "hetcheled" or combed in order to separate the long, or
"line," threads from the "tow" or refuse.
Russia produces more than one-half the world's crop, but the finest and
choicest is that known as Courtrai fibre, which is grown in Belgium.
This is thought to be due to the quality of the water in the Lys River.
A considerable amount of flax grown elsewhere in Europe is sent to this
part of Belgium to be retted. Ireland and Germany produce considerable
amounts, and a small quantity is grown in the United States.
The prepared flax is used in the manufacture of linen cloth, and the
latter is almost exclusively used for table-cloths, napkins,
shirt-bosoms, collars, cuffs, and handkerchiefs. France is noted for the
manufacture of linen lawns and cambrics, and Belfast, Ireland, for
table-cloths and napkins. Nearly the whole linen product is consumed in
the United States, Canada, and western Europe; indeed, linen is a mark
of western civilization. Great Britain handles the greater part of the
linen textiles.
=Hemp.=--The true hemp of commerce is the bast or inner bark of a plant,
_Cannabis sativa_, belonging to the nettle order. It is an annual plant
having a very wide range; it occurs in pretty nearly every country of
North America, Europe, and Asia. In Europe the chief countries producing
it for commercial uses are Russia, France, Italy, and Hungary; in the
United States it is grown in California and the central Mississippi
Valley. Russia produces the largest crop; Italy the finest quality of
fibre, the best coming from the vicinity of Bologna.
The stalks grow three feet or more in height. When cultivated for the
fibre they are pulled from the ground, stripped of their leaves and
soaked until the fibre is free. They are then "retted," or beaten, and
the fibre is removed. After preparation the fibre is used mainly for the
manufacture of wrapping-twine, cordage, and a coarse canvas. Great
Britain is the chief purchaser and manufacturer.
=Manila Hemp.=--Manila hemp is the name given to a fibre obtained from the
leaves of a plant, _Musa textilis_, belonging to the banana family. The
best fibres are from six to nine feet in length, of light amber color,
and very strong. The leaves, torn into narrow strips by hand, are
afterward scraped by hand until the fibre is free of pulp. The long and
coarser fibres are made into rope; the shorter fibres are beaten and
hetcheled in the same manner as flax, until fine enough to weave into
mats, carpets, and fine cloth. The fibres that have served their
usefulness as rope are pulped and manufactured into manila paper.
Practically all the manila fibre of commerce--which is not hemp at
all--is grown in the Philippine Islands, and since peace has prevailed,
the growth and production is increasing. The crude fibre is prepared by
hand, by Filipino or by Chinese labor. The manufacture of cordage and
paper is done mainly in the United States and Great Britain. Fine
hand-made textiles are made by a few Filipino natives, but most of the
goods of this character are manufactured in France. Very fine fibre is
sometimes used as an adulterant of silk. Great Britain and the United
States are the chief purchasers.
=Sisal Hemp.=--Sisal hemp, or henequen, is a stout, stringy fibre obtained
from the thick leaves of several species of agave, to which the maguey
and century-plant belong. The cultivated species, from which most of the
commercial product is obtained, is the _Agave sisalina_, which much
resembles the ordinary century-plant.
The essential feature in the economic production of sisal hemp is
machinery for separating the fibre from the pulp of the leaf. The fibre
is whiter, cleaner, and lighter than jute; moreover, in strength it
ranks next to the best quality of manila hemp. It is used mainly in the
manufacture of grain-sacks, and the twine used on self-binding
harvesters. Nearly all the fibre of commerce is grown in the Mexican
state of Yucatan and consumed in the United States. The cultivation of
this material has made Yucatan one of the most prosperous states of
Mexico.
=Jute.=--Jute is a fibre obtained from the inner bark of a tropical plant,
_Corchorus olitorius_, belonging to the same order as the linden-tree.
The plant is an annual, growing in various moist, tropical countries,
but is extensively cultivated in India and parts of China for commercial
purposes. The fibre is prepared for manufacture in much the same manner
as hemp and flax. In India it is used mainly for the manufacture of a
coarse textile known as gunny cloth, used as bale-wrappers, and sacks
for coffee and rice. On the Pacific coast states it is used for
wheat-sacks. Calcutta is the chief centre of manufacture, but jute-sacks
are extensively manufactured by the Chinese in California and China.
=Ramie.=--This fibre, also known as China grass, is the best of two or
more species of nettles, prepared in the same manner as hemp fibre. It
is finer and stronger than jute, and will take dye-stuffs in a superior
manner. With the introduction of machinery for separating and handling
the fibre, the cultivation of the ramie-plant has spread from China to
India, Japan, and the United States. Fine textiles are now manufactured
from it, the most important being carpets, mattings, and American
"Smyrna" rugs. The last are generally sold as jute-rugs, and they are
nearly as durable as woollen floor-covers.
=Other Economic Fibres.=--The fibre of _cocoanut husk_ is largely employed
in the manufacture of coarse matting. A part of this is obtained from
tropical America, but it is a regular export of British India, where it
is known as _coir_.
The mid-rib of the _screw pine_ growing in the forests of tropical
America furnishes the material of which "Panama" hats are made. The hats
are made in various parts of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia, and were
formerly marketed in Panama. Hats made of a score of grasses and fibres
are also sold as Panamas.
A plant (_Phormium tenax_) having leaves somewhat like those of the iris
or common flag furnishes the material of which New Zealand flax is
prepared. It is used mainly in the manufacture of cordage.
_Plaiting straw_, used in the manufacture of hats and bonnets, is grown
extensively in northern Italy and in Belgium. For this product spring
wheat is very thickly sown in a soil rich in lime. The thick sowing
produces a long, slender stalk; the lime gives it whiteness and
strength. Plaiting straw is also exported from China and Japan. British
merchants handle most of the product.
_Cuba bast_, a fibre readily bleached to whiteness, is exported to the
various establishments in which women's hats are made.
_Esparto grass_, also called _alfa_, grows in Spain and the northern
part of Africa. It was formerly much used in the manufacture of the
cheaper grades of paper, but it has been largely supplanted by wood-pulp
for this purpose. The decline of the esparto grass industry led to no
little unrest among some of the native tribes of northern Africa.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What fibres were used in cloth-making in Europe before cotton was
employed?
What textiles are of necessity made of cotton?
What is a spinning jenny?--a Jacquard loom?
What are the specific differences between cotswold and merino wool?
Why were most of the cloth-making mills of the United States built at
first in the New England States?
How is the silk-making industry encouraged in the United States?
What are the chief linen manufacturing countries?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of the cotton seed, boll, raw cotton (sea island,
Peruvian, and ordinary), cotton thread, calico, gingham, domestic,
canvas, and some of the fancy textiles such as organdie, lawn, etc.
Obtain specimens of the cocoons of the silk-worm, raw silk gros-grain
cloth, pongee, and tussar silk cloth.
Obtain also specimens of merino cloth, cashmere, cheviot, and other
similar goods; compare them and note the difference.
Examine the fibres of cotton, silk, and wool under a microscope and note
the difference.
[Illustration: BRANCH OF COFFEE TREE, WEST BRAZIL]
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANTATION NEAR JOLO, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS]
[Illustration: COFFEE DRYING FIELD, BRAZIL]
CHAPTER X
PLANT PRODUCTS OF ECONOMIC USE--BEVERAGES AND MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES
It may be assumed that practically all beverages derived from plants owe
their popularity to the stimulant effects they produce. In coffee, tea,
cocoa, and mate, the stimulant principle is identical with _cafein_, the
active principle of coffee; in liquors it is a powerful narcotic
_alcohol_; non-potable substances, tobacco, opium, etc., owe their
popularity also to narcotic poisons.
=Coffee.=--The coffee "beans" of commerce are the seeds of a tree (_Coffea
arabica_) probably native to Abyssinia, but now cultivated in various
parts of the world. It was introduced into Aden from Africa late in the
fifteenth century, and from there its use spread to other cities. Rather
singularly its popularity resulted from the strong efforts made to
forbid its use.
It was regarded as a stimulant and therefore it was forbidden to
followers of Islam.[34] But its power to prevent drowsiness and sleep
during the intolerably long religious exercises was a winning feature,
and so its use became general in spite of the fulminations against it.
Coffee culture was confined to Arabia until the close of the seventeenth
century; it was then introduced into the Dutch East Indies, and for many
years the island of Java became the main supply of the world. At the
present time, Java is second only to Brazil in coffee production. In the
Old World it is now also cultivated along the Guinea coast of Africa, in
Madagascar, India, and Ceylon. In the New World the chief areas are
Brazil, Venezuela, the Central American States, and the West Indies.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCING REGIONS]
The coffee-tree may be cultivated in almost any soil that is fertile; it
thrives best, however, in red soil. Old, decomposed red lavas produce
the choicest beans. Coffee grows in any moist climate in which the
temperature does not range higher than 80 deg. F. nor lower than 55 deg.
F. An occasional frost injures but does not necessarily kill the trees,
which grow better in the shade than in the sunlight. For convenience in
gathering the crop, the trees are pruned until they are not higher than
bushes.
The fruit of the coffee-tree is a deep-red berry not quite so large as a
cherry. A juicy pulp encloses a double membrane, or endocarp, and within
the latter are the seeds which constitute the coffee of commerce.
Normally there are two seeds, but in some varieties there is a tendency
for one seed to mature, leaving the other undeveloped; this is the
"peaberry" coffee of commerce. The so-called Mocha coffee is a peaberry.
In their preparation the berries are picked when ripe and deprived of
their pulp. After pulping they are cured in the sun for about a week and
then hulled, or divested of the endocarp, a process requiring expensive
machinery. The coffee is then cleaned, and sacked.
The value of the product depends on two factors, age and the care with
which it is sorted. Formerly, in the Dutch East Indies, coffee-growing,
for the greater part, was a government privilege, and the crop was kept
for several years in storage before it was permitted to be
sold--therefore the term "Old Government" Java. Other coffee was
designated as "Private Plantations." The quality of coffee is greatly
improved with age. Brazilian and other American coffee-beans are rarely
seasoned by storage.
American coffees are almost wholly sorted by machinery. This process,
however, merely collects beans of the same size; it still leaves the
good and the bad beans together, though it is to be said that among the
largest beans there are fewer poor ones. In the coffees handled by the
Arab dealers all the sorting is done by hand, the very choice grade
selling in the large cities of Europe for the equivalent of nearly three
dollars per pound. All machine-sorted coffee is greatly improved by a
subsequent hand-sorting to remove the imperfect beans.
The naming of the different kinds of coffee is somewhat arbitrary. Thus,
Brazilian coffees are commercially known as _Rio_ because they are
shipped from the port of Rio de Janeiro; the same name is applied to the
product shipped from Santos. Nearly all Venezuela coffees are called
_Maracaibo_ although they differ much in kind and quality; most Central
American coffee is sold as _Costa Rica_; most peaberry varieties are
known as _Mocha_; and most of the East India product is popularly called
_Java_, no matter whence it comes.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCTION]
Of the American coffees Rio constitutes about half the world's product.
After sorting, the larger beans are often marketed as Java coffee, and
when the beans have been roasted it is exceedingly difficult to tell the
difference. The best Maracaibo is regarded as choice coffee, but its
flavor is not liked by all coffee-drinkers. The best Honduras and Puerto
Rico coffees take a high rank and command very high prices, retailing in
some instances at sixty cents per pound. A very choice peaberry is grown
in the volcanic soils of Mexico to which the name of _Oaxaca_ is given;
most of it is sold in the United States as a choice Mocha.
Mocha is the commercial name of a coffee at one time marketed in the
Arabian city of that name. Since the completion of the Suez Canal,
Hodeida has been the chief centre of the Arabian coffee-trade. Formerly
most of this coffee was grown in the Province of Yemen, but now it is
brought to Hodeida, from Egypt, Ceylon, and India.
About all the product is hand-sorted. The choicest is sold in
Constantinople, Cairo, and other cities near by, in some instances
bringing five dollars per pound. Very little, and only that of the most
inferior quality, ever finds its way into western Europe or the United
States. Even the best Mocha is not superior to fine Oaxaca coffee.
Java coffee is renowned the world over for its fine flavor. The best
quality was formerly that which had been held in storage to season for a
few years. The government coffee was generally the better, but some of
the private plantations crop is now equally good. Some of the Sumatra
coffees are equal to the best Java beans.
The Liberia coffees have never been favorites in the United States on
account of their flavor. In Europe they are used for blending with other
varieties.
Of the entire coffee-crop of the world, the United States consumes more
than three-quarters of a billion pounds--a yearly average of very nearly
eleven pounds for each inhabitant. This is nearly three times as much
per inhabitant as is consumed in Germany, and almost fifteen times the
average used in Great Britain. Nearly all the world's crop is consumed
in the United States and western Europe.
Chicory, parched grain, pease, and burnt parsnip are sometimes added as
adulterants to ground coffee. Of those, chicory most nearly resembles
coffee in flavor and taste. It is harmless and usually improves the
flavor of inferior coffee. A tariff recently placed upon chicory has
somewhat lessened the use of it.
=Tea.=--The tea of commerce consists of the dried and prepared leaves of
an evergreen shrub (_Thea chinensis_) belonging most probably to the
_camellia_ family. Tea has been a commercial product of China for more
than fourteen hundred years, but seems to have been carried thither from
India about five hundred years before the Christian era; for its virtues
were praised by (the probably mythical) Chinung, an emperor of that
period.
The cultivated plants are scarcely higher than bushes, but the wild
plant found in India is a tree fifteen or twenty feet in height. The
cultivated plant is quite hardy; severe winters kill it but ordinary
freezing weather merely retards its growth. It thrives best in red,
mouldy soils; the choicest varieties are grown in new soils. The leaves
are not picked until the plants are three or four years old.
Two general classes of tea are known in commerce--the green and the
black. Formerly these were grown on different varieties of the plant,
but in the newer plantations no distinction is made in the matter of
variety; the color is due wholly to the manner of preparation.
The plants are watched carefully during the seasons of picking, of which
there are three or four each year. The April picking yields the choicest
crop of leaves, and only the youngest leaves and buds are taken.[35] A
single plant rarely yields more than four or five ounces of tea yearly.
Each acre of a tea-garden yields about three hundred and fifty pounds.
After picking, the leaves are partly crushed and allowed to wilt until
they begin to turn brown in color. They are then rolled between the
hands and either dried very slowly in the sun, or else rapidly in pans
over a charcoal fire--a process known as "firing." The former method
produces _black_, the latter _green_, tea. The color of the latter is
sometimes heightened by the use of a mixture of powdered gypsum and
Prussian blue. In the black teas the green coloring matter of the leaf
is destroyed by fermentation; in the green teas it remains unchanged.
The greater part of the Chinese tea designed for export is packed rather
loosely in wooden chests lined with sheet-lead, the folds and joints of
which are soldered in order to make the cover both air-tight and
moisture-tight. A full chest contains seventy-five pounds of tea. The
Japan product is also packed in moisture-tight wrappers, the original
parcels being usually ten-pound, five-pound, and pound packages. Similar
devices are used in preparing the India and Formosa teas for ocean
shipment.
The chief tea-producing countries are India (including Ceylon) China,
Japan (including Formosa), and Java. A successful tea-garden is in
operation near Charleston, S.C. A small amount is grown in the Fiji and
Samoan Islands. The Ceylon and Formosa teas take a very high rank.
[Illustration: AREA OF TEA PRODUCTION]
Great Britain and her colonies consume the bulk of the tea-crop. The
average yearly consumption per person is eight pounds in Australia, six
in Great Britain and Cape of Good Hope, and more than four in Canada. In
the United States and Russia it is less than one pound per person.
Before the opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, most of the crop for the
English market was despatched by way of Cape of Good Hope. So important
was it to get the consignments to London without loss of time, that fast
clipper ships were built especially for carrying tea. Since the opening
of the canal the crop has been shipped mainly by the Suez route.
A part of the tea required for the United States reaches New York by way
of the Suez Canal, but the movement is gradually changing since the
building of the fast liners that now ply between Asian and American
ports. These steamships carry it to Seattle, or to Vancouver, whence it
is distributed by rail. The increased cost of shipment by this route is
more than offset by a gain of from five to seven days in time.
In some respects the Russian "caravan route" is the most important
channel of the tea-trade. The tea is collected mainly at Tientsin, and
sent by camel caravans through Manchuria to the most convenient point on
the Siberian railway. Not only the shipments of brick tea[36] for the
Russian market, but the choicest products for western Europe also are
sent by this route. It is probably an economical way of shipping the
brick tea, but a more expensive method of shipment for the latter could
not be found easily; it is preferred from the fact that, no matter how
carefully sealed, the flavor of tea is materially injured by an ocean
voyage.
It is evident, therefore, that for the tea product alone the Siberian
railway will soon become an important factor in the commerce of Europe.
Shipments of tea are also sent from Canton to Odessa, Russia, but this
route is not less expensive in the long run than the Cape route, and the
tea suffers as much deterioration from the shorter as from the longer
voyage.
=Cacao.=--Cacao, the "cocoa" of commerce, consists of the prepared seeds
of several species of _Theobroma_, the greater part being obtained from
the _Theobroma cacao_. The name is unfortunately confused with that of
the cocoa-palm, but there is no relation whatever between the two.
The seeds of the cacao were used in ancient America long before its
discovery by Columbus, and the latter carried the first knowledge of it
to Europe. By the middle of the seventeenth century it was much used in
Spain, and less than a hundred years later it had become the fashionable
drink of western Europe.
The cacao-tree, originally native to Mexico, is now cultivated
throughout tropical America and the West Indies. It is not cultivated to
any extent in the Eastern continent. The fruit consists of large, fleshy
pods, which are cut from the trees usually in June and December. The
seeds are then piled in heaps, or else packed in pits, and allowed to
undergo a rapid fermentation for a period of several days, to which
process their flavor is mainly due. The roasted and broken seeds are the
cocoa-nibs of commerce. The husks are known as cocoa-shells.
A very large part of the cacao product comes from Ecuador, Guayaquil
being perhaps the chief market of the world. The Venezuelan and
Brazilian products, however, are the choicest; these are known in
commerce respectively as Caracas and Trinidad cacao. Spain, Portugal,
and France are the chief purchasers, and in the first-named country the
consumption per person is five or six times as great as in other
countries.
Cacao is not only a stimulant beverage, but a food as well; about
one-half its weight is fat, and about one-third consists of starch and
flesh-making substances. The stimulant principle is the same as that
occurring in tea and coffee, but the proportion is considerably less. In
preparing the cocoa for the market, much of the fat is intentionally
withdrawn. The fat, commercially known as "cocoa-butter," and "oil of
theobroma," does not turn rancid.
Chocolate consists of cocoa ground to a paste with sugar and flavoring
matter, and then cast in moulds to harden. It is used mainly in the
manufacture of confectionery. Most of the chocolate is made in France,
Spain, and the United States. More than forty million pounds of cocoa
are yearly consumed in the United States.
=Mate.=--Mate, yerba mate, or Paraguay tea, is the leaf of a shrub, a
species of holly, growing profusely in the forests of Brazil, Paraguay,
Argentina, and Uruguay. In many instances, the shrub is cultivated. The
leaves are prepared in much the same manner as tea-leaves are, but
instead of being rolled, they are broken by beating.
The mate of commerce has a stimulant principle identical with that of
tea and coffee, which is the only reason for its use. The consumption,
about fifteen thousand tons a year, is confined almost wholly to the
countries named.
=Tobacco.=--The tobacco of commerce is the prepared and manufactured leaf
of several species of plant, belonging to the nightshade family. Most of
the product is derived from the species known as Virginia tobacco
(_Nicotiana tabacum_) and the Brazilian species (_Nicotiana rustica_).
The former is cultivated in the United States, West Indies, the
Philippine Islands, and Turkey; the latter has been transplanted to
central Europe and the East Indies.
The use of tobacco was prevalent in the New World at the time of
Columbus's first voyage, and was quickly introduced into Europe. The
prepared leaf contains a substance, nicotine, which is one of the most
deadly of poisons when swallowed, and an intense narcotic stimulant when
inhaled. On account of the evil effects arising from its introduction,
its use was forbidden by the Church and also by sovereigns of several
European states. The latter, however, finding that its use was becoming
general, made it a Crown monopoly. In Great Britain its cultivation was
forbidden in order to encourage its cultivation in Virginia.
Tobacco does not thrive best in a poor soil, but the latter produces a
thin, half-developed leaf, which in other plants would be called
"sickly." It grows in almost any kind of soil, but requires warm summer
nights. In many instances the tobacco of temperate latitudes yields a
more salable leaf when grown under cover. The flavor is due partly to
soil and climate, and partly to skill in curing. The choicest product is
obtained in only a few localities of limited area. It sometimes happens
that the products of two plantations almost side by side, and similarly
situated, are very unlike in character and quality.
[Illustration: TOBACCO]
The choicest cigar-tobacco is grown on the Vuelta Abajo district in the
province of Pinar del Rio, Cuba; another very choice Cuban leaf is known
as Partidos. Cuban-made cigars of fine quality are commercially "Havana"
cigars, although tobacco from Manila and Porto Rico is apt to be largely
used in their manufacture. In order to avoid the very heavy duty on
cigars, which is not far from six dollars per pound, a great deal of the
Havana tobacco is exported to points along the Florida coast, mainly Key
West and Tampa. The unmanufactured tobacco pays a comparatively small
duty, and the cigars made from it are commercially known as "Key West."
In some parts of Mexico a fine-flavored tobacco is grown, but as the
cigars are not uniform in quality they are not popular. Some of the
Brazilian tobacco is a high-class product, but not much is exported.
Porto Rican leaf has a fine flavor, but is not popular because of its
dark color. The demand for it in the United States is growing, however.
Of the leaf grown in the East, that from Sumatra and the Philippine
Islands is by far the best, and the exports are heavy. Cuban
manufacturers purchase the Manila leaf; the Sumatra wrappers are
purchased in the United States.
The choicest cigarette-tobacco is grown in Asiatic Turkey,
Transcaucasia, and Egypt. It is selected with great care, and is
"long-cut." The common grades are made of chopped Virginia tobacco, or
of chopped cigar-trimmings. The cheapest grades consist of refuse leaf
mixed with half-smoked cigar-stumps. The United States leads in the
manufacture of cigarettes, and a large part of the product is sold in
China, India, and Japan. Most of the world's product of snuff is made in
the United States, and nearly all of it is sold abroad.
The United States produces yearly about seven hundred million pounds. A
large part of this is sold to European countries. Great Britain
purchases about four-fifths of the tobacco there consumed from the
United States. The latter country purchases from Europe (mainly the
Netherlands) about half as much as it sells to Europe. Louisville, Ky.,
is probably the largest tobacco-market in the world. New York,
Baltimore, Richmond, Manila, and Havana are the chief shipping-ports.
In almost every civilized country tobacco is heavily taxed. In the
United States there is not only a heavy import duty, but an internal
revenue in addition. In Austria, France, Italy, Japan, and Spain the
manufacture and sale is in the hands of the government. The consumption
of tobacco varies greatly. In the Netherlands it averages about seven
pounds a year to each individual; in the United States it is more than
four pounds; in central Europe, three pounds; in Spain, Sweden, Great
Britain, and Italy, it is less than two pounds.
=Opium.=--The opium of commerce is the hardened juice obtained from the
seed capsules of several species of the poppy-plant. A variety having a
large capsule (_Papaver somniferum_) is most commonly cultivated for the
commercial production of the substance. Half-a-dozen times during the
season the capsules are scratched or cut; the juice exuding when hard is
picked or scraped off and pressed into cakes.
Opium is not only a narcotic poison, but it has the property of
lessening the pain of disease, and this is its chief use in medicine. In
Mohammedan countries where the use of alcoholic liquors is forbidden as
a religious custom, opium is used as a substitute. In Turkey, Persia,
Arabia, and Egypt the production of opium is an important industry
connected with social and religious life. In British India it is a
political factor, being extensively cultivated as a government monopoly
to be sold to the Chinese, who are probably the chief consumers of it.
The Indian Government derives a revenue sometimes reaching twenty
million dollars from this source.
The best quality of opium is marketed at Smyrna, and most of this is
purchased by the United States. A considerable amount of Chinese opium
is imported for the use of the Chinese, and a larger amount is probably
smuggled over the Canadian and Mexican borders. Laudanum is an alcoholic
tincture, and morphine an extractive of opium; both are used as
medicine.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Consult a good physiology and learn the effects of coffee, tea, tobacco,
and opium.
Where and what are the following: Mocha, Java, Maracaibo, Yokohama,
Amoy, Canton, Oaxaca, Hodeida, Rio Janeiro, Santos, Havana; how is each
connected commercially with this chapter?
From the map, Fig. 1, trace the route of a cargo of tea overland from
China to Great Britain.
Consult an English history or a cyclopaedia and learn about the opium
war.
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain samples of the following, preserving them for study and
inspection in closely stoppered vials: Mocha, Java, Rio, and Sumatra
coffees; green, black, and gunpowder tea. Soak a tea-leaf a few minutes
in warm water; unroll the leaf and attach it to a white card, for study.
Obtain samples of gum opium, laudanum, and morphine; note the odor of
the first two and the taste of the last. Remember that they are
poisonous.
Unroll a cheap cigarette and note the character of the tobacco in it,
using a magnifying glass.
CHAPTER XI
GUMS AND RESINS USED IN THE ARTS
Most vegetable juices exposed to the air harden into firm substances,
commonly called _gum_. Some of these dissolve, or at least soften, in
water; these technically are known as "gums," and usually are so
designated in commerce. Others are insoluble in water, but dissolve
readily in alcohol, in naphtha, in turpentine, or in other essential
oils; these are designated as "gum-resins." Still others yield oils or
pitchy substances on distillation; these are known as "oleo-resins."
There are many other dried vegetable juices, however, that in commerce
are not classified among the gums and resins, and of these the most
important is the substance commonly known as india-rubber.
=Rubber and Rubber Products.=--"Caoutchouc" is approximately the name
given by Indians of the Amazon forests to a substance that had also been
found in India. Some of it was brought to Europe from the Amazon region
as early as 1736, and for nearly one hundred years no general purpose
was discovered for which it could be used, except to erase lead-pencil
marks--hence the name india-rubber, which has held ever since.
Common rubber is the prepared juice of a dozen or more shrubs and trees,
all of which grow in tropical regions.[37] The belt of rubber-producing
plants extends around the world and includes such well-known species as
the fig, the manihot (or manioc), and the oleander; indeed, it is a
condition of sap rather than a definite species of plant that produces
rubber, and the latter is a manufactured rather than a natural product.
The process of preparing the juice is practically the same in every part
of the world.
The rubber-gatherer of the Amazon, who is practically a slave, wades
into the swamp, makes several incisions in the bark of the tree,
fashions a rough trough of clay under it, and waits till the sap fills
the clay vessel. When the sap has been gathered he makes a fire of the
nuts of the urucuri palm and places an inverted funnel over it to
concentrate the smoke. He first dips the end of a wooden spindle into
the juice and then holds it in the smoke until the juice coagulates;
this process is repeated until there has formed a ball of rubber
weighing from five to ten pounds. The smoke of the palm-nuts is a
chemical agent that converts the juice into the crude rubber of
commerce.
Crude gum, however, is lacking both in strength and elasticity. The
process that makes it a finished product is known as _vulcanization_.
The crude rubber, having been exported to the manufacturer in the United
States or Europe, is shredded, washed, and cleansed, and partly fused
with varying proportions of sulphur. For a very soft product, such as
the inner surface of tires, only a small proportion is used; where the
wear is considerable, a larger proportion is employed.[38] White clay is
sometimes added to give body to the product; coloring matter is also
sometimes added.
By far the greater part of the crude rubber comes from the Amazon
forests. Brazil produces about one-half, but a considerable quantity is
obtained in Acre, the territory formed where the borders of Brazil,
Bolivia, and Peru meet, and now ceded to Brazil. Nearly all this
product, that of the Ceara region excepted, is marketed at Para and is
known as Para rubber. It is the best produced. The African product,
mainly from the forests of the Kongo, and Madagascar, and nearly all the
East Indian product is sent to Europe.
[Illustration: REGIONS YIELDING RUBBER]
The world's product is about one hundred and thirty-three million pounds
of crude rubber. Of this product the United States takes nearly
one-half. The greater part is used in the manufacture of pneumatic
tires, hose, and overshoes. A large part is used for making water-proof
cloth,[39] and considerable is made into the small elastic bands for
which there is a growing use.
=Gutta-Percha.=--Gutta-percha is obtained from the juices of several
plants (chiefly _Dichopsis gutta_ and _Supota muelleri_) both of which
abound in the Malay peninsula and the East Indies. It is prepared in a
manner somewhat similar to that employed in making crude rubber; it is
also easily vulcanized by heating with sulphur. It is used to a limited
extent in the manufacture of golf-balls, but mainly as the insulating
cover of copper wires used in ocean telegraph cables. For this purpose
it has no known substitute, and its essential merit is the fact that it
is not altered by salt water. Nearly all the product is shipped from
Singapore to England.
=Pine-Tree Products.=--The various members of the pine and cone-bearing
trees yield valuable essential oils and oleo-resins that are very
important in the arts and sciences. These, in nearly every instance, are
prepared from the sap of the tree.
_Oil of turpentine_ is known as an "essential oil," and in chemical
structure and properties it does not differ from the various essential
oils, such as lemon, orange, peppermint, etc. Commercial turpentine is
generally made from the sap of the long-leafed pine of the Atlantic
coast-plain.
The bark of the tree is cut near the foot, and the sap that oozes from
the scar quickly hardens into a gum. The gum, generally known as "crude
turpentine," is distilled and yields about one-fourth its weight of oil
or "spirit" of turpentine. It is a staple article of manufacture in
Europe, India, and the United States, and is used chiefly to dilute the
oil paints and varnishes used in indoor work. The United States supplies
about two-thirds of the world's product, a large part of which is
shipped from Savannah and Brunswick, Ga., to Great Britain.[40]
_Resin_ is the substance remaining after the crude turpentine has been
distilled. It is used in the manufacture of varnish, sealing-wax, and
soap. Finely powdered resin is also mixed with wood-pulp in the
manufacture of wrapping-paper. It gives the latter a glazed surface and
renders it almost water-proof. Most of the world's product of resin
comes from the turpentine district of the United States, and about
four-fifths of it is exported to Europe.
When resin is subjected to distillation at a still higher temperature,
_resin oil_, a very heavy turpentine, is given off, and a viscous
substance known as _pitch_ remains. A considerable amount of this is
still made in the United States, but the greater part comes from the
pine-forests of Russia and Scandinavia. When pine-wood is distilled,
_tar_ is the chief product. In Russia tar is generally made by burning
green logs covered with turf, over a pit. _Creosote_, or wood
preservative, is made from tar. The various pine-tree products, creosote
excepted, are commonly known as "naval stores," the tar being used in
water-proofing the rigging of vessels, the pitch in calking the seams in
between planks, in the decks and hulls.
=Other Resins and Gums Used in the Arts.=--Most of the gums and resins
used in the arts and sciences are the hardened sap of plants--in some
cases exuding by natural means from the bark, in others resulting from
the puncture of the bark.
The _lac_ of commerce is due to the puncture of the young branches of a
tree, frequently a fig (_Ficus religiosa_) growing in the tropical
forests of India. The hardened sap incrusts twigs forming _stick-lac_;
when crushed, washed, and freed from the woody matter it is _seed-lac_;
when melted and cooled in flakes it is _shell-lac_, the form best known
in commerce. It is the chief ingredient in sealing-wax, and is
extensively used as a varnish. It is also used in fireworks on account
of its inflammability.
_Dammar_ is the product of a tree growing in the East Indies; it is the
basis of a very fine white varnish. _Copal_ is a term applied to
oleo-resins soluble in turpentine, and used almost universally as
varnishes. They come from the tropical regions of South America, Africa,
and from the East Indies. _Kauri_ is the fossil gum of a cone-bearing
tree dug from the ground in northern New Zealand. _Amber_ is the fossil
gum of extinct cone-bearing trees found mainly along the Baltic coast of
Prussia. It is used chiefly for the mouth-pieces of tobacco-pipes and
cigar-holders; the inferior product is made into varnish. It is sold
wherever tobacco is used. _Sandarach_, found on the north African coast,
is used principally in Europe, being employed as a varnish. The United
States and Great Britain consume most of the foregoing products.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Name any elastic substance you know about that is in every way a
substitute for rubber.
What has been the relation between rubber and good roads?
Describe the structure of a bicycle tire.
Why are tar, pitch, and turpentine called naval stores?--and what
determines the locality in which they are made?
What is varnish, and for what purposes is it used?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of crude rubber, vulcanized rubber, and hard rubber;
note carefully the characteristics of each.
Burn a very small piece of cheap white rubber-tubing in an iron spoon or
a fire-shovel; note the character of the residue.
Obtain specimens of gutta-percha, resin, pitch, turpentine, shellac,
copal, dammar, and creosote for study and inspection.
CHAPTER XII
COAL AND PETROLEUM
The economic history of nearly every country that has achieved eminence
in modern times dates from its use of coal and iron; and indeed the
presence of these substances in workable deposits means almost unlimited
power. The present era is sometimes called the Age of Steel, but the
possibilities of producing steel in enormous quantities, at less than
one-fifth its price at the beginning of the nineteenth century, depended
mainly upon the use of mineral coal instead of charcoal in its
manufacture.
Coal consists of accumulations of vegetable matter that were formed in
prior geological ages. Under the action of heat and moisture, and also
the tremendous pressure of the rock layers that afterward covered them,
the vegetable matter was converted to mineral coal.
The aggregate coal-fields of the United States are not far from two
hundred thousand square miles in extent, but of this area not much more
than one-half is workable. In Europe there are estimated to be about one
hundred thousand square miles of coal-lands, of which about half are
productive at the present time. Of this Great Britain has 12,000 square
miles, Spain 4,000, France 2,000, Germany 1,800, and Belgium 500. In
Canada there are about 20,000 square miles of coal-land; a part of this
is included in the Nanaimo field on the Pacific coast, but the most
important are the Nova Scotia beds, which form about the only supply for
the British naval stations of America. China has extensive coal-fields.
In character coal is broadly divided into two classes--anthracite or
hard, and bituminous or soft, coal. Anthracite coal occurs in folded and
metamorphic rocks. It is hard and glassy, and does not split into thin
layers or leaves. The beds have been subjected to intense heat and
pressure, and the coal has but a very small amount--rarely more than
five per cent.--of volatile matter; it burns, therefore, with little or
no smoke and soot, and on this account is very desirable as a fuel in
cities. Two areas in Colorado and New Mexico produce small quantities of
pure anthracite; practically all the commercial anthracite comes from
three small basins in Pennsylvania. In quality it is known as "red ash"
and "white ash," the former being the superior.
The yearly output of the anthracite mines is upward of fifty-five
million long tons a year, or somewhat less than five million tons per
month. In winter the rate of consumption is somewhat greater than that
of production. A shortage in the summer production is therefore apt to
be keenly felt in the winter. Before shipment to the market the coal is
crushed at the breakers, sorted in different sizes, and washed.
Most of the anthracite coal-mines are owned by the railway companies
centring at New York and Philadelphia, or else are operated by companies
controlled by the railways. About one-fourth of the output is produced
by independent operators who, as a rule, sell their coal to the railway
companies. The Reading, Pennsylvania, Central of New Jersey, Lackawanna,
Lehigh Valley, Ontario & Western, Erie, and Delaware & Hudson are
popularly known as "coalers" because the larger part of their eastern
business consists in carrying anthracite coal.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF THREE COLLIERIES IN THE ANTHRACITE COAL BASIN
NEAR MAHANOY CITY, PA.]
Formerly much of the coal was shipped by canals, but the latter were
not able to compete with the railways, and most of the coal-canals have
been abandoned. The price of anthracite at tide-water (New York) varies
from $3.20 to $4.50 per long ton. At Philadelphia the price is about
one-fourth less. Buffalo is the chief lake-port for anthracite. Steam
sizes are about two-thirds the price of house fuel.
[Illustration: COAL FIELDS IN UNITED STATES]
Bituminous, or soft coal furnishes the larger part of the house fuel in
the United States, and nearly all the house coal used in other parts of
the world. It contains from fifteen to more than forty per cent. of
volatile matter, burning with a long and smoky flame. The coal which
contains twenty per cent. or less of volatile matter is a free-burning
coal that may develop heat enough to partly fuse the ash, forming
"clinkers"; it is therefore called "caking" coal, and is not only well
adapted for use as fuel and steam-making, but it is also a good smelting
coal.
Coal which contains more than thirty per cent. of volatile matter is
known as "fat" coal and is generally used in the manufacture of coke and
illuminating gas. Western Pennsylvania produces the largest amount of
fat coal, but it is found here and there in nearly all soft-coal
regions. A so-called smokeless bituminous coal occurs in various
localities; its low percentage of volatile matter makes it an excellent
house fuel.
Bituminous coal is mined in twenty-five States of the Union,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, and Ohio heading the list. In
about half the mines the coal is cut from the seam by means of machinery
and is known as machine-mined coal. A very large part of the product is
consumed within a short distance of the mines, and this is especially
true of the region about the upper Ohio River.
[Illustration: COAL PRODUCTION]
Most of the product is shipped to the large manufacturing cities of the
middle west, where it is used for steam as well as fuel; a very large
amount also is sent down the Ohio in barges to the lower Mississippi
River. The spot value of bituminous coal varies from $0.80 to $1.60 per
ton; the product of the Pacific coast mines, however, is from $3 to $5.
The output of the mines of the United States aggregates about two
hundred and forty million long tons yearly, and this is about one-third
of the world's product. For many years there has been an export trade to
Canada, the West Indies, Central and South America, amounting in 1900 to
8,000,000 tons. Within a few years, however, the decreased cost of
mining due to machinery, and the low rates of transportation to the
seaboard has developed an export trade to Russia, Germany, and France.
[Illustration: COAL]
A small amount of coal is imported into the United States. A superior
quality of Australian coal finds a ready market in Pacific coast points
as far north as San Francisco, and large quantities of Nanaimo, B.C.,
coal are sold in Oregon, Washington, and California. A small quantity of
the "slack" or waste of the Nova Scotia mines is imported to Boston to
be made into coke. The Canadian fields supply a considerable part of the
coal used in Montana.
=Coke and Coal-Tar Products.=--In the manufacture of iron and steel a fuel
having a high percentage of carbon free from volatile matter is
essential. The great cost of wood charcoal forbids its use, and so a
charcoal made from soft coal is used. Fat coal is heated in closed
chambers until the volatile matter is driven off. The product is "coke";
the closed chamber is an "oven." The ovens are built of stone or
fire-brick, in a long row. They are usually on an abrupt slope, so that
the coal can be dumped into the top, while the coke can be withdrawn
from the bottom, to be loaded into cars.
About three thousand one hundred and forty pounds of coal are required
to make a short ton of coke; from three thousand to five thousand cubic
feet of illuminating gas, together with varying amounts of coal-tar and
ammonia, are driven off and generally wasted. In a few instances
"scientific" ovens are in use for the purpose of saving these products;
but in the coal-mining regions such devices are the exception and not
the rule. The great waste of energy-products in the manufacture of coke
is partly offset by the employment of refuse and slack, which could not
be otherwise used.
There are more than five hundred and eighteen thousand coke-ovens in
the United States, of which eighty per cent. are in use. Most of them
are in the region about the upper Ohio River, and nearly half the total
number is in the vicinity of Connellsville. The region around
Birmingham, Ala., ranks next in number. The coke product of the United
States is more than twenty million short tons a year. This is
considerably less than the product of Great Britain, which is upward of
twenty-five million tons.
Most of the "scientific" ovens are near or in large cities where the
gas, after purification, is used for illuminating purposes. In some
instances the coke, and not the gas, is a by-product. The coal-tar is
used in part for fuel, but a portion of it goes to the chemical
laboratory, where it is made to yield ammonia, benzine, carbolic acid,
and aniline dyes to the value of nearly seven million dollars.
=Graphite.=--Graphite, plumbago, or "black lead," as it is popularly
named, is found in many parts of the United States, but only a few
localities produce a good commercial article; these are Ticonderoga, N.Y.,
which yields from six hundred to two thousand tons a year, and
Chester County, Pa., which yields a small but increasing amount; a good
quality is mined near Ottawa, Canada. It is extensively mined in Ceylon,
and this island produces the chief bulk of the world's ordinary product.
The finest grade comes from the Alibert mine in Siberia. A good article
is manufactured artificially at Niagara Falls.
Graphite is used as a stove polish and for crucibles; in the main,
however, it is employed in the manufacture of lead[41] pencils; for this
purpose only a very soft mineral, absolutely free from grit, is
employed, and the Siberian output is used almost wholly. One German firm
and two American firms supply most of the pencils used.
=Petroleum.=--Petroleum is the name given to a natural liquid mineral from
which the well-known illuminating oil "kerosene" is derived, and to
obtain which it is mined. Petroleum is a mixture of various compounds
known as hydrocarbons. Some of these compounds are gaseous, some are
liquid, and some are solid; all of them are articles of commercial
value. The petroleum from different localities differs greatly in
appearance and composition.
The pitch that coated Noah's ark, the slime of the builders of the Tower
of Babel, and the slime-pits of the Vale of Siddim all refer to mineral
products associated with petroleum. Under the name of "naphtha" it has
been known in Persia for thirty centuries, and for more than half as
long a flowing oil spring has existed in the Ionian Islands. The Seneca
Indians knew of a petroleum spring near the village of Cuba, N.Y., and
used it as a medicine long before the advent of the white man.
As early as 1850 illuminating oil, known as "coal" oil, was made in the
United States by distilling cannel coal, but this product was supplanted
within a few years by the natural petroleum discovered in Pennsylvania.
In 1859 Colonel Drake completed a well bored in solid rock near
Titusville, Pa. The venture proved successful, and in a few years
petroleum mining became one of the great industries of the United
States.
Petroleum is known to exist in a great many parts of the world; the
United States and Russia, however, produce practically all the
commercial product; a very small amount is obtained from a horizon on
the south slope of the Carpathian Mountains, situated in Rumania and
Galicia, Austria-Hungary. There are also a few producing wells in Peru,
Germany, Italy, Burma, Argentina, and Sumatra.
[Illustration: PETROLEUM FIELDS IN THE UNITED STATES]
In the United States the largest horizon is that of the Appalachian
region. Since 1859 it has produced more than forty million gallons of
crude oil. The Lima, Ind., horizon produces about twenty million
barrels. The California and Texas horizons have become very important
factors. The crude petroleum is transported partly in tank cars, but
mainly by means of long lines of pipe, flowing from one pumping station
to another by gravity. There are pipe-line terminals on the Great Lakes
and at Pittsburg, but the principal are at the refining and exporting
stations in New York, Philadelphia, and on the Delaware River.
A considerable amount is exported to European countries to be there
refined, but in the main the crude oil is refined before exporting it.
Some of the refined oil is exported in barrels, and some in tin cases;
the greater part, however, goes in tank steamers, and from these it is
pumped into tank cars to be distributed. Most of the product is
controlled by the Standard Oil Company, and it reaches nearly every
country in the world. It is carried into Arctic regions on sledges, and
over the African deserts by caravans. Great Britain, Germany, and the
Netherlands are the chief purchasers and distributors. The value of the
entire product is about one hundred and eighty-five million dollars.
The Russian oil-producing region is on and near the Apsheron peninsula,
a small area of Trans-Caucasia, that extends into the Caspian Sea; the
region is commonly known as the Baku field, and in 1900 the production
of crude oil surpassed that of the United States. The petroleum is
conveyed by pipe lines to the refineries at Baku. From this port it is
shipped in tank cars by rail to Batum, whence it is conveyed to the
various European markets. A considerable part of the product is sent by
tank steamers to Astrakhan, and thence up the Volga to Russian markets.
Great Britain takes about one-third; about the same amount is shipped to
Port Said for China, India, and other Asian markets; the rest is
consumed in central Europe.
=Petroleum Products.=--The various constituents of crude petroleum differ
greatly in character, some being much more volatile than others. They
are separated by distillation at different temperatures. By this process
naphtha, rhigoline, gasoline, benzine, and other highly inflammable
products are obtained in separate receivers. By a similar process the
illuminating or refined oil and the lubricating oils are also separated.
The residuum consists of a gummy mass from which paraffine and petroleum
jelly are extracted.
_Naphtha_ usually contains several volatile compounds, including
_benzine_ and _gasoline_. It is used as a solvent of grease and also of
crude india-rubber, but chiefly the manufacture of illuminating gas.
_Kerosene_ is the name commonly given to the refined oil. A good
quality should have a fire test of not less than one hundred and fifty
degrees; that is, when heated to that temperature, it should not give
off any inflammable gas. This test is now mandatory in most States.
_Lubricating oil_ is used almost wholly for the lubrication of heavy
machinery. It varies greatly in composition and quality.
_Paraffine_ or petroleum wax has largely superseded beeswax; it is used
mainly in the manufacture of candles and as an insulator for electric
wires. A native mineral paraffine, known as ozocerite, is mined in Utah
and Galicia; it is used as an insulating material.
"_Vaseline_," "_cosmoline_," or _petroleum "jelly"_ is very largely used
in pharmacy as the basis of ointments and also as a lubricant for heavy
machinery.
_Asphalt_ is produced by the distillation of petroleum, but the greater
part of the world's product comes from two "pitch lakes"--one in
Bermudez, Venezuela, the other in the island of Trinidad, off the
Venezuelan coast. The former is the larger and produces a superior
quality. Small deposits occur near Los Angeles, Cal., and in Utah. The
output of the Venezuelan asphalt is used almost wholly for street
pavement.
Probably no other mineral has had a wider influence on both social and
economic life, and the industrial arts, than petroleum and its
compounds. The kerosene lamp, the aniline dye, the insulation of
electric wires, the lubrication of machinery, the cosmetic, the
india-rubber solution, and the physician's sedative dose represent only
a few of the devices that are derived from petroleum.
=Natural Gas.=--A natural inflammable gas occurs in or near several of the
petroleum horizons. One important belt extends through western
Pennsylvania and New York, and another through northwestern Ohio and
northeastern Indiana. It is conveyed through pipe-lines and used both as
fuel and for lighting. Natural gas occurs in a great many localities,
but is used commercially only in the regions noted. It is better adapted
for making glass than any other fuel, and on this account extensive
glass-making establishments have concentrated in the natural-gas belt of
western Pennsylvania.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
The statement is sometimes made to the effect that coal is "condensed
sunlight"; is it true, or untrue; and why?
Why are the coal areas of Europe and America also areas of various
manufactures?
A recent cartoon had for its title--"John Bull and his coal piles
(_i.e._, coaling stations) rule the world"; show why this statement
contains a great deal of truth.
What are some of the advantages of steam-vessels over sailing-vessels?
Whale oil, crude turpentine, kerosene, and gas have been used each in
turn for illuminants; what is the advantage of each over the preceding?
Describe the structure of an ordinary kerosene lamp-burner, an argand
burner, a Welsbach burner.
For what are aniline, paraffine, naphtha, and carbolic acid used?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of anthracite, bituminous, and cannel coal, and coke
for comparison and study.
Obtain specimens of crude petroleum, naphtha, refined oil, aniline dye,
paraffine, and carbolic acid; note the properties of each. Throw away
the naphtha after using.
Read Mineral Resources of the United States on the foregoing subjects.
CHAPTER XIII
METALS OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES
The development of modern civilization is directly connected with the
mining and manufacture of the useful metals. Their effect on the affairs
of mankind can be rightly understood only when they are studied in their
relations to one another, as well as to the people who used them. Next
to the discovery of the use of fire, an appreciation of the use of
metals has been the chief thing to develop the intellect of mankind.
When human beings discarded natural caves for artificially constructed
dwellings--when they began to cook their food and clothe their bodies,
they required tools. These, in the main, consisted of the spears and
arrow-heads used as weapons of the chase, and the axes and knives used
as constructive tools.
Rough stone gave place to flint because the latter would take a better
edge. For the same reason the people of central Europe sent to the
deserts of central Asia for jade wherewith to make axes and knives.
Again, for the same reason, jade was discarded, because an alloy of
copper and tin produced a bronze that would not only take a sharper edge
than stone, but it was hard enough to cut and dress the latter. Egypt
rose to a commanding position because of her control of the copper mines
in the Sinaitic peninsula, and subsequently of the gold products coming
from the upper Nile.
A meridian drawn through Cairo, Egypt, practically divides the world
into two kinds of civilization. East of this meridian the population is
almost wholly agricultural and, excepting Japan and India, the
character of the civilization has changed but little in the past 2,000
years. West of the line the population is essentially characterized as
metal-workers. It controls the world--not especially by virtue of a high
degree of intellectual development, but because it has availed itself of
the properties and characteristics of metals and their applications to
commerce.
The four metals that have had the greatest influence on western
civilization are gold, silver, iron, and copper. The discovery of gold
and silver has always resulted in a rapid settlement of the regions in
which the discoveries were made, and usually in the building of great
industrial centres. Thus, the discovery of gold in California was the
first step in making the United States a world power. The acquisition of
so large an amount of gold caused an industrial expansion that hurried
the Civil War, and led to the manufacture of iron and steel both for
agricultural machinery and railroad transportation. This, in turn,
brought the country so closely in touch with the affairs of China and
Japan, that European and American diplomacy in eastern Asia are a common
concern. The commercial position of Great Britain is very largely due to
her iron mines.
The production of Bessemer steel at a price far less than that of iron
at the beginning of the nineteenth century lowered the cost of
transporting commodities to the extent that large areas, once of
necessity very moderately productive of food-stuffs, are now densely
peopled because food-stuffs can be transported to these regions more
economically than they can be grown there. Thus, owing to the
improvements in iron and steel manufacture, the farmer of Minnesota, the
planter of Louisiana, the miner of Colorado, and the factory operative
of Massachusetts have each the same comforts of living that are enjoyed
by all the others, and have them at scarcely more than half the cost of
fifty years ago.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--THE NATIONAL STEEL COMPANY'S SMELTERY
AND ROLLING-MILLS, MINGO JUNCTION, OHIO]
The gradual decrease in the production of the silver mines near the
present site of Ergasteria proved a beginning of the fall of Athens; and
when gold was discovered in the Perim Mountains of Macedonia, the seat
of Greek power moved thither. Philip of Macedon hoarded the treasure
from the mines of Pangaeus, and with the capital thus acquired his son,
Alexander the Great, conquered the East, implanted Hellenic business
methods there, and drew the various trade routes between Europe and Asia
under one control.
In the fifteenth century copper from the mines near Budapest and silver
from the Schwarz Mountains of Germany were the resources that made
Germanic Europe pre-eminent. The wresting of the trade in these two
metals from Venice caused the rise of Antwerp and brought immense gains
to Luebeck, London, Brussels, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. In the latter part
of the nineteenth century copper again reached a high position of
importance from the fact that upon it largely depends electric motive
power and transportation.
=Iron.=--Iron is one of the most widely diffused of metals. It is abundant
in the sun; meteorites contain from more than ten to eighty or ninety
per cent. of it; all earths and rocks contain at least traces of it; and
in various places the deposits of ore in nearly pure form aggregate
cubic miles in extent.
In only a few localities is iron ore found in a metallic or "native"
form. Many meteorites consist of metallic iron mixed with nickel and
manganese, and in Greenland a volcanic dyke or ledge of metallic iron is
known to exist. The iron of commerce is derived from "ores," or chemical
compounds of iron and oxygen, or iron and carbon. The cheapness of the
product depends upon the ease with which the ore may be quarried,
transported to coal, and smelted. The following are the ores commonly
employed in the production of iron:
_Red hematite_ has a reddish metallic lustre and when pure contains
seventy per cent. of iron.[42] It is the most abundant of the workable
ores, and certainly the best for the manufacture of Bessemer steel. The
ores of the Lake Superior region are mainly red hematite, and the latter
constitutes more than four-fifths of the output of the United States.
[Illustration: THE COMPARATIVE PRODUCTION OF IRON AND STEEL]
_Brown hematite_, or limonite, has a chestnut brown color and contains
very nearly sixty per cent. of iron[43]; it includes the "bog" ores, and
is very abundant. Not far from one-quarter of the Appalachian ores are
brown hematite; it constitutes about one-eighth of the output of the
United States.
_Magnetic_ iron ore, or magnetite, of which loadstone, a natural magnet,
is an example, has a metallic, steel lustre and contains 72.4 per cent.
of iron.[44] Most of the ores obtained in Pennsylvania and New York are
magnetite. The magnetites furnish about one-sixteenth of the output of
the United States.
_Carbonate of Iron_, or siderite, occurs in a few localities, the ore
produced in Ohio being almost wholly of this kind. It contains when
pure about forty-eight per cent. of iron.[45] It constitutes less than
one per cent. of the output of the United States.
_Iron pyrites_, or sulphide of iron, sometimes called "fools' gold," is
a very common mineral. It is used in the manufacture of sulphuric acid,
but is worthless for the production of iron; indeed, the presence of a
very small percentage of sulphur in iron renders the latter worthless
for many purposes.
Extensive deposits of iron are known to exist in very nearly every
country in the world, but those which can be advantageously worked are
few in number. In order to be available, the deposits must be within
easy transporting distance of the people who use it, and likewise within
a short distance of the coal used to manufacture it.
For these reasons most of the workable deposits of ore are in or near
the great centres of population in western Europe and the eastern part
of the United States; as a matter of fact, practically all the iron and
steel of the latter country is produced in the populous centres of the
Atlantic slopes. In most great steel-making districts it is essential to
mix the native ores with special ores brought from a distance, the
latter being used to give strength and hardness to the resulting metal.
Ores from Sweden, and from Juragua, Cuba, are employed for this purpose
in the steel-making establishments of the United States.
In the past few years the United States has jumped from an insignificant
position in the production of iron and steel to the first rank among the
iron-producing countries. This great advance is due to the fortunate
geographic position of the iron ore and the coal, and also to the
discovery of the Bessemer process of making steel.
In general it is more economical to ship the ore to the coal than _vice
versa_. The position of the steel-making plant is largely determined by
the cost of moving the coke and ore, together with that of getting the
steel to the place of use. Formerly, iron manufacture in the United
States was not profitable unless the coal, ore, and limestone[46] were
very near to one another.
These conditions still obtain in the southern Appalachian mineral
fields; the ore and the coal are at no great distance apart, and a great
iron-making industry, in which Birmingham and Bessemer form the
principal centre, has grown into existence. For the greater part the
coal is coked; and in this form less than a ton[47] is sufficient to
make a ton of pig-iron. The smelteries and rolling-mills are built at
places where the materials are most conveniently hauled.
In the past few years the iron and steel industry which formerly centred
about the navigable waters at the head of the Ohio River, has undergone
a readjustment. Rolling-mills and smelteries exist at Pittsburg and
vicinity, and at Youngstown, New Castle, and other nearby localities,
but greater steel-making plants have been built along the south shores
of Lakes Michigan and Erie, all of which have come about because of
reasons that are purely geographic.
Immense deposits of excellent hematite ore in the old mountain-ranges
near Lake Superior have recently become available. For the greater part
the ore is very easily quarried. In many instances it is taken out of
the quarry or pit by steam-shovels which dump it into self-discharging
hopper-cars. Thence the ore is carried on a down grade to the nearest
shipping-port on the lake. There it is dumped into huge bunkers built at
the docks, and from these it slides down chutes into the holds of the
steam-barges. A 6,000-ton barge is loaded in less than two hours; a car
is unloaded in a few seconds.
[Illustration: MOVEMENT OF IRON ORE]
Water transportation is very cheap compared with railway transportation,
even when the road is built and equipped as an ore-hauling road. The ore
is therefore carried a distance varying from one thousand to one
thousand five hundred miles for less than it could be loaded, on cars
hauled one-tenth that distance by rail, and unloaded.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--ORE DOCKS]
At the south shore of Lake Erie, the ore meets the coke from western
Pennsylvania and coal from the Ohio coal-fields, and as a result new
centres of iron and steel manufacture have grown up along this line of
"least resistance." The ore is unloaded at the docks by means of
mechanical scoops and shovels. So cheaply and quickly is it mined and
transported that it is delivered to the smelteries at a cost varying
from $1.75 to $3.25 per ton.
[Illustration: LAKE SUPERIOR IRON ORE FIELDS]
There are three forms in which iron is used--cast iron, wrought iron,
and steel. Cast iron is crystalline and brittle. The product as it comes
from the blast furnace is called pig-iron. In making such commodities as
stoves, and articles that do not require great strength, the pig-iron is
again melted and cast into moulds which give them the required shape.
Cast iron contains from one to five per cent. of carbon.
Wrought iron is malleable, ductile, and very flexible; when pure it is
also very soft. It is prepared by melting pig-iron in furnaces having
such a shape that the molten metal can be stirred or "puddled" in
contact with the air. By this means the carbon is burnt out, and while
still at a white heat the pasty iron is kneaded or "wrought," in order
to expel other impurities.
Steel is a form of iron which is thought to contain a chemical compound
of iron with carbon. It is stronger than iron and finer in grain.
Formerly, steel was made by packing bars of pure iron in charcoal
powder, the whole being enclosed in clay retorts that were heated to
whiteness for about three days. The product obtained by this method is
known as cementation steel. It is still used in the manufacture of
cutlery, tools, and fine machinery; it is likewise very expensive. In
smelting certain ores it is easy to burn out the carbon in open
furnaces, and "open-hearth" steel is an important factor.
Just about the beginning of the Civil War, when the railways of the
United States were taxed beyond their capacity to carry the produce of
the country, it became apparent that something more durable than iron
must be used for rails. The locomotives, then weighing from twenty-five
to thirty-five tons each, were too light to haul the freight offered the
roads; they were also too heavy for the rails, which split at the ends
and frayed at the edges.
[Illustration: IRON AND STEEL]
The Bessemer process of making steel was the result of the demand for a
better and a cheaper method. By this process, the iron is put into a
"converter" along with certain Swedish or Cuban ores to give the product
hardness. A hot blast is then forced into the converter which not only
melts the mass but burns out the excess of carbon as well. The color of
the flame indicates the moment when the conversion to steel is
accomplished.
In 1860, before the establishment of the Bessemer process, steel
commanded a price of about one hundred and twenty-five dollars per ton;
at the beginning of the twentieth century steel billets were about
eighteen dollars per ton. In western Europe and the United States there
are used about three hundred pounds of iron and steel per capita; in
South America the rate of consumption is about fifteen pounds; in Asia
(Japan excepted) it is probably less than three pounds.
The economic results of low-priced steel are very far-reaching. Steam
boilers of steel carry a pressure of more than two hundred and fifty
pounds to each square inch of surface--about four times as great as in
the iron boilers formerly used. Locomotives of eighty tons draw the fast
passenger trains at a speed of sixty miles an hour. Ponderous
compounding engines weighing one hundred and twenty tons haul ninety or
more steel freight cars that carry each a load of 100,000 pounds. The
iron rails formerly in use weighed about forty pounds per yard; now
steel rails of one hundred pounds per yard are employed on most trunk
lines.
In the large commercial buildings steel girders have entirely supplanted
timber, while in nearly all modern buildings of more than six stories in
height, the frame is constructed of Bessemer steel. Indeed, a
steel-framed building of twenty-five stories has greater stability than
a brick or stone building of six. Such a structure as the "Flatiron
Building" in New York or the Masonic Temple in Chicago would have been
impossible without Bessemer steel.
In ocean commerce cheap steel has worked even a greater revolution. In
1860, a vessel of 4,000 tons displacement was thought to be almost up to
the limit. The Oceanic of the White Star Line has a displacement of
about twenty-eight thousand five hundred tons. This is nearly equalled
by the measurement of half a dozen other liners, and is exceeded by the
freighters built by Mr. J.J. Hill for the China trade.
[Illustration: _From a copyrighted photograph by C.L. Ritzmann, N.Y._
STEEL MANUFACTURE
THE FULLER (FLATIRON) BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY]
HISTORICAL
1619.--Iron works established on Falling Creek, Va.
1643.--First foundry in Massachusetts, at Lynn.
1658.--Blast furnace and forge at New Haven, Conn.
1679.--Father Hennepin discovers coal in Illinois.
1703.--Mordecai Lincoln, ancestor of Abraham Lincoln, establishes
iron works at Scituate, Mass.
1717.--First bar iron exported from American Colonies to West
Indies.
1728.--Steel made, Hebron, Ct.
1732.--Father of George Washington establishes furnace in Virginia.
1740.--First iron works in New York, near Hudson.
1750.--Bituminous coal mined in Virginia.
1766.--Anthracite coal discovered in Pennsylvania.
1770.--First rolling-mill in Colonies, Boonton, N.J.
1801-1803.--Lake Champlain iron district, New York, developed.
1812.--First rolling-mill at Pittsburg.
1828.--Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, first steam railway in the United
States, begun.
1829.--"Stourbridge Lion," first locomotive in America, used in
Delaware & Hudson Railway.
1830.--The T rail invented by Robert L. Stevens.
1830.--First American locomotive, "Tom Thumb," built by Peter
Cooper at Baltimore.
1830.--Twenty-three miles of railway in the United States.
1844.--Lake Superior iron ores discovered by William Burt.
1850.--First shipment of Lake Superior ore, ten tons.
1857.--Iron industry founded in Chicago.
1862.--Phoenix wrought iron column, or girder, first made.
1864.--Bessemer steel first made in the United States.
1865.--First Bessemer steel rails in the United States rolled at
Chicago.
1890.--First armor-plate made in the United States rolled at
Bethlehem, Pa.
1890.--The United States surpasses Great Britain in production of
pig-iron.
1900.--The United States leads in the production of open-hearth
steel.
=Gold.=--Gold is one of the metals earliest to be mined. It is mentioned
by the ancient profane as well as by sacred writers. Pictorial
representations of fusing and working the metal are sculptured on early
Egyptian tombs, and beautiful gold ornaments have been found that were
made by the prehistoric peoples who once occupied ancient Etruria, in
Italy. Columbus found gold ornaments in the possession of the aboriginal
Americans. The Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico possessed large
quantities of gold.
[Illustration: LEACHING (CYANIDE) TANKS DISSOLVING THE GOLD FROM THE
ROASTED ORE]
[Illustration: STOPING OUT A TUNNEL]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF MILL]
[Illustration: GOLD MINING]
Gold is one of the most widely diffused of metals. Traces of it are
found in practically all igneous and most sedimentary rocks. It occurs
in sea-water, and quite frequently in beach-sands. Traces of it are also
usually to be found in alluvial deposits and in the soils of most
mountain-folds. In spite of its wide diffusion, however, all the gold
that has been mined could be stored readily in the vaults of any large
New York bank.
In all probability most of the gold now in use has been deposited by
solution in quartz veins, the latter usually filling seams and crevices
in granitic or volcanic rocks. Quartz veins seldom yield very great
returns, but they furnish a steady supply of the metal. The rock must be
mined, hoisted to the surface, and crushed. The gold is then dissolved
by quicksilver (forming an amalgam from which the quicksilver is removed
by heat), by potassium cyanide solution, or by chlorine solution.
In many instances the quartz veins have been broken and weathered by
natural forces. In such cases the gold is usually carried off by swiftly
running water and deposited in the channel lower down. In this way
"placer" deposits of gold occur. Placer deposits are sometimes very
rich, but they are quickly exhausted. The first gold discovered in
California was placer gold.
Nearly all the gold mined in the United States has come from the western
highlands. In 1900, Colorado, California, South Dakota (Black Hills),
Montana, and Alaska yielded about seven-eighths of the entire product.
The placer mines of Alaska are confined mainly to the beach-sands and
the tributaries of Yukon River. Since 1849 the average annual yield of
gold in the United States is about forty-three million dollars.
The Guinea coast of Africa, Australia, California, the Transvaal of
South Africa, and Venezuela have each stood at the front in the
production of gold. The aggregate annual production of the world has
increased from one hundred and sixty million dollars in 1853 to more
than three hundred million dollars in 1900.
A considerable part of the gold product is used in gilding
picture-frames, book-titles, sign-letters, porcelain, and ornamental
brass work. Practically, all of this is lost, and in the United States
alone the loss aggregates about fifteen million dollars yearly. The
abrasion and unavoidable wear of gold coin is another great source of
loss.
An enormous amount is used in the manufacture of jewelry, most of which
is used over and over again. By far the greater part, however, is used
as a commercial medium of exchange--that is, as coin. For this purpose
its employment is wellnigh universal; and indeed this has been its chief
use since the beginning of written history. Gold coin of the United
States is 900 fine, that is, 900 parts of every thousand is pure gold;
gold coin of Great Britain is 916-2/3 fine. In each case a small amount
of silver, or silver and copper, is added to give the coin the requisite
hardness. The coining of gold, and also other metals, is a government
monopoly in every civilized country.
The fiat value of gold throughout the commercial world is the equivalent
of $20.6718 per troy ounce of fine metal; an eagle weighs, therefore,
2580 grains. The real value, however, is reckoned by a different and a
more accurate standard, namely, the labor of man, and this, the
sporadic finds of placer gold excepted, has not changed much in two
thousand years or more. The increased production has scarcely equalled
the demand for the metal; moreover, the longer a mine is worked the
greater becomes the expense of its operation. Improved processes for the
extraction of gold have not created any surplus of gold; indeed, the
supply is not equal to the demand; and this fact keeps the metal
practically at a fixed value.
=Silver.=--Silver is about as widely diffused as is gold, but it is more
plentiful. It is found sparingly in most of the older rocks and also in
sea-water. It was used by the Greeks for coinage more than eight hundred
years before the Christian era, and was known to the Jewish people in
very early times. According to the writer of the Book of Kings (1 Kings
x. 21), "It was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon," but
Tacitus declares that in ancient Germany silver was even more valuable
than gold. The mines of Laureion (Laurium) gave the Greek state of
Attica its chief power, and the failure of the mines marked the
beginning of Athenian decline.
Silver is rarely found in a metallic state. For the greater part it
occurs combined with chlorine ("horn silver"), or with sulphur ("silver
glance"), or in combination with antimony and sulphur ("ruby ore"). The
ranges of the western highland region of the American continent yield
most of the present supply. The mines of Colorado, Montana, Utah, and
Idaho produce about six-sevenths of the yield in the United States,
which in 1900 was 74,500,000 ounces. In Europe the Hartz Mountains have
been famous for silver for several centuries.
About four-fifths of the silver bullion is used in the arts, most of it
being manufactured into ornaments or into table-service called "plate."
A considerable amount is used in photography, certain silver salts,
especially the chloride and the bromide, changing color by exposure to
the light. The remaining part of the silver output is made into coin.
The ratio of silver and gold has fluctuated much in the history of
civilization. In the United States the value of an ounce of fine silver
is fixed at $1.2929, thereby making the ratio 16 to 1. The silver
dollars, 900 fine, were coined on this basis, weighing 412.5 grains.
With the tremendous output of the silver mines between 1870 and 1880 the
price of silver fell to such an extent that, in time, most countries
limited the amount of coinage or demonetized it altogether. In the
United States the purchase of silver bullion for coinage has been
practically suspended, and the silver purchased is bought at the bullion
value--about fifty cents per troy ounce in 1900. In Japan the ratio has
been officially fixed at 32 to 1.
=Copper.=--Copper is probably the oldest metal known that has been used in
making tools. An alloy of copper and tin, hard enough to cut and dress
stone, succeeded the use of flint and jade, and its employment became so
general as to give the name "bronze" to the age following that
characterized by the use of stone implements.
Copper is very widely distributed. It occurs in quantities that pay for
mining in pretty nearly every country in the world. The rise of Egypt as
a commercial power was due to the fact that the Egyptians controlled the
world's trade in that metal, and it is highly probable that the
conquests of Cyprus at various times were chiefly for the possession of
the copper mines of Mount Olympus.
At the present time there are several great centres of production which
yield most of the metal used. These are the Rocky Mountain region,
including Mexico; the Lake Superior region of the United States; the
Andean region, including Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia; the
Iberian region, consisting of Spain and Portugal; and the Hartz
Mountain region of Germany. In 1900 they produced about four hundred and
fifty thousand tons, of which two hundred and eighty thousand were mined
in the United States.
Montana, the Lake Superior mines, and Arizona are the most productive
regions of the United States, and the mines of these three localities
yield more than half the world's product. Of these mines the Calumet and
Hecla of the Lake Superior region is the most famous. It was discovered
by Jesuit explorers about 1660, but was not worked until 1845. It is one
of the most productive mines in the world, its yearly output averaging
fifty million tons.
The export trade in copper is very important, amounting at the close of
the past century to about one hundred and seventy thousand short tons.
Of this amount, half goes to Germany (most of it through ports of the
Netherlands), and one-fifth each to France and Great Britain. The market
price to the consumer during the ten years closing the century averaged
about sixteen cents per pound. Most of the product is exported from New
York and Baltimore. The head-quarters of the great copper-mining
companies of America are at Boston. The imports of raw ores and partly
reduced ores called "regulus," come mainly from Mexico to New York and
Baltimore, and from Mexico and Japan to Puget Sound ports. The most
important American refineries are at New York and Baltimore.
A part of the copper is mixed with zinc to form brass, an alloy much
used in light machinery. A considerable quantity is rolled into sheets
to sheath building fronts and the iron hulls of vessels. By far the
greater part, however, is drawn into wire for carrying electricity, and
for this purpose it is surpassed by silver alone. The decrease in the
price of copper in the past few years is due, not to a falling off in
the demand, but to methods of reducing the ores and transporting the
product more economically.
=Aluminium.=--Aluminium is the base of clay, this mineral being its oxide.
It occurs in the various feldspars and feldspathic rocks, and in mica.
The expense of extracting the metal from these minerals has been so
great as to prohibit its commercial use. In 1870 there were probably
less than twenty pounds of the metal in existence, and it was to be
found only as a curiosity in the chemical laboratories. The discovery
that the metal could be extracted cheaply from cryolite, a mineral with
an aluminium base, obtained from Ivigtut, Greenland, led to a sparing
use of the metal in the economic arts.
The chief step in the production of the metal dates from the time that
the mineral _bauxite_, a hydroxide of aluminium and iron, was decomposed
in the electric furnace. The process has been repeatedly improved, and
under the patents covered by the Hall process the crude metal is now
produced at a market price of about eighteen cents per pound. The entire
production of the United States is controlled by the Pittsburg Reduction
Company, which also manufactures much of the commercial product of
England. The competitor of the Pittsburg Reduction Company is an
establishment in Germany, near Bremen.
Aluminium does not corrode; it is easily rolled, drawn, or cast; and,
bulk for bulk, it is less than one-third as heavy as copper. Because of
these properties it has a great and constantly growing economic value.
Because of its greater size, a pound of aluminium wire will carry a
greater electric current than a pound of copper wire of the same length.
It therefore has an increasing use as a conductor of electricity.
Bauxite, the mineral from which the metal is now chiefly extracted, is
obtained in two localities. One extends through Georgia and Alabama;
the other is in Arkansas.
=Lead.=--Lead is neither so abundant nor so widely diffused as iron,
copper, and the precious metals, but the supply is fully equal to the
demand. Lead ores, mainly galena or lead sulphide, occur abundantly in
the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah, producing more than half
the total output of the United States. In these localities, in Mexico,
and in the Andean states of South America it is used mainly in the
smelting of silver ores.
Metallic lead is used largely in the manufacture of water-pipes, and for
this purpose it must be very nearly pure. It is also rolled into sheets
to be used as lining for water-tanks. The fact that the edges of
sheet-lead and the ends of pipes may be readily joined with solder gives
to lead a great part of its economic value. Alloyed with arsenic it is
used in making shot; alloyed with antimony it forms type metal; alloyed
with tin it forms pewter and solder.
The greater part, however, is manufactured into the carbonate or "white"
lead that is used as a pigment, or paint. Red lead, an oxide, is a
pigment; litharge, also an oxide, is used for glazing the cheaper kinds
of pottery. About two hundred and thirty thousand tons of lead are
produced in the United States and one-half as much is imported--mainly
from Mexico and Canada. The linotype machines, now used in all large
printing establishments, have increased the demand for lead.
=Other Metals.=--Most of the remaining economic metals occur in small
quantities as compared with iron, copper, gold, and silver. Some of
them, however, are highly important from the fact that in various
industrial processes no substitutes for them are known.
_Quicksilver_, or _mercury_, is the only industrial metal that at
ordinary temperatures is a liquid. It is the base of the substance
calomel, a chloride, and corrosive sublimate, a dichloride, both of
which are employed as medicines. It is essential in the manufacture of
thermometers and barometers, but is used chiefly, however, as a solvent
of gold, which it separates from the finely powdered ore by solution or
amalgamation. Quicksilver occurs in the mineral cinnabar, a sulphide.
Nearly one-half the world's product comes from California. The New
Almaden mines of Santa Clara County produce over five thousand flasks
(each seventy-six and one-half pounds net); those of Napa County nearly
nine thousand flasks; the mines of the whole State yield about
twenty-six thousand flasks, valued at $1,200,000. Almaden, Spain, and
Idria, Austria, produce nearly all the rest of the output. An average of
about fifteen thousand flasks are exported from San Francisco, mainly to
the mines of Mexico, and Central and South America.
_Tin_ is about the only metal of industrial value whose ores are not
found in paying quantities in the United States. Small quantities occur
in San Bernardino County, Cal., and in the vicinity of Bering Strait,
Alaska, but it is doubtful if either will ever pay for development.
About three-fifths of the world's product comes from the Straits
Settlements on the Malay Peninsula; the nearby islands of Banca and
Billiton also yield a considerable quantity.
The mines of Cornwall, England, have been worked for two thousand years
and were probably the source of the tin that made the "bronze age." The
United States imports yearly about twenty million dollars worth of tin,
about half of which comes from the Straits Settlements. This is used
almost wholly for the manufacture of tin plate[48]--that is, sheet-iron
coated with tin. Much of the block tin imported from Great Britain is
returned there in the form of tin plate, being manufactured in the
United States much more economically than in Europe.
_Nickel_ occurs in New Caledonia, in Canada, and in the State of
Missouri. It is used in the manufacture of small coins and for plating
iron and steel. It is an essential in the metal known as "nickel steel"
which is now generally used in armor-plate and propeller-shafts, about
four per cent. of nickel being added to the steel. Most of the product
used in the United States is imported from Canada.
_Manganese_, a metal resembling iron, occurs in Russia, Brazil, and
Cuba, Russia producing about half the total output. It is used mainly to
give hardness to steel. The propeller-blades of large steamships are
usually made of manganese bronze. The building of war-ships in the
United States during the past few years has led to the extensive use of
manganese for armor-plate, and manganese ores to the amount of more than
two hundred and fifty thousand tons were imported in 1900. More than
one-half of this came from Russia; most of the remaining half from
Brazil.
_Zinc_ is abundant in nearly every part of the world. In the United
States the best known mines are in the Galena-Joplin District, in
Missouri and Kansas, which produce about two-thirds of the home
product--mainly from the ore _blende_, a sulphide. There are also
extensive zinc-mining operations in Illinois, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania. The lower Rhine District, Great Britain, and Silesia are
the chief European sources. Sheet-zinc is found in nearly every dwelling
in the United States, and zinc-coated or "galvanized" iron has become a
domestic necessity. Zinc-white is extensively used as a pigment. About
two hundred and fifty million pounds of crude zinc, or "spelter," are
produced in the United States; forty-five million pounds were exported
in 1900, mainly to Great Britain.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the qualities that make iron the most valuable of metals?
In what ways does commerce depend on iron and steel?
What substances are used for food, clothing, or domestic purposes that
are not manufactured by the aid of iron?
Ingot or billet steel is rated at about one cent per pound; the
hair-springs of watches are worth several thousand dollars per pound;
what makes the difference in their value?
What are the qualities that give to gold its value?
Would all the gold mined in the United States pay the national debt at
the end of the Civil War?
What causes have led to the increasing price of copper during the past
few years?
What is the market price each of copper, silver, steel rails, and
aluminium to-day?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of the following iron ores: Hematite, brown hematite,
magnetite, carbonate, and pyrites. Note the color and physical
appearance of each; scratch the first four with a very hard steel point
and note the color of the streak.
Obtain specimens of pig-iron, cast iron, wrought iron, and cast steel;
note carefully the fracture or "break" of each; how does cast iron
differ from wrought iron?
Obtain specimens of the following copper ores: Malachite, azurite,
chalcopyrite, and red oxide; wet a very small fragment with an acid and
note the color when it is held in the flame of an alcohol lamp or a
Bunsen burner; dissolve a crystal of blue vitriol (copper sulphate) in
water and note what occurs if the end of a bright iron wire be dipped in
the solution.
Name the various uses to which nickel, tin, lead, and aluminium are put.
Consult the chapters on these subjects in any cyclopaedia.
[Illustration: TRANSPORTING SUGAR-CANE, CUBA]
[Illustration: SUGAR-CANE GROWING IN CUBA]
[Illustration: HAVEMEYER SUGAR-REFINERY, BROOKLYN, N.Y.]
CHAPTER XIV
SUGAR AND ITS COMMERCE
The term sugar is applied rather loosely to a large number of substances
characterized by the quality of sweetness. In a few instances the name
is given to certain mineral salts, such as sugar of lead, but in the
main the sugars are plant products very similar in chemical structure to
the starches. They are very closely connected with plant growth, and
even in animal life, starchy substances are changed to sugar in the
process of digestion. Although sugar does not sustain life, it is
necessary as an adjunct to other food-stuffs, and it is probably
consumed by a greater number of people than any other food-stuffs except
starch and water.
Three kinds of sugar are found in commerce, namely--_cane_-sugar,
_grape_-sugar, and _milk_-sugar. Cane-sugar occurs in the sap of the
sugar-cane, sorghum-cane, certain of the palms, and the juice of the
beet. Grape-sugar is the sweet principle of most fruits and of honey.
Sugar of milk occurs in milk, and in several kinds of nuts.
=Sugar-Cane Sugar.=--Cane-sugar is so called because until recently it was
derived almost wholly from the sap of the sugar-cane (_Saccharum
officinarum_). The plant belongs to the grass family and much resembles
maize before the latter has matured. It is thought to be native to Asia,
but it is now cultivated in nearly all tropical countries in the world.
Practically every moist tropical region in the world, the basins of the
Kongo and Amazon Rivers excepted, is a cane-sugar-producing region. As
a rule it is grown in the states under native rule for home consumption,
and in European colonial possessions for commercial purposes. India and
China are probably the foremost in the production of sugar-cane sugar,
but the product is not exported. Cuba, Java, the Gulf coast of the
United States, Mauritius, the Philippine and the Hawaiian Islands
produce the most of the supply that enters into commerce.
=Beet-Sugar.=--During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the
demands for sugar increased so greatly that it became necessary either
to raise the price of the commodity, or else to utilize some plant other
than the sugar-cane as a source. After a few years of experimental work
it was found that sugar could be readily extracted from the juice of the
common beet (_Beta vulgaris_). Several varieties of this plant have been
improved and are now very largely cultivated for the purpose. Beet-sugar
and cane-sugar are identical.
Almost all the beet-sugar of commerce comes from northwestern Europe;
Germany leads with nearly one-third the world's product; France,
Austria, and Russia follow, each producing about one-sixth. A small
amount is produced in the United States--mainly in California and
Michigan. The area of production, however, is increasing.
=Other Cane-Sugars.=--Maple-sugar is derived from the sap of several
species of maple-trees occurring mainly in the northeastern United
States and in Canada. The sap is obtained by tapping the trees in early
spring, a single tree often yielding several gallons. The value of
maple-sugar lies mainly in its pleasant flavor. It is used partly as a
confection, but in the main as a sirup. A very large part of the
maple-sirup and not a little of the sugar is artificial, consisting of
ordinary sugar colored with caramel and flavored with an extract
prepared from the maple-tree.
Sorghum-sugar is obtained from a cane known as Chinese grass, or Chinese
millet. It has been introduced into the United States from southeastern
Asia and Japan. The sorghum-cane grows well in the temperate zone, and
its cultivation in the Mississippi Valley States has been successful.
The sugar is not easily crystallizable, however, and it is usually made
into table-sirup.
Maguey-sugar is derived from the sap of the maguey-plant (_Agave
Americana_). It is much used in Mexico and the Central American states.
The method of manufacture is very crude and the product is not exported.
Palm-sugar is obtained from the sap of several species of palm growing
in India and Africa.
=Sugar Manufacture.=--Sugar manufacture includes three
processes--expressing the sap, evaporating, and refining. The first two
are carried on at or near the plantations; the last is an affair
requiring an immense capital and a most elaborately organized plant. The
refining is done mainly in the great centres of population at places
most convenient for transportation. The raw sugar may travel five or ten
thousand miles to reach the refinery; the refined product rarely travels
more than a thousand miles.
After it has been cut and stripped of its leaves the sugar-cane is
crushed between powerful rollers in order to express the juice. The
sugar-beet is rasped or ground to a pulp and then subjected to great
pressure. The expressed juice contains about ten or twelve per cent. of
sugar. In some factories the beet, or the cane, is cut into thin slices
and thrown into water, the juice being extracted by the solvent
properties of the latter. This is known as the "diffusion" process.
The juice is first strained or filtered under pressure in order to
remove all foreign matter and similar impurities. It is then clarified
by adding slacked lime, at the same time heating the liquid nearly to
the boiling point and skimming off the impurities that rise to the
surface. The purified juice is then boiled rapidly in vacuum pans until
it is greatly concentrated.
When the proper degree of concentration is reached, the liquid is
quickly run off into shallow pans, in which most of it immediately
crystallizes. The crystalline portion forms the _raw sugar_ of commerce;
the remaining part is molasses. The whole mass is then shovelled into a
centrifugal machine which in a few minutes separates the two products.
In purchasing raw sugar, the refiner was formerly at a loss to know just
how much pure sugar could be made from a given weight of the raw sugar.
In order to aid in making a correct determination, the Dutch government
formerly prepared sixteen samples put up in glass flasks and sealed.
These samples varied in color according to the amount of pure sugar
contained. The pure solution was known in commerce as No. 16 Dutch
standard, and this was generally taken all over the world as the
standard of pure sugar. Within recent years the polariscope, an optical
instrument that determines the percentage of sugar by means of polarized
light, has largely replaced the Dutch standard.
The refineries, as a rule, are built with reference to a minimum
handling and transportation of the raw product. The cane-sugar
refineries are mainly at the great seaports, where the raw sugar does
not pay railway transportation. The beet-sugar refineries are in the
midst of the beet-growing districts. So nearly perfect and economically
managed are these processes, that raw sugar imported from Europe or
from the West Indies, at a cost of from two and a quarter to two and a
half cents per pound, is refined and sold at retail at about five cents.
The margin of profit is so very close, however, that in the United
States, as well as most European states, the sugar industry is protected
by government enactments. In the United States imported raw sugar pays a
tariff in order to protect the cane-sugar industry of the Gulf coast and
the beet-sugar grower of the Western States. The duty at the close of
the nineteenth century was about 1.66 cents per pound; or, if the sugar
came from a foreign country paying a bounty on sugar exported, an
additional countervailing duty equal to the bounty was also charged.
In the various states of western Europe the beet-sugar industry is
governed by a cartel or agreement among the states, which makes the
whole business a gigantic combination arrayed against the tropical sugar
interests. In general, the government of each state pays a bounty on
every pound of beet-sugar exported. The real effect of the export bounty
is about the same as the imposition of a tax on the sugar purchased for
consumption at home.
Two-thirds of the entire sugar product are made from the beet, at an
average cost of about 2.5 cents a pound. In the tropical islands the
yield of cane-sugar per acre is about double that of beet-sugar and it
is produced for about five dollars less per ton. This difference is in
part offset by the fact that the raw cane-sugar must pay transportation
for a long distance to the place of consumption, and in part by the
government bounties paid on the beet product.
Both the political and the economic effects of beet sugar-making have
been far-reaching. In Germany the agricultural interests of the country
have been completely reorganized. The uncertain profits of cereal
food-stuffs have given place to the sure profits of beet-sugar
cultivation, with the result that the income of the Germans has been
enormously increased. In the other lowland countries of western Europe
the venture has been equally successful. Even the Netherlands has
profited by it.
In the case of Spain, the result of beet-sugar cultivation was
disastrous. The price of cane-sugar in Cuba and the Philippine Islands
fell to such a low point that the islands could not pay the taxes
imposed by the mother country. Instead of lowering the taxes and
adjusting affairs to the changed conditions, the Spaniards drove the
islands into rebellion, and the latter finally resulted in war with the
United States, and the loss of the colonies. Great Britain wisely
adjusted her colonial affairs to the changed conditions, but the British
colonies suffered greatly from beet-sugar competition.
=Production and Consumption.=--The production and consumption of sugar
increased about sevenfold during the latter half of the nineteenth
century, the increase being due very largely to the decreased price.
Thus, in 1850, white (loaf) sugar was a luxury, retailing at about
twenty cents per pound; in 1870 the wholesale price of pure granulated
sugar was fourteen cents; in 1902 it was not quite five cents.
Although the tropical countries are greatly handicapped by the political
legislation of the European states, they cannot supply the amount of
sugar required, unless the area of production be greatly extended. It is
also certain that without governmental protection, sugar growing in the
temperate zone cannot compete with that of the tropical countries.
Of the eight million tons of sugar yearly consumed, two-thirds are
beet-sugar. The annual consumption per capita is about ninety pounds in
Great Britain, seventy pounds in the United States, and not far from
thirty-five pounds in Germany and France. In Russia and the eastern
European countries it is less than fifteen pounds.
=Molasses.=--The molasses of commerce is the uncrystallizable sugar that
is left in the vacuum pans at the close of the process of evaporation.
The molasses formerly known as "sugar house" is a filthy product that
nowadays is scarcely used, except in the manufacture of rum. The color
of molasses is due mainly to the presence of "caramel" or half-charred
sugar; it cannot be wholly removed by any ordinary clarifying process.
Purified molasses is usually known as "sirup," and much of it is made by
boiling a solution of raw sugar to the proper degree of concentration. A
considerable part is made from the sap of the sorghum-cane, and probably
a larger quantity consists of glucose solution colored with caramel.
Maple-sirup, formerly a solution of maple-sugar, is now very largely
made from raw cane-sugar clarified and artificially flavored.
=Glucose.=--Glucose, or grape-sugar, is the natural sugar of the grape and
most small fruits. Honey is a nearly pure, concentrated solution of
glucose. Grape-sugar has, roughly, about three-fifths the sweetening
power of cane-sugar. Natural grape-sugar is too expensive for ordinary
commercial use; the commercial product, on the other hand, is
artificial, and is made mainly from cornstarch.
Glucose is employed in the cheaper kinds of confectionery in the United
States; most of it, however, is exported to Great Britain, the annual
product being worth about four million dollars. From the fact that it
can be made more economically from corn than from any other grain,
practically all the glucose is made in the United States.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
It frequently happens that the prices of sugar and tin-plate rise and
fall together; show how the fruit-crop may cause this fluctuation.
Which of the possessions of the United States are adaptable for
cane-sugar?--for beet-sugar?
In what ways has the manufacture of sugar brought about international
complications?
What is meant by "Dutch Standard" tests?--by polariscope tests?
FOR REFERENCE AND STUDY
Obtain specimens of rock candy, granulated sugar, raw sugar, and
caramel; observe each carefully with a magnifying glass and note the
difference.
World's Sugar Production.
CHAPTER XV
FORESTS AND FOREST PRODUCTS
Outside the food-stuffs, probably no other material is more generally
used by human beings than the products of the forests. More people are
sheltered by wooden dwellings than by those of brick or stone, and more
people are warmed by wood fires than by coal. Even in steam-making a
considerable power is still produced by the use of wood for fuel.
Neither stone nor metal can wholly take the place of wood as a building
material; indeed, for interior fittings, finishings, and furniture, no
artificial substitute has yet been found that is acceptable. For such
purposes it is carried to the interior of continents and transported
across the oceans; and although the cost has enormously increased, the
demand has scarcely fallen off.
=Forest Areas.=--The great belts of forests girdle the land surface of the
earth. A zone of tropical forest forms a broad belt on each side of the
equator, but mainly north of it. This forest includes most of the
ornamental woods, such as mahogany, ebony, rosewood, sandal-wood, etc.
It also includes the most useful teak as well as the rubber-tree and the
cinchona. Another forest belt in the north temperate zone is situated
mainly between the thirty-fifth and fiftieth parallels. It traverses
middle and northern Europe and the northern United States.
This forest contains the various species of pine, cedar, and other
conifers, the oaks, maples, elms, birches, etc. Most of the forests of
western Europe have been greatly depleted, though those of Norway and
Sweden are still productive. The forests of the United States, extending
from Maine to Dakota, have been so wellnigh exhausted that by 1950 only
a very little good lumber-making timber will be left.
The destruction of forests has been most wasteful. When a forest-covered
region is settled, a large area is burnt off in order to clear the land
for cultivation. In many instances the fires are never fully
extinguished until the forest disappears. The timber of the United
States has been depleted not only by frequent fires but in various other
ways. The lumbermen take the best trees and these are cut into
building-lumber. The railways follow the lumbermen, cutting out
everything suitable for ties. The paper-makers vie with the tie-cutters,
and what is left is the plunder of the charcoal-burner.
=Forestry.=--In most of Europe the care of the remaining forests is
usually a government charge. Only a certain number of mature trees may
be removed each year, and many are planted for each one removed--in the
aggregate, several million each year. In the United States, where the
value of the growing timber destroyed by fire each year nearly equals
the national debt, not very much has been done to either check the
ravage or to reforest the denuded areas. Many of the States, however,
encourage tree-planting. In several, Arbor Day is a holiday provided by
law.
The general Government has established timber preserves in several
localities in the West. The State of New York has converted the whole
Adirondack region into a great preserve. Forest wardens and guards are
employed both to keep fires in check and to prevent the ravages of
timber thieves; excepting the State preserves however, the means of
prevention are inadequate for either purpose.
[Illustration: THE LUMBER INDUSTRY--A LOG JAM]
To be valuable for lumber of the best quality, a forest tree must be
"clear"; that is, it must be free from knots at least fifteen feet from
the ground. In the case of pines and cedars, the clear part of the trunk
must have a greater length. To produce such conditions, the trees must
grow thickly together, in order that the lower branches may not mature.
The growth of trees thus set is very slow. Isolated pine-trees will
reach the size large enough for cutting in about fifty years, but the
lumber will be practically worthless because of the knots. On the other
hand, pine forests with the trees so thickly set as to make a clear,
merchantable lumber require at least a century for maturity.[49] Oak
forests require a much greater period.
As a rule, the forest growths of the United States are found in the
areas characterized by sandy and gravelly soils. Thus, the glaciated
region of the United States and Canada for the greater part is
forest-covered. The sand barrens along the Atlantic coast usually are
forest areas. The older bottom-lands of most rivers are often
forest-covered, especially when their soil is coarse and sandy.
There are large areas, however, in both the United States and Europe,
that are treeless. In some instances this condition, without doubt,
resulted from the fires that annually burnt the grass. With the
cessation of the prairie fires, forest growths have steadily increased.
In other instances these areas are treeless because the seeds of trees
have never been planted there. The high plains at the eastern base of
the Rocky Mountains are an example. This region is deficient in the
moisture required to give young trees the vigorous start that will
carry them to maturity. Moreover, the westerly winds and the streams of
this region come from localities also deficient in forestry, and there
are therefore no seeds to be carried.
As a rule, the distribution of forests is effected by the winds and by
moving water. The prevailing westerly winds of the temperate zones have
carried many species eastward and have extended the forest areas in that
direction. Freshets, floods, and overflows have been even more active in
carrying seeds, sprouts, and even trees into new territories. Waves and
currents have likewise played a similar part. Wherever the soil of the
region into which the species have been carried is moist and nutritious,
the forest growth has usually extended.
=The Pine Family.=--The pine family includes the various species of pine,
tamarack, spruce, hemlock, fir, juniper, larch, cypress, and cedar. A
few members of the family thrive in the warmer parts of the temperate
zone, but for the greater part they flourish between the fortieth and
sixtieth parallels. Most of the species found in low latitudes are
mountain-trees. They constitute the greater part of the American and
Russian forests. The American pine forest is thought to be the largest
in the world.
The _white pine_ (_Pinus strobus_) is the most valuable member of the
family. Its value is due in part to the fact that the wood is soft,
clear, and easily worked, and in part to the accessibility of the
forests. Not much inroad has yet been made upon the great Russian
forest, owing to the fact that the timber is too far away from seaports
and water transportation. Rough lumber becomes too expensive for use
when transported by land, but it will stand the expense of shipment by
water many miles.
The _Georgia_ or _long-leafed pine_ (_Pinus palustris_) is also
commonly called _pitch pine_, _turpentine pine_, and _southern pine_; it
grows chiefly along the south Atlantic coast and in the northern
counties of Georgia. It is harder than white pine and makes excellent
flooring.
The _sugar pine_ (_Pinus lambertiana_) occurs mainly in Oregon and
California. The grain is fine and soft and the trees reach a large
girth.
The _loblolly pine_ (_Pinus taeda_) has a considerably larger area than
the Georgia pine, extending into Indian Territory. The _short-leaf pine_
(_Pinus echinata_) occurs in small areas from New York to the Gulf of
Mexico, and across to Missouri; it is the Chattahoochee pine of Florida.
The _pitch pine_ (_Pinus rigida_) occurs in various areas mainly north
of the Ohio River and west of the prairies. The lumber cut annually from
these pines aggregates about thirty billion feet.
The common _white cedar_ (_Chamaecyparis thyoides_) occurs along the
Atlantic and Gulf coasts nearly to the Mississippi. On account of its
fine grain it is much used in cabinet work and as a finishing wood. _Red
cedar_, probably a different species, occurs along the Atlantic coast.
It is largely used in the manufacture of lead-pencils, and the forests
are wellnigh exhausted.
The _redwoods_ are confined to the California coast, mainly in the coast
ranges, near the ocean. Ordinary redwood (_Sequoia sempervirens_)
resembles red cedar, is soft, and very fine in grain, and shrinks but
little in seasoning. It is a most valuable timber both for common and
for ornamental use. It very frequently attains a diameter of five or six
feet; the big tree sometimes exceeds sixteen feet in diameter and
reaches a height of nearly four hundred feet.
=Other Industrial Woods.=--The oaks, like the pines, form a nearly
continuous belt across the northern continents, lying mainly south of
the pines; they do not extend much south of the thirtieth parallel. The
white oak of the New England plateau and Canada commands a high price on
account of its strength; a considerable quantity is exported.
The "quartering" of the lumber used in ornamental work is produced by
sawing the logs, which have been split in quarters, so that the
silver-grain shows on the faces of the boards. The bark of the oak is
rich in tannic acid and it is much used in tanning leather. _Cork oak_
(_Quercus suber_) grows mainly in Spain and Algeria.
_Black walnut_ (_Juglans nigra_) grows in the river-bottoms of the
Mississippi Valley and in Texas. The merchantable supply is not great,
and the wood is therefore growing more valuable each year. _Hickory_ is
used where great strength is required, and also for various
tool-handles. _Maple_ is largely employed in making furniture. _Ash_ is
a very common wood for tool-handles.
=Shade-Trees and Ornamental Woods.=--A large number of trees are yearly
transplanted, or else grown from seed, to be used as ornamental
shade-trees. For this purpose the elm, maple, acacia ("locust"), linden
("lime"), catalpa, ash, horse-chestnut ("buckeye"), poplar, and willow
are most common in ordinary temperate latitudes, both in Europe and
America. In warmer latitudes the Australian eucalyptus ("red gum" and
"blue gum"), magnolia, palmetto, laurel, arbutus, and tulip are common.
The local trade in ornamental trees is very heavy; the trade is local
for the reason that the transportation of them is very expensive.
=Tropical Woods and Tree Products.=--Many of the tropical woods are in
demand on account of their beautiful appearance, and in many species
this quality is combined with strength and hardness. _Mahogany_ is
obtained from Mexico and the Central American states, and also from the
West Indies. The former is classed as "Honduras"; the latter is
generally known as San Domingo mahogany and commands the highest price.
_Rosewood_ is obtained from Brazil, and is used almost exclusively in
piano-cases. Both are cut into thin veneers, to be glued to a less
expensive body.
_Ebony_ is the heart of a species of persimmon obtained mainly in Ceylon
and the East Indies. Very little of the so-called ebony is genuine, most
of the ebony of commerce consisting of fine-grained hardwood, stained
black. _Jarrah_, an Australian wood, is now very generally used for
street-paving, and for this purpose it has no superior. _Teak_ probably
has no equal for strength and durability. It is not touched by the
teredo and other marine worms.
_Boxwood_ (_Buxus balearica_) is a high-growing tree, native to India,
but growing best in the islands of the Mediterranean. The wood is very
hard, of yellowish-brown color, and so fine in grain that it finds a
ready market in nearly every part of the world. Probably the larger part
is used by engravers. A large amount of the wood is also used in the
manufacture of folding-rules, and in inlaying. Constantinople is the
principal market, and nearly ten thousand tons of the selected wood are
sold yearly.
_Lignum vitae_, or _guaiac wood_ (_Guaiacum officinale_), grows profusely
in the West Indies and along the Spanish Main. It is used both in
medicine and in the arts. Shavings of the wood steeped in water were
once considered a cure-all, hence the name. The wood is very hard,
heavy, and is split with the greatest difficulty. It is therefore much
employed in making mallet-heads, tool-handles, nine-pin balls, and
pulley-blocks. In tropical countries it is employed for railway ties.
West India ports are the chief markets, and the United States is the
chief consumer.
[Illustration: A LOG RAFT, WINONA, WIS.]
[Illustration: HAULING LOGS TO THE RIVER]
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1898, Detroit Photographic Co._
THE LUMBER INDUSTRY--A LOGGING STREAM, MENOMINEE, WIS.]
_Logwood_ is the wood of a tree (_Haematoxylon campechianum_) growing in
Central America and the West Indies. The best quality comes from
Campeche, and it is marketed mainly from Central American ports. It is
almost universally used for dyeing the black of woollen and cotton
textiles, and logwood blacks are the standard of color-prints.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what structures has timber been supplanted by iron and steel?
In what manufactured article has timber supplanted the use of rags?
When a pine forest is cut away, what kinds of timber are apt to come up
in place of the pines?
In what manner does the railway draw upon the forests?--the
paper-maker?--the farmer?--the tanner?--the beaver?--the teredo, or
ship-worm?
From what country or countries do the following come: boxwood, rosewood,
sandal-wood, cinchona, bog oak, jarrah?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Make a list of the forestry growing in the State in which you live; so
far as possible, obtain a specimen of each wood, prepared so as to show
square, oblique, split, and polished sections; for what purpose, if any,
is each used?
Consult "Check-list of Forestry of the United States" (U.S. Department
of Agriculture).
CHAPTER XVI
SEA PRODUCTS AND FURS
The world's fish-catch amounts probably to more than one-quarter of a
billion dollars in value and employs upward of a million people; in the
United States 200,000 are employed. In some localities, such as the
oceanic islands, far distant from the grazing lands of the continents,
the flesh of fish is about the only fresh meat obtainable. Even on the
continents fish is more available and cheaper than beef. The
fish-producing areas pay no taxes; they require no cultivation;
moreover, they do not require to be purchased. In general, fish
supplements beef as an article of food; it is not a substitute for the
latter.
The whale-catch excepted, fish are generally caught in the shallow
waters of the continental coasts. The fish, in great schools, resort to
such localities at certain seasons, and the seasons in which they school
is the fisherman's opportunity. For the greater part, such shallows and
banks are spawning-places. Most of the fish, however, are caught off the
Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America, these localities being
nearest to the great centres of population.
=Whales.=--The whale is sought mainly in cold waters, and at the present
time the chief whaling-grounds are in the vicinity of Point Barrow. In
the first half of the nineteenth century whale-fishing was an industry
involving hundreds of vessels and a large aggregate capital. The
industry centred about New England seaports.
The train-oil obtained from the blubber of the animal was used partly
as a lubricant, but mainly for illuminating purposes. For this purpose,
however, it has been superseded by coal-oil, gas, and electricity. It is
still in demand as a lubricant, but the whale-oil of commerce is quite
as apt to come from the blubber of the porpoise or the sea-cow as from
the right whale. Whalebone is a horny substance taken from the animal's
jaw, and is worth from three dollars to eight dollars per pound. It is
used chiefly in the manufacture of whips. For other purposes, steel,
hard rubber, and celluloid have taken its place.
The substance called _spermaceti_ is derived from the sperm-whale, an
inhabitant of warm ocean-waters. Spermaceti is identical in its physical
properties with paraffine, and the latter is now almost universally its
substitute.
_Ambergris_, thought to be a morbid secretion or disease of the
sperm-whale, is found in the body cavity of the animal and also in
masses floating in the sea. It is used chiefly to give intensity to the
odor of perfumes, and the best quality brings as much as five dollars
per ounce. Most of the ambergris of commerce is obtained from the
neighborhood of the Bahama Islands.
=Cod.=--In the amount of the product the cod-fisheries are the most
important. The meat of the fish is not strong in flavor, and it is cured
with little expense. So valuable is the annual catch that the banks and
shallows which the schools frequent are governed by international
treaties.
The cod is a cold-water fish, and the fishing-grounds are confined to
rather high latitudes. The coast-waters of the Scandinavian peninsula
and the shores of the Canadian coast, especially the Banks of
Newfoundland, are the chief areas. The fishing-grounds of the Canadian
coast are closed to foreign vessels inside a three-mile limit; beyond
the limit they are occupied mainly by Canadian, French, and American
fishermen. By the terms of treaties foreign vessels may enter the
three-mile limit under restriction to purchase bait and food-supplies,
and to cure their fish.
A large part of the cod-catch is exported. Tropical countries buy much
of the product. In such countries it is more wholesome than meat; it is
cheaper; moreover, the salted cod will keep for an indefinite length of
time. A large part of the catch is sold to the Catholic states of Europe
and America, where during certain times the eating of the flesh of
animals is forbidden. Gloucester, Mass., London, England, and Trondhjem,
Norway, are great markets for salted fish. The oil from the liver of the
cod is much used in medicine.
=Herring, Alewives, and Sardine.=--The herring is a much smaller fish than
the cod, and, commercially, is much less important. They school in about
the same waters as the cod, but are caught at a different season,
gill-nets being usually employed. Practically no distinction is made
between full-grown herring and alewives of the same size. The fish are
usually cured by smoking, pickling, or salting, and in this form are
either exported or sold in interior markets.
The true sardine is found in latitudes a little farther south than the
schooling-grounds of the cod. The most important fisheries are along the
coasts of the Latin states of Europe. Sardine fishing is a great
industry all along the New England coast of the United States, but the
"sardines" marketed from this region are young herring. Indeed, nearly
all sorts of small fry are sold in boxes bearing spurious French labels.
=Salmon.=--Most of the salmon are caught in the rivers flowing into the
North Pacific Ocean. The fish are caught in traps and weirs at the time
of the spring run, when they ascend the river to spawn. The rivers are
frequently so congested with the salmon that thousands of tons are
caught in a single stream during the run.
The salmon canneries of the Columbia River are very extensive
establishments, but in the past few years they have been surpassed by
the Alaskan fisheries, which produce not far from fifty million pounds
each year. The dressed fish is cooked by steam, canned, and exported to
all parts of the world. The growth and development of the industry has
also made an enormous demand on the tin mines of the world. Canned
salmon is the largest fish export of the United States. There are
extensive salmon-fisheries in Norway, Japan, and Russia.
=Other Fish.=--_Mackerel_ and _haddock_ are caught near the shores of the
North Atlantic. Most of the mackerel-catch is pickled in brine and sold
in small kegs known as "kits." The _menhaden_-catch of the North
Atlantic is converted into fertilizer. The _halibut_ is a large fish
that is rarely preserved. The area in which it is caught is about the
same as that of the cod. _Shad_ are usually caught when ascending the
rivers of the middle Atlantic coast. In the United States, Chesapeake,
Delaware, and New York Bays yield the chief supply. The _bluefish_ and
_barracuda_ are warm-water fish. The market for fresh fish has been
greatly enlarged by the use of refrigerator-cars.
The _sturgeon_ is captured mainly in the rivers and lakes of the
temperate zone. Those of the Black Sea sometimes attain a weight of
2,000 pounds. The flesh is of less importance than the eggs, of which
caviare is made. Russian caviare is sold all over Europe and America,
and not a small part of the product is made in Maine. The caviare made
from the roe of the Delaware River sturgeon is exported to Germany. The
_tunny_ is confined to Mediterranean waters.
The _anchovy_ is caught on the coast of Europe; most of the product is
preserved, or made into the well-known "anchovy sauce." The
_beche-de-mere_, or "sea cucumber," is a product of Australasian and
Malaysian waters. Almost the whole catch is purchased by the Chinese,
and it is exported to all countries having a Chinese population.
=Oysters and Lobsters.=--The oyster is among the foremost sea products of
the United States in value. The oyster thrives best in moderately warm
and sheltered waters. The coves and estuaries along the middle Atlantic
coast produce the best in the world. Chesapeake Bay and Long Island
Sound yield the greater part of the output. In the latter waters
elaborate methods of propagation are carried out, and the yearly crop is
increasing both in quality and quantity. The output of the Chesapeake
beds has decreased materially; that of the Long Island Sound beds has
increased.
Oysters are plentiful along the Pacific coast of the United States and
also in European coast-waters, but they are inferior in size and
quality. The use of refrigerator-cars and vessels has extended the trade
to the extent that fresh oysters are shipped to points 2,000 miles
inland; they are also exported to Europe. Baltimore is the chief
oyster-market.
The consumption of the lobster has been so great that the catch of the
New England coast has decreased about one-half in the past fifty years,
and the United States is now an importer. Most of the import, amounting
to about one million dollars yearly, comes from Canada. The so-called
lobsters of the Pacific coast of the United States are not lobsters, but
crayfish.
=Fish Hatcheries.=--The demand for fish has grown so great in past years
that in many countries the waters, especially the lakes and rivers, are
restocked. The eggs are hatched and the young fry are fed until they
are large enough to take care of themselves. The chief hatchery and
laboratory of the United States Fish Commission is at Woods Holl, Mass.
As many as 860,000,000 eggs, small fry, and adult fish have been
distributed in a single year. The State of New York has also a similar
department for restocking its waters.
=Sponge.=--This substance is practically the skeleton of a low order of
animal, growing at the bottom of the sea. The sponge is cut from the
place of attachment, and the gelatinous matter is washed away after
putrefaction. The chief sponge-fisheries are in the neighborhood of
Florida and the Bahama Islands.
=Seal.=--The fur-seal is an amphibian, found only in cold waters. A few
pelts are obtained along the Greenland coast, but the chief
sealing-grounds of the world have been at the Pribilof Islands, in
Bering Sea. The pelts of the young males only are taken. The rookeries
of the Pribilof Islands have been so nearly exhausted, that the killing
season has been suspended for a term of years. Much illicit
seal-catching is still going on, however.
The skins are taken to London, via San Francisco, where the fur is dyed
a rich brown color; London is the chief market for dyed pelts; San
Francisco for raw pelts; and New York, Paris, and St. Petersburg for
garments. The pelts of the sea-otter are obtained mainly in the North
Pacific Ocean.
=Other Furs.=--The furs employed in the finest garments are in part the
pelts of land animals living in polar regions. The sable, stone-marten,
otter, beaver, and red fox are the most valuable. The Persian lamb,
however, is not a polar animal. The Russian Empire and Canada are the
chief sources of supply. The Hudson Bay Company, with head-quarters at
Fort Garry, near Winnipeg, controls most of the fur-trade of North
America; the Russian furs are marketed mainly at Lower Novgorod.
Leipzig, Germany, is also an important fur-market.
Enormous quantities of rabbit-skins from Australia and nutria from
Argentina are imported into the United States and Europe for the
manufacture of the felt of which hats are made. The amount of this
substance may be realized when one considers that not far from two
hundred million people in the two countries wear felt hats.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Note an instance in which the search for deep-sea fishing-grounds has
resulted in the discovery of unknown lands.
Why are not whale products as essential now as a century ago?
What international complications have arisen between the United States
and Great Britain concerning the cod-fisheries?--the seal-catch?
[Illustration: NORTH AMERICA]
CHAPTER XVII
THE UNITED STATES--THE SEAPORTS AND THE ATLANTIC COAST-PLAIN
The United States of America together with the possessions included
within the domain of the Republic comprise an area somewhat greater than
that of Europe.
With respect to latitude, the position of the main body of the United
States is extremely fortunate. Practically all its area is situated in
the warmer half of the temperate zone. Only a small part lies beyond the
northern limit of the corn belt; wheat, oats, and barley are cultivated
successfully throughout four-fifths of its extent in latitude; grass,
and therefore cattle and sheep are grown in nearly every part. Coal,
iron, copper, gold, and silver, the minerals and metals which give to a
nation its greatest material power, exist in abundance, and the
successful working of these deposits have placed the country upon a very
high commercial plane.
Topographically the United States may be divided into the following
regions:
The Atlantic Coast-Plain,
The Appalachian Ranges and the New England Plateau,
The Basin of the Great Lakes,
The Northern Mississippi Valley Region,
The Southern Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast,
The Arid Plains,
The Plateau Region,
The Pacific Coast Lowlands.
[Illustration: A HARBOR--NEW YORK BAY, AT THE BATTERY]
The topographic and climatic features of these various regions have had
a great influence not only on the political history of the country, but
their effect has been even greater in determining its industrial
development. They have resulted in the establishment of the various
industries, each in the locality best adapted to it, instead of their
diffusion without respect to the necessary conditions of environment.
The foregoing regions are also approximately areas of fundamental
industries. Thus, the New England plateau supplies the rest of the
United States with light manufactures, such as cotton textiles, woollen
clothing, hats, shoes, cutlery, books, writing-paper, household metal
wares, etc., but sells the excess abroad. The middle and southern
Appalachians, with the coal which forms their chief resource, supply the
rest of the country with structural steel, from ores obtained in the
lake regions, and sell the excess to foreign countries.
The northern Mississippi Valley grows nearly one-fourth of the world's
wheat-crop. The wheat of this region and the Pacific coast lowlands
supplies the country with bread-stuffs, and exports the excess to
western Europe. The Gulf states, which produce three-fourths of the
world's cotton-crop, supply the whole country and about one-half the
rest of the world besides with cotton textiles. The grazing regions
produce an excess of meat for export; the western highlands furnish the
gold and silver necessary to carry on the enormous commerce.
In the last twenty years the imports of merchandise per capita varied
but little from $11.50; the exports per capita varied from about $12 to
more than $18.
=The Atlantic Coast-Plain and the Seaports.=--Throughout most of its
extent the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is bordered by a low
coast-plain. Along the northeastern coast of the United States the
coast-plain is very narrow; south of New York Bay it has a width in
some places of more than two hundred miles.
The existence of this plain has had a marked effect on the commercial
development of the country. The sinking or "drowning" of the northern
part of it has made an exceedingly indented coast. The drowned valleys,
enclosed by ridges and headlands, form the best of harbors, and nearly
all of them are northeast of New York Bay. South of New York Bay good
harbors are comparatively few. For the greater part they occur only when
old, buried river-channels permit approach to the shore.
The most important port of entry in these harbors is _New York_, and it
derives its importance from two factors. It has a very capacious harbor,
into which vessels drawing as much as thirty-five feet may enter; its
situation at the lower end of a series of valleys and passes makes it
almost a dead level route from the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard.
The importance of New York as the commercial gateway between European
ports and the food-producing region of the American continent began when
the Erie Canal was opened between the Great Lakes and tide-water. The
completion of the canal for the first time opened the rich farming lands
of the interior to European markets. Probably a greater tonnage of
freight is carried yearly over this route than over any other channel of
trade in the world.
Not far from two-thirds of the foreign commerce of the country passes
through the port of New York. The water-front of the city has an
aggregate length of about three hundred miles, of which one-third is
available for anchorage. The docks and piers, including those of Jersey
City and Hoboken, aggregate about ninety miles in frontage.
About sixteen thousand sea-going craft enter and clear yearly, and an
average of nearly twenty large passenger and freight steamships arrive
and clear daily, about one-half of them being foreign. The latter
receive their cargoes from about three thousand freight-cars that are
daily switched into the various freight-yards, a large part of which is
through freight from the west.
The port of entry of _New York_ is a centre of population of about four
million, and although there are the industries usually found in great
communities, the greater business enterprises practically reduce
themselves to export, import, and exchange. For this reason New York
City is the financial, as well as the commercial centre of the
continent. Most of the great industrial corporations of the country have
their head offices in the city. These are financed by more than one
hundred banks, together with a clearing-house whose yearly business
amounted in 1902 to considerably more than seventy billions of
dollars.[50]
[Illustration: BOSTON HARBOR]
_Boston_ has been one of the leading ports of the United States for
considerably more than a century. It ranks second among the ports of the
United States. Regular lines of transit connect it with the principal
ports of Great Britain and Canada. The coast trade is also very heavy.
Boston is the financial and commercial centre of New England; the
cotton, woollen, and leather goods passing through the port find their
way to nearly every inhabited part of the world. The city controls a
considerable export trade of food-stuffs from the upper Mississippi
Valley. The vessels entering and clearing at Boston indicate a movement
of about four million five hundred thousand tons, about one-fourth that
of New York. The clearing-house exchanges average about six billion
dollars yearly.
_Philadelphia_, on account of its distance inland, is not fortunately
situated for ocean commerce. Steamships of deep draught reach their
docks at the lower end of the city under their own steam, but
sailing-craft pay heavy towage fees. There are regular lines to
Liverpool, Antwerp, West Indian ports, Baltimore, and Boston.
Philadelphia is the centre of the anthracite coal trade, and this is the
chief factor of its domestic trade. The imports of fruit from the West
Indies, carpet-wool from Europe, and raw sugar from the West Indies,
form the greater part of its foreign business. The manufactures are
mainly carpets and rugs, locomotives and iron steamships, and refined
sugar. The carpet-weaving and the ship-building plants are among the
largest in the world. The ocean movement of freight is more than three
million five hundred thousand tons yearly. The business of the
clearing-house in 1902 aggregated nearly six billion dollars.
_Baltimore_ is likewise handicapped by its distance inland.
Sailing-vessels, however, require only a short towage, the docks being
scarcely a dozen miles from Chesapeake Bay. The harbor is deep and
capacious. The Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio railway systems have
made Baltimore an important railway centre. The completion of the Gould
railway system to the Atlantic seaboard has made the city second to New
York only in the export of corn, wheat, flour, and tobacco. The most
noteworthy local industry is the oyster product, which is the greatest
in the world. Nearly ten thousand people are employed, and during the
busy season--from September to the end of April--about thirty carloads
of oysters a day are shipped.
[Illustration: CHARLESTON HARBOR]
The yearly movement of marine freight, entering and clearing, aggregates
about three million tons. In 1902 the clearing-house exchanges
aggregated about two and one-quarter billion dollars.
_Portland_, Me., has good harbor facilities, but is distant from the
great lines of traffic. Steamship lines, which in summer make Montreal a
terminal point, occasionally make Portland their winter harbor. _Newport
News_, _Savannah_, _Charleston_, and _Brunswick_ are growing in
importance as clearing ports for the cotton and produce from the region
west of them. _Norfolk_ obtains importance on account of the United
States Navy-Yard; it is also the great peanut-market of the world.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the requisites of a good seaport?
What is meant by the draught of a vessel?
For what purposes are pilots?
How are navigable channels marked and designated?
From the Statistical Abstract find six or more of the leading exports
from each of the following ports: New York, Boston, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and the port nearest which you live.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Statistical Abstract of the United States.
Statesman's Year-Book.
Industrial Evolution of the United States--Chapter II.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE UNITED STATES--THE NEW ENGLAND PLATEAU AND THE APPALACHIAN REGION
The manufacturing regions of the United States, which connect the
country with the rest of the world, include mainly the New England
plateau and the Appalachian ranges.
=The New England Plateau.=--This region embraces the New England States
and practically includes all the eastern part of New York and northern
New Jersey. The abruptly sloping surface affords a great wealth of
water-power, and the region is one of the most important centres of
light manufacture in the world. This industry resulted very largely from
the conditions imposed by the War of 1812 and its consequent
non-intercourse acts.
The interruption of foreign commerce not only cut off the importation of
manufactured commodities, but also made idle the capital employed.
Manufacturing enterprises started in various parts of the United States,
but they prospered in this region for three reasons--an abundance of
power, plenty of capital, and business experience. Steam-power is
largely supplanting water-power in the manufacturing enterprises, and in
many instances the establishments have been moved to tide-water in order
to get their coal at the lowest rates of transportation.
Chief among the manufactures are cotton textiles, the yearly output of
which is about three hundred million dollars. About nine-tenths of the
cotton goods made are consumed at home. Of the remainder, China
purchases one-half. Great Britain and Canada take one-fourth, the South
American and Central American states purchase most of the remaining
output. The great improvement of spinning and weaving machinery has
enabled the cotton manufacturer to export his wares to about every
country in the world.
Boots, shoes, and other leather goods are also important manufactures.
The invention of improved machinery for making shoes has revolutionized
the industry to the extent that a pair of stylish shoes may be purchased
anywhere in the United States for about half the price charged in 1880.
Another result is the enormous importation of hides from South American
countries and Mexico.
The New England plateau is also the centre of a large number of
manufactures that require a high degree of mechanical skill and
intellectual training, such as small fire-arms, machinery, watches and
clocks, jewelry, machine-tools, etc. The location of such industries
depends but little upon climate, topography, or the cost of
transportation; it is wholly a question of an educated and trained
people. This region is likely to lose a considerable part of its
manufactures of cotton textiles, inasmuch as the industry is gradually
moving to the cotton-growing region. The manufactures requiring training
and skill, however, are likely to remain in the region where they have
grown up.
_Lawrence_, _Lowell_, _Manchester_, and _Nashua_--all on the Merrimac
River; _Lewiston_, _Waterville_, _Augusta_, _Woonsocket_, and
_Adams_--each situated at falls or rapids--are great centres of cotton
manufacture. Fall River has an abundance of water-power, and at the same
time is situated on tide-water. Having the advantage of good power and
cheap transportation, it has probably the greatest output of cotton
textiles of any city in the world. Textile establishments have also
grown up in the cities and towns of the Mohawk Valley, being attracted
by the excellent facilities for transportation and also by the available
water-power. _Lynn_, _Brockton_, _Haverhill_, _Marlboro_, and
_Worcester_ are centres of boot and shoe manufacture; they turn out
about two-thirds of the product of the United States.
_Bridgeport_ and _New Haven_ have very large plants for the manufacture
of fire-arms and fixed ammunition; _Waterbury_ and _Ansonia_ for
watches, clocks, and brass goods; _Meriden_ for silverware, and
_Waltham_ for watches. _Worcester_, _Hartford_, _North Adams_,
_Fitchburg_, and _Providence_ have each a great variety of manufactures.
The foreign commerce of these manufacturing centres is carried on mainly
through _Boston_. _New Haven_, _New Bedford_, _Providence_, _Salem_,
_Gloucester_, and _New London_ control each a very large local commerce.
South of New York Bay the Atlantic coast-plain attains an average width
of nearly two hundred miles. The pine forests of this plain yield
lumber, tar, pitch, and turpentine. The productive lands are valuable
chiefly for their output of dairy stuffs, fruit, and "garden truck,"
which find a ready market in the larger cities. In order to encourage
this industry, the railways make special rates for dairy products,
fruit, and vegetables, and afford quick transit for such freight.
Manufacturing industries are rapidly taking shape in this part of the
United States. Along the line where the coast-plain proper joins the
foot-hills of the Appalachian ranges, the rivers reach the lower levels
by rapids or falls. The estuaries into which they flow are usually
navigable for river-craft. The manufacturer thus has the double
advantage of water-power and low transportation. The opening of the
southern Appalachian coal-mines has also greatly encouraged manufacture
in this region. _Richmond_, _Columbia_, _Milledgeville_, _Augusta_, and
_Columbus_ are thus situated. Their manufactures are very largely
connected with the cotton-crop.
The domestic commerce of the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is
probably larger than that of any other similar region in the world. It
is considerably larger than the "round-the-island" trade of Great
Britain. Much of this trade is carried by steam-vessels, but the
three-masted schooner is everywhere in evidence, and these craft carry a
very large part of the coal that is moved by water. This trade is
restricted to vessels flying the American flag.
=The Appalachian Region.=--The middle and southern Appalachian region has
become the most important centre of iron and steel manufacture in the
world. This great development has resulted from several causes, the
chief being the existence of coal and unlimited quantities of iron ore
on the one hand, and unusual facilities for cheap transportation on the
other. There are practically three areas of steel manufacture--one along
the Ohio River and its tributaries in western Pennsylvania; another is
situated along the south shores of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan; the
third includes the Birmingham district in the southern Appalachians.
The steel-making plants of the Ohio River are located with reference to
the transportation of their products, and therefore are built usually
alongside the river. The coal or coke is commonly shipped in barges of
light draught; the manufactured products are carried by rail. The
greater part of the ore is brought from the Lake Superior region. It is
shipped at a very small cost from the ore quarries to the lake-shore,
and by rail from the lake-shore to the manufacturing plant. In order to
avoid heavy grades the ore railways are also built along the
river-valleys.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--ERECTING SHOP OF THE BALDWIN
LOCOMOTIVE WORKS, PHILADELPHIA]
Some of the various steel-making plants are equipped for the
manufacture of building or "structural" steel, others for rails and
railway equipments, still others for tin-plate, or for wire, or for tool
steel. In a few mills armor-plate and ordinary plate for steel vessels
form the exclusive product. The diversity of the product has led to the
organization of great corporations, each of which controls half-a-dozen
or more plants, the transportation lines necessary to carry the product,
the ore quarries, and the fuel-mines.
The wonderful development of the steel industry in the United States is
due to the use of labor-saving machinery, and to the superb
organization. The wages paid for labor are higher than those paid in
European steel-making centres; the cost of living is not materially
greater. The price of steel rails, which in 1880 was forty-eight dollars
per ton, in 1900 was about twenty dollars per ton.
_Pittsburg_, together with _Homestead_, _Carnegie_, _McKeesport_,
_Duquesne_, and _Braddock_, is the chief steel-making centre of the Ohio
River Valley. There are also large plants at _New Castle_, _Sharon_,
_Scranton_, _Johnstown_, _Bellaire_, _Youngstown_, _Mingo Junction_, and
_Wheeling_. The steel-plant and rolling-mills at _South Bethlehem_ are
designed especially for the manufacture of the heavy ordnance used in
the army and navy. Nearly all the cities and towns of Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, and eastern Ohio carry on manufacturing enterprises that
depend on coal mining and steel manufacture. The great and diversified
manufactures of Philadelphia are due to its fortunate situation at
tide-water, near the coal-mines. Cheap fuel and water transportation
have made it one of the great industrial centres of the world.
The anthracite coal of this region is used wholly for fuel and
steam-making; it is shipped partly by water from Philadelphia, but
mainly in specially constructed cars to the various points of
consumption. The soft coal is used also for fuel and steam-making, but a
large part of the product is converted into coke and used in the
steel-plants.
The petroleum of this region is a leading export of the country, the
states of western Europe being the chief purchasers. Of agricultural
products, hay, dairy products, and tobacco are the only ones of
importance. Natural gas is used both as a fuel and in manufactures.
The lake-shore centre of steel manufacture depends largely on the low
cost of transporting the iron ore, which in part is offset by the
increased cost of coal. The low cost of shipping the manufactured
product over nearly level trunk lines is a very substantial gain. _South
Chicago_, _Toledo_, _Sandusky_, _Lorain_, _Cleveland_, _Ashtabula_,
_Conneaut_, _Erie_, and _Buffalo_ are centres of steel manufacture or
ore shipment, because they are situated on this great trade-route or
line of least resistance.
The coal-mines and iron-making plants of the southern Appalachians have
a considerable area. The chief manufacturing centres are _Birmingham_,
_Richmond_, _Roanoke_, and _Chattanooga_. A considerable part of the
Virginia ores find their way to the Ohio River steel-mills. Open-hearth
steel is an important manufacture in Birmingham. A large part of the
ores smelted in the southern Appalachian region are made into foundry
iron.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the advantages and the disadvantages of manufacturing cotton
textiles in the New England States?
Why have the mining of ore and the manufacture of steel become generally
unprofitable in the New England States?
What causes have brought about the lowering of the prices of cotton
textiles during the past fifty years?--of shoes?
What makes the manufacture of artificial ice a precarious business north
of the latitude of Philadelphia?
What are the advantages and the disadvantages arising from the location
of a manufacturing industry at a seaport?
What is the design of a protective tariff? What are its advantages and
disadvantages?
Why are most of the great steel-making plants so remote from the mines
of iron ore used in making steel?
FOR COLLATERAL READING
Industrial Evolution of the United States--Chapters III-V.
Mineral Resources of the United States.
Outlines of Political Science--Chapters VIII-X.
CHAPTER XIX
THE UNITED STATES--THE BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES AND THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY
The principal agricultural region of the United States extends from the
Appalachian ranges to the Rocky Mountains. A certain amount of
bread-stuffs, meat, and dairy products are grown in nearly every part of
the country for local use, but the grain, meat, and cotton of this
region are designed for export, and are therefore factors in the world's
commerce. The basin of the Great Lakes connects the Mississippi Valley
with the Atlantic seaboard.
=The Basin of the Great Lakes.=--This region includes not only the Great
Lakes and the area drained by the streams flowing into them, but also a
considerable region surrounding that commercially is tributary to the
traffic passing over the lakes. This basin itself is a part of a
trade-route destined very shortly to become one of the greatest highways
of traffic in the world.
The lakes afford a navigable water-way which, measured due east and
west, aggregates nearly six hundred miles. This route is interrupted at
Niagara Falls and at St. Mary's Falls, between Lake Superior and Lake
Huron. On the Canadian side, Welland Canal, Lake Ontario, and the St.
Lawrence connect Lake Erie with tide-water. In the United States the
Erie Canal connects the lake with the Hudson River and New York Bay.
From the head of Lake Superior railway routes of minimum grades--the
Great Northern and the Northern Pacific[51]--cross the continent to
Puget Sound, the best harbor approach to the Pacific coast of the
American continent. The harbors of Puget Sound, moreover, are materially
nearer the great Asian ports than any other port of the United States.
The level margins of these lakes are roadbeds for many miles of railway
track; in many instances the railways are built on the tops of terraces
that once were shores of the lakes.
[Illustration: DULUTH]
_Duluth_, at the head of Lake Superior, became commercially important
when the St. Mary's Falls Canal was completed. Much of the tremendous
tonnage of freight passing through the canal is assembled at this place.
The freight shipped consists mainly of farm products collected from an
area reaching as far west as the Rocky Mountains. There is also a
considerable shipment of iron ores obtained near by. _Buffalo_, at the
lower end of Lake Erie, owes its activity to the trade in lumber, grain,
and other farm products that come from Western lake-ports. It is the
eastern terminus of the lake-commerce and the western terminus of the
Erie Canal.
_Chicago_, at the head of Lake Michigan, has a very heavy lake-trade.
The mouth of Chicago River, the natural harbor of the city, has been
improved by a system of basins and breakwaters. The river itself has
been converted into a ship and drainage canal that is connected with the
Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. It is now an outlet instead of a feeder
to the lake, and the city built about old Fort Dearborn has become the
greatest railway centre in the world.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF LOCKS AND CANAL, SAULT STE. MARIE]
_Milwaukee_ has a situation in many ways resembling that of Chicago,
its harbor being the mouth of Milwaukee River. Like Chicago, it owes its
importance to its lake-trade. _Detroit_ (with _Windsor_, Ont.) owes its
growth partly to its strategic position on the strait connecting Lake
Huron and Lake Erie, and partly for its position between the lakes. It
is an important collecting and distributing point for lake-freights, and
the chief centre of commerce with Canada. Several east-and-west trunk
lines and local lines of railway have freight terminals in the city; it
is also the centre of the most complete system of interurban electric
railways in the world. _Port Huron_ (with _Sarnia_, Ont.) has a
geographic position similar to that of Detroit, and is also an important
lake-port. The St. Clair River is tunnelled at this point. _Cleveland_,
_Toledo_, _Sandusky_, and _Erie_ contribute very largely to the
lake-trade. _Grand Rapids_ is the business centre of furniture
manufacture of the United States.
The great iron-ore ranges about Lake Superior have had much to do with
the growth of the local lake-trade. This has resulted in the
establishment of a large number of shipping-ports near the head of the
lakes, and also a number of receiving ports on the south shores of Lake
Erie and Lake Michigan. Some of the latter have become also great
manufacturing centres of structural iron and steel.
Various centres of industry at a considerable distance from the Great
Lakes are contributors to their trade. Thus, on account of the low rate
for grain between _Chicago_ and _New York City_--about 5-1/4 cents per
bushel--there are yearly very heavy shipments of the grain designed for
Liverpool. _St. Paul_ and _Minneapolis_ are also collecting and
distributing centres of lake-freights. A considerable part of the
business of the lake-region is carried on by the Canadians, who have
improved their resources for production and transportation to the
utmost.
[Illustration: _Copyright, Detroit Photographic Co._
AURORA IRON MINES, IRONWOOD, MICHIGAN]
=The Northern Mississippi Valley Region.=--This region extends from the
Appalachian ranges to the western limit of wheat and cotton growing. On
the south it is limited by the cotton-growing region. Its boundaries are
therefore climatic and commercial.
The surface is level; there is a rich, deep soil and an abundant
rainfall. It has therefore become one of the foremost regions of the
world in the production of corn, wheat, pork, dairy-stuffs, and general
farm produce. The evolution of farming machinery is the direct result of
topographic conditions. A level, fertile region naturally invites
grain-farming on a large scale. This, in turn, must depend very largely
on the ability of the farmer to plant and harvest his crops with the
minimum of expense and time.
Hand-work in harvesting and planting has almost wholly given way to
machine-work. Farming carried on under such conditions requires not only
a considerable capital, but close business management as well. Some of
the results have been very far-reaching. The machinery and other
equipments require capital, and this in late years has been borrowed
from Eastern capitalists. The prompt business methods of the
money-lender brought about no little friction, and it is only within
recent years that each adjusted himself to the requirements of the
other.
The system of machine-farming to a great extent has prevented the
subdivision of farms. As a rule, quarter and half sections represent the
size of most of the farms, but tracts varying from five thousand to ten
thousand acres are by no means uncommon. The chief drawback to this
method in the case of wheat-farming, however, is the low yield per acre.
The average yield per acre for the United States, a little more than
twelve bushels, is scarcely half the average yield in Europe. Although
the farmer has done much to reorganize his business methods, he has done
but little to maintain the productivity of his land.
[Illustration: THE WHEAT INDUSTRY--HARVESTING WITH McCORMICK
SELF-BINDING REAPERS]
The cities and towns of this region are mainly receiving and collecting
points for farm produce. Nearly every village is equipped with elevators
and grain-handling machinery; the larger towns, as a rule, have
stock-yards and the necessary facilities for cattle shipment; the large
cities are usually centres of meat-packing. Most of the meat-packing is
a necessity; for although cattle may be shipped alive and beef may be
transported in refrigerator ships and cars, pork is not marketable
unless pickled, salted, or smoked. The pork thus exported, aggregating
about six hundred million pounds yearly, must be prepared, therefore,
somewhere near the cornfields. Manufacturing enterprises are operated on
a very large scale, but in the main their products are farm-machinery
and the commodities required by a farming population.
Education in agriculture is provided for in nearly every State in the
Union. The agricultural colleges in the States composing this group rank
among the best in the world. In addition to the ordinary courses in such
institutions, there are also many experiment stations for the study of
economic plants, cattle diseases, and insect pests.
_Chicago_ is the largest food-market in the world. The industries of the
city are almost wholly connected with the commerce of grain, pork, meat,
and other food-stuffs. For the transportation of these commodities about
thirty great trunk lines enter the city and about twelve hundred
passenger trains daily arrive and depart from its stations.
The freight terminals are connected by transfer and belt lines, which
receive and distribute the cars passing between the eastern and the
western roads. More than five hundred freight trains, aggregating about
twenty thousand cars, arrive and depart daily.
_St. Louis_ originally derived its importance as a river-port of the
Mississippi, having been the connecting commercial link between the
upper and the lower river. In recent years it has become the metropolis
of the southern part of the food-producing region. In addition to the
river-trade, still largely controlled at this point, it is the focus of
more than twenty trunk lines of railway. Some of these, like the trunk
lines of Chicago, handle freight exchanged between the East and West;
but a large proportion are receiving and distributing roads for Southern
freight.
[Illustration: AUTOMOTIVE POWER IN THE INDUSTRIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY]
_St. Paul_ and _Minneapolis_ are the metropolis of the upper
Mississippi. The former grew from a trading-post at the head of
navigation; the latter gained its commercial prominence from the
water-power at the falls of St. Anthony. The former has become the chief
railway and distributing centre of the northern Mississippi Valley; the
latter has the greatest flour-mills in the world, and an extensive
lumber-trade. Both are situated on the trade-route between the United
States and Asian ports, and distribute a part of the trade that comes
from them.
The two _Kansas Cities_,[52] _Omaha_, _South Omaha_, and _Sioux City_
are stock-markets and meat-packing centres. The first two named are
collecting and distributing points not only for the Mississippi Valley,
but also for a considerable share of the Pacific Coast trade. Kansas
City is also a transfer station for the cotton destined for China. From
this place it is sent by way of Billings to Seattle, and thence shipped
to China.
_Cincinnati_ is the metropolis of the Ohio Valley. Its situation on a
bend of the river gives most excellent landing facilities; the easy
grade from the bluff to the bottom-lands along the flood-plain of Mill
Creek makes it accessible to the railways that enter the city. On
account of low rates of transportation by river-barges, about three
million tons of coal and one million tons of pig-iron and steel billets
are floated to the city to be manufactured into other steel products.
_Indianapolis_ is a great railway centre, where much of the freight
passing between Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg is
exchanged. _Columbus_ (O.) is similarly situated as a railway and
farming centre.
[Illustration: CATTLE AND DAIRY PRODUCTS]
_Louisville_ is a market of the tobacco region, and has probably a
larger business in this industry than any other city in the world.
_Davenport_, _Rock Island_, and _Moline_ form a single commercial
centre, the last-named having the largest establishment for the
manufacture of ploughs in the world. _Dubuque_, _Burlington_, _Quincy_,
and _Muscatine_ are river-ports, all having a considerable trade in the
lumber that is carried down the river.
=The Southern Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast.=--This region receives a
generous warmth and rainfall. Cotton is its staple product, and nearly
all the industries are connected with the growth, shipment, and
manufacture of the crop and its side products. The cotton, raw or
manufactured, is sold in about every country in the world.
The commercial part of handling the cotton-crop begins within a very
few weeks from the time of the first picking. The baled cotton is hauled
by team from the plantation to the nearest market-town, an item
sometimes greater than the entire freightage from the nearest seaport to
Liverpool.
The season for export lasts from September until the middle of January,
during which time brokers are visiting the smaller markets in order to
buy it on commission. It is then shipped by rail or by river to the
nearest general market, where it is sold to the foreign buyers and
domestic manufacturers.
_New Orleans_, the metropolis of the South, has usually the heaviest
export of cotton, amounting to about one billion pounds each year. Much
of this is received by water from the various river-ports. The city is
not only a river-port, but an important seaport as well, controlling a
large part of the foreign commerce of the Gulf. Several trunk lines of
railway enter the city, which is a receiving and distributing depot for
both Atlantic and Pacific freights. A considerable part of the former
are sent by ocean steamships from New York. An elaborate system of
sewerage, well-paved streets, and a good water-supply--all recently put
into operation--have made the city one of the most attractive in the
United States.
_Galveston_ is destined to become a leading port for cotton export. It
has the advantage of a fine harbor on the seaboard, and the disadvantage
of a location so low that very heavy south winds flood the streets with
water from the Gulf. The growth of the export trade is due chiefly to
the increasing crop of Texas. Shipments from Galveston begin in
September, the Texas crop being the first to mature. _Savannah_ and _New
York_ rank next in their exports. _Pensacola_ and _Brunswick_ are also
important points of export. _Memphis_, _Vicksburg_, _Shreveport_,
_Houston_, and _Montgomery_ are important collecting stations for the
cotton.
About one-third of the crop is retained for manufacture in the United
States; one-third is purchased by Great Britain, one-sixth by Germany,
and most of the remainder by France, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Of the
manufactured cotton goods, the Chinese are the heaviest buyers, taking
about half the entire export. Most of the Chinese purchase is landed at
Shanghai.
In the main, the manufactures of this region closely concern the cotton
industry. The increase in the manufacture of textile goods has been very
great, and a large part of the cotton now manufactured in the New
England States and abroad, in time will be made in the cities and towns
of this section. In addition to the textile goods, cottonseed-oil is an
important product. A part of this is used in the mechanical arts, but
the refined oil is used mainly for domestic purposes. A considerable
part of the latter is used to adulterate olive-oil, and in some
instances is substituted for it. The refuse of the seed is made into
fertilizer.
_Atlanta_ is one of the foremost cities in the South in the manufacture
of cotton textiles and products. Commercially its situation resembles
that of Indianapolis; it is a focal point of the chief trunk lines of
railway in the South, and has the principal railway clearing-house. Like
New Orleans, it is an educational centre and one of the foremost in the
South. _Macon_, _Dallas_, _Fort Worth_, and _San Antonio_ are growing
commercial centres.
The manufacture of cane-sugar has been an industry of Louisiana for more
than a century. Since the advent of beet-sugar, however, it has been a
somewhat precarious venture, and has depended for existence very largely
upon tariff protection and bounties paid to the American sugar-makers.
Tobacco manufacture centres at Tampa and Key West. Cuban leaf is there
converted into cigars.
Fruit culture is a great industry. Millions of melons and great
quantities of pineapples, oranges, and small fruit form the early crop
that is shipped North. The orange groves are mainly in Florida. The crop
is exhausted about the time that California oranges are shipped East. A
great deal of tropical fruit is brought from Mexican, Central American,
and South American ports. This trade is controlled mainly at _Mobile_,
which is also a lumber-market.
=The Arid Plains and the Grazing Region.=--This region includes the high
plains approximately west of the 2,000-foot contour of level, together
with a part of the plateaus of the western highland region. It is
essentially one of grazing. Formerly there was an attempt to make
wheat-growing the chief industry, but on account of the limited rainfall
not more than three crops out of five reached maturity.
The earlier cattle-growing was carried on in a somewhat primitive
manner; the cattle herded on open lands, wandering from one range to
another, wherever the grazing might be good. The ownership of the cattle
was determined by the brand the animal bore,[53] and the herds were
"rounded up" twice a year to be sorted; at the round-up the "mavericks,"
or unmarked calves and yearlings, were branded. In time the ranges
became greatly overstocked; the winter losses by starvation were so
heavy that a better system became imperative. "Rustling," or
cattle-stealing, also became a factor in improving the methods of
cattle-ranching. The cautious rustler would purchase a few head of
cattle and add to the number by capturing stray mavericks.
[Illustration: A DESERT REGION--TOO DRY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF
FOOD-STUFFS]
[Illustration: OPEN GRAZING RANGES, IN WESTERN HIGHLANDS]
Both the legitimate graziers and the rustlers at first were bitterly
opposed to fencing the land. In time, however, the grazier was compelled
to do this, and also to grow alfalfa for winter foddering. The great
open ranges have therefore been broken up and fenced wholly or in part.
The fencing, moreover, has kept a dozen or more of the largest
wire-mills in the world turning out a product that is at once shipped
West. As a rule, the top wire is set on insulators and used for
telephone connection.[54] This method of cattle-growing has improved the
business in every way. The cattle are better kept; the loss by winter
killing is very small; the "long-horn" cattle have given place to the
best breeds of "meaters," which are heavier, and mature more quickly.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co._
ON A TEXAS CATTLE RANCH]
The success of stock-growing in this region is largely a question of
climate. The sparse rainfall permits the growth of several species of
grass that retain nutrition and vitality after turning brown under the
fierce summer heat. Ordinary turf-grass will not live in this region,
nor will it retain its nutrition after turning brown if rain falls upon
it. The native grass is not materially affected by a shower or two; it
is fairly good fodder even when buried under the winter's snow. The
existence of this industry, therefore, turns on a very delicate climatic
balance.
Of the beef grown in the United States the export product is derived
mainly from this region. Nearly four hundred thousand animals are
shipped alive; about three hundred million pounds of fresh beef are
shipped to the Atlantic seaboard in refrigerator-cars and then
transferred to refrigerator-steamships. Two-thirds of the cattle and
fresh beef exported are shipped from New York and Boston.
Upward of one hundred and fifty million pounds of canned and pickled
beef are also exported. All but a very small part of this product is
consumed in Great Britain, France, and Germany. The cattle are collected
for transportation at various stations and sidings along the railways
that traverse this region. _Cheyenne_ is one of the largest
cattle-markets in the world.
Wool has become a very valuable product, and the sheep grown in this
region number about one-half the total in the United States. The growing
of macaroni-wheat is extending to lands that fail to produce crops of
ordinary wheat.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what ways does the basin of the Great Lakes facilitate the commerce
of the United States?
How has the topography of the Mississippi Valley affected the evolution
of farming-machinery?
Why are shippers willing in many cases to pay an all-rail rate on wheat
sent to the Atlantic seaboard, nearly three times as great as the lake
and canal rates?
The acre-product of wheat in the United States is about twelve bushels;
in western Europe it varies from twenty-five to more than forty bushels;
to what is the difference due?
What is meant by sea-island cotton?--for what reasons is cotton imported
from Egypt and Peru into the United States?
In what manner is cotton used in the manufacture of pneumatic tires, and
why is it thus used?
What are refrigerator-cars?--refrigerator-steamships? Name some of the
regulations required in shipping cattle.
Why have American meats been debarred at times from European markets?
Find the value of cotton and meat exported to the following-named
countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, China.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
The Wheat Problem--pp. 191 _et seq._
Statistical Abstract.
[Illustration: DIFFICULT RAILROADING--LAS ANIMAS CANYON]
CHAPTER XX
THE UNITED STATES--THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS AND TERRITORIAL POSSESSIONS
The western part of the United States consists of a succession of high
mountain-ranges extending nearly north and south. The two highest
ranges, each about two miles high, enclose a basin-shaped plateau about
one mile high. This basin is commonly called the "plateau region." The
rim ranges are broken in a few places by passes that the
transcontinental railways thread. West of the Sierra Nevada ranges are
the fertile Pacific coast lowlands.
=The Plateau Region.=--This region is generally arid, but on the higher
plateaus there is sufficient rainfall to produce a considerable forestry
and grazing. The general conditions of rainfall and topography forbid
any great development of agriculture. Farming is confined to the
river-flood-plains, the parks, and the old lake beds and margins.
A considerable area, estimated at more than two million acres, may be
made productive by irrigation, and the United States Government is
undertaking the construction of an elaborate and extensive system of
reservoirs for the impounding of stream and storm waters now running to
waste. The irrigated lands of this region, when their products are
accessible to markets, are very valuable. The river-bottom lands of New
Mexico, and the old margins of Great Salt Lake in Utah are examples.
They produce abundantly, and a single acre often yields as much as four
or five acres in regions of plentiful rainfall.
Not much of the crop of this region, the fruit and wool excepted,
leaves the vicinity in which it is grown, on account of the expense of
transportation. In the matter of the transportation of their
commodities, the dwellers of the western highland are doubly
handicapped. The building of railways is enormously expensive, and in a
region of sparse population there is comparatively little local freight
to be hauled. The difficulties of developing such a region from a
commercial stand-point, therefore, are very great.
Mining is the chief industry of this section, and silver, gold, and
copper are its most important products. Since the discovery of precious
metals in the United States, this region has produced gold and silver
bullion to the value of about four billion dollars. This sum is about
one-half the value of the railways of the country,[55] and from 1865 to
1880 a large part of the capital invested in railway building represents
the gold and silver of these mines. In the last twenty years of the past
century they produced an average of about one hundred and twenty-five
million dollars per year, and this average is constantly increasing.
Coal-measures extend along the eastern escarpment of the Rocky
Mountains, and these are destined at no remote day to create a centre of
steel and other manufactures. Several of the railways operate coal-mines
in Colorado and Wyoming for the fuel required. A limited supply of steel
is also made, the industry being protected by the great distance from
the Eastern smelteries.
[Illustration: GOLD MINING--CRIPPLE CREEK, COLORADO]
_Denver_ is the chief active centre of finance of the mining industry
in the western highlands, although many of the great enterprises derive
the capital necessary to develop them from _New York_ and _San
Francisco_. _Leadville_, _Cripple Creek_, _Butte_, _Helena_, and
_Deadwood_ are regions of gold and silver production. _Virginia City_ is
the operating centre of the famous Comstock mines. At _Anaconda_ is the
chief copper-mine of this region. _Salt Lake City_ and _Ogden_ are the
centre of the Mormon agricultural enterprises. _Santa Fe_, _Las Vegas_,
and _Albuquerque_ are centres of agricultural interests and
stock-growing.
_Spokane_ and _Walla Walla_ are commercial centres of the plains of the
Columbia River. The former is the focal point of a network of local
roads that collect the wheat and other farm products of this region; the
latter is the collecting point for much of the freight sent by
steamboats down the Columbia River from _Wallula_. Railway
transportation has largely superseded river-navigation for all except
local freights, however. _Boise City_ is the financial centre of
considerable mining interests.
=The Pacific Coast Lowlands.=--Climatically this region differs from the
rest of the United States in having a rainy and a dry season--that is,
the rainfall is wholly seasonal. In the northern part the rainfall is
sixty inches or more, and rain may be expected daily from the middle of
October to May. In central California the precipitation is about half as
much, the rainy season beginning later and ending earlier. In southern
California there are occasional showers during the winter months,
aggregating ten or twenty inches.
The level valley-lands have no superior for wheat-farming, and in but
one or two places is the rainfall insufficient to insure a good crop. In
the San Joaquin and southern valleys of California the harvest begins in
May, in the Sacramento Valley in June, and in the Willamette and Sound
Valleys of Oregon and Washington in July. The wheat goes mainly to Great
Britain by way of Cape Horn. It cannot be safely shipped in bulk, and
the manufacture of jute grain-sacks has become an important industry in
consequence. The yearly wheat product of this region is not far from
eighty million bushels.
Fruit is a valuable product of the foot-hills of the Sierras, and in
southern California oranges, lemons, and grapes are now the staple crop.
In some cases the average yield per acre has reached a value of five
hundred dollars. Some of the largest vineyards in the world are in this
region. The Zinfandel claret wine and the raisins find a market as far
east as London, and considerable quantities are sold in China and Japan.
The navel orange, although not native to California, reaches its finest
development in that State. A large part of the fruit-crop of California
is handled at Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York. It is
transported in special cars attached to fast trains.
Wool is an important crop. In the northern part the sheep thrive best in
the foot-hills. The valley of Umpqua River, Ore., produces nearly
seventeen million pounds of wool yearly, the staple being an ordinary
variety. California produces nearly as much of the finest merino staple.
A considerable part is manufactured in the mills of the Pacific coast.
The Mission Mills blankets made in San Francisco are without an equal
elsewhere.
The discovery of gold by John Marshall in 1848 resulted in a tremendous
inflow of people to the gold-fields of California. It also was a factor
in the acquisition of the territory composing the Pacific coast States.
The first mining consisted merely in separating the metal deposited in
the bed-rock of streams by washing away the lighter material. In time
the quartz ledges which had produced the placer gold became the chief
factor in gold mining. California is still one of the leading States in
the production of gold. Quicksilver mining is an important feature of
the mining interests of the Pacific coast, and the mines of the coast
ranges produce about half the world's output.
Lumber manufacture is an important industry. Douglas spruce, commonly
known as "Oregon pine," grows profusely on the western slopes of the
high ranges, the belt extending nearly to the Mexican border. It makes a
most excellent building-lumber, especially for bridge-timber and
framework. Masts and spars of this material are used in almost every
maritime country. Sugar-pine is less common, but is abundant. It is
largely used for interior work. Several species of redwood occur in
central California, confined to a limited area. The wood is fine-grained
and makes a most beautiful interior finish.
_San Francisco_ is the metropolis of the Pacific coast of the United
States. It is the terminus of the Santa Fe and Union Pacific railways,
and the centre of a network of local roads. Steamship lines connect the
city with Panama, the Hawaiian Islands, Japan, and Australian ports;
coast steamships reach to the various ports of Alaska, Oregon, and
California. It is also the financial as well as the commercial centre of
the Pacific coast. _Los Angeles_ is the centre of the fruit-growing
region; its port is _San Pedro_. _Stockton_, _Port Costa_, and
_Sacramento_, all on navigable waters, are wheat-markets. _Portland_
(Ore.) is the metropolis of the basin of the Columbia and Willamette
Rivers. Navigation of the former is interrupted by falls or rapids at
_Dalles_ and _Cascades_, but boats ascend as far as _Wallula_. The lower
Willamette is also made navigable by means of a canal and locks at
Oregon Falls.
Puget Sound is a "drowned valley," with an abundance of deep water. The
score or more of harbors are among the best in the world. _Seattle_ and
_Tacoma_, the leading ports, are terminals of great transcontinental
railways, and also of the most important trade-route across the
continent. Lines of steamships connect Seattle with Japan and China, and
the commerce passing through this gateway is drawn from a territory
that extends more than half-way around the world. These ports are
destined to become the chief American ports in the Asian trade.
=Alaska.=--The most productive industry of the insular part of the
territory is the fisheries. For many years the Pribilof Islands produced
practically all the seal-pelts used in the manufacture of seal-fur
garments. So many seals were killed, however, that the species seemed
likely to become extinct, and seal-catching has been forbidden for a
term of years.
[Illustration: PUGET SOUND]
The discovery of gold along the Klondike River and in the beach-sands of
Cape Nome was followed by the development of surface mines that produced
a large amount of gold. For the better transportation of products, a
railway has been completed from _Skagway_ across White Pass to _White
Horse_, the head of navigation of the Yukon. About twenty steamboats are
engaged in the commerce of the river. _Skagway_ and _Dyea_ are
collecting points for the commerce of the Klondike mines. _Juneau_ has
probably the largest quartz-mill in the world.
=Porto Rico.=--Porto Rico, formerly a Spanish colony, is now a possession
of the United States. The island is about the size of Connecticut and
has a population somewhat greater. The industries are almost wholly
agricultural, and nearly the whole surface is under cultivation. Sugar,
coffee, and tobacco are grown for export, and these constitute the chief
source of income. The coffee-crop, about sixty million pounds yearly, is
the most valuable product and commands a high price on account of its
superior quality. It is sold very largely to European coffee-merchants,
and is marketed as a "Mocha." Exports of fruit to the United States are
increasing. In 1900 the exports to United States markets, mainly sugar
and cattle products, were about six million dollars. The imports from
the United States were chiefly of cotton-prints and rice, to the amount
of nearly nine million dollars. The total export and import trade that
year was about twenty million dollars.
The facilities for the transportation of products are not good. The
railway lines have a total mileage of about one hundred and fifty miles.
An excellent wagon-road, built by the Spanish Government from San Juan
to Ponce, has been supplemented by several hundred miles of roads built
under the direction of the military authorities. _San Juan_ and _Ponce_
are the leading seaports and centres of trade.
=Hawaiian Islands.=--These islands were discovered by a Spanish sailor,
Gaetano, in 1549, and again visited by Captain Cook in 1778. Up to 1893
they formed a native kingdom. In 1893 foreign influence was sufficient
to overthrow the native government, and in 1898 they were formally
annexed to the United States and about the same time organized as a
territory. From an early date the geographic position of the islands has
made them a convenient mid-ocean post-station, and they have therefore
become a most important commercial centre.
[Illustration: HYDRAULIC GOLD MINING--CALIFORNIA]
Of the various islands composing the group, Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, Kaui,
Molokai, Lanai, and Niihau are inhabited. About one-fifth of the
population consists of native Hawaiians; a little more than one-fifth is
white; the remainder is composed of Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans.
The native population is decreasing. About ninety-five per cent. of the
property is owned by the white people--Americans, English, and Germans.
The volcanic soils are the very best sugar-lands, and a large amount of
capital is invested in this industry. The sugar-plantations employ more
than forty thousand laborers, all Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans.
The value of the sugar export is nearly twenty-five million dollars
yearly; that of fruit, rice, and hides is about two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Coffee is rapidly becoming a leading product. The bulk
of the imports comes from the United States, and consists of clothing,
cotton textiles, lumber, and machinery.
_Honolulu_, on the island of Oahu, is the capital and commercial centre,
and foreign steamships and sailing-craft are scarcely ever absent from
its harbor. Regular steamship service connects this port with San
Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, B.C., and the principal ports of China
and Japan. It is connected with the other islands by a system of
wireless telegraphy. The city has the best of schools, business
organizations, hotels, and streets.
_Pearl Harbor_ contains a large area of water, most of which is deep
enough for the largest vessels afloat. It is intended to deepen the
entrance and establish a United States naval station at this place. The
village of _Hilo_ is the chief port of the island of Hawaii.
=The Philippine Islands= are an archipelago of about two thousand islands,
the two largest of which, Luzon and Mindanao, are each nearly the size
of New York State. Luzon is by far the most important.
After their cession to the United States (December 10, 1898), they were
held under military control, but this has given place to local
self-government as rapidly as the circumstances permitted. A general
school system has been established and is extended wherever practicable.
In a considerable number of the islands civil organization is still
impossible.
The following are the principal islands and their mineral resources:
----------------+----------------------+---------------------
NAME |CHIEF CITIES AND PORTS|MINERAL RESOURCES
----------------+----------------------+---------------------
Luzon |Manila, Lipa, Batangas|Coal, gold, copper
Mindanao |Zamboanga |Coal, gold, copper
Samar |Catbalogan |Coal, gold
Negros |Bacolor |Coal
Panay |Iloilo |Coal, gold, petroleum
Leyte |Tacloban |Coal, petroleum
Mindoro |Calapan |Coal, gold
Cebu |Cebu |Coal, petroleum, gold
----------------+----------------------+----------------------
The native population is mainly of the Malay race, but there are also
many Negritos. Of the native element the Tagals are the most advanced,
and are the dominant people. The foreign population includes nearly one
hundred thousand Chinese, who are the chief commercial factors of the
islands, and the leading industries are controlled by them. There is a
considerable population of Chinese and Tagal mixed blood, commonly known
as "Chinese mestizos"; they inherit, in the main, the Chinese
characteristics. The European and American population consists mainly of
officials, troops, and merchant-agents for Philippine products.
The principal products for export are "Manila" hemp, sugar, and tobacco.
The hemp is used in the manufacture of cordage and paper. On account of
the great strength of the fibre it has no equal among cordage fibres.
The imports from the United States consist mainly of machinery and
cotton textiles. The total trade of the islands amounted in 1901 to
about fifty million dollars, most of which was shared by Great Britain
and the United States.
Coal is mined in the island of Cebu and is abundant in most of the
islands. Iron ore, copper, and sulphur occur, but they have not been
made commercially available to any extent. Gold is mined in the island
of Luzon. A stable government only is needed to make these great
resources productive. An abundance of timber is found in most of the
islands. Cedar, ebony, and sapan-wood are available for ornamental
purposes; there is also a great variety of economic woods.
_Manila_ is the commercial centre. Manila Bay is one of the finest
harbors in the Pacific Ocean, but much work is necessary to give the
water-front a navigable depth for large steamships. With an improved
harbor the city is bound to be a great emporium of Oriental trade.
Steamship lines connect the city with Hongkong, Australia, Japan,
Singapore, and Liverpool. There is also a military transport service to
Seattle. A railway to Dagupan extends through the most important
agricultural region. The wagon-roads throughout the island are very
poor.
_Lipa_, _Batanzas_, _Bauan_, and _Cavite_ are cities of about forty
thousand population, all more or less connected with the industries of
Manila. _Iloilo_ is the second port of importance of the islands, and is
the centre of a considerable export trade in tobacco, hemp, sugar, and
sapan-wood. _Cebu_ is also a port having a considerable trade.
=Tutuila=, one of the Samoan Islands, was acquired by treaty for use as a
coal-depot and naval station. _Pago Pago_ is a port of call for
steamships between San Francisco and Australia. =Guam=, one of the Ladrone
Islands, is a naval station. These possessions are strategic and are
designed to secure the interests of the United States in the Pacific. An
ocean telegraphic cable connects the Pacific Ocean possessions with the
United States and Asia.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why are mountain-regions apt to be sparsely peopled?
Why are arid regions sparsely peopled, as a rule?
Why are not gold-mining settlements so apt to be permanent as
agricultural settlements?
From the Abstract of Statistics find the production of gold and silver
of this region for each ten years ending the last half of the century.
What causes the difference between the wool clip of southern California
and that of the Eastern States?
Follow the route of a grain-carrying ship from San Francisco to
Liverpool.
What are the advantages to the United States of the accession of the
Hawaiian Islands?--of the Philippine Islands?--of Alaska? What are the
disadvantages?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Mineral Resources of the United States.
Abstract of Statistics.
U.S. Coast Survey Chart of Alaska.
Map of Hawaiian Islands.
Map of Philippine Islands.
[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (EXTERIOR)]
[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (INTERIOR)]
CHAPTER XXI
CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND
A very large part of Canada is so far north that the ordinary
food-stuffs cannot be grown there; the river-valleys of British Columbia
and the basin of the Saskatchewan excepted, there are but few marks of
human industry beyond the fiftieth parallel. The general conditions of
topography resemble those of the United States--a central plain between
the high Rocky Mountain ranges in the west and the lower Laurentian
ranges in the east.
Canada is an agricultural country, and because of the great skill with
which its resources have been made commercially available, it is the
most important colony of Great Britain. The basin of the Great Lakes and
the St. Lawrence River is the most populous part of the country. This
region is highly cultivated and produces dairy products, beef, and the
ordinary farm-crops.
From Lake Winnipeg westward, nearly to the Rocky Mountains, the land is
a succession of prairies admirably suited to wheat-growing.[56] The
wheat is a hard, spring variety, and the average yield per acre is about
one-fourth greater than the average yield in the United States.
The area of forestry includes the larger remaining part of the great
pine belt, together with a very heavy reserve of merchantable
oak-timber. The part of the forest area in Canada aggregates one and
one-quarter million square miles, and yields an annual product of about
eighty million dollars; about one-third of the lumber is exported.
The northerly region of Canada produces furs and pelts. As long ago as
1670, Charles II. granted to Prince Rupert and a stock company the lands
comprising a very large part of Canada around Hudson Bay, and secured to
them the sole right to trap the fur-bearing animals of the region. In
time the company, known as the Hudson Bay Company, transferred all its
lands to Canada, and out of the domain thus annexed various provinces
and unorganized districts have been created.
The company now exists as a corporation for the merchandise of furs. For
the greater part, Indians are employed as hunters and trappers, and the
pelts are collected at the various trading-posts, known as "houses" and
"factories," to be sent to the head-quarters of the company near
Winnipeg. Nearly every Arctic animal furnishes a merchantable pelt. The
cheaper skins are made into garments in Canada and the United States;
those commonly classed as furs are sold in London. Several other fur
companies are also operating in Canada.
The fisheries of the coast-waters and the Great Lakes are among the most
productive in the world. Everything within the three-mile limit of the
shore is reserved for Canadian fishermen. The smaller bays and coves are
reserved also within the three-mile limit. Beyond this limit the waters
are open to all, and a fleet of swift gun-boats is necessary to prevent
illicit fishing. Salmon, cod, lobsters, and herring form most of the
catch, amounting in value to upward of twenty million dollars yearly.
The output of minerals varies from year to year; since 1900 it has
averaged about sixty million dollars a year. The gold product
constitutes nearly one-half and the coal about one-sixth of the total
amount. Nickel, petroleum, silver, and lead form the rest of the output.
Iron ore is abundant, but it is not at present available for production
on account of the distance from transportation.
Commerce is facilitated by about eighteen thousand miles of railway and
nearly three thousand miles of canal and improved river-navigation. One
ocean-to-ocean railway, the Canadian Pacific, is in operation; another,
an extension of the Grand Trunk, is under way. The rapids and shoals of
the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers are surmounted by canals and
locks. Welland Canal connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and the
Canadian lock at St. Mary's Falls joins Lake Superior to Lake Huron. By
means of the lakes and canals vessels drawing fourteen feet may load at
Canadian ports and discharge at Liverpool.
The harbors of the Atlantic coast have two great drawbacks--ice and high
tides. Some of the steamship lines make Portland, Me., their winter
terminus. The Pacific coast harbors are not obstructed by ice. An
attempt has been made in the direction of using Hudson Bay and Strait as
a grain-route, but the difficulties of navigation are very great and the
route is open only two months of the year.
Practically all the foreign trade is carried on with Great Britain and
the United States. The trade with each aggregates about one hundred and
fifty million dollars yearly. The exports are lumber and wood-pulp,
cheese and dairy products, wheat and flour, beef-cattle, hog products,
fish, and gold-quartz. The chief imports are steel, wool, sugar, and
cotton manufactures.
Politically, Canada consists of a number of provinces, each with the
usual corps of elective officers. A governor-general appointed by the
Crown of Great Britain is the chief executive officer.
=Nova Scotia.=--This province is prominent on account of its coal and
iron, and also because of its geographic position. The iron and coal are
utilized in steel smelteries and rolling-mills, glass-factories,
sugar-refineries, and textile-mills. It is one of the few localities in
the eastern part of the continent yielding gold. _Halifax_, the capital,
has one of the best harbors of the Atlantic coast of North America; it
is not often obstructed by ice, and is the chief winter port. Halifax is
the principal British naval station of North America, and this fact adds
much to its commercial activity.
=Prince Edward Island.=--The industries of this province are mainly
connected with the coast-fisheries. During the summer the island is
visited by thousands of fishing-vessels for the purpose of preparing the
catch for market. Fertilizer manufactured from the refuse is an
incidental product. _Charlottetown_ is the capital.
=New Brunswick.=--Fisheries and forest products are both resources of this
province. Coal is mined at _Grand Lake_, and an excellent lime for
export to the United States is made at _St. John_. Lumber, wood-pulp,
wooden sailing-vessels, cotton textiles, and structural steel for
ship-building are manufactured. A ship railway, seventeen miles long,
across the isthmus that connects this province to Nova Scotia, is under
construction. _St. John_, the capital, is the chief seat of trade.
=Quebec.=--This province was once a possession of France, and in the
greater part of it French customs are yet about as prevalent as they
were a century ago; moreover, the French population is increasing
rapidly. The English-speaking population lives mainly along the Vermont
border. As a rule the English are the manufacturers and traders; the
French people are the farmers.
_Montreal_ is the head of navigation of the St. Lawrence for ocean
steamships. It is also the chief centre of manufactures. These are
mainly sugar, rubber goods, textiles, light steel wares, and leather.
The last-named goes almost wholly to Great Britain; the rest are
consumed in Canada and the border American States. _Quebec_ is the most
strongly fortified city of the Dominion.
=Ontario.=--This province is a peninsula bordered by Lakes Huron, Erie,
and Ontario. Farming is the chief employment, and barley is an important
product. Most of it is used in the manufacture of malt, and "Canada
malt" is regarded as the best. Several of the trunk railways whose
terminals are in the United States traverse this peninsula. _Toronto_,
the capital and commercial centre, is one of the most rapidly growing
cities of North America. _Hamilton_ owes its existence to its harbor and
position at the head of Lake Ontario. _Ottawa_ is the capital of the
Dominion. At _Sudbury_ are the nickel-mines that are among the most
productive in the world.
=Manitoba=, =Saskatchewan=, and =Alberta=.--These provinces include the
level prairie lands of the Saskatchewan and the Red River of the North.
They comprise the great grain-field of Canada. A considerable part of
the wheat-growing lands are yet unproductive owing to the lack of
railways. Much of the product is carried to market by the Canadian
Pacific and its feeders, but a considerable part finds its way to the
Northern Pacific and Great Northern roads. The coal of Manitoba and
Alberta is an important fuel supply not only to the provinces and states
surrounding, but to the railways above named. A good quality of
anthracite coal is also mined in Alberta. _Winnipeg_, the metropolis of
the region, is one of the great railway centres of Canada.
=British Columbia.=--British Columbia, the Pacific coast province, has
several resources of great value. The gold mines led to its settlement
and commercial opening. The salmon-fisheries are surpassed by those of
the United States only. The beds of lignite coal have produced a very
large part of the coal used in the Pacific coast States. The forests
produce lumber for shipment both to the Atlantic coast of America and
the Pacific coast of Asia.
_Vancouver_, the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is connected
with various Asian ports by fast steamships. _Nanaimo_, _Wellington_,
and _Commox_ are the centres of the coal-mining industry. The
copper-mines at _Rossland_ produce most of the copper mined in Canada.
=Newfoundland.=--Although a Crown possession, Newfoundland is not a member
of the Dominion of Canada. The extensive fisheries are its chief
resource. The Labrador coast, which is used as a resort for curing and
preserving the catch, is attached to Newfoundland for the purpose of
government. _St. Johns_ is the capital.
The islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre, south of Newfoundland, are a
French possession. Fishing is the ostensible industry, but a great deal
of smuggling is carried on.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What, if any, climatic or topographic boundaries separate Canada and the
United States?
Which of the two countries is the more fortunately situated for the
production of food-stuffs?
Which will support the larger population?--why?
The harbors of the Labrador coast and of Cape Breton Island are superior
to those of the British Islands, situated in about the same latitude;
why do the latter have a commerce far greater than that of the former?
Compare the industries of the eastern, middle, and western regions of
Canada with the corresponding regions of the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Statesman's Year-Book.
Statistical Year-Book of Canada (official government publication,
Ottawa).
CHAPTER XXII
MEXICO--CENTRAL AMERICA--WEST INDIES
Mexico and the Central American states occupy the narrow, southerly part
of North America. Structurally they consist of a plateau about a mile
high, bordered on each side by a low coast-plain. The table-land, or
_tierra templada_, has about the same climate as southern California;
the low coast-plains, or _tierra caliente_, are tropical.
=Mexico.=--The United States of Mexico is the most important part of this
group. The people are of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, but there are
many families of pure Castilian descent. The latter, in general, are the
landed proprietors; the former constitute the tradesmen, herders, and
peons. There is also a large unproductive class, mainly of Indians, who
are living in a savage state. In general the manners and customs are
those of Spain.
The agricultural pursuits are in a backward condition, partly for the
want of good system and an educated people, but mainly for lack of the
capital and engineering skill to construct the irrigating canals that
are needed to make the land productive. Maize, rice, sugar (cane and
panocha), and wheat are grown for home consumption.
The agricultural products which connect Mexico with the rest of the
world are sisal-hemp (henequin), coffee, logwood, and fruit. Sisal-hemp
is grown in the state of Yucatan, and has become one of its chief
financial resources. Oaxaca coffee is usually sold as a "Mocha" berry.
The logwood goes mainly to British textile makers; and the fruit,
chiefly oranges and bananas, finds a market in the large cities of the
United States, to which large consignments of vanilla and tropical woods
are also sent. Cattle are grown on more than twenty thousand ranches,
and the greater part are sent alive to the markets of the United States.
The native long-horn stock is giving place to improved breeds.
[Illustration: MEXICO]
Gold and silver are the products that have made Mexico famous, and the
mines have produced a total of more than three billion dollars' worth of
precious metal. The native methods of mining have always been primitive,
and low-grade ores have been neglected. In recent years American and
European capital has been invested in low-grade mines, and the bullion
production has been about doubled in value; it is now about one hundred
million dollars yearly. Iron ore is abundant, and good coal exists.
The manufactures, at present of little importance, are growing rapidly.
The cotton-mills consume the home product and fill their deficiency from
the Texas crop. All the finer textiles, however, are imported. Most of
the commodities are supplied by the United States, Great Britain, and
Germany, the first-named having about half the trade. Most of the
hardware and machinery is purchased in the United States.
Railway systems, with American terminal points at El Paso, San Antonio,
and New Orleans, extend from the most productive parts of the country.
One of the most important railways crosses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,
and, in order to encourage commerce, the harbors at Coatzacoalcos and
Salina Cruz have been deepened and improved. This interoceanic route is
destined to become a very important factor in commerce. It shortens the
route between European ports and San Francisco by six thousand miles,
and between New York and San Francisco by twelve hundred miles.[57]
_Mexico_, the capital, is the financial and commercial centre. _Vera
Cruz_ and _Tampico_ are connected with the capital by railway, but both
have very poor port facilities. Steamship lines connect the former with
New York, New Orleans, Havana, and French ports. It is the chief port of
the country. _Matamoros_ on the American frontier has a considerable
cattle-trade. The crop of sisal-hemp is shipped mainly from _Progresso_
and _Merida_. _Acapulco_, _Manzanillo_, and _Mazatlan_ for want of
railway connections have but little trade. The first-named is one of the
best harbors in the world. _Guadalajara_ has important textile and
pottery manufactures.
=The Central American States.=--The physical features and climate of
these states resemble those of Mexico. The Spanish-speaking people live
in the table-lands, where the climate is healthful. The coast-plain of
the Atlantic is forest-covered and practically uninhabited save by
Indians. Guatemala is the most important state. A railway from _Puerto
Barrios_, its Atlantic port, through its capital, _Guatemala_, to its
Pacific port, _San Jose_, is nearly completed. British Honduras is a
British territory acquired mainly for the mahogany product, which is
shipped from _Belize_. Honduras has great resources in mines, cultivable
lands, and forests, but these are undeveloped. Salvador is the smallest
but most progressive state.
[Illustration: ROUTE OF PROPOSED NICARAGUA CANAL.]
Nicaragua is politically of importance on account of the possibilities
of an interoceanic canal. A treaty for this canal, involving both
Nicaragua and Great Britain, has already been signed by the powers
interested. Many engineers regard the Nicaragua as preferable to that of
the Panama canal. The shorter distance between New York and the Pacific
ports of the United States, a saving of about four hundred miles, is in
its favor. The longer distance of transit and the dangers of navigating
Lake Nicaragua are against it. Costa Rica is favorably situated for
commerce, but its resources are not developed. A railway from _Puerto
Limon_ is nearly completed to _Puenta Arenas_, an excellent harbor on
the Pacific side.
Coffee, hides, mahogany, and fruit are the only products of importance
that connect these states with the rest of the world. About half the
trade goes to the United States. The Germans and English supply a
considerable part of the textiles and manufactured articles. The coffee
of Costa Rica is a very superior product. Much of the mahogany and
forest products goes to Great Britain. Fruit-steamers call at the
Atlantic ports for bananas, which are sold in New Orleans and the
Atlantic cities.
=The West Indies.=--The climate and productions of these islands are
tropical in character. Sugar, fruit, coffee, tobacco, and cacao are the
leading products. From the stand-point of the planter, the sugar
industry has been a history of misfortunes. The abolition of slavery
ruined the industry in many of the islands belonging to Great Britain.
The competition of the beet-sugar made in Europe drove the Cubans into
insurrection on account of the excessive taxes levied by the Spaniards,
and ended in the Spanish-American War.
The fruit-crop--mainly pineapples, oranges, and grapefruit--is shipped
to the United States. New York, Philadelphia, and the Gulf ports are the
destination of the greater part of it.
Cuba, the largest island, is one of the most productive regions of the
world. The famous "Havana" tobacco grows mainly in the western part,
although practically all Cuban tobacco is classed under this name.
According to popular opinion it is pre-eminently the best in flavor,
and the price is not affected by that of other tobaccos.[58] About
two-thirds of the raw leaf and cigars are purchased by the tobacco
manufacturers of the United States. _Havana_, _Santiago_, and
_Cienfuegos_ are the shipping-ports; most of the export is landed at New
York, Key West, and Tampa.
From 1900 to 1903 the small fraction of the sugar industry that survived
the war and the insurrection was crippled by the high tariff on sugar
imported into the United States. The latter, which was designed to
protect the home sugar industry, was so high that the Cubans could not
afford to make sugar at the ruling prices in New York. Hides, honey, and
Spanish cedar for cigar-boxes are also important exports.
The United States is the chief customer of Cuba, and in turn supplies
the Cubans with flour, textile goods, hardware, and coal-oil. Smoked
meat from Latin America and preserved fish from Canada and Newfoundland
are the remaining imports. There are no manufactures of importance. The
railways are mainly for the purpose of handling the sugar-crop.
_Havana_, the capital and financial centre, is connected with New York,
New Orleans, and Key West by steamship lines. _Santiago_, _Matanzas_,
and _Cienfuegos_ are ports having a considerable trade.
The British possessions in the West Indies are commercially the most
important of the European possessions. The Bahamas are low-lying coral
islands, producing but little except sponges, fruit, and sisal-hemp.
_Nassau_, the only town of importance, is a winter resort. Fruit, sugar,
rum, coffee, and ginger are exported from _Kingston_, the port of
Jamaica. _St. Lucia_ has probably the strongest fortress in the
Caribbean Sea.
Barbados produces more sugar than any other British possession in the
West Indies. The raw sugar, muscovado, is shipped to the United States.
Bermuda, an outlying island, furnishes the Atlantic states with onions,
Easter lilies, and early potatoes. From Trinidad is obtained the
asphaltum, or natural tar, that is used for street paving. Brea Lake,
the source of the mineral, is leased to a New York company. Sugar and
cacao are also exported from Port of Spain. The products of St. Vincent
and Dominica are similar to those of the other islands.
The French own Martinique (_Fort de France_) and Guadeloupe (_Basse
Terre_). St. Thomas (_Charlotte Amalie_), St. Croix, and St. John are
Danish possessions. Various attempts to transfer the Danish islands to
the United States have failed. They are admirably adapted for naval
stations. The island of Haiti consists of two negro republics, Haiti and
San Domingo. The only important product is coffee. Most of the product
is shipped to the United States, which supplies coal oil and textiles in
return.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What part of the United States was formerly a possession of Mexico, and
how did it become a possession of the United States?
From a cyclopedia learn the character of the political organization of
Mexico and the Central American states.
From the report listed below find what commercial routes gain, and what
ones lose in distance by the Nicaragua, as compared with the Panama
canal.
From a good atlas make a list of the islands of the West Indies; name
the country to which each belongs, and its exports to the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
The Statesman's Year-Book.
Great Canals of the World--pp. 4058-4059.
[Illustration: SOUTH AMERICA]
CHAPTER XXIII
SOUTH AMERICA--THE ANDEAN STATES
In its general surface features South America resembles North
America--that is, a central plain is bordered by low ranges on the east
and by a high mountain system on the west. In the southern part,
midsummer is in January and midwinter in July. The mineral-producing
states are traversed by the ranges of the Andes and all of them except
Chile are situated on both slopes of the mountains.
=Colombia.=--This republic borders both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific
Ocean. One port excepted, however, most of its commerce is confined to
the shores of the Caribbean Sea. The lowlands east of the Andes are
admirably adapted for grazing, and such cattle products as hides, horns,
and tallow are articles of export. This region, however, even with the
present facilities for transportation, produces only a small fraction of
the products possible.
The intermontane valleys between the Andean ranges have the climate of
the temperate zone; wheat and sheep are produced. The chief industrial
development, however, is confined to the lands near the Caribbean coast.
Coffee, cacao, and tobacco are grown for export, the business of
cultivation being largely controlled by Americans and Europeans. Rubber,
copaiba, tolu, and vegetable ivory[59] are gathered by Indians from the
forests.
[Illustration: A PASS IN THE ANDES]
The montane region has long been famous for its mines of gold and
silver. The salt mines near Bogota are a government monopoly and yield a
considerable revenue. Near the same city are the famous Muzo emerald
mines.
The rivers are the chief channels of internal trade. During the rainy
season steamboats ascend the Orinoco to Cabugaro, about two hundred
miles from Bogota. About fifty steamboats are in commission on the
Magdalena and its tributary, the Cauca. Mule trains traversing wretched
trails require from one to two weeks to transport the goods from the
river landings to the chief centres of population. Improvements now
under way in clearing and canalizing these rivers will add about five
hundred miles of additional water-way. The railways consist of short
lines mainly used as portages around obstructions of the rivers.
An unstable government and an onerous system of export taxes hamper
trade. Coffee, a leading product, goes mainly to Europe. Cattle
products, and balsam of tolu are purchased mainly in the United States.
Great Britain purchases the gold and silver ores. The chief
imports--textiles, flour, and petroleum--are purchased in the United
States. _Bogota_ and _Medellin_ are the largest cities. The isolation of
the region in which they are situated shapes the indifferent foreign
policy of the government. _Barranquilla_, _Sabanilla_, and _Cartagena_
are the chief ports.
=Panama.=--This state, formerly a part of Colombia, includes the isthmus
of Panama. Geographically it belongs to North America, and practically
it can be approached from Colombia by water only. The secession of
Panama was brought about by the complications of the isthmian canal. A
treaty with the United States gives the latter sovereign control over
the canal and the strip of land ten miles wide bordering it. _Panama_
and _Colon_ are the two ports of the canal. The United States exercises
police and sanitary regulations in these cities, but it has no
sovereignty over them.
=Peru.=--Peru has great resources, both agricultural and mineral. Cotton
is one of the chief products. The ordinary fibre is excelled only by the
sea-island cotton of the United States; the long-staple fibre of the
Piura is the best grown. The former is generally employed for mixing
with wool in the manufacture of underwear, and is sold in the United
States and Europe; the latter, used in the manufacture of thread and the
web of pneumatic tires, goes mainly to Great Britain.
Cane-sugar is a very large export crop, Great Britain, the United
States, and Chile being the principal customers. The area of coffee
production is growing rapidly. Coca-growing has become an important
industry, and the plantations aggregate about three million trees;[60] a
large part of the product is sent to the chemical laboratories of the
United States. A small crop of rice for export is grown on the coast.
The Amazon forest products yield a considerable revenue. Rubber and
vegetable ivory are the most valuable. Cinchona, or Peruvian bark,
however, is the one for which the state is best known; and there is
probably not a drug-shop in the civilized world that does not carry it
in stock.[61]
Cattle are grown for their hides, and of these the United States is the
chief purchaser. The wool of the llama, alpaca, and vicuna is used in
manufacture of the cloth known as alpaca, and the value of the shipments
to Great Britain usually exceeds one million dollars a year. In the
mining regions the llama is used as a pack-animal, and a large part of
the mine products reach the markets by this means of transportation. The
mines yield silver and copper; in the main the ores are exported to
Great Britain to be smelted.
The products already named are the chief exports; the imports are cotton
textiles, machinery, steel wares, and coal-oil. Great Britain has about
one-half the foreign trade; the United States controls about one-fourth.
_Callao_, the port of _Lima_, is the market through which most of the
foreign trade is carried on. Steamship lines connect it with San
Francisco and with British ports. _Mollendo_ is the outlet of Bolivian
trade. The railways are short lines extending from the coast.
=Ecuador.=--This state has but little commercial importance. The only
cultivated products for export are cacao, coffee, and sugar. The
first-named constitutes three-fourths of the exports, and most of it
goes to France. The land is held in large estates, and most of the
laboring people are in a condition of practical slavery. The
bread-stuffs consumed by the foreign population and the land proprietors
are imported. Animals are grown for their hides and these are sold to
the United States.
Another manufacture that connects Ecuador with the rest of the world is
the so-called "Panama" hat. The material used is toquilla straw, the
mid-rib of the screw-pine (_Carlodovica palmata_). The prepared straw
can be plaited only when the atmosphere is very moist, and much of the
work is done at night. The hats are made by Indians, who are governed
by their own ideas regarding style and shape. They bring from
twenty-five to fifty dollars apiece in the American markets, where
nearly all the product is sold.[62]
Mule-paths are the only means of inland communication. There is a
considerable local traffic on the estuaries of the rivers, but this is
confined to the rainy seasons. A railway built by an American company is
in operation from _Guayaquil_, a short distance inland. This city is the
chief market for foreign goods, and it is the only foreign port of the
Pacific coast of South America in which the volume of trade of the
United States approximates that of Germany and Great Britain.
=Bolivia.=--Bolivia lost much of its possible commercial possible future
when, after a disastrous war, its Pacific coast frontage became a
possession of Chile. The agricultural lands are unfortunately situated
with reference to the mining population; as a result, a considerable
amount of food-stuffs must be imported from Argentina. Coffee, cacao,
and coca are the principal cultivated products. Rubber from the Amazon
forest is the most valuable vegetable product, but a considerable amount
of cinchona bark and ivory nuts are also exported.
The mines, however, are the chief wealth of the state and give it the
only excuse for its political existence. They produce silver, tin,
copper, gold, and borate of lime. Inasmuch as a large part of the ore
and ore products must be transported by llamas and mules, only the
richest mines can be profitably worked. With adequate means of
transportation, the mines should make Bolivia one of the most powerful
South American states.
Railways already connect _Oruro_ with the sea-coast. A railway now
under construction will connect _La Paz_ (the pass) with the Pacific
coast, and also Buenos Aires. Excellent roads to take the place of the
pack-trains are under construction.
Practically all the imports, consisting of cotton and woollen textiles,
machinery, and steel wares, are purchased in Great Britain. The exports
are more than double the imports. Most of the goods pass through the
Chilean port Antofagasto, or Mollendo, Peru. _La Paz_, _Oruro_, and
_Sucre_ are the chief cities.
The hypothetical state of Acre is situated in the angle where Bolivia,
Peru, and Brazil join. The rubber forests, together with the absence of
legal government, led to its existence. The government is wholly
insurrectionary, but it at least uses its powers to encourage the rubber
trade.
=Chile.=--This state comprises the narrow western slope of the Andes,
extending from the tropic of Capricorn to Cape Horn, a distance of about
three thousand miles. The resources of the state have been so skilfully
handled, that with the drawback of a very small proportion of cultivable
land, Chile is the foremost Andean state.
The cultivation of the ordinary crops is confined to the flood-plains of
the short rivers. These, as a rule, are from twenty to fifty miles long
and a mile or two in width. They are densely peopled and cultivated to
the limit. Between the river-valleys are long stretches of unproductive
land.
Within the valleys wheat, barley, fruit, and various food-stuffs are
grown. Of these there are not only enough for home consumption, but
considerable quantities are exported to Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Much
of the cultivable land requires to be watered, and the system of
irrigation has been developed with extraordinary skill. The grazing
lands are extensive. In the northern part an excellent quality of merino
wool is produced; the greater part of the clip, however, is an ordinary
fibre. The cattle furnish a considerable amount of leather for export.
The conditions which have made the northern part a desert have also
given to the state its greatest resource--nitre.[63] The nitrate occurs
in the northern desert region. The crude salt is crushed and partly
refined at the mines, and carried by rail to the nearest port. The
working of the nitrate beds is largely carried on by foreign companies.
Nearly all the product is used as a fertilizer in Germany, France, and
Great Britain. Nitrate constitutes about two-thirds of the exports.
Iodine and bromine are also obtained from the nitrates, and the Chilean
product yields nearly all the world's supply.
Copper is extensively mined and, next to the nitrates, is the most
valuable product. Great Britain is the customer for the greater part.
Coal occurs in the southern part of the state, and is mined for export
to the various states of the Pacific coast. It is not a good coal for
iron smelting, however, and about three times as much is imported as is
exported. A considerable part of the imported coal comes from Australia,
and with it structural steel is made from pig-iron that is also
imported.
Chile is well equipped with railways, a part of which has been built and
are operated by the state. The most important line traverses the valley
between the Andes and the coast ranges, from Concepcion to Valparaiso.
In this region are most of the manufacturing enterprises.
The imports are chiefly coal, machinery, textile goods, and sugar. The
British control about two-thirds of the foreign trade; the Germans and
the French have most of the remainder. The United States supplies the
Chileans with a part of the textiles, a considerable quantity of Oregon
pine, and practically all the coal-oil used.
[Illustration: VALPARASIO]
_Valparaiso_ is the chief business centre of the Pacific coast of South
America. Most of the forwarding business is carried on by British and
German merchants. The transandine railway, now about completed, will
make it one of the most important ports of the world. _Santiago_ is the
capital. _Concepcion_ and _Talca_ are important centres of trade.
_Chillan_ is the principal cattle-market of the Pacific coast of South
America. _Copiapo_ is the focal point of the mining interests. _Iquique_
is the port from which about all the nitrates are shipped. _Punta
Arenas_, one of the "end towns" of the world, is an ocean post-office
for vessels passing through the Straits of Magellan. It is about as far
south as Calgary, B.C., is north.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What will be the probable effect of an interoceanic canal on the
commerce of these states?
From the Abstract of Statistics make a list of the exports from the
United States to these countries.
From the statistics of trade in the Statesman's Year-Book compare the
trade of the United States with that of other countries in these states.
How have race characteristics affected the commerce and development of
these states?
What is meant by peonage?
What cities of the tropical part of these states are in the climate of
the temperate zone?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Carpenter's South America.
Vincent's Around and About South America.
Fiske's Discovery of America--Chapters IX-X.
Procure, if possible, specimens of the following: Cacao and its
products, ivory nuts, cinchona bark, crude nitrate, Panama straw, iodine
(in a sealed vial), llama wool, alpaca cloth, Peruvian cotton.
CHAPTER XXIV
SOUTH AMERICA--THE LOWLAND STATES
The eastern countries of South America are mainly lowland plains. The
llanos of the Orinoco and the pampas of Plate (La Plata) River are
grazing lands. The silvas of the Amazon are forest-covered. In tropical
regions the coast-plain is usually very unhealthful; the seaports
excepted, most of the cities and towns are therefore built on higher
land beyond the coast-plain.
=Venezuela.=--The greater part of Venezuela is a region of llanos, or
grassy plains, shut off from the harbors of the Caribbean Sea, by
mountain-ranges. On account of their pleasant climate the
mountain-valleys constitute the chief region of habitation. The plains
are flooded in the rainy season and sun-scorched during the period of
drought; they are therefore unfit for human habitation.
Coffee is cultivated in the montane region; and cacao in the lower coast
lands. Almost every part of the coast lowlands is fit for sugar
cultivation, and in order to encourage this industry, the importation of
sugar is forbidden. As is usual in similar cases, the domestic sugar is
poor in quality and high in price. Among the forest products rubber,
fustic, divi-divi,[64] and tonka beans, the last used as a perfume, are
the only ones of value. The cattle of the llanos, the native long-horns,
furnish a poor quality of hide, and poorer beef. A few thousand head are
shipped yearly down the Orinoco to be sent to Cuba and Porto Rico.
The placer gold-mines of the Yuruari country, a region also claimed by
Great Britain, have been very productive. Coal, iron ore, and asphaltum
are abundant. Concessions for mining the two last-named have been
granted to American companies. The pearl-fisheries around Margarita
Island, also leased to a foreign company, have become productive under
the new management.
The means of intercommunication are as primitive as those of Colombia.
Short railways extend from several seaports to the regions of
production, and from these coffee and cacao are the only exports of
importance. The Orinoco River is the natural outlet for the
cattle-region, but the commerce of this region is small. The lagoon of
Maracaibo is becoming the centre of a rapidly growing commercial region.
_Caracas_, the capital and largest city, receives the imports of
textiles, domestic wares, flour, and petroleum from the United States
and Great Britain. The railway to its port, _La Guaira_, is a remarkable
work of engineering. _Puerto Cabello_, the most important port, receives
the trade of _Valencia_. From _Maracaibo_, the port on the lagoon of the
same name, is shipped the Venezuelan coffee. _Ciudad Bolivar_ is the
river-port of the Orinoco and an important rubber-market.
=The Guianas.=--The surface conditions and climate of the Guianas resemble
those of Venezuela. The native products are also much the same, but good
business organization has made the countries bearing the general name
highly productive. For the greater part, the coast-plain is the region
of cultivation. Sugar is still the most important crop; but on account
of the fierce competition of beet-sugar, on many of the plantations
cane-sugar cultivation is unprofitable and has been abandoned for that
of rice, cacao, and tobacco. Great Britain, Holland, and France possess
the country. The divisions are known respectively as British Guiana,
Surinam, and Cayenne, and the trade of each accrues to the
mother-country. British Guiana is noted quite as much for its
gold-fields on the Venezuelan border (Cuyuni River) as for its vegetable
products. _Georgetown_, better known by the name of the surrounding
district, _Demerara_, is the focal point of business. _New Amsterdam_ is
also a port of considerable trade. The gold-mining interests centre at
_Bartica_.
[Illustration: A CACAO PLANTATION]
[Illustration: PREPARING THE BEANS FOR SHIPMENT]
[Illustration: CACAO-TREE]
[Illustration: MAKING CHOCOLATE]
Surinam, in addition to its export of vegetable products, contains rich
gold-mines, and these contribute a considerable revenue. _Paramaribo_ is
the port and centre of trade. Phosphates and gold are among the
important exports of Cayenne, whose port bears the same name.
=Brazil.=--This state, nearly the size of the United States, comprises
about half the area of South America. Much of it, including the greater
part of the Amazon River basin, is unfit for the growth of food-stuffs.
There are three regions of production. The Amazon forests yield the
greater part of the world's rubber supply. The middle coast region has
various agricultural products, of which cotton and cane-sugar are the
most important. From the southern region comes two-thirds of the world's
coffee-crop. There are productive gold-mines in the state of Minas
Geraes, but this region is best known for the "old mine" diamonds, the
finest produced.
The Amazon rubber-crop includes not only the crude gum obtained in
Brazil, but a considerable part, if not the most, of the crop from the
surrounding states. The bifurcating Cassiquiare, which flows both into
Amazonian and Orinocan waters, drains a very large area of forest which
yields the best rubber known. The yield of 1901 aggregated about one
hundred and thirty million pounds, of which about one-half was sold in
the United States, one-third in Liverpool, and the rest mainly in
Antwerp and Le Havre. The price of rubber is fixed in New York and
London.
The cotton and cane-sugar are grown in the middle coast region. The
cotton industry bids fair to add materially to the prosperity of the
state. A considerable part of the raw cotton is exported, but the
reserve is sufficient to keep ten thousand looms busy. About three
hundred and fifty million pounds of the raw sugar is purchased by the
refineries of the United States, and much of the remainder by British
dealers.
The seeds of a species of myrtle (_Bertholletia excelsa_) furnish the
Brazil nuts of commerce, large quantities of which are shipped to Europe
and the United States.[65] Manganese ore is also an important export,
and Great Britain purchases nearly all of it.
The coffee-crop of the southern states is the largest in the world; and
about eight hundred million pounds are landed yearly at the ports of the
United States. The coffee-crop, more than any other factor, has made the
great prosperity of the state; for while the rubber yield employs
comparatively few men and yields but little public revenue, the
coffee-crop has brought into Brazil an average of about fifty million
dollars a year for three-quarters of a century.
Cattle products also afford a considerable profit in the vicinity of the
coffee-region. The hides and tallow are shipped to the United States.
For want of refrigerating facilities, most of the beef is "jerked" (or
sun-dried), and shipped in this form to Cuba.
The facilities for transportation, the rivers excepted, are poor. The
Amazon is navigable for ocean steamships nearly to the junction of the
Ucayale. The Paraguay affords a navigable water-way to the mouth of
Plate River. Rapids and falls obstruct most of the rivers at the
junction of the Brazilian plateau and the low plains, but these streams
afford several thousand miles of navigable waters both above and below
the falls.
Nearly all the railways are plantation roads, extending from the various
ports to regions of production a few miles inland. The most important
railway development is that in the vicinity of Rio, where short local
roads to the suburban settlements and the coffee-plantations converge at
the harbor. About fourteen thousand miles of railway are completed and
under actual construction. A considerable part of the mileage is owned
and operated by the state, and it has become the policy of the latter to
control its roads and to encourage immigration. One result of this
policy is the increasing number of German and Italian colonies, that
establish settlements in every district penetrated by a new road.
In 1900 the total foreign trade aggregated upward of two hundred and
seventy-five million dollars. The imports consist of cotton and woollen
manufactures, structural steel and machinery, preserved fish and meats,
and coal-oil. Great Britain, Germany, the United States, and France have
nearly all the trade. The United States sells to Brazil textiles and
coal-oil to the amount of over eleven million dollars yearly, and buys
of the country coffee and rubber to the amount of six times as much.
_Rio de Janeiro_, commonly called "Rio," is the capital and commercial
centre. Its harbor is one of the best in South America. Formerly all the
coffee was shipped from this port, but the greater part now goes from
_Santos_. _Porto Alegre_, the port of the German colonies, has also a
growing export trade.
_Bahia_, _Pernambuco_ (or _Recife_), _Maceio_, _Ceara_ are the markets
for cotton, sugar, and tobacco, much of which is shipped to other
Brazilian ports for home consumption. _Para_ and _Ceara_ monopolize
nearly all the rubber trade. The position of _Manaos_, at the confluence
of several rivers, makes it one of the most important markets of the
Amazon basin, and most of the crude rubber is first collected there for
shipment. _Cuyaba_ is the commercial centre of the mining region; its
outlet is the Paraguay River, and Buenos Aires profits by its trade.
=Argentina and the Plate River Countries.=--These states are situated in a
latitude corresponding to that of the United States. The entire area
from the coast to the slopes of the Andes is a vast prairie-region. As a
result of position, climate, and surface the agricultural industries are
the same as in the United States--grazing and wheat-growing.
Cattle-growing is the chief employment, and the cost per head of rearing
stock is practically nothing. For want of better means of transportation
the shipments of live beef are not very heavy; the quality of the beef
is poor, and until recently there have been no adequate facilities for
getting it to market.[66] A small amount of refrigerator beef and a
large amount of jerked beef are exported, however. Near the markets,
there are large plants in which the hides, horns, tallow, and meat are
utilized--the last being converted to the famous "beef extract," which
finds a market all over the world.
The sheep industry is on a much better business basis. Both the wool and
the mutton have been improved by cross-breeding with good stock. As a
result the trade in mutton and wool has increased by leaps and bounds;
and nearly three million sheep carcasses are landed at the other ports
of Brazil, at Cuba, and at various European states. The wool is bought
mainly by Germany and France, but the United States is a heavy
purchaser. The quality of the fibre, formerly very poor, year by year is
improving.
Wheat, the staple product, is grown mainly within a radius of four
hundred miles around the mouth of Plate River. The area of cultivation
is increasing as the facilities for transportation are extended and,
little by little, is encroaching on the grazing lands. The wheat
industry is carried on very largely by German and Italian colonists.
Flax, grown for the seed, is a very large export crop. Maize, partly for
export and partly for home consumption, is also grown.
The timber resources, chiefly in Paraguay and the Gran Chaco, are very
great, but for want of means of transportation the timber-trade cannot
successfully compete with that of Central America and Mexico. Workable
gold and silver ores are abundant along the Andean cordillera; gold,
silver, and copper are exported to Europe. A poor quality of lignite
occurs in several provinces, but there are no available mines yielding
coal suitable for making steam. There are petroleum wells near Mendoza.
Most of the manufactures pertain to the preparation of cattle products,
although a considerable amount of coarse textiles are made in the larger
cities from the native cotton and wool. Hats, paper (made from grass),
and leather goods are also made. In general, all manufactures are
hampered by the difficulties of getting good fuel at a low price.
Transportation is carried on along Plate River and the lower parts of
its tributaries. The railway has become the chief factor in the carriage
of commodities, however, and the railways of Argentina have been
developed on the plans of North American roads. About twelve thousand
miles are in actual operation, one of which is a transcontinental line,
about completed between Buenos Aires and Valparaiso. Electric railways
have become very popular, and the mileage is rapidly increasing.
The import trade, consisting of textile goods, machinery, steel, and
petroleum, is carried on with Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium
(mainly transit trade), the United States, and Italy. The competition
between the European states for this trade is very strong, and not a
little has been acquired at the expense of the United States, whose
trade has not materially increased.
[Illustration: AREA OF THE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF MATE]
_Buenos Aires_ is the financial centre of this part of South America.
Among its industries is the largest meat-refrigerating plant in the
world. The harbor at _La Plata_ is excellent and has drawn a
considerable part of the foreign trade from Buenos Aires. _Rosario_,
_Cordoba_, _Santa Fe_, and _Parana_ are the markets of extensive farming
regions. _Mendoza_ is the focal point of the mining interests.
=Paraguay= has a large forest area, but for want of means of
transportation it is without value. Even the railway companies find it
cheaper to buy their ties in the United States and Australia, rather
than to procure them in Paraguay. In spite of the extent of good land,
the wheat and much of the bread-stuffs are purchased from Argentina.
Tobacco and mate are the only export crops, and they have but little
value. The Parana and Paraguay Rivers are the only commercial outlet of
the state.
=Uruguay.=--Owing to its foreign population Uruguay is becoming a rich
country. The native cattle have been improved by cross-breeding with
European stock, and the state has become one of the foremost cattle and
sheep ranges of the world. The value of animal products is not far from
forty million dollars yearly. These go mainly to Europe, and so also
does the wheat-crop.
France and Argentina purchase most of the exports and Great Britain
supplies most of the textiles and machinery imported. The trade of the
United States is about one-fourth that of Great Britain. _Montevideo_ is
the chief market and port. At _Fray Bentos_ is one of the largest plants
in the world for the manufacture of cattle products.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What kind of commerce has led to the establishment of the various ports
along the Spanish Main?
What advantages has the American fruit-shipper, trading at South
American ports, over his European competitor?
What is meant by "horse latitudes," and what was the origin of the name?
In what way may the opening of an interoceanic canal affect the
coffee-trade of Brazil?--the nitrate trade of Chile?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From the Abstract of Statistics find the exports of the United States to
each of these countries.
From the Statesman's Year-Book compare the trade of the United States in
each of these countries with that of Great Britain, France, Germany, and
Italy.
If possible, obtain specimens of the following: Crude rubber, pampas
grass, Brazil nuts (in pod), and raw coffee of several grades for
comparison with Java and Mocha coffees.
CHAPTER XXV
EUROPE--GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY
Almost all the commercial activity of Europe is south of the parallel
and west of the meridian of St. Petersburg. Most of the great industries
are controlled by Germanic and Latin peoples, and among these Great
Britain and Germany stand first.
=Great Britain and Ireland.=--The United Kingdom, or Great Britain and
Ireland, are commonly known as the British Isles. The British Empire
consists of the United Kingdom and its colonial possessions; it includes
also a large number of islands occupied as coaling stations and for
strategic purposes. All told, the empire embraces about one-seventh of
the land area of the world and about one-fourth its population.
The wonderful power and great commercial development is due not only to
conditions of geographic environment but also to the intelligence of a
people who have adjusted themselves to those conditions. The insular
position of the United Kingdom has given it natural protection, and for
more than eight hundred years there has been no successful invasion by a
foreign power. Its commercial position is both natural and artificial.
It has utilized the markets to the east and south, and has founded great
countries which it supplies with manufactured products.
[Illustration: THE BRITISH EMPIRE]
The position of the kingdom with respect to climate is fortunate. The
movement of the Gulf Stream on the American coast carries a large volume
of water into the latitude of the prevailing westerly winds, and these
in turn carry warm water to every part of the coast of the islands. As a
result, the harbors of the latter are never obstructed by ice; those of
the Labrador coast, situated in the same latitude, are blocked nearly
half the year.
The high latitude of the islands is an advantage so far as the
production of food-stuffs is concerned. The summer days in the latitude
of Liverpool are very nearly eighteen hours in length, and this fact
together with the mild winters, adds very largely to the food-producing
power of the islands.
The highlands afford considerable grazing. Great care is taken in
improving the stock, both of cattle and sheep. In the north the cattle
are bred mainly as meat producers; in the south for dairy products.
Durham, Alderney, and Jersey stock are exported to both Americas for
breeding purposes. The sheep of the highlands produce the heavy, coarse
wool of which the well known "cheviot" and "frieze" textiles are made.
Elsewhere they are bred for mutton, of which the "South Down" variety is
an example.
The lowland regions yield grain abundantly where cultivated. The average
yield per acre is about double that of the United States, and is
surpassed by that of Denmark only. Both Ireland and England are famous
for fine dairy products. These are becoming the chief resource of the
former country, which is practically without the coal necessary for
extensive manufacture. The fishing-grounds form an important food
resource.
The cultivated lands do not supply the food needed for consumption. The
grain-crop lasts scarcely three months; the meat-crop but little longer.
Bread-stuffs from the United States and India, and meats from the United
States, Australia, and New Zealand make up the shortage. The annual
import of food-stuffs amounts to more than fifty dollars per capita.
The growing of wool and flax for cloth-making became an industry of
great importance just after the accession of Henry VII. With the advent
of peace, it became possible to manufacture into cloth the fibres that
before had been sent for that purpose to Flanders. The utilization of
the coal and the iron ore years afterward brought about an economic
revolution that was intensified by the invention of the steam-engine and
the power-loom.
These quickly brought the country into the foremost rank as a
manufacturing centre. Moreover, they also demanded the foreign markets
that have made the country a maritime power as well--for an insular
country must also have the ships with which to carry its merchandise to
its markets.
The development of the manufactures, therefore, is inseparably connected
with that of the mineral and metal industries. From very early times the
metal deposits of the country have been a source of power. Copper and
tin were used by the aboriginal Britons long before Caesar's
reconnaissance of the islands, and it is not unlikely that the Bronze
Period was the natural development that resulted from the discovery of
these metals.
Coal occurs in various fields that extend from the River Clyde to the
River Severn. The annual output of these mines at the close of the
century was about two hundred and twenty-five million tons. In the past
century the inroads upon the visible supply were so great that the
output in the near future will be considerably lessened. Not far from
one-sixth of the output is sold to consumers in Russia and the
Mediterranean countries, but a growing sentiment to forbid any sale of
coal to foreign buyers is taking shape.
[Illustration: BRITISH ISLES]
Iron ores are fairly abundant, but the hematite required for the best
Bessemer steel is limited to the region about Manchester and Birmingham.
The shortage of this ore has become so apparent within recent years that
Great Britain has become a heavy purchaser of ores in foreign markets.
The coal in the Clyde basin is employed mainly in the manufacture of
railway iron, steamship material, and rolling stock. The manufacture of
Bessemer steel is gradually moving to the vicinity of South Wales, at
the ports of which foreign pig-iron can be most cheaply landed. In
west-central England the several coal-fields form a single centre of
manufacture, where are located some of the largest woollen and cotton
mills in Europe. It also includes the plants for the manufacture of
machinery, cutlery, and pottery.
The import trade of Great Britain consists mainly of food-stuffs and raw
materials.[67] Of the latter, cotton is by far the most important. Most
of it comes from the United States, but the Nile delta, Brazil, the
Dekkan of India, the Iran plateau, and the Piura Valley of Peru send
portions, each region having fibre of specific qualities designed for
specific uses. The native wool clip forms only a small part of the
amount used in manufacture. The remainder, more than three million
pounds, comes from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
The supply of flax is small, and 100,000 tons are imported to meet the
wants of the mills. The greater part is purchased in Russia, but the
finer quality is imported from Belgium. Jute is purchased from India and
manufactured into burlap and rugs.
But little available standing timber remains, and lumber must,
therefore, be imported. The pine is purchased mainly in Sweden, Norway,
Canada, and the United States. A considerable amount of wood-pulp is
imported from Canada for paper-making. Mahogany for ornamental
manufactures is obtained from Africa and British Honduras. Oak, and the
woods for interior finish, are purchased largely from Canada and the
United States.
The export trade of Great Britain consists almost wholly of the articles
manufactured with British coal as the power. These are made from the raw
materials purchased abroad, and the stamp of the British craftsman is a
guarantee of excellence and honesty. Of the total export trade,
amounting yearly to about one billion, two hundred million dollars,
nearly one-third consists of cotton, woollen, linen, and jute textiles;
one-fifth consists of iron and steel manufactured stuffs made from
British ores. About one-third goes to the colonies of the
mother-country, with whom she keeps in close touch; Germany, the United
States, and the South American states are the chief foreign buyers.
For the handling and carriage of these goods there is an admirable
system of railways reaching from every part of the interior to the
numerous ports. The rolling stock and the locomotives are not nearly so
heavy as those used in the United States; the railway beds and track
equipment, on the whole, are probably the best in the world. Freight
rates are considerably higher than on the corresponding classes of
merchandise in the United States. The public highways are most
excellent, but the means of street traffic in the cities are very poor.
The harbor facilities at the various ports are of the best. The docks
and basins are usually arranged so that while the import goods are being
landed the export stuffs are made ready to be loaded. The facilities for
the rapid transfer of freights have been improved by the reconstruction
of the various river estuaries so as to make them ship-channels. The
estuaries of the Clyde, Tyne, and Mersey have been thus improved, while
Manchester has been made a seaport by an artificial canal. The British
merchant marine is the largest in the world, and about ninety per cent.
of the vessels are steamships.
_London_ is the capital; it is also one of the first commercial and
financial centres of the world. The Thames has not a sufficient depth of
water for the largest liners, and these dock usually about twenty miles
below the city. The colonial commerce at London is very heavy,
especially the India traffic, and it is mainly for this trade that the
British acquired the control of the Suez Canal.
_Liverpool_ is one of the most important ports of Europe, and receives
most of the American traffic. The White Star and Cunard Lines have their
terminals at this port.
_Southampton_ is also a port which receives a large share of American
traffic. The American and several foreign steamship lines discharge at
that place. _Hull_ and _Shields_ have a considerable part of the
European traffic. _Glasgow_ is one of the foremost centres of steel
ship-building. _Cardiff_ and _Swansea_ are ports connected with the coal
and iron trade. _Queenstown_ is a calling point for transatlantic
liners.
_Manchester_ is both a cotton port and a great market for the cotton
textiles made in the nearby towns of the Lancashire coal-field. _Leeds_
and _Bradford_ and the towns about them are the chief centres of woollen
manufacture. _Wilton_ and _Kidderminster_ are famous for carpets.
_Birmingham_ is the centre of the steel manufactures. _Sheffield_ has a
world-wide reputation for cutlery. In and near the Staffordshire
district are the potteries that have made the names of _Worcester_,
_Coalport_, _Doulton_, _Copeland_, and _Jackfield_ famous. _Belfast_ is
noted for its linen textiles, and also for some of the largest
steamships afloat that have been built in its yards. _Dundee_ is the
chief centre of jute manufacture.
=The German Empire.=--The German Empire consists of the kingdoms of
Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Wuertemburg, together with a number of
small states. The "free" cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck, whose
independence was purchased in feudal times, are also incorporated within
the empire. The present empire was formed in 1871, at the close of the
war between Germany and France. The merging of the states into the
empire was designed as a political step, but it proved a great
industrial revolution as well.
The plain of Europe which slopes to the north and the Baltic Sea, the
flood-plains of the rivers excepted, is feebly productive of grain. It
is a fine grazing region, however, and the dairy products are of the
best quality. Among European states Russia alone surpasses Germany in
the number of cattle grown. The province of Schleswig-Holstein is famous
the world over for its fine cattle. Cavalry horses are a special feature
of the lowland plain, and the government is the chief buyer. The wool
product has hitherto been important, but the sheep ranges are being
turned into crop lands, on account of the increase of population in the
industrial regions.
The midland belt, however, between the coast-plain and the mountains, is
the chief food-producing part of Germany. Rye and wheat are grown
wherever possible, but the entire grain-crop is consumed in about eight
months. The United States, Argentina, and Russia supply the wheat and
flour; Russia supplies the rye.
[Illustration: GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES]
The sugar-beet is by far the most important export crop, and Germany
produces yearly about one million, eight hundred thousand tons, or
nearly as much as Austria-Hungary and France combined. This industry is
encouraged by a bounty paid on all sugar exported.[68] A considerable
amount of raw beet-sugar is sold to the refineries of the United States;
Great Britain also is a heavy buyer. The home consumption is relatively
small, being about one-third per capita that of the United States.
Silesia, the Rhine Valley, and the lowlands of the Hartz Mountains are
the most important centres of the sugar industry.
Germany is rich in minerals.[69] Zinc occurs in abundance, and the mines
of Silesia furnish the world's chief supply. Most of the lithographic
stone in use is obtained in Bavaria. Copper and silver are mined in the
Erz and Hartz Mountains. During the sixteenth century the mines of the
latter region brought the states then forming Germany into commercial
prominence and thereby diverted the trade between the North and
Mediterranean Seas to the valleys of the Rhine and Elbe Rivers.
These two metal products made Germany a great financial power. The
Franco-Prussian War added to Germany the food-producing lands of the
Rhine and Moselle, and the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. At the same
time it gave the Germans organization by welding the various German
states into an empire. As a result there has been an industrial
development that has placed Germany in the class with the United States
and Great Britain.
By unifying the various interstate systems of commerce and
transportation, the iron and steel industry has greatly expanded. The
chief centre of this industry is the valley of the Ruhr River.
Coal-measures underlie an area somewhat larger than the basin of the
river. To the industrial centres of this valley iron ore is brought by
the Rhine and Moselle barges from Alsace-Lorraine and Luxemburg, and
also from the Hartz Mountains.
In the importance and extent of manufactures, Germany ranks next to
Great Britain among European states, and because of the extent of their
coal-fields the Germans seem destined in time to surpass their rivals.
The manufacture of textiles is one of the leading industries, and, next
to Great Britain, Germany is the heaviest purchaser of raw cotton from
the United States. The Rhine district is the chief centre of cotton
textile manufacture. Raw cotton is delivered to the mills by the Rhine
boats, and these carry the manufactured product to the seaboard. Central
and South America are the chief purchasers.
Woollen goods are also extensively manufactured, the industry being in
the region that produces Saxony wool. In Silesia and the lower Rhine
provinces there are also extensive woollen textile manufactures, but the
goods are made mainly from imported wool. Argentina and the other Plate
River countries are the chief buyers of these goods. There is a
considerable linen manufacture from German-grown flax, and silk-making,
mainly from raw silk imported from Italy.
The great expansion and financial success of the manufacturing
enterprises is due very largely to the admirable organization of the
lines of transportation. The rivers, with their connecting canals,
supplement the railways instead of competing with them. They are
utilized mainly for slow freights, while the railways carry the traffic
that demands speed. The possibilities of both inland water-ways and
railway transportation have been utilized by the Germans to the utmost,
with the result of a very low rate both for coal and ore, and for
structural iron and steel. The latter is carried from the various
steel-making plants in the Ruhr Valley to the seaboard at a rate of
eighty to ninety cents per ton.[70]
[Illustration: LUeBECK]
[Illustration: BREMEN]
All this has resulted in a wonderful commercial expansion of the
empire. In 1875 Germany was neither a maritime nor a naval power. At the
close of the century it ranked about with the United States as a naval
power, and far surpassed that country in the tonnage of merchant marine.
The German steamship fleet includes the largest and fastest vessels
afloat.
German trade may be summed up as an export of manufactured goods and an
import of food-stuffs and raw materials. At the close of the century the
annual movement of industrial products amounted to nearly two and
one-half billion dollars. About one-half the trade of the empire is
carried on with Great Britain, the United States, Austria-Hungary, and
Russia. A large part of the foreign trade is carried on through the
ports of Belgium and Holland.
_Berlin_, the capital, is one of the few cities having a population of
more than one million. It is not only a great centre of trade, but it is
one of the leading money-markets of Europe; it is also the chief railway
centre. _Hamburg_ and _Bremen_ are important ports of German-American
trade, the former being the largest seaport of continental Europe.
_Breslau_ is an important market, into which the raw materials of
eastern Europe are received, and from which they are sent to the
manufacturing districts. The art galleries of _Dresden_ have had the
effect of making that city a centre of art manufactures which are famous
the world over. _Luebeck_ is one of the free cities that was formerly in
the Hanse League.
The twin cities, _Barmen-Eberfeld_, in the Ruhr coal-field, form one of
the principal centres of cotton manufacture in the world. _Dortmund_ is
a coal-market. At _Essen_ are the steel-works founded by Herr Krupp.
They are the largest and one of the most complete plants in the world.
The output includes arms, heavy and light ordnance, and about every kind
of structural iron and steel used. About forty thousand men are
employed. _Chemnitz_ is an important point, not only of cotton
manufacture, but also of Saxony wools, underwear and shawls being its
most noteworthy products. At _Stettin_, _Danzig_, and _Kiel_ are built
the steamships that have given to Germany its great commercial power.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what ways are Great Britain and Germany commercial rivals?
What are the advantages of each with respect to position?--with respect
to natural resources?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports of
each;--the leading imports of each. What exports have they in common?
From the Abstract of Statistics find what commodities the United States
sells to each.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--Chapter III.
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Book III, Chapters III-V.
CHAPTER XXVI
EUROPE--THE BALTIC AND NORTH SEA STATES
These states, like Great Britain and Germany, belong to Germanic Europe,
and their situation around the North and Baltic Seas makes their
commercial interests much the same. From the stand-point of commerce
Holland might be regarded as an integral part of Germany, inasmuch as a
large part of the foreign commerce of Germany must reach the sea by
crossing that state.
=Sweden and Norway.=--Sweden and Norway occupy the region best known as
the Scandinavian peninsula. The western side faces the warm, moist winds
of the Atlantic, but the surface is too rugged to be productive. The
lands suitable for farming, on the other hand, are on the east side,
where, owing to the high latitude, the winters are extremely cold.
The plateau lands are in the latitude of the great pine-forest belt that
extends across the two continents. The forests of the Scandinavian
peninsula are near the most densely peopled part of Europe, and they are
also readily accessible. Moreover, the rugged surface offers unlimited
water-power. As a result Norway and Sweden practically control the
lumber-market of Europe, and their lumber products form one of the most
important exports of the kingdom. Norway pine competes with California
redwood in Australia. The "naval stores," tar and pitch, compete with
those of Georgia and the Carolinas. The wood-pulp from this region is
the chief supply of the paper-makers of Europe. Next to Russia, Sweden
has the largest lumber-trade in Europe. The Mediterranean states are the
chief buyers.
The mineral products are a considerable source of income. Building stone
is shipped to the nearby lowland countries. The famous Swedish
manganese-iron ores, essential in steel manufacture, are shipped to the
United States and Europe. For this purpose they compete with the ores of
Spain and Cuba. The mines of the Gellivare iron district are probably
the only iron-mines of consequence within the frigid zone. The ore is
sent to German and British smelteries.
The fisheries are the most important of Europe, and this fact has had a
great influence on the history of the people. Centuries ago the people
living about the _vigs_ or fjords of the west coast were compelled to
depend almost wholly on the fisheries for their food-supplies. As a
result they became the most famous sailors of the world. They
established settlements in Iceland and Greenland; they also planted a
colony in North America 500 years before the voyage of Columbus.
Herring, salmon, and cod are the principal catch of the fisheries, and
about four-fifths of the product is cured and exported to the Catholic
European states and to South America.
South of Kristiania farming is the principal industry. Much of the land
is suitable for wheat-growing, but the productive area is so small that
a considerable amount of bread-stuffs must be imported from the United
States. On account of the high latitude the winters are too long and
severe for any but the hardiest grains. Dairy products are commercially
the most important output of the farms, and they find a ready market in
the popular centres of Europe--London, Hamburg, Paris, and Berlin.
The lumber, furniture, matches, fish, ores, and dairy products sold
abroad do not pay for the bread-stuffs, coal, petroleum, clothing, and
machinery. In part, this is made up by the carrying trade of Norwegian
vessels; the rest of the deficit is more than met by the money which the
throngs of tourists spend during the summer months.
The United States buys from these countries fish and ores to the amount
of about three million dollars a year; it sells them cotton, petroleum,
bread-stuffs, and machinery to the amount of about twelve million
dollars.
_Stockholm_, the capital of Sweden, is the chief financial and
distributing centre of the Scandinavian trade. Its railway system
reaches about every area of production. Although having a good harbor of
its own, it must depend on _Trondhjem_ (Drontheim) for winter traffic,
because the Baltic ports are closed by ice three or four months of the
year. _Kristiania_, the capital of Norway, is the export market of the
fish and lumber products.
_Goteborg_, owing to recently completed railway and canal connections,
is becoming an important port of trade. It is convenient to other
European ports, and it is rarely closed by ice. _Bergen_, _Trondhjem_,
and _Hammerfest_ derive a heavy income from their fisheries and likewise
from the tourists who visit the coast during midsummer. The last-named
port, although farther north than any town in the world, has an open
harbor during the winter.
=Denmark.=--Denmark is essentially an agricultural state, and almost every
square mile of available land is under cultivation. Even the sand-dunes
have been reclaimed and converted into pasturage. The yield of wheat is
greater per acre than in any other country, but as only a small area is
sown, wheat and flour are imported.
About half the area of the state is used in growing fodder for horses
and cattle. The dairy products, especially butter, are unrivalled
elsewhere in Europe. The dairy business is largely controlled by a
cooperative association of dairymen and farmers. Pastures, fodder,
cattle, sheds, creameries, and all the processes involved are subject to
a most rigid sanitary inspection.
_Copenhagen_, the capital, is the financial centre of the kingdom.
Commercially it is one of the most important ports of Europe. Various
shipments consigned to Baltic ports are landed at this city; here the
cargoes break bulk and are again trans-shipped to their destination. In
order to facilitate this forwarding business, the Crown has made
Copenhagen a free port. Steamship lines connect it with New York,
British ports, and the East Indies.
A great deal of farming and dairy machinery is manufactured; coal,
cotton goods, and structural machinery are imported from the United
States. Little, however, is exported to that country, almost all the
dairy products being sold to Great Britain and other populous centres of
western Europe. _Aalborg_ and _Aarhuus_ are dairy-markets.
Greenland and Iceland are colonies of Denmark, and the fishing industry
of the kingdom is carried on mainly along the shores of these islands.
The furs, seal-skins, seal-oil, and eider-down of Greenland are a
government monopoly. The mineral cryolite occurs at Ivigtut and is mined
by soda-making establishments in the United States. Iceland produces
sheep, cattle, and fish; these are shipped from _Reikiavik_. The Faroe
Islands produce but little save wool, feathers, and birds' eggs.
=Belgium.=--Probably in no other country of Europe has nature done so
little and man so much to make a great state as in Belgium. The lowland
region has been made so fertile by artificial means that it yields more
wheat per acre than any other country except Denmark. The Ardennes
highland in the southeast is naturally unproductive, but it has become
one of the great manufacturing centres of Europe. Less than one-twelfth
of the area of the state is unproductive.
The coast, more than twoscore miles in extent, has not a single harbor
for large vessels, and the two navigable rivers, the Scheldt and Meuse,
flow into another state before reaching the sea.
[Illustration: HOLLAND AND BELGIUM]
The low sand-barrens next the coast have been reclaimed by means of a
grass that holds in place the sand that formerly shifted with each
movement of the wind. This region is now cultivated pasture-land that
produces the finest of horses, cattle, and dairy products. The dairy
products go mainly to London. The Flemish horses, like those of the
sand-barrens of Germany and France, are purchased in the large cities,
where heavy draught-horses are required. Many of them are sold to the
express companies of the United States.
Bordering the sand-barrens is a belt of land that produces grain and the
sugar-beet. Flax is an important product, and its cultivation has had
much to do with both the history and the political organization of the
state. Before the advent of the cotton industry, woollen and linen were
practically the only fibres used in cloth-making. Belgium was then the
chief flax-growing and cloth-making country, and all western Europe
depended upon the Flemish looms for cloth. This industry, therefore,
gave the country not only commercial prominence, but was largely
responsible for its political independence as well. Flax is still an
important product, and the linen textiles made in the state are without
a superior. Much of the flax is grown in the valley of the River Lys.
One of the most productive coal-fields of Europe stretches across
Belgium, and a few miles south of it are the iron-ore deposits that
extend also into Luxemburg and Germany. In addition to these, the
zinc-mines about Moresnet are among the richest in the world. Belgium
is, therefore, one of the great metal-working centres of Europe. A small
portion of the coal is exported to France, but most of it is required in
the manufactures.
_Liege_, _Seraing_, and _Verviers_ are the great centres of the metal
industry. They were built at the eastern extremity of the coal-field,
within easy reach of the iron ores. Firearms, railroad steel, and
tool-making machinery are the chief products of the region, and because
of the favorable situation, these products easily compete with the
manufactures of Germany and France.
_Ghent_ is the chief focal point for the flax product, which is
converted into the finest of linen cloth and art fabrics. Much of the
weaving and spinning machinery employed in Europe is made in this city.
_Mechlin_ and the villages near by are famous the world over for
hand-worked laces.
Expensive porcelains, art tiles, glassware, and cheap crockery are made
in the line of kilns that reaches almost from one end of the coal-field
to the other; these products, moreover, are extensively exported.
The railways are owned and operated by the state. They are managed so
judiciously, moreover, that the rates of carriage are lower than in most
European states. The Scheldt is navigable for large ocean steamers to
_Antwerp_, and this city is the great Belgian port for ocean traffic.
The city owes its importance to its position. One branch of the Scheldt
leads toward the Rhine; the other is connected by a canal with the
rivers of France; the main stem of the river points toward London. It is
therefore the meeting of three ways. It is the terminal of the
steamships of American, and of various other lines. It is also the depot
of the Kongo trade. Ship-canals deep enough for coasters and freighters
connect _Ghent_, _Bruges_, and _Brussels_ with tide-water. These are
about to be converted to deep-water ship-canals.
The foreign commerce of Belgium is much like that of other European
states. Wheat, meat, maize, cotton, and petroleum are imported mainly
from the United States; iron ore is purchased from Luxemburg and
Germany, and various raw materials are brought from France. In exchange
there are exported fine machinery, linen fabrics, porcelains, fire-arms,
glassware, and beet-sugar. From the Kongo state, at the head of which is
the King of the Belgians, are obtained rubber and ivory. The rubber is
sold mainly to the United States.
_Brussels_ is the capital and financial centre. On account of the state
control of the railways, it is also the directive centre of all the
industries pertaining to commerce and transportation.
=Holland.=--The names Holland and Netherlands mean "lowland," and the
state itself has a lower surface than any other country of Europe.
Nearly half the area is at high-tide level or else below it. A large
part, mainly the region about the Zuider[71] Sea, has been reclaimed
from the sea.
In the reclamation of these lands stone dikes are built to enclose a
given area, and from the basin thus constructed the water is pumped. The
reclaimed lands, or "polders," include not only the sea-bottom, but the
coast marshes as well; even the rivers are bordered with levees in order
to prevent overflows. Windmills are the machinery by which the water is
pumped from the polders into the sea. In no other part of the world is
wind-power so extensively used. Almost every acre of the polders is
under cultivation, and these lands grow a very large part of the
vegetables and flowers consumed in the great cities of England, France,
and Belgium.
The coast sand-barrens have been converted into pasture-lands that
produce draught-horses, beef cattle, and dairy cattle. The horses find a
ready market in the United States and the large European cities; the
dairy cattle not needed at home are exported, the United States being a
heavy purchaser. The beef cattle are grown mainly for the markets of
London. Dutch butter is used far beyond the boundaries of the state, and
Edam cheese reaches nearly every large city of Europe and America.
The sugar-beet is extensively cultivated, in spite of the great trade
resulting from the cane-sugar industry of the East Indies. It is more
profitable to import wheat from the United States and rye from Russia in
order to use the land for the sugar-beet.
Practically no timber suitable for lumber manufacture exists, and
building material therefore must be imported. Pine is purchased from
Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States. Stone is purchased wherever
it may be obtained as return freight, or as ballast. The coast fisheries
yield oysters, herrings, and "anchovies," which are not anchovies, but
sprats.
For want of coal and iron there are few manufactures, and the garden and
dairy products are about the only export articles. There is an
abundance of clay, and of this brick for road-making, tiles for building
purposes, and porcelains are made. But little of the raw sugar is
refined; most of it is sold to foreign refiners, and the United States
is one of the chief customers.
Holland is a great commercial country, and for more than five hundred
years the Dutch flag has been found in almost every large port of the
world. Much of the commerce is derived from the tobacco, sugar, and
coffee plantations of the Dutch East Indies.
A very large part of the commerce, however, is neither import or export
trade, but a "transit" commerce. Thus, American coal-oil is transferred
from the great ocean tank-steamers to smaller tank-boats, and is then
carried across the state into Germany, France, and Belgium, through the
numerous canals.
This trade applies also to many of the products of the German industries
which will not bear a heavy freight tariff, such as coal, ores, etc. It
reaches the Rhine and Rhone river-basins and extends even to the Danube.
Both Switzerland and Austria-Hungary send much of their exports through
Holland. All trade at the various ports and through the canals is free,
it being the policy to encourage and not to obstruct commerce.
_Amsterdam_, the constitutional capital, is one of the great financial
and banking centres of Europe. The completion of the Nord Holland canal
makes the docks and basins accessible to the largest steamships.
Diamond-cutting is one of the unique industries of the city. Since the
discovery of the African mines its former trade in diamonds has been
largely absorbed by London.
More than half the carrying trade of the state centres at _Rotterdam_.
By the improvement of the river estuaries and canals this city has
become one of the best ports of Europe, and the tonnage of goods
handled at the docks is enormously increasing. _Vlissingen_ (Flushing)
and the _Hook_ are railway terminals that handle much of the local
freights consigned to London. _Delft_ is famous the world over for the
beautiful porcelain made at its potteries.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How has the topography of each of these states affected its commerce?
How is their commerce affected by latitude and climate?
How has the cultivation of the sugar-beet affected the cane-sugar
industry in the British West Indies?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports and
imports of each country.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of the United States with
each of these countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--pp. 153-159.
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Book III, Chapters I and VIII.
CHAPTER XXVII
EUROPE--THE MEDITERRANEAN STATES AND SWITZERLAND
The Mediterranean states are peopled mainly by races whose social and
economic development was moulded largely by the Roman occupation of the
Mediterranean basin for a period of more than one thousand years. The
occupations of the people have been shaped to a great extent by the
slope of the land and by the mountain-ranges that long isolated them
from the Germanic peoples north of the Alps.
=France.=--The position of France with respect to industrial development
is fortunate. The North Sea coast faces the ports of Great Britain; the
Atlantic ports are easily accessible to American centres of commerce;
the Mediterranean ports command a very large part of the trade of that
sea.
The easily travelled overland routes between the Mediterranean and North
Seas in very early times gave the country a commercial prominence that
ever since has been retained. Even before the time of Caesar it was a
famous trading-ground for Mediterranean merchants, and the conquest of
the country was not so much for the spoils of war as for the extension
of Roman commercial influence.
The greater part of France is an agricultural region, and nowhere is the
soil cultivated with greater skill. Although the state is not quite as
large as Texas, there are more farms than in all the United States,
their small size making thorough cultivation a necessity. Much of the
land is too valuable for wheat-farming, and so the eastern
manufacturing districts depend upon the Russian wheat-farms for their
supply. Northwestern France, however, has a surplus of wheat, and this
is sold to Great Britain.
[Illustration: FRANCE]
The sugar-beet is the most profitable crop, and its cultivation is aided
indirectly by the government, which gives a bounty on all exported
sugar. The area of sugar-beet cultivation will probably increase to its
limit for this reason.
The French farmer is an artist in the cultivation of small fruits, and
the latter form an important source of revenue. Of the fruit-crop, the
grape is by far the most important commercially. French wines,
especially the champagnes, are exported to a greater extent than the
wines of any other country.[72] Most of the wine is sold in Great
Britain and the countries north of the grape belt; a considerable part
is sold in the United States and the eastern countries. Champagne,
Bordeaux, the Loire, and the Rhone Valleys are famous wine districts.
Wine is also imported, to be refined or to be made into brandy.
Cattle-breeding, both for meat and for dairy purposes, is extensively
carried on. The meat is consumed at home. Butter is an important export,
especially in the northwest, where a large amount is made for London
consumers. This region produces Camembert and Neufchatel cheese, both of
which are largely exported; Brie cheese is made chiefly along the German
border. The Roquefort product, made of ewe's milk, is fermented in
limestone caves and cellars. All these varieties have a large sale, the
United States and Great Britain being heavy purchasers.
The Percheron draught-horse is raised for export as well as for home
use; mules are extensively raised for the army wagon-trains of Great
Britain and Germany. Sheep are grown for the finer grades of wool, but
so much of the sheep pasture has been given to the cultivation of the
sugar-beet, that a considerable part of the woollen textiles are now
made of wool imported from Argentina. A large part of the eggs and table
poultry consumed in London are products of northwestern France.
The coal-fields of the north produce nearly two-thirds of the total
amount consumed. Iron ores are found near the German border; they are
sent to coal-fields in the neighborhood of St. Etienne and Le Creuzot to
be manufactured into steel. Both coal and iron ore are deficient. To
meet the requirements of consumption, the former is imported from Great
Britain, Germany, and Belgium; the latter, mainly from Germany and
Spain.
The manufactures of France have a wide influence. From the coal and iron
are derived the intricate machinery that has made the country famous,
the railways, the powerful navy, and the merchant marine that has made
the country a great commercial nation. Because of the great creative
skill and taste of the people, French textiles are standards of good
taste, and they find a ready market in all parts of the world. In
textile manufactures more than one million people and upward of one
hundred thousand looms are employed.
The United States is a heavy buyer of the woollen cloths and the finer
qualities of dress goods. Inasmuch as these goods have not been
successfully imitated elsewhere, the French trade does not suffer from
competition. The best goods are made from the fleeces of French merino
sheep, and are manufactured mainly in the northern towns. The Gobelin
tapestries of Paris are famous the world over.
The cotton manufactures depend mainly on American cotton. About
two-thirds of the cotton is purchased in the United States, a part of
which returns in the form of fine goods that may be classed as muslins,
tulles, and art textiles. The market for such goods is also general. In
the manufacture of fine laces, such as the Point d'Alencon fabrics, the
French have few equals and no superiors. The flax is imported mainly
from Belgium.
Silk culture is aided by the government, and is carried on mainly in
the south. The amount grown, however, is insufficient to keep the
factories busy, and more than four-fifths of the raw silk and cocoons
are imported from Italy and other southern countries.
The chief imports to France are coal, raw textile fibres, wine, wheat,
and lumber. The last two products excepted, they are again exported in
the form of manufactured products. The great bulk of the imports comes
from Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Russia, and
Argentina. In 1900 the import trade from these countries aggregated
about five hundred million dollars. The total export trade during the
same year was about eight hundred million dollars; it consisted mainly
of high-priced articles of luxury.
The foreign trade is supported by a navy, which ranks second among the
world's navies, and a merchant marine of more than fifteen thousand
vessels. Aside from the subsidies given to mail steamships, government
encouragement is given for the construction and equipment of home-built
vessels. It is a settled policy that French vessels shall carry French
traffic.
Of the 24,000 miles of railway, about 2,000 miles are owned by the
state. The rivers are connected by canals, and these furnish about 7,000
miles of navigable waters. As in Germany, the water-routes supplement
the railway lines. Practically all lines of transportation converge at
Paris.
_Paris_, the capital, is a great centre of finance, art, science, and
literature, whose influence in these features has been felt all over the
world. The character of fine textiles, and also the fashions in the
United States and Europe, are regulated largely in this city.
_Marseille_ is the chief seaport, and practically all the trade between
France and the Mediterranean countries is landed at this port; it is
also the focal point of the trade between France and her African
colonies, and a landing-place for the cotton brought from Egypt and
Brazil.
_Havre_, the port receiving most of the trade from the United States, is
the port of Paris. _Rouen_ is the chief seat of cotton manufacture.
_Paris_ and _Rheims_ are noted for shawls. _Lille_ and _Roubaix_ are
centres of woollen manufacture. _Lyons_ is the great seat of silk
manufacture.
=Italy.=--Italy is a spur of the Alps extending into the Mediterranean
Sea. From its earliest history it has been an agricultural state, and,
excepting the periods when it has been rent by wars, it has been one of
the most productive countries in the world.
Wheat is extensively grown, but the crop is insufficient for home
consumption, and the deficit is imported from Russia and Hungary. A
large part of the wheat-crop is grown in the valley of the Po River.
Flax and hemp are grown for export in this region; and corn for home
consumption is a general product. Cotton is a good crop in Sicily and
the south, but the amount is insufficient for use and must be made up by
imports from the United States and Egypt.
Silk, fruit, and vegetables are the staple products that connect Italy
commercially with the rest of the world. About a million people are
concerned in the silk industry, and Italy is one of the foremost
countries in the world in the production of raw silk. Most of the crop
is produced in northern Italy; western Europe and the United States are
the chief buyers. The silk of the Piedmont region is the best in
quality.
Fruit is the crop next in value to raw silk. Sicilian oranges and
lemons, from about twenty millions of trees, find a ready market in
Europe; the oranges come into competition with the California and
Florida oranges of the United States, in spite of the tariff imposed
against them by the latter country. Olives are probably the most
important fruit-crop. Both the preserved fruit and the oil are exported
to nearly every civilized people. Much of the oil is consumed at home,
very largely taking the place of meat and butter. Lucca-oil is regarded
as the best.
[Illustration: ITALY]
The grape-crop is enormous, and the fruit itself is exported. Some of
the fruit sold as "Malaga" grapes throughout the United States during
winter months comes from Italy. Chianti wine, from the vineyards around
Florence, has hitherto been regarded as an inferior product, but the
foreign demand for it is steadily increasing. The Marsala wines of
Sicily are largely exported.
Among mineral products the iron deposits in the island of Elba are
undoubtedly the most valuable, but they are yet undeveloped to any great
extent. The quarries at Carrara produce a fine marble that has made
Italy famous in sculpture and architecture. Much of the boracic acid
used in the arts comes from Tuscany, and the world's chief supply of
sulphur comes from the neighborhood of Mount Etna in Sicily. Of this
Americans buy about one-third.
On account of the lack of coal, the manufactures are restricted mainly
to art wares, such as jewelry, silk textiles, and fine glassware. The
Venetian glassware, the Florentine and mosaic jewelry, and the pink
coral ornaments are famous the world over. Within recent years, however,
imported coal, together with native lignite, have given steel
manufacture an impetus. Steel ships and rails made at home are meeting
the demands of commerce. Goods of American cotton are made for export to
Turkey and South American countries.
Raw silk, wine, olive-oil, straw goods, sulphur, and art goods are
exported. Cotton, wheat, tobacco, and farm machinery from the United
States, and coal, woollen textiles, and steel goods from Great Britain
are the chief imports. Most of the foreign trade is with the nearby
states. The raw silk goes to France.
Since the unification of Italy the railways have been readjusted to the
needs of commerce. Before that time the lines were wholly local in
character; with the readjustment they were organized into trunk lines.
They enter France through the Mont Cenis tunnel; they reach Switzerland
and Germany by way of St. Gotthard Pass; they cross the Austrian border
through Brenner Pass.
_Rome_, the capital, is a political rather than an industrial centre.
_Milan_, the Chicago of the kingdom, is the chief market for the crops
of northern Italy and a great railway centre. It is also the market for
raw silk. _Genoa_, the principal port, is the one at which most of the
trade of the United States is landed. _Naples_ monopolizes most of the
marine traffic between Italy and Great Britain. _Leghorn_ is famous for
its manufacture and trade in straw goods. A considerable part of the
grain harvested in the Po Valley is stored for shipment at _Venice_--not
in elevators, but in pits. _Palermo_ is the trading centre of Sicily.
Most of the sulphur is shipped from _Catania_. _Brindisi_ and _Ancona_
are shipping-points for the Suez Canal route.
=Spain and Portugal.=--The surface of these states is too rugged and the
climate too arid for any great agricultural development. Less than half
the area is under cultivation; nevertheless, they are famous for several
agricultural products--merino wool, wine, and fruit. The merino wool of
the Iberian peninsula has no equal for fine dress goods; it is imported
into almost every other country having woollen manufactures. A
considerable amount of ordinary wool is grown, but not enough for home
needs.
The fruit industry is an important source of income. Oranges, limes, and
lemons are extensively grown for exports; among these products is the
bitter orange, from which the famous liqueur curacao, a Dutch
manufacture, is made. The heavy, sweet port wine, now famous the world
over, was first made prominent in the vineyards of Spain and Portugal.
Malaga raisins are sold in nearly every part of England and America. The
olive is more extensively cultivated than in any other state, but both
the fruit and the oil are mainly consumed at home--the latter taking the
place of butter. Raw silk is grown for export to France.
Although a larger part of the peninsula must depend on the American and
Scandinavian forests for lumber, there is one tree product that is in
demand wherever bottles are used--namely, cork. The cork is prepared
from the bark of a tree (_Quercus suber_) commonly known as the cork
oak,[73] which grows freely in the Iberian peninsula and northern
Africa.
[Illustration: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL]
Metals and minerals of economic use are abundant. Iron ore is sold to
Great Britain, France, and Germany. Since the Spanish-American War,
however, there have been extensive developments in utilizing the coal
and the ore which before that time had been sold to other countries.
The undeveloped coal and iron resources are very great, and must figure
in the payment of a national debt that is near the limit of bankruptcy.
The state, however, is entering a period of industrial prosperity.
The most available metal resource is quicksilver. Of this metal the
mines in Almaden produce about one-half the world's supply. The working
of these mines is practically a government monopoly, and the income was
mortgaged for many years ahead when Spain was at war with her rebellious
colonies.
Both Spain and Portugal are poorly equipped with means for
transportation. The railways lack organization, and freight rates are
excessive. Not a little of the transportation still depends on the
ox-cart and the pack-train. The merchant marine has scarcely more than a
name; the foreign commerce is carried almost wholly in British or French
bottoms. The imports are mainly cotton, coal, lumber, and
food-stuffs--these in spite of the fact that every one save lumber might
be produced at home.
Wine and fruit products, iron ore, and quicksilver are leading exports.
Of these the United States purchases wine and raisins for home
consumption and lace and filigree work for the trade with Mexico. Spain
has a considerable trade in cotton goods with her colonies, the Canary
Islands, and the African provinces of Rio de Oro and Adrar.
Portugal likewise supplies her foreign possessions--Goa (India), Macao
(China), and the Cape Verde and Azores Islands--with home products. The
chief Portuguese trade, however, is with Great Britain and Brazil.
_Madrid_ is the capital of Spain. _Barcelona_ is the chief commercial
centre. _Valencia_, _Alicante_, _Cartagena_, and _Malaga_, are all ports
of fruit and wine trade. _Oporto_ has been made famous for the port wine
that bears its name. Probably not one per cent. of the port now used,
however, comes from Oporto, and not many Malaga raisins come from
Malaga.
=Switzerland.=--This state is situated in the heart of the highest Alps.
The southeastern half is above the altitude in which food-stuffs can be
produced, and probably no other inhabited country has a greater
proportion of its area above the limits of perpetual snow. A
considerable area of the mountain-slopes affords grazing. The
valley-lands of the lake-region produce a limited amount of food-stuffs,
but not enough for the sparse population.
Politically, Switzerland is a republic, having the position of a
"buffer" state between Germany, Italy, France, and Austria-Hungary.
Racially, the state is divided among Italians, French, and Germans; as a
matter of fact, however, the old Helvetian spirit, which not even Caesar
could destroy, is still a great factor in dominating the people; this,
with their montane environment, gives the Swiss a very positive
nationality.
The agricultural interests of the state are developed to their utmost;
two-thirds of the bread-stuffs, however, are purchased from the United
States, the plains of Bohemia, and Russia. Cherries, apples, grapes, and
other fruit are cultivated in every possible place, and as these can be
delivered to any part of western and central Europe within a day, the
fruit industry is a profitable one.
Cattle are bred for dairy purposes, but those for beef must be very
largely imported, Austria-Hungary and Italy selling the needed supply.
Goats are raised for their hides, and the latter are converted into
Morocco leather. Of the dairy products, cheese is in many respects the
most important; Gruyere cheese is exported to nearly every country. On
account of the long distance from populous centres milk cannot be
transported; much of it is, therefore, condensed, and in that form
exported.
A peculiar feature of the dairy industry is the fact that it is
constantly moving. The dairy herds begin to pasture in the lowlands as
soon as the snow melts, and as fast as the snow line recedes up the
mountains the cattle follow. The milk is converted into butter and
cheese wherever the herds may be, and the second crop of grass below
them is cut and cured for winter forage.
In spite of the fact that Switzerland has no available coal,[74]
manufacture is pre-eminently the industry of the state. During the long
winters the Alpine herdsman and his family whittle out wooden toys from
the stock of rough lumber laid by for the purpose. Farther down in the
valley-lands the exquisite brocades and muslins are made on hand-looms,
or by the aid of the abundant water-power. Each industrial district has
its special line of manufacture, so that there is scarcely an idle day
in the year.
In the cities and towns of the lowland district, watches, clocks,
music-boxes, and fine machinery are manufactured. For many years Swiss
watches were about the only ones used in the United States, but on
account of the competition of American watches this trade has fallen
off. The mechanical music-player, operated by perforated paper, has also
interfered with the trade in music-boxes.
Switzerland is provided with excellent facilities for transportation,
and this has done about as much for the commercial welfare of the state
as all other industrial enterprises. In proportion to its area, the
railway mileage is greater than that of the surrounding states. The
roads are well built and the rates of transportation are low.
In addition to the ordinary trip-tickets, monthly time-tickets are
issued to travellers, allowing the holders to travel when and where they
please within the limits of the state on all roads and lake-steamers.
These are sold to the traveller for about two-thirds the price of the
1,000-mile book of the American railway. The carriage roads have no
superiors, and they penetrate about every part of the state below the
snow line; they also cross the main passes of the Alps.
Through one or another of these passes most of the foreign traffic of
the state must be carried. To Genoa and Milan it crosses the Alps via
the St. Gotthard tunnel, or the Simplon Pass;[75] to Paris it goes by
the Rhone Valley; between Vienna and Switzerland, by the Arlberg tunnel;
and to Germany or to Amsterdam through the valley of the Main.
As a result of this most excellent system of transportation, Switzerland
is thronged with visiting tourists at all times of the year; moreover,
it has always been the policy of the Swiss Government not only to
provide for them, but also to make the country attractive to them. The
result has shown the wisdom of the policy. Indeed, the foreign tourist
has become one of the chief sources of income of the Swiss people, and
the latter profit by the transaction to the amount of about forty
million dollars a year.
About all the raw material used in manufacture must be imported. The
cotton is purchased mainly from the United States, and enters by way of
Marseille. The raw silk is purchased from Italy, China, and Japan. Coal,
sugar, food-stuffs, and steel are purchased from Germany, and this state
supplies about half the imports. From the United States are purchased
wheat, cotton, and coal-oil.
The manufactures are intended for export. The fine cotton textiles sold
to the United States are worth far more than the raw cotton purchased
therefrom. Silk textiles, straw wares, toys, watches, jewelry, and dairy
products are leading exports. The surrounding states are the chief
buyers, and none of them competes with Switzerland to any extent in the
character of the exports.
_Geneva_, situated at the head of the Rhone Valley, is the chief trade
depot; it is noted especially for the manufacture of watches, of which
many hundred thousand are made yearly. _Zurich_ is the centre of
manufactures of textiles and fine machinery. The silk-brocade industry
is centred chiefly in this city and _Basel_.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why did not France prosper commercially prior to the time of the
revolution of 1793?
What are the chief natural advantages of the state in favor of
commercial development?
In what ways have the natural disadvantages of Switzerland been
overcome?
How has the loss of her colonies affected the industrial development of
Spain?
Comparing Spain and Italy, which has the better situation with reference
to the Suez Canal traffic?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the amount of foreign trade of each
state.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of each one with the
United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire, pp. 160-168.
Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. II, Chapter XI.
Procure for inspection specimens of raw silk and also of the choice
textile goods made in these states.
CHAPTER XXVIII
EUROPE--THE DANUBE AND BALKAN STATES
The Danube and Balkan states derive their commercial importance partly
from the large area in which bread-stuffs may be produced, and also
because the valley of the Danube has become an overland trade-route of
growing importance between the Suez Canal and the North Sea.
=Austria-Hungary.=--This empire is composed of the two monarchies, Austria
and Hungary, each practically self-governed, but united under a single
general government. The greater part of the country is walled in by the
ranges of the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains.
The region known as the Tyrol is topographically continuous with
Switzerland, and the people have Swiss characteristics. Galicia,
northeast of the Carpathian Mountains, the fragment of Poland that fell
to Austria at the time of partition, is a part of the great Russian
plain. Bohemia, which derives its name from the Keltic peoples, whom
Caesar called the Boii, comprises the upper part of the Elbe river-basin.
Its natural commercial outlet is Germany, but the race-hatred which the
Czechs have for the Germans, retards commercial progress. Hungary is a
country of plains occupying the lower basin of the Danube. The Huns are
of Asian origin. Austria proper occupies the upper valley of the Danube,
adjoining Germany; the country and the people are Germanic.
To the student of history it is a surprise that a country of such
diverse peoples, having but little in common save mutual race-hatred,
should hold together under the same general government. The explanation,
however, is found in the topography of the region. The basin of the
Danube is a great food-producing region, and the upper valley of the
Elbe River forms the easiest passage from the Black to the Baltic Sea.
The topography therefore gives the greater part of the country
commercial unity.
The climate and surface of the low plains of Hungary are much the same
as those of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Grain-growing and stock-raising are
the chief employments. High freight rates, a long haul, and the
competition of Russia and Roumania have retarded the development of
these industries, however. Bohemia is likewise a grain-growing country,
and the easy route into Germany through the Elbe Valley makes the
industry a profitable one. Bohemia is also in the sugar-beet area.
There is an abundance of coal in Austria, but most of it is unfit for
the manufacture of iron and steel. Steel manufacture, however, is
carried on, the industry being protected by the distance from the German
steel-making centres. The lead-mines about Bleiberg (or "Leadville") are
very productive; at Idria are the only quicksilver-mines in Europe that
compete with those of Almaden, Spain. The salt-mines near Krakow are in
a mass of rock-salt twelve hundred feet thick.
Most of the manufactured products are for home consumption. American
cotton and home-grown wool supply the greater part of the textiles. The
flour-mills are equipped with the very best of machinery, and much of
the product is for export to Germany and the countries to the south. The
manufactures that have made the state famous, however, are gloves and
glassware, both of which are widely exported. The sand, fluxes, and
coloring minerals of Bohemian glassware are all peculiar to the region,
and the wares, therefore, cannot be imitated elsewhere. The gloves are
made from the skins of Hungarian sheep and goats.
The railways are not well organized, and the mileage is insufficient for
the needs of the country. Ludwig Canal (in Germany) connects the Danube
with the Main, a navigable tributary of the Rhine; the Elbe is navigable
from a point above Prague to the Baltic; the Moravian Gate opens a
passage from Vienna northward; the Iron Gate, through which the Danube
flows, is the route to the Black Sea; Semmering Pass and its tunnel is
the gateway to the ports of the Adriatic. These great routes practically
converge at Vienna, which also is the great railway centre of the
empire.
The foreign trade consists mainly of the export of food-stuffs (of which
sugar and eggs are heavy items), fine cabinet ware, woollen textiles
(made from imported wool), barley and malt, and fine glassware. Much of
the German and Italian wine is sent to market in casks made of Austrian
stock; the coal goes mainly to Italy. The imports are raw cotton from
the United States and Egypt, wool, silk, and tobacco. Coal is both
exported and imported. The United States sells to Austria-Hungary
cotton, pork, and corn--buying porcelain ware, glassware, and gloves,
amounting to about one-fifth the value of the exports.
_Vienna_, the capital, is the financial centre and commercial
clearing-house of central Europe; it has also extensive manufactures.
_Budapest_ is the great focal point of Hungarian railways and commerce.
_Prague_ controls the coal, textile, and glass trade of Bohemia.
_Lemberg_ is the metropolis of Galicia. The states of Liechtenstein,
Bosnia, and Herzegovina are commercially under the control of Austria.
=The Lower Danube States.=--Roumania and Bulgaria, the plain of the lower
Danube, are enclosed by the Carpathian and Balkan ranges. They
constitute a great wheat-field whose chief commercial outlets are the
Iron Gate into Germanic Europe, and the Sulina mouth of the Danube into
the Black Sea. The growing of maize for home consumption and wheat for
export form the only noteworthy industries. Most of the grain is shipped
up the Danube and sold in Great Britain and Germany.
From the Iron Gate to the Black Sea the Danube is held as an
international highway, and the control of its navigation is directed by
a commission of the various European powers, having its head-quarters at
Galatz, Roumania.
[Illustration: TURKEY AND GREECE]
In the Balkan Mountains is the famous Vale of Roses which furnishes
about half the world's supply of attar-of-roses. The petals of the
damask rose are pressed between layers of cloth saturated with lard. The
latter absorbs the essential oil, from which it is easily removed. About
half a ton of roses are required to make a pound of the attar. Kazanlik,
noted also for rugs, is the great market for attar. _Galatz_ and
_Rustchuk_ are grain-markets and river-ports; from the latter a railway
extends to _Varna_, the chief port of the Black Sea. From _Sofia_, near
the Bulgarian frontier, a trunk line of railway extends through
Budapest to western Europe.
=Turkey-in-Europe.=--The European part of the Ottoman Empire has long been
politically known as the "Sick Man" of Europe, and so far as the
industries and commerce of the state are concerned, there is no excuse
for its separate existence as a state. Its political existence, however,
is regarded as a necessity, in order to prevent the Russians from
obtaining military and naval control of the Mediterranean and Black
Seas, and thereby becoming a menace to all western Europe. Less than
one-half the people are Turks; the greater part of the population
consists of Armenians, Jews, Magyars, and Latins.
Most of the country is rugged and unfit for grain-growing. The internal
government is bad, the taxes are so ruinous that the agricultural
resources are undeveloped, and every sort of farming is primitive. In
many instances the taxes levied on the growing crops become practical
confiscation when they are collected. Much of the cultivable land is
idle because there are no means of getting the crops to market.
Grapes and wine, silk, opium, mohair and wool, valonia (acorn cups used
in tanning leather), figs, hides, cigarettes, and carpets are the
leading exports, and these about half pay for the American cotton
textiles, woollen goods, coal-oil, sugar, and other food-stuffs
imported. Choice Mocha coffee is imported for home use, and poorer
grades are exported. Most of the foreign commerce is in the hands of
English and French merchants. Armenians, Jews, and Greeks are the native
middlemen and traders.
The native population is subject to the Sultan, whose rule is absolute;
most foreign merchants and residents are permitted by treaties to remain
subject to the regulations of the consuls.
_Constantinople_ is the capital. Its situation on the Bosphorus is such
that under any other European government it would command a tremendous
foreign commerce. It is naturally the focal point of the trade between
Europe and Asia. A trunk line of railway connects the city with Paris.
_Salonica_ is the port of western Turkey, and is likewise connected by
rail with western Europe. A great deal of the foreign commerce of the
state is now landed at this port.
[Illustration: HARBOR OF CONSTANTINOPLE]
The chief possessions of the Ottoman Empire are Asia Minor, Armenia,
Mesopotamia, Syria, and Arabia.
=Greece.=--Greece is a rugged peninsula, no part of which is more than
forty miles from the sea. The country is without resources in the way of
coal, timber, or available capital. Its former commercial position, in
ancient times, was due largely to the silver-mines near Ergasteria, and
subsequently to the gold-mines of eastern Macedonia; these, however, are
no longer productive.
There is but little land suitable for farming, and not far from one-half
the bread-stuffs must be imported. Much of the timber has been
destroyed, and this has resulted in a deterioration not only of the
water-power, but of the cultivable lands as well. The railway lines are
short and their business is local; there are practically no trunk line
connections with the great centres of commerce.
The harbors and the natural position of the country are its best
remaining resources. The Greeks are born sailors, and the country is in
the pathway of European and Asian commerce. Most of the grain-trade
between the Black and Mediterranean Seas is controlled by Greek
merchants, and the Greeks are everywhere in evidence in the carrying
trade of the Mediterranean. The construction of the Corinthian canal has
also given Greek commerce a material impetus.
The chief exports are Corinthian grapes--commonly known as
"currants"--fruit, and iron ore from Ergasteria. Great Britain, France,
and Belgium are the chief buyers of the fruit-crop. The exports scarcely
pay for the American cotton, Russian wheat, and the timber products that
are purchased abroad. There has been a material growth in the
manufacture of cotton, woollens, and silk in the past few years, much of
the work being done in households. _Athens_ is the capital and largest
city. _The Piraeus_ and _Patras_ are the chief ports.
=Servia= and =Montenegro= are stock-growing countries. The former has
suffered greatly from misgovernment and the waste of its resources.
Wine-cask stock and cattle are sold to Austria, which has five-sixths of
its trade. _Belgrade_ is its metropolis. Tobacco and live-stock are
exported from Montenegro to Austria.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
On a good map of central Europe trace an all-water route from the mouth
of the Danube to the ports of the lower Rhine and the North Sea; what
connection have the cities of Ratisbon and Lemberg with this route?
How do the forests of these states affect the wine industry of Germany?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the amount and movement of the
exports and imports of these countries.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the volume of trade of these
countries with the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Great Canals of the World--p. 4089.
A good map of central Europe.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN EMPIRE]
CHAPTER XXIX
EUROPE-ASIA--THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
The great plain of Eurasia, which borders about half the circuit of the
Arctic Ocean, is undivided by topographic barriers or boundaries. It is
physically a unit.
=Russia.=--Russia comprises more than one-half the area of Europe; the
Russian Empire embraces about one-half of Europe and Asia combined, and
constitutes more than one-seventh of the land surface of the earth. East
and west, from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, the distance is about six
thousand miles. It has a similar position with respect to southern
Europe and China as has Canada to the United States.
In latitude the country is unfortunately situated. North of the latitude
of St. Petersburg the climate is too cold to grow bread-stuffs; a large
part of the country is, therefore, unproductive. The central belt is
forest-covered; the southern part, or "black earth" belt, comprises the
greater part of the productive lands, and this region is the chief
granary of Europe.
Russia is an agricultural country. Maize and rye grown for home
consumption, and wheat for export, are the chief products. Flax is a
leading export product, and the Russian crop constitutes about
four-fifths of the world's supply. Lands too remote from markets for
grain-growing produce cattle and sheep, which are grown mainly for their
hides and tallow. The wool of the Don is a very coarse textile that is
much used in the manufacture of American carpets; that of the arid
plateaus of the southern country is a fine rug wool.
Agriculture in Russia is on a much lower plane than in western Europe.
Most of the land is owned in large estates. Individual farming is rare,
land tillage being usually a community affair. A village community rents
or purchases a tract of land, and the latter is allotted to the families
composing it, a part of the land being reserved for pasturage. The
business is transacted by "elders," or trustees, who exercise a general
management and supervision over the "mir," or community.
The methods of farming are not the best, and an acre of land produces
scarcely one-third as much as the same area is made to yield in other
states. The farming class, or peasantry, was in a condition of serfdom
until within a few years. Poverty unfits them to compete with farmers of
western Europe; moreover, the laws of land ownership and tenure also
serve to discourage farming.
The metal and mineral resources are very great. Iron ore is abundant,
and the yearly output of both is greatly increasing. There are extensive
deposits in southern Russia, in the Ural Mountains, and in Poland. Coal
of good quality is plentiful, and coal mining is encouraged by a heavy
tariff on the foreign coal that enters regions where the home product is
available. The most productive coal-fields are those of the lower Don
River and of Poland.
Gold is obtained in various parts of Siberia and in the Ural Mountains,
but scarcely enough is mined for the requirements of coinage. Copper is
also mined in the Ural and Caucasus Mountains. More than nine-tenths of
the world's supply of platinum is also obtained in the Ural Mountains.
The petroleum fields of Transcaucasia have a yearly output a little
greater than those of the United States.
The forest area is surpassed only by the timber belt of North America,
both of which are in about the same latitudes. This area, within a very
few years, is destined to be the chief lumber supply of all Europe.
Moreover, the forests, the grain-growing lands, and the iron and coal
constitute national resources which are surpassed in no other countries
save the United States and China.
The Russian Government has done much to encourage manufactures.
Steel-making in the Ural district, in Poland, and in the iron regions of
the Don has progressed to the extent that home-made railway material and
rolling stock are now generally used. Farming machinery is made in the
cities of the grain-growing region. The manufacture of cotton, woollen,
and linen fabrics has developed to the extent that the state is becoming
an exporter rather than an importer of such goods.
Railway building has progressed under government aid, and about
two-thirds of the 37,000 miles of track are owned by the state. The
Transsiberian Railway connecting Vladivostok with the trunk lines of
Europe was built by the state both for strategic and economic purposes.
Large bodies of emigrants are carried into Siberia at nominal rates and
are settled on lands that are practically free. The return cargoes
consist of Chinese products--mainly silk textiles and tea--destined for
western Europe.
A network of railways covers the grain-growing districts; trunk lines,
mainly for strategic purposes, extend through Russian Turkestan to the
Chinese border. For many years Russia has endeavored to acquire the
territory that would afford commercial outlets to the Indian Ocean and
into China. In this the state has been thwarted by two great
powers--Great Britain and Japan. The construction of canals and the
improvements of river-navigation are under government management, and
the internal water-ways aggregate about fifty thousand miles of
navigation.
The foreign commerce is changing in character as manufactures develop.
Wheat, flour, timber products, flax, and petroleum are the chief
exports. Cotton, tea, wool, and coal are the leading imports, the
first-named coming mainly from the United States. Germany, Great
Britain, France, Holland, and the United States are the chief European
countries utilizing Russian trade. The commerce between Russia and China
is growing rapidly. The Transsiberian railway is its chief northern
outlet, and a branch of this road, now under construction, extends
through to the leading commercial centres of Manchuria, to Port Arthur.
A considerable amount of manufactured goods is sent to Asia Minor and
the Iran countries.
The most available ports opening into the Atlantic are on the Baltic
Sea, but these are blocked by ice in winter; the best ports are on the
Black Sea, but the Russians do not control the navigable waters that
connect them with the Atlantic.
Much of the internal trade is carried on by means of annual fairs. The
most important of these are held at _Nijni_, (lower) _Novgorod_,
_Kharkof_, _Kief_, and other points. At the first-named fair goods to
the amount of $80,000,000 have changed hands during a single season, and
the annual fair is the recognized common ground on which the oriental
traders meet the buyers of European and American firms.
Unlike the schemes of colonization of other European states, the various
possessions of the Czar are practically in a single area, the
dependencies being contiguous. The lines between them, with few
exceptions, are political rather than natural boundaries.
_St. Petersburg_, the capital, is the centre of finance and trade.
_Riga_ is the port from which most of the lumber is exported; it
receives the coal purchased from Great Britain for the factories of the
Baltic coast. The harbor of Riga is not greatly obstructed by ice.
_Archangel_ has an export trade of lumber and flax during the few months
when the White Sea is free from ice. _Odessa_ and _Rostof_ are the
grain-markets of the empire. _Astrakhan_ is the centre of trade for the
Iran countries, and _Baku_ is the petroleum-market. _Moscow_ is the
chief focal point of the railways; and in consequence has become a great
centre of manufacture and trade. _Warsaw_, next to Moscow, is the most
important city.
=Siberia.=--This great territory resembles Russia in surface and climatic
features. Like the former "west" of the United States, Siberia is the
open "east" into which much of the surplus population of Russia,
Germany, and the Scandinavian countries is moving, attracted by fine
farming lands. The European emigrant becomes a producer when settled in
Siberia, and, at the same time, a consumer of Russian manufactures. In
five years more than one million people thus became occupants of the new
country in Siberia. Russian trade is encouraged by a heavy tariff on
foreign goods brought into Siberia.
_Tobolsk_, _Tomsk_, and _Semipalatinsk_ are collecting stations for
Siberian products, and each is built on navigable waters. _Irkutsk_
receives the caravan trade that goes from Peking through _Urga_ and
_Kiakhta_, the frontier post of Chinese trade. _Vladivostok_ is the
great Pacific outlet and the terminus of the Transsiberian Railway. It
is ice-bound in winter. _Harbin_, in Manchuria, China, is a Russian
trading post of great commercial importance.
=Bokhara= and =Khiva= are Russian vassal states. The former was acquired
chiefly as a trade-route. A railway from _Krasnovodsk_ on the Caspian
Sea extends through _Merv_, _Bokhara_, and _Samarkand_ to _Kashgar_,
where it meets the caravan trade from central China. The building of
this railway has caused a great development of cotton-growing in these
countries, which furnish Europe and America with the choice Afghan,
Khiva, and Bokhara rugs.
=Transcaucasia=, now joined to Russia, is a part of the plateau of Iran. A
railway extends across the country from _Batum_ to _Baku_, connecting
the Black and Caspian Seas. Transcaucasia is the petroleum region of the
East. It is also noted for the Shirvan, Kabistan, Daghestan, and Kazak
rugs which are sold all over Europe and America. The so-called
"Cashmere" rugs are not a product of Kashmir, but are made in the town
of _Shemaka_. Kabistan rugs are made in _Kuba_. Kazak fabrics are
usually the sleeping-blankets of the Kazak (Cossack) rough-riders.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How will the development of the coal, iron, and lumber resources most
likely affect the industrial future of Russia?
Discuss the policy of Siberian immigration;--what are its advantages to
German colonists?
From the map accompanying this chapter show how the tributary streams of
the great rivers have served to extend Russian commerce through Siberia.
Note the situation of the cities and towns of Siberia with reference to
the rivers.
What effect has the high latitude of Russia on its agricultural
industries?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports and
imports of Russia by articles, and also the volume of trade with other
countries.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the statistics of trade between
Russia and the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Commercial life in Russia--preferably from the article, "Russia," in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
For a rug of the Caucasus type, see illustration, p. 351; compare the
Kabistan with the Persian piece--which has the floral and which the
geometric figures?
CHAPTER XXX
THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA
The countries of the Iran plateau extend from the Mediterranean Sea to
the valley of the Indus River. The Arabian Peninsula is not a part of
it, but its climate and general character are similar. The Iran
countries are exceedingly rugged, and a great part of their surface is
more than a mile above sea-level. The climate is one of great extremes;
the summer hot-waves and the winter hurricanes are probably unknown
elsewhere in severity. The greater part of Arabia is an unhabitable
desert.
[Illustration: THE RUG-MAKING COUNTRIES]
The rigorous conditions of surface and climate have placed their stamp
upon the population of the region. They are full of the intelligent
cunning and ferocity that mark people living under such conditions of
environment. In many parts the sterile soil and arid climate force the
sparse population into nomadic habits of life and predatory pursuits.
For the greater part, the land hardly yields enough food-stuffs for the
population, and any great development of agriculture is out of the
question. The flood-plain of the Tigris and Euphrates, and a few of the
river-valleys are highly productive.
[Illustration: AN ANTIQUE TREE-OF-LIFE, KERMANSHAH (PERSIAN) RUG]
Before the Christian era several trade-routes between Europe and the
Orient lay across this region, and along the caravan routes there were
the usual industries pertaining to commercial peoples. The cities of
Sinope, Trebizond, Astrabad, Phasis, Mashad, and Bactra (now Balkh) grew
into existence along one of the northern routes. Tyre, Nineveh, Tarsus,
Palmyra, Babylon, and Persepolis were founded along one or another of
the southern routes. Of these, Trebizond only retains its importance,
being a seaport with a considerable trade. The commerce that once passed
over this route was crushed out of existence during the invasions by
Jenghis Khan.
[Illustration: A KABISTAN RUG--CAUCASUS DISTRICT]
Of the various industries of the Iran plateau, practically but one
extends beyond its borders, namely, the manufacture of the textile
fabrics known as Oriental rugs. These are unique; they are made of
materials, colored with dyes, and are ornamented with designs that
cannot be successfully imitated anywhere else in the world. The filling
of the rugs consists of fine wool, selected not only from particular
localities, but also from certain parts of the fleece. The dye-stuffs
are common to other parts of the world, and their names--indigo,
saffron, coccus, madder, and orchil--are familiar. But both the wool and
the dye-stuffs possess qualities imparted to them by soil and climate
that are not found elsewhere.
The absence of floors, and of the furniture found in European dwellings,
make the rugs essential household articles rather than luxuries. The
hearth-rug, the bath-mat, the divan-cover, the sleeping-blanket, and the
saddle-mat must be regarded as necessities. Religion also has its
requirements, and the prayer rug, sometimes ornamented with the hands of
the Prophet, is a part of every household equipment, whether of the
nomadic Arab or the wealthy merchant. Each district and people have
their own designs and methods of workmanship, and the rugs of each are
easily distinguished.[76]
For the greater part these are gathered by caravans and conveyed to
convenient shipping-points. Nearly all the cottage-made product is
obtained in this manner. As a rule the rugs are named from the town or
district in which they are made. Smyrna and Constantinople are the chief
ports of shipment. Many of them find their way to European dealers, but
New York is probably the largest rug-market in the world. The great
majority are retailed at from ten to fifty dollars each; choice
fabrics, however, bring from three hundred to ten thousand dollars.
Oriental rugs are hand-woven, and a weaver frequently spends several
years on a single piece, earning perhaps less than ten cents a day. The
factory-made rugs are inferior to the cottage-manufactured product.
=Turkish Possessions.=--Anatolia is the common name of the Turkish
possession formerly known as Asia Minor. The name properly belongs,
however, to only a small part of the region. The Asiatic possessions of
the Ottoman Empire comprise Asia Minor, Armenia, Kurdistan, Syria,
Mesopotamia, and Arabia. The Armenians are the commercial people of the
greater part of this region, and although thousands have been massacred
because of Turkish hatred of them, they practically wield the chief
power because of their business enterprise.
During the Roman occupation many miles of roads were built from
Constantinople and other coast-points to the interior. One of these
extended to Mesopotamia, and became a much-travelled route of the trade
which centred at Constantinople. Within recent years German capitalists
have built railways along these roads, thereby creating a considerable
export trade in fruit, rugs, and mohair cloth.
_Angora_ and _Konieh_ (_Iconium_) are important marts. _Trebizond_ is
the chief port of the Black Sea, but it lacks railway connections with
the interior. _Smyrna_ is the chief port of the Mediterranean, and from
it are shipped to European and American markets the fruit and textile
fabrics that have made its importance. In Syria, _Damascus_, one of the
oldest cities in the world, is the centre of a considerable trade in
textile manufactures. Rugs, dates, figs, and damask fabrics are exported
to Europe through _Beirut_, its seaport, with which it is connected by
rail. Much of the stuffs exported is gathered from Persia. _Yafa_ is
the port of Jerusalem. _Bagdad_ is the chief trade-centre of
Mesopotamia.
=Arabia.=--Arabia is nominally a Turkish possession, but the coast-regions
only are under the control of the Sultan. The interior is peopled by
nomadic tribes, who do not acknowledge the sovereignty of Turkey. The
province of Yemen, on the Red Sea, is about the only noteworthy part of
the peninsula. Hides and Mocha coffee, gathered by Arab traders, are
shipped from the port of _Hodeida_. _Mecca_ is the yearly meeting-place
of thousands of Mohammedan pilgrims, who go thither as a religious duty;
it is also the centre from which Asiatic cholera radiates. _Aden_, the
chief coaling-station of the British Empire in the Indian Ocean, is also
a free port, having a considerable trade in American cotton and
coal-oil.
Although Arabia itself is practically of no commercial importance, the
same cannot be said of the Arabic people. They are keen, thrifty
traders, and as brutal in their instincts as they are keen. The commerce
which connects the western part of Asia with Europe is largely of their
making. They collect and transport the goods from the interior,
delivering them to Jewish and Armenian middlemen, who turn them over to
European and American merchants. Arab traders also control the greater
part of the commerce of northern Africa. The slave-trade, which is
wholly in their hands, is very largely the key to the situation. A party
of slave-dealers makes an attack upon a village and, after massacring
all who are not able-bodied, load the rest with the goods to be
transported to the coast.
=Persia.=--Persia is the modernized name of the province now called Fars,
or Farsistan. Within its borders, however, the name Persia is almost
unknown; the native people call the country Iran. In the times of
Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius, Persia was one of the great powers of the
world. The cultivable lands produced an abundance of food-stuffs. The
mines of copper, lead, silver, and iron were worked to their utmost
extent, and the chief trade-routes between Europe and the Orient crossed
the country to the Indus River.
The conquest by Alexander the Great changed the course of trade and
diverted it to other routes, thus depriving the country of much of its
revenue; the invasions of the Arabs left the empire a hopeless wreck.
Iran blood dominates the country at the present time, it is true, but
the religion of Islam does not encourage any material development, and
the industries are now purely local. There is no organization of trade,
nor any system of transportation except by means of wretched wagon-roads
with innumerable toll-gates. "Turkish" tobacco, opium, and small fruits
are grown for export; silk and wool, however, are the most important
crops. The former is manufactured into brocaded textiles; the latter
into rugs and carpets. There are famous pearl-fisheries in the Persian
Gulf.
_Tabriz_, situated in the midst of an agricultural region, has important
manufactures of shawls and silk fabrics of world renown. The Tabriz rugs
are regarded as among the finest of the rug-maker's art. _Shiraz_, the
former capital, _Kermanshah_,[77] and _Hamadan_ are noted for rug and
carpet manufactures. _Mashad_ is the centre of the trade with Russia.
_Bushire_ and _Bender-Abbas_ are seaports, but have no great importance.
Most of the trade with Russia passes through the port of Trebizond.
=Afghanistan.=--The nomadic tribes that inhabit Afghanistan have but
little in common with the British civilization that is slowly but surely
closing in upon them, and driving them from routes of commerce. A
considerable local traffic is carried on between Bokhara and Herat, and
between Bokhara and Kabul through Balkh, all being fairly prosperous
centres of population in regions made productive by irrigation.
By far the most important route lies between Kabul and Peshawur, at the
head of the Indus River. A railway, the Sind-Pishin, extends along the
valley of this river from Karachi, a port of British India, to Peshawur,
also in British India near the Afghan border, and the route lies thence
through Khaibar Pass to Jelalabad and Kabul. A branch of this road is
completed through Bolan Pass nearly to Kandahar.
_Kabul_, the capital, is a military stronghold rather than a business
centre, although it is a collection depot for the Khiva-Bokhara rugs and
carpets that are marketed at Peshawur. _Kandahar_ has a growing trade
resulting from the railway of the Indus Valley. _Herat_ is the market of
the famous Herati rugs. There is no organized commercial system; a small
amount of British manufactures--mainly stuffs for domestic use--are
imported; rugs and dried fruit are the only exports to Europe and
America. The imports enter mainly by way of Karachi, India; the exports
are carried to Europe, for the greater part, by the Russian railway.
The importance of Afghanistan is due to its position as a buffer state
between Russia and British India. The various strategic points for
years, therefore, have been military strongholds. There is an old
saying: "Whoso would be master of India must first make himself lord of
Kabul." The meaning of this is seen in the history of Khaibar Pass,
which for many years has been a scene of slaughter; indeed, it has been
the chief gateway between occidental and oriental civilizations for
more than twenty centuries. Since the acquisition of India by Great
Britain Afghanistan has been under British protectoracy.
=Baluchistan.=--The general features of Baluchistan resemble those of the
other parts of the Iran plateau. The coast has no harbors in the proper
sense, but the anchorage off _Gwador_ has fair protection from storms
and heavy winds. The few valleys produce enough food-stuffs for the
half-savage population. There is but little organization to the
government save that which is military in character. The state is a
protectorate of Great Britain.
Rug-making is the only industry that connects Baluchistan with the rest
of the world. _Quetta_, the largest town, is a military station
controlling Bolan Pass. Its outlet is the Kandahar branch of the
Sind-Pishin Railway.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What climatic factors prevent these countries from being regions of
great production?
How do climate and soil affect the character of the wool clip?
How do Arabian horses compare with American thorough-bred stock with
respect to usefulness?--how do they compare with the mustang stock?
Why is Khaibar Pass regarded as the key to India?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia (or from McCarthy's History of Our Own Times) read an
account of the British disaster at Kabul.
Study, if possible, one or more rugs of the following kinds, noting the
colors, designs, and warp of each: Bokhara (antique and modern),
Anatolian, Kermanshah, and Baluchistan.
CHAPTER XXXI
BRITISH INDIA AND THE EAST INDIES
These countries are in tropical latitudes and in the main are regions of
great productivity. A few native states that have resisted annexation
and conquest excepted, almost the entire area is divided among Great
Britain, Holland, and France.
[Illustration: INDIA]
=British India.=--The Empire of India comprises an area half as large as
the United States, situated on the southern slope of Asia. It covers the
same latitude as the span between the Venezuelan coast and the Ohio
River; from the Indus to the Siam frontier the distance is about two
thousand miles. It includes also settlements in the Malay peninsula.
Excepting the plateau of the Dekkan, and the slopes of the Himalayan
ranges, most of the surface consists of plains and low, rolling land
covered with a great depth of soil. Through these rich lands flow four
large rivers--the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Irawadi, which afford
a great deal of internal communication. The Himalaya Mountains on the
north and the Hindu Kush on the northwest practically shut off
communication from the northward, so that all communication in this
direction is concentrated at Khaibar and Bolan Passes, the most
important gateways by land approach.
British India is one of the most populous regions of the world; the
average population per square mile is about one hundred and eighty, a
density considerably greater than that of New York State. The entire
population is about three times that of the United States. Nearly all
the food-stuffs grown are required for home consumption; indeed, dry
years are apt to be followed by a shortage of food-stuffs. Years ago
famines followed any considerable deficiency of crops, but since the
completion of the admirable railway systems the necessary food-stuffs
are quickly shipped to the district where the shortage occurs.
The Hindus constitute about three-fourths of the population. Along the
northern border there are many peoples of Afghan and Turkic descent; in
Burma there is a considerable admixture of Mongol blood. An elaborate
system of social castes imposed by the teachings of Brahmanism has made
the introduction of western methods of education and civilization
somewhat difficult to carry out. The educational system of the
dominating Brahmanic caste, although of a very high order, does not fit
the people to cope with the commercialism of western civilization.
Five-sevenths of the population are engaged in agricultural labor. Rice,
wheat, millet, meat, and sugar are the chief food-crops. Of these, rice
and wheat[78] only are exported; the others are required for home
consumption.
The articles grown for export are jute, cotton, opium, oil-yielding
seeds, tea, and opium. No meat is exported, but hides form a large item
of foreign trade.
The jute is used in the manufacture of rugs and grain-sacks. It is
cultivated mainly in the delta-lands of the Ganges-Brahmaputra. A
considerable part of the product is now manufactured in India and in
China; some is also shipped to California, to be made into wheat-sacks;
perhaps the larger part is sent to Dundee, Scotland, where it is woven
into textile fabrics. The choicest product is used to mix with silk
fibre, or is employed in the manufacture of rugs and coverings.
Cotton cultivation is rapidly taking first rank among the industries of
India, for which the conditions of soil, climate, and market are
admirably adapted. India stands second in cotton-growing, and the area
of production is gradually increasing. Most of the crop is exported to
Europe for manufacture, although there is an increasing amount sold to
Japan. Great Britain is the largest purchaser, and the cotton goods
manufactured at Manchester are reshipped in large quantities to India.
Owing to the low wages paid for labor both in the fields and the mills,
cotton manufacture is a rapidly growing industry in India. In many cases
the yarn is manufactured in India and then sent to China to be made into
coarse cloth. Some of the mills are equipped with machinery made in the
United States.
Tea has become one of the most important crops of India. It is grown
mainly in Ceylon and Assam, and is said to have grown wild in the latter
state. The quality of Indian tea is regarded as superior to the Chinese
product, and Indian teas have therefore very largely supplanted those of
China, in British consumption.
Silk cultivation and manufacture have been growing rapidly in the past
few years; a considerable part of the product is "tussar," or wild silk.
The silk rugs of India are not equalled anywhere else in the world. Wool
is a product of the mountain-regions, but is almost wholly used in the
manufacture of rugs and coverings.
The British occupation of India is commercial rather than political.
India furnishes a most valuable market for British manufactures; it
supplies the British people with a large amount of raw material for
manufacture. The general government is administrative only so far as the
construction of railways, irrigating canals, and harbors, and the
organization of financial affairs are concerned.
There are about two hundred and fifty native states included within the
territory of British India. In addition to the native ruler, a British
governor or magistrate carries out the administrative features of the
British Government. For administrative purposes most of the native
states are grouped into eight provinces, or "presidencies."
=Bengal.=--The states of Bengal, mainly in the valley of the Ganges River,
produce most of the rice and wheat. _Calcutta_, the capital of the
empire, is a comparatively young city. The Hugli at this point is
navigable both for ocean and river craft. The situation of the city is
much like that of New York, and it is therefore finely adapted for
commerce. Railways extending from the various food-producing districts
and from other centres of commerce converge at Calcutta. The city is not
only the centre of administration, but the chief focus of commerce and
finance as well.
=Bombay.=--Bombay includes a number of states bordering on the Arabian
Sea. The city of _Bombay_ is built on an island of the same name. Its
situation on the west coast makes it the most convenient port for the
European trade that passes through the Suez Canal. The opening of the
route gave Bombay a tremendous growth, and it is destined to become a
great commercial factor in Indian Ocean trade. It is also a great
manufacturing centre for cotton textiles. _Ahmedabad_, an important
military station, is also an important centre of cotton manufacture and
wheat-trade.
=Sind.=--The native state Sind includes the greater part of the basin of
the Indus. Its importance is military and strategic rather than
commercial. The ability of Great Britain to hold India depends very
largely on British control of the Indus Valley and the passes leading
from it. The Sind-Pishin Railway traverses the Indus Valley from Karachi
to Peshawur. _Haidarabad_, one of the largest cities of India, is the
centre of an agricultural district. _Karachi_, the port near the mouth
of the Indus, next to Khaibar Pass, is the most important strategic
point of India, and one that the Russians for more than a century have
been trying to possess.
=Punjab.=--The states of the Punjab are mainly at the upper part of the
Indus. _Amritsar_ is an important centre for the manufacture of silk
rugs and carpets. A large number of these are sold in the United States
at prices varying from two hundred to six thousand dollars. The designs
for these textiles are often made in New York. _Peshawur_ is important
chiefly as a military station.
=Burma.=--British Burma includes the basin of the Irawadi River. The
uplands are wheat-fields; the lowlands produce rice. _Mandalay_ is a
river-port and commercial centre. _Rangoon_ is the seaport, with a
considerable ship-building industry that results from the teak forests.
Although the Irawadi is navigable for light craft, railways along the
valley have become a necessity; these centre at Rangoon.
The province of Madras is one of the most densely peopled parts of
India. The chief commercial products are cotton and teak-wood. _Madras_,
its commercial centre, has a very heavy foreign trade in hides, spices,
and cotton. The cotton manufactures are extensive. A yarn-dyed cotton
cloth, now imitated both in Europe and the United States, has made the
name famous.
=Kashmir.=--The native state Kashmir, situated high on the slopes of the
Karakorum Mountains, is known chiefly for the "Cashmere" shawls made
there. The shawls are hand-woven and represent the highest style of the
weaver's art. The best require many years each in the making; they
command prices varying from five hundred to five thousand dollars. This
industry centres at _Srinagar_.
=Other British States.=--The Straits Settlements are so called because
they face the Straits of Malacca. They include several colonies, chief
of which are Singapore, Penang, and Malacca. The Straits ports are free
from export and import duties, a regulation designed to encourage the
concentration of Malaysian products there--in other words, to encourage
a transit trade.
The policy has proved a wise one, and the trade at the three
ports--_Singapore_, _Penang_, and _Malacca_--aggregates about six
hundred million dollars yearly. About two-thirds of this sum represents
the business of Singapore. Tin constitutes about half the exports, a
large share going to the United States. Spices, rubber, gutta-percha,
tapioca, and rattan constitute the remaining trade. Rice, cotton cloth,
and opium are the imports.
The Federated Malay States, situated in the Malay peninsula, and the
northern part of Borneo are also British possessions. Their trade and
products are similar to the rest of the Malaysian possessions.
=Dutch East India.=--The Dutch possessions include nearly all the islands
of the Malay Archipelago and the western part of New Guinea. Of these,
Java and Sumatra are the most important. They are divided into
"residencies," and the administering officers exercise control over the
various plantations. In addition, there are numerous private
plantations. The colonial administration is admirable.
Cane-sugar, coffee, rice, indigo, pepper, tobacco, and tea are the chief
products. The sugar industry has been somewhat crippled by the
beet-sugar product of Europe. Java and Sumatra coffees are in demand all
over Europe and the United States. Sumatra wrappers for cigars find also
a ready market wherever cigars are manufactured. The cultivation of
cinchona, or Peruvian bark, has proved successful, and this substance is
becoming an important export. The islands of Banka and Billiton (with
Riouw) yield a very large part of the world's supply of tin, much of
which goes finally to the United States. The mother-country profits by
the trade of these islands in two ways: the Dutch merchants are
practically middlemen who create and manage the commerce; the Dutch
Government receives an import tax of six per cent., and a small export
tax on nearly all articles except sugar. _Batavia_ is the focal point of
the commerce.
=Siam.=--This kingdom is chiefly important as a buffer state between
French and British India, and little by little has been pared by these
nations until practically nothing but the basin of the Menam River
remains. The administration of the state is progressive, and much of the
resources have been developed in the last few years.
Rice and teak are the leading products. The rice is cultivated by
native laborers--much of it by enforced labor--and is sold to Hongkong,
British India, and the more northerly states. It is collected by Chinese
middlemen, and by them sold to British and German exporters. The
teak-wood business is managed by British firms. The logs are cut by
natives, hauled to the Menam River, and floated to Bangkok; there they
are squared and sent to European markets. Pepper and preserved fish are
also exported. The Menam River is the chief trade-route, and _Bangkok_,
at its mouth, is the focal point of trade.
=French India.=--The French control the region south of China, called
French Indo-China, together with various areas in the peninsula of
Hindustan; of these Pondicheri and Karical are the most important.
Indo-China includes the basin of Mekong River, and rice is the staple
product. The most productive rice-fields are the delta-lands of the
Mekong, formerly known as Cochin-China.
From these lands more than half a million tons of rice are exported, the
product being sold mainly at Hongkong and Singapore. Pepper is also an
export of considerable value. France, China, and the Philippine Islands
are the final destination of the rice export. The imports are mainly
textiles, machinery, and coal-oil from the United States. The machinery
pertains chiefly to the manufactures of cotton and silk textiles. On
account of cheaply mined coal, there is a considerable growth of this
industry. _Saigon_ is the business centre and port at which the Chinese
middlemen meet the European merchants and forwarders.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What have been the chief effects of the British occupation of these
countries, so far as the natives are concerned?
What is the position of Khaibar Pass with respect to the commerce of
India?
How has the building of the Sind-Pishin Railway strengthened British
occupation of India?
Singapore and Batavia are the two great focal points of trade in the
East India Islands. At the former all trade is absolutely free; at the
latter there is both an import and an export tax. What are the
advantages of each policy?
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of the United States with
these countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia, preferably the Encyclopaedia Britannica, read the
following topics:
Caste
Lord Clive
Rattan
Pepper
CHAPTER XXXII
CHINA AND JAPAN
The relative position of China, Russia, and Japan is not unlike that of
continental Europe and Great Britain, and the struggle for supremacy in
the Japan and Yellow Seas is about the same as that which in times past
took place in the North Sea. In the latter case France and Holland were
the disturbing powers; in the former, it is Russia.
=The Chinese Empire.=--A comparison of the Chinese Empire with the United
States shows that the two countries have about the same position and
extent of latitude. There is also about the same proportion of
highlands, arid lands, and fertile lowlands. The similarity of the two
countries in geographic conditions is very marked.
The fertile lowland in the east and southeast is one of the most
productive regions in the world, and forms the chief resource of the
country; on account of its productivity it is densely peopled. The arid
and mountain lands are peopled mainly by cattle-herders and nomadic
tribes.
China is essentially an agricultural country, and the farms are held in
much the same way as in the United States, but the holdings are so small
that agricultural machinery is not required for their cultivation.
Wheat, millet, and pease are grown throughout the lowlands wherever they
can be cultivated. The cultivation of rice is confined mainly to the
coast lowlands. The amount of food-stuffs produced, however, is scarcely
sufficient for home consumption; indeed, a considerable amount is
imported, and the imports year by year are increasing. This is due not
so much to the density of population as to want of means of
transportation of the soil products from inland regions. It is often
much cheaper to import food-stuffs from abroad than to transport them,
even from an adjoining province.
Tea is extensively cultivated, and China exports nearly one-half of the
world's product; the total amount produced is considerably more than
half. Most of this goes to Great Britain and Canada. Raw silk is an
important product, and the mulberry-tree is extensively grown. Cotton is
one of the most general crops in the southern part of the empire,
especially along the lower Yangtze. It is a garden-crop, however, and
nearly all of it is consumed.
The mineral wealth is very great, and with proper management will make
China one of the most productive and powerful countries in the world.
Coal is found in every one of the provinces, and the city of Peking is
supplied with an excellent quality of anthracite from the Fang-shan
mines, only a few miles distant. It is thought that the coal-fields are
the most extensive in the world. Iron ore of excellent quality is
abundant, and in several localities, notably in the province of Shansi,
the two are near each other.
Foreign capitalists are seeking to develop these resources in several
localities. The Germans have obtained mining concessions in Shantung
peninsula, and these involve the iron ore and coal occurring there. The
Peking syndicate, a London company, has also obtained a coal-mining
concession in Shansi.
[Illustration: EASTERN CHINA]
For the greater part the manufactures are home industries.[79] Until
recently most of the cotton cloth was made by means of cottage looms,
and the beautiful silk brocades which are not surpassed anywhere else in
the world are still made in this manner. Porcelain-making is one of the
oldest industries, and to this day the wares sold in Europe and America
are known as "china." Straw carpet, or matting, and fans for export are
also important exports.
The mill system of manufacture is rapidly gaining ground, however, and
foreign companies find it economical to carry the yarn made in India
from American cotton into China to be made into cloth. In the vicinity
of Shanghai alone there are nearly three hundred thousand spindles. This
phase of the industry is due largely to the factor of cheap labor; the
Chinese skilled laborer is intelligent; he does not object to a
sixteen-hour working-day at wages varying from five to twenty cents.
There is no great localization of industrial centres, as in the United
States and Europe. Each centre of population is practically
self-supporting and independent from an economic stand-point. The
introduction of western methods, however, is gradually changing this
feature.
All industries of a general character are hampered for want of good
means of transportation. The empire is traversed by a network of unpaved
roads; but although these are always in a wretched condition, an
enormous traffic is carried over them by means of wheel-barrows,
pack-animals, and by equally primitive methods.
The numerous rivers form an important means of communication. The
Yangtze is now available to commerce a distance of 2,000 miles, and the
opening of the Si Kiang (West River) adds a large area that is
commercially tributary to Canton and Hongkong. The most important
water-way is the Grand Canal, extending from Hang Chow to Tientsin. This
canal is by no means a good one as compared with American and European
standards. It was built not so much for the necessities of traffic, as
to avoid the numerous pirate vessels that infest the coasts. Junks,
row-boats, house-boats, and foreign steam craft are all employed for
traffic. The internal water-ways aggregate about fifteen thousand miles
in length.
[Illustration: A TEA-PLANTATION--PICKING THE LEAVES]
[Illustration: PREPARING THE LEAVES FOR ROASTING]
[Illustration: TEA-BALES FOR EXPORT THROUGH RUSSIA]
Of railways there were less than three hundred and fifty miles at the
close of the century, the most important being the line from Tientsin to
Peking. About five thousand miles are projected and under construction
by American and European companies. A branch of the Transsiberian
railway is under construction to Port Arthur. Telegraph and telephone
lines have become popular and have been extended to the interior a
considerable distance. There are upward of twenty thousand miles of wire
communication, the most important, in many respects, being a direct
overland line between Peking and European cities. Inasmuch as there are
no letters in the Chinese language, the difficulties in using the Morse
code of telegraphy are very great. In some cases the messages are
translated into a foreign language before they are transmitted; in
others, a thousand or more words in colloquial and commercial use are
numbered, and the number is telegraphed instead of the word.
Most of the business between the natives and foreigners is carried on by
means of middlemen, or "compradors," and these include both the
commission merchants and the native bankers. They are intelligent,
thrifty, and trustworthy. They are the most capable merchants in Asia,
and have few if any superiors among the merchants of western nations. A
very large part of the retail trade of the Philippine Islands is carried
on by Chinese merchants.
The Chinese Empire consists of China and the five dependencies, as shown
in the following table:
---------------------+-------------+-------------
| | CAPITAL OR
STATE | POPULATION | CHIEF TOWN
---------------------+-------------+-------------
China proper | 380,000,000 | Peking
Manchuria | 7,500,000 | Kirin
Tibet | 6,000,000 | Lassa
Mongolia | 2,000,000 | Urga
Jungaria | 600,000 | Kur-kara-usu
Eastern Turkestan | 600,000 | Yarkand
---------------------+-------------+--------------
The five dependencies are mainly arid, unproductive, and sparsely
peopled. Their chief importance consists in the fact that they are
"buffer states" between China proper and European states. They produce
little except meat, wool, and live-stock.
China proper is divided into provinces, each governed by a viceroy
appointed by the throne. All business with foreign powers is transacted
through a Foreign Office, the Wai-wu-pu (formerly the Tsung-li-Yamen).
The government business is managed by a Grand Council whose members are
advisers to the throne. The government is controlled mainly by Manchu
officials.
[Illustration: HONGKONG]
Until within a few years China nominally allowed no foreign traders
within her borders; recently, however, about forty cities, commonly
known as "treaty ports," have been opened to the trade of foreign
countries. Goods going inland any distance are required to pay a "liken"
or internal tariff at the border of each province.
Several concessions of territory within recent years have been forced
from China by foreign powers: thus, Great Britain has Hongkong Island
(with the peninsula of Kaulung) and Weihaiwei; Germany has Kiaochou on
the bay of the same name; France has Kwang chau wan harbor. These
concessions carry with them the control of the port and surrounding
territory. The German concession includes the right to mine coal and
iron, and to build railways within a territory of much larger extent. At
the close of the war between Russia and Japan, the latter acquired Port
Arthur, the gateway to Manchuria.
Whatever may be the political significance of the opening of the treaty
ports and the granting of the various concessions, the effect has been
to increase the trade of the United States with China about twenty-fold.
The imports from the United States consist mainly of cotton and cotton
cloth, coal-oil, and flour. The chief exports to all countries are tea,
silk goods, and porcelain ware. Most of those sent to the United States
are landed at Seattle or San Francisco. Great Britain, through the port
of Hongkong, has a larger trade than any other nation. Japan and the
United States have most of the remaining trade.
_Peking_, the capital, is politically, but not commercially, important.
The part occupied by the foreign legations is modern and well kept.
_Tientsin_, the port of Peking, is a larger city, with much more
business. _Canton_, the largest city of the empire, and _Hongkong_, are
the commercial centres of nearly all the British trade. Most of the
American and Japanese trade centres at _Shanghai_. _Niuchwang_, on the
Manchurian frontier, is important mainly as a strategic point. _Macao_,
a Portuguese possession, is the open door of Portugal into China.
The inland divisions of the Chinese Empire have but little commercial
importance. Musk, wool, and skins are obtained from Tibet, into whose
capital, _Lassa_, scarcely half-a-dozen Europeans have penetrated. The
closed condition is due to the opposition of the Lamas, an order of
Buddhist priests. Mongolia is a grazing region that supplies the Chinese
border country with goats, sheep, and horses. It also supplies the
camels required for the caravan tea-trade to the Russian frontiers.
Eastern Turkestan is mainly a desert. _Kashgar_, the metropolis of the
fertile portion, is the exchange market for Chinese and Russian
products. Most of the mineral known as jade is obtained there. Manchuria
is a grazing and wheat-growing country, exporting food stuffs and
ginseng into China. _Harbin_, a Russian trading post, is connected with
Peking and with European cities by railway.
[Illustration: JAPAN AND KOREA]
=Korea=, formerly a vassal of China, became an independent state after the
war between China and Japan, this step being forced by Russia. The
country is a natural market for Japanese manufactures, and in turn
supplies Japan with a considerable amount of food-stuffs. _Chemulpo_ is
the chief centre of its commerce.
=Japan.=--Japan is an insular empire, the commercial part of which has
about the same latitude as the Atlantic coast of the United States; the
empire extends from Formosa to Kamchatka. It is sometimes called the
"Great Britain of the East," and the people are also called the "Yankees
of the East." Structurally, the chain of islands consists of ranges of
volcanic mountains. The abundant rains, however, have made many fertile
river-valleys, and have fringed most of the islands with coast-plains.
Since the opening of Japan to foreigners the Japanese have so thoroughly
adapted themselves to western commercial methods that they have become
the dominating power in eastern Asia. Their influence has been greatly
strengthened by a treaty for defensive purposes with Great Britain. A
most excellent army and a modern navy make the alliance a strong one.
The Japanese are better adapted to mould the commercial policy of China
than any other people.
With a population of more than half that of the United States, occupying
an area not larger than the State of California, every square foot of
available land must be cultivated. Yet the Japanese not only grow most
of the food-stuffs they consume, but are able to export rice. There is
scant facility for growing beef cattle, but fish very largely takes the
place of beef. The cattle grown are used as draught-animals in farm
labor. Ordinary dairy products are but little used.
Rice, tea, and silk are the staple crops. Rice is grown on the coast
lowlands, the west or rainy side[80] producing the larger crop. The
Japanese crop is so superior that the larger part is exported, while an
inferior Chinese grain is imported for home consumption. The quality of
the Japanese rice is due to skilful cultivation.
[Illustration: NATIVE PLOUGHING RICE-FIELDS]
[Illustration: IRRIGATING A RICE-FIELD]
[Illustration: RICE-FIELDS]
Tea has become the staple crop, and is cultivated from Formosa to the
forty-fifth parallel. Tea-farms occupy nearly every acre of the
cultivable hill-side areas in some of the islands, and the soil is
enriched with a fertilizer made from fish and fish refuse, dried and
broken. Most of the tea product is made into green tea, and on account
of its quality it commands a high price. Formosa tea is considered the
best in the market.
Silk culture is confined almost wholly to the island of Hondo. The raw
silk is of superior quality, and the exported material is used mainly in
the manufacture of ribbons and brocades. A limited amount of cotton is
grown, but the staple is short, and its cultivation is not profitable
except in a few localities.
Among the forestry there is comparatively little timber suitable for
building purposes, and a considerable amount of timber is purchased from
the mills of Puget Sound. Bamboo is largely employed for buildings.
Camphor is the product of a tree (_Camphora officinarum_) allied to the
cinnamon and the sassafras. It is cultivated in the island of Kiushiu.
The best gum, however, is now obtained from Formosa, and this island now
controls the world's supply. The camphor product is a government
monopoly leased to a British company.
The lacquer-tree (_Rhus vernicifera_) grows mainly in the island of
Hondo. The sap, after preparation, forms the most durable varnish known.
Black lacquer is obtained by treating the sap with nutgalls. Lacquered
wooden-ware is sold all over Europe and the United States. The lacquered
surface is exceedingly hard and water-proof; it is not affected by
climate.
Gold, porcelain clay, silver, copper, and petroleum are mined. The gold
and silver are used both for coinage and in the arts; the clay has made
Japanese porcelains famous. The copper comes from the most productive
mines of Asia; a considerable amount is exported, but much is used in
the manufacture of Japanese bronze goods. Coal is mined, and this has
given a great impetus to manufacture; iron ore is deficient, and steel
must be imported. The quantity of petroleum is increasing yearly, and is
becoming an important factor in the world's product.
Manufacturing industries are giving shape to the industrial future of
the country. The cotton-mills alone employ seventy thousand people and
keep more than one million spindles busy. More than one million
operatives are engaged in textile manufactures. Much of the cloth, both
cotton and silk, is still woven on cottage looms. The cotton cloth is
sold mainly in China and Korea; the surplus silk textiles find a ready
market in the United States. The best straw matting used as a
floor-covering is now made in Japan and constitutes a very important
export.
Three thousand miles of railway aid the internal industries of the
country; several steamship lines to Hongkong and Shanghai, and one or
more each to Vladivostok, Bombay, San Francisco, Seattle, Honolulu,
Australia, and Vancouver (B.C.) carry the tea, raw silk, and
manufactured products to Europe and America. Much, if not most, of the
steamship interests are owned by the Japanese, and the lines are
encouraged by government subsidies. France and the United States buy
most of the raw silk. The latter country purchases most of the tea,
sending coal-oil, cotton, leather, and lumber in return. Great Britain
and Germany sell to the Japanese a large part of the textiles and the
machinery they use. The exports to the United States are consigned
mainly to San Francisco, New York and Seattle.
_Tokio_ is the capital; _Yokohama_ is the chief port for American
traffic, and the market for most of the foreign trade. Most of the trade
between China and Japan centres at _Nagasaki_, which is the Japanese
naval station. _Osaka_ and _Kioto_ are the chief centres of cotton and
textile manufactures.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How has the policy of seclusion affected the commercial development of
China?
What has been its effect on the social life of the people?
How did the cultivation of opium in India become a factor in the opening
of China to foreign trade?
What is meant by "treaty ports"? Make a list of those shown on the map
of eastern China.
Name two Chinese statesmen who have been factors in the relations
between China and the United States.
Compare the position of Japan with that of the British Isles with
reference to commerce.
What advantages has Japan with reference to latitude?--what
disadvantages with reference to cultivable lands?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the leading exports and imports and
the volume of trade of these states.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the leading articles of trade
between these states and the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia read the following topics: The opium war, Commodore
Perry's expedition.
CHAPTER XXXIII
AFRICA
Africa is in a state of commercial transition. During the last quarter
of the nineteenth century the partition of its area among European
nations left but few of the names that formerly were familiar. At the
beginning of the twentieth century the British, French, and Germans
controlled the greater part of the continent, although the Portuguese,
Belgians, Italians, and Spanish have various possessions.
The partition of Africa was designed for the expansion of European
markets. The population of Africa is about one hundred and seventy
million, and the continent is practically without manufacturing
enterprises. The people, therefore, must be supplied with clothing and
other commodities. In 1900 the total trade of Africa with the rest of
the world was about one and one-third billion dollars, of which the
United States had a little more than two per cent., mainly cotton cloth
and coal-oil.
=Egypt.=--The Egypt of the maps is a region of indefinite extent so far as
its western and southern boundaries are concerned; the Egypt of history
is the flood plain of the Nile. From the Mediterranean Sea to Cairo the
cultivable area is not far from one hundred miles in width; from Cairo
to Khartum it varies from three to seven or eight miles wide.
[Illustration: AFRICA]
The food-producing power of Egypt depends on the Nile. In lower Egypt a
considerable area is made productive at the ordinary stage of water by
means of irrigating canals, but in upper Egypt the crops must depend
upon the annual flood of the river, which occurs from June until
September. During this period the river varies from twenty-five to forty
feet above the low-water mark. In the irrigated regions three crops a
year may be produced; in the flooded lands only one is grown.
In order to add to the cultivable area two great engineering works have
been constructed. A barrage and lock control the flow of water at
Assiut; a huge dam at Assuan impounds the surplus of the flood season.
These structures, it is thought, will increase the productive power of
the country about one-fourth. Rice, maize (an Egyptian variety), sugar,
wheat, and beans are the staple crops.
Rice is the food of the native people, but the crop is insufficient, and
the deficit must be imported. The wheat, maize, and beans are grown for
export to Europe, the last named being extensively used for
horse-fodder. The sugar-growing industry is protected by the heavy yield
and the cheap fellahin labor. The raw sugar is sent to the refineries
along the Mediterranean. Onions are exported to the United States.
The cotton-crop is an important factor, and in spite of its own crop the
United States is a heavy purchaser of the long-staple Egyptian cotton,
which is used in the manufacture of thread and hosiery. The cultivation
of tobacco is forbidden by law, but Egyptian cigarettes are an item of
considerable importance. They are made of imported Turkish tobacco by
foreign workmen. There is a heavy export duty on native tobacco
exported, and the ban on the inferior native-grown article is intended
to prevent its admixture with the high-grade product from Turkey, and
thereby to keep up the standard of the cigarettes.
Egypt is nominally a vassal of Turkey, paying to the Sultan a yearly
tribute of $3,600,000. Great Britain's is the real controlling hand,
because the Suez Canal is Great Britain's gateway to India. By a
purchase of the stock held by a former Khedive, Great Britain secured
financial control of the canal, a necessary step from the fact that more
than half the trade carried through the canal is British commerce.
The country is deficient in the resources that make most nations
powerful. There is neither coal, iron, nor timber available, and these
must be imported. Great Britain supplies the first, and Norway the last.
Some traffic is carried on the Nile, but railways have been built
through the crop-lands. One of these threads the Nile Valley and will
become a part of the "Cape to Cairo" route.
_Alexandria_ is the port at which most of the Egyptian commerce lands.
_Cairo_, the largest city of Africa, derives its importance from its
position at the head of the Nile delta. It is a favorite winter-resort.
_Port Said_ and _Suez_ are the terminal ports of the Suez Canal; their
commerce is mainly the transit trade of the canal.
=Other Independent States.=--Most of the independent states of Africa are
in a condition of barbarism and have but little importance to the rest
of the world. Abyssinia has the natural advantages of gold, iron,
pasture-lands, and forestry, and the possibilities of cotton
cultivation. Valuable mining concessions have been granted to foreign
companies. Ivory, coffee, and gold are shipped to India in exchange for
textiles. A railway from the coast is under construction, but all the
traffic is carried by mule-trains, mainly to _Harrar_.
Morocco has an admirable strategic position at the entrance of the
Strait of Gibraltar, and is most likely, in time, to become a possession
of Spain. There are exported, mainly to Great Britain, beans, almonds,
goat-skins, and wool. The goat-skins are sumac-tanned and are still
used in making the best book-binding leather. Only a small part of the
so-called Morocco leather of commerce is genuine. There are no railways;
caravan routes from the Sahara cross the country. _Tangier_ and one or
two other ports are open to foreign trade. Coal-oil is the only import
from the United States.
The state of Liberia was established for the benefit of freed slaves
from the United States. The products are those of tropical Africa,
including caoutchouc. Coffee cultivation is extensively carried on, and
coffee is the leading export. _Monrovia_ is the chief centre of trade.
=North African Possessions.=--French influence is paramount in northern
Africa. Algeria and Tunis are both French colonies, and the caravan
trade of the Sahara is generally tributary to French trade. The region
known as the Tell, a strip between the coast and the Atlas Mountains, is
the chief agricultural region, and the products are similar to those on
the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. The ordinary grains are grown
for home consumption, but the macaroni wheat crop is manufactured into
macaroni paste for export. The fruit-crop, especially the olive, date,
and grape, and their products, is exported.
Esparto grass, for making paper, was formerly an important export, but
the increasing use of wood-pulp for this purpose has had the effect of
increasing the grazing area, and therefore the wool-crop. Date-palms
grow in great profusion, and the excess forms an important export, going
to nearly every part of Europe and the United States. A large part of
the crop, however, is consumed by the Arabs. Sumac-tanned goat-skins,
for book-binding leather, are also exported.
The colonies must import coal. Manufactures are therefore restricted to
the preparation of the fruit and food products. Sponges are an
important product. Railways provide the necessary transportation for the
crops. _Algiers_, the metropolis, is a finely built city and a favorite
winter-resort. _Oran_ is the shipping-port for grain and esparto grass.
_Biskra_ is the market for dates.
The caravan trade of northern Africa is considerable, and the greater
part converges at _Tripoli_, to which not far from ten thousand
camel-loads of merchandise are brought annually. This trade is carried
on mainly by the Arabs, who cover the region from _Timbuctu_ to Lake
Chad. They bring ivory, ostrich feathers, gold, goat-skins, and slaves.
In return they carry cloth, fire-arms, ammunition, and various
commodities to the negro villages of the Sudan. The district is a
possession of Turkey. Its chief exports are esparto grass, sponges, and
dye-stuffs.
=Central Africa.=--Central Africa is divided among the chief European
powers. Great Britain and Germany divide the lake-region and the
Zanzibar coast. On the Guinea coast the French are an additional factor.
The trade of these regions consists of an exchange of tropical
products--palm-oil, rubber, ebony, camwood, ivory, and hides--for cloth,
tobacco, fire-arms, beads and trinkets, and preserved foods. Most of
this trade is carried on by companies holding royal charters.
The Kongo State is a semi-official corporation of this character, the
King of the Belgians being its chief executive officer. The active
administration is carried on by agents of the company. The chief of each
tribe or village is required, under penalty, to furnish a certain quota
of crude rubber and other products; and between the agent and the Arab
slave-driver the natives have little to choose.
The Kongo River is the outlet of the state, and to facilitate the
transportation of the products, railways have been built, or are under
construction, around the rapids. This region is about the only
remaining source of elephant ivory, but most of the supply consists of
the tusks of animals long since dead. A fleet of steamboats carries the
commercial products to the coast. _Stanley Pool_, at the head of the
rapids, is the chief depot for collection. Ocean steamships ascend the
river to a point above _Boma_, the place of administration.
Nigeria and Ashanti are British possessions on the Guinea coast,[81]
having a trading company organization. Sierra Leone is an organized
colony, a product of which is the kola-nut. British East Africa is
important for strategic purposes, inasmuch as it includes the upper Nile
basin, a territory sometimes known as the Egyptian Sudan. _Akra_ is the
trading port of Nigeria, and _Khartum_ of the upper Nile Valley.
_Zanzibar_ is the metropolis of the east coast.
The French possessions include a large territory at the mouth of the
Kongo, the western part of the Sahara, and the islands of Madagascar and
Reunion. In German East Africa the commercial development has been
substantial, and large plantations for the cultivation of tropical
products are in operation. A railway from the coast to the lake-district
is under construction. _Mombasa_ is its commercial outlet.
The Italians have nominal possession of a territory facing the Strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb, and also of the peninsula of Guardafui. Their actual
possession, however, is restricted to the island and trading-post of
_Massawa_. Their attempts to conquer Abyssinia have been unsuccessful.
=Cape of Good Hope and the South African Colonies.=--Up to the time of the
Suez Canal, Cape of Good Hope was a sort of half-way house between
British ports and India, and this position made it commercially
important. Even at the present time more than fifteen hundred vessels,
many of them in the Indian Ocean trade, call at the chief port of the
colony every year.
Agriculture is the chief industry of these colonies, though not the one
yielding the greatest returns. Enough wheat, maize (or "mealies"), and
fruit are grown for home consumption, but the climate is too arid for
any excess of bread-stuffs. The aridity is a resource, however, in the
matter of wool, the superior quality of which is due largely to the
deficient rainfall. As a matter of fact the whole country is a great
grazing veldt; wool, a very fine quality of Angora mohair, hides, and
cattle products are exports.
From December to March the fruits ripen, and these, especially the
grapes, are carried in cold-storage vessels to British and other
European ports. The wine is likewise of excellent quality and is
becoming an export of great value. Both the fruit and the wine are
similar to those of Australia and California.
The business of ostrich farming is in the hands of several large
companies, and, next to the wool-crop, ostrich plumes are the leading
product. There are about a quarter of a million birds, and each produces
about one pound of feathers. The ordinary quality of plumes varies from
five to ten dollars a pound; very choice plumes command as much as two
hundred dollars a pound. London is the chief market for them, but most
of them sooner or later find their way to the milliners of the great
cities.
The diamond-mines of Griqualand West furnish practically the whole of
the world's supply. The mines are operated on a most thorough business
system, and the output of rough stones is carefully regulated to meet
the demand. All wholesale dealers know the output from year to year, and
no more stones are put upon the market than the number required to meet
the demand. All the Kimberley mines are now consolidated under one
company. The yearly output does not vary much from twenty million
dollars' worth of stones. The stones are marketed from Kimberley, but
London dealers buy most of them.
The mines that for several years produced more gold than any others in
existence are in the Transvaal.[82] Other undeveloped mines in the
territory of Rhodesia are known to be extremely rich in precious metals;
indeed, there is much evidence that the famous mines of Ophir were in
this region. Copper ore is an important export.
The industries of Natal colony do not differ materially from those of
Cape of Good Hope. The rainfall is sufficient for the growing of
sugar-cane, and sugar is an important export to the mother-country. The
colony has productive coal-mines, and these are destined to become an
important resource.
The home government has encouraged railway building, and a trunk line
through Rhodesia affords an outlet to the ports of the south coast. It
is the policy of the mother-country to extend this road along the
lake-region and the Nile Valley (known as the "Great Rift") to the
Mediterranean Sea. This plan when carried out will give Great Britain a
practical control of the trade of eastern Africa. The imports are mainly
textiles, machinery, and steel wares.
_Cape Town_ is the most important centre of trade in South Africa. A
considerable trade, however, is carried on at _Port Elizabeth_ and at
_Durban_, the port of Natal. _Kimberley_ is the seat of the
diamond-mining interests, and _Johannesberg_ of the gold-mines.
Germany and Portugal divide the southwest coast. _Walfisch Bay_ is the
outlet of the former. Portuguese East Africa is an outlet for the trade
of the Transvaal region, with which it is connected by rail. The port
_Lourenco Marquez_ has a fine harbor.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Has the partition of Africa been an advantage or a disadvantage to the
native races of the continent?
What advantages will accrue to Great Britain from the Cape to Cairo
railway?
Compare the basin of the Kongo with that of the Amazon with respect to
climate, products, and civilization.
From Commercial Africa prepare a list of the exports and imports between
the United States and the various African countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Statesman's Year-Book.
Commercial Africa--pp. 3679 and following.
From a cyclopaedia read the following topics: Ivory, Suez Canal,
Gibraltar, Livingstone, Diamonds, Canary Islands.
CHAPTER XXXIV
OCEANIA
Oceania, the island division of the world, includes Australasia and the
great groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Some of the larger islands
are regions of great productivity; others are important as
coaling-stations; still others have positions of great strategic value.
When it is considered that more than half the people in the world live
on the slopes of the Pacific Ocean, and that they depend on the
metal-working and manufacturing people of the Atlantic slopes for
clothing and commodities, it is apparent that the commerce of the
Pacific Ocean must reach enormous proportions.
For this reason the various island groups of Oceania have been acquired
by Europeans, and from the moment of their occupation their commercial
development began. The great majority of these groups are within the
limits of the sago-palm, bread-fruit, cocoanut, and banana, and these
yield not only the food-stuffs of the native people, but the export
products as well. Copra, or dried cocoanut meat, is the general export.
It is marketed in Marseille, London, and San Francisco. Sago is prepared
from the pith of a species of palm. Considerable quantities are also
exported, and it is used as a table delicacy. The banana is the
food-stuff upon which many millions of people must depend. In spite of
their small aggregate area, the food-producing power of these islands is
very great.[83]
On account of its central position, Honolulu, the capital and chief
port of Hawaii, is the most important mid-ocean station of the Pacific.
It is almost in the direct line of traffic between the Pacific ports of
the United States and Canada on the one hand, and those of Australia,
Japan and China on the other. It is also in the route of vessels that
may hereafter use the American isthmian canal in going between European
and Asian ports.
In the cultivation of export products native Malay labor is almost
always employed, inasmuch as Europeans cannot bear out-of-door labor in
the tropics. The natives are generally known as "Kanakas," and there is
not a little illicit traffic in their labor. Chinese and Japanese
coolies are also employed as laborers.
=The Commonwealth of Australia.=--The commonwealth of Australia consists
of the various states of Australia together with Tasmania. Their
position corresponds very closely to that of Mexico and Central America,
and the climate and products are not unlike. A considerable part of
Australia is a desert, and a large area is too arid for the production
of bread-stuffs; the eastern coast, however, receives abundant rains.
Australia produces nearly one-third of the wool-clip of the world. On
account of the climate, the quality of the wool, much of it merino, is
excellent. More than half the clip comes from New South Wales.
Two-thirds of the wool goes to Great Britain to be manufactured; nearly
all the rest is purchased by France, Germany, and Belgium. Less than two
per cent. is sold to the United States.
Since the introduction of cold-storage plants in steamships, Australia
has become a heavy exporter of meat. Areas long unproductive are now
cattle-ranges; mutton constitutes the heaviest shipment. Inasmuch as the
transportation is almost wholly by water, the cost is very light, and
the mutton can be sold to London dealers at less than four cents per
pound.
[Illustration: THE COMMERCE OF THE PACIFIC]
[Illustration: AUSTRALIA]
Wheat is grown mainly for home consumption. Grapes for wine and for
raisins are good-paying crops in Victoria and New South Wales. Both
products find a ready market in Great Britain. Australian claret is a
strong competitor of California claret for public favor, and the two are
similar in character. Cane-sugar is grown in the moist regions of
Queensland; it is the chief supply of the commonwealth and the
neighboring islands. The forests produce an abundance of hard woods, but
practically no building-timber. Jarrah wood paving-blocks are an
important export. British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon supply much
of the building-timber.
Gold has been the chief mineral product since the settlement of the
country. The mints convert the metal into coin. As a rule the value of
the exports exceeds that of the imports, and the excess swells the
amount of metal exported. The most productive mines are in the district
of Ballarat. Coal is abundant on the east coast, and a considerable part
is sold to California, and more to Asian ports. Tin is extensively mined
in Tasmania.
More than fifteen thousand miles of railway have been built to carry the
traffic of the country. Most of them were built by private corporations,
but on account of financial difficulties and poor service they were
acquired by the government. The policy proved a wise one.
Great Britain encourages the trade of her colonies, and gets about
three-fourths of the traffic of the commonwealth, the imports being
manufactured goods. Of the foreign trade the United States has about
half, nearly all of which is landed at San Francisco and Puget
Sound. Wool, cattle products, and coal are exported to the United
States, and the latter sends to Australia structural steel--mainly
rails--printing-paper, and coal-oil.
_Melbourne_ is the largest city. _Sydney_ is the port at which most of
the ocean trade is landed. _Brisbane_, mainly a coal and a wool market,
is connected with British Columbia by an ocean cable. Steamships by way
of the Suez Canal generally call at _Perth_ and _Adelaide_. _Hobart_ and
_Launcestown_ are the markets of Tasmania.
=New Zealand.=--This colony is one of the most prosperous and best
administered states in existence. The cultivable lands produce enough
wheat for home use, and an excess for export. Cattle and sheep are the
chief resource, however, and pretty nearly everything--meat, hides,
wool, horn, and bones--is exported. Dairy products are not forgotten,
and under the management of an association, these are of the best
quality.
New Zealand flax (_Phormium tenax_), a kind of marsh hemp, yields a
fibre used in making cordage. The kauri pine furnishes the chief supply
of lumber. A fossil kauri gum is collected for export; it makes a
varnish almost equal to Japanese lacquer. Gold is mined, and there being
no mint, all the bullion is exported. The only manufactures are those
which are connected with the meat export and the dairy industry. The
exports noted more than pay for the manufactured goods. Most of the
trade is carried on with Great Britain. _Wellington_, the capital, and
_Auckland_ are the centres of trade.
=New Guinea.=--This island, one of the largest in the world, is somewhat
larger than the State of Texas, or about one-third larger than Germany
or France. The gold-mines first led to the exploration and settlement of
the island, but it was soon apparent that the agricultural resources
were even more valuable, and it was divided among the British, Germans,
and Dutch.
The western part of the island is distinctly Asian in character; the
eastern and southern parts resemble Australia. Coffee, rice, and tobacco
plantations have been established in the former; grazing is the chief
industry in the latter. Ebony and bamboo are among the forest products.
=British Possessions.=--The Fiji Islands are among the most important
British possessions. They number about eighty habitable and twice as
many small islands. Sugar is the chief export product, and it goes
mainly to Australia and New Zealand. Cocoanuts are also a large item of
export trade. _Suva_ is the chief trading-port.
The Tonga Islands are nominally independent, but are practically a
British protectorate. Among other British possessions are Cook, Gilbert,
and Ellice archipelagoes, and Pitcairn Island.
=German Possessions.=--The Samoa Islands are perhaps the most important
German possession, and German planters have made them highly productive.
They were formerly held under a community-of-interest plan by Great
Britain, Germany, and the United States. A joint commission awarded the
greater part of the territory to Germany. In addition to the ordinary
products, pineapples and limes are exported. Most of the trade is
carried on by way of Australia. _Apia_ is the trading-port.
Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon, Marshall, and Caroline groups
have also been acquired by Germany. The last named was purchased from
Spain at the close of the Spanish-American War.
=French Possessions.=--New Caledonia, together with Loyalty Islands,
Fortuna, and the New Hebrides group, have great wealth in the matter of
resources. New Caledonia, a penal colony, has productive mines of chrome
iron ore and copper. It is the source of a considerable supply of nickel
and cobalt. A railway to the coast has been built for the carriage of
these products.
Tahiti is the principal island of the Society group, and under the
missions long established there, the natives have become civilized. In
addition to the usual trade, sugar and mother-of-pearl are important
exports.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How will the commerce of the Pacific be changed by the construction of
an isthmian canal?
What has been the effect of the Australian wool-clip on the cloth-making
industry of England and Germany?
How will the acquisition of Hawaii and the Philippine Islands affect the
commerce of the United States?
From Commercial Australia find the trade of the United States with the
Commonwealth.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia read the history of Australia as a convict colony.
Commercial Australia.
APPENDIX
TRADE OF THE PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
Sells Buys
Country Imports Exports to U.S. from U.S.
Argentina $110,000,000 $161,850,000 $10,000,000 $11,000,000
Australia 201,000,000 224,000,000 5,263,000 28,164,000
Austria-
Hungary 335,486,000 383,748,000 10,000,000 6,844,000
Belgium 428,651,000 352,850,000 14,920,000 51,444,000
Bolivia 5,845,000 15,618,000 22 120,000
Brazil 97,330,000 165,461,000 64,914,000 11,517,000
Canada 181,238,000 177,443,000 42,482,000 105,790,000
Chile 46,916,000 61,201,000 7,474,000 4,507,000
China 203,421,000 124,528,000 18,126,000 18,176,000
Colombia 10,695,000 18,487,000 4,811,000 2,924,000
Cuba 66,584,000 63,278,000 46,664,000 27,007,000
Denmark 111,542,000 75,549,000 797,000 15,500,000
Ecuador 6,541,000 7,509,000 1,578,000 1,590,000
Egypt 75,366,000 77,754,000 8,867,000 1,321,000
France 843,255,000 774,497,000 81,315,000 78,406,000
Germany 1,290,254,000 1,054,685,000 99,970,000 184,679,000
Greece 26,782,000 18,100,000 1,447,000 286,000
India,
British 264,318,000 392,025,000 47,172,000 5,647,000
India,
Dutch 67,755,000 100,632,000 32,309,000 1,653,000
India,
French 36,576,000 30,513,000 ... 118,000
Italy 331,668,000 265,270,000 27,631,000 34,046,000
Japan 127,397,000 124,209,000 36,855,000 21,163,000
Mexico 64,036,000 77,583,000 17,273,000 83,722,000
Netherlands 815,442,000 695,763,000 17,273,000 83,722,000
Norway 83,255,000 43,616,000 ... ...
Peru 11,276,000 21,890,000 2,911,000 2,312,000
Philippine
Islands 30,279,000 23,215,000 4,421,000 4,027,000
Portugal 62,497,000 30,546,000 3,642,000 4,454,000
Roumania 41,878,000 54,041,000 101,000 31,000
Russia 269,493,000 375,276,000 7,236,000 6,506,000
Spain 161,867,000 129,399,000 7,041,000 16,786,000
Sweden 143,363,000 104,878,000 4,370,000 11,521,000
Switzerland 202,651,000 161,458,000 16,035,000 233,000
Turkey 103,110,000 64,876,000 2,437,000 184,000
United
Kingdom 2,540,265,000 1,362,729,000 155,292,000 598,767,000
United
States 903,321,000 1,355,482,000 ... ...
Uruguay 24,497,000 28,674,000 1,975,000 1,481,000
Venezuela 8,457,000 17,962,000 6,610,000 2,737,000
INDEX
Acapulco, 269
Acre, 281
Activities classified, 4
Adams, 220
Aden, 354
Adjustment to environment, 86
Afghanistan, 355
Alaska, 254
Alberta, 265
Alexandria, 384
Alfa, 124
Algeria, 385
Alpaca, 111, 115
Altitude, effects of, 32
Aluminium, 179
Amazon River, 53
Amber, 146
Ambergris, 204
American Indians, 86
Amritsar, 362
Amsterdam, 318
Anaconda, 250
Anchovy, 207
Angora wool, 115
Anthracite coal, 224
Appalachian region, 222
Arabia, 354
Argentina, 291
Arid region of U.S., 240
Arkwright, 108
Asian Rivers, navigation of, 53
Asphalt, 157
Assiniboia, 265
Astrakhan, 347
Athens, 341
Atlanta, 239
Atlantic coast-plain, 213, 221
Attar-of-roses, 338
Australia, 392
Austria-Hungary, 335
Bagdad, 354
Baku, 347, 348
Baltimore, 217
Baluchistan, 357
Banca, 181, 364
Barbados, 273
Barley, 101
Barmen-Elberfeld, 308
Batavia, 364
Bauxite, 179
Beef, exports of U.S., 244
Beet sugar, 186, 303, 321
Beginnings of cities, 82
Belgium, 313
Belgrade, 341
Bengal, 361
Benzine, 156
Bergen, 312
Berlin, 308
Bermuda, 273
Bessemer-steel boilers, 63
Big tree, 198
Billiton, 364
Birmingham, Ala., 165, 225
Birmingham, Eng., 302
Bismarck Archipelago, 397
Black walnut, 199
Blende, 182
Bluefish, 206
Boers, 86
Bogota, 277
Bohemian glass, 336
Boise City, 250
Bokhara, 347
Bolivia, 280
Bombay, 362
Bosnia, 337
Boston, 215
Boxwood, 200
Brass, 178
Brazil, 288
nuts, 289
Breakfast, travels of a, 1
Bremen, 308
Brenner Pass, 66
Brick tea, 134
Bridgeport, 221
British Columbia, 265
India, 358
Bronze Age, 181
Brussels, 316
Budapest, 337
Buenos Aires, 293
Buffalo, 225
Bulgaria, 338
Burlington, 237
Burma, British, 362
Burr clover, 34
Butte, 250
Cacao, 134
Cairo, 384
Calcutta, 123
California fruits, 251
Callao, 279
Camel's hair, 116
Camphor, 378
Canada, 261
Canadian Pacific Railway, 263
Canal, Chesapeake & Ohio, 56
Chicago ship, 56
Erie, 55
Grand, 370
Kaiser Wilhelm, 57
Ludwig, 337
Manchester, 57
Nicaragua, 59, 270
Nord Holland, 57, 318
Panama, 58
Rideau, 54
St. Mary's Falls, 228, 263
Suez, 57
Welland, 54, 263
Canyons, effects of, 18
Canton, 374
Caoutchouc, 141
Capacity of locomotives, 63, 64
Cape Nome, 254
Cape of Good Hope, 387
Cape Town, 389
Caravan tea, 134
Carpet wools, 112
Cashmere shawls, 363
Cattle-growing, 240
Cavite, 258
Cereals, 88
Charleston, 218
Cheviot, 112
Cheyenne, 244
Chicago, 84, 228, 230, 234
Chicago River, 228
Chicory, 131
Chile, 281
Chinook winds, 261
Chocolate, 136
Cigars, manufacture of, 137
Cincinnati, 236
Cities, growth of, 83
Clearing-houses, 215
Cleveland, 225, 230
Climate, 29
Clipper ship, 44
Cloth, antiquity of, 105
Coal, 148, 257, 258, 264, 265, 268, 298, 323, 333, 344, 365, 368, 379
areas of the world, 147
prices of, in U.S., 149
tar products, 153
Coast commerce of U.S., 222
Coastplains, 22
Coca, 278
Cocoa, 134
Cocoon silk, 119
Cod fisheries, 204
Coffee, 127, 271, 277, 290
Coke, 151
Colombia, 275
Columbus, voyages of, 11
Commerce in Western Europe, 13
Communal life, 81, 344
Competition and pools, 67
Constantinople, 340
Copal, 146
Copenhagen, 313
Copper, 159, 162, 177, 248, 266, 279, 344, 379
Cordage, 122
Corn, 98, 232
Corn, oil of, 100
Cotton, 106, 238, 269, 289, 302, 306, 326
Cotton, Egyptian, 109, 383
gin, 109
Indian, 360
Peruvian, 108, 278
sea island, 108
Cotton crop, distribution of, 239
Creosote, 145
Cripple Creek, 248
Crompton, 108
Crusades, wars of, 8
Cuba, 271
bast, 124
Currant grapes, 341
Da Gama, voyage of, 11
Dammar, 146
Davenport, 237
Deadwood, 250
Demerara, 286
Denmark, 312
Denver, 250
Detroit, 230
Diamonds, 388
Dias, voyage of, 11
Differentials, 71, 73
Divi-divi, 285
Division of industries, 41
Dubuque, 237
Dutch East Indies, 364
standards, 188
Eastern Turkestan, 376
Ebony, 200
Economic regions of U.S., 213
Ecuador, 279
Egypt, 381
Electric railways, 76
Eminent domain, 76
Esparto grass, 124, 385
Exchange of products, 5
Fairs, 346
Fall line, 53, 221
Fall River, 220
Felt hats, 209
Fertility of irrigated regions, 33
Feudalism, 7
Fiji Islands, 396
Fisheries, 266
Fish hatcheries, 207
Flax, 120, 300, 314, 343
New Zealand, 124
Forced draught, 63
Forest areas, 193, 261, 288, 299, 310
Fort Dearborn, 228
France, 320
Freight rates, 63, 69
French India, 365
Galveston, 238
Gasoline, 156
Geneva, 334
German Empire, 303
Ghent, 314, 316
Glucose, 100, 191
Gold, 166, 172, 248, 264, 268, 286, 344, 379, 395
Grain elevators, 94
Grape industry in New York, 36
Graphite, 153
Grasses, 88
Great Britain, 295
Great Central Plain, 22
Great Lakes, 227
Great Salt Lake, 247
Greece, 340
Griqualand West, 388
Guam, 258
Guatemala, 270
Guayaquil, 280
Guiana, 286
Gulf coast, 237
Gums, 141
Gutta-percha, 144
Halibut, 256
Halifax, 264
Hamburg, 308
Hamilton, 265
Hanse League, 13
Harbors, 26, 47, 84
Hargreaves, 109
Hartford, 221
Havana, 272
cigars, 137
Hawaiian Islands, 255
Helena, 250
Hematite, 163
Hemp, 121, 257
Henequen, 122
Herodotus quoted, 106
Herring fisheries, 205
Herzegovina, 337
Hickory, 199
Hilo, 256
Hodeida, 130
Holland, 316
Hongkong, 365, 374
Honolulu, 256, 392
Houston, 238
Hudson's Bay Company, 208, 262
Iloilo, 258
Inclination of axis, 36
Indianapolis, 237
Inland waters, 50
Intermontane valleys, 18
Interstate Commerce Commission, 76
Iodine, 282
Iquique, 283
Iran plateau, 349
Ireland, 265
Irkutsk, 347
Iron, 162, 236, 300, 323
galvanized, 182
ore, 163, 166, 300, 306, 311, 315, 323
Iron Gate, 338
Italy, 325
Jade, 159
Japan, 375
Jarrah, 200, 394
Java, 364
Joint tariff associations, 72
Jute, 122, 360
Kabue, 356
Kansas City, 236
Kashmir, 363
Kauri, 146, 396
Kerosene, 154, 157
Key West cigars, 137
Khaibar Pass, 356
Khiva, 347
Kiakhta, 347
Kiel, 309
Kimberley, 389, 390
Klondike mines, 254
Kongo River, navigation of, 54
Kongo State, 386
Korea, 376
Kristiania, 311, 312
Lac, 145
Lacquer, 378
La Guaira, 286
Lanolin, 114
Lassa, 374
Las Vegas, 250
Laudanum, 139
Lawrence, 220
Lead, 180
Lead pencils, 153
Leadville, 250
Leather goods, 221
Liechtenstein, 337
Lignum vitae, 200
Lithographic stone, 305
Liverpool, 302
Llama, 115
Lobster fisheries, 207
Locomotive, Central-Atlantic type, 64
Logwood, 201
London, 302
Los Angeles, 157, 252
Louisville, 237
Lourenco Marquez, 390
Lowell, 220
Lynn, 221
Macao, 374
Mackerel, 206
Mackintosh, 143
Madagascar, 387
Madras, 363
Magnetite, 163
Maguey sugar, 187
Mahogany, 199
Malay States, Federated, 363
Manchester, Eng., 382
Manchester, N.H., 220
Manchuria, 376
Mandalay, 362
Manganese, 182
Manila, 258
hemp, 121
Manitoba, 265
Maple, 199
sugar, 186
Marco Polo, 9
Martinique, 273
Mate, 136
Maverick, 240
Melbourne, 395
Memphis, 238
Merino wool, 111, 112
Metals, influence of, in cities, 85
Mexico, 267
city of, 269
Milan, 328
Mileage books, 72
Millet, 359
Milwaukee, 230
Mingo Junction, 224
Mining, 248
Minneapolis, 230, 236
Miquelon, 266
Mississippi River, 52
valley, 232
Mobile, 240
Mocha coffee, 130
Mohair, 115
Mohawk valley, 220
Molasses, 191
Moline, 237
Mongolia, 376
Mont Cenis tunnel, 66
Montenegro, 341
Montreal, 264
Morocco, 384
Mountains, contents of, 17
Moscow, 347
Mulberry, 116
Nagasaki, 380
Nankeen cotton, 108
Naphtha, 154, 156
Nashua, 220
Natural gas, 157
Naval stores, 145
Nearchus, 107
New Brunswick, 264
New Caledonia, 397
New England Plateau, 219
New Guinea, 396
New Haven, 221
New Orleans, 238
New York City, 84, 214, 215, 230, 238, 250
New Zealand, 395
New Zealand flax, 123, 396
Newfoundland, 266
Nicaragua, 270
Nickel, 182
Nieuwchwang, 374
Nigeria, 387
Nile River, barrage of, 383
floods of, 33
navigation of, 54
Nitrate, 282
Norfolk, 218
Northern Securities Company, 227
Norway, 310
Nova Scotia, 264
Novgorod, 209
Oak, 198
Oats, 101
Ocean steamships, 45
Odessa, 134, 347
Ogden, 250
Ohio River, 52
Oil of theobroma, 135
Old Government Java, 129
Oleo-resins, 141
Omaha, 236
Ontario, 265
Opium, 139, 360
Oregon pine, 252
Ottawa, 265
Oyster fisheries, 207
Pacific Coast lowlands, 250
Paddy, 103
Pago Pago Harbor, 258
Panama, 277
hats, 133, 279
Para, 291
Paraffine, 157
Paraguay, 293
tea, 136
Paris, 324
Passes, 19
Pearl Harbor, 256
Peking, 374
Penang, 363
Pepper, 365
Persia, 354
Persian lamb, 208
Peru, 278
Peshawur, 356, 362
Petroleum, 154, 225, 344, 379
jelly, 157
Philadelphia, 216
Philippine Islands, 256
Pine, 197
Piraeus, The, 341
Pitch, 145
Pittsburg, 106, 224
Plains, 21
Plaiting straw, 124
Plateaus, 21, 247
Ponce, 255
Pools, 68
Population, distribution of, 81
Pork, 234
Port Arthur, 347
Port Huron, 230
Port Said, 384
Port wine, 330
Portland, Me., 217
Portland, Ore., 252
Porto Rico, 254
Portugal, 328
Pribilof Islands, 208, 254
Prince Edward Island, 264
Providence, 221
Puget Sound, 228, 252
Punjab, 362
Pyrites, 164
Quebec, 264
city of, 265
Quicksilver, 180
Rabbit skins, 209
Railway, Canadian Pacific, 263
Chesapeake & Ohio, 71
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, 68
New York Central, 65, 67
Northern Pacific, 227
Sind-Pishin, 356
Southern, 71
Tehuantepec, 269
Transportation, 62
Transsiberian, 345, 372
Union Pacific, 66
Rainfall, effects of, 33
deficiency of, 33
Ramie, 123
Rangoon, 362
Raw silk, 118
Rebates, 71
Redwood, 198, 252
Resins, 141
Rhodesia, 389
Rice, 102, 359
Richmond, 221
Riga, 347
Rio Janeiro, 290
River navigation in Europe, 53
valleys, 21
Roads, macadamized, 78
Rock Island, 237
Rome, 327
Rotterdam, 318
Roumania, 338
Rubber, 141, 275, 278, 281, 288
Rug wools, 114
Rugs, oriental, 351, 355
Ruhr iron fields, 306
Russia, 343
Rye, 101, 344
Sacramento, 252
Sahara, 385
Saigon, 365
Sailing vessels, 47
St. Gotthard tunnel, 66
St. Louis, 234
St. Paul, 230, 236
St. Petersburg, 346
St. Pierre, 266
St. Thomas, 273
Salmon, 205
Salonica, 340
Samoa Islands, 396
San Antonio, 239
San Francisco, 252
San Joaquin valley, 250
San Juan, P.R., 255
San Pedro, 252
Sandarach, 146
Santa Fe, 250
Santiago, 283
Santos, 290
Saskatchewan, 265
Savannah, 238
Schooners, 44, 47
Scranton, 224
Seal fisheries, 208
Seasonal rains, 34
Seattle, 84, 252
Servia, 341
Shad, 256
Shanghai, 374
Sheep-growing, 242
Shell-lac, 145
Shoe manufacture, 221
Siam, 364
Siberia, 347
Silk, 116, 323, 326, 368, 378
Silver, 162, 176, 248, 268, 278, 304, 340
Sind, 362
Singapore, 363, 365
Sioux City, 236
Sisal hemp, 122, 267
Skagway, 254
Smyrna, 139, 353
Sorghum, 187
Sound Valley, 250
South Bethlehem, 224
South Chicago, 225
Southampton, 302
Spain, 328
Spermaceti, 204
Spokane, 250
Sponge, 208
Steel, Bessemer, 160, 169, 170, 222, 300, 304, 345
Stephenson, 63
Stockholm, 312
Stockton, 252
Sugar, 185, 289, 303, 314, 318, 364
Swash channel, 50
Sweden, 310
Switzerland, 331
Sydney, 395
Tacoma, 252
Tar, 145
Tea, 131, 360, 368, 378
Teak, 200, 365
Temperate zone, activities of, 32
Textiles, 105
Three-mile fishing limit, 262
Thrown silk, 118
Tientsin, 134, 374
Tin, 181, 364
Tobacco, 136, 237, 240, 364, 383
Tokio, 380
Toledo, 225
Topography and trade routes, 24
Toronto, 265
Torrid zone, temperature of, 30
Tortilla, Mexican, 100
Trade routes, ancient, 8
Transcaucasia, 348
Transvaal, 389
Treaty ports, 373
Trebizond, 351
Triple-expansion principle, 45
Tripoli, 386
Tunis, 385
Turf grass, 34
Turkey-in-Europe, 339
Turks invade Europe, 9
Turpentine, 144
Tussar silk, 119
Tutuila, 258
Tweed, 112
Uruguay, 294
Valparaiso, 283
Vancouver, 266
Vanderbilt locomotive fire-box, 64
Vanilla, 268
Vaseline, 157
Venezuela, 285
Vicksburg, 238
Vienna, 337
Virginia City, 250
Vladivostok, 347
Vuelta Abajo, 137
Vulcanized rubber, 142
Wai-wu-pu, 373
Walla Walla, 250
Warsaw, 347
Water-power, 84
Waterproof cloth, 143
Welland Canal, 263
Wellington, 396
Whale fisheries, 203
Wheat, 88, 96, 244, 344, 359, 367
White Pass, 254
Willamette Valley, 250
Winnipeg, 265
Wood-pulp, 124
Wool, 110,115, 117, 244, 251, 292, 297, 323
Yafa, 354
Yokohama, 380
Youngstown, 166
Yucatan, 267
Zinc, 182
Zinfandel, 251
Footnotes:
[1] If the edition for free distribution is exhausted, these may be
purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, Public Printer,
Washington, D.C.
[2] The greatness of Palmyra was due to the trade along this route, and
its decay began when the route was abandoned. The present town of Tadmor
is near the ruins of the former city.
[3] Cosmas Indicopleustes--in early life a merchant, in later years a
monk--visited India and Ceylon during the first part of the sixth
century. His writings contain much valuable knowledge, but in the main
they are theological arguments intended to disprove the Geography
written by Ptolemy.
[4] The date is variously given as 1169, 1200, and 1241.
[5] To Waldemar III. of Denmark it dictated terms that made its power in
Scandinavia supreme.
[6] For a complete list of books for reference, see p. xii.
[7] The record time on this route was made by the Lucania in five days,
seven hours, and twenty-three minutes, from Daunts Rock, Queenstown, to
Sandy Hook light. The fastest day's run yet recorded was made by the
Deutschland--601 nautical miles, a speed of 24.19 knots.
[8] In Congress the River and Harbor Bill always receives a generous
appropriation.
[9] In many instances goods designed for the spring trade in the Western
States are started via the canal in October, reaching their destination
at Chicago some time in April, the cargo having been frozen up in one or
another of the canal basins during the winter. The rate paid for this
slow transit is considerably less than the amount which otherwise would
have been paid for storage; moreover, it is nearly all clear profit to
the canal boatmen.
[10] The minimum depth of the canal is 22 feet; its width at the bottom
is 160 feet. It was begun September, 1892, and completed January 2,
1902, at a cost of thirty-four million dollars. More than forty million
cubic yards of earth and rock were excavated. All the bridges crossing
it are movable.
[11] This is on the supposition that night travel will be too dangerous
a risk. With a continuous travel the time would be about thirty-three
hours.
[12] On one great trunk system the average ton-mile rate in 1870 was one
and one-seventh cents; in 1900 it was just one-half that sum.
[13] The modern steam-making boiler has from thirty to one hundred or
more tubes passing through it from end to end. The heat from the
fire-box as a rule passes under the boiler and through the tubular
flues; it thus increases the heating surface very greatly. The forced
draught is made by allowing the exhaust steam to escape into the
smokestack, thereby increasing the draught through the fire-box.
[14] A single locomotive of the New York Central has hauled 4,000 tons
of freight at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour. A "camel-back" of
the Philadelphia & Reading hauled 4,800 tons of coal from the mines to
tide-water without a helper.
[15] The Vanderbilt boiler with cylindrical corrugated fire-box invented
by Cornelius Vanderbilt, great-grandson of the founder of the New York
Central, marks an important step in locomotive building. The cylindrical
form largely obviates the necessity of an array of stay-bolts to prevent
warping; the corrugated surface gives greater heating power.
[16] The Central-Atlantic type of locomotive illustrates a modern
improvement. The driving-wheels are placed a little forward of their
usual position, while the fire-box, formerly set between the wheels, now
overhangs each side of a pair of low trailing-wheels. By this means the
heating surface of the fire-box is increased nearly one-half. A lever
controlled by the engineer enables the latter to transfer 5,000 pounds
weight from the trucks to the driving-wheels when a grade is to be
surmounted. The daily run of such a locomotive is greatly increased.
(_See cut, p. 61._)
[17] A line from Vienna to Triest was opened about 1854; Germany was
joined to Italy across Brenner Pass in 1868; France was connected with
Italy through a tunnel near Mont Cenis in 1871; in 1882 the traffic of
Germany was opened to Mediterranean ports by a tunnel under St.
Gotthard. In this manner trunk systems have gradually developed.
[18] The building of the West Shore Railroad is an illustration. After
both roads had suffered tremendous losses the New York Central settled
the matter by purchasing the West Shore. This was one of a great number
of similar cases both in the United States and Europe.
[19] In Great Britain the ton-rate is about $2.30 per hundred miles; in
Germany, $1.75; in Russia, $1.30; in the United States, $0.70. The
difference is due as much to the length of distance hauled as to
economical management.
[20] Thus, A, B, and C are roads whose chief terminal points are Chicago
and New York City. The road C is the shortest of the three lines, but
its grades are very heavy. B is, say, one hundred miles longer, but has
no heavy grades. A is a very indirect route, and its New York traffic
must be trans-shipped at Boston, or perhaps at New London, and sent a
part of the way by water. If now an absolute ton-mile rate is fixed for
either road, it is evident that neither of the others can carry through
freight without altering rates. If C fixes a rate, then A and B must
either charge higher rates between Chicago and Montreal, or Chicago and
Albany, than between their terminals. And although this is illegal in
most States, the laws are evaded by "rebate," or repayment of a certain
sum to the shipper. Of the three roads B, on account of easy grades, is
in the best position to fix rates. It therefore makes, not the lowest
rate, but the one that will yield the best returns. C conforms to this,
and A takes what it can get, hauling at a very small profit. But if A
happens to be outside of the limits of the United States, it may openly
cut rates, because pretty nearly all the through freight it gets is
clear profit, and inasmuch as none of the laws of a State apply to the
Canadian portion of the road, it may do what the others cannot. And
while B is struggling with A, the three roads X, Y, and Z are perhaps
endeavoring to have some of the freight sent from Buffalo eastward over
their own lines. In instances similar to the foregoing it is customary
for B and C to divide the through business and to allow a "differential"
to A--that is, on account of its slower delivery of through freight, to
carry it at a slightly lower rate. B then adjusts its traffic with X, Y,
and Z in a similar manner; and on the whole this is the fairest way to
all concerned.
The following, one of many instances, shows the difficulties in fixing
rates that will not be unjust to either party: Danville and Lynchburg
compete for a certain trade. The Southern Railway passes through both
cities, but the Chesapeake & Ohio makes Lynchburg by another route;
Danville, therefore, is not a competing point, while Lynchburg is. As a
result, the Southern Railway charged $1.08 for a certain traffic from
Chicago to Danville and only 72 cents to Lynchburg, some distance
beyond, this being the rate over the other road. The matter finally
reached the Court of Appeals, and the latter sustained the Southern
Railway. The rate to Danville was shown to be not excessive, but if the
railway were required to maintain a rate to Lynchburg higher than 72
cents, it would lose all its traffic to that point, amounting to
$433,000 yearly. In a case of this kind there can be no help except by a
consolidation of the two roads; by virtue of the consolidation all the
Lynchburg freight will then go over the line having the easiest haul.
[21] That is, the Government pledged its credit for the money borrowed,
and in addition gave the companies alternate sections of public land on
both sides of the proposed line, the land-grants being designed partly
to encourage immigration and partly to increase the building funds of
the various companies. In several instances both the land-grants and the
money subsidies were scandalously used. At least one road used its
earnings to build a competing line and, after disposing of the
land-grant and pocketing the proceeds, allowed the Government to
foreclose the mortgage and sell the original road.
[22] From the Latin "castra," a camp.
[23] In 1897 the world's crop was 2,226,750,000 bushels, and as a
result, the countries in which the crop was short suffered from high
prices. Had it not been for the prompt carrying service of railways and
steamships famine would have resulted.
[24] In order to yield a crop of twenty-five bushels per acre the soil
must supply 110 lbs. of nitrogen, 45 lbs. of phosphoric acid, 30.5 lbs.
of lime, 14.5 lbs. of magnesia, and 142 lbs. of potash; these are
approximately the mineral elements taken out of the soil with each crop,
and it is needless to say that they must be replaced or the grain will
starve for want of nutrient substances.
[25] In the United States there are about seven wheat-districts, each
characterized by particular varieties that grow best in the given
locality. In the New England and most of the middle Atlantic division
Early Genesee Giant, Jones Winter Fife, and Fultz are chiefly grown. In
the Southern States Fultz, Fulcaster, Purple Straw, and May are
foremost. In the north central group of States Early Red Clawson, Poole,
Dawson's Golden Chaff, Buda Pest, and Fultz are common. In the Dakotas
and Minnesota Scotch Fife and Velvet Blue Stem (both spring wheats) are
generally planted. In Kansas and Texas and the adjacent locality the
principal varieties are Turkey, Fulcaster, and Mediterranean (all winter
wheats). In California and the southern plateau region Sonora,
California Club, and Defiance are the principal kinds (all winter
wheats). In Washington and Oregon Little Club, Red Chaff, and Blue Stem
(which are either winter or spring) are the main varieties.
[26] Sometimes the owner sends it to the nearest elevator at tide-water
where the grain is stored, not in bulk, but in the original packages,
subject to his demand. In the course of a month or six weeks it absorbs
so much moisture that the gain in weight more than pays the storage
charges.
[27] The elevators are equipped with "legs" or long spouts, within which
belts with metal scoops transfer the grain from car to vessel or _vice
versa_. The elevators at Buffalo will fill a canal-boat in an hour's
time, or load six grain-cars in five minutes. A large whaleback
steamship may be relieved of its 200,000 bushels in about three hours.
Most of the east-bound wheat of the Middle West is transferred to the
seaboard by rail, but that of the northwest, which forms the chief part
of the crop, is shipped from Duluth through the St. Marys Falls Canal to
Buffalo, where it is transferred to cars or to canal-boats. New York is
the leading export market, but Boston, New Orleans, Galveston,
Baltimore, and Philadelphia are also important shipping ports.
[28] The following is approximately the yield of the chief wheat-growing
countries in bushels per acre:
Denmark 42
England 29
New Zealand 26
Germany 23.2
Holland & Belgium 21.5
Hungary 18.5
France 19.5
Austria 16.3
Canada 15.5
United States 12.3
Argentina 12.2
Italy 12.1
Australia 10
India 9.2
Russia 8.6
Algeria 7.5
The low average in Australia, India, and Algeria is due mainly to lack
of rainfall; in the United States and Russia, mainly to unskilful
cultivation.
[29] It seems to have been introduced into Turkey from India about the
latter part of the fifteenth century, after which it was occasionally
heard of in Europe as "Turkey corn."
[30] The "tortilla," the national bread of the Mexican, consists of a
thick corn-meal paste pressed into thin wafers between the hands, and
baked on hot slabs of stone. The corn-meal "mush" of the American, the
"polenta" of the Italian, and the "mamaliga" of the Rumanian are all
practically corn-meal boiled to a thick paste in water.
[31] The gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, enabled one man to do by
machinery about the same amount of work as previously had required one
hundred laborers. For want of the laws necessary to protect his
invention, Whitney was defrauded of the profits arising from it. Neither
Congress nor the courts gave him any relief from the numerous
infringements, and he died a poor man.
[32] The commercial distinction is a sensible one: hair is hard, crisp,
straight, and does not felt; wool is soft, curly, and felts readily.
[33] An ounce of eggs produces about forty thousand worms, and these,
during the grub stage, require about fifteen hundred pounds of leaves,
about one-half of which is actually consumed.
[34] Charles II. of England also forbade its use (1675) and attempted to
close the coffee-houses that had sprung up in London, but in spite of
the ban and the prohibitive tax laid upon it, the use of coffee became
general. Similar efforts to close the coffee-houses in Constantinople
failed.
[35] The full-grown leaf attains a length of from four to nine inches;
those picked rarely exceed one-and-a-half inches in length.
[36] Brick tea consists of leaves moulded into bricks under heavy
pressure. Refuse and stems are also thus prepared for the cheaper
grades.
[37] The following are the chief rubber-producing trees: _Siphonia
elastica_, or _Hevea brasiliensis_, Amazon forests, yields Para rubber;
_Manihot Glaziovii_, also a tapioca-producing shrub, Ceara province,
Brazil, furnishes Ceara rubber; _Castilloa elastica_, Central American
States, Nicaragua rubber; _Ficus elastica_, British India, and _Urceola
elastica_, Borneo, Indian rubber. There are rubber-producing trees in
Florida, but they have little commercial value at the present time.
African rubber is taken from a variety of plants.
[38] The process of vulcanizing was made practicable during the ten
years ending in 1850. It was invented and perfected by Goodyear in the
United States and by Hancock in England; for ordinary purposes, where
both strength and elasticity are required, about five per cent. of
sulphur is added. The addition of about fifty per cent. changes the
rubber to a hard black substance known as "ebonite," or "hard rubber."
[39] In 1823 a Scotchman, Mackintosh, applied the discovery, that rubber
gum was soluble in benzine, to the water-proofing of the cloth that
bears his name. This invention was about the first extensive commercial
use to which rubber had been put.
[40] From the fact that most of the dwellings in the United States are
built of wood, the United States is a very heavy consumer of turpentine.
[41] A slender strip of metallic lead was used instead of graphite in
the first pencils made. The use of graphite did not become general until
about 1850. The hardness of a pencil is regulated by mixing clay with
the powdered graphite.
[42] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[43] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[44] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[45] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[46] The limestone has no essential part in the smelting of the ore
except to produce an easily-flowing, liquid slag; hence it is called a
_flux_. Some ores smelt and flow so easily that a flux is not required.
[47] Under ordinary circumstances about two tons of coal, or
three-quarters of a ton of coke, are required to produce a ton of
pig-iron.
[48] Terne plate is sheet-iron coated with an alloy of lead and tin.
[49] Heredity is likewise a factor. The seeds of knotty, scraggly trees
are very apt to produce trees of their own kind and _vice versa_.
[50] This sum represents more than ten times the amount of gold coin now
in existence. Less than five per cent. of the business of the great
industrial centres is a cash business. Even if the money existed, the
transfer of such immense sums would greatly retard commerce. In order to
effect a speedy settlement of payments, clearing-houses are established.
At the clearing-house the representatives of the various banks meet
daily and liquidate the checks drawn against one another; and although
the total yearly volume of payment aggregates the sum mentioned above,
the _balances_ for a year are but little more than two billion dollars.
Even this does not always represent cash payment, for a bank that is a
debtor to another at the close of one day may be a creditor for an equal
sum on the next.
[51] These roads are financed by the Northern Securities Company and
form a link in the Hill-Morgan lines. Their intercontinental traffic is
large.
[52] Their dividing line is the centre of a street.
[53] The brand consisted of any specific device, such as an initial, a
monogram, or a conventional form that might be easily recognized. The
device was registered and imprinted with a red-hot iron on the flank of
the animal. Ear-marks, such as notches or similar devices, also
indicated ownership.
[54] In many cases Government land, not owned by the rancher, has been
fenced in. No objection was made, however, until the sheep-grazier came.
He demanded the removal of the fences, claiming that he had an equal
right to graze his herds on public lands. But inasmuch as a range once
grazed by sheep is ruined for cattle-growing, the quarrel between the
grazier and the rustler has become one in which both the grazier and the
rustler turned upon the sheep-owner.
[55] It is one-third of their capital stock plus the bonded
indebtedness.
[56] The high latitude of the wheat-region, which in most cases is too
cold for the growing of food-stuffs, in this region is tempered by
occasional warm winds known as "Chinook winds." These winds are the
saving feature of wheat-growing. They prevail also in British Columbia,
Washington, and Oregon.
[57] Freight rates from Coatzacoalcos to San Francisco are already fixed
at $6.50 per ton; by the transcontinental railways they vary from $12 to
$15 per ton.
[58] The entire Cuban crop is comparatively small, being but little more
than one-eighth that of the United States.
[59] Vegetable ivory is the seed or nut of a species of palm
(_Phytelephas macrocarpa_). The kernel of the nut gradually acquires the
hardness and appearance of the best ivory, for which it is employed as a
substitute.
[60] The leaves of this shrub (_Erythroxylon coca_) contain a stimulant
substance that in its effects is much like the active principle of
coffee. They are much used by the native laborers to ward off the
feeling of lassitude that comes with severe labor in a tropical climate.
A native porter will carry a load of one hundred pounds a distance of
sixty miles with no food or rest, but merely chewing a few coca-leaves.
The plant yields the substance _cocaine_, now in demand all over the
world as an anaesthetic in eye and throat surgery.
[61] More than a score of species of the tree from which this bark is
obtained grow in the higher eastern slopes of the Andes, but a very
large part is obtained from the tree, _Cinchona calisaya_. The medicinal
substance, quinine, is extracted from the bark, and in the past
half-century it has become the specific for malarial fevers. So great is
the demand for it, that the cinchona-tree is now cultivated in India,
Java, and Mexico.
[62] Only a very small proportion of the Panama hats in the market are
genuine. Many of the imitations, selling at retail for ten dollars or
more, are serviceable hats; most of them, however, have but little
worth.
[63] Nitre, or "nitrate," is a native nitrate of potash, or nitrate of
soda. The latter, commonly called cubic nitre or Chile saltpetre, is the
kind occurring in Chile. Inasmuch as it is very soluble, a plentiful
rainfall would soon leach it from the ground and carry it to the sea.
The nitrate is thought to be of vegetable origin.
[64] The pod of a shrub (_Caesalpina coriaria_); it contains a
considerable proportion of tannin and is used for tanning leather.
[65] The pericarp or pod contains about twenty-four prismatic-shaped
nuts.
[66] The cattle for Cuba and Brazil must be shipped in open pens in
crossing the tropics. With the exports for Europe the case is different.
If it is summer at the one port it is winter at the other, but it is
always summer in the tropics, and cattle-ships fit for one zone are not
fit for the other--hence the great difficulties in shipment of live
animals to Europe.
[67] For this reason Great Britain is practically a free-trade country.
A protective tariff on imported food-stuffs and materials to be
manufactured would hurt rather than protect British industries.
[68] This is equivalent to the imposition of a tax on all the sugar
consumed at home.
[69] Most of the lithographic stone is obtained at Solnhofen.
[70] This is a little greater than the average ton-mile rate on the New
York Central Railroad between New York and Chicago.
[71] The name Zuider, or Zuyder, means "south"; it was so named to
distinguish it from the North Sea.
[72] Some years ago many of the most valuable vineyards were destroyed
by an insect pest known as the _phylloxera_, introduced from California.
The trouble was overcome by replanting with American vines, the roots of
which were immune to the pest. On these roots were grafted the choice
French vines, the leaves and twigs of which were immune. In this manner
the vineyards were restored with vines that are proof against attack,
and the wine output has reached its normal amount.
[73] It is cultivated as an ornamental tree in the Southern States and
in California.
[74] A small vein of coal occurs near Freiburg.
[75] The St. Gotthard tunnel is almost nine and one-half miles long; the
Arlberg tunnel is six and one-half miles in length. The tunnel now
nearing completion under the Simplon Pass is more than twelve miles
long. Five railways cross the northern frontier into Germany, and German
commerce profits most by them.
[76] Persian rugs are the finest. As a rule the designs are floral and
many of them contain legendary history worked in fantastic but beautiful
patterns. Among those of especial merit are the Kermanshah tree-of-life
fabrics, now somewhat rare. The rugs of Tabriz and Shiraz are also of
high value. In general, Persian fabrics are characterized by very fine
weaving, a short pile, and elaborate designs. Turkoman rugs are usually
a rich brown or maroon in color, and are apt to contain slightly
elongated octagonal figures. The Bokhara and Khiva-Bokhara, or Afghan
rugs, are the best examples. The Baluchistan rugs are usually very dark
in color, with bright red designs and striped ends of cotton warp.
Turkish rugs are made almost wholly in Asia Minor or Anatolia. Large
carpets of American and European designs are made at Ushak and Smyrna.
"Smyrna" rugs are made in Philadelphia.
[77] The most valuable Kermanshah rug, now no longer made there, is the
tree-of-life prayer-rug, an illustration of which is shown on p. 350.
The design is emblematic of the story of the Garden of Eden.
[78] In 1900 the aggregate value of the wheat exported to Great Britain
was only L2,200.
[79] Since the treaty of 1901, which forbids the importation of
fire-arms, a number of large plants for the manufacture of fire-arms,
smokeless powder, and fixed ammunition have been established on the
lower Yangtze.
[80] The islands are mainly in the belt of prevailing westerly winds.
More rain, therefore, falls on the west than on the east coasts.
[81] This region is also known us the Gold Coast. Formerly it furnished
the chief British supply of gold, and the gold coin known as the
"guinea" received its name from this circumstance.
[82] This region was formerly comprised in the Boer republics, Orange
Free State and South African Republic. In 1899 they declared war against
Great Britain, with the result that they were defeated and annexed to
that country--the former as Orange Colony, the latter as Transvaal
Colony.
[83] It is estimated that twenty-two acres of land are necessary to
sustain one adult on fresh meat. The same area of wheat would feed
forty-two people; of oats about eighty-five people; of maize, potatoes,
and rice, one hundred and seventy people. But twenty-two acres planted
with bread-fruit or bananas will support about six thousand.
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Title: Commercial Geography
A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges
Author: Jacques W. Redway
Release Date: March 20, 2008 [eBook #24884]
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COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY
A Book for High Schools
Commercial Courses, and
Business Colleges
by
JACQUES W. REDWAY, F.R.G.S.
Author of "A Series of Geographies," "An Elementary
Physical Geography," "The New Basis of Geography"
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York ... 1907
Copyright, 1903, by
Jacques W. Redway
PREFACE
The quiet industrial struggle through which the United States passed
during the last decade of the nineteenth century cannot fail to impress
the student of political economy with the fact that commercial
revolution is a normal result of industrial evolution. Within a period
of twenty-five years the transportation of commodities has grown to be
not only a science, but a power in the betterment of civil and political
life as well; and the world, which in the time of M. Jules Verne was
eighty days wide, is now scarcely forty.
The invention of the Bessemer process for making steel was intended
primarily to give the railway-operator a track that should be free from
the defects of the soft, wrought-iron rail; in fact, however, it created
new industrial centres all over the world and brought Asia and Africa
under commercial conquest. The possibilities of increased trade between
the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific Coast States led to the building
of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railways. But when these were
thoroughly organized, there unexpectedly resulted a new trade-route that
already is drawing traffic away from the Suez Canal and landing it at
Asian shores by way of the ports of Puget Sound. It is a repetition of
the adjustment that occurred when the opening of the Cape route to India
transferred the trade that had gathered about Venice and Genoa to the
shores of the North and Baltic Seas.
In other words, a new order of things has come about, and the world and
the people therein are readjusting themselves to the requirements made
upon them by commerce. And so at the beginning of a new century,
civilized man is drawing upon all the rest of the world to satisfy his
wants, and giving to all the world in return; he is civilized because of
this interchange and not in spite of it.
The necessity for instruction in a subject that pertains so closely to
the welfare of a people is apparent, and an apology for presenting this
manual is needless. Moreover, it should not interfere in any way with
the regular course in geography; indeed, more comprehensive work in the
latter is becoming imperative, and it should be enriched rather than
curtailed.
In the preparation of the work, I wish to express my appreciation of the
great assistance of Principal Myron T. Pritchard, Edward Everett School,
Boston, Mass. I am also much indebted to the map-engraving department of
Messrs. The Matthews-Northrup Company, Buffalo, N.Y.
J.W.R.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 1
II. HOW COMMERCE CIVILIZED MANKIND 7
III. TOPOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE 17
IV. CLIMATIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE 29
V. TRANSPORTATION--OCEAN AND INLAND NAVIGATION 39
VI. TRANSPORTATION--RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY ORGANIZATION;
PUBLIC HIGHWAYS 62
VII. FACTORS IN THE LOCATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS 81
VIII. THE CEREALS AND GRASSES 88
IX. TEXTILE FIBRES 105
X. PLANT PRODUCTS OF ECONOMIC USE--BEVERAGES AND
MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES 127
XI. GUMS AND RESINS USED IN THE ARTS 141
XII. COAL AND PETROLEUM 147
XIII. METALS OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES 159
XIV. SUGAR AND ITS COMMERCE 185
XV. FORESTS AND FOREST PRODUCTS 193
XVI. SEA PRODUCTS AND FURS 203
XVII. THE UNITED STATES--THE SEAPORTS AND THE ATLANTIC
COAST-PLAIN 211
XVIII. THE UNITED STATES--THE NEW ENGLAND PLATEAU
AND THE APPALACHIAN REGION 219
XIX. THE UNITED STATES--THE BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES
AND THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 227
XX. THE UNITED STATES--THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS AND
TERRITORIAL POSSESSIONS 247
XXI. CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND 261
XXII. MEXICO--CENTRAL AMERICA--WEST INDIES 267
XXIII. SOUTH AMERICA--THE ANDEAN STATES 275
XXIV. SOUTH AMERICA--THE LOWLAND STATES 285
XXV. EUROPE--GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY 295
XXVI. EUROPE--THE BALTIC AND NORTH SEA STATES 310
XXVII. EUROPE--THE MEDITERRANEAN STATES AND SWITZERLAND 320
XXVIII. EUROPE--THE DANUBE AND BALKAN STATES 335
XXIX. EUROPE-ASIA--THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 343
XXX. THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA 349
XXXI. BRITISH INDIA AND THE EAST INDIES 358
XXXII. CHINA AND JAPAN 367
XXXIII. AFRICA 381
XXXIV. OCEANIA 391
APPENDIX 398
INDEX 399
COLORED MAPS
PAGE
PRINCIPAL TRANSPORTATION LINES AND REGIONS OF LARGEST
COMMERCE x, xi
MEAN ANNUAL RAINFALL 28
CITY OF NEW YORK AND VICINITY, WITH HARBOR APPROACHES 49
DISTRIBUTION OF VEGETATION 80
NORTH AMERICA 210
PUGET SOUND 253
MEXICO 268
SOUTH AMERICA 274
BRITISH ISLES 299
GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES 304
HOLLAND AND BELGIUM 314
FRANCE 321
ITALY 326
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 329
TURKEY AND GREECE 338
RUSSIAN EMPIRE 342
THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA 349
EASTERN CHINA 369
JAPAN AND KOREA 375
AFRICA 382
THE COMMERCE OF THE PACIFIC 393
[Illustration: PRINCIPAL TRANSPORTATION LINES AND REGIONS OF LARGEST
COMMERCE]
TO THE TEACHER:--The contents of this book are so topicalized and
arranged that, if the time for the study is limited, a short course may
be selected. Under no circumstances, however, should Chapters V, VI,
VIII, IX, XII, and XIII be omitted. A casual inspection of the questions
at the end of each chapter will serve to show that they cannot be
answered from the pages of the book, and they have been selected with
this idea in view. They are intended first of all to stimulate
individual thought, and secondly to encourage the pupil to investigate
the topics by consulting original sources. The practice of corresponding
with pupils in other parts of the world cannot be too highly commended.
The following list represents a minimum rather than a maximum reference
library. It may be enlarged at the judgment of the teacher. A good atlas
and a cyclopaedia are also necessary.
Industrial Evolution of the United States. WRIGHT. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
History of Commerce in Europe. GIBBINS. The Macmillan Company.
Discovery of America. FISKE. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The New Empire. ADAMS. The Macmillan Company.
Statesman's Year-Book. KELTIE. The Macmillan Company.
Outlines of Political Science. GUNTON AND ROBBINS. D. Appleton &
Co.
The Wheat Problem. CROOKES. G.P. Putnam's Sons.
South America. CARPENTER. American Book Company.
From the Bureau of Statistics, Department of Commerce, Washington,
D.C., the following monographs may be procured:[1]
Commercial China. American Commerce. Commercial Australia.
Commercial Japan. Commercial Africa. Commercial India. Statistical
Abstract. Great Canals of the World. World's Sugar Production and
Consumption.
The following from the Department of Agriculture is necessary:
Check List of Forest Trees of the United States.
Lantern slides illustrating the subjects treated in this book may be
procured from T.H. McAllister, 49 Nassau Street, New York. Stereoscopic
views may be obtained from Underwood & Underwood, Fifth Avenue and
Nineteenth Street, New York.
COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
Commerce and modern civilization go hand in hand, and the history of the
one is the history of the other; and whatever may be the basis of
civilization, commerce has been the chief agent by which it has been
spread throughout the world. Peoples who receive nothing from their
fellow-men, and who give nothing in return, are usually but little above
a savage state. Civilized man draws upon all the rest of the world for
what he requires, and gives to the rest of the world in return. He is
civilized because of this fact and not in spite of it.
There is scarcely a country in the world that does not yield something
or other to civilized peoples. There is scarcely a household whose
furnishings and contents do not represent an aggregate journey of
several times around the earth. A family in New York at breakfast occupy
chairs from Grand Rapids, Mich.; they partake of bread made of wheat
from Minnesota, and meat from Texas prepared in a range made in St.
Louis; coffee grown in Sumatra or Java, or tea from China is served in
cups made in Japan, sweetened with sugar from Cuba, stirred with spoons
of silver from Nevada. Spices from Africa, South America, and Asia
season the food, which is served on a table of New Hampshire oak,
covered with a linen spread made from flax grown in Ireland or in
Russia. Rugs from Bokhara, or from Baluchistan, cover the floors;
portieres made in Constantinople hang at the doors; and the room is
heated with coal from Pennsylvania that burns in a furnace made in Rhode
Island.
Now all these things may be, and usually are, found in the great
majority of families in the United States or Europe, and most of them
will be found in nearly all households. Certain it is that peoples do
exist who, from the immediate vicinity in which they live, procure all
the things they use or consume. In the main, however, such peoples are
savages.
A moment's thought will make it clear that before an ordinary meal can
be served there must be railways, steamships, great manufacturing
establishments, iron quarries, and coal mines, aggregating many thousand
millions of dollars, and employing many million people. A casual
inspection, too, reveals the fact that all of the substances and things
required by mankind come from the earth, and, a very few excepted, every
one requires a certain amount of manufacture or preliminary treatment
before it is usable. The grains and nearly all the other food-stuffs
require various processes of preparation before they are ready for
consumption by civilized peoples. Iron and the various other ores used
in the arts must undergo elaborate processes of manufacture; coal must
be mined, broken, cleaned, and transported; the soil in which
food-stuffs are grown must be fertilized and mechanically prepared; and
even the water required for domestic purposes in many instances must be
transported long distances.
[Illustration: AGRICULTURE AND MANUFACTURE SUPPLEMENT EACH OTHER]
A little thought will suffice to show that not only are all food-stuffs
derived from the earth, but that also every usable resource which
constitutes wealth is also drawn from the same source. The same is also
pretty nearly true of the various forms of energy, for although the sun
is the real source of light and heat, and probably of electricity, these
agents are usable only when they have been transformed into earth
energies. Thus, the physical energy generated by falling water is merely
a transformed portion of solar heat; so also the coal-beds contain both
the chemical and physical energy of solar heat and light converted into
potential energy--that is, into force that can be used at the will of
intelligence. Indeed, the physical being of mankind is an organism born
of the earth, and adapted to the earth; and when that physical form
dies, it merely is transformed again to ordinary earth substances.
The chief activities of living beings are those relating to the
maintenance of life. In other words, animals must feed, and they must
also protect themselves against extermination. In the case of all other
animals this is a very simple matter, they simply live in immediate
contact with their food, migrating or perishing if the supply gives out.
In the case of mankind the conditions are different and vastly more
elaborate. Savage peoples excepted, man does not live within close touch
of the things he requires; indeed, he cannot, for he depends upon all
the world for what he uses. In a less enlightened state many of these
commodities were luxuries; in a civilized state they have become
necessities. Moreover, nearly everything civilized man employs has been
prepared by processes in which heat is employed.
Therefore one may specify several classes of human activities and
employments:
(_a_) The production of food-stuffs and other commodities by the
cultivation of the soil--_Agriculture_.
(_b_) The preparation of food-stuffs and things used for shelter,
protection, or ornament--_Manufacture_.
(_c_) The production of minerals for the generation of power, such
as coal, or those such as iron, copper, stone, etc., required in
the arts and sciences--_Mining_.
(_d_) The exchange of food stuffs and commodities--_Commerce_.
(_e_) The transfer of commodities--_Transportation_.
It is evident that the prosperity and happiness of a people depend very
largely on the condition of their surroundings--that is, their
environment. If a country or an inhabited area produces all the
food-stuffs and commodities required by its people, the conditions are
very fortunate. A very few nations, notably China and the United States,
have such diverse conditions of climate, topography, and mineral
resources, that they can, if necessary, produce within their national
borders everything needed by their peoples.
The prosecution of such a policy, however, is rarely economical; in the
history of the past it has always resulted in weakness and
disintegration. China is to-day helpless because of a policy of
self-seclusion; and the marvellous growth of Japan began when her trade
was thrown open to the world.
For the greater part the environment of a people is deficient--that is,
the locality of a people does not yield all that is required for the
necessities of life. For instance, the New England plateau requires an
enormous amount of fuel for its manufacturing enterprises; but
practically no coal is found within its borders; hence the manufacturers
must either command the coal to be shipped from other regions or give up
their employment. The people of Canada require a certain amount of
cotton cloth; but the cotton plant will not grow in a cold climate, so
they must either exchange some of their own commodities for cotton, or
else go without it. The inhabitants of Great Britain produce only a
small part of the food-stuffs they consume; therefore they are
constantly exchanging their manufactured products for the food-stuffs
that of necessity must be produced in other parts of the world.
The dwellers of the New England plateau might grow the bread-stuffs they
require, and in times past they did so. At that time, however, a barrel
of flour was worth twelve dollars. But the wheat of the prairie regions
can be grown, manufactured into flour, transported a thousand miles, and
sold at a profit for less than five dollars a barrel. Therefore it is
evidently more economical to buy flour in Minnesota than to grow the
wheat and make it into flour in Massachusetts.
All these problems, and they exist without number, show that man may
overcome most of the obstacles that surround him. So we find civilized
man living in almost every part of the world. Tropical regions are not
too scorching, nor are arctic fastnesses too cold for him. In other
words, because of commerce and transportation, he can and usually does
master the conditions of his environment; his intelligence enables him
to do so, and his ability to do so is the result of the intelligent use
of experience and education.
CHAPTER II
HOW COMMERCE CIVILIZED MANKIND
The history of western civilization is so closely connected with the
development of the great routes of travel and the growth of commerce
that one cannot possibly separate them. Commerce cannot exist without
the intercourse of peoples, and peoples cannot be in mutual
communication unless each learns from the other.
=Feudalism.=--When the Roman Empire fell civilization in western Europe
was not on a high plane; indeed, the feudalism that followed was not
much above barbarism. The people were living in a manner that was not
very much unlike the communal system under which the serfs of Russia
lived only a few years ago. Each centre of population was a sort of
military camp governed by a feudal lord. The followers and retainers
were scarcely better off than slaves; indeed, many of them were slaves.
There was no ownership of the land except by the feudal lords, and the
latter were responsible for their acts to the king only.
But very few people cared to be absolutely free, because they had but
little chance to protect themselves; so it was the common custom to
attach one's self to a feudal lord in order to have his protection; even
a sort of peonage or slavery under him was better than no protection at
all. A few of the people were engaged in trade and manufacture of some
kind or other, and they were the only ones through whom the feudal lord
could supply himself with the commodities needed for his retainers and
the luxuries necessary to himself.
Each feudal estate, therefore, became a sort of industrial centre by
itself, producing its own food-stuffs and much of the coarser
manufactures. It was not a very high condition of enlightenment, but it
was much better than the one which preceded it, for at least it offered
protection. It encouraged a certain amount of trade and commerce,
because the feudal lord had many wants, and he was usually willing to
protect the merchant who supplied them.
=The Crusades and Commerce.=--The Crusades, or wars by which the
Christians sought to recover the Holy Land from the Turk, resulted in a
trade between Europe and India that grew to wonderful proportions. Silk
fabrics, cotton cloth, precious stones, ostrich plumes, ivory, spices,
and drugs--all of which were practically unknown in Europe--were eagerly
sought by the nobility and their dependencies. In return, linen and
woollen fabrics, leather goods, glassware, blacklead, and steel
implements were carried to the far East.
Milan, Florence, Venice and Genoa, Constantinople and a number of less
important towns along the Mediterranean basin became important trade
centres, but Venice and Genoa grew to be world powers in commerce. Not
only were they great receiving and distributing depots of trade, but
they were great manufacturing centres as well.
The routes over which this enormous commerce was carried were few in
number. For the greater part, the Venetian trade went to Alexandria, and
thence by the Red Sea to India. Genoese merchants sent their goods to
Constantinople and Trebizond, thence down the Tigris River to the
Persian Gulf and to India. There was also another route that had been
used by the Phoenicians. It extended from Tyre through Damascus and
Palmyra[2] to the head of the Persian Gulf; this gradually fell into
disuse after the founding of Alexandria.
The general effects of this trade were very far-reaching. To the greater
number of the people of Europe, the countries of India, China, and Japan
were mythical. According to tradition they were infested with dragons
and gryphons, and peopled by dog-headed folk or by one-eyed Arimaspians.
About the first real information of them to be spread over Europe was
brought by Marco Polo, whose father and uncle had travelled all through
these countries during the latter part of the thirteenth century.[3]
Marco Polo's writings were very widely read, and influenced a great many
people who could not be reached through the ordinary channels of
commerce. So between the wars of the Crusades on the one hand, and the
growth of commerce on the other, a new and a better civilization began
to spread over Europe.
=The Turkish Invasions.=--But the magnificent trade that had thus grown up
was checked for a time by an unforeseen factor. The half-savage
Turkomans living southeast of Russia had become converted to the
religion of Islam, and in their zeal for the new belief, determined to
destroy the commerce which seemed to be connected with Christianity. So
they moved in upon the borderland between Europe and Asia, and one after
another the trade routes were tightly closed. Then they captured
Constantinople, and the routes between Genoa and the Orient were
hermetically sealed. Moslem power also spread over Syria and Egypt, and
so, little by little, the trade of Venice was throttled.
[Illustration: ROUTES TO INDIA--THE TURK CHANGES THE COMMERCE OF THE
WORLD]
Now a commerce that involved not only many millions of dollars, but the
employment of thousands of people as well, is not likely to be given up
without a struggle. So the energy that had been devoted to this great
trade was turned in a new direction, and there began a search for a new
route to India--one that the Turks could not blockade.
=The Search for an All-Water Route to India.=--Overland routes were out of
the question; there were none that could be made available, and so the
search was made for a sea-route. Rather singularly the Venetians and
Genoese, who had hitherto controlled this trade, took no part in the
search; it was conducted by the Spanish and the Portuguese.
The Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, fitted out an
expedition under Christopher Columbus, a master-mariner and
cartographer, the funds being provided by Isabella, who pledged her
private property as security for the cost of the expedition. This
expedition resulted in the discovery, October 10-21, 1492, of the West
India Islands. In a subsequent voyage, Columbus discovered the mainland
of South America.
Even before the voyage of Columbus, the Portuguese had been trying to
find a way around Africa to India, and Pope Eugenius IV. had conferred
on Portugal "all heathen lands from Cape Bojador eastward even to the
Indies." Little by little, therefore, Portuguese navigators were pushing
southward until, in 1487, Bartholomew Dias sighted the Cape of Good
Hope, and got about as far as Algoa Bay. Then he unwillingly turned back
because of the threats of his crew. It was a most remarkable voyage, and
one of the shipmates of Dias was Bartholomew Columbus, a brother of the
discoverer of the New World.
Ten years later, or five years after the voyage of Columbus, Vasco da
Gama sailed from Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope. As he passed the Cape
he was terribly storm-tossed, but the storms carried him in a fortunate
direction. And when at last he got his reckonings, he was off the coast
of India; he therefore kept along the coast until in sight of a port.
The port was the well-known city of Calicut. Two years later he returned
to Europe by the same route, his ships laden with spices, precious
stones, beautiful tapestries and brocades, ivory and bronzes. The
long-sought sea-route to India had been discovered.
[Illustration: A HANSE CITY--HAMBURG, ALONG THE WATER-FRONT]
=Commerce in Western Europe.=--After the discovery of the new route,
Venice and Genoa were scarcely heard of in relation to commerce; they
lost everything and gained nothing. The great commerce with the Orient
was to have a new western terminus, and the latter was to be on the
shores of the North and Baltic Seas.
The commerce between Europe and India stimulated trade in western Europe
as well. As early as the twelfth century the manufacture of linen and
woollen cloth had grown to be a very important industry that had
resulted in the rapid growth of population. The older cities grew
rapidly, and new ones sprang up wherever the commodities of trade were
gathered, manufactured, or distributed.
These centres of trade had two hostile elements against them. The feudal
lords used to pillage them legally by extorting heavy taxes and forced
loans whenever their treasuries were empty. The portionless brothers and
relatives of the feudal lords, to whom no employments save war,
adventure, and piracy were open, pillaged them illegally. Along the
coasts especially, piracy was considered not only a legitimate, but a
genteel, profession. So in order to protect themselves, the cities began
to join themselves into leagues.
=The Hanse League.=--About the beginning of the thirteenth century[4]
Hamburg and Luebeck formed an alliance afterward called a _hansa_; at the
beginning of the fourteenth century it embraced seventy cities, having
the capital at Luebeck. At the time of its greatest power the League
embraced all the principal cities of western Europe nearly as far south
as the Danube. Large agencies, called "factories," were established in
London, Bruges, Novgorod, Bergen, and Wisby. The influence of the League
practically controlled western Europe.
The Hanse League performed a wonderful work. It stopped piracy on the
seas and robbery on the land. Industrially, it encouraged
self-government and obedience to constitutional authority. Shipbuilding
and navigation so greatly improved that the ocean traffic resulting from
the discovery of the cape route to India quickly fell into the hands of
Hanse sailors and master-mariners. The League not only encouraged and
protected all sorts of manufactures, but its schools trained thousands
of operatives. The mines were worked and the idle land cultivated. It
was the greatest industrial movement that ever occurred.
[Illustration: HANSE ROUTES--THE HANSE LEAGUE REORGANIZES THE TRADE OF
THE WORLD]
Socially, the Hanse League brought the wealth that gave those comforts
and conveniences before unknown. The standards of social life,
education, art, and science were raised from a condition scarcely
better than barbarism to a high plane of civilization. Indeed, the
civilization of western Europe was the most important result of it.
It forced the rights of individual freedom, as well as municipal
independence, from more than one monarch, and punished severely the
kings who sought to betray it. It crushed the power of those who opposed
it,[5] and rewarded those who were faithful to it. Its most important
mission, however, was the overthrow of feudalism and the gradual
substitution of popular government in its place.
Having accomplished the regeneration of Europe, the Hanse League died
partly by its own hand, because of its arrogance, but mainly from the
fact that, having educated western Europe to self-government and
commercial independence, there was no longer need for its existence.
Independent cities grew rapidly into importance, and these got along
very well without the protection of the League. The great industrial
progress was at times temporarily checked by wars, but it never took a
backward step. Indeed the progress of commerce has always been a contest
between brains and brute force, and in such a struggle there is never
any doubt about the final outcome.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What were some of the effects of Caesar's invasion of Germanic Europe so
far as commerce is concerned?
What were some of the effects on commerce of the breaking up of the
Roman Empire?
How did the invasion of England by William of Normandy affect the
commerce of the English people?
Who was Henry the Navigator, and what did he accomplish?
How did the blockade of the routes between Europe and India bring about
the discovery of America?
What was the result of the great voyage of the Cabots?
Was the overthrow of feudalism in Europe a gain or a loss to commerce?
Why are not commercial leagues, such as the Hanse, necessary at the
present time?
Why did Spain's commerce decline as Portugal's thrived?
COLLATERAL READING[6]
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Chapters IV-V.
Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. 1--Chapters IV-V.
CHAPTER III
TOPOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE
The great industry of commerce, which includes both the trade in the
commodities of life and the transportation of them, is governed very
largely by the character of the earth's surface. But very few
food-stuffs can be grown economically in mountain-regions. Steep
mountain-slopes are apt to be destitute of soil; moreover, even the
mountain-valleys are apt to be difficult of access, and in such cases
the cost of moving the crops may be greater than the market value of the
products. Mountainous countries, therefore, are apt to be sparsely
peopled regions.
But although the great mountain-systems are unhabitable, or at least
sparsely peopled, they have a very definite place in the economics of
life. Thus, the great western highland of the United States diverts the
flow of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico northward into the central
plain, and gives to the region most of its food-growing power. In a
similar manner, moisture intercepted by the Alps and the Himalayas has
not only created the plains of the Po and the Ganges from the rock-waste
carried from the slopes, but has also made them exceedingly fertile.
Mountain-ranges are also valuable for their contents. The broken
condition of the rock-folds and the rapid weathering to which they are
subjected have exposed the minerals and metals so useful in the arts of
commerce and civilization. Thus, the weathering of the Appalachian folds
has made accessible about the only available anthracite coal measures
yet worked; and the worn folds about Lake Superior have yielded the
ores that have made the United States the foremost copper and steel
manufacturing country of the world. Gold, silver, tin, lead, zinc,
platinum, granite, slate, and marble occur mainly in mountain-folds.
=Mountains and Valleys.=--Mountain-ranges are great obstacles to commerce
and intercommunication. The Greek peoples found it much easier to
scatter along the Mediterranean coast than to cross the Balkan
Mountains. For twenty years after the settlement of California, it was
easier and less expensive to send traffic by way of Cape Horn than to
carry it across the Rocky Mountains.
The deep canyons of mountainous regions are quite as difficult to
overcome as the high ranges. In modern methods of transportation a range
that cannot be surmounted may be tunnelled, and a tunnel five or six
miles in length is no uncommon feat of engineering. A canyon, however,
cannot be tunnelled, and if too wide for cantilever or suspension
bridges, a detour of many miles is necessary. In crossing a deep chasm
the route of transportation may aggregate ten or fifteen times the
distance spanned by a straight line.
Excepting the mining regions, the population of mountainous countries is
apt to be found mainly in the intermontane valleys. A reason for this is
not hard to find; the valleys are usually filled with rich soil brought
from the higher slopes and levelled by the water. The population,
therefore, is concentrated in the valley because of the food-producing
power of the land. For this reason the Sound, Willamette, and San
Joaquin-Sacramento Valleys contain the chief part of the Pacific coast
population. The Shenandoah and the Great Valley of Virginia are similar
instances.
What is true of the larger intermontane valleys is true also of the
narrow stream valleys of mountain and plateau regions. Thus, in the New
England plateau the chief growth during the past forty years has been in
the valley lands. In that time if the uplands have not suffered actual
loss, they certainly have made no material gains. Upland farming has not
proved a remunerative venture, and many of the farms have either been
abandoned or converted to other uses.
=Passes.=--Transverse valleys form very important topographic features of
mountain-regions. Inasmuch as the ranges themselves are obstacles to
communication, it follows that the latter must be concentrated at such
cross valleys or gaps as may be traversed. Khaibar Pass, a narrow defile
in the Hindu Kush Mountains, between Peshawur and Jelalabad, for many
years was the chief gateway between Europe and India. Even now the cost
of holding it is an enormous tax upon England.
Brenner, St. Gotthard, and the Mont Cenis Passes are about the only land
channels of commerce between Italy and transalpine Europe, and most of
the communication between northern Italy and the rest of Europe is
carried on by means of these passes. Every transcontinental railway of
the American continent crosses the various highlands by means of gaps
and passes, and some of them would never have been built were it not for
the existence of the passes. Fremont, South, and Marshall Passes have
been of historic importance for half a century.
The Hudson and Champlain Valley played an important part in the history
of the colonies a century before the existence of the United States, and
its importance as a gateway to eastern Canada is not likely to be
lessened. The Mohawk gap was the first practical route to be maintained
between the Atlantic seaboard and the food-producing region of the Great
Central Plain. It is to-day the most important one. It is so nearly
level that the total lift of freight going from Buffalo to tide-water is
less than five hundred feet.
[Illustration: A PASS--THE ROUTE OF A RAILWAY]
=Rivers.=--River-valleys are closely connected with the economic
development of a country. Navigable rivers are free and open highways of
communication. In newly settled countries the river is always the least
expensive means of carriage, and often it is the only one available for
the transportation of heavy goods.
In late years, since the railway has become the chief means for the
transportation of commodities, river transportation has greatly
declined. The river-valley, however, has lost none of its importance; in
most instances it is a naturally levelled and graded route, highly
suitable for the tracks of the railway. As a result, outside of the
level lands of the Great Central Plain, not far from eighty per cent. of
the railway mileage of the United States is constructed along
river-valleys.
=Plateaus.=--Plateaus are usually characterized by broken and more or less
rugged surface features. As a rule they are deficient in the amount of
rainfall necessary to produce an abundance of the grains and similar
food-stuffs, although this is by no means the case with all.
Most plateaus produce an abundance of grass, and cattle-growing is
therefore an important industry in such regions. Thus, the plateaus of
the Rocky Mountains are famous for cattle, and the same is true of the
Mexican and the South American plateaus. The Iberian plateau, including
Spain and Portugal, is noted for the merino sheep, which furnish the
finest wool known. The plateau of Iran is also noted for its wool, and
the rugs from this region cannot be imitated elsewhere in the world.
=Plains.=--Plains are of the highest importance to life and its
activities. Not only do they present fewer obstacles to
intercommunication than any other topographic features, but almost
always they are deeply covered with the fine rock-waste that forms the
chief components of soil. Plains, therefore, contain the elements of
nutrition, and are capable of supporting life to a greater extent than
either mountains or plateaus. About ninety per cent. of the world's
population dwell in the lowland plains.
The Great Central Plain of North America produces more than one-quarter
of the world's wheat, and about four-fifths of the corn. The southern
part of the great Arctic plain, and its extension, the plains of the
Baltic also yield immense quantities of grain and cattle products. The
coast-plains of the Atlantic Ocean, on both the American and the
European side, are highly productive.
River flood-plains are almost always densely peopled because of their
productivity. The bottom-lands of the Mississippi and the Yangtze Rivers
are among the chief food-producing regions of the world. Lacustrine
plains, the beds of former lakes, are also highly productive regions.
The valley of the Red River of the North is an example, and its wheat is
of a very high quality.
Fertile coast-plains and lowlands that are adjacent to good harbors, as
a rule are the most thickly peopled regions of the world. In many such
regions the density of population exceeds two hundred or more per square
mile. The reason is obvious. Life seeks that environment which yields
the greatest amount of nutrition with the least expenditure of energy.
The study of a good relief map shows that, as a rule, the Pacific Ocean
is bordered by a rugged highland, which has a more or less abrupt slope,
and a narrow coast-plain. Indeed, the latter is absent for the greater
part. The slopes of the Atlantic, on the other hand, are long and
gentle--being a thousand miles or more in width throughout the greater
part of their extent. The area of productive land is correspondingly
great, and the character of the surface features is such that
intercommunication is easy.
[Illustration: A RIVER FLOOD-PLAIN--A REGION ADAPTED TO CULTIVATION]
The result of these conditions is evident. The Atlantic slopes, though
not everywhere the most densely peopled areas, contain the great centres
of the world's activities and economies. In the past 400 years they have
not only overtaken the Pacific coast races, but have far surpassed them.
They are now entering upon a commercial invasion of the Pacific nations
that is resulting in a reorganization of the entire industrial world.
=Topography and Trade Routes.=--As the settlement and commerce of a
country grow, roads succeed trails, and trails are apt to follow the
paths of migrating animals. Until the time of the Civil War in the
United States, most of the great highways of the country were the direct
descendants of "buffalo roads," as they were formerly called.
In the crossing of divides from one river-valley to another, the
mountain-sections of the railways for the greater part follow the trails
of the bison. This is especially marked in the Pennsylvania, the
Baltimore and Ohio, and the Chesapeake and Ohio railways; in some
instances the tunnels through ranges have been constructed directly
under the trails. The reason is obvious; the instinct of the bison led
him along routes having the minimum of grade.
Throughout the Mississippi Valley and the great plains the Indian trails
usually avoided the bottom-lands of the river-valleys, following the
divides and portages instead. This selection of routes was probably due
to the fact that the lowlands were swampy and subject to overflow; the
portages and divides offered no steep grades, and were therefore more
easily traversed.
[Illustration: WHERE COMMODITIES ARE EXCHANGED--NEW YORK CITY
WATER-FRONT]
=Harbors.=--Coast outlines have much to do with the commercial
possibilities of a region. The "drowned valleys" and similar inlets
along the North Atlantic coast, both of Europe and America, form harbors
in which vessels ride at anchor in safety, no matter what the existing
conditions outside may be. As a result, the two greatest centres of
commerce in the world are found at these harbors--one on the American,
the other on the European coast.
From New York Bay southward along the Atlantic seaboard there are but
few harbors, and this accounts for the enormous development of commerce
in the stretch of coast between Portland and Baltimore. San Francisco
Bay and the harbors of Puget Sound monopolize most of the commerce of
the Pacific coast of the United States. South America has several good
harbors on the Atlantic seaboard, and in consequence a large city has
grown at the site of each. On the Pacific coast the good harbors are
very few in number, and they are not situated near productive regions.
Asiatic peoples, as a rule, are not promoters of foreign commerce, and,
those of Japan excepted, the only good harbors are those that have been
improved by European governments. These are confined mainly to India and
China. The many possible harbors make certain a tremendous commerce in
the future. Africa has but very few good harbors. There are excellent
harbors in the islands of the Pacific, and many of them are of great
strategic value as coaling stations and bases of supply to the various
maritime powers.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
The Pennsylvania Railroad has found it more economical to tunnel the
mountain-range under Horseshoe Curve, near Altoona, than to haul the
trains over the mountains; discuss the details in which there will be a
saving.
Why are rugged and mountainous regions apt to be sparsely peopled?
The first valuable discovery in the Rocky Mountains was gold; what were
the chief effects that resulted?
Would the industries of the Pacific coast of the United States be
benefited or impaired by the existence of a coast-plain?
Which are more conducive to commerce--the large mediterraneans, such as
the Gulf of Mexico, or the small estuaries, such as New York Bay?
Discuss the merits or demerits of each.
What are the chief products of mountains, of plateaus, of lowland
plains?
COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--Chapter I.
Redway's Physical Geography--Chapter IV.
A topographic map of the United States.
[Illustration: MEAN ANNUAL RAINFALL]
CHAPTER IV
CLIMATIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE
In its effect upon life and the various industries of peoples, climate
is a factor even more important than topography. Of the 53,000,000
square miles of the land surface of the earth, scarcely more than
one-half is capable of producing any great amount of food-stuffs, and
only a very small area can support a population of more than one hundred
people to each square mile.
=Climate and Habitability.=--In the main, regions that are inhabited by
human beings produce either food-stuffs or something of value that may
be exchanged for food-stuffs; and inasmuch as food and shelter are the
chief objects of human activity, regions that will not furnish them are
not habitable.
The growth and production of food-stuffs is governed even more by
conditions of climate than by those of topography. Thus the great
Russian plain is too cold to produce any great amount of food-stuffs,
and it is, therefore, sparsely peopled. The northern part of Africa and
the closed basins of North America and Asia lack the rainfall necessary
to insure productivity, and these regions are also unhabitable. The
basin of the Amazon has a rainfall too great for cereals and grasses,
and the larger part of it is unfit for habitation.
All the food-stuffs are exceedingly sensitive to climate. Rice will not
grow where swampy conditions do not prevail at least during part of the
year. Turf-grass will not live where there are repeated droughts of more
than three months' duration, and corn will not ripen in regions having
cool nights. Wheat does not produce a kernel fit for flour anywhere
except in the temperate zone; and the banana will not grow outside the
torrid zone.
The two chief factors of climate are temperature and moisture. No forms
of life can withstand a temperature constantly below the freezing-point
of water, and but few, if any, can endure a constant heat of one hundred
and twenty-five degrees, although most species can exist at temperatures
beyond these limits for a short time.
=Zones of Climate.=--The belt of earth upon which the sun's rays are
nearly or quite vertical is comparatively narrow. But the inclination of
the earth's axis and the fact that it is parallel to itself at all times
of the year create zones of climate. These differ materially in the
character of the life, forms, and the activities of the people who dwell
in them.
In the torrid zone the temperature varies but little. During the season
of rains it rarely falls to 70 deg. F., and in the dry season it is seldom
higher than 95 deg. F. As a result, all sorts of plants that are sensitive
to low temperatures thrive in the torrid zone. It is not a climate
suitable for heat-producing food-plants, and they are not required.
The constant heat and excessive moisture of the atmosphere in the torrid
zone is apt to produce a feeling of lassitude among the dwellers in such
regions, moreover, and great bodily activity is out of question. These
conditions seriously affect the lives of the people, and, with few
exceptions, tropical peoples are rarely noted for energy or enterprise.
Great commercial enterprises are the exception rather than the rule, and
they are usually carried on by foreigners who must live a part of the
time in cooler localities.
[Illustration: THE EFFECTS OF HIGH LATITUDE--TOO COLD TO PRODUCE
BREAD-STUFFS]
Polar regions are deficient both in the heat and light necessary for
food-stuffs. Neither the grasses nor the grains fructify. As a result,
but few herbivora can live there, and these are practically restricted
to the musk-ox and the reindeer, which subsist on mosses and lichens.
The native people are stunted in growth; their food consists mainly of
raw blubber, and they are scarcely above savagery.
The temperate zones are the regions of the great industries and
activities of human life. The larger part of the land surface of the
earth is situated in these zones; moreover, the people who dominate the
world also live in them, and their supremacy is due largely to
conditions of climate. The alternation of summer and winter causes a
struggle for existence that develops the intellectual faculties and
results in industrial supremacy.
=Effects of Altitude.=--There is a decrease of temperature of 1 deg. F. for
about every three hundred feet of ascent. But few people live at an
altitude of more than six thousand feet above sea-level, and in many
cases they depend on other localities for the greater part of their
food-stuffs, because very few of such regions produce food-stuffs
abundantly.
The chief exceptions to this rule are found in tropical regions. The
highlands of Mexico, the plateau-regions of Bolivia and Ecuador, and the
highlands of southern Asia are habitable, but they are not densely
peopled. Because of their altitude they are relieved of the enervating
effects of tropical climate at the sea-level.
Altitude likewise affects the amount of rainfall. Most plateaus are
arid. As a rule, they are arid because of their altitude; and because of
their aridity they are deficient in their power to produce food-stuffs.
They are therefore sparsely peopled.
=Effects of Rainfall.=--Regions having considerably more than one hundred
inches of rain annually are very apt to be forest-covered, and
therefore to be deficient in food-producing plants. Such localities have
usually a sparse population, in spite of the profusion of vegetation. In
some parts of India, lands that have been left idle for a few seasons
produce such a dense jungle of wild vegetation that to reclaim them for
cultivation is wellnigh impossible.
A deficiency of rainfall is even a greater factor in restricting the
density of population than too much rain. With less than fifteen or
twenty inches a year few regions produce good crops of grains and
grasses, and as a result they are sparsely peopled. Some of the
exceptions, however, are important. If the rainfall is not quite enough
to produce a normal overflow to the sea, the soil may be very rich,
because the nutrition is not leached out and carried away.
Many small areas of this character produce enormous crops when
artificially watered, and many of them, such as Persia, parts of Asia
Minor, northern Utah, and large areas of Australia and Chile have become
regions of considerable commercial importance. The products of such
regions are apt to be unique in character and of unusual value. Thus,
the wool of Persia and Australia and the fruit of the Iberian peninsula
are important articles of commerce.
In Egypt one may see the results of irrigated lands. The area of
geographical Egypt is somewhat less than half a million square miles;
the habitable part of the country is confined to a narrow strip, which,
one or two places excepted, varies from three to six miles in width. In
other words, almost the whole population of the country is massed in the
flood-plain and delta of the Nile; the remaining part is a desert
producing practically nothing.
The water that makes these lands productive falls, not in Egypt, but in
the highlands of Abyssinia, 2,000 miles away. The September overflow of
the flood-plain is the chief factor in the irrigation of these lands,
but the area has been greatly increased by the construction of barrages
and dams at Assiut and Assuan.
In the western highland region of the United States considerable areas
already have been made productive by irrigation, and it is estimated
that about two million acres of barren land can be reclaimed by
impounding the waters of the various streams now running to waste.
The distribution of rain with respect to the season in which it falls is
quite as important as its distribution with respect to quantity. In
tropical regions the ocean winds, and therefore the rainfall, come from
the east. The eastern slopes of such regions, therefore, have a season
in which rains may be expected daily, and another in which no rain falls
for several months. In the temperate zones seasonal rains for a similar
reason are on the western coasts.
Thus on the Pacific coast of the United States the rainfall varies from
about one hundred inches in southern Alaska to about twelve in San
Diego, Cal. Practically all the rain falls between October and the
following May; very little or none falls in the interval between May and
October. As a result, ordinary turf-grass, which will not withstand long
droughts, grows in only a few localities of the Pacific slope. It is
replaced by hardier grasses whose roots, instead of forming turf, grow
very deep in the soil.
Common clover will not grow in this region unless irrigated; it is
replaced by burr-clover, a variety of the plant that will not thrive in
moist regions. Now the quality of the merino wool clip of California
depends in no slight degree upon the burr-clover and other food-products
that thrive in regions of seasonal rains; that is, a great commercial
industry exists because of this feature of rainfall, and it could not
long survive in spite of it.
[Illustration: CLIMATICALLY ADAPTED TO CULTIVATION--THE LOWLANDS
PRODUCE BREAD-STUFFS AND FRUIT; THE MOUNTAIN-SLOPES ARE GRAZING REGIONS]
The seasonal rainfall also affects other agricultural industries. The
sacked wheat-crop may be left in the field without cover or protection
until the time is convenient for shipping it. The absence of summer
rains makes possible in California what would be out of question in the
Mississippi Valley, where a rainstorm may be expected every few days.
The quality of certain fruits depends largely on the season during which
the rainfall occurs. Apples, pears, and grapes grown in regions having
dry summers have usually a very superior flavor. The raisin-making
industry of California also depends on the same condition, because, in
order to insure a good quality of the product, the bunches of grapes,
after picking, must be dried on the ground. To a certain extent this is
also true of other fruits, such as dates, figs, and prunes, which
frequently are sun-dried.
The presence of large bodies of water, which both absorb and give out
their heat very slowly, tempers the climate of the nearby land and to
that extent modifies the commerce of such districts. The grape-growing
industry of central New York is a great one and its product is famous.
Its existence depends almost wholly upon the lake-tempered climate.
Elsewhere in the State the industry is on a precarious basis, and the
product is inferior.
=Effects of Inclination of the Earth's Axis.=--The inclination and
self-parallelism of the earth's axis is undoubtedly a very important
factor in climate. Practically it more than doubles the width of the
belts of ordinary food-stuffs by lengthening the summer day in the
temperate zone. Beyond the tropics the obliquity of the sun's rays are
more than balanced by the increased length of time in which they fall.
Thus, in the latitude of St. Paul, the longest day is about fifteen and
one-half hours long; at Liverpool it is nearly seventeen hours long; a
greater number of heat units therefore are received in these latitudes
during summer than are received in equatorial regions during the
twelve-hour day. Moreover, the summer temperature is higher in these
latitudes than in the torrid zone, because the sun is shining upon them
for a greater length of time.
The result of these various influences is far-reaching. Because of the
long summer days and short nights, wheat can be cultivated to the
sixtieth parallel. Corn, which gets scarcely enough warmth and light in
the torrid zone to become a prolific crop, attains its greatest yield in
the latitude of fourteen-hour days.
These factors, it is evident, carry the grain and meat industries into
regions that otherwise would not be habitable. Because the long summer
days produce these great food-crops, commerce and its allied industries
have reached their maximum development in these regions. Human
activities are greatest in the zones bounded by the thirty-fifth and
fifty-fifth parallels, the zone that includes the greater parts of the
United States, Europe, China, Japan. They are greatest, moreover,
because of their geographical position.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What would be the probable effect on the food-crops of the United States
were the main body of the country moved twenty degrees north in
latitude? Which would then be the wheat-growing States, the
cotton-producing States?
Illustrate the connection between occupation and altitude above
sea-level.
What difference would it make to the corn-crop were the days and nights
always twelve hours long?
What would be requisite to make Canada a centre of silk production?
Why is not cod-fishing an industry off the east coast of Florida?
Why is the greater part of the Russian Empire destined to be sparsely
peopled?
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
A rain chart of the world.
A chart of isothermal lines.
CHAPTER V
TRANSPORTATION--OCEAN AND INLAND NAVIGATION
Of all the adjustments which come into the lives of a people none has
been so far-reaching as the gradual localization of industries each in
the region best adapted to it. For instance, manufacturing industries
require power, but not fertile soil; therefore the manufacturing
industries seek nearness to fuel or to water-power, and a position
available for quick transportation.
Farming does not require any great amount of natural power; on the
contrary, level land having a great depth of fertile soil is the
essential feature. The farmer must therefore look first of all to
conditions of topography and climate, and secondly to the means of
transporting his crop.
Mining cannot be an industry in regions destitute of minerals; the miner
must therefore go where the mineral wealth is found, without regard to
climate, soil, centres of population, or topography. But two things are
required--the mineral products and the means of getting them to the
people--that is, ready means of transportation.
A century or more ago, each centre of population in the United States
was practically self-sustaining. Each grew its own food-stuffs, and
manufactured the articles used in the household. But very little was
required in the way of transportation. The means of carriage were mainly
ox-carts, pack-horses, and rafts. There was a mutual independence among
the various centres, it is true, but the independence was at the expense
of civilization and the comforts of life.
[Illustration: OCEAN TRANSPORTATION--ROYAL MAIL STEAMSHIP OCEANIC,
WHITE STAR LINE]
Beyond an independence that is more apparent than real, such a plan of
social and industrial organization has but little in it to commend.
Intercommunication increases knowledge, and under the conditions that
formerly prevailed, there was a lack of the breadth of knowledge that
comes with the mutual contact of peoples.
The utilization of national resources, such as the productiveness of the
land, the existence of iron ore, coal, copper, and other economic
minerals, finally brought about the policy of a territorial division of
industries. This, in turn, made the prompt transportation and exchange
of commodities essential; indeed, without such a plan, industrial
centres could not long exist.
The man whose sole business is manufacture must look to others for his
supply of food-stuffs and raw materials, and these are produced more
economically at a distance from the centre of manufacture. Thus England
must look to the United States for wheat and cotton, to the Australian
Commonwealth for wool, and to New Zealand and the United States for
meat. Her chief wealth is in her coal and iron, and these make the
nation a great manufacturing centre. So, also, the manufacturer of New
York must go to Pittsburg for steel, to Minneapolis for flour, and to
Chicago for beef.
The application of this principle is very broad; it is the foundation of
all commerce, and it underlies modern civilization. For this reason the
question of transportation is just as important to a community as the
industries of agriculture, mining, and manufacture. Food-stuffs are of
no use unless they can be transported to the people who want them; nor
can peoples remain in unproductive regions unless the food-stuffs are
brought to them.
The gross tonnage of goods is transported mainly in one or another or
all of three ways--namely, by animal power, by railway, or by water.
Thus, the cotton-crop of the United States is usually transported by
wagon from the plantation to the nearest station or boat-landing; by
rail or by barge to the nearest seaport; and by ocean steamship to the
foreign seaport.
Water transportation is more economical than land carriage, for the
reason that less power is required to move a given tonnage through the
water than on the most perfectly graded railway. Steamship freights, as
a rule, are lower than those of sailing-vessels, because a steamship has
more than twice the speed, and, being larger, can carry a greater
tonnage. Freight rates on the Great Lakes are higher per ton-mile than
on the ocean, because the vessels are necessarily smaller than those
built for ocean traffic. For a similar reason, river and canal freights
are higher than lake freights. Railway transportation is economical,
partly because a single locomotive will draw an enormous weight of
goods, and partly because of the high speed at which the goods move from
point to point. Animal transportation is more expensive than any other
means ordinarily employed.
=Ocean Transportation.=--In many respects, water-routes form the most
available and economical methods of transportation. Intercontinental
commerce must be carried on by means of deep-water vessels. Therefore an
extraordinary development of ocean carriers has taken place in the past
century.
One important period of development began with the rise of American
commerce. Just after the close of the War for Independence, it was found
that deep-water ships could be built of New England timber for
thirty-five dollars per ton, rated tonnage, while a vessel of the same
burden built in Europe cost about forty-five dollars per unit of
tonnage. Two types of vessels came into use--one, the clipper ship with
square sails, was used for long ocean voyages; the other, the schooner,
with fore-and-aft rigging, was employed mainly in the coast-trade.
[Illustration: A SQUARE-RIGGED SHIP--A TYPE NOW BEING REPLACED BY
FORE-AND-AFT RIGGED SCHOONERS]
In speed and ease of management these vessels surpassed anything that
had ever sailed. In time they became the standards for the
sailing-vessels of all the great commercial nations. The types of the
vessels are still standards.
[Illustration: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STEAMSHIP]
=The Development of the Steamship.=--Another important era in ocean
commerce began when steam was used as a motive power for vessels. The
first deep-water vessel thus to be propelled was the Savannah. Her
steam-power was merely incidental, however, and her paddle-wheels were
unshipped and taken aboard when there was enough wind for sailing. Up
to 1860 almost all the ocean steamships were side-wheelers, propelled by
low-pressure beam-engines.
The next most important improvement was the screw-blade propeller,
placed astern. This means of propulsion called for higher speed of the
engines, and in a very short time compactly built high-pressure engines
took the place of the low-pressure engine with its heavy walking-beam.
The latter carried steam at a pressure varying from twenty to thirty-two
pounds; the modern boiler has steam at 260 pounds per square inch.
Ocean steamships have gradually evolved into two types. The freighter,
broad in beam and capacious, is built to carry an enormous amount of
freight at a moderate speed. The White Star liner Celtic is a vessel of
this class; her schedule time between New York and Liverpool is about
nine days. The Philadelphia of the American line, though not the fastest
steamship, makes the same trip in an average time of five and one-half
days.[7]
Twin-screws, instead of a single propeller, are employed on nearly all
the large liners. The gain in speed is not greatly increased, but the
vessel is far more manageable with two screws than with one; moreover,
if one engine breaks down, the vessel can make excellent time with the
other.
Triple-expansion engines are almost universally used on modern
steamships, and a pound of coal now makes about three times as much
steam available as in the engines formerly used. As a result a bushel of
wheat is now carried from Fargo, N. Dak., to Liverpool for about
twenty-one cents--less than one-half the freight tariff of 1876.
[Illustration: THE SCHOONER THOMAS A. LAWSON. THE FIRST SEVEN-MASTED
SAILING-VESSEL]
The fastest liners consume from three hundred and fifty to more than
four hundred tons of coal a day, and for each additional knot of speed
the amount of coal burned must be greatly increased. Freighters like the
Celtic consume scarcely more than half as much as those of the Kaiser
Wilhelm II. type.
=Sailing-Craft.=--In spite of the growth and development of
steam-navigation, a large amount of freight is still carried by
sailing-craft; moreover, it is not unlikely that the relative proportion
of ocean freight carried by sailing-vessels will increase rather than
decrease, especially in the case of imperishable freight.
The square-rigged ship, or bark, has been very largely replaced by the
fore-and-aft, or schooner-rigged vessel. A large full-rigged ship
requires a crew of thirty to thirty-six men; a schooner-rigged vessel
needs from sixteen to twenty. These vessels are commonly built with
three and four masts; some of the largest have six or seven. They carry
as many as five thousand tons of freight at a speed of about ten
knots--only a trifle less than that of an ordinary tramp freighter. Some
of the larger vessels are provided with auxiliary engines and propelling
apparatus, which enables them to enter or to leave port without the
assistance of a tug. Donkey-engines hoist and lower the sails, and
perform the work of loading and unloading. They are admirable colliers
and grain-carriers.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, about ninety thousand
sailing-craft and thirty-five thousand steam-vessels were required to
carry the world's commerce. Of this number, Great Britain and her
colonies register nearly thirty-five thousand, and the United States
over twenty thousand.
HARBOR SAFEGUARDS.--Excepting the open anchorages formed by angles
in coast-lines, the greater number of harbors consist of small
coves and river-mouths. In these, although there may be a
considerable area of water, there is not apt to be much sailing
room; it is therefore necessary to mark off the navigable channels.
For this purpose buoys of different shapes and colors are used by
day; by night fixed and flashing lights are employed.
The buoys of permanent channels are usually hollow metal cylinders
or cones about two feet in diameter, anchored so that the end of
the cylinder projects about three feet above the water. On entering
a channel from the seaward, red buoys are on the starboard, or
right hand; white buoys are kept on the port, or left side. Buoys
at the end of a channel are usually surmounted each by some device
or other fastened at the upper end of a perch. Thus, at the outer
entrance of Gedney Channel in New York Harbor, a ball surmounts the
perch; at the inner entrance the buoy carries a double square.
Sharp angles in a channel are similarly marked. In many instances
the buoy carries, as a warning signal, a bell that rings as the
buoy is rocked by the waves; in others, a whistle that sounds by
the air which the rocking motion compresses within the cylinder;
still others carry electric or gas lights.
The color of a buoy is an index of its character. Thus, one with
black and red stripes indicates danger; one with black and white
vertical stripes is a channel-marker. Temporary channels are
frequently marked by pieces of spar floating upright. In some cases
it is customary to set untrimmed tree-tops on the port, and trimmed
sticks on the starboard.
Light-houses are built at all exposed points of navigated
coast-waters, and beacons are set at all necessary points within a
harbor for use at night. All lights are kept burning from sunset
until sunrise. The color, the duration, and the intervals of
flashing indicate the position of the beacon. In revolving lights
the beams, concentrated by powerful lenses, sweep the horizon as
the lantern about the light revolves. Flashing lights are produced
when the light is obscured at given intervals. Fixed lights burn
with a steady flame. In some instances a sector of colored glass is
set so as to cover a given part of a channel. Range lights, set so
that one shows directly above the other, are used as
channel-markers.
[Illustration: CITY OF NEW YORK AND VICINITY, WITH HARBOR
APPROACHES.]
The use of lights may be seen as a vessel enters New York Lower
Bay. A steamship drawing not more than eighteen feet of water may
enter through Swash Channel (_follow the course on the chart_). In
this case the pilot makes for Scotland lightship, and merely keeps
New Dorp and Elmtree beacons in range, giving Dry Romer a wide
berth to starboard, until Chapel Hill and Conover beacons come into
range on his port side. The vessel is then held on a course between
Coney Island and Fort Tompkins lights until Robbins Reef light
shows ahead.
For the liners that draw more than eighteen feet the task is more
difficult, inasmuch as the channel is tortuous. At Sandy Hook
lightship a course lying nearly west takes the vessel to the outer
entrance of Gedney Channel, marked by two buoy-lights. In passing
between the lights the vessel enters the channel, which is also
covered by the red sector of Hook beacon. The pilot continues
between the buoy-lights until Waacaack and Point Comfort beacons
are in range, and steers to this range until South Beacon and Sandy
Hook light are in range astern. The helm is then turned, keeping
these lights in range astern until Chapel Hill and Conover beacons
are in range on the port bow. Turning northward nearly eight
points, the pilot holds the bow of the vessel between Fort Tompkins
and Coney Island lights, keeping sharply to his range astern, until
Robbins Reef light comes into view through the narrows. From this
point on, the shore lights are the pilot's chief guide.
So difficult are harbor entrances, that in most cases the
underwriters will not insure a vessel unless the latter is taken
from the outer harbor to the dock by a licensed pilot, and the
latter must spend nearly half a lifetime as an apprentice before he
receives a license. The charges for pilotage are usually regulated
by the number of feet the vessel draws. The charges differ in
various ports, but the devices for marking and lighting the
channels are much the same in every part of the world. In the
United States all navigable channels are under the control of the
general Government.
=Inland Waters.=--Lakes, rivers, and canals furnish a very important means
of transportation. In Europe and Canada an enormous amount of slow
freight is transported by their use; in China they are the most
important means of internal traffic.
[Illustration: THE COMMERCE OF THE OHIO--TOWING COAL TO THE STEEL
MILLS, PITTSBURG]
In the United States the Great Lakes with the Erie Canal and Hudson
River form the most important internal water-way, and by them the
continent is penetrated as far west as Duluth, a distance of more than
one thousand three hundred miles. The traffic passing out of Lake
Superior alone is about one-third greater than that passing out of the
Mediterranean Sea at the Suez Canal. Much of this traffic goes across
the continent, and the route in question is one of the great commercial
highways of the world.
The Mississippi River and its branches afford not far from ten thousand
miles of navigable waters. Canals connect tributaries of this river with
the Great Lakes at Chicago and at several points in Ohio. The
development of the navigation of this great water-way was checked by the
Civil War, and after the close of the war the great advance in railway
building kept its improvement in the background. The general government,
nevertheless, has done much to encourage the use of the Mississippi as a
commercial highway, and many millions of dollars have been spent in
widening and deepening its channel.[8] On the upper river grain and
lumber form the chief traffic; on the lower part a large part of the
world's cotton-crop starts on its journey to the various markets.
On account of the soft-coal fields and the steel manufacture in western
Pennsylvania, the commerce of the Ohio River is very heavy, aggregating
not far from fifteen million tons yearly. Much of this traffic extends
to ports on the Mississippi.
The navigable parts of the Hudson and Delaware Rivers are estuaries of
the sea or "drowned valleys." In each case navigation extends about to
the limits of high tide. Both rivers carry a heavy freight commerce; the
Hudson has a passenger traffic of several million fares each year.
Nearly every river of the Atlantic coast is navigable to the limit of
high tide or a little beyond. Navigation extends to the point where the
coast-plain joins the foot-hills. Above this limit, called the "Fall
Line," the streams are swift and shallow; below it they are deep and
sluggish. As a result, a chain of important river ports extends along
the Fall Line from Maine to Florida.
River-navigation in Europe in the main is inseparably connected with the
great canal systems. As a rule, the lower parts of the rivers are
navigable for steamboats of light draught. Some of the smaller streams
are made navigable by means of a long steel chain, which is laid along
the bed of the stream; the boat engages the chain by means of heavy
sprocket wheels driven by steam, and thus wind the boat up and down the
river.
Ocean steamers penetrate the Amazon Valley to a distance of one thousand
miles from its mouth; boats of light draught ascend the main stream and
some of its tributaries a thousand miles farther. The Orinoco is
navigable within one hundred miles of Bogota. Light-draught boats ascend
the tributaries of La Plata River a distance of fifteen hundred miles.
The Asian rivers that are important highways of commerce are few in
number. The Amur, Yangtze, Indus, and Cambodia have each considerable
local commerce. The Hugli, a channel in the delta of the Ganges, has a
channel deep enough for ocean steamships. The tributaries of the Lena,
Yenisei, and Ob have been of the greatest service in the commercial
development of northern Asia from the fact that their valleys are both
level and fertile.
Because of a high interior and abrupt slopes, the rivers of Africa are
not suitable for navigation to any considerable extent; the channels are
uncertain and the rivers are interrupted by rapids. The Nile has an
occasional steamboat service as far as the "First Cataract," but in high
water the service is sometimes extended farther. The Kongo has a long
stretch of navigable water, but is interrupted by rapids below Stanley
Pool. Similar conditions obtain in the Zambezi. The lower part of the
Senegal affords good navigation. The Niger has in many respects greater
commercial possibilities than other rivers of Africa. It is navigable to
a distance of three hundred miles.
=Canals.=--Canals easily rank among the most important means of traffic,
as a rule, supplementing other navigable waters. Thus, by means of an
elaborate system of canals, goods are transferred by water, from one
river-basin to another, so that practically all the navigable streams of
western Europe are connected. Canals are extensively used to avoid the
falls or rapids that separate the various reaches of rivers. The water
itself by means of locks lifts the boat to a higher level or transfers
it to a lower reach, thus saving the expense of unloading, transferring,
and reloading a cargo.
The manner in which canals supplement the obstructed navigation of a
river is seen in the case of the St. Lawrence. This river is obstructed
in several places by rapids, but by means of canals steamship service
connects the Great Lakes, not only with Quebec, but with ports of the
Mediterranean Sea as well; indeed, it is possible to send a cargo from
Duluth, at the head of Lake Superior, to Odessa or Batum, on the shores
of the Black Sea.
The internal water-ways of Canada have been splendidly developed. The
Canadian St. Marys Canal furnishes an outlet to Lake Superior for
vessels drawing twenty-one feet. The Welland Canal connects Lakes Erie
and Ontario. The Rideau Canal and River connect Kingston and Lake
Ontario with the Ottawa, and the latter with its canals is navigable to
the St. Lawrence. With a population of less than six millions the
Dominion Government has spent nearly one hundred million dollars in the
improvement of internal water-ways.
[Illustration: PROFILE OF ERIE CANAL
HORIZONTAL SCALE 100 MILES TO THE INCH, VERTICAL SCALE 1,000 FEET TO THE
INCH]
In the United States the possible development of canals has been
neglected and, to a certain extent, stifled by railway building. The
Erie Canal, built before the advent of the railway, connects Lake Erie
with tide-water at Albany, a distance of 387 miles. For many years it
was the chief means of traffic between the Mississippi Valley and the
Atlantic seaboard, and although paralleled by the six tracks of a great
railway system, it is still an important factor in the carriage of grain
and certain classes of slow freight.[9] The level way that made the
canal possible is largely responsible for the decline of its importance,
for the absence of steep grades enables a powerful locomotive to haul
so many cars that the quick transit more than overbalances a very low
ton rate by the canal.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, designed to connect the Mississippi
Valley with the Atlantic seaboard, fared much worse than the Erie Canal.
Less than two hundred miles have been completed, and practically no work
except that of repair has been done since 1850; the heavy grades between
Cumberland and Pittsburg render its completion improbable.
An excellent system of canals, the Ohio and Erie and the Miami and Erie,
connect the Ohio River with Lake Erie. These canals are in the State of
Ohio and aggregate about six hundred miles in length. They are important
as coal and ore carriers. Several hundred miles of canals were built
along the river-valleys of eastern Pennsylvania before 1840 for carrying
coal to tide-water. Most of them have been abandoned; one, the Delaware
& Hudson Canal Co., survives as a railway. Inasmuch as the coal went on
a down grade from the mines to the markets, it could be carried more
economically by railway than by canal.
Of far greater importance are the St. Marys Canal on the Canadian side,
and the St. Marys Falls Canal on the American side, of St. Marys River.
These canals obviate the falls in St. Marys River and form the
commercial outlet of Lake Superior. The tonnage of goods, mainly iron
ore and coal, is about one-half greater than that of the Suez Canal.
About twenty-five thousand vessels pass through these canals yearly.
The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal,[10] from Lake Michigan to Lockport,
on the Illinois River, was designed mainly to carry the sewage of
Chicago which, prior to the construction of the canal, was poured into
the lake through the Chicago River. The completion of the canal turned
the course of the river and caused the water to flow out of the lake,
carrying the city's sewage. It is intended to complete a navigable
water-way from Chicago to St. Louis deep enough for vessels drawing
fourteen feet. Its value is therefore strategic as well as industrial,
for by means of it gun-boats may readily pass from the Gulf of Mexico to
the Great Lakes.
Oceanic canals are designed both for naval strategic purposes and for
industrial uses. Thus, the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, from the mouth of the
Elbe to Kiel Bay, across the base of Jutland, saves two days between
Hamburg and the Baltic ports. It also enables German war-vessels to
concentrate quickly in either the North or the Baltic Sea. The
Manchester Ship Canal makes Manchester a seaport and saves the cost of
trans-shipping freights by rail from Liverpool. The Corinth Canal across
the isthmus that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece
affords a much shorter route between Italian ports and Odessa. The North
Holland Ship Canal makes Amsterdam practically a seaport.
Probably no other highway of commerce since the discovery of the Cape
route around Africa has caused such a great change and readjustment of
trade between Europe and Asia as the Suez Canal. Sailing-vessels still
take the Cape route, because the heavy towage tolls through the canal
more than offset the gain in time. Steamships have their own power and
generally take the canal route, thereby saving about ten days in time
and fuel, and about four thousand eight hundred miles in distance. In
spite of the heavy tolls the saving is considerable. About three
thousand five hundred vessels pass through the canal yearly.
The Suez Canal, constructed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, for some time was
under the control of French capitalists. Subsequently, by the purchase
of stock partly in open market and partly from the Khedive of Egypt, the
control of the canal passed into the hands of the English. The
restrictions placed upon the passage of war-ships is such that the canal
would be of little use to nations at war.
[Illustration: THE ROUTE OF THE PANAMA CANAL]
The necessity of an interoceanic canal across the American continent has
become more imperative year by year for fifty years. The discovery of
gold in California caused an emigration from the Atlantic to the Pacific
coast which resulted in a permanent settlement of the latter region. A
railway across the Isthmus of Panama and another across the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec have afforded very poor means of communication between
oceans.
In 1881 work on a tide-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama was
begun, but the plan was afterward changed to a high-level canal. The
change was thought necessary partly on account of the great cost of the
former, and partly because of the difficulties of constructing so deep a
cut--about three hundred and forty feet--at the summit of the Culebra
ridge. The construction company, after spending the entire
capital--about one hundred and twenty million dollars--in accomplishing
one-tenth of the work, became bankrupt. The United States subsequently
purchased the franchise.
A canal by way of Lake Nicaragua has also been projected, and two
treaties with Great Britain, whereby the United States agreed to build
no fortifications to guard it, have been made. No work beyond the
surveys has yet been undertaken, however. The cost of each canal is
estimated between one hundred and fifty million and two hundred million
dollars. The Panama route will require about twelve hours for the
passage of a vessel; the Nicaragua route about sixty hours.[11] (_See
map, p. 270._)
The completion of a canal by either route will cause a readjustment of
the world's commerce far greater than that which followed the
construction of the Suez Canal. By such a route San Francisco is brought
nearer to London than Calcutta now is, and the all-water route between
the Atlantic ports of the United States and those of China and Japan
will be shortened by upward of eight thousand miles. The importance of
the Hawaiian Islands, already a great ocean depot, will be greatly
increased, and the latter is becoming one of the great commercial
stations of the world.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What were some of the effects which resulted from the various embargo
and non-intercourse acts that preceded the war of 1812?
What is the effect upon an industry when all means of getting the
products to market are cut off?
In the early history of the country rivers were the most important
highways of commerce; obtain an account of some instance of this in
detail.
Certain commodities have been carried about four-fifths of the distance
between Moscow and Vladivostok by water, across Siberia. Illustrate
this, using the map of the Russian Empire, plate, p. 342.
What has been the effect of cheap steel on ocean navigation?
Discuss the difference between a screw-steamship and a side-wheeler; a
ship and a schooner. How are vessels steered?
How does a triple-expansion engine differ from an ordinary steam-engine?
Cargoes are carried by water across Europe from Havre to Marseilles, and
from The Hague to the mouth of the Danube; illustrate the route on a map
of Europe.
The following instruction occasionally is found in the pilothouse of a
vessel--what is its meaning?
"Green to green and red to red--
Perfect safety; go ahead."
From the chart on p. 49 show how a pilot uses the range lights in
entering New York Harbor.
The new freighter Minnesota is designed to carry a load of 30,000 tons;
how many trains of fifty cars, each car holding 30,000 pounds, are
required to furnish her cargo?
From the map on pp. x-xi describe the new ocean routes that will be
created by an interoceanic canal across the American continent.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Photographs or illustrations of various steam and sailing craft.
An Atlantic Coast Pilot Chart--any month.
A map showing the canals of the United States.
A map showing the canals of Europe.
[Illustration: A MODERN LOCOMOTIVE--THE TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED AT A
SPEED EXCEEDING NINETY MILES AN HOUR]
CHAPTER VI
TRANSPORTATION--RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY ORGANIZATION; PUBLIC HIGHWAYS
In the United States and western Europe, in spite of the low cost of
water transportation, the railways have almost wholly monopolized the
transportation of commodities. This is due in part to the saving of time
in transit--for under the demands of modern business, the only economy
is economy of time--and in part to prompt delivery at the specified
time.
Into a large centre of population like New York, London, or Berlin, many
millions of pounds of perishable food-stuffs must be brought daily for
consumption. Now these food-stuffs must be delivered with promptness,
and no delay can be tolerated. A shipper having half a million pounds of
meat or a hundred thousand pounds of flour or a car-load of fruit to
deliver can take no risks; he sends it by rail, not only because it is
the quickest way, but because experience has shown it to be the most
prompt way; as a rule, it is delivered on the exact minute of schedule
time.
Cargoes of silks and teas from China and Japan might be sent all the way
to London by water, but experience has shown a more profitable way. The
consignments are sent by swift steamships to Seattle; thence by fast
express trains to New York; there they are transferred to swift liners
that take them across the Atlantic to European ports. And although this
method of shipment is enormously expensive as compared with the
all-water route, the saving of time and certainty of prompt delivery
more than offset the extra cost of delivery.
In the last half of the nineteenth century the cost of haulage in the
United States by rail decreased so materially that in a few instances
only--notably the Great Lakes and the Hudson River--do inland waters
compete with the railways.[12] This is due in part to better
organization of the railways, but mainly to the substitution of Bessemer
steel for iron rails and the great improvements in locomotives and
rolling stock.
The use of a steam-driven locomotive became possible for the first time
when Stephenson used the tubular boiler and the forced draught,[13]
thereby making steam rapidly enough for a short, quick stroke. In 1865 a
good freight locomotive weighing thirty tons could haul about forty
box-cars, each loaded with ten tons. This was the maximum load for a
level track; the average load for a single locomotive was about
twenty-five or thirty cars. Heavier locomotives could not well be used
because the iron rails went to pieces under them.
The invention of Bessemer steel produced a rail that was safe under the
pounding of a locomotive three or four times as heavy as those formerly
employed; it produced boilers that would carry steam at 250 instead of
60 pounds pressure per square inch. As a result, with only a moderate
increase in the fuel burned, a single locomotive on a level track will
haul eighty or ninety box-cars, each carrying nearly seventy thousand
pounds.[14]
The application of the double and the triple expansion principle has
been quite as successful with locomotive as with marine engines in
saving fuel and gaining power--that is, it has decreased the cost per
ton-mile of hauling freight and likewise the cost of transporting
passengers. Enlarged "fire-boxes," or furnaces,[15] enable steam to be
made more rapidly and to give higher speed.[16] Only a few years ago
forty-eight hours was the scheduled time between New York and Chicago;
now there are about forty trains a day between these two cities, several
of which make the trip in twenty-four hours or less.
=Railway Development.=--The railway as a common carrier, having its right
by virtue of a government charter, dates from 1801, when a tramway was
built between Croydon and Wandsworth, two suburbs of London. The rails
were iron straps, nailed to wooden stringers. The charter was carefully
drawn in order to prevent the road from competing with omnibus lines and
public cabs.
When the steam locomotive succeeded horse-power, however, there
followed an era of railway development that in a few years
revolutionized the carrying trade in the thickly settled parts of the
United States and Europe. Short, independent lines were constructed
without any reference whatever to the natural movement of traffic. There
seemed but one idea, namely, to connect two cities or towns. Indeed, the
absence of a definite plan was much similar to that of the interurban
electric roads a century later; local traffic was the only
consideration.
At first an opinion prevailed that the road-bed of the railway ought to
be a public highway upon which any individual or company might run its
own conveyances, on the payment of a fixed toll; indeed, in both Europe
and the United States, public opinion could see no difference between
the railway and the canal. The employment of a steam-driven locomotive
engine, however, made such a plan impossible, and demonstrated that the
roads must be thoroughly organized.
At the close of 1850 there were nearly four hundred different railway
companies in England; in the United States about a dozen companies were
required to make the connection of New York City and Buffalo. A few of
these paid dividends; a large majority barely met their operating
expenses, defaulting the interest on their bonds; a great many were
hopelessly bankrupt.
=Consolidation of Connecting Lines.=--Between 1850 and 1865 a new feature
entered into railway management, namely, the union of connecting lines.
This was a positive advantage, for the operating expenses of the sixteen
lines, now a part of the New York Central, between New York and Buffalo
were scarcely greater than the expenses of one-third that number. The
service was much quicker, better, and cheaper. In England the several
hundred companies were reduced to twelve; in France the thirty-five or
more companies were reduced to six in number.
The consolidation of connecting lines brought about another desirable
feature--the extension of the existing lines.[17] The lines of
continental Europe were extended eastward to the Russian frontier, and
to Constantinople; then the Alps were surmounted. In the United States
railway extension was equally great. The Union and Central Pacific
railways were opened in 1869, giving the first all-rail route to the
Pacific coast. Other routes to the Pacific followed within a few years,
one of which, the Canadian Pacific, was built from Quebec to Vancouver.
[Illustration: A TRUNK SYSTEM--THE VARIOUS BRANCHES EXTEND INTO COAL,
GRAIN, IRON, CATTLE, TIMBER, AND TOBACCO REGIONS]
The period from 1864 was one of extensive railway building both in the
United States and Europe. Some of the roads, such as the transalpine
railways of Europe and the Pacific roads of the United States, were
greatly needed. Others that created new fields of industry by opening to
communication productive lands were also wise and necessary; the lands
would have been valueless without them. Not a few lines that were to be
needed in time were built so far ahead of time that they did not even
pay their operating expenses for many years.
Another class of roads was intended for speculative purposes. Thus,
there were instances in which a line occupying a given territory had
antagonized its patrons by poor service, and extortionate charges.
Thereupon another company would obtain a charter--which was then easily
done--and build a competing line in the same territory, the former most
likely having scarcely enough business for one road.[18] The results
were almost always the same; a war of rate-cutting followed; the
stockholders of both roads lost heavily; and one or both went into the
hands of receivers.
=Competition and Pools.=--In many instances the consolidation of roads,
while cutting off disastrous competition in the territory jointly
occupied by the two roads, brought the consolidated road into fierce
competition with another adjacent system. If the roads had practically
the same territory but different terminals the competition was confined
mainly to local traffic. On the other hand, they might have the same
terminals but cover different local territories; in this case the roads
must compete for through traffic. Thus the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy
is brought into competition with the Union Pacific in Nebraska, but
inasmuch as the roads have different and widely distant terminals, their
local traffic is easily adjusted. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and
the Northwestern have common terminals at Chicago, St. Paul, Denver,
Omaha, and Kansas City. They must therefore compete with each other, and
with half-a-dozen other roads for their through traffic.
Competition between railways differs greatly from that between two
firms. If one of two firms cannot afford to compete, the manager may
discharge his help, and close doors; he then does not suffer actual
loss. But a railway, being a common carrier, cannot do this; the road
must keep its trains moving or lose its charter. If it cannot carry
goods at a profit it must carry them at cost or at a loss. Even the
latter is better than not carrying them at all, for the operating
expenses of the road must go on.
So between 1870 and 1880 most of the railway managements were busy
devising ways to stop a rate-cutting and competition that was ruinous.
In many instances great trunk lines would have consolidated had not
State laws prevented. They could not maintain rates because one or
another of the weaker roads would be compelled to lower their rates in
order to meet their operating expenses. Therefore they were compelled to
do one of three things, namely, to divide the territory, to divide
traffic, or to divide earnings. Either of the two latter plans is called
a _pool_.
Of these two forms of pooling the division of the traffic is the easier,
but it is often unsatisfactory to the patrons of the road. The second
plan, the division of the earnings, is a more difficult matter to adjust
because each road is usually dissatisfied with its proportion. As a
matter of fact, however, the first plan of pooling is very apt to grow
into the second.
In several instances pools have been declared illegal by the courts,
but, in general, railway service has been more satisfactory under the
pool system than under any other. They have always aroused popular
suspicion, however, from the fact that they increase power of the
railway itself. In various instances important trunk lines have formed a
general company, each having its separate organization, because they
could accomplish under a combined organization what they could not as
independent companies. The restrictions against pooling have therefore
encouraged combination of competing lines.
Because the railway is an absolute necessity, and because it has power
given neither to individuals nor to other corporations, it is a settled
policy that both the State and general Government should have the power
to regulate its rates, and should in every way prevent unjust
discrimination. Both problems are very difficult, however, and the
unintelligent adjustment of rates has frequently resulted in injustice
both to the roads and their patrons.
A rate per ton-mile for each class of freight is out of question,
because a large part of the cost to the company consists in loading,
handling, and storing the goods. Once aboard the car, it costs but
little more to carry a ton of freight one hundred miles than to move it
one mile. The rates per mile, therefore, are necessarily greater for
short distances than for long runs. A mile-rate based on a ten-mile haul
would be prohibitive to the shipper if applied to a run between Chicago
and New York. On the other hand, were the charges based on the long run,
the local rates would be far less than the cost of the service.[19]
As a result freight rates are based very largely on the cost of the
service, and this is particularly true of local freights. This practice
is also modified by charging _what the traffic will bear_, and, on the
whole, a combination of the two ideas gives the most reasonable and the
fairest method of basing charges. Thus, a car filled with fine, crated
furniture, which is light and bulky, can afford a higher rate than one
filled with scrap-iron. Cars filled with grain, lumber, coal, or ore are
made up in train-loads, and form a part of the daily haul; they can
afford to be taken at a lower rate than the stuffs of which only an
occasional car-load is hauled. In order to adjust this problem it is
customary to divide freights into six general classes.
[Illustration: THE PROBLEM OF FREIGHT RATES]
In handling through freights the problems are many, and, if two or more
roads have the same terminal points, a great deal of friction of
necessity results. The longest roads must either make their through
rates lower than local rates between distant points, or lose much of
their through business. They cannot afford to do the latter and the
statutory laws may forbid the former. As a result the laws most likely
are evaded, or else openly disobeyed.[20]
The difficulties in adjusting the matter of the long and the short
haul, as has been shown, have caused the formation of pools and various
other traffic associations, the object of which has been to prevent
rate-wars. To this extent they resulted in positive good, for a
rate-war in the end is apt to be as hurtful to the community as to the
railway company. The attempt to settle such questions has also resulted
in a great deal of legislation. Some of this has been wise and good; but
not a little has been hurtful both to the railroads and to the
community. The general result is seen in the great combination of
competing lines and, more recently, of competing systems.
=Passenger Service.=--Passenger traffic is more easily managed than the
movement of freight. For the greater part the rates are fixed by law. On
a few eastern roads local rates are two cents per mile; in the main,
however, a three-cent rate prevails, except that in sparsely peopled
regions the rates are four and five cents per mile. On many roads
1,000-mile books are sold at the rate of twenty dollars; on some the
rate is twenty-five dollars per book.
Long-distance rates involving passage over several roads are somewhat
less than the local rates. These rates are determined by joint
passenger-tariff associations. Each individual road fixes its own
excursion and commutation rates; one or another of the joint passenger
associations determines the rates where several roads divide the
traffic. The latter are usually one, or one and one-third fares for the
round trip.
Except on a few local roads in densely peopled regions the passenger
service is much less remunerative than freight business, and not a few
railways would abolish passenger trains altogether were they permitted
to do so. Rate-cutting between competing roads has not been common since
the existence of joint passenger associations. It is sometimes done
secretly, however, through the use of ticket-brokers, or "scalpers," who
are employed to sell tickets at less than the usual rate; it is also
done by the illicit use of tickets authorized for given purposes, such
as "editors'," "clergymen's," and "advertising" transportation.
In many instances, where several roads have the same terminal points, it
is customary for the road or roads having the quickest service to allow
a lower rate to the others. Thus, of the seven or eight roads between
New York and Chicago, the two best equipped roads charge a fare of
twenty dollars on their ordinary, and a higher rate on their limited,
trains. Because of slower time the other roads charge a sum less by two
or three dollars for the same service. This cut in the rate is called a
"differential."
=Railway Mileage.=--The railways of the world in 1900 had an aggregate of
nearly four hundred and eighty thousand miles distributed as follows:
North America 216,000
Europe 173,000
Asia 36,000
South America and West Indies 28,000
Australasia 15,000
Africa 12,000
In western Europe and the eastern United States there is an average of
one mile of railway to each six or eight square miles of area. In these
countries railway construction has reached probably its highest
development, and the proportion seems to represent the mileage necessary
for the commercial interests of the people.
The railways of the United States aggregate 193,000 miles--nearly
one-half the total mileage of the world. Over this enormous trackage
38,000 locomotives and 1,400,000 coaches and cars carry yearly
600,000,000 passengers and 1,000,000,000 tons of freight. They represent
an outlay of about $5,000,000,000. Owing to the absence of the
international problems that have greatly interfered with the
organization of European railways, the roads of the United States have
developed "trunk-system" features to a higher degree than is found
elsewhere.
In the United States and Canada the farms of the great central plain,
together with the coal-mines, are the great centres of production, while
the seaports of the two coasts form great centres of distribution. Most
of the trunk lines, therefore, extend east and west; of the north and
south lines only two are important. The reason for the east-west
direction of the great trunk lines is obvious; the great markets of
North America, Europe, and Asia lie respectively to the east and the
west.
[Illustration: THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE RAILWAYS OF THE UNITED STATES
THEIR POSITION DEPENDS ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE LAND]
=Railway Ownership.=--The ownership of railways is vested either in
national governments or else in corporate companies; in only a few
instances are roads held individually by private owners, and these are
mainly lumber or plantation roads. Thus, the railways of Prussia are
owned by the state; most of those of the smaller German states are owned
either by the state or by the empire; still others are owned by
corporate companies and managed by the imperial government. In their
management military use is considered as first in importance.
In France governmental ownership and management have been less
successful. Plans for an elaborate system of state railways failed, and
the state now owns and operates only 1,700 miles, mainly, in the
southwest. Belgium controls and operates all her lines, but as the
latter are short and the area of the state small, there are no
difficulties in the way of excellent management. In Great Britain all
the railways are owned and controlled by corporate companies. The great
transcontinental line of the Russian Empire was built by the government,
but the latter does not own it.
In the United States the railways are now owned by corporate companies.
Some of the western roads were built by Government subsidies;[21] other
roads were built by the aid of States, counties, or cities, which
afterward sold them to corporate companies. The first transcontinental
railways required Government assistance, and could not have been built
without it; nowadays, however, corporate companies find no difficulty in
providing the capital for any railway that is needed.
Inasmuch as the railway is a positive necessity, upon whose existence
depends the transportation of the food daily required in the great
centres of population, the charter of the railway gives the company
extraordinary powers. Most steam railway companies are permitted by the
State to exercise the power of _eminent domain_--that is, they may seize
and hold the land on which to locate their tracks and buildings, if it
cannot be acquired by the consent of the owners; they may also seize
coal and other materials consigned to them for shipment if such
materials are necessary to operate their lines.
Therefore, in consideration of the unusual powers possessed by the
companies, the various States reserve the right to regulate the freight
and passenger tariffs. They may also compel the companies to afford
equal facilities to all patrons, and take the measures necessary to
prevent discrimination.
The control of the railways by the government may be absolute, as in the
German state of Prussia; or it may consist of a general supervision, as
in the case of the Canadian railways. In almost every European state
there is a director or else a commission to act as a representative
between the railways and the people. In the United States the various
States have each a railway commission, while the general Government is
represented by the Interstate Commerce Commission.
=Electric Railways.=--The use of electricity as a motive power has not
only revolutionized suburban traffic but it has become a great factor in
rural transportation as well. The speed of the horse-car rarely exceeded
five or six miles per hour, while that of the electric car is about ten
miles per hour in city streets and about twice as great over rural
roads. As a result, the suburban limits of the large centres of
population have greatly extended, and the population of the outlying
districts has been increased from four to ten fold.
[Illustration: ELECTRIC RAILWAY--ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
[Illustration: ELECTRIC FREIGHT LOCOMOTIVE--ERIE RAILROAD]
From some of the larger cities the electric roads reach out to
distances of one hundred miles or more and have become the carriers of
perishable freight, such as fruit and dairy products. These are not only
delivered just as promptly as though they were sent over the steam
roads, but the delivery is more frequent. Indeed, the marvellous success
of the electric interurban railway is due mainly to the frequency of its
service.
=Public Roads and Highways.=--Carriages propelled by steam, electric, and
gasoline motors have become an important factor in the delivery of goods
in nearly every city of Europe and America. They are not only speedier
than the horse and wagon, but their keeping costs less. They are
economical only on good roads. The bicycle, no longer a plaything,
exerted a very decided effect on transportation when the "pneumatic" or
inflated rubber tire came into use. Through the bicycle came the demand
for good roads; and several thousand miles of the best surfaced roads
are built in the United States each year.
The ordinary highways or roads, the paved streets of the large cities
excepted, are popularly known either as "dirt" roads or "macadamized"
roads, the latter name being applied to about every sort of graded
highway that has been surfaced with broken rock. Most of the roads of
western Europe are of this character. They are laid out with easy
grades, and a thick foundation of heavy stone is covered with smaller
pieces of broken rock, the whole being finished off with a top-dressing
of fine material. Once built, the expense of keeping them in good order
is less than that of keeping a dirt road in bad order.
Most of the country highways of the United States are dirt roads that
are deep with dust in dry weather and almost impassable at the breaking
of winter. Roads of this character are such a detriment that grain
farming will not pay when the farm is distant twenty miles or more from
the nearest railway. Many a farmer pays more to haul his grain to the
nearest railway station than from the railway station to London.
Since it has become apparent that the commercial development of many
agricultural regions depends quite as much on good wagon roads as upon
railways and expensive farming machinery, there has been a disposition
to grade and rock-surface all roads that are important highways.
Intercommunication becomes vastly easier; the cost of transportation is
lessened by more than one-half; and the wear and destruction of vehicles
is reduced to a minimum. In every case the improvement of the road is
designed to increase traffic by making a given power do more work in
less time.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What have been the effects of Bessemer steel on the carrying power of
railways?--on cheapening freight rates?
What would be some of the effects first apparent were a large city like
London or New York suddenly cut off from railway communication?
What is meant by a tubular boiler?--by a forced draught?--by a
switch?--by an automatic coupler?
Ascertain from a railway official the various danger-signals as
indicated by lights, flags, and whistle-blasts.
Why should not crated furniture and coal have the same freight rate?
What is meant by a pool?--by long haul and short haul?--by rebate?
If the rate on a given weight of merchandise is one dollar and fifty
cents for five miles, should it be three hundred dollars for one
thousand miles?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Hartley's Railroad Transportation.
American Railways.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF VEGETATION]
CHAPTER VII
FACTORS IN THE LOCATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS
The population of the world is very unevenly distributed. Not far from
nine-tenths live in lowland plains, below an altitude of 1,200 feet, in
regions where food-stuffs grow. The remainder live mainly in the
grass-producing regions of the great plateaus, the mining regions or the
flood-plains and grassy slopes of the higher montane regions.
=Communal Life.=--In each of these regions, also, there is a very unequal
massing of population. In part, the various families live isolated from
one another; in part, they gather into cities and villages. In other
words the population of a habitable region may be classed as _rural_ and
_urban_. In the United States and western Europe, agricultural pursuits
encourage rural life, each family living on its own estate. In Russia,
the agricultural population usually cluster in villages.
The farmer or freeholder who owns or controls his estate, exemplifies
the most advanced condition of personal and political liberty. Only a
few centuries have elapsed since not only the land but also the life of
a subject was the property of the king or the feudal lord, and in those
days about the only people living in isolation were outlaws. In most
cases the communal system, best exemplified in Russia, marks an
intermediate stage between a low and a high state of civilization; in
other instances it is necessary in order to insure safety. German
farmers in Siberia usually adopt the village plan for this reason.
For the greater part, the non-agricultural population of the civilized
world is massed in villages and cities for reasons that have nothing to
do with either civilization or self-defence. The causes that bring about
the massing of urban population are many and their operation is complex.
In general, however, it is to facilitate one or more of several things,
namely--the receiving, distribution, and transportation of commodities,
the manufacture of products, the existence of good harbors, and the
existence of minerals and metals necessary in the various industries.
=The Beginnings of Towns and Cities.=--The "country town" of agricultural
regions in many ways is the best type of the centre of population
engaged in receiving and disbursing commodities. The farmers living in
their vicinity send their crops to it for transportation or final
disposition. The country store is a sort of clearing-house, exchanging
household and other commodities, such as sugar, tea, coffee, spices,
drugs, silks, woollens, cotton goods, farming machinery, and furniture
for farm products. A railway station, grain elevator, and one or more
banks form the rest of its business equipment.
Usually the town has resulted from a position of easy access. It may be
the crossing of two highways, a good landing-place on a river, the
existence of a fording-place, a bridge, a ferry, a toll gate, or a point
that formed a convenient resting-place for a day's journey. The towns
and villages along the "buffalo" roads are examples almost without
number.
The "siding" or track where freight cars may be held for unloading, has
formed the beginning of many a town. The siding was located at the
convenience of the railway company; the village resulting could have
grown equally well almost anywhere else along the line.
[Illustration: THE EFFECT OF POSITION--BUFFALO IS AT THE FOOT OF LAKE
ERIE AND THE HEAD OF ERIE CANAL; AN EXCELLENT HARBOR FACILITATES ITS
COMMERCE]
In the early history of nearly every country, military posts formed the
beginnings of many centres that have grown to be large cities. Thus,
Rome, Paris, London, the various "chesters"[22] of England, Milan,
Turin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburg, and Albany were established first as
military outposts. The trading post was most conveniently established
under the protection of the military camp, and the subsequent growth
depended partly on an accessible position, and partly on the
intelligence of the men who controlled the trade of the surrounding
regions.
=Harbors as Factors in the Growth of Cities.=--A good harbor draws trade
from a great distance. Thus, with a rate of 14-1/2 cents on a bushel of
wheat from Chicago, New York City draws a trade from a region having a
radius of more than one thousand miles. In its trade with Chinese ports,
Seattle, the chief port of Puget Sound, reaches as far eastward as
London and Hamburg.
=Water-Power as a Factor.=--The presence of water-power has brought about
the establishment of many centres that have grown into populous cities.
The water-power of the New England plateau had much to do with the rapid
growth of the New England States. At the time of the various embargo and
non-intercourse acts preceding the war of 1812, a great amount of
capital was thrown into idleness. The water-power was made available
because, during this time, the people were compelled to manufacture for
themselves the commodities that before had been imported.
The manufacturing industry at first was prosecuted in the southern
Appalachians as well as in the New England plateau. It survived in the
latter, partly because of the capital available, and partly owing to the
business experience of the people. In the meantime villages sprang up in
pretty nearly every locality in which there was available water-power.
Since the use of coal and the advent of cheap railway transportation,
steam has largely supplanted water-power, unless the latter is unlimited
in supply. As a result, there is a marked growth of the smaller centres
of population along the various water-fronts. In such cases the
advantages of a water-front offset the loss of water-power.
=The Effects of Metals on the Growth of Cities.=--The character of the
industry of a region has much to do with the character of its
manufactures. Thus, coal is absolutely essential to the manufacture of
iron and steel; and, inasmuch as from two to eight tons of the former
are necessary to manufacture a ton of steel, it is cheaper to ship the
ore to a place to which coal can be cheaply brought.
The coal-fields are responsible for the greater part of Pittsburg's
population, and almost wholly for that of Scranton, Wilkesbarre, and
many other Pennsylvania towns. Iron and coal are responsible, also, for
many cities and towns in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. Birmingham,
Salford, and Cardiff in Great Britain, Dortmund and Essen in Germany,
and St. Etienne in France have resulted from the presence of coal and
iron.
In many instances man is a great factor in the establishment of a centre
of population. Chicago would have been quite as well off in two or three
other locations; its present location is the result of man's energy and
is not likely to be changed. St. Louis might have been built at a dozen
different places and would have fared just as well; the same is true of
St. Paul, or of Indianapolis.
Leavenworth at one time was a more promising city than Kansas City, but
the building of an iron bridge over the Missouri River at the latter
place gave it a start, and wide-awake men kept it in the lead. It has
grown at the expense of Leavenworth and St. Joseph, neither one of which
has become a commercial centre. Cairo, at the junction of the
Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, has the geographical position for a great
city; it waits for the man who can concentrate the commerce there.
=Adjustment to Environment.=--San Francisco was wisely located at first,
but its grain trade was more economically carried on at Karquinez
Strait, while its oriental trade is gradually concentrating at Seattle.
Philadelphia lost its commercial supremacy when the completion of the
Erie Canal gave return cargoes to foreign vessels discharging at New
York City. Oswego, N.Y., had the advantage of both harbor facilities and
water-power, but Syracuse, with practically no advantages except those
of leadership, has far outstripped it.
Such instances of the readjustment of centres of population have been
common in the past; they will also occur in the future. In nearly every
case the readjustment results from economic causes, the opening of new
lines of transportation, the lowering of the cost of the production of a
commodity, the discovery of new economic processes--all these cause a
disturbance of population, and the latter must readjust itself to new
and changed conditions.
Not all peoples have the necessary intelligence and training at first to
adapt themselves to their environment. For the greater part, the
American Indians were unable to take advantage of the wonderful
resources of the continent in which they lived. The Boers occupied about
the richest part of Africa, but made no use of the natural wealth of the
country beyond the grazing industry; in fact, their nomadic life reduced
them to a plane of civilization materially lower than that of their
ancestors.
People of the highest state of civilization do not always adjust
themselves to their environment readily. The people of the New England
plateau were nearly a century in learning that they possessed nearly all
the best harbors of the Atlantic coast of North America. When, however,
the great commerce of the country had been wiped out of existence, it
did not take them long to readjust themselves to the industry of
manufacture, the water-power being the natural resource that made the
industry profitable.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Were the middle Atlantic coast of the United States to undergo an
elevation of 100 feet, what would be the effect on New York City?
Find the factors that led to the settlement of the city or town in which
or near which you live. What caused the settlement of the three or four
largest towns in the same county?--of the following places: Minneapolis,
Fall River, New Haven, New Bedford, Cairo (Ill.), Cairo (Egypt),
Marseille, Aix-la-Chapelle, Alexandria (Egypt), Washington (D.C.),
Columbus (O.), Johannesburg (Africa), Kimberley (Africa), Albany (N.Y.),
Punta Arenas (S.A.), Scranton (Pa.), Vancouver (B.C.), San Francisco,
Cape Nome?
What circumstances connected with commerce led to the passing of the
following-named places: Palmyra, Carthage, Babylon, Genoa, Venice,
Ancient Rome, Jerusalem?
COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Any good cyclopaedia.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CEREALS AND GRASSES
Of all the plants connected with the economies of mankind the grasses
hold easily the first place. Not only are the seeds of certain species
the chief food of nearly all peoples, but the plants themselves are the
food of most animals whose flesh is used as meat. Wheat, maize, and rice
are used by all except a very few peoples; and about all the animals
used for food, fish and mollusks excepted, are grain eaters, or grass
eaters, or both.
The grasses of the Plains in Texas, the Veldt in South Africa, and the
hills of New Zealand by nature's processes are converted into meat that
feeds the great cities of western Europe and the eastern United States.
The corn of the Mississippi valley becomes the pork which, yielded from
the carcasses of more than forty million swine, is exported to half the
countries of the world. Even the two and one-half billion pounds of wool
consumed yearly is converted grass.
=Wheat.=--The wheat of commerce is the seed of several species of cereal
grass, one of which, _Triticum sativum_, is the ordinary cultivated
plant. Wild species are found in the highlands of Kurdistan, in Greece,
and in Mesopotamia, that are identical with species cultivated to-day.
It is thought that the cultivation of the grain began in Mesopotamia,
but it is also certain that it was grown by the Swiss lake-dwellers far
back in prehistoric times. It is the "corn" Joseph's brothers sought to
buy when they went to Egypt, and the records of its harvesting are
scattered all over the pages of written history.
[Illustration: THE GRAIN CROP--MODERN METHODS OF CULTIVATION AND
HARVESTING]
Of the one and one-half billion people that constitute the world's
population, more than one-third, or about eight times the population of
the United States, are consumers of wheat-bread; and this number is
yearly increasing by twelve million. Moreover, each individual of this
aggregate consumes yearly very nearly one barrel of flour, or about four
and one-half bushels of wheat. In other words, it requires somewhat more
than two billion three hundred million bushels of wheat each year to
supply the world's demand.[23] As a matter of fact the world's crop is
yearly consumed so nearly to the danger-line that very often the
"visible supply," or the amount known to be in the market, is reduced to
a few million bushels.
Wheat will grow under very wide ranges of climate, but it thrives best
between the parallels of 25 deg. and 55 deg. In a soil very rich in
vegetable mould it is apt to "run to stalk." A rather poor clay-loam
produces the best seed,[24] and a hard seed, rather than a heavy stalk,
is required.
In the latitude of Kansas the seeds planted in the fall will retain
their vitality through the winter; in the latitude of Dakota they are
"winter-killed," as a rule. Because of this feature two broad classes or
divisions of the crop are recognized in commerce--the winter and the
spring varieties. In general, the spring wheats are regarded as the
better, and this is nearly always the case in localities too cold for
winter wheat. There are exceptions to this rule, however. In the main,
winter wheat ripens first, and is therefore first in the market.[25]
[Illustration: WHEAT]
In Europe the plain that faces the North and Baltic Seas, and that part
which extends through southern Russia, yield the chief part of the
crop, although the plains of the Po, the Danube, and Bohemia furnish
heavy crops. Russia, France, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy are all
wheat states.
In a normal year all Europe produces a little more than one-half
(fifty-five per cent.) of the world's crop. Russia and France excepted,
scarcely another state produces as much as is consumed. Great Britain
consumes her entire crop in three months; Germany in about six months.
France sends a part of her crop to Great Britain and buys of Russia to
fill the deficiency. Russia consumes but very little of her wheat-crop;
it is nearly all sold to the states of western Europe. All Europe
consumes about one billion seven hundred and ten million bushels, but
produces about one billion two hundred and fifty million; the remainder
is supplied by the United States, India, Argentina, Africa, and
Australia.
[Illustration: WHEAT IN UNITED STATES]
In the United States the great bulk of the crop comes from the upper
Mississippi valley and Pacific coast States. About one-third is
consumed where it is grown; more than one-third is required for the
populous centres of the east; a little less than one-third is exported,
of which about ninety per cent. goes to Europe.
[Illustration: WHEAT PRODUCTION]
Much of this, especially the Pacific coast product, is sold unground,
but each year an increasing amount is made into flour. The flour
manufacture of the United States aggregates somewhat more than
160,000,000 barrels yearly--the output of 16,000 flour-mills; the
Pillsbury mills of Minneapolis alone have a capacity of 60,000 barrels a
week. In Europe the Hungarian mills and their output of Bohemian flour
are the chief competitors of the United States.
[Illustration: WHEAT]
The wheat-crop of the Pacific coast has usually been a factor by itself.
On account of the absence of summer rains, the kernel is both plump and
hard. After the threshing process it is sacked and stored in the fields
in which it has grown.[26] Heretofore much of the sacked wheat has been
shipped to European markets by the Cape Horn route, but in late years a
yearly increasing amount is made into flour and sold in China, Japan,
and Siberia. In 1900 nearly two million barrels were thus sent.
East of the Rocky Mountains, after the grain is harvested much of it is
sold to dealers whose storage elevators[27] are scattered all over the
wheat-growing region, and at all great points of shipment, such as
Duluth, Minneapolis, Buffalo, and the eastern seaports. Before the grain
is transferred to the elevators it is inspected and graded, and the cars
which contain it are sealed. This wheat constitutes the "visible
supply." All the business concerning it is transacted by means of
"warehouse receipts," that have almost the currency of ready money.
Banks loan money on them almost to their market value.
Under normal conditions, the cost of growing and harvesting a bushel of
wheat--including interest on the land and deterioration of the
machinery, etc.--is between fifty and fifty-five cents. The market
price, when not affected by "corners" and other gambling transactions,
usually varies between sixty-two and eighty-five cents. The difference
between these figures is divided between the farmer and the "middlemen,"
the share of the latter being in the form of commissions and elevator
charges.
[Illustration: STORING PACIFIC COAST WHEAT]
In addition to bread-making wheat, certain varieties of grain known as
macaroni wheat have a certain importance in the market. Several
varieties are so hardy that they easily resist extremely cold winters;
they will also grow in regions too dry for ordinary varieties. In this
respect they are well adapted to the plains at the eastern base of the
Rocky Mountains. The only detriment is the lack of a steady market.
Macaroni wheat has a very hard kernel and is rich in gluten. It is used
mainly in the manufacture of macaroni paste, but in Europe, when mixed
with three times its weight of ordinary soft wheat, it is much used in
making flour. The small amount now grown in the United States is shipped
mainly to France.
The yield of wheat varies partly with the rainfall, but the difference
is due mainly to skill in cultivation. In western Europe it is from two
to three times as great as in the United States; in Russia and India it
is much less.[28]
The yearly consumption of wheat is increasing very rapidly both in the
United States and in Europe; moreover, China is becoming a
wheat-consuming country. In the United States the consumption is
increasing so rapidly that unless either the acreage of the crop, or
else the yield per acre, is materially increased, there will be no
surplus for export after the year 1931.
[Illustration: THE WHEAT INDUSTRY--GRAIN ELEVATORS AT BUFFALO, NEW
YORK]
In the United States the acreage may be somewhat increased by the
irrigation of arid lands now uncultivated, and by the reclamation of
overflowed and swamp lands. There are far greater possibilities,
however, in the employment of methods of cultivation which will double
the rate of present yield. It is doubtful if there can be much increase
of acreage in the States of the Mississippi Valley, where the acreage
will of necessity be lessened rather than increased.
In western Europe there can be no material increase of the acreage or
the rate of yield; in Russia both are possible. The plains of Argentina
now yield a notable quantity--about one hundred million bushels--and the
amount may be increased. Moreover, a large product may be obtained from
both Uruguay and Paraguay, and southern Brazil, neither one of which
produces a considerable quantity. At the present rate of the increase in
consumption, all of the available land, yielding its maximum, will not
produce a sufficient crop at the end of the twentieth century.
=Corn.=--Maize or Indian corn is the seed of a plant, _Zea mays_, a member
of the grass family. It is not known to exist in a wild state. The
species now cultivated are undoubtedly derived from the American
continent, but evidence is not wanting to show that it was known in
China and the islands of Asia before the discovery of America.[29] The
commercial history of corn begins with the discovery of America. Next to
meat it was the chief food of the native American; next to wheat it is
the chief food-stuff in the American continent to-day.
Corn requires a rich soil and is not so hardy as wheat. It thrives best
in regions having long summers and warm nights. The growing crop is
easily injured by too much rain. It is an abundant crop in the central
Mississippi Valley, but not near the coast; it is very prolific in
Nebraska, but not in Dakota; it thrives in Italy, Austria, and the
Balkan Peninsula, but not in the British Isles and Germany. It is a very
important crop in Australia, and is the staple grain of Mexico. It is
the crop of fourteen-hour days and warm nights.
[Illustration: CORN]
The United States is the chief producer of corn, and from an area of
80,000,000 acres--about that of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
combined--more than two billion bushels, or four-fifths of the world's
crop, are produced. In the past few years the area planted with corn has
not materially increased, and it is likely to be lessened rather than
increased in the future. From the same acreage, however, the annual
yield, now about twenty-five or thirty bushels per acre, can be more
than doubled by the use of more skilful methods of cultivation.
Corn contains more fatty substance, or natural oil, than wheat, and
therefore has a greater heating power. For this reason it is better than
wheat for out-of-door workers, and it is almost the only cereal
food-stuff consumed in Spanish America. It is also a staple food-stuff
in Egypt. Corn has been used as a bread-stuff in the United States,
Italy, and Rumania[30] for a long time. In recent years, however, its
use has become very popular in Europe.
[Illustration: CORN PRODUCTION]
In the United States by far the greater part of the crop is consumed
where it is grown, being used to fatten swine and cattle. The market
value of a pound of corn is about one-third of a cent; converted into
pork or beef, however, it is worth five or six times as much. By feeding
the corn to stock, therefore, a farmer may turn an unmarketable product
into one for which there is a steady demand.
[Illustration: CORN]
Although corn is not so essential a staple as wheat, it has a much wider
range of usefulness. The starch made from it is considered a delicacy
and is used very largely in America and Europe as an article of food.
Glucose, a cheap but wholesome substitute for sugar, is made from it;
from the oil a substitute for rubber is prepared; smokeless powder and
other explosives are made from the pith of the stalk; while a very
large part of the product is used in the manufacture of liquor.
=Rye.=--Rye is the seed of a cereal grass, _Secale cereale_, a plant
closely resembling wheat in external appearance. Rye will grow in soils
that are too poor for wheat; its northern limit is in latitudes somewhat
greater than that of wheat, also. It is an ideal crop for the sandy
plain stretching from the Netherlands into central Russia, and this
locality produces almost the whole yield. The world's crop is about one
and a half billion bushels, of which Russia produces nearly two-thirds.
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Japan grow nearly all the rest. It is
consumed where it is grown. In the United States the yearly product is
about twenty-five million bushels, about one-tenth of which is exported
to Europe. Rye-bread is almost always sour, and this fact is its chief
disadvantage.
=Barley.=--Barley is the seed of several species of cereal grass, mainly
_Hordeum distichum_ and _Hordeum vulgare_. It is one of the oldest-used
of bread-stuffs. It can be cultivated farther north than wheat, and
about as far within the tropics as corn; it has, therefore, very wide
limits. Formerly it was much used in northwestern Europe as a
bread-stuff, but in recent years it has been in part supplanted by wheat
and corn. Barley is a most excellent food for horses, and in California
is grown mainly for this purpose. Its chief use is for the manufacture
of the malt used in brewing.
The world's crop of barley is not far from one billion bushels, of which
the United States produces about sixty million bushels. Most of the crop
is grown in the Germanic states of Europe, and in Russia.
=Oats.=--The oat is the seed of a cereal grass, _Avena sativa_ being the
species almost always cultivated. It is not known where the cultivated
species originated, but the earliest known locality is central Europe,
where it was certainly a domestic plant during the Bronze Age. It seems
probable that the species now cultivated in Scotland at one time grew
wild in western Europe; certain it is that wild species are found in
North America.
[Illustration: OATS PRODUCTION]
The oat grows within rather wider limits of latitude, and thrives in a
greater variety of soils than does wheat. Grown in a moist climate,
however, the grain is at its best. The oat-crop of the world aggregates
more than three billion bushels, surpassing that of wheat or corn in
measurement, but not in weight. A small portion of this is used as a
bread-stuff, but the greater part is used as horse-food, for which it is
remarkably adapted.
[Illustration: OATS]
In Europe, Russia is the greatest producer, and its yearly oat harvest
is about one-quarter of the world's crop. The states of northwestern
Europe yield about half the entire crop; the wheat-growing area of the
United States produces the remaining one-fourth. Russia and the United
States are both exporters, the grain going to western Europe. By far the
greater part of the grain is consumed where it is grown.
=Rice.=--Rice is the seed of a cereal grass, _Oryza sativa_. It is claimed
to be native to India, but it is known to have been cultivated in China
for more than five thousand years. It grows wild in Australia and
Malaysia.
Rice requires plenty of warmth and moisture. It is cultivated in the
warmer parts of the temperate zone, but it thrives best in the tropical
regions. In China a considerable upland rice is grown, but for the
greater part it is grown in level lowlands that may be flooded with
water. The preparation of the fields is a matter of great expense, for
they may require flooding and draining at a moment's notice. The crop
matures in from three to six months. After threshing, the seed is still
covered with a husk, and in this form it is known as "paddy."
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why is not wheat-growing a profitable industry in the New England
States?--in the plains at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains?--in
the southern part of the United States?
What are meant by the following terms: No. 1 spring, a corner, a disk
harrow, a cradle, a flail, a separator, futures, warehouse certificates?
In 1855 the price of a barrel of flour in New York or Boston was about
twelve dollars; at the close of the century it was less than five.
Explain how the lessened price came about.
From a census or other report make a list of the ten leading
wheat-producing States; the ten that produce the most corn.
Why are the foreign shipments of oats less than those of wheat?
What are the prices current of wheat, corn, oats, and barley to-day?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain samples of the different kinds of wheat, oats, barley, corn,
millet, and rice. Put the grain in small, closely stoppered vials;
attach the heads of the small grains to sheets of cardboard of the
proper size.
Read "The Wheat Problem"--Chapter I.
[Illustration: PICKING COTTON, ALABAMA]
[Illustration: TRANSPORTING COTTON FROM WHARF, CHARLESTON, S.C.]
[Illustration: COTTON PRESS YARD, NEW ORLEANS, LA.]
CHAPTER IX
TEXTILE FIBRES
Under the term "textile" are included the fibrous substances that can be
spun into threads, and woven or felted into cloth. Some of these, like
the covering of the sheep, goat, and llama, or the cocoon of the
silk-worm, are of animal origin; others, like cotton furze, the husk of
the cocoanut, and the bast of the flax-plant are vegetable products.
Their use in the manufacture of cloth antedates the period at which
written history begins; it probably begins with the time when primitive
man gradually ceased to have the hairy covering necessary to protect him
from the conditions of climate and weather.
As body coverings all these substances are dependent on a single
principle, namely--they are poor conductors of heat; that is, they do
not permit the natural heat of the body to pass away quickly, nor do
they allow sudden changes of the temperature to reach the body quickly.
In other words, because of the artificial covering which mankind alone
requires, bodily heat is not dissipated more rapidly than it is created;
if it were, the covering would be worthless. A suit of clothes made of
steel wire, for instance, because it conducts heat so rapidly, might
chill, or perhaps heat the body more quickly than the open air.
With respect to warming qualities wool surpasses all other textiles. It
is employed for clothing in every part of the world and by nearly all
peoples. Cotton is used mainly also for body coverings, but it is
inferior to wool for protection against cold. It is used by practically
all peoples, savage and civilized, outside of the frigid zones. Linen
is inferior both to cotton and wool for clothing; its use is also
restricted by its great cost. Silk is used mainly for ornamental cloths.
Hemp is used mainly for cordage, and the use of ramie, jute, and sisal
hemp is confined mainly to the manufacture of very coarse cloths and
rugs.
=Cotton.=--The cotton fibre of commerce is the lint surrounding the seeds
of several species of _Gossypium_, plants belonging to the same natural
order as the marshmallow and the hollyhock. The cultivated species have
been carried from India to different parts of the world, but
cotton-bearing plants are also native to the American. A native
tree-cotton, known as Barbados cotton, occurs in the West Indies; a
herbaceous cotton-plant is known to have been cultivated in Peru long
before the discovery of Columbus.
[Illustration: COTTON-PRODUCING REGIONS]
More than four hundred years before the Christian era Herodotus
describes it and mentions a gin for separating the lint from the seed.
Nearchus, an admiral serving under Alexander the Great, brought to
Europe specimens of cotton cloth, and in the course of time it became an
article of commerce among Greek and Roman merchants.
The cotton-plant requires warmth, moisture, and a long season. It also
thrives best near the sea. It grows better, on the whole, in subtropical
rather than in tropical regions, and the difference is due probably to
the longer days and higher temperature of the subtropical latitudes. In
the United States the northern limit is approximately the thirty-eighth
parallel. The seeds are planted, as a rule, during the first three weeks
of April and the first two of May. The plants bloom about the middle of
June; the boll or pod matures during July, and bursts about the first of
August. The picking begins in August.
[Illustration: COTTON IN THE UNITED STATES]
The yield and the quality of the textile depend not only on conditions
of the soil, but on locality. In the river flood-plains of the southern
United States the yield is about two bales per acre; on the bluff lands
it is but little more than one, unless unusual care is taken in the
preparation of the land. The islands off the Carolina coast produce a
very fine long-staple variety, commercially known as _sea island
cotton_. A district in China produces a good fibre of brownish color
known as _nankeen_, named for the city of Nanking, whence formerly it
was exported. The valley of Piura River, Peru, produces varieties of
long-staple cotton that in quality closely resemble silk.
The fibre of ordinary American cotton is about seven-eighths of an inch
long; it is made into the fabrics commercially known as "domestics" and
"prints," or calico. If the fibre averages a little longer than the
common grades it is reserved for canvas. Ordinary Peruvian cotton has a
fibre nearly two inches long; it is used in the manufacture of hosiery
and balbriggan underwear, and also to adulterate wool. The long-staple
cotton of the Piura Valley is bought by British manufacturers at a high
price, and used in the webbing of rubber tires and hose. Egyptian cotton
is very fine and is used mainly in the manufacture of thread and the
finer grades of balbriggan underwear. Sea island fibre is nearly two
inches long and is used almost wholly in the making of thread and lace.
The introduction of cotton cultivation resulted in very far-reaching
consequences both from a political as well as an economic stand-point.
The invention of the steam-engine by Watt gave England an enormous
mechanical power. To utilize this the cotton industry was wrested from
Hindustan; the mills were concentrated in Manchester and Lancashire; the
cotton-fields were transferred to the United States.
As a result, the plains of Hindustan were strewn with the bodies of
starved weavers and spinners, but a great industry grew into existence
in England. The invention of spinning machinery by Arkwright, Crompton,
and Hargreaves, and the gradual improvement of the power-loom, greatly
reduced the cost of making the cloth and, at the same time, enormously
increased the demand for it.
[Illustration: COTTON PRODUCTION]
In the United States the consequences were far more serious. The
invention of the engine or "gin" for separating the lint from the seed
made cotton cultivation highly profitable.[31] The negro slaves, who had
been scattered throughout the colonies and the States that succeeded
them, were soon drawn to the cotton-growing States to supply the needed
field-labor; and, indeed, white workmen could not stand the hot, moist
climate of the cotton-fields.
The cotton-mills grew up in the Northern manufacturing States. The
Northern manufacturer needed a tariff on imported goods to protect him
from European competition; the Southern cotton-planter who purchased
much of his supplies abroad was hurt by the tariff. After about sixty
years of strained relations between the two sections there occurred the
Civil War which wiped out nearly one million lives, and rolled up a
debt, direct and indirect, of nearly six billions of dollars.
The world's cotton-crop aggregates from twelve million to fifteen
million bales yearly, of which the United States produces, as a rule, a
little more than three-fourths. Egypt is rapidly taking an important
place among cotton-producing countries, and, with the completion of the
various irrigating canals, will very soon rank next to the United
States. India ranks about third; China and Korea produce about the same
quantity. There are a few cotton-cloth mills in these states, but in
Japan the manufacture is increasing, the mills being equipped with the
best of modern machinery. Brazil has a small product, and Russia in Asia
needs transportation facilities only to increase largely its growing
output.
[Illustration: COTTON]
The cotton-crop of the United States is quite evenly distributed;
one-third is manufactured at home; one-third is purchased by Great
Britain; and the remaining third goes mainly to western Europe. In the
past few years China has become a constantly increasing purchaser of
American cotton. New Orleans, Galveston, Savannah, and New York are the
chief ports of shipment. The imported Egyptian and Peruvian cotton is
landed mainly at New York. Most of the cotton manufacture is carried on
in the New England States, but there is a very rapid extension of cotton
manufacture in the South.
=Wool.=--The wool of commerce is a term applied to the fleece of the
common sheep, to that of certain species of goat, and to that of the
camel and its kind. There is no hard-and-fast distinction between hair
and wool,[32] but, in general, wool fibres have rough edges, much
resembling overlapping scales which interlock with one another; hair, as
a rule, has a hard, smooth surface. If a mass of loose wool be spread
out and beaten, or if it be pressed between rollers, the fibres
interlock so closely that there results a thick, strong cloth which has
been made without either spinning or weaving.
This property, known as "felting," gives to wool a great part of its
value, and is its chief distinction from hair. Some kinds of hair,
however, have a slight felting property, and if sufficiently fine may be
spun and woven. The hair of the common goat is worthless for this
purpose, but that of the Cashmere and Angora species have the properties
of wool. The hair of the Bactrian camel, and also that of the llama,
alpaca, and vicuna is soft and fine, possessing felting qualities that
make it very superior as a textile.
[Illustration: WOOL PRODUCING REGIONS]
The quality of wool varies greatly according to the conditions of soil,
climate, and the character of the food of the animal. In commerce,
however, the fleeces are commonly graded as "long-staple,"
"short-staple," "merino," and "coarse."
In long-staple wools the fibres are from four to eight inches long;
they are more easily separated by a process much like combing, and are
therefore called "combing" wools. The cotswold, cheviot, and most of the
wools of the British Isles are of this kind; indeed, in fairly moist
lowland regions such as Canada and the United States, there is a
tendency toward the development of a long-staple product. The English
long-staple wools are largely made into worsted cloth, the Scotch
cheviot into tweeds, and the French into the best dress cloth.
If the fibres are materially less than four inches in length, the
product is classed as a short-staple or "carding" wool. By far the
greater part of the wool of the United States, Canada, and Europe is of
this class. It is disposed of according to its fineness or fitness for
special purposes, the greater part being made into cloths for the medium
grades of men's clothing.
The finest and softest wool as a rule is grown in arid, plateau regions,
and of this kind of staple the merino is an example. The fibres are fine
as silk, and the goods made from them are softer. The Mission wool of
California is the product of merino sheep, and, indeed, the conditions
of climate in southern California and Australia are such as to produce
the best merino wool. The famous Electoral wool of Saxony is a merino,
the sheep having been introduced into that country from Spain about
three hundred years ago. The merino wools, as a rule, are used in the
most highly finished dress and fancy goods.
The coarse-staple wools are very largely used for American carpets,
coarse blankets, and certain kinds of heavy outer clothing. The Russian
Donskoi wool, some of the Argentine fleeces, such as the Cordoban, and
many of those grown in wet lowlands are very coarse and harsh. The
quality is due more to climatic conditions and food than to the species
of sheep; indeed, sheep that in other regions produce a fine wool, when
introduced to this locality, after a few generations produce coarse
wool.
[Illustration: SHEEP FEEDING ON ALFALFA]
[Illustration: SHEEP RANGE, UTAH]
[Illustration: SHEEP IN FEEDING YARD
THE WOOL-GROWING INDUSTRY]
The rug wools grown in Persia, Turkestan, Turkey in Asia, and the
Caucasus Mountains are also characteristic. They vary in fineness, and
because they do not readily felt they are the best in the world for rug
stock. The "pile" or surface of the rug remains elastic and stands
upright even after a hundred years of wear. This quality is due mainly
to conditions of climate and soil.
[Illustration: WOOL PRODUCTION]
In some instances the wool is obtained by a daily combing of the
half-grown lambs. This process, however, is employed in the rug-making
districts only; in general, the fleeces are clipped either with shears
or machine clippers. In the United States the latter are generally
employed, and but little attempt is made either to sort the fleeces or
to separate the various qualities of wool in the same fleece.
The raw wool always contains foreign matter such as burs and dirt; it is
also saturated with a natural oil which prevents felting. The oil,
commonly called "grease," or "yolk," is an important article of
commerce; under the name of "lanolin" (_adeps lanae_) it is used in
medicine and pharmacy as a basis for ointments.
The world's yearly clip is a little more than two and one-half billion
pounds, of which the United States produces about one-eighth. In Europe
and the United States, owing to the increasing value of the land, the
area of production is decreasing; in Australia, South Africa, and
Argentina, where land is cheap, it is increasing. From these three
regions wool is exported; most European countries and the United States
buy it. In the latter country the consumption is about six pounds for
each person.
[Illustration: WOOL]
The wools of the Mediterranean countries--France, Spain, Italy, Algiers,
Egypt, etc.--are the best for fine cloths; those of central Asia for
rugs and shawls; the others are used mainly in medium and low grade
textiles.
=Other Wools.=--The Angora goat, originally grown in Anatolia (Asia
Minor), and the Iran States (Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan),
furnishes a beautiful white wool, commercially known as "mohair." Smyrna
is an important market for it, and England is the chief buyer. The
Angora goat has been introduced into South Africa and California, where
it is successfully grown. From the former country there is a large
export of mohair.
Cashmere wool is a fine, downy undercovering, obtained by combing the
fleece of a goat native to the Kashmir Valley in India. A single animal
yields scarcely more than an ounce or two, and the best product is worth
about its weight in gold. It is used in the manufacture of the famous
Cashmere shawls, which are sold at prices varying from five hundred to
five thousand dollars. They are made in Persia and India.
Llama and alpaca wool are fine textile obtained from animals of the
camel kind native to South America. The wool is either black or brown in
color. A considerable part is used for native-made articles, such as
saddle-blankets, etc., but much of it is exported to England.
Most of the "camel's hair" of commerce was originally worn by goats,
being called by its commercial name because of a similarity in texture
to that of the camel's hair. The camel of Turkestan, however, furnishes
a silky textile that is much used. The brown wool often found in Hamadan
rugs is natural camel's hair, and a considerable amount mixed with
sheep's wool is used in certain textiles. The camel's hair of China is
made into artists' brushes.
=Silk.=--The silk of commerce is the fibre spun by the larvae or
caterpillars of a moth, _Bombyx mori_, as they enter the chrysalis stage
of existence. The silk-growing industry includes the care and feeding of
the insect in all its stages. The leaves of the white mulberry-tree
(_morus alba_) are the natural food of the insect, and silk-growing
cannot be carried on in regions where this tree does not thrive. Not all
areas that produce the mulberry-tree, however, will also grow the
silk-worm; the latter cannot exist in regions having very cold winters,
and therefore the industry is restricted by climate.
The moth, shortly after emerging from the chrysalis stage, lays from two
or three hundred to seven hundred eggs. These are "hardy"--that is, they
will remain fertile for a long time if kept in a cool, dry place;
moisture will cause them to putrify, and heat to germinate. If well
protected, they may be transported for distances.
In rearing the silk-worm, as soon as the latter is hatched, it is placed
on mulberry-leaves, and for five weeks it does nothing but eat, in that
time consuming many times its weight of food.[33] Then it begins to spin
the material that forms its chrysalis case or cocoon. The outer part of
the case consists of a tough envelope not unlike coarse tissue-paper;
the inner part is a fine thread about one thousand feet long that has
been wound around the body of the worm. This thread or filament is the
basis of the silk textile industry.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1898, by Nature Study Pub. Co._
SILK INDUSTRY
1. Silkworm Eggs
2. Fourth-stage Worm
3. Pupa in Cocoon
4. Cocoon
5. Male Moth
6. Female Moth
7. Unspun Silk
8. Raw Manufactured Silk
9. Manufactured Silk]
[Illustration: SILK PRODUCING REGIONS]
At the proper time the cocoons are gathered and, if immediately to be
used, are plunged into hot water. This not only kills the chrysalids but
softens the cocoons as well, so that the outer cases may be removed. The
cases removed, the rest of the cocoon is soaked in warm water until the
gummy matter is softened and the fibres are free enough to be reeled. In
the latter process the ends of a number of cocoons, varying from five to
twenty, are caught and loosely twisted into a single strand. The silk
thus prepared forms the "raw silk" of commerce. Sometimes a number of
strands of raw silk are twisted into a coarse thread, thereby forming
"thrown silk." For convenience in handling, both raw and thrown silk
are made into large skeins called hanks, and most of the silk product is
exported in this form.
A given quantity of cocoons yields scarcely more than one-tenth its
weight in good raw silk. The remaining part, consisting of broken fibres
and cases, is shredded and spun into silk thread of inferior quality.
This material, commonly called "husks" or "knubs," forms an important
item in silk manufacture, and much of it is exported to Europe and
America.
[Illustration: SILK PRODUCTION]
According to traditions, not wholly trustworthy, eggs of the silk-worm
were smuggled to India in the head-dress of a Chinese princess. Thence
sericulture slowly made its way westward to Persia, Asia Minor, and the
Mediterranean countries. Wild silk, a coarse but strong product, is
grown in many of these countries, but mainly in China, where it forms an
important export. The Chinese product is commercially known as "tussar"
silk. Of the product of raw silk, about thirty-five million pounds,
China yields about two-fifths, Japan and Italy each one-fifth. The
remainder is grown in the Levant, Spain, and France.
Most of the raw silk of China is exported from Shanghai and Canton; that
of Japan is shipped mainly from Yokohama. Among European countries Italy
is the first producer of raw silk, and France the chief manufacturer.
By the operation of a heavy tariff a considerable manufacture of silk
textiles has grown up in the United States. New York City and Paterson,
N.J., are the chief centres of the industry.
The southern part of the United States offers an ideal locality for
sericulture. Various attempts at silk-worm breeding have failed from
lack of training, but not on account of geographic conditions.
=Flax.=--The flax of commerce, the basis of linen cloth, is the bast or
inner bark-fibre of an annual plant (_Linum usitalissimum_, _i.e._, most
useful fibre), native probably to the Mediterranean basin. It ranks
among the oldest known textiles. Bundles of unwrought fibre have been
found in the lake dwellings of Switzerland, and linen cloth constituted
a part of the sepulture wrappings of the ancient Egyptian dead.
Flax has a very wide range, thriving in the colder parts of Europe as
well as in tropical Asia; it does equally well in the dry summers of
California or the moist regions of the Mississippi Valley. The chief
requisite is a firm soil that contains plenty of nutrition.
After the stalks have passed maturity they are pulled up by hand;
"rippled," or deprived of their seeds and leaves; "retted," or moistened
in soft water until the bast separates; "broken" and "scutched" by a
machine which gets rid of the woody fibres; and finally the loosened
bast fibre is "hetcheled" or combed in order to separate the long, or
"line," threads from the "tow" or refuse.
Russia produces more than one-half the world's crop, but the finest and
choicest is that known as Courtrai fibre, which is grown in Belgium.
This is thought to be due to the quality of the water in the Lys River.
A considerable amount of flax grown elsewhere in Europe is sent to this
part of Belgium to be retted. Ireland and Germany produce considerable
amounts, and a small quantity is grown in the United States.
The prepared flax is used in the manufacture of linen cloth, and the
latter is almost exclusively used for table-cloths, napkins,
shirt-bosoms, collars, cuffs, and handkerchiefs. France is noted for the
manufacture of linen lawns and cambrics, and Belfast, Ireland, for
table-cloths and napkins. Nearly the whole linen product is consumed in
the United States, Canada, and western Europe; indeed, linen is a mark
of western civilization. Great Britain handles the greater part of the
linen textiles.
=Hemp.=--The true hemp of commerce is the bast or inner bark of a plant,
_Cannabis sativa_, belonging to the nettle order. It is an annual plant
having a very wide range; it occurs in pretty nearly every country of
North America, Europe, and Asia. In Europe the chief countries producing
it for commercial uses are Russia, France, Italy, and Hungary; in the
United States it is grown in California and the central Mississippi
Valley. Russia produces the largest crop; Italy the finest quality of
fibre, the best coming from the vicinity of Bologna.
The stalks grow three feet or more in height. When cultivated for the
fibre they are pulled from the ground, stripped of their leaves and
soaked until the fibre is free. They are then "retted," or beaten, and
the fibre is removed. After preparation the fibre is used mainly for the
manufacture of wrapping-twine, cordage, and a coarse canvas. Great
Britain is the chief purchaser and manufacturer.
=Manila Hemp.=--Manila hemp is the name given to a fibre obtained from the
leaves of a plant, _Musa textilis_, belonging to the banana family. The
best fibres are from six to nine feet in length, of light amber color,
and very strong. The leaves, torn into narrow strips by hand, are
afterward scraped by hand until the fibre is free of pulp. The long and
coarser fibres are made into rope; the shorter fibres are beaten and
hetcheled in the same manner as flax, until fine enough to weave into
mats, carpets, and fine cloth. The fibres that have served their
usefulness as rope are pulped and manufactured into manila paper.
Practically all the manila fibre of commerce--which is not hemp at
all--is grown in the Philippine Islands, and since peace has prevailed,
the growth and production is increasing. The crude fibre is prepared by
hand, by Filipino or by Chinese labor. The manufacture of cordage and
paper is done mainly in the United States and Great Britain. Fine
hand-made textiles are made by a few Filipino natives, but most of the
goods of this character are manufactured in France. Very fine fibre is
sometimes used as an adulterant of silk. Great Britain and the United
States are the chief purchasers.
=Sisal Hemp.=--Sisal hemp, or henequen, is a stout, stringy fibre obtained
from the thick leaves of several species of agave, to which the maguey
and century-plant belong. The cultivated species, from which most of the
commercial product is obtained, is the _Agave sisalina_, which much
resembles the ordinary century-plant.
The essential feature in the economic production of sisal hemp is
machinery for separating the fibre from the pulp of the leaf. The fibre
is whiter, cleaner, and lighter than jute; moreover, in strength it
ranks next to the best quality of manila hemp. It is used mainly in the
manufacture of grain-sacks, and the twine used on self-binding
harvesters. Nearly all the fibre of commerce is grown in the Mexican
state of Yucatan and consumed in the United States. The cultivation of
this material has made Yucatan one of the most prosperous states of
Mexico.
=Jute.=--Jute is a fibre obtained from the inner bark of a tropical plant,
_Corchorus olitorius_, belonging to the same order as the linden-tree.
The plant is an annual, growing in various moist, tropical countries,
but is extensively cultivated in India and parts of China for commercial
purposes. The fibre is prepared for manufacture in much the same manner
as hemp and flax. In India it is used mainly for the manufacture of a
coarse textile known as gunny cloth, used as bale-wrappers, and sacks
for coffee and rice. On the Pacific coast states it is used for
wheat-sacks. Calcutta is the chief centre of manufacture, but jute-sacks
are extensively manufactured by the Chinese in California and China.
=Ramie.=--This fibre, also known as China grass, is the best of two or
more species of nettles, prepared in the same manner as hemp fibre. It
is finer and stronger than jute, and will take dye-stuffs in a superior
manner. With the introduction of machinery for separating and handling
the fibre, the cultivation of the ramie-plant has spread from China to
India, Japan, and the United States. Fine textiles are now manufactured
from it, the most important being carpets, mattings, and American
"Smyrna" rugs. The last are generally sold as jute-rugs, and they are
nearly as durable as woollen floor-covers.
=Other Economic Fibres.=--The fibre of _cocoanut husk_ is largely employed
in the manufacture of coarse matting. A part of this is obtained from
tropical America, but it is a regular export of British India, where it
is known as _coir_.
The mid-rib of the _screw pine_ growing in the forests of tropical
America furnishes the material of which "Panama" hats are made. The hats
are made in various parts of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia, and were
formerly marketed in Panama. Hats made of a score of grasses and fibres
are also sold as Panamas.
A plant (_Phormium tenax_) having leaves somewhat like those of the iris
or common flag furnishes the material of which New Zealand flax is
prepared. It is used mainly in the manufacture of cordage.
_Plaiting straw_, used in the manufacture of hats and bonnets, is grown
extensively in northern Italy and in Belgium. For this product spring
wheat is very thickly sown in a soil rich in lime. The thick sowing
produces a long, slender stalk; the lime gives it whiteness and
strength. Plaiting straw is also exported from China and Japan. British
merchants handle most of the product.
_Cuba bast_, a fibre readily bleached to whiteness, is exported to the
various establishments in which women's hats are made.
_Esparto grass_, also called _alfa_, grows in Spain and the northern
part of Africa. It was formerly much used in the manufacture of the
cheaper grades of paper, but it has been largely supplanted by wood-pulp
for this purpose. The decline of the esparto grass industry led to no
little unrest among some of the native tribes of northern Africa.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What fibres were used in cloth-making in Europe before cotton was
employed?
What textiles are of necessity made of cotton?
What is a spinning jenny?--a Jacquard loom?
What are the specific differences between cotswold and merino wool?
Why were most of the cloth-making mills of the United States built at
first in the New England States?
How is the silk-making industry encouraged in the United States?
What are the chief linen manufacturing countries?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of the cotton seed, boll, raw cotton (sea island,
Peruvian, and ordinary), cotton thread, calico, gingham, domestic,
canvas, and some of the fancy textiles such as organdie, lawn, etc.
Obtain specimens of the cocoons of the silk-worm, raw silk gros-grain
cloth, pongee, and tussar silk cloth.
Obtain also specimens of merino cloth, cashmere, cheviot, and other
similar goods; compare them and note the difference.
Examine the fibres of cotton, silk, and wool under a microscope and note
the difference.
[Illustration: BRANCH OF COFFEE TREE, WEST BRAZIL]
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANTATION NEAR JOLO, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS]
[Illustration: COFFEE DRYING FIELD, BRAZIL]
CHAPTER X
PLANT PRODUCTS OF ECONOMIC USE--BEVERAGES AND MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES
It may be assumed that practically all beverages derived from plants owe
their popularity to the stimulant effects they produce. In coffee, tea,
cocoa, and mate, the stimulant principle is identical with _cafein_, the
active principle of coffee; in liquors it is a powerful narcotic
_alcohol_; non-potable substances, tobacco, opium, etc., owe their
popularity also to narcotic poisons.
=Coffee.=--The coffee "beans" of commerce are the seeds of a tree (_Coffea
arabica_) probably native to Abyssinia, but now cultivated in various
parts of the world. It was introduced into Aden from Africa late in the
fifteenth century, and from there its use spread to other cities. Rather
singularly its popularity resulted from the strong efforts made to
forbid its use.
It was regarded as a stimulant and therefore it was forbidden to
followers of Islam.[34] But its power to prevent drowsiness and sleep
during the intolerably long religious exercises was a winning feature,
and so its use became general in spite of the fulminations against it.
Coffee culture was confined to Arabia until the close of the seventeenth
century; it was then introduced into the Dutch East Indies, and for many
years the island of Java became the main supply of the world. At the
present time, Java is second only to Brazil in coffee production. In the
Old World it is now also cultivated along the Guinea coast of Africa, in
Madagascar, India, and Ceylon. In the New World the chief areas are
Brazil, Venezuela, the Central American States, and the West Indies.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCING REGIONS]
The coffee-tree may be cultivated in almost any soil that is fertile; it
thrives best, however, in red soil. Old, decomposed red lavas produce
the choicest beans. Coffee grows in any moist climate in which the
temperature does not range higher than 80 deg. F. nor lower than 55 deg.
F. An occasional frost injures but does not necessarily kill the trees,
which grow better in the shade than in the sunlight. For convenience in
gathering the crop, the trees are pruned until they are not higher than
bushes.
The fruit of the coffee-tree is a deep-red berry not quite so large as a
cherry. A juicy pulp encloses a double membrane, or endocarp, and within
the latter are the seeds which constitute the coffee of commerce.
Normally there are two seeds, but in some varieties there is a tendency
for one seed to mature, leaving the other undeveloped; this is the
"peaberry" coffee of commerce. The so-called Mocha coffee is a peaberry.
In their preparation the berries are picked when ripe and deprived of
their pulp. After pulping they are cured in the sun for about a week and
then hulled, or divested of the endocarp, a process requiring expensive
machinery. The coffee is then cleaned, and sacked.
The value of the product depends on two factors, age and the care with
which it is sorted. Formerly, in the Dutch East Indies, coffee-growing,
for the greater part, was a government privilege, and the crop was kept
for several years in storage before it was permitted to be
sold--therefore the term "Old Government" Java. Other coffee was
designated as "Private Plantations." The quality of coffee is greatly
improved with age. Brazilian and other American coffee-beans are rarely
seasoned by storage.
American coffees are almost wholly sorted by machinery. This process,
however, merely collects beans of the same size; it still leaves the
good and the bad beans together, though it is to be said that among the
largest beans there are fewer poor ones. In the coffees handled by the
Arab dealers all the sorting is done by hand, the very choice grade
selling in the large cities of Europe for the equivalent of nearly three
dollars per pound. All machine-sorted coffee is greatly improved by a
subsequent hand-sorting to remove the imperfect beans.
The naming of the different kinds of coffee is somewhat arbitrary. Thus,
Brazilian coffees are commercially known as _Rio_ because they are
shipped from the port of Rio de Janeiro; the same name is applied to the
product shipped from Santos. Nearly all Venezuela coffees are called
_Maracaibo_ although they differ much in kind and quality; most Central
American coffee is sold as _Costa Rica_; most peaberry varieties are
known as _Mocha_; and most of the East India product is popularly called
_Java_, no matter whence it comes.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCTION]
Of the American coffees Rio constitutes about half the world's product.
After sorting, the larger beans are often marketed as Java coffee, and
when the beans have been roasted it is exceedingly difficult to tell the
difference. The best Maracaibo is regarded as choice coffee, but its
flavor is not liked by all coffee-drinkers. The best Honduras and Puerto
Rico coffees take a high rank and command very high prices, retailing in
some instances at sixty cents per pound. A very choice peaberry is grown
in the volcanic soils of Mexico to which the name of _Oaxaca_ is given;
most of it is sold in the United States as a choice Mocha.
Mocha is the commercial name of a coffee at one time marketed in the
Arabian city of that name. Since the completion of the Suez Canal,
Hodeida has been the chief centre of the Arabian coffee-trade. Formerly
most of this coffee was grown in the Province of Yemen, but now it is
brought to Hodeida, from Egypt, Ceylon, and India.
About all the product is hand-sorted. The choicest is sold in
Constantinople, Cairo, and other cities near by, in some instances
bringing five dollars per pound. Very little, and only that of the most
inferior quality, ever finds its way into western Europe or the United
States. Even the best Mocha is not superior to fine Oaxaca coffee.
Java coffee is renowned the world over for its fine flavor. The best
quality was formerly that which had been held in storage to season for a
few years. The government coffee was generally the better, but some of
the private plantations crop is now equally good. Some of the Sumatra
coffees are equal to the best Java beans.
The Liberia coffees have never been favorites in the United States on
account of their flavor. In Europe they are used for blending with other
varieties.
Of the entire coffee-crop of the world, the United States consumes more
than three-quarters of a billion pounds--a yearly average of very nearly
eleven pounds for each inhabitant. This is nearly three times as much
per inhabitant as is consumed in Germany, and almost fifteen times the
average used in Great Britain. Nearly all the world's crop is consumed
in the United States and western Europe.
Chicory, parched grain, pease, and burnt parsnip are sometimes added as
adulterants to ground coffee. Of those, chicory most nearly resembles
coffee in flavor and taste. It is harmless and usually improves the
flavor of inferior coffee. A tariff recently placed upon chicory has
somewhat lessened the use of it.
=Tea.=--The tea of commerce consists of the dried and prepared leaves of
an evergreen shrub (_Thea chinensis_) belonging most probably to the
_camellia_ family. Tea has been a commercial product of China for more
than fourteen hundred years, but seems to have been carried thither from
India about five hundred years before the Christian era; for its virtues
were praised by (the probably mythical) Chinung, an emperor of that
period.
The cultivated plants are scarcely higher than bushes, but the wild
plant found in India is a tree fifteen or twenty feet in height. The
cultivated plant is quite hardy; severe winters kill it but ordinary
freezing weather merely retards its growth. It thrives best in red,
mouldy soils; the choicest varieties are grown in new soils. The leaves
are not picked until the plants are three or four years old.
Two general classes of tea are known in commerce--the green and the
black. Formerly these were grown on different varieties of the plant,
but in the newer plantations no distinction is made in the matter of
variety; the color is due wholly to the manner of preparation.
The plants are watched carefully during the seasons of picking, of which
there are three or four each year. The April picking yields the choicest
crop of leaves, and only the youngest leaves and buds are taken.[35] A
single plant rarely yields more than four or five ounces of tea yearly.
Each acre of a tea-garden yields about three hundred and fifty pounds.
After picking, the leaves are partly crushed and allowed to wilt until
they begin to turn brown in color. They are then rolled between the
hands and either dried very slowly in the sun, or else rapidly in pans
over a charcoal fire--a process known as "firing." The former method
produces _black_, the latter _green_, tea. The color of the latter is
sometimes heightened by the use of a mixture of powdered gypsum and
Prussian blue. In the black teas the green coloring matter of the leaf
is destroyed by fermentation; in the green teas it remains unchanged.
The greater part of the Chinese tea designed for export is packed rather
loosely in wooden chests lined with sheet-lead, the folds and joints of
which are soldered in order to make the cover both air-tight and
moisture-tight. A full chest contains seventy-five pounds of tea. The
Japan product is also packed in moisture-tight wrappers, the original
parcels being usually ten-pound, five-pound, and pound packages. Similar
devices are used in preparing the India and Formosa teas for ocean
shipment.
The chief tea-producing countries are India (including Ceylon) China,
Japan (including Formosa), and Java. A successful tea-garden is in
operation near Charleston, S.C. A small amount is grown in the Fiji and
Samoan Islands. The Ceylon and Formosa teas take a very high rank.
[Illustration: AREA OF TEA PRODUCTION]
Great Britain and her colonies consume the bulk of the tea-crop. The
average yearly consumption per person is eight pounds in Australia, six
in Great Britain and Cape of Good Hope, and more than four in Canada. In
the United States and Russia it is less than one pound per person.
Before the opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, most of the crop for the
English market was despatched by way of Cape of Good Hope. So important
was it to get the consignments to London without loss of time, that fast
clipper ships were built especially for carrying tea. Since the opening
of the canal the crop has been shipped mainly by the Suez route.
A part of the tea required for the United States reaches New York by way
of the Suez Canal, but the movement is gradually changing since the
building of the fast liners that now ply between Asian and American
ports. These steamships carry it to Seattle, or to Vancouver, whence it
is distributed by rail. The increased cost of shipment by this route is
more than offset by a gain of from five to seven days in time.
In some respects the Russian "caravan route" is the most important
channel of the tea-trade. The tea is collected mainly at Tientsin, and
sent by camel caravans through Manchuria to the most convenient point on
the Siberian railway. Not only the shipments of brick tea[36] for the
Russian market, but the choicest products for western Europe also are
sent by this route. It is probably an economical way of shipping the
brick tea, but a more expensive method of shipment for the latter could
not be found easily; it is preferred from the fact that, no matter how
carefully sealed, the flavor of tea is materially injured by an ocean
voyage.
It is evident, therefore, that for the tea product alone the Siberian
railway will soon become an important factor in the commerce of Europe.
Shipments of tea are also sent from Canton to Odessa, Russia, but this
route is not less expensive in the long run than the Cape route, and the
tea suffers as much deterioration from the shorter as from the longer
voyage.
=Cacao.=--Cacao, the "cocoa" of commerce, consists of the prepared seeds
of several species of _Theobroma_, the greater part being obtained from
the _Theobroma cacao_. The name is unfortunately confused with that of
the cocoa-palm, but there is no relation whatever between the two.
The seeds of the cacao were used in ancient America long before its
discovery by Columbus, and the latter carried the first knowledge of it
to Europe. By the middle of the seventeenth century it was much used in
Spain, and less than a hundred years later it had become the fashionable
drink of western Europe.
The cacao-tree, originally native to Mexico, is now cultivated
throughout tropical America and the West Indies. It is not cultivated to
any extent in the Eastern continent. The fruit consists of large, fleshy
pods, which are cut from the trees usually in June and December. The
seeds are then piled in heaps, or else packed in pits, and allowed to
undergo a rapid fermentation for a period of several days, to which
process their flavor is mainly due. The roasted and broken seeds are the
cocoa-nibs of commerce. The husks are known as cocoa-shells.
A very large part of the cacao product comes from Ecuador, Guayaquil
being perhaps the chief market of the world. The Venezuelan and
Brazilian products, however, are the choicest; these are known in
commerce respectively as Caracas and Trinidad cacao. Spain, Portugal,
and France are the chief purchasers, and in the first-named country the
consumption per person is five or six times as great as in other
countries.
Cacao is not only a stimulant beverage, but a food as well; about
one-half its weight is fat, and about one-third consists of starch and
flesh-making substances. The stimulant principle is the same as that
occurring in tea and coffee, but the proportion is considerably less. In
preparing the cocoa for the market, much of the fat is intentionally
withdrawn. The fat, commercially known as "cocoa-butter," and "oil of
theobroma," does not turn rancid.
Chocolate consists of cocoa ground to a paste with sugar and flavoring
matter, and then cast in moulds to harden. It is used mainly in the
manufacture of confectionery. Most of the chocolate is made in France,
Spain, and the United States. More than forty million pounds of cocoa
are yearly consumed in the United States.
=Mate.=--Mate, yerba mate, or Paraguay tea, is the leaf of a shrub, a
species of holly, growing profusely in the forests of Brazil, Paraguay,
Argentina, and Uruguay. In many instances, the shrub is cultivated. The
leaves are prepared in much the same manner as tea-leaves are, but
instead of being rolled, they are broken by beating.
The mate of commerce has a stimulant principle identical with that of
tea and coffee, which is the only reason for its use. The consumption,
about fifteen thousand tons a year, is confined almost wholly to the
countries named.
=Tobacco.=--The tobacco of commerce is the prepared and manufactured leaf
of several species of plant, belonging to the nightshade family. Most of
the product is derived from the species known as Virginia tobacco
(_Nicotiana tabacum_) and the Brazilian species (_Nicotiana rustica_).
The former is cultivated in the United States, West Indies, the
Philippine Islands, and Turkey; the latter has been transplanted to
central Europe and the East Indies.
The use of tobacco was prevalent in the New World at the time of
Columbus's first voyage, and was quickly introduced into Europe. The
prepared leaf contains a substance, nicotine, which is one of the most
deadly of poisons when swallowed, and an intense narcotic stimulant when
inhaled. On account of the evil effects arising from its introduction,
its use was forbidden by the Church and also by sovereigns of several
European states. The latter, however, finding that its use was becoming
general, made it a Crown monopoly. In Great Britain its cultivation was
forbidden in order to encourage its cultivation in Virginia.
Tobacco does not thrive best in a poor soil, but the latter produces a
thin, half-developed leaf, which in other plants would be called
"sickly." It grows in almost any kind of soil, but requires warm summer
nights. In many instances the tobacco of temperate latitudes yields a
more salable leaf when grown under cover. The flavor is due partly to
soil and climate, and partly to skill in curing. The choicest product is
obtained in only a few localities of limited area. It sometimes happens
that the products of two plantations almost side by side, and similarly
situated, are very unlike in character and quality.
[Illustration: TOBACCO]
The choicest cigar-tobacco is grown on the Vuelta Abajo district in the
province of Pinar del Rio, Cuba; another very choice Cuban leaf is known
as Partidos. Cuban-made cigars of fine quality are commercially "Havana"
cigars, although tobacco from Manila and Porto Rico is apt to be largely
used in their manufacture. In order to avoid the very heavy duty on
cigars, which is not far from six dollars per pound, a great deal of the
Havana tobacco is exported to points along the Florida coast, mainly Key
West and Tampa. The unmanufactured tobacco pays a comparatively small
duty, and the cigars made from it are commercially known as "Key West."
In some parts of Mexico a fine-flavored tobacco is grown, but as the
cigars are not uniform in quality they are not popular. Some of the
Brazilian tobacco is a high-class product, but not much is exported.
Porto Rican leaf has a fine flavor, but is not popular because of its
dark color. The demand for it in the United States is growing, however.
Of the leaf grown in the East, that from Sumatra and the Philippine
Islands is by far the best, and the exports are heavy. Cuban
manufacturers purchase the Manila leaf; the Sumatra wrappers are
purchased in the United States.
The choicest cigarette-tobacco is grown in Asiatic Turkey,
Transcaucasia, and Egypt. It is selected with great care, and is
"long-cut." The common grades are made of chopped Virginia tobacco, or
of chopped cigar-trimmings. The cheapest grades consist of refuse leaf
mixed with half-smoked cigar-stumps. The United States leads in the
manufacture of cigarettes, and a large part of the product is sold in
China, India, and Japan. Most of the world's product of snuff is made in
the United States, and nearly all of it is sold abroad.
The United States produces yearly about seven hundred million pounds. A
large part of this is sold to European countries. Great Britain
purchases about four-fifths of the tobacco there consumed from the
United States. The latter country purchases from Europe (mainly the
Netherlands) about half as much as it sells to Europe. Louisville, Ky.,
is probably the largest tobacco-market in the world. New York,
Baltimore, Richmond, Manila, and Havana are the chief shipping-ports.
In almost every civilized country tobacco is heavily taxed. In the
United States there is not only a heavy import duty, but an internal
revenue in addition. In Austria, France, Italy, Japan, and Spain the
manufacture and sale is in the hands of the government. The consumption
of tobacco varies greatly. In the Netherlands it averages about seven
pounds a year to each individual; in the United States it is more than
four pounds; in central Europe, three pounds; in Spain, Sweden, Great
Britain, and Italy, it is less than two pounds.
=Opium.=--The opium of commerce is the hardened juice obtained from the
seed capsules of several species of the poppy-plant. A variety having a
large capsule (_Papaver somniferum_) is most commonly cultivated for the
commercial production of the substance. Half-a-dozen times during the
season the capsules are scratched or cut; the juice exuding when hard is
picked or scraped off and pressed into cakes.
Opium is not only a narcotic poison, but it has the property of
lessening the pain of disease, and this is its chief use in medicine. In
Mohammedan countries where the use of alcoholic liquors is forbidden as
a religious custom, opium is used as a substitute. In Turkey, Persia,
Arabia, and Egypt the production of opium is an important industry
connected with social and religious life. In British India it is a
political factor, being extensively cultivated as a government monopoly
to be sold to the Chinese, who are probably the chief consumers of it.
The Indian Government derives a revenue sometimes reaching twenty
million dollars from this source.
The best quality of opium is marketed at Smyrna, and most of this is
purchased by the United States. A considerable amount of Chinese opium
is imported for the use of the Chinese, and a larger amount is probably
smuggled over the Canadian and Mexican borders. Laudanum is an alcoholic
tincture, and morphine an extractive of opium; both are used as
medicine.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Consult a good physiology and learn the effects of coffee, tea, tobacco,
and opium.
Where and what are the following: Mocha, Java, Maracaibo, Yokohama,
Amoy, Canton, Oaxaca, Hodeida, Rio Janeiro, Santos, Havana; how is each
connected commercially with this chapter?
From the map, Fig. 1, trace the route of a cargo of tea overland from
China to Great Britain.
Consult an English history or a cyclopaedia and learn about the opium
war.
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain samples of the following, preserving them for study and
inspection in closely stoppered vials: Mocha, Java, Rio, and Sumatra
coffees; green, black, and gunpowder tea. Soak a tea-leaf a few minutes
in warm water; unroll the leaf and attach it to a white card, for study.
Obtain samples of gum opium, laudanum, and morphine; note the odor of
the first two and the taste of the last. Remember that they are
poisonous.
Unroll a cheap cigarette and note the character of the tobacco in it,
using a magnifying glass.
CHAPTER XI
GUMS AND RESINS USED IN THE ARTS
Most vegetable juices exposed to the air harden into firm substances,
commonly called _gum_. Some of these dissolve, or at least soften, in
water; these technically are known as "gums," and usually are so
designated in commerce. Others are insoluble in water, but dissolve
readily in alcohol, in naphtha, in turpentine, or in other essential
oils; these are designated as "gum-resins." Still others yield oils or
pitchy substances on distillation; these are known as "oleo-resins."
There are many other dried vegetable juices, however, that in commerce
are not classified among the gums and resins, and of these the most
important is the substance commonly known as india-rubber.
=Rubber and Rubber Products.=--"Caoutchouc" is approximately the name
given by Indians of the Amazon forests to a substance that had also been
found in India. Some of it was brought to Europe from the Amazon region
as early as 1736, and for nearly one hundred years no general purpose
was discovered for which it could be used, except to erase lead-pencil
marks--hence the name india-rubber, which has held ever since.
Common rubber is the prepared juice of a dozen or more shrubs and trees,
all of which grow in tropical regions.[37] The belt of rubber-producing
plants extends around the world and includes such well-known species as
the fig, the manihot (or manioc), and the oleander; indeed, it is a
condition of sap rather than a definite species of plant that produces
rubber, and the latter is a manufactured rather than a natural product.
The process of preparing the juice is practically the same in every part
of the world.
The rubber-gatherer of the Amazon, who is practically a slave, wades
into the swamp, makes several incisions in the bark of the tree,
fashions a rough trough of clay under it, and waits till the sap fills
the clay vessel. When the sap has been gathered he makes a fire of the
nuts of the urucuri palm and places an inverted funnel over it to
concentrate the smoke. He first dips the end of a wooden spindle into
the juice and then holds it in the smoke until the juice coagulates;
this process is repeated until there has formed a ball of rubber
weighing from five to ten pounds. The smoke of the palm-nuts is a
chemical agent that converts the juice into the crude rubber of
commerce.
Crude gum, however, is lacking both in strength and elasticity. The
process that makes it a finished product is known as _vulcanization_.
The crude rubber, having been exported to the manufacturer in the United
States or Europe, is shredded, washed, and cleansed, and partly fused
with varying proportions of sulphur. For a very soft product, such as
the inner surface of tires, only a small proportion is used; where the
wear is considerable, a larger proportion is employed.[38] White clay is
sometimes added to give body to the product; coloring matter is also
sometimes added.
By far the greater part of the crude rubber comes from the Amazon
forests. Brazil produces about one-half, but a considerable quantity is
obtained in Acre, the territory formed where the borders of Brazil,
Bolivia, and Peru meet, and now ceded to Brazil. Nearly all this
product, that of the Ceara region excepted, is marketed at Para and is
known as Para rubber. It is the best produced. The African product,
mainly from the forests of the Kongo, and Madagascar, and nearly all the
East Indian product is sent to Europe.
[Illustration: REGIONS YIELDING RUBBER]
The world's product is about one hundred and thirty-three million pounds
of crude rubber. Of this product the United States takes nearly
one-half. The greater part is used in the manufacture of pneumatic
tires, hose, and overshoes. A large part is used for making water-proof
cloth,[39] and considerable is made into the small elastic bands for
which there is a growing use.
=Gutta-Percha.=--Gutta-percha is obtained from the juices of several
plants (chiefly _Dichopsis gutta_ and _Supota muelleri_) both of which
abound in the Malay peninsula and the East Indies. It is prepared in a
manner somewhat similar to that employed in making crude rubber; it is
also easily vulcanized by heating with sulphur. It is used to a limited
extent in the manufacture of golf-balls, but mainly as the insulating
cover of copper wires used in ocean telegraph cables. For this purpose
it has no known substitute, and its essential merit is the fact that it
is not altered by salt water. Nearly all the product is shipped from
Singapore to England.
=Pine-Tree Products.=--The various members of the pine and cone-bearing
trees yield valuable essential oils and oleo-resins that are very
important in the arts and sciences. These, in nearly every instance, are
prepared from the sap of the tree.
_Oil of turpentine_ is known as an "essential oil," and in chemical
structure and properties it does not differ from the various essential
oils, such as lemon, orange, peppermint, etc. Commercial turpentine is
generally made from the sap of the long-leafed pine of the Atlantic
coast-plain.
The bark of the tree is cut near the foot, and the sap that oozes from
the scar quickly hardens into a gum. The gum, generally known as "crude
turpentine," is distilled and yields about one-fourth its weight of oil
or "spirit" of turpentine. It is a staple article of manufacture in
Europe, India, and the United States, and is used chiefly to dilute the
oil paints and varnishes used in indoor work. The United States supplies
about two-thirds of the world's product, a large part of which is
shipped from Savannah and Brunswick, Ga., to Great Britain.[40]
_Resin_ is the substance remaining after the crude turpentine has been
distilled. It is used in the manufacture of varnish, sealing-wax, and
soap. Finely powdered resin is also mixed with wood-pulp in the
manufacture of wrapping-paper. It gives the latter a glazed surface and
renders it almost water-proof. Most of the world's product of resin
comes from the turpentine district of the United States, and about
four-fifths of it is exported to Europe.
When resin is subjected to distillation at a still higher temperature,
_resin oil_, a very heavy turpentine, is given off, and a viscous
substance known as _pitch_ remains. A considerable amount of this is
still made in the United States, but the greater part comes from the
pine-forests of Russia and Scandinavia. When pine-wood is distilled,
_tar_ is the chief product. In Russia tar is generally made by burning
green logs covered with turf, over a pit. _Creosote_, or wood
preservative, is made from tar. The various pine-tree products, creosote
excepted, are commonly known as "naval stores," the tar being used in
water-proofing the rigging of vessels, the pitch in calking the seams in
between planks, in the decks and hulls.
=Other Resins and Gums Used in the Arts.=--Most of the gums and resins
used in the arts and sciences are the hardened sap of plants--in some
cases exuding by natural means from the bark, in others resulting from
the puncture of the bark.
The _lac_ of commerce is due to the puncture of the young branches of a
tree, frequently a fig (_Ficus religiosa_) growing in the tropical
forests of India. The hardened sap incrusts twigs forming _stick-lac_;
when crushed, washed, and freed from the woody matter it is _seed-lac_;
when melted and cooled in flakes it is _shell-lac_, the form best known
in commerce. It is the chief ingredient in sealing-wax, and is
extensively used as a varnish. It is also used in fireworks on account
of its inflammability.
_Dammar_ is the product of a tree growing in the East Indies; it is the
basis of a very fine white varnish. _Copal_ is a term applied to
oleo-resins soluble in turpentine, and used almost universally as
varnishes. They come from the tropical regions of South America, Africa,
and from the East Indies. _Kauri_ is the fossil gum of a cone-bearing
tree dug from the ground in northern New Zealand. _Amber_ is the fossil
gum of extinct cone-bearing trees found mainly along the Baltic coast of
Prussia. It is used chiefly for the mouth-pieces of tobacco-pipes and
cigar-holders; the inferior product is made into varnish. It is sold
wherever tobacco is used. _Sandarach_, found on the north African coast,
is used principally in Europe, being employed as a varnish. The United
States and Great Britain consume most of the foregoing products.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Name any elastic substance you know about that is in every way a
substitute for rubber.
What has been the relation between rubber and good roads?
Describe the structure of a bicycle tire.
Why are tar, pitch, and turpentine called naval stores?--and what
determines the locality in which they are made?
What is varnish, and for what purposes is it used?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of crude rubber, vulcanized rubber, and hard rubber;
note carefully the characteristics of each.
Burn a very small piece of cheap white rubber-tubing in an iron spoon or
a fire-shovel; note the character of the residue.
Obtain specimens of gutta-percha, resin, pitch, turpentine, shellac,
copal, dammar, and creosote for study and inspection.
CHAPTER XII
COAL AND PETROLEUM
The economic history of nearly every country that has achieved eminence
in modern times dates from its use of coal and iron; and indeed the
presence of these substances in workable deposits means almost unlimited
power. The present era is sometimes called the Age of Steel, but the
possibilities of producing steel in enormous quantities, at less than
one-fifth its price at the beginning of the nineteenth century, depended
mainly upon the use of mineral coal instead of charcoal in its
manufacture.
Coal consists of accumulations of vegetable matter that were formed in
prior geological ages. Under the action of heat and moisture, and also
the tremendous pressure of the rock layers that afterward covered them,
the vegetable matter was converted to mineral coal.
The aggregate coal-fields of the United States are not far from two
hundred thousand square miles in extent, but of this area not much more
than one-half is workable. In Europe there are estimated to be about one
hundred thousand square miles of coal-lands, of which about half are
productive at the present time. Of this Great Britain has 12,000 square
miles, Spain 4,000, France 2,000, Germany 1,800, and Belgium 500. In
Canada there are about 20,000 square miles of coal-land; a part of this
is included in the Nanaimo field on the Pacific coast, but the most
important are the Nova Scotia beds, which form about the only supply for
the British naval stations of America. China has extensive coal-fields.
In character coal is broadly divided into two classes--anthracite or
hard, and bituminous or soft, coal. Anthracite coal occurs in folded and
metamorphic rocks. It is hard and glassy, and does not split into thin
layers or leaves. The beds have been subjected to intense heat and
pressure, and the coal has but a very small amount--rarely more than
five per cent.--of volatile matter; it burns, therefore, with little or
no smoke and soot, and on this account is very desirable as a fuel in
cities. Two areas in Colorado and New Mexico produce small quantities of
pure anthracite; practically all the commercial anthracite comes from
three small basins in Pennsylvania. In quality it is known as "red ash"
and "white ash," the former being the superior.
The yearly output of the anthracite mines is upward of fifty-five
million long tons a year, or somewhat less than five million tons per
month. In winter the rate of consumption is somewhat greater than that
of production. A shortage in the summer production is therefore apt to
be keenly felt in the winter. Before shipment to the market the coal is
crushed at the breakers, sorted in different sizes, and washed.
Most of the anthracite coal-mines are owned by the railway companies
centring at New York and Philadelphia, or else are operated by companies
controlled by the railways. About one-fourth of the output is produced
by independent operators who, as a rule, sell their coal to the railway
companies. The Reading, Pennsylvania, Central of New Jersey, Lackawanna,
Lehigh Valley, Ontario & Western, Erie, and Delaware & Hudson are
popularly known as "coalers" because the larger part of their eastern
business consists in carrying anthracite coal.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF THREE COLLIERIES IN THE ANTHRACITE COAL BASIN
NEAR MAHANOY CITY, PA.]
Formerly much of the coal was shipped by canals, but the latter were
not able to compete with the railways, and most of the coal-canals have
been abandoned. The price of anthracite at tide-water (New York) varies
from $3.20 to $4.50 per long ton. At Philadelphia the price is about
one-fourth less. Buffalo is the chief lake-port for anthracite. Steam
sizes are about two-thirds the price of house fuel.
[Illustration: COAL FIELDS IN UNITED STATES]
Bituminous, or soft coal furnishes the larger part of the house fuel in
the United States, and nearly all the house coal used in other parts of
the world. It contains from fifteen to more than forty per cent. of
volatile matter, burning with a long and smoky flame. The coal which
contains twenty per cent. or less of volatile matter is a free-burning
coal that may develop heat enough to partly fuse the ash, forming
"clinkers"; it is therefore called "caking" coal, and is not only well
adapted for use as fuel and steam-making, but it is also a good smelting
coal.
Coal which contains more than thirty per cent. of volatile matter is
known as "fat" coal and is generally used in the manufacture of coke and
illuminating gas. Western Pennsylvania produces the largest amount of
fat coal, but it is found here and there in nearly all soft-coal
regions. A so-called smokeless bituminous coal occurs in various
localities; its low percentage of volatile matter makes it an excellent
house fuel.
Bituminous coal is mined in twenty-five States of the Union,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, and Ohio heading the list. In
about half the mines the coal is cut from the seam by means of machinery
and is known as machine-mined coal. A very large part of the product is
consumed within a short distance of the mines, and this is especially
true of the region about the upper Ohio River.
[Illustration: COAL PRODUCTION]
Most of the product is shipped to the large manufacturing cities of the
middle west, where it is used for steam as well as fuel; a very large
amount also is sent down the Ohio in barges to the lower Mississippi
River. The spot value of bituminous coal varies from $0.80 to $1.60 per
ton; the product of the Pacific coast mines, however, is from $3 to $5.
The output of the mines of the United States aggregates about two
hundred and forty million long tons yearly, and this is about one-third
of the world's product. For many years there has been an export trade to
Canada, the West Indies, Central and South America, amounting in 1900 to
8,000,000 tons. Within a few years, however, the decreased cost of
mining due to machinery, and the low rates of transportation to the
seaboard has developed an export trade to Russia, Germany, and France.
[Illustration: COAL]
A small amount of coal is imported into the United States. A superior
quality of Australian coal finds a ready market in Pacific coast points
as far north as San Francisco, and large quantities of Nanaimo, B.C.,
coal are sold in Oregon, Washington, and California. A small quantity of
the "slack" or waste of the Nova Scotia mines is imported to Boston to
be made into coke. The Canadian fields supply a considerable part of the
coal used in Montana.
=Coke and Coal-Tar Products.=--In the manufacture of iron and steel a fuel
having a high percentage of carbon free from volatile matter is
essential. The great cost of wood charcoal forbids its use, and so a
charcoal made from soft coal is used. Fat coal is heated in closed
chambers until the volatile matter is driven off. The product is "coke";
the closed chamber is an "oven." The ovens are built of stone or
fire-brick, in a long row. They are usually on an abrupt slope, so that
the coal can be dumped into the top, while the coke can be withdrawn
from the bottom, to be loaded into cars.
About three thousand one hundred and forty pounds of coal are required
to make a short ton of coke; from three thousand to five thousand cubic
feet of illuminating gas, together with varying amounts of coal-tar and
ammonia, are driven off and generally wasted. In a few instances
"scientific" ovens are in use for the purpose of saving these products;
but in the coal-mining regions such devices are the exception and not
the rule. The great waste of energy-products in the manufacture of coke
is partly offset by the employment of refuse and slack, which could not
be otherwise used.
There are more than five hundred and eighteen thousand coke-ovens in
the United States, of which eighty per cent. are in use. Most of them
are in the region about the upper Ohio River, and nearly half the total
number is in the vicinity of Connellsville. The region around
Birmingham, Ala., ranks next in number. The coke product of the United
States is more than twenty million short tons a year. This is
considerably less than the product of Great Britain, which is upward of
twenty-five million tons.
Most of the "scientific" ovens are near or in large cities where the
gas, after purification, is used for illuminating purposes. In some
instances the coke, and not the gas, is a by-product. The coal-tar is
used in part for fuel, but a portion of it goes to the chemical
laboratory, where it is made to yield ammonia, benzine, carbolic acid,
and aniline dyes to the value of nearly seven million dollars.
=Graphite.=--Graphite, plumbago, or "black lead," as it is popularly
named, is found in many parts of the United States, but only a few
localities produce a good commercial article; these are Ticonderoga, N.Y.,
which yields from six hundred to two thousand tons a year, and
Chester County, Pa., which yields a small but increasing amount; a good
quality is mined near Ottawa, Canada. It is extensively mined in Ceylon,
and this island produces the chief bulk of the world's ordinary product.
The finest grade comes from the Alibert mine in Siberia. A good article
is manufactured artificially at Niagara Falls.
Graphite is used as a stove polish and for crucibles; in the main,
however, it is employed in the manufacture of lead[41] pencils; for this
purpose only a very soft mineral, absolutely free from grit, is
employed, and the Siberian output is used almost wholly. One German firm
and two American firms supply most of the pencils used.
=Petroleum.=--Petroleum is the name given to a natural liquid mineral from
which the well-known illuminating oil "kerosene" is derived, and to
obtain which it is mined. Petroleum is a mixture of various compounds
known as hydrocarbons. Some of these compounds are gaseous, some are
liquid, and some are solid; all of them are articles of commercial
value. The petroleum from different localities differs greatly in
appearance and composition.
The pitch that coated Noah's ark, the slime of the builders of the Tower
of Babel, and the slime-pits of the Vale of Siddim all refer to mineral
products associated with petroleum. Under the name of "naphtha" it has
been known in Persia for thirty centuries, and for more than half as
long a flowing oil spring has existed in the Ionian Islands. The Seneca
Indians knew of a petroleum spring near the village of Cuba, N.Y., and
used it as a medicine long before the advent of the white man.
As early as 1850 illuminating oil, known as "coal" oil, was made in the
United States by distilling cannel coal, but this product was supplanted
within a few years by the natural petroleum discovered in Pennsylvania.
In 1859 Colonel Drake completed a well bored in solid rock near
Titusville, Pa. The venture proved successful, and in a few years
petroleum mining became one of the great industries of the United
States.
Petroleum is known to exist in a great many parts of the world; the
United States and Russia, however, produce practically all the
commercial product; a very small amount is obtained from a horizon on
the south slope of the Carpathian Mountains, situated in Rumania and
Galicia, Austria-Hungary. There are also a few producing wells in Peru,
Germany, Italy, Burma, Argentina, and Sumatra.
[Illustration: PETROLEUM FIELDS IN THE UNITED STATES]
In the United States the largest horizon is that of the Appalachian
region. Since 1859 it has produced more than forty million gallons of
crude oil. The Lima, Ind., horizon produces about twenty million
barrels. The California and Texas horizons have become very important
factors. The crude petroleum is transported partly in tank cars, but
mainly by means of long lines of pipe, flowing from one pumping station
to another by gravity. There are pipe-line terminals on the Great Lakes
and at Pittsburg, but the principal are at the refining and exporting
stations in New York, Philadelphia, and on the Delaware River.
A considerable amount is exported to European countries to be there
refined, but in the main the crude oil is refined before exporting it.
Some of the refined oil is exported in barrels, and some in tin cases;
the greater part, however, goes in tank steamers, and from these it is
pumped into tank cars to be distributed. Most of the product is
controlled by the Standard Oil Company, and it reaches nearly every
country in the world. It is carried into Arctic regions on sledges, and
over the African deserts by caravans. Great Britain, Germany, and the
Netherlands are the chief purchasers and distributors. The value of the
entire product is about one hundred and eighty-five million dollars.
The Russian oil-producing region is on and near the Apsheron peninsula,
a small area of Trans-Caucasia, that extends into the Caspian Sea; the
region is commonly known as the Baku field, and in 1900 the production
of crude oil surpassed that of the United States. The petroleum is
conveyed by pipe lines to the refineries at Baku. From this port it is
shipped in tank cars by rail to Batum, whence it is conveyed to the
various European markets. A considerable part of the product is sent by
tank steamers to Astrakhan, and thence up the Volga to Russian markets.
Great Britain takes about one-third; about the same amount is shipped to
Port Said for China, India, and other Asian markets; the rest is
consumed in central Europe.
=Petroleum Products.=--The various constituents of crude petroleum differ
greatly in character, some being much more volatile than others. They
are separated by distillation at different temperatures. By this process
naphtha, rhigoline, gasoline, benzine, and other highly inflammable
products are obtained in separate receivers. By a similar process the
illuminating or refined oil and the lubricating oils are also separated.
The residuum consists of a gummy mass from which paraffine and petroleum
jelly are extracted.
_Naphtha_ usually contains several volatile compounds, including
_benzine_ and _gasoline_. It is used as a solvent of grease and also of
crude india-rubber, but chiefly the manufacture of illuminating gas.
_Kerosene_ is the name commonly given to the refined oil. A good
quality should have a fire test of not less than one hundred and fifty
degrees; that is, when heated to that temperature, it should not give
off any inflammable gas. This test is now mandatory in most States.
_Lubricating oil_ is used almost wholly for the lubrication of heavy
machinery. It varies greatly in composition and quality.
_Paraffine_ or petroleum wax has largely superseded beeswax; it is used
mainly in the manufacture of candles and as an insulator for electric
wires. A native mineral paraffine, known as ozocerite, is mined in Utah
and Galicia; it is used as an insulating material.
"_Vaseline_," "_cosmoline_," or _petroleum "jelly"_ is very largely used
in pharmacy as the basis of ointments and also as a lubricant for heavy
machinery.
_Asphalt_ is produced by the distillation of petroleum, but the greater
part of the world's product comes from two "pitch lakes"--one in
Bermudez, Venezuela, the other in the island of Trinidad, off the
Venezuelan coast. The former is the larger and produces a superior
quality. Small deposits occur near Los Angeles, Cal., and in Utah. The
output of the Venezuelan asphalt is used almost wholly for street
pavement.
Probably no other mineral has had a wider influence on both social and
economic life, and the industrial arts, than petroleum and its
compounds. The kerosene lamp, the aniline dye, the insulation of
electric wires, the lubrication of machinery, the cosmetic, the
india-rubber solution, and the physician's sedative dose represent only
a few of the devices that are derived from petroleum.
=Natural Gas.=--A natural inflammable gas occurs in or near several of the
petroleum horizons. One important belt extends through western
Pennsylvania and New York, and another through northwestern Ohio and
northeastern Indiana. It is conveyed through pipe-lines and used both as
fuel and for lighting. Natural gas occurs in a great many localities,
but is used commercially only in the regions noted. It is better adapted
for making glass than any other fuel, and on this account extensive
glass-making establishments have concentrated in the natural-gas belt of
western Pennsylvania.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
The statement is sometimes made to the effect that coal is "condensed
sunlight"; is it true, or untrue; and why?
Why are the coal areas of Europe and America also areas of various
manufactures?
A recent cartoon had for its title--"John Bull and his coal piles
(_i.e._, coaling stations) rule the world"; show why this statement
contains a great deal of truth.
What are some of the advantages of steam-vessels over sailing-vessels?
Whale oil, crude turpentine, kerosene, and gas have been used each in
turn for illuminants; what is the advantage of each over the preceding?
Describe the structure of an ordinary kerosene lamp-burner, an argand
burner, a Welsbach burner.
For what are aniline, paraffine, naphtha, and carbolic acid used?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of anthracite, bituminous, and cannel coal, and coke
for comparison and study.
Obtain specimens of crude petroleum, naphtha, refined oil, aniline dye,
paraffine, and carbolic acid; note the properties of each. Throw away
the naphtha after using.
Read Mineral Resources of the United States on the foregoing subjects.
CHAPTER XIII
METALS OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES
The development of modern civilization is directly connected with the
mining and manufacture of the useful metals. Their effect on the affairs
of mankind can be rightly understood only when they are studied in their
relations to one another, as well as to the people who used them. Next
to the discovery of the use of fire, an appreciation of the use of
metals has been the chief thing to develop the intellect of mankind.
When human beings discarded natural caves for artificially constructed
dwellings--when they began to cook their food and clothe their bodies,
they required tools. These, in the main, consisted of the spears and
arrow-heads used as weapons of the chase, and the axes and knives used
as constructive tools.
Rough stone gave place to flint because the latter would take a better
edge. For the same reason the people of central Europe sent to the
deserts of central Asia for jade wherewith to make axes and knives.
Again, for the same reason, jade was discarded, because an alloy of
copper and tin produced a bronze that would not only take a sharper edge
than stone, but it was hard enough to cut and dress the latter. Egypt
rose to a commanding position because of her control of the copper mines
in the Sinaitic peninsula, and subsequently of the gold products coming
from the upper Nile.
A meridian drawn through Cairo, Egypt, practically divides the world
into two kinds of civilization. East of this meridian the population is
almost wholly agricultural and, excepting Japan and India, the
character of the civilization has changed but little in the past 2,000
years. West of the line the population is essentially characterized as
metal-workers. It controls the world--not especially by virtue of a high
degree of intellectual development, but because it has availed itself of
the properties and characteristics of metals and their applications to
commerce.
The four metals that have had the greatest influence on western
civilization are gold, silver, iron, and copper. The discovery of gold
and silver has always resulted in a rapid settlement of the regions in
which the discoveries were made, and usually in the building of great
industrial centres. Thus, the discovery of gold in California was the
first step in making the United States a world power. The acquisition of
so large an amount of gold caused an industrial expansion that hurried
the Civil War, and led to the manufacture of iron and steel both for
agricultural machinery and railroad transportation. This, in turn,
brought the country so closely in touch with the affairs of China and
Japan, that European and American diplomacy in eastern Asia are a common
concern. The commercial position of Great Britain is very largely due to
her iron mines.
The production of Bessemer steel at a price far less than that of iron
at the beginning of the nineteenth century lowered the cost of
transporting commodities to the extent that large areas, once of
necessity very moderately productive of food-stuffs, are now densely
peopled because food-stuffs can be transported to these regions more
economically than they can be grown there. Thus, owing to the
improvements in iron and steel manufacture, the farmer of Minnesota, the
planter of Louisiana, the miner of Colorado, and the factory operative
of Massachusetts have each the same comforts of living that are enjoyed
by all the others, and have them at scarcely more than half the cost of
fifty years ago.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--THE NATIONAL STEEL COMPANY'S SMELTERY
AND ROLLING-MILLS, MINGO JUNCTION, OHIO]
The gradual decrease in the production of the silver mines near the
present site of Ergasteria proved a beginning of the fall of Athens; and
when gold was discovered in the Perim Mountains of Macedonia, the seat
of Greek power moved thither. Philip of Macedon hoarded the treasure
from the mines of Pangaeus, and with the capital thus acquired his son,
Alexander the Great, conquered the East, implanted Hellenic business
methods there, and drew the various trade routes between Europe and Asia
under one control.
In the fifteenth century copper from the mines near Budapest and silver
from the Schwarz Mountains of Germany were the resources that made
Germanic Europe pre-eminent. The wresting of the trade in these two
metals from Venice caused the rise of Antwerp and brought immense gains
to Luebeck, London, Brussels, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. In the latter part
of the nineteenth century copper again reached a high position of
importance from the fact that upon it largely depends electric motive
power and transportation.
=Iron.=--Iron is one of the most widely diffused of metals. It is abundant
in the sun; meteorites contain from more than ten to eighty or ninety
per cent. of it; all earths and rocks contain at least traces of it; and
in various places the deposits of ore in nearly pure form aggregate
cubic miles in extent.
In only a few localities is iron ore found in a metallic or "native"
form. Many meteorites consist of metallic iron mixed with nickel and
manganese, and in Greenland a volcanic dyke or ledge of metallic iron is
known to exist. The iron of commerce is derived from "ores," or chemical
compounds of iron and oxygen, or iron and carbon. The cheapness of the
product depends upon the ease with which the ore may be quarried,
transported to coal, and smelted. The following are the ores commonly
employed in the production of iron:
_Red hematite_ has a reddish metallic lustre and when pure contains
seventy per cent. of iron.[42] It is the most abundant of the workable
ores, and certainly the best for the manufacture of Bessemer steel. The
ores of the Lake Superior region are mainly red hematite, and the latter
constitutes more than four-fifths of the output of the United States.
[Illustration: THE COMPARATIVE PRODUCTION OF IRON AND STEEL]
_Brown hematite_, or limonite, has a chestnut brown color and contains
very nearly sixty per cent. of iron[43]; it includes the "bog" ores, and
is very abundant. Not far from one-quarter of the Appalachian ores are
brown hematite; it constitutes about one-eighth of the output of the
United States.
_Magnetic_ iron ore, or magnetite, of which loadstone, a natural magnet,
is an example, has a metallic, steel lustre and contains 72.4 per cent.
of iron.[44] Most of the ores obtained in Pennsylvania and New York are
magnetite. The magnetites furnish about one-sixteenth of the output of
the United States.
_Carbonate of Iron_, or siderite, occurs in a few localities, the ore
produced in Ohio being almost wholly of this kind. It contains when
pure about forty-eight per cent. of iron.[45] It constitutes less than
one per cent. of the output of the United States.
_Iron pyrites_, or sulphide of iron, sometimes called "fools' gold," is
a very common mineral. It is used in the manufacture of sulphuric acid,
but is worthless for the production of iron; indeed, the presence of a
very small percentage of sulphur in iron renders the latter worthless
for many purposes.
Extensive deposits of iron are known to exist in very nearly every
country in the world, but those which can be advantageously worked are
few in number. In order to be available, the deposits must be within
easy transporting distance of the people who use it, and likewise within
a short distance of the coal used to manufacture it.
For these reasons most of the workable deposits of ore are in or near
the great centres of population in western Europe and the eastern part
of the United States; as a matter of fact, practically all the iron and
steel of the latter country is produced in the populous centres of the
Atlantic slopes. In most great steel-making districts it is essential to
mix the native ores with special ores brought from a distance, the
latter being used to give strength and hardness to the resulting metal.
Ores from Sweden, and from Juragua, Cuba, are employed for this purpose
in the steel-making establishments of the United States.
In the past few years the United States has jumped from an insignificant
position in the production of iron and steel to the first rank among the
iron-producing countries. This great advance is due to the fortunate
geographic position of the iron ore and the coal, and also to the
discovery of the Bessemer process of making steel.
In general it is more economical to ship the ore to the coal than _vice
versa_. The position of the steel-making plant is largely determined by
the cost of moving the coke and ore, together with that of getting the
steel to the place of use. Formerly, iron manufacture in the United
States was not profitable unless the coal, ore, and limestone[46] were
very near to one another.
These conditions still obtain in the southern Appalachian mineral
fields; the ore and the coal are at no great distance apart, and a great
iron-making industry, in which Birmingham and Bessemer form the
principal centre, has grown into existence. For the greater part the
coal is coked; and in this form less than a ton[47] is sufficient to
make a ton of pig-iron. The smelteries and rolling-mills are built at
places where the materials are most conveniently hauled.
In the past few years the iron and steel industry which formerly centred
about the navigable waters at the head of the Ohio River, has undergone
a readjustment. Rolling-mills and smelteries exist at Pittsburg and
vicinity, and at Youngstown, New Castle, and other nearby localities,
but greater steel-making plants have been built along the south shores
of Lakes Michigan and Erie, all of which have come about because of
reasons that are purely geographic.
Immense deposits of excellent hematite ore in the old mountain-ranges
near Lake Superior have recently become available. For the greater part
the ore is very easily quarried. In many instances it is taken out of
the quarry or pit by steam-shovels which dump it into self-discharging
hopper-cars. Thence the ore is carried on a down grade to the nearest
shipping-port on the lake. There it is dumped into huge bunkers built at
the docks, and from these it slides down chutes into the holds of the
steam-barges. A 6,000-ton barge is loaded in less than two hours; a car
is unloaded in a few seconds.
[Illustration: MOVEMENT OF IRON ORE]
Water transportation is very cheap compared with railway transportation,
even when the road is built and equipped as an ore-hauling road. The ore
is therefore carried a distance varying from one thousand to one
thousand five hundred miles for less than it could be loaded, on cars
hauled one-tenth that distance by rail, and unloaded.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--ORE DOCKS]
At the south shore of Lake Erie, the ore meets the coke from western
Pennsylvania and coal from the Ohio coal-fields, and as a result new
centres of iron and steel manufacture have grown up along this line of
"least resistance." The ore is unloaded at the docks by means of
mechanical scoops and shovels. So cheaply and quickly is it mined and
transported that it is delivered to the smelteries at a cost varying
from $1.75 to $3.25 per ton.
[Illustration: LAKE SUPERIOR IRON ORE FIELDS]
There are three forms in which iron is used--cast iron, wrought iron,
and steel. Cast iron is crystalline and brittle. The product as it comes
from the blast furnace is called pig-iron. In making such commodities as
stoves, and articles that do not require great strength, the pig-iron is
again melted and cast into moulds which give them the required shape.
Cast iron contains from one to five per cent. of carbon.
Wrought iron is malleable, ductile, and very flexible; when pure it is
also very soft. It is prepared by melting pig-iron in furnaces having
such a shape that the molten metal can be stirred or "puddled" in
contact with the air. By this means the carbon is burnt out, and while
still at a white heat the pasty iron is kneaded or "wrought," in order
to expel other impurities.
Steel is a form of iron which is thought to contain a chemical compound
of iron with carbon. It is stronger than iron and finer in grain.
Formerly, steel was made by packing bars of pure iron in charcoal
powder, the whole being enclosed in clay retorts that were heated to
whiteness for about three days. The product obtained by this method is
known as cementation steel. It is still used in the manufacture of
cutlery, tools, and fine machinery; it is likewise very expensive. In
smelting certain ores it is easy to burn out the carbon in open
furnaces, and "open-hearth" steel is an important factor.
Just about the beginning of the Civil War, when the railways of the
United States were taxed beyond their capacity to carry the produce of
the country, it became apparent that something more durable than iron
must be used for rails. The locomotives, then weighing from twenty-five
to thirty-five tons each, were too light to haul the freight offered the
roads; they were also too heavy for the rails, which split at the ends
and frayed at the edges.
[Illustration: IRON AND STEEL]
The Bessemer process of making steel was the result of the demand for a
better and a cheaper method. By this process, the iron is put into a
"converter" along with certain Swedish or Cuban ores to give the product
hardness. A hot blast is then forced into the converter which not only
melts the mass but burns out the excess of carbon as well. The color of
the flame indicates the moment when the conversion to steel is
accomplished.
In 1860, before the establishment of the Bessemer process, steel
commanded a price of about one hundred and twenty-five dollars per ton;
at the beginning of the twentieth century steel billets were about
eighteen dollars per ton. In western Europe and the United States there
are used about three hundred pounds of iron and steel per capita; in
South America the rate of consumption is about fifteen pounds; in Asia
(Japan excepted) it is probably less than three pounds.
The economic results of low-priced steel are very far-reaching. Steam
boilers of steel carry a pressure of more than two hundred and fifty
pounds to each square inch of surface--about four times as great as in
the iron boilers formerly used. Locomotives of eighty tons draw the fast
passenger trains at a speed of sixty miles an hour. Ponderous
compounding engines weighing one hundred and twenty tons haul ninety or
more steel freight cars that carry each a load of 100,000 pounds. The
iron rails formerly in use weighed about forty pounds per yard; now
steel rails of one hundred pounds per yard are employed on most trunk
lines.
In the large commercial buildings steel girders have entirely supplanted
timber, while in nearly all modern buildings of more than six stories in
height, the frame is constructed of Bessemer steel. Indeed, a
steel-framed building of twenty-five stories has greater stability than
a brick or stone building of six. Such a structure as the "Flatiron
Building" in New York or the Masonic Temple in Chicago would have been
impossible without Bessemer steel.
In ocean commerce cheap steel has worked even a greater revolution. In
1860, a vessel of 4,000 tons displacement was thought to be almost up to
the limit. The Oceanic of the White Star Line has a displacement of
about twenty-eight thousand five hundred tons. This is nearly equalled
by the measurement of half a dozen other liners, and is exceeded by the
freighters built by Mr. J.J. Hill for the China trade.
[Illustration: _From a copyrighted photograph by C.L. Ritzmann, N.Y._
STEEL MANUFACTURE
THE FULLER (FLATIRON) BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY]
HISTORICAL
1619.--Iron works established on Falling Creek, Va.
1643.--First foundry in Massachusetts, at Lynn.
1658.--Blast furnace and forge at New Haven, Conn.
1679.--Father Hennepin discovers coal in Illinois.
1703.--Mordecai Lincoln, ancestor of Abraham Lincoln, establishes
iron works at Scituate, Mass.
1717.--First bar iron exported from American Colonies to West
Indies.
1728.--Steel made, Hebron, Ct.
1732.--Father of George Washington establishes furnace in Virginia.
1740.--First iron works in New York, near Hudson.
1750.--Bituminous coal mined in Virginia.
1766.--Anthracite coal discovered in Pennsylvania.
1770.--First rolling-mill in Colonies, Boonton, N.J.
1801-1803.--Lake Champlain iron district, New York, developed.
1812.--First rolling-mill at Pittsburg.
1828.--Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, first steam railway in the United
States, begun.
1829.--"Stourbridge Lion," first locomotive in America, used in
Delaware & Hudson Railway.
1830.--The T rail invented by Robert L. Stevens.
1830.--First American locomotive, "Tom Thumb," built by Peter
Cooper at Baltimore.
1830.--Twenty-three miles of railway in the United States.
1844.--Lake Superior iron ores discovered by William Burt.
1850.--First shipment of Lake Superior ore, ten tons.
1857.--Iron industry founded in Chicago.
1862.--Phoenix wrought iron column, or girder, first made.
1864.--Bessemer steel first made in the United States.
1865.--First Bessemer steel rails in the United States rolled at
Chicago.
1890.--First armor-plate made in the United States rolled at
Bethlehem, Pa.
1890.--The United States surpasses Great Britain in production of
pig-iron.
1900.--The United States leads in the production of open-hearth
steel.
=Gold.=--Gold is one of the metals earliest to be mined. It is mentioned
by the ancient profane as well as by sacred writers. Pictorial
representations of fusing and working the metal are sculptured on early
Egyptian tombs, and beautiful gold ornaments have been found that were
made by the prehistoric peoples who once occupied ancient Etruria, in
Italy. Columbus found gold ornaments in the possession of the aboriginal
Americans. The Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico possessed large
quantities of gold.
[Illustration: LEACHING (CYANIDE) TANKS DISSOLVING THE GOLD FROM THE
ROASTED ORE]
[Illustration: STOPING OUT A TUNNEL]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF MILL]
[Illustration: GOLD MINING]
Gold is one of the most widely diffused of metals. Traces of it are
found in practically all igneous and most sedimentary rocks. It occurs
in sea-water, and quite frequently in beach-sands. Traces of it are also
usually to be found in alluvial deposits and in the soils of most
mountain-folds. In spite of its wide diffusion, however, all the gold
that has been mined could be stored readily in the vaults of any large
New York bank.
In all probability most of the gold now in use has been deposited by
solution in quartz veins, the latter usually filling seams and crevices
in granitic or volcanic rocks. Quartz veins seldom yield very great
returns, but they furnish a steady supply of the metal. The rock must be
mined, hoisted to the surface, and crushed. The gold is then dissolved
by quicksilver (forming an amalgam from which the quicksilver is removed
by heat), by potassium cyanide solution, or by chlorine solution.
In many instances the quartz veins have been broken and weathered by
natural forces. In such cases the gold is usually carried off by swiftly
running water and deposited in the channel lower down. In this way
"placer" deposits of gold occur. Placer deposits are sometimes very
rich, but they are quickly exhausted. The first gold discovered in
California was placer gold.
Nearly all the gold mined in the United States has come from the western
highlands. In 1900, Colorado, California, South Dakota (Black Hills),
Montana, and Alaska yielded about seven-eighths of the entire product.
The placer mines of Alaska are confined mainly to the beach-sands and
the tributaries of Yukon River. Since 1849 the average annual yield of
gold in the United States is about forty-three million dollars.
The Guinea coast of Africa, Australia, California, the Transvaal of
South Africa, and Venezuela have each stood at the front in the
production of gold. The aggregate annual production of the world has
increased from one hundred and sixty million dollars in 1853 to more
than three hundred million dollars in 1900.
A considerable part of the gold product is used in gilding
picture-frames, book-titles, sign-letters, porcelain, and ornamental
brass work. Practically, all of this is lost, and in the United States
alone the loss aggregates about fifteen million dollars yearly. The
abrasion and unavoidable wear of gold coin is another great source of
loss.
An enormous amount is used in the manufacture of jewelry, most of which
is used over and over again. By far the greater part, however, is used
as a commercial medium of exchange--that is, as coin. For this purpose
its employment is wellnigh universal; and indeed this has been its chief
use since the beginning of written history. Gold coin of the United
States is 900 fine, that is, 900 parts of every thousand is pure gold;
gold coin of Great Britain is 916-2/3 fine. In each case a small amount
of silver, or silver and copper, is added to give the coin the requisite
hardness. The coining of gold, and also other metals, is a government
monopoly in every civilized country.
The fiat value of gold throughout the commercial world is the equivalent
of $20.6718 per troy ounce of fine metal; an eagle weighs, therefore,
2580 grains. The real value, however, is reckoned by a different and a
more accurate standard, namely, the labor of man, and this, the
sporadic finds of placer gold excepted, has not changed much in two
thousand years or more. The increased production has scarcely equalled
the demand for the metal; moreover, the longer a mine is worked the
greater becomes the expense of its operation. Improved processes for the
extraction of gold have not created any surplus of gold; indeed, the
supply is not equal to the demand; and this fact keeps the metal
practically at a fixed value.
=Silver.=--Silver is about as widely diffused as is gold, but it is more
plentiful. It is found sparingly in most of the older rocks and also in
sea-water. It was used by the Greeks for coinage more than eight hundred
years before the Christian era, and was known to the Jewish people in
very early times. According to the writer of the Book of Kings (1 Kings
x. 21), "It was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon," but
Tacitus declares that in ancient Germany silver was even more valuable
than gold. The mines of Laureion (Laurium) gave the Greek state of
Attica its chief power, and the failure of the mines marked the
beginning of Athenian decline.
Silver is rarely found in a metallic state. For the greater part it
occurs combined with chlorine ("horn silver"), or with sulphur ("silver
glance"), or in combination with antimony and sulphur ("ruby ore"). The
ranges of the western highland region of the American continent yield
most of the present supply. The mines of Colorado, Montana, Utah, and
Idaho produce about six-sevenths of the yield in the United States,
which in 1900 was 74,500,000 ounces. In Europe the Hartz Mountains have
been famous for silver for several centuries.
About four-fifths of the silver bullion is used in the arts, most of it
being manufactured into ornaments or into table-service called "plate."
A considerable amount is used in photography, certain silver salts,
especially the chloride and the bromide, changing color by exposure to
the light. The remaining part of the silver output is made into coin.
The ratio of silver and gold has fluctuated much in the history of
civilization. In the United States the value of an ounce of fine silver
is fixed at $1.2929, thereby making the ratio 16 to 1. The silver
dollars, 900 fine, were coined on this basis, weighing 412.5 grains.
With the tremendous output of the silver mines between 1870 and 1880 the
price of silver fell to such an extent that, in time, most countries
limited the amount of coinage or demonetized it altogether. In the
United States the purchase of silver bullion for coinage has been
practically suspended, and the silver purchased is bought at the bullion
value--about fifty cents per troy ounce in 1900. In Japan the ratio has
been officially fixed at 32 to 1.
=Copper.=--Copper is probably the oldest metal known that has been used in
making tools. An alloy of copper and tin, hard enough to cut and dress
stone, succeeded the use of flint and jade, and its employment became so
general as to give the name "bronze" to the age following that
characterized by the use of stone implements.
Copper is very widely distributed. It occurs in quantities that pay for
mining in pretty nearly every country in the world. The rise of Egypt as
a commercial power was due to the fact that the Egyptians controlled the
world's trade in that metal, and it is highly probable that the
conquests of Cyprus at various times were chiefly for the possession of
the copper mines of Mount Olympus.
At the present time there are several great centres of production which
yield most of the metal used. These are the Rocky Mountain region,
including Mexico; the Lake Superior region of the United States; the
Andean region, including Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia; the
Iberian region, consisting of Spain and Portugal; and the Hartz
Mountain region of Germany. In 1900 they produced about four hundred and
fifty thousand tons, of which two hundred and eighty thousand were mined
in the United States.
Montana, the Lake Superior mines, and Arizona are the most productive
regions of the United States, and the mines of these three localities
yield more than half the world's product. Of these mines the Calumet and
Hecla of the Lake Superior region is the most famous. It was discovered
by Jesuit explorers about 1660, but was not worked until 1845. It is one
of the most productive mines in the world, its yearly output averaging
fifty million tons.
The export trade in copper is very important, amounting at the close of
the past century to about one hundred and seventy thousand short tons.
Of this amount, half goes to Germany (most of it through ports of the
Netherlands), and one-fifth each to France and Great Britain. The market
price to the consumer during the ten years closing the century averaged
about sixteen cents per pound. Most of the product is exported from New
York and Baltimore. The head-quarters of the great copper-mining
companies of America are at Boston. The imports of raw ores and partly
reduced ores called "regulus," come mainly from Mexico to New York and
Baltimore, and from Mexico and Japan to Puget Sound ports. The most
important American refineries are at New York and Baltimore.
A part of the copper is mixed with zinc to form brass, an alloy much
used in light machinery. A considerable quantity is rolled into sheets
to sheath building fronts and the iron hulls of vessels. By far the
greater part, however, is drawn into wire for carrying electricity, and
for this purpose it is surpassed by silver alone. The decrease in the
price of copper in the past few years is due, not to a falling off in
the demand, but to methods of reducing the ores and transporting the
product more economically.
=Aluminium.=--Aluminium is the base of clay, this mineral being its oxide.
It occurs in the various feldspars and feldspathic rocks, and in mica.
The expense of extracting the metal from these minerals has been so
great as to prohibit its commercial use. In 1870 there were probably
less than twenty pounds of the metal in existence, and it was to be
found only as a curiosity in the chemical laboratories. The discovery
that the metal could be extracted cheaply from cryolite, a mineral with
an aluminium base, obtained from Ivigtut, Greenland, led to a sparing
use of the metal in the economic arts.
The chief step in the production of the metal dates from the time that
the mineral _bauxite_, a hydroxide of aluminium and iron, was decomposed
in the electric furnace. The process has been repeatedly improved, and
under the patents covered by the Hall process the crude metal is now
produced at a market price of about eighteen cents per pound. The entire
production of the United States is controlled by the Pittsburg Reduction
Company, which also manufactures much of the commercial product of
England. The competitor of the Pittsburg Reduction Company is an
establishment in Germany, near Bremen.
Aluminium does not corrode; it is easily rolled, drawn, or cast; and,
bulk for bulk, it is less than one-third as heavy as copper. Because of
these properties it has a great and constantly growing economic value.
Because of its greater size, a pound of aluminium wire will carry a
greater electric current than a pound of copper wire of the same length.
It therefore has an increasing use as a conductor of electricity.
Bauxite, the mineral from which the metal is now chiefly extracted, is
obtained in two localities. One extends through Georgia and Alabama;
the other is in Arkansas.
=Lead.=--Lead is neither so abundant nor so widely diffused as iron,
copper, and the precious metals, but the supply is fully equal to the
demand. Lead ores, mainly galena or lead sulphide, occur abundantly in
the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah, producing more than half
the total output of the United States. In these localities, in Mexico,
and in the Andean states of South America it is used mainly in the
smelting of silver ores.
Metallic lead is used largely in the manufacture of water-pipes, and for
this purpose it must be very nearly pure. It is also rolled into sheets
to be used as lining for water-tanks. The fact that the edges of
sheet-lead and the ends of pipes may be readily joined with solder gives
to lead a great part of its economic value. Alloyed with arsenic it is
used in making shot; alloyed with antimony it forms type metal; alloyed
with tin it forms pewter and solder.
The greater part, however, is manufactured into the carbonate or "white"
lead that is used as a pigment, or paint. Red lead, an oxide, is a
pigment; litharge, also an oxide, is used for glazing the cheaper kinds
of pottery. About two hundred and thirty thousand tons of lead are
produced in the United States and one-half as much is imported--mainly
from Mexico and Canada. The linotype machines, now used in all large
printing establishments, have increased the demand for lead.
=Other Metals.=--Most of the remaining economic metals occur in small
quantities as compared with iron, copper, gold, and silver. Some of
them, however, are highly important from the fact that in various
industrial processes no substitutes for them are known.
_Quicksilver_, or _mercury_, is the only industrial metal that at
ordinary temperatures is a liquid. It is the base of the substance
calomel, a chloride, and corrosive sublimate, a dichloride, both of
which are employed as medicines. It is essential in the manufacture of
thermometers and barometers, but is used chiefly, however, as a solvent
of gold, which it separates from the finely powdered ore by solution or
amalgamation. Quicksilver occurs in the mineral cinnabar, a sulphide.
Nearly one-half the world's product comes from California. The New
Almaden mines of Santa Clara County produce over five thousand flasks
(each seventy-six and one-half pounds net); those of Napa County nearly
nine thousand flasks; the mines of the whole State yield about
twenty-six thousand flasks, valued at $1,200,000. Almaden, Spain, and
Idria, Austria, produce nearly all the rest of the output. An average of
about fifteen thousand flasks are exported from San Francisco, mainly to
the mines of Mexico, and Central and South America.
_Tin_ is about the only metal of industrial value whose ores are not
found in paying quantities in the United States. Small quantities occur
in San Bernardino County, Cal., and in the vicinity of Bering Strait,
Alaska, but it is doubtful if either will ever pay for development.
About three-fifths of the world's product comes from the Straits
Settlements on the Malay Peninsula; the nearby islands of Banca and
Billiton also yield a considerable quantity.
The mines of Cornwall, England, have been worked for two thousand years
and were probably the source of the tin that made the "bronze age." The
United States imports yearly about twenty million dollars worth of tin,
about half of which comes from the Straits Settlements. This is used
almost wholly for the manufacture of tin plate[48]--that is, sheet-iron
coated with tin. Much of the block tin imported from Great Britain is
returned there in the form of tin plate, being manufactured in the
United States much more economically than in Europe.
_Nickel_ occurs in New Caledonia, in Canada, and in the State of
Missouri. It is used in the manufacture of small coins and for plating
iron and steel. It is an essential in the metal known as "nickel steel"
which is now generally used in armor-plate and propeller-shafts, about
four per cent. of nickel being added to the steel. Most of the product
used in the United States is imported from Canada.
_Manganese_, a metal resembling iron, occurs in Russia, Brazil, and
Cuba, Russia producing about half the total output. It is used mainly to
give hardness to steel. The propeller-blades of large steamships are
usually made of manganese bronze. The building of war-ships in the
United States during the past few years has led to the extensive use of
manganese for armor-plate, and manganese ores to the amount of more than
two hundred and fifty thousand tons were imported in 1900. More than
one-half of this came from Russia; most of the remaining half from
Brazil.
_Zinc_ is abundant in nearly every part of the world. In the United
States the best known mines are in the Galena-Joplin District, in
Missouri and Kansas, which produce about two-thirds of the home
product--mainly from the ore _blende_, a sulphide. There are also
extensive zinc-mining operations in Illinois, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania. The lower Rhine District, Great Britain, and Silesia are
the chief European sources. Sheet-zinc is found in nearly every dwelling
in the United States, and zinc-coated or "galvanized" iron has become a
domestic necessity. Zinc-white is extensively used as a pigment. About
two hundred and fifty million pounds of crude zinc, or "spelter," are
produced in the United States; forty-five million pounds were exported
in 1900, mainly to Great Britain.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the qualities that make iron the most valuable of metals?
In what ways does commerce depend on iron and steel?
What substances are used for food, clothing, or domestic purposes that
are not manufactured by the aid of iron?
Ingot or billet steel is rated at about one cent per pound; the
hair-springs of watches are worth several thousand dollars per pound;
what makes the difference in their value?
What are the qualities that give to gold its value?
Would all the gold mined in the United States pay the national debt at
the end of the Civil War?
What causes have led to the increasing price of copper during the past
few years?
What is the market price each of copper, silver, steel rails, and
aluminium to-day?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of the following iron ores: Hematite, brown hematite,
magnetite, carbonate, and pyrites. Note the color and physical
appearance of each; scratch the first four with a very hard steel point
and note the color of the streak.
Obtain specimens of pig-iron, cast iron, wrought iron, and cast steel;
note carefully the fracture or "break" of each; how does cast iron
differ from wrought iron?
Obtain specimens of the following copper ores: Malachite, azurite,
chalcopyrite, and red oxide; wet a very small fragment with an acid and
note the color when it is held in the flame of an alcohol lamp or a
Bunsen burner; dissolve a crystal of blue vitriol (copper sulphate) in
water and note what occurs if the end of a bright iron wire be dipped in
the solution.
Name the various uses to which nickel, tin, lead, and aluminium are put.
Consult the chapters on these subjects in any cyclopaedia.
[Illustration: TRANSPORTING SUGAR-CANE, CUBA]
[Illustration: SUGAR-CANE GROWING IN CUBA]
[Illustration: HAVEMEYER SUGAR-REFINERY, BROOKLYN, N.Y.]
CHAPTER XIV
SUGAR AND ITS COMMERCE
The term sugar is applied rather loosely to a large number of substances
characterized by the quality of sweetness. In a few instances the name
is given to certain mineral salts, such as sugar of lead, but in the
main the sugars are plant products very similar in chemical structure to
the starches. They are very closely connected with plant growth, and
even in animal life, starchy substances are changed to sugar in the
process of digestion. Although sugar does not sustain life, it is
necessary as an adjunct to other food-stuffs, and it is probably
consumed by a greater number of people than any other food-stuffs except
starch and water.
Three kinds of sugar are found in commerce, namely--_cane_-sugar,
_grape_-sugar, and _milk_-sugar. Cane-sugar occurs in the sap of the
sugar-cane, sorghum-cane, certain of the palms, and the juice of the
beet. Grape-sugar is the sweet principle of most fruits and of honey.
Sugar of milk occurs in milk, and in several kinds of nuts.
=Sugar-Cane Sugar.=--Cane-sugar is so called because until recently it was
derived almost wholly from the sap of the sugar-cane (_Saccharum
officinarum_). The plant belongs to the grass family and much resembles
maize before the latter has matured. It is thought to be native to Asia,
but it is now cultivated in nearly all tropical countries in the world.
Practically every moist tropical region in the world, the basins of the
Kongo and Amazon Rivers excepted, is a cane-sugar-producing region. As
a rule it is grown in the states under native rule for home consumption,
and in European colonial possessions for commercial purposes. India and
China are probably the foremost in the production of sugar-cane sugar,
but the product is not exported. Cuba, Java, the Gulf coast of the
United States, Mauritius, the Philippine and the Hawaiian Islands
produce the most of the supply that enters into commerce.
=Beet-Sugar.=--During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the
demands for sugar increased so greatly that it became necessary either
to raise the price of the commodity, or else to utilize some plant other
than the sugar-cane as a source. After a few years of experimental work
it was found that sugar could be readily extracted from the juice of the
common beet (_Beta vulgaris_). Several varieties of this plant have been
improved and are now very largely cultivated for the purpose. Beet-sugar
and cane-sugar are identical.
Almost all the beet-sugar of commerce comes from northwestern Europe;
Germany leads with nearly one-third the world's product; France,
Austria, and Russia follow, each producing about one-sixth. A small
amount is produced in the United States--mainly in California and
Michigan. The area of production, however, is increasing.
=Other Cane-Sugars.=--Maple-sugar is derived from the sap of several
species of maple-trees occurring mainly in the northeastern United
States and in Canada. The sap is obtained by tapping the trees in early
spring, a single tree often yielding several gallons. The value of
maple-sugar lies mainly in its pleasant flavor. It is used partly as a
confection, but in the main as a sirup. A very large part of the
maple-sirup and not a little of the sugar is artificial, consisting of
ordinary sugar colored with caramel and flavored with an extract
prepared from the maple-tree.
Sorghum-sugar is obtained from a cane known as Chinese grass, or Chinese
millet. It has been introduced into the United States from southeastern
Asia and Japan. The sorghum-cane grows well in the temperate zone, and
its cultivation in the Mississippi Valley States has been successful.
The sugar is not easily crystallizable, however, and it is usually made
into table-sirup.
Maguey-sugar is derived from the sap of the maguey-plant (_Agave
Americana_). It is much used in Mexico and the Central American states.
The method of manufacture is very crude and the product is not exported.
Palm-sugar is obtained from the sap of several species of palm growing
in India and Africa.
=Sugar Manufacture.=--Sugar manufacture includes three
processes--expressing the sap, evaporating, and refining. The first two
are carried on at or near the plantations; the last is an affair
requiring an immense capital and a most elaborately organized plant. The
refining is done mainly in the great centres of population at places
most convenient for transportation. The raw sugar may travel five or ten
thousand miles to reach the refinery; the refined product rarely travels
more than a thousand miles.
After it has been cut and stripped of its leaves the sugar-cane is
crushed between powerful rollers in order to express the juice. The
sugar-beet is rasped or ground to a pulp and then subjected to great
pressure. The expressed juice contains about ten or twelve per cent. of
sugar. In some factories the beet, or the cane, is cut into thin slices
and thrown into water, the juice being extracted by the solvent
properties of the latter. This is known as the "diffusion" process.
The juice is first strained or filtered under pressure in order to
remove all foreign matter and similar impurities. It is then clarified
by adding slacked lime, at the same time heating the liquid nearly to
the boiling point and skimming off the impurities that rise to the
surface. The purified juice is then boiled rapidly in vacuum pans until
it is greatly concentrated.
When the proper degree of concentration is reached, the liquid is
quickly run off into shallow pans, in which most of it immediately
crystallizes. The crystalline portion forms the _raw sugar_ of commerce;
the remaining part is molasses. The whole mass is then shovelled into a
centrifugal machine which in a few minutes separates the two products.
In purchasing raw sugar, the refiner was formerly at a loss to know just
how much pure sugar could be made from a given weight of the raw sugar.
In order to aid in making a correct determination, the Dutch government
formerly prepared sixteen samples put up in glass flasks and sealed.
These samples varied in color according to the amount of pure sugar
contained. The pure solution was known in commerce as No. 16 Dutch
standard, and this was generally taken all over the world as the
standard of pure sugar. Within recent years the polariscope, an optical
instrument that determines the percentage of sugar by means of polarized
light, has largely replaced the Dutch standard.
The refineries, as a rule, are built with reference to a minimum
handling and transportation of the raw product. The cane-sugar
refineries are mainly at the great seaports, where the raw sugar does
not pay railway transportation. The beet-sugar refineries are in the
midst of the beet-growing districts. So nearly perfect and economically
managed are these processes, that raw sugar imported from Europe or
from the West Indies, at a cost of from two and a quarter to two and a
half cents per pound, is refined and sold at retail at about five cents.
The margin of profit is so very close, however, that in the United
States, as well as most European states, the sugar industry is protected
by government enactments. In the United States imported raw sugar pays a
tariff in order to protect the cane-sugar industry of the Gulf coast and
the beet-sugar grower of the Western States. The duty at the close of
the nineteenth century was about 1.66 cents per pound; or, if the sugar
came from a foreign country paying a bounty on sugar exported, an
additional countervailing duty equal to the bounty was also charged.
In the various states of western Europe the beet-sugar industry is
governed by a cartel or agreement among the states, which makes the
whole business a gigantic combination arrayed against the tropical sugar
interests. In general, the government of each state pays a bounty on
every pound of beet-sugar exported. The real effect of the export bounty
is about the same as the imposition of a tax on the sugar purchased for
consumption at home.
Two-thirds of the entire sugar product are made from the beet, at an
average cost of about 2.5 cents a pound. In the tropical islands the
yield of cane-sugar per acre is about double that of beet-sugar and it
is produced for about five dollars less per ton. This difference is in
part offset by the fact that the raw cane-sugar must pay transportation
for a long distance to the place of consumption, and in part by the
government bounties paid on the beet product.
Both the political and the economic effects of beet sugar-making have
been far-reaching. In Germany the agricultural interests of the country
have been completely reorganized. The uncertain profits of cereal
food-stuffs have given place to the sure profits of beet-sugar
cultivation, with the result that the income of the Germans has been
enormously increased. In the other lowland countries of western Europe
the venture has been equally successful. Even the Netherlands has
profited by it.
In the case of Spain, the result of beet-sugar cultivation was
disastrous. The price of cane-sugar in Cuba and the Philippine Islands
fell to such a low point that the islands could not pay the taxes
imposed by the mother country. Instead of lowering the taxes and
adjusting affairs to the changed conditions, the Spaniards drove the
islands into rebellion, and the latter finally resulted in war with the
United States, and the loss of the colonies. Great Britain wisely
adjusted her colonial affairs to the changed conditions, but the British
colonies suffered greatly from beet-sugar competition.
=Production and Consumption.=--The production and consumption of sugar
increased about sevenfold during the latter half of the nineteenth
century, the increase being due very largely to the decreased price.
Thus, in 1850, white (loaf) sugar was a luxury, retailing at about
twenty cents per pound; in 1870 the wholesale price of pure granulated
sugar was fourteen cents; in 1902 it was not quite five cents.
Although the tropical countries are greatly handicapped by the political
legislation of the European states, they cannot supply the amount of
sugar required, unless the area of production be greatly extended. It is
also certain that without governmental protection, sugar growing in the
temperate zone cannot compete with that of the tropical countries.
Of the eight million tons of sugar yearly consumed, two-thirds are
beet-sugar. The annual consumption per capita is about ninety pounds in
Great Britain, seventy pounds in the United States, and not far from
thirty-five pounds in Germany and France. In Russia and the eastern
European countries it is less than fifteen pounds.
=Molasses.=--The molasses of commerce is the uncrystallizable sugar that
is left in the vacuum pans at the close of the process of evaporation.
The molasses formerly known as "sugar house" is a filthy product that
nowadays is scarcely used, except in the manufacture of rum. The color
of molasses is due mainly to the presence of "caramel" or half-charred
sugar; it cannot be wholly removed by any ordinary clarifying process.
Purified molasses is usually known as "sirup," and much of it is made by
boiling a solution of raw sugar to the proper degree of concentration. A
considerable part is made from the sap of the sorghum-cane, and probably
a larger quantity consists of glucose solution colored with caramel.
Maple-sirup, formerly a solution of maple-sugar, is now very largely
made from raw cane-sugar clarified and artificially flavored.
=Glucose.=--Glucose, or grape-sugar, is the natural sugar of the grape and
most small fruits. Honey is a nearly pure, concentrated solution of
glucose. Grape-sugar has, roughly, about three-fifths the sweetening
power of cane-sugar. Natural grape-sugar is too expensive for ordinary
commercial use; the commercial product, on the other hand, is
artificial, and is made mainly from cornstarch.
Glucose is employed in the cheaper kinds of confectionery in the United
States; most of it, however, is exported to Great Britain, the annual
product being worth about four million dollars. From the fact that it
can be made more economically from corn than from any other grain,
practically all the glucose is made in the United States.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
It frequently happens that the prices of sugar and tin-plate rise and
fall together; show how the fruit-crop may cause this fluctuation.
Which of the possessions of the United States are adaptable for
cane-sugar?--for beet-sugar?
In what ways has the manufacture of sugar brought about international
complications?
What is meant by "Dutch Standard" tests?--by polariscope tests?
FOR REFERENCE AND STUDY
Obtain specimens of rock candy, granulated sugar, raw sugar, and
caramel; observe each carefully with a magnifying glass and note the
difference.
World's Sugar Production.
CHAPTER XV
FORESTS AND FOREST PRODUCTS
Outside the food-stuffs, probably no other material is more generally
used by human beings than the products of the forests. More people are
sheltered by wooden dwellings than by those of brick or stone, and more
people are warmed by wood fires than by coal. Even in steam-making a
considerable power is still produced by the use of wood for fuel.
Neither stone nor metal can wholly take the place of wood as a building
material; indeed, for interior fittings, finishings, and furniture, no
artificial substitute has yet been found that is acceptable. For such
purposes it is carried to the interior of continents and transported
across the oceans; and although the cost has enormously increased, the
demand has scarcely fallen off.
=Forest Areas.=--The great belts of forests girdle the land surface of the
earth. A zone of tropical forest forms a broad belt on each side of the
equator, but mainly north of it. This forest includes most of the
ornamental woods, such as mahogany, ebony, rosewood, sandal-wood, etc.
It also includes the most useful teak as well as the rubber-tree and the
cinchona. Another forest belt in the north temperate zone is situated
mainly between the thirty-fifth and fiftieth parallels. It traverses
middle and northern Europe and the northern United States.
This forest contains the various species of pine, cedar, and other
conifers, the oaks, maples, elms, birches, etc. Most of the forests of
western Europe have been greatly depleted, though those of Norway and
Sweden are still productive. The forests of the United States, extending
from Maine to Dakota, have been so wellnigh exhausted that by 1950 only
a very little good lumber-making timber will be left.
The destruction of forests has been most wasteful. When a forest-covered
region is settled, a large area is burnt off in order to clear the land
for cultivation. In many instances the fires are never fully
extinguished until the forest disappears. The timber of the United
States has been depleted not only by frequent fires but in various other
ways. The lumbermen take the best trees and these are cut into
building-lumber. The railways follow the lumbermen, cutting out
everything suitable for ties. The paper-makers vie with the tie-cutters,
and what is left is the plunder of the charcoal-burner.
=Forestry.=--In most of Europe the care of the remaining forests is
usually a government charge. Only a certain number of mature trees may
be removed each year, and many are planted for each one removed--in the
aggregate, several million each year. In the United States, where the
value of the growing timber destroyed by fire each year nearly equals
the national debt, not very much has been done to either check the
ravage or to reforest the denuded areas. Many of the States, however,
encourage tree-planting. In several, Arbor Day is a holiday provided by
law.
The general Government has established timber preserves in several
localities in the West. The State of New York has converted the whole
Adirondack region into a great preserve. Forest wardens and guards are
employed both to keep fires in check and to prevent the ravages of
timber thieves; excepting the State preserves however, the means of
prevention are inadequate for either purpose.
[Illustration: THE LUMBER INDUSTRY--A LOG JAM]
To be valuable for lumber of the best quality, a forest tree must be
"clear"; that is, it must be free from knots at least fifteen feet from
the ground. In the case of pines and cedars, the clear part of the trunk
must have a greater length. To produce such conditions, the trees must
grow thickly together, in order that the lower branches may not mature.
The growth of trees thus set is very slow. Isolated pine-trees will
reach the size large enough for cutting in about fifty years, but the
lumber will be practically worthless because of the knots. On the other
hand, pine forests with the trees so thickly set as to make a clear,
merchantable lumber require at least a century for maturity.[49] Oak
forests require a much greater period.
As a rule, the forest growths of the United States are found in the
areas characterized by sandy and gravelly soils. Thus, the glaciated
region of the United States and Canada for the greater part is
forest-covered. The sand barrens along the Atlantic coast usually are
forest areas. The older bottom-lands of most rivers are often
forest-covered, especially when their soil is coarse and sandy.
There are large areas, however, in both the United States and Europe,
that are treeless. In some instances this condition, without doubt,
resulted from the fires that annually burnt the grass. With the
cessation of the prairie fires, forest growths have steadily increased.
In other instances these areas are treeless because the seeds of trees
have never been planted there. The high plains at the eastern base of
the Rocky Mountains are an example. This region is deficient in the
moisture required to give young trees the vigorous start that will
carry them to maturity. Moreover, the westerly winds and the streams of
this region come from localities also deficient in forestry, and there
are therefore no seeds to be carried.
As a rule, the distribution of forests is effected by the winds and by
moving water. The prevailing westerly winds of the temperate zones have
carried many species eastward and have extended the forest areas in that
direction. Freshets, floods, and overflows have been even more active in
carrying seeds, sprouts, and even trees into new territories. Waves and
currents have likewise played a similar part. Wherever the soil of the
region into which the species have been carried is moist and nutritious,
the forest growth has usually extended.
=The Pine Family.=--The pine family includes the various species of pine,
tamarack, spruce, hemlock, fir, juniper, larch, cypress, and cedar. A
few members of the family thrive in the warmer parts of the temperate
zone, but for the greater part they flourish between the fortieth and
sixtieth parallels. Most of the species found in low latitudes are
mountain-trees. They constitute the greater part of the American and
Russian forests. The American pine forest is thought to be the largest
in the world.
The _white pine_ (_Pinus strobus_) is the most valuable member of the
family. Its value is due in part to the fact that the wood is soft,
clear, and easily worked, and in part to the accessibility of the
forests. Not much inroad has yet been made upon the great Russian
forest, owing to the fact that the timber is too far away from seaports
and water transportation. Rough lumber becomes too expensive for use
when transported by land, but it will stand the expense of shipment by
water many miles.
The _Georgia_ or _long-leafed pine_ (_Pinus palustris_) is also
commonly called _pitch pine_, _turpentine pine_, and _southern pine_; it
grows chiefly along the south Atlantic coast and in the northern
counties of Georgia. It is harder than white pine and makes excellent
flooring.
The _sugar pine_ (_Pinus lambertiana_) occurs mainly in Oregon and
California. The grain is fine and soft and the trees reach a large
girth.
The _loblolly pine_ (_Pinus taeda_) has a considerably larger area than
the Georgia pine, extending into Indian Territory. The _short-leaf pine_
(_Pinus echinata_) occurs in small areas from New York to the Gulf of
Mexico, and across to Missouri; it is the Chattahoochee pine of Florida.
The _pitch pine_ (_Pinus rigida_) occurs in various areas mainly north
of the Ohio River and west of the prairies. The lumber cut annually from
these pines aggregates about thirty billion feet.
The common _white cedar_ (_Chamaecyparis thyoides_) occurs along the
Atlantic and Gulf coasts nearly to the Mississippi. On account of its
fine grain it is much used in cabinet work and as a finishing wood. _Red
cedar_, probably a different species, occurs along the Atlantic coast.
It is largely used in the manufacture of lead-pencils, and the forests
are wellnigh exhausted.
The _redwoods_ are confined to the California coast, mainly in the coast
ranges, near the ocean. Ordinary redwood (_Sequoia sempervirens_)
resembles red cedar, is soft, and very fine in grain, and shrinks but
little in seasoning. It is a most valuable timber both for common and
for ornamental use. It very frequently attains a diameter of five or six
feet; the big tree sometimes exceeds sixteen feet in diameter and
reaches a height of nearly four hundred feet.
=Other Industrial Woods.=--The oaks, like the pines, form a nearly
continuous belt across the northern continents, lying mainly south of
the pines; they do not extend much south of the thirtieth parallel. The
white oak of the New England plateau and Canada commands a high price on
account of its strength; a considerable quantity is exported.
The "quartering" of the lumber used in ornamental work is produced by
sawing the logs, which have been split in quarters, so that the
silver-grain shows on the faces of the boards. The bark of the oak is
rich in tannic acid and it is much used in tanning leather. _Cork oak_
(_Quercus suber_) grows mainly in Spain and Algeria.
_Black walnut_ (_Juglans nigra_) grows in the river-bottoms of the
Mississippi Valley and in Texas. The merchantable supply is not great,
and the wood is therefore growing more valuable each year. _Hickory_ is
used where great strength is required, and also for various
tool-handles. _Maple_ is largely employed in making furniture. _Ash_ is
a very common wood for tool-handles.
=Shade-Trees and Ornamental Woods.=--A large number of trees are yearly
transplanted, or else grown from seed, to be used as ornamental
shade-trees. For this purpose the elm, maple, acacia ("locust"), linden
("lime"), catalpa, ash, horse-chestnut ("buckeye"), poplar, and willow
are most common in ordinary temperate latitudes, both in Europe and
America. In warmer latitudes the Australian eucalyptus ("red gum" and
"blue gum"), magnolia, palmetto, laurel, arbutus, and tulip are common.
The local trade in ornamental trees is very heavy; the trade is local
for the reason that the transportation of them is very expensive.
=Tropical Woods and Tree Products.=--Many of the tropical woods are in
demand on account of their beautiful appearance, and in many species
this quality is combined with strength and hardness. _Mahogany_ is
obtained from Mexico and the Central American states, and also from the
West Indies. The former is classed as "Honduras"; the latter is
generally known as San Domingo mahogany and commands the highest price.
_Rosewood_ is obtained from Brazil, and is used almost exclusively in
piano-cases. Both are cut into thin veneers, to be glued to a less
expensive body.
_Ebony_ is the heart of a species of persimmon obtained mainly in Ceylon
and the East Indies. Very little of the so-called ebony is genuine, most
of the ebony of commerce consisting of fine-grained hardwood, stained
black. _Jarrah_, an Australian wood, is now very generally used for
street-paving, and for this purpose it has no superior. _Teak_ probably
has no equal for strength and durability. It is not touched by the
teredo and other marine worms.
_Boxwood_ (_Buxus balearica_) is a high-growing tree, native to India,
but growing best in the islands of the Mediterranean. The wood is very
hard, of yellowish-brown color, and so fine in grain that it finds a
ready market in nearly every part of the world. Probably the larger part
is used by engravers. A large amount of the wood is also used in the
manufacture of folding-rules, and in inlaying. Constantinople is the
principal market, and nearly ten thousand tons of the selected wood are
sold yearly.
_Lignum vitae_, or _guaiac wood_ (_Guaiacum officinale_), grows profusely
in the West Indies and along the Spanish Main. It is used both in
medicine and in the arts. Shavings of the wood steeped in water were
once considered a cure-all, hence the name. The wood is very hard,
heavy, and is split with the greatest difficulty. It is therefore much
employed in making mallet-heads, tool-handles, nine-pin balls, and
pulley-blocks. In tropical countries it is employed for railway ties.
West India ports are the chief markets, and the United States is the
chief consumer.
[Illustration: A LOG RAFT, WINONA, WIS.]
[Illustration: HAULING LOGS TO THE RIVER]
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1898, Detroit Photographic Co._
THE LUMBER INDUSTRY--A LOGGING STREAM, MENOMINEE, WIS.]
_Logwood_ is the wood of a tree (_Haematoxylon campechianum_) growing in
Central America and the West Indies. The best quality comes from
Campeche, and it is marketed mainly from Central American ports. It is
almost universally used for dyeing the black of woollen and cotton
textiles, and logwood blacks are the standard of color-prints.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what structures has timber been supplanted by iron and steel?
In what manufactured article has timber supplanted the use of rags?
When a pine forest is cut away, what kinds of timber are apt to come up
in place of the pines?
In what manner does the railway draw upon the forests?--the
paper-maker?--the farmer?--the tanner?--the beaver?--the teredo, or
ship-worm?
From what country or countries do the following come: boxwood, rosewood,
sandal-wood, cinchona, bog oak, jarrah?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Make a list of the forestry growing in the State in which you live; so
far as possible, obtain a specimen of each wood, prepared so as to show
square, oblique, split, and polished sections; for what purpose, if any,
is each used?
Consult "Check-list of Forestry of the United States" (U.S. Department
of Agriculture).
CHAPTER XVI
SEA PRODUCTS AND FURS
The world's fish-catch amounts probably to more than one-quarter of a
billion dollars in value and employs upward of a million people; in the
United States 200,000 are employed. In some localities, such as the
oceanic islands, far distant from the grazing lands of the continents,
the flesh of fish is about the only fresh meat obtainable. Even on the
continents fish is more available and cheaper than beef. The
fish-producing areas pay no taxes; they require no cultivation;
moreover, they do not require to be purchased. In general, fish
supplements beef as an article of food; it is not a substitute for the
latter.
The whale-catch excepted, fish are generally caught in the shallow
waters of the continental coasts. The fish, in great schools, resort to
such localities at certain seasons, and the seasons in which they school
is the fisherman's opportunity. For the greater part, such shallows and
banks are spawning-places. Most of the fish, however, are caught off the
Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America, these localities being
nearest to the great centres of population.
=Whales.=--The whale is sought mainly in cold waters, and at the present
time the chief whaling-grounds are in the vicinity of Point Barrow. In
the first half of the nineteenth century whale-fishing was an industry
involving hundreds of vessels and a large aggregate capital. The
industry centred about New England seaports.
The train-oil obtained from the blubber of the animal was used partly
as a lubricant, but mainly for illuminating purposes. For this purpose,
however, it has been superseded by coal-oil, gas, and electricity. It is
still in demand as a lubricant, but the whale-oil of commerce is quite
as apt to come from the blubber of the porpoise or the sea-cow as from
the right whale. Whalebone is a horny substance taken from the animal's
jaw, and is worth from three dollars to eight dollars per pound. It is
used chiefly in the manufacture of whips. For other purposes, steel,
hard rubber, and celluloid have taken its place.
The substance called _spermaceti_ is derived from the sperm-whale, an
inhabitant of warm ocean-waters. Spermaceti is identical in its physical
properties with paraffine, and the latter is now almost universally its
substitute.
_Ambergris_, thought to be a morbid secretion or disease of the
sperm-whale, is found in the body cavity of the animal and also in
masses floating in the sea. It is used chiefly to give intensity to the
odor of perfumes, and the best quality brings as much as five dollars
per ounce. Most of the ambergris of commerce is obtained from the
neighborhood of the Bahama Islands.
=Cod.=--In the amount of the product the cod-fisheries are the most
important. The meat of the fish is not strong in flavor, and it is cured
with little expense. So valuable is the annual catch that the banks and
shallows which the schools frequent are governed by international
treaties.
The cod is a cold-water fish, and the fishing-grounds are confined to
rather high latitudes. The coast-waters of the Scandinavian peninsula
and the shores of the Canadian coast, especially the Banks of
Newfoundland, are the chief areas. The fishing-grounds of the Canadian
coast are closed to foreign vessels inside a three-mile limit; beyond
the limit they are occupied mainly by Canadian, French, and American
fishermen. By the terms of treaties foreign vessels may enter the
three-mile limit under restriction to purchase bait and food-supplies,
and to cure their fish.
A large part of the cod-catch is exported. Tropical countries buy much
of the product. In such countries it is more wholesome than meat; it is
cheaper; moreover, the salted cod will keep for an indefinite length of
time. A large part of the catch is sold to the Catholic states of Europe
and America, where during certain times the eating of the flesh of
animals is forbidden. Gloucester, Mass., London, England, and Trondhjem,
Norway, are great markets for salted fish. The oil from the liver of the
cod is much used in medicine.
=Herring, Alewives, and Sardine.=--The herring is a much smaller fish than
the cod, and, commercially, is much less important. They school in about
the same waters as the cod, but are caught at a different season,
gill-nets being usually employed. Practically no distinction is made
between full-grown herring and alewives of the same size. The fish are
usually cured by smoking, pickling, or salting, and in this form are
either exported or sold in interior markets.
The true sardine is found in latitudes a little farther south than the
schooling-grounds of the cod. The most important fisheries are along the
coasts of the Latin states of Europe. Sardine fishing is a great
industry all along the New England coast of the United States, but the
"sardines" marketed from this region are young herring. Indeed, nearly
all sorts of small fry are sold in boxes bearing spurious French labels.
=Salmon.=--Most of the salmon are caught in the rivers flowing into the
North Pacific Ocean. The fish are caught in traps and weirs at the time
of the spring run, when they ascend the river to spawn. The rivers are
frequently so congested with the salmon that thousands of tons are
caught in a single stream during the run.
The salmon canneries of the Columbia River are very extensive
establishments, but in the past few years they have been surpassed by
the Alaskan fisheries, which produce not far from fifty million pounds
each year. The dressed fish is cooked by steam, canned, and exported to
all parts of the world. The growth and development of the industry has
also made an enormous demand on the tin mines of the world. Canned
salmon is the largest fish export of the United States. There are
extensive salmon-fisheries in Norway, Japan, and Russia.
=Other Fish.=--_Mackerel_ and _haddock_ are caught near the shores of the
North Atlantic. Most of the mackerel-catch is pickled in brine and sold
in small kegs known as "kits." The _menhaden_-catch of the North
Atlantic is converted into fertilizer. The _halibut_ is a large fish
that is rarely preserved. The area in which it is caught is about the
same as that of the cod. _Shad_ are usually caught when ascending the
rivers of the middle Atlantic coast. In the United States, Chesapeake,
Delaware, and New York Bays yield the chief supply. The _bluefish_ and
_barracuda_ are warm-water fish. The market for fresh fish has been
greatly enlarged by the use of refrigerator-cars.
The _sturgeon_ is captured mainly in the rivers and lakes of the
temperate zone. Those of the Black Sea sometimes attain a weight of
2,000 pounds. The flesh is of less importance than the eggs, of which
caviare is made. Russian caviare is sold all over Europe and America,
and not a small part of the product is made in Maine. The caviare made
from the roe of the Delaware River sturgeon is exported to Germany. The
_tunny_ is confined to Mediterranean waters.
The _anchovy_ is caught on the coast of Europe; most of the product is
preserved, or made into the well-known "anchovy sauce." The
_beche-de-mere_, or "sea cucumber," is a product of Australasian and
Malaysian waters. Almost the whole catch is purchased by the Chinese,
and it is exported to all countries having a Chinese population.
=Oysters and Lobsters.=--The oyster is among the foremost sea products of
the United States in value. The oyster thrives best in moderately warm
and sheltered waters. The coves and estuaries along the middle Atlantic
coast produce the best in the world. Chesapeake Bay and Long Island
Sound yield the greater part of the output. In the latter waters
elaborate methods of propagation are carried out, and the yearly crop is
increasing both in quality and quantity. The output of the Chesapeake
beds has decreased materially; that of the Long Island Sound beds has
increased.
Oysters are plentiful along the Pacific coast of the United States and
also in European coast-waters, but they are inferior in size and
quality. The use of refrigerator-cars and vessels has extended the trade
to the extent that fresh oysters are shipped to points 2,000 miles
inland; they are also exported to Europe. Baltimore is the chief
oyster-market.
The consumption of the lobster has been so great that the catch of the
New England coast has decreased about one-half in the past fifty years,
and the United States is now an importer. Most of the import, amounting
to about one million dollars yearly, comes from Canada. The so-called
lobsters of the Pacific coast of the United States are not lobsters, but
crayfish.
=Fish Hatcheries.=--The demand for fish has grown so great in past years
that in many countries the waters, especially the lakes and rivers, are
restocked. The eggs are hatched and the young fry are fed until they
are large enough to take care of themselves. The chief hatchery and
laboratory of the United States Fish Commission is at Woods Holl, Mass.
As many as 860,000,000 eggs, small fry, and adult fish have been
distributed in a single year. The State of New York has also a similar
department for restocking its waters.
=Sponge.=--This substance is practically the skeleton of a low order of
animal, growing at the bottom of the sea. The sponge is cut from the
place of attachment, and the gelatinous matter is washed away after
putrefaction. The chief sponge-fisheries are in the neighborhood of
Florida and the Bahama Islands.
=Seal.=--The fur-seal is an amphibian, found only in cold waters. A few
pelts are obtained along the Greenland coast, but the chief
sealing-grounds of the world have been at the Pribilof Islands, in
Bering Sea. The pelts of the young males only are taken. The rookeries
of the Pribilof Islands have been so nearly exhausted, that the killing
season has been suspended for a term of years. Much illicit
seal-catching is still going on, however.
The skins are taken to London, via San Francisco, where the fur is dyed
a rich brown color; London is the chief market for dyed pelts; San
Francisco for raw pelts; and New York, Paris, and St. Petersburg for
garments. The pelts of the sea-otter are obtained mainly in the North
Pacific Ocean.
=Other Furs.=--The furs employed in the finest garments are in part the
pelts of land animals living in polar regions. The sable, stone-marten,
otter, beaver, and red fox are the most valuable. The Persian lamb,
however, is not a polar animal. The Russian Empire and Canada are the
chief sources of supply. The Hudson Bay Company, with head-quarters at
Fort Garry, near Winnipeg, controls most of the fur-trade of North
America; the Russian furs are marketed mainly at Lower Novgorod.
Leipzig, Germany, is also an important fur-market.
Enormous quantities of rabbit-skins from Australia and nutria from
Argentina are imported into the United States and Europe for the
manufacture of the felt of which hats are made. The amount of this
substance may be realized when one considers that not far from two
hundred million people in the two countries wear felt hats.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Note an instance in which the search for deep-sea fishing-grounds has
resulted in the discovery of unknown lands.
Why are not whale products as essential now as a century ago?
What international complications have arisen between the United States
and Great Britain concerning the cod-fisheries?--the seal-catch?
[Illustration: NORTH AMERICA]
CHAPTER XVII
THE UNITED STATES--THE SEAPORTS AND THE ATLANTIC COAST-PLAIN
The United States of America together with the possessions included
within the domain of the Republic comprise an area somewhat greater than
that of Europe.
With respect to latitude, the position of the main body of the United
States is extremely fortunate. Practically all its area is situated in
the warmer half of the temperate zone. Only a small part lies beyond the
northern limit of the corn belt; wheat, oats, and barley are cultivated
successfully throughout four-fifths of its extent in latitude; grass,
and therefore cattle and sheep are grown in nearly every part. Coal,
iron, copper, gold, and silver, the minerals and metals which give to a
nation its greatest material power, exist in abundance, and the
successful working of these deposits have placed the country upon a very
high commercial plane.
Topographically the United States may be divided into the following
regions:
The Atlantic Coast-Plain,
The Appalachian Ranges and the New England Plateau,
The Basin of the Great Lakes,
The Northern Mississippi Valley Region,
The Southern Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast,
The Arid Plains,
The Plateau Region,
The Pacific Coast Lowlands.
[Illustration: A HARBOR--NEW YORK BAY, AT THE BATTERY]
The topographic and climatic features of these various regions have had
a great influence not only on the political history of the country, but
their effect has been even greater in determining its industrial
development. They have resulted in the establishment of the various
industries, each in the locality best adapted to it, instead of their
diffusion without respect to the necessary conditions of environment.
The foregoing regions are also approximately areas of fundamental
industries. Thus, the New England plateau supplies the rest of the
United States with light manufactures, such as cotton textiles, woollen
clothing, hats, shoes, cutlery, books, writing-paper, household metal
wares, etc., but sells the excess abroad. The middle and southern
Appalachians, with the coal which forms their chief resource, supply the
rest of the country with structural steel, from ores obtained in the
lake regions, and sell the excess to foreign countries.
The northern Mississippi Valley grows nearly one-fourth of the world's
wheat-crop. The wheat of this region and the Pacific coast lowlands
supplies the country with bread-stuffs, and exports the excess to
western Europe. The Gulf states, which produce three-fourths of the
world's cotton-crop, supply the whole country and about one-half the
rest of the world besides with cotton textiles. The grazing regions
produce an excess of meat for export; the western highlands furnish the
gold and silver necessary to carry on the enormous commerce.
In the last twenty years the imports of merchandise per capita varied
but little from $11.50; the exports per capita varied from about $12 to
more than $18.
=The Atlantic Coast-Plain and the Seaports.=--Throughout most of its
extent the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is bordered by a low
coast-plain. Along the northeastern coast of the United States the
coast-plain is very narrow; south of New York Bay it has a width in
some places of more than two hundred miles.
The existence of this plain has had a marked effect on the commercial
development of the country. The sinking or "drowning" of the northern
part of it has made an exceedingly indented coast. The drowned valleys,
enclosed by ridges and headlands, form the best of harbors, and nearly
all of them are northeast of New York Bay. South of New York Bay good
harbors are comparatively few. For the greater part they occur only when
old, buried river-channels permit approach to the shore.
The most important port of entry in these harbors is _New York_, and it
derives its importance from two factors. It has a very capacious harbor,
into which vessels drawing as much as thirty-five feet may enter; its
situation at the lower end of a series of valleys and passes makes it
almost a dead level route from the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard.
The importance of New York as the commercial gateway between European
ports and the food-producing region of the American continent began when
the Erie Canal was opened between the Great Lakes and tide-water. The
completion of the canal for the first time opened the rich farming lands
of the interior to European markets. Probably a greater tonnage of
freight is carried yearly over this route than over any other channel of
trade in the world.
Not far from two-thirds of the foreign commerce of the country passes
through the port of New York. The water-front of the city has an
aggregate length of about three hundred miles, of which one-third is
available for anchorage. The docks and piers, including those of Jersey
City and Hoboken, aggregate about ninety miles in frontage.
About sixteen thousand sea-going craft enter and clear yearly, and an
average of nearly twenty large passenger and freight steamships arrive
and clear daily, about one-half of them being foreign. The latter
receive their cargoes from about three thousand freight-cars that are
daily switched into the various freight-yards, a large part of which is
through freight from the west.
The port of entry of _New York_ is a centre of population of about four
million, and although there are the industries usually found in great
communities, the greater business enterprises practically reduce
themselves to export, import, and exchange. For this reason New York
City is the financial, as well as the commercial centre of the
continent. Most of the great industrial corporations of the country have
their head offices in the city. These are financed by more than one
hundred banks, together with a clearing-house whose yearly business
amounted in 1902 to considerably more than seventy billions of
dollars.[50]
[Illustration: BOSTON HARBOR]
_Boston_ has been one of the leading ports of the United States for
considerably more than a century. It ranks second among the ports of the
United States. Regular lines of transit connect it with the principal
ports of Great Britain and Canada. The coast trade is also very heavy.
Boston is the financial and commercial centre of New England; the
cotton, woollen, and leather goods passing through the port find their
way to nearly every inhabited part of the world. The city controls a
considerable export trade of food-stuffs from the upper Mississippi
Valley. The vessels entering and clearing at Boston indicate a movement
of about four million five hundred thousand tons, about one-fourth that
of New York. The clearing-house exchanges average about six billion
dollars yearly.
_Philadelphia_, on account of its distance inland, is not fortunately
situated for ocean commerce. Steamships of deep draught reach their
docks at the lower end of the city under their own steam, but
sailing-craft pay heavy towage fees. There are regular lines to
Liverpool, Antwerp, West Indian ports, Baltimore, and Boston.
Philadelphia is the centre of the anthracite coal trade, and this is the
chief factor of its domestic trade. The imports of fruit from the West
Indies, carpet-wool from Europe, and raw sugar from the West Indies,
form the greater part of its foreign business. The manufactures are
mainly carpets and rugs, locomotives and iron steamships, and refined
sugar. The carpet-weaving and the ship-building plants are among the
largest in the world. The ocean movement of freight is more than three
million five hundred thousand tons yearly. The business of the
clearing-house in 1902 aggregated nearly six billion dollars.
_Baltimore_ is likewise handicapped by its distance inland.
Sailing-vessels, however, require only a short towage, the docks being
scarcely a dozen miles from Chesapeake Bay. The harbor is deep and
capacious. The Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio railway systems have
made Baltimore an important railway centre. The completion of the Gould
railway system to the Atlantic seaboard has made the city second to New
York only in the export of corn, wheat, flour, and tobacco. The most
noteworthy local industry is the oyster product, which is the greatest
in the world. Nearly ten thousand people are employed, and during the
busy season--from September to the end of April--about thirty carloads
of oysters a day are shipped.
[Illustration: CHARLESTON HARBOR]
The yearly movement of marine freight, entering and clearing, aggregates
about three million tons. In 1902 the clearing-house exchanges
aggregated about two and one-quarter billion dollars.
_Portland_, Me., has good harbor facilities, but is distant from the
great lines of traffic. Steamship lines, which in summer make Montreal a
terminal point, occasionally make Portland their winter harbor. _Newport
News_, _Savannah_, _Charleston_, and _Brunswick_ are growing in
importance as clearing ports for the cotton and produce from the region
west of them. _Norfolk_ obtains importance on account of the United
States Navy-Yard; it is also the great peanut-market of the world.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the requisites of a good seaport?
What is meant by the draught of a vessel?
For what purposes are pilots?
How are navigable channels marked and designated?
From the Statistical Abstract find six or more of the leading exports
from each of the following ports: New York, Boston, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and the port nearest which you live.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Statistical Abstract of the United States.
Statesman's Year-Book.
Industrial Evolution of the United States--Chapter II.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE UNITED STATES--THE NEW ENGLAND PLATEAU AND THE APPALACHIAN REGION
The manufacturing regions of the United States, which connect the
country with the rest of the world, include mainly the New England
plateau and the Appalachian ranges.
=The New England Plateau.=--This region embraces the New England States
and practically includes all the eastern part of New York and northern
New Jersey. The abruptly sloping surface affords a great wealth of
water-power, and the region is one of the most important centres of
light manufacture in the world. This industry resulted very largely from
the conditions imposed by the War of 1812 and its consequent
non-intercourse acts.
The interruption of foreign commerce not only cut off the importation of
manufactured commodities, but also made idle the capital employed.
Manufacturing enterprises started in various parts of the United States,
but they prospered in this region for three reasons--an abundance of
power, plenty of capital, and business experience. Steam-power is
largely supplanting water-power in the manufacturing enterprises, and in
many instances the establishments have been moved to tide-water in order
to get their coal at the lowest rates of transportation.
Chief among the manufactures are cotton textiles, the yearly output of
which is about three hundred million dollars. About nine-tenths of the
cotton goods made are consumed at home. Of the remainder, China
purchases one-half. Great Britain and Canada take one-fourth, the South
American and Central American states purchase most of the remaining
output. The great improvement of spinning and weaving machinery has
enabled the cotton manufacturer to export his wares to about every
country in the world.
Boots, shoes, and other leather goods are also important manufactures.
The invention of improved machinery for making shoes has revolutionized
the industry to the extent that a pair of stylish shoes may be purchased
anywhere in the United States for about half the price charged in 1880.
Another result is the enormous importation of hides from South American
countries and Mexico.
The New England plateau is also the centre of a large number of
manufactures that require a high degree of mechanical skill and
intellectual training, such as small fire-arms, machinery, watches and
clocks, jewelry, machine-tools, etc. The location of such industries
depends but little upon climate, topography, or the cost of
transportation; it is wholly a question of an educated and trained
people. This region is likely to lose a considerable part of its
manufactures of cotton textiles, inasmuch as the industry is gradually
moving to the cotton-growing region. The manufactures requiring training
and skill, however, are likely to remain in the region where they have
grown up.
_Lawrence_, _Lowell_, _Manchester_, and _Nashua_--all on the Merrimac
River; _Lewiston_, _Waterville_, _Augusta_, _Woonsocket_, and
_Adams_--each situated at falls or rapids--are great centres of cotton
manufacture. Fall River has an abundance of water-power, and at the same
time is situated on tide-water. Having the advantage of good power and
cheap transportation, it has probably the greatest output of cotton
textiles of any city in the world. Textile establishments have also
grown up in the cities and towns of the Mohawk Valley, being attracted
by the excellent facilities for transportation and also by the available
water-power. _Lynn_, _Brockton_, _Haverhill_, _Marlboro_, and
_Worcester_ are centres of boot and shoe manufacture; they turn out
about two-thirds of the product of the United States.
_Bridgeport_ and _New Haven_ have very large plants for the manufacture
of fire-arms and fixed ammunition; _Waterbury_ and _Ansonia_ for
watches, clocks, and brass goods; _Meriden_ for silverware, and
_Waltham_ for watches. _Worcester_, _Hartford_, _North Adams_,
_Fitchburg_, and _Providence_ have each a great variety of manufactures.
The foreign commerce of these manufacturing centres is carried on mainly
through _Boston_. _New Haven_, _New Bedford_, _Providence_, _Salem_,
_Gloucester_, and _New London_ control each a very large local commerce.
South of New York Bay the Atlantic coast-plain attains an average width
of nearly two hundred miles. The pine forests of this plain yield
lumber, tar, pitch, and turpentine. The productive lands are valuable
chiefly for their output of dairy stuffs, fruit, and "garden truck,"
which find a ready market in the larger cities. In order to encourage
this industry, the railways make special rates for dairy products,
fruit, and vegetables, and afford quick transit for such freight.
Manufacturing industries are rapidly taking shape in this part of the
United States. Along the line where the coast-plain proper joins the
foot-hills of the Appalachian ranges, the rivers reach the lower levels
by rapids or falls. The estuaries into which they flow are usually
navigable for river-craft. The manufacturer thus has the double
advantage of water-power and low transportation. The opening of the
southern Appalachian coal-mines has also greatly encouraged manufacture
in this region. _Richmond_, _Columbia_, _Milledgeville_, _Augusta_, and
_Columbus_ are thus situated. Their manufactures are very largely
connected with the cotton-crop.
The domestic commerce of the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is
probably larger than that of any other similar region in the world. It
is considerably larger than the "round-the-island" trade of Great
Britain. Much of this trade is carried by steam-vessels, but the
three-masted schooner is everywhere in evidence, and these craft carry a
very large part of the coal that is moved by water. This trade is
restricted to vessels flying the American flag.
=The Appalachian Region.=--The middle and southern Appalachian region has
become the most important centre of iron and steel manufacture in the
world. This great development has resulted from several causes, the
chief being the existence of coal and unlimited quantities of iron ore
on the one hand, and unusual facilities for cheap transportation on the
other. There are practically three areas of steel manufacture--one along
the Ohio River and its tributaries in western Pennsylvania; another is
situated along the south shores of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan; the
third includes the Birmingham district in the southern Appalachians.
The steel-making plants of the Ohio River are located with reference to
the transportation of their products, and therefore are built usually
alongside the river. The coal or coke is commonly shipped in barges of
light draught; the manufactured products are carried by rail. The
greater part of the ore is brought from the Lake Superior region. It is
shipped at a very small cost from the ore quarries to the lake-shore,
and by rail from the lake-shore to the manufacturing plant. In order to
avoid heavy grades the ore railways are also built along the
river-valleys.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--ERECTING SHOP OF THE BALDWIN
LOCOMOTIVE WORKS, PHILADELPHIA]
Some of the various steel-making plants are equipped for the
manufacture of building or "structural" steel, others for rails and
railway equipments, still others for tin-plate, or for wire, or for tool
steel. In a few mills armor-plate and ordinary plate for steel vessels
form the exclusive product. The diversity of the product has led to the
organization of great corporations, each of which controls half-a-dozen
or more plants, the transportation lines necessary to carry the product,
the ore quarries, and the fuel-mines.
The wonderful development of the steel industry in the United States is
due to the use of labor-saving machinery, and to the superb
organization. The wages paid for labor are higher than those paid in
European steel-making centres; the cost of living is not materially
greater. The price of steel rails, which in 1880 was forty-eight dollars
per ton, in 1900 was about twenty dollars per ton.
_Pittsburg_, together with _Homestead_, _Carnegie_, _McKeesport_,
_Duquesne_, and _Braddock_, is the chief steel-making centre of the Ohio
River Valley. There are also large plants at _New Castle_, _Sharon_,
_Scranton_, _Johnstown_, _Bellaire_, _Youngstown_, _Mingo Junction_, and
_Wheeling_. The steel-plant and rolling-mills at _South Bethlehem_ are
designed especially for the manufacture of the heavy ordnance used in
the army and navy. Nearly all the cities and towns of Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, and eastern Ohio carry on manufacturing enterprises that
depend on coal mining and steel manufacture. The great and diversified
manufactures of Philadelphia are due to its fortunate situation at
tide-water, near the coal-mines. Cheap fuel and water transportation
have made it one of the great industrial centres of the world.
The anthracite coal of this region is used wholly for fuel and
steam-making; it is shipped partly by water from Philadelphia, but
mainly in specially constructed cars to the various points of
consumption. The soft coal is used also for fuel and steam-making, but a
large part of the product is converted into coke and used in the
steel-plants.
The petroleum of this region is a leading export of the country, the
states of western Europe being the chief purchasers. Of agricultural
products, hay, dairy products, and tobacco are the only ones of
importance. Natural gas is used both as a fuel and in manufactures.
The lake-shore centre of steel manufacture depends largely on the low
cost of transporting the iron ore, which in part is offset by the
increased cost of coal. The low cost of shipping the manufactured
product over nearly level trunk lines is a very substantial gain. _South
Chicago_, _Toledo_, _Sandusky_, _Lorain_, _Cleveland_, _Ashtabula_,
_Conneaut_, _Erie_, and _Buffalo_ are centres of steel manufacture or
ore shipment, because they are situated on this great trade-route or
line of least resistance.
The coal-mines and iron-making plants of the southern Appalachians have
a considerable area. The chief manufacturing centres are _Birmingham_,
_Richmond_, _Roanoke_, and _Chattanooga_. A considerable part of the
Virginia ores find their way to the Ohio River steel-mills. Open-hearth
steel is an important manufacture in Birmingham. A large part of the
ores smelted in the southern Appalachian region are made into foundry
iron.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the advantages and the disadvantages of manufacturing cotton
textiles in the New England States?
Why have the mining of ore and the manufacture of steel become generally
unprofitable in the New England States?
What causes have brought about the lowering of the prices of cotton
textiles during the past fifty years?--of shoes?
What makes the manufacture of artificial ice a precarious business north
of the latitude of Philadelphia?
What are the advantages and the disadvantages arising from the location
of a manufacturing industry at a seaport?
What is the design of a protective tariff? What are its advantages and
disadvantages?
Why are most of the great steel-making plants so remote from the mines
of iron ore used in making steel?
FOR COLLATERAL READING
Industrial Evolution of the United States--Chapters III-V.
Mineral Resources of the United States.
Outlines of Political Science--Chapters VIII-X.
CHAPTER XIX
THE UNITED STATES--THE BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES AND THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY
The principal agricultural region of the United States extends from the
Appalachian ranges to the Rocky Mountains. A certain amount of
bread-stuffs, meat, and dairy products are grown in nearly every part of
the country for local use, but the grain, meat, and cotton of this
region are designed for export, and are therefore factors in the world's
commerce. The basin of the Great Lakes connects the Mississippi Valley
with the Atlantic seaboard.
=The Basin of the Great Lakes.=--This region includes not only the Great
Lakes and the area drained by the streams flowing into them, but also a
considerable region surrounding that commercially is tributary to the
traffic passing over the lakes. This basin itself is a part of a
trade-route destined very shortly to become one of the greatest highways
of traffic in the world.
The lakes afford a navigable water-way which, measured due east and
west, aggregates nearly six hundred miles. This route is interrupted at
Niagara Falls and at St. Mary's Falls, between Lake Superior and Lake
Huron. On the Canadian side, Welland Canal, Lake Ontario, and the St.
Lawrence connect Lake Erie with tide-water. In the United States the
Erie Canal connects the lake with the Hudson River and New York Bay.
From the head of Lake Superior railway routes of minimum grades--the
Great Northern and the Northern Pacific[51]--cross the continent to
Puget Sound, the best harbor approach to the Pacific coast of the
American continent. The harbors of Puget Sound, moreover, are materially
nearer the great Asian ports than any other port of the United States.
The level margins of these lakes are roadbeds for many miles of railway
track; in many instances the railways are built on the tops of terraces
that once were shores of the lakes.
[Illustration: DULUTH]
_Duluth_, at the head of Lake Superior, became commercially important
when the St. Mary's Falls Canal was completed. Much of the tremendous
tonnage of freight passing through the canal is assembled at this place.
The freight shipped consists mainly of farm products collected from an
area reaching as far west as the Rocky Mountains. There is also a
considerable shipment of iron ores obtained near by. _Buffalo_, at the
lower end of Lake Erie, owes its activity to the trade in lumber, grain,
and other farm products that come from Western lake-ports. It is the
eastern terminus of the lake-commerce and the western terminus of the
Erie Canal.
_Chicago_, at the head of Lake Michigan, has a very heavy lake-trade.
The mouth of Chicago River, the natural harbor of the city, has been
improved by a system of basins and breakwaters. The river itself has
been converted into a ship and drainage canal that is connected with the
Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. It is now an outlet instead of a feeder
to the lake, and the city built about old Fort Dearborn has become the
greatest railway centre in the world.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF LOCKS AND CANAL, SAULT STE. MARIE]
_Milwaukee_ has a situation in many ways resembling that of Chicago,
its harbor being the mouth of Milwaukee River. Like Chicago, it owes its
importance to its lake-trade. _Detroit_ (with _Windsor_, Ont.) owes its
growth partly to its strategic position on the strait connecting Lake
Huron and Lake Erie, and partly for its position between the lakes. It
is an important collecting and distributing point for lake-freights, and
the chief centre of commerce with Canada. Several east-and-west trunk
lines and local lines of railway have freight terminals in the city; it
is also the centre of the most complete system of interurban electric
railways in the world. _Port Huron_ (with _Sarnia_, Ont.) has a
geographic position similar to that of Detroit, and is also an important
lake-port. The St. Clair River is tunnelled at this point. _Cleveland_,
_Toledo_, _Sandusky_, and _Erie_ contribute very largely to the
lake-trade. _Grand Rapids_ is the business centre of furniture
manufacture of the United States.
The great iron-ore ranges about Lake Superior have had much to do with
the growth of the local lake-trade. This has resulted in the
establishment of a large number of shipping-ports near the head of the
lakes, and also a number of receiving ports on the south shores of Lake
Erie and Lake Michigan. Some of the latter have become also great
manufacturing centres of structural iron and steel.
Various centres of industry at a considerable distance from the Great
Lakes are contributors to their trade. Thus, on account of the low rate
for grain between _Chicago_ and _New York City_--about 5-1/4 cents per
bushel--there are yearly very heavy shipments of the grain designed for
Liverpool. _St. Paul_ and _Minneapolis_ are also collecting and
distributing centres of lake-freights. A considerable part of the
business of the lake-region is carried on by the Canadians, who have
improved their resources for production and transportation to the
utmost.
[Illustration: _Copyright, Detroit Photographic Co._
AURORA IRON MINES, IRONWOOD, MICHIGAN]
=The Northern Mississippi Valley Region.=--This region extends from the
Appalachian ranges to the western limit of wheat and cotton growing. On
the south it is limited by the cotton-growing region. Its boundaries are
therefore climatic and commercial.
The surface is level; there is a rich, deep soil and an abundant
rainfall. It has therefore become one of the foremost regions of the
world in the production of corn, wheat, pork, dairy-stuffs, and general
farm produce. The evolution of farming machinery is the direct result of
topographic conditions. A level, fertile region naturally invites
grain-farming on a large scale. This, in turn, must depend very largely
on the ability of the farmer to plant and harvest his crops with the
minimum of expense and time.
Hand-work in harvesting and planting has almost wholly given way to
machine-work. Farming carried on under such conditions requires not only
a considerable capital, but close business management as well. Some of
the results have been very far-reaching. The machinery and other
equipments require capital, and this in late years has been borrowed
from Eastern capitalists. The prompt business methods of the
money-lender brought about no little friction, and it is only within
recent years that each adjusted himself to the requirements of the
other.
The system of machine-farming to a great extent has prevented the
subdivision of farms. As a rule, quarter and half sections represent the
size of most of the farms, but tracts varying from five thousand to ten
thousand acres are by no means uncommon. The chief drawback to this
method in the case of wheat-farming, however, is the low yield per acre.
The average yield per acre for the United States, a little more than
twelve bushels, is scarcely half the average yield in Europe. Although
the farmer has done much to reorganize his business methods, he has done
but little to maintain the productivity of his land.
[Illustration: THE WHEAT INDUSTRY--HARVESTING WITH McCORMICK
SELF-BINDING REAPERS]
The cities and towns of this region are mainly receiving and collecting
points for farm produce. Nearly every village is equipped with elevators
and grain-handling machinery; the larger towns, as a rule, have
stock-yards and the necessary facilities for cattle shipment; the large
cities are usually centres of meat-packing. Most of the meat-packing is
a necessity; for although cattle may be shipped alive and beef may be
transported in refrigerator ships and cars, pork is not marketable
unless pickled, salted, or smoked. The pork thus exported, aggregating
about six hundred million pounds yearly, must be prepared, therefore,
somewhere near the cornfields. Manufacturing enterprises are operated on
a very large scale, but in the main their products are farm-machinery
and the commodities required by a farming population.
Education in agriculture is provided for in nearly every State in the
Union. The agricultural colleges in the States composing this group rank
among the best in the world. In addition to the ordinary courses in such
institutions, there are also many experiment stations for the study of
economic plants, cattle diseases, and insect pests.
_Chicago_ is the largest food-market in the world. The industries of the
city are almost wholly connected with the commerce of grain, pork, meat,
and other food-stuffs. For the transportation of these commodities about
thirty great trunk lines enter the city and about twelve hundred
passenger trains daily arrive and depart from its stations.
The freight terminals are connected by transfer and belt lines, which
receive and distribute the cars passing between the eastern and the
western roads. More than five hundred freight trains, aggregating about
twenty thousand cars, arrive and depart daily.
_St. Louis_ originally derived its importance as a river-port of the
Mississippi, having been the connecting commercial link between the
upper and the lower river. In recent years it has become the metropolis
of the southern part of the food-producing region. In addition to the
river-trade, still largely controlled at this point, it is the focus of
more than twenty trunk lines of railway. Some of these, like the trunk
lines of Chicago, handle freight exchanged between the East and West;
but a large proportion are receiving and distributing roads for Southern
freight.
[Illustration: AUTOMOTIVE POWER IN THE INDUSTRIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY]
_St. Paul_ and _Minneapolis_ are the metropolis of the upper
Mississippi. The former grew from a trading-post at the head of
navigation; the latter gained its commercial prominence from the
water-power at the falls of St. Anthony. The former has become the chief
railway and distributing centre of the northern Mississippi Valley; the
latter has the greatest flour-mills in the world, and an extensive
lumber-trade. Both are situated on the trade-route between the United
States and Asian ports, and distribute a part of the trade that comes
from them.
The two _Kansas Cities_,[52] _Omaha_, _South Omaha_, and _Sioux City_
are stock-markets and meat-packing centres. The first two named are
collecting and distributing points not only for the Mississippi Valley,
but also for a considerable share of the Pacific Coast trade. Kansas
City is also a transfer station for the cotton destined for China. From
this place it is sent by way of Billings to Seattle, and thence shipped
to China.
_Cincinnati_ is the metropolis of the Ohio Valley. Its situation on a
bend of the river gives most excellent landing facilities; the easy
grade from the bluff to the bottom-lands along the flood-plain of Mill
Creek makes it accessible to the railways that enter the city. On
account of low rates of transportation by river-barges, about three
million tons of coal and one million tons of pig-iron and steel billets
are floated to the city to be manufactured into other steel products.
_Indianapolis_ is a great railway centre, where much of the freight
passing between Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg is
exchanged. _Columbus_ (O.) is similarly situated as a railway and
farming centre.
[Illustration: CATTLE AND DAIRY PRODUCTS]
_Louisville_ is a market of the tobacco region, and has probably a
larger business in this industry than any other city in the world.
_Davenport_, _Rock Island_, and _Moline_ form a single commercial
centre, the last-named having the largest establishment for the
manufacture of ploughs in the world. _Dubuque_, _Burlington_, _Quincy_,
and _Muscatine_ are river-ports, all having a considerable trade in the
lumber that is carried down the river.
=The Southern Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast.=--This region receives a
generous warmth and rainfall. Cotton is its staple product, and nearly
all the industries are connected with the growth, shipment, and
manufacture of the crop and its side products. The cotton, raw or
manufactured, is sold in about every country in the world.
The commercial part of handling the cotton-crop begins within a very
few weeks from the time of the first picking. The baled cotton is hauled
by team from the plantation to the nearest market-town, an item
sometimes greater than the entire freightage from the nearest seaport to
Liverpool.
The season for export lasts from September until the middle of January,
during which time brokers are visiting the smaller markets in order to
buy it on commission. It is then shipped by rail or by river to the
nearest general market, where it is sold to the foreign buyers and
domestic manufacturers.
_New Orleans_, the metropolis of the South, has usually the heaviest
export of cotton, amounting to about one billion pounds each year. Much
of this is received by water from the various river-ports. The city is
not only a river-port, but an important seaport as well, controlling a
large part of the foreign commerce of the Gulf. Several trunk lines of
railway enter the city, which is a receiving and distributing depot for
both Atlantic and Pacific freights. A considerable part of the former
are sent by ocean steamships from New York. An elaborate system of
sewerage, well-paved streets, and a good water-supply--all recently put
into operation--have made the city one of the most attractive in the
United States.
_Galveston_ is destined to become a leading port for cotton export. It
has the advantage of a fine harbor on the seaboard, and the disadvantage
of a location so low that very heavy south winds flood the streets with
water from the Gulf. The growth of the export trade is due chiefly to
the increasing crop of Texas. Shipments from Galveston begin in
September, the Texas crop being the first to mature. _Savannah_ and _New
York_ rank next in their exports. _Pensacola_ and _Brunswick_ are also
important points of export. _Memphis_, _Vicksburg_, _Shreveport_,
_Houston_, and _Montgomery_ are important collecting stations for the
cotton.
About one-third of the crop is retained for manufacture in the United
States; one-third is purchased by Great Britain, one-sixth by Germany,
and most of the remainder by France, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Of the
manufactured cotton goods, the Chinese are the heaviest buyers, taking
about half the entire export. Most of the Chinese purchase is landed at
Shanghai.
In the main, the manufactures of this region closely concern the cotton
industry. The increase in the manufacture of textile goods has been very
great, and a large part of the cotton now manufactured in the New
England States and abroad, in time will be made in the cities and towns
of this section. In addition to the textile goods, cottonseed-oil is an
important product. A part of this is used in the mechanical arts, but
the refined oil is used mainly for domestic purposes. A considerable
part of the latter is used to adulterate olive-oil, and in some
instances is substituted for it. The refuse of the seed is made into
fertilizer.
_Atlanta_ is one of the foremost cities in the South in the manufacture
of cotton textiles and products. Commercially its situation resembles
that of Indianapolis; it is a focal point of the chief trunk lines of
railway in the South, and has the principal railway clearing-house. Like
New Orleans, it is an educational centre and one of the foremost in the
South. _Macon_, _Dallas_, _Fort Worth_, and _San Antonio_ are growing
commercial centres.
The manufacture of cane-sugar has been an industry of Louisiana for more
than a century. Since the advent of beet-sugar, however, it has been a
somewhat precarious venture, and has depended for existence very largely
upon tariff protection and bounties paid to the American sugar-makers.
Tobacco manufacture centres at Tampa and Key West. Cuban leaf is there
converted into cigars.
Fruit culture is a great industry. Millions of melons and great
quantities of pineapples, oranges, and small fruit form the early crop
that is shipped North. The orange groves are mainly in Florida. The crop
is exhausted about the time that California oranges are shipped East. A
great deal of tropical fruit is brought from Mexican, Central American,
and South American ports. This trade is controlled mainly at _Mobile_,
which is also a lumber-market.
=The Arid Plains and the Grazing Region.=--This region includes the high
plains approximately west of the 2,000-foot contour of level, together
with a part of the plateaus of the western highland region. It is
essentially one of grazing. Formerly there was an attempt to make
wheat-growing the chief industry, but on account of the limited rainfall
not more than three crops out of five reached maturity.
The earlier cattle-growing was carried on in a somewhat primitive
manner; the cattle herded on open lands, wandering from one range to
another, wherever the grazing might be good. The ownership of the cattle
was determined by the brand the animal bore,[53] and the herds were
"rounded up" twice a year to be sorted; at the round-up the "mavericks,"
or unmarked calves and yearlings, were branded. In time the ranges
became greatly overstocked; the winter losses by starvation were so
heavy that a better system became imperative. "Rustling," or
cattle-stealing, also became a factor in improving the methods of
cattle-ranching. The cautious rustler would purchase a few head of
cattle and add to the number by capturing stray mavericks.
[Illustration: A DESERT REGION--TOO DRY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF
FOOD-STUFFS]
[Illustration: OPEN GRAZING RANGES, IN WESTERN HIGHLANDS]
Both the legitimate graziers and the rustlers at first were bitterly
opposed to fencing the land. In time, however, the grazier was compelled
to do this, and also to grow alfalfa for winter foddering. The great
open ranges have therefore been broken up and fenced wholly or in part.
The fencing, moreover, has kept a dozen or more of the largest
wire-mills in the world turning out a product that is at once shipped
West. As a rule, the top wire is set on insulators and used for
telephone connection.[54] This method of cattle-growing has improved the
business in every way. The cattle are better kept; the loss by winter
killing is very small; the "long-horn" cattle have given place to the
best breeds of "meaters," which are heavier, and mature more quickly.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co._
ON A TEXAS CATTLE RANCH]
The success of stock-growing in this region is largely a question of
climate. The sparse rainfall permits the growth of several species of
grass that retain nutrition and vitality after turning brown under the
fierce summer heat. Ordinary turf-grass will not live in this region,
nor will it retain its nutrition after turning brown if rain falls upon
it. The native grass is not materially affected by a shower or two; it
is fairly good fodder even when buried under the winter's snow. The
existence of this industry, therefore, turns on a very delicate climatic
balance.
Of the beef grown in the United States the export product is derived
mainly from this region. Nearly four hundred thousand animals are
shipped alive; about three hundred million pounds of fresh beef are
shipped to the Atlantic seaboard in refrigerator-cars and then
transferred to refrigerator-steamships. Two-thirds of the cattle and
fresh beef exported are shipped from New York and Boston.
Upward of one hundred and fifty million pounds of canned and pickled
beef are also exported. All but a very small part of this product is
consumed in Great Britain, France, and Germany. The cattle are collected
for transportation at various stations and sidings along the railways
that traverse this region. _Cheyenne_ is one of the largest
cattle-markets in the world.
Wool has become a very valuable product, and the sheep grown in this
region number about one-half the total in the United States. The growing
of macaroni-wheat is extending to lands that fail to produce crops of
ordinary wheat.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what ways does the basin of the Great Lakes facilitate the commerce
of the United States?
How has the topography of the Mississippi Valley affected the evolution
of farming-machinery?
Why are shippers willing in many cases to pay an all-rail rate on wheat
sent to the Atlantic seaboard, nearly three times as great as the lake
and canal rates?
The acre-product of wheat in the United States is about twelve bushels;
in western Europe it varies from twenty-five to more than forty bushels;
to what is the difference due?
What is meant by sea-island cotton?--for what reasons is cotton imported
from Egypt and Peru into the United States?
In what manner is cotton used in the manufacture of pneumatic tires, and
why is it thus used?
What are refrigerator-cars?--refrigerator-steamships? Name some of the
regulations required in shipping cattle.
Why have American meats been debarred at times from European markets?
Find the value of cotton and meat exported to the following-named
countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, China.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
The Wheat Problem--pp. 191 _et seq._
Statistical Abstract.
[Illustration: DIFFICULT RAILROADING--LAS ANIMAS CANYON]
CHAPTER XX
THE UNITED STATES--THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS AND TERRITORIAL POSSESSIONS
The western part of the United States consists of a succession of high
mountain-ranges extending nearly north and south. The two highest
ranges, each about two miles high, enclose a basin-shaped plateau about
one mile high. This basin is commonly called the "plateau region." The
rim ranges are broken in a few places by passes that the
transcontinental railways thread. West of the Sierra Nevada ranges are
the fertile Pacific coast lowlands.
=The Plateau Region.=--This region is generally arid, but on the higher
plateaus there is sufficient rainfall to produce a considerable forestry
and grazing. The general conditions of rainfall and topography forbid
any great development of agriculture. Farming is confined to the
river-flood-plains, the parks, and the old lake beds and margins.
A considerable area, estimated at more than two million acres, may be
made productive by irrigation, and the United States Government is
undertaking the construction of an elaborate and extensive system of
reservoirs for the impounding of stream and storm waters now running to
waste. The irrigated lands of this region, when their products are
accessible to markets, are very valuable. The river-bottom lands of New
Mexico, and the old margins of Great Salt Lake in Utah are examples.
They produce abundantly, and a single acre often yields as much as four
or five acres in regions of plentiful rainfall.
Not much of the crop of this region, the fruit and wool excepted,
leaves the vicinity in which it is grown, on account of the expense of
transportation. In the matter of the transportation of their
commodities, the dwellers of the western highland are doubly
handicapped. The building of railways is enormously expensive, and in a
region of sparse population there is comparatively little local freight
to be hauled. The difficulties of developing such a region from a
commercial stand-point, therefore, are very great.
Mining is the chief industry of this section, and silver, gold, and
copper are its most important products. Since the discovery of precious
metals in the United States, this region has produced gold and silver
bullion to the value of about four billion dollars. This sum is about
one-half the value of the railways of the country,[55] and from 1865 to
1880 a large part of the capital invested in railway building represents
the gold and silver of these mines. In the last twenty years of the past
century they produced an average of about one hundred and twenty-five
million dollars per year, and this average is constantly increasing.
Coal-measures extend along the eastern escarpment of the Rocky
Mountains, and these are destined at no remote day to create a centre of
steel and other manufactures. Several of the railways operate coal-mines
in Colorado and Wyoming for the fuel required. A limited supply of steel
is also made, the industry being protected by the great distance from
the Eastern smelteries.
[Illustration: GOLD MINING--CRIPPLE CREEK, COLORADO]
_Denver_ is the chief active centre of finance of the mining industry
in the western highlands, although many of the great enterprises derive
the capital necessary to develop them from _New York_ and _San
Francisco_. _Leadville_, _Cripple Creek_, _Butte_, _Helena_, and
_Deadwood_ are regions of gold and silver production. _Virginia City_ is
the operating centre of the famous Comstock mines. At _Anaconda_ is the
chief copper-mine of this region. _Salt Lake City_ and _Ogden_ are the
centre of the Mormon agricultural enterprises. _Santa Fe_, _Las Vegas_,
and _Albuquerque_ are centres of agricultural interests and
stock-growing.
_Spokane_ and _Walla Walla_ are commercial centres of the plains of the
Columbia River. The former is the focal point of a network of local
roads that collect the wheat and other farm products of this region; the
latter is the collecting point for much of the freight sent by
steamboats down the Columbia River from _Wallula_. Railway
transportation has largely superseded river-navigation for all except
local freights, however. _Boise City_ is the financial centre of
considerable mining interests.
=The Pacific Coast Lowlands.=--Climatically this region differs from the
rest of the United States in having a rainy and a dry season--that is,
the rainfall is wholly seasonal. In the northern part the rainfall is
sixty inches or more, and rain may be expected daily from the middle of
October to May. In central California the precipitation is about half as
much, the rainy season beginning later and ending earlier. In southern
California there are occasional showers during the winter months,
aggregating ten or twenty inches.
The level valley-lands have no superior for wheat-farming, and in but
one or two places is the rainfall insufficient to insure a good crop. In
the San Joaquin and southern valleys of California the harvest begins in
May, in the Sacramento Valley in June, and in the Willamette and Sound
Valleys of Oregon and Washington in July. The wheat goes mainly to Great
Britain by way of Cape Horn. It cannot be safely shipped in bulk, and
the manufacture of jute grain-sacks has become an important industry in
consequence. The yearly wheat product of this region is not far from
eighty million bushels.
Fruit is a valuable product of the foot-hills of the Sierras, and in
southern California oranges, lemons, and grapes are now the staple crop.
In some cases the average yield per acre has reached a value of five
hundred dollars. Some of the largest vineyards in the world are in this
region. The Zinfandel claret wine and the raisins find a market as far
east as London, and considerable quantities are sold in China and Japan.
The navel orange, although not native to California, reaches its finest
development in that State. A large part of the fruit-crop of California
is handled at Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York. It is
transported in special cars attached to fast trains.
Wool is an important crop. In the northern part the sheep thrive best in
the foot-hills. The valley of Umpqua River, Ore., produces nearly
seventeen million pounds of wool yearly, the staple being an ordinary
variety. California produces nearly as much of the finest merino staple.
A considerable part is manufactured in the mills of the Pacific coast.
The Mission Mills blankets made in San Francisco are without an equal
elsewhere.
The discovery of gold by John Marshall in 1848 resulted in a tremendous
inflow of people to the gold-fields of California. It also was a factor
in the acquisition of the territory composing the Pacific coast States.
The first mining consisted merely in separating the metal deposited in
the bed-rock of streams by washing away the lighter material. In time
the quartz ledges which had produced the placer gold became the chief
factor in gold mining. California is still one of the leading States in
the production of gold. Quicksilver mining is an important feature of
the mining interests of the Pacific coast, and the mines of the coast
ranges produce about half the world's output.
Lumber manufacture is an important industry. Douglas spruce, commonly
known as "Oregon pine," grows profusely on the western slopes of the
high ranges, the belt extending nearly to the Mexican border. It makes a
most excellent building-lumber, especially for bridge-timber and
framework. Masts and spars of this material are used in almost every
maritime country. Sugar-pine is less common, but is abundant. It is
largely used for interior work. Several species of redwood occur in
central California, confined to a limited area. The wood is fine-grained
and makes a most beautiful interior finish.
_San Francisco_ is the metropolis of the Pacific coast of the United
States. It is the terminus of the Santa Fe and Union Pacific railways,
and the centre of a network of local roads. Steamship lines connect the
city with Panama, the Hawaiian Islands, Japan, and Australian ports;
coast steamships reach to the various ports of Alaska, Oregon, and
California. It is also the financial as well as the commercial centre of
the Pacific coast. _Los Angeles_ is the centre of the fruit-growing
region; its port is _San Pedro_. _Stockton_, _Port Costa_, and
_Sacramento_, all on navigable waters, are wheat-markets. _Portland_
(Ore.) is the metropolis of the basin of the Columbia and Willamette
Rivers. Navigation of the former is interrupted by falls or rapids at
_Dalles_ and _Cascades_, but boats ascend as far as _Wallula_. The lower
Willamette is also made navigable by means of a canal and locks at
Oregon Falls.
Puget Sound is a "drowned valley," with an abundance of deep water. The
score or more of harbors are among the best in the world. _Seattle_ and
_Tacoma_, the leading ports, are terminals of great transcontinental
railways, and also of the most important trade-route across the
continent. Lines of steamships connect Seattle with Japan and China, and
the commerce passing through this gateway is drawn from a territory
that extends more than half-way around the world. These ports are
destined to become the chief American ports in the Asian trade.
=Alaska.=--The most productive industry of the insular part of the
territory is the fisheries. For many years the Pribilof Islands produced
practically all the seal-pelts used in the manufacture of seal-fur
garments. So many seals were killed, however, that the species seemed
likely to become extinct, and seal-catching has been forbidden for a
term of years.
[Illustration: PUGET SOUND]
The discovery of gold along the Klondike River and in the beach-sands of
Cape Nome was followed by the development of surface mines that produced
a large amount of gold. For the better transportation of products, a
railway has been completed from _Skagway_ across White Pass to _White
Horse_, the head of navigation of the Yukon. About twenty steamboats are
engaged in the commerce of the river. _Skagway_ and _Dyea_ are
collecting points for the commerce of the Klondike mines. _Juneau_ has
probably the largest quartz-mill in the world.
=Porto Rico.=--Porto Rico, formerly a Spanish colony, is now a possession
of the United States. The island is about the size of Connecticut and
has a population somewhat greater. The industries are almost wholly
agricultural, and nearly the whole surface is under cultivation. Sugar,
coffee, and tobacco are grown for export, and these constitute the chief
source of income. The coffee-crop, about sixty million pounds yearly, is
the most valuable product and commands a high price on account of its
superior quality. It is sold very largely to European coffee-merchants,
and is marketed as a "Mocha." Exports of fruit to the United States are
increasing. In 1900 the exports to United States markets, mainly sugar
and cattle products, were about six million dollars. The imports from
the United States were chiefly of cotton-prints and rice, to the amount
of nearly nine million dollars. The total export and import trade that
year was about twenty million dollars.
The facilities for the transportation of products are not good. The
railway lines have a total mileage of about one hundred and fifty miles.
An excellent wagon-road, built by the Spanish Government from San Juan
to Ponce, has been supplemented by several hundred miles of roads built
under the direction of the military authorities. _San Juan_ and _Ponce_
are the leading seaports and centres of trade.
=Hawaiian Islands.=--These islands were discovered by a Spanish sailor,
Gaetano, in 1549, and again visited by Captain Cook in 1778. Up to 1893
they formed a native kingdom. In 1893 foreign influence was sufficient
to overthrow the native government, and in 1898 they were formally
annexed to the United States and about the same time organized as a
territory. From an early date the geographic position of the islands has
made them a convenient mid-ocean post-station, and they have therefore
become a most important commercial centre.
[Illustration: HYDRAULIC GOLD MINING--CALIFORNIA]
Of the various islands composing the group, Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, Kaui,
Molokai, Lanai, and Niihau are inhabited. About one-fifth of the
population consists of native Hawaiians; a little more than one-fifth is
white; the remainder is composed of Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans.
The native population is decreasing. About ninety-five per cent. of the
property is owned by the white people--Americans, English, and Germans.
The volcanic soils are the very best sugar-lands, and a large amount of
capital is invested in this industry. The sugar-plantations employ more
than forty thousand laborers, all Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans.
The value of the sugar export is nearly twenty-five million dollars
yearly; that of fruit, rice, and hides is about two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Coffee is rapidly becoming a leading product. The bulk
of the imports comes from the United States, and consists of clothing,
cotton textiles, lumber, and machinery.
_Honolulu_, on the island of Oahu, is the capital and commercial centre,
and foreign steamships and sailing-craft are scarcely ever absent from
its harbor. Regular steamship service connects this port with San
Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, B.C., and the principal ports of China
and Japan. It is connected with the other islands by a system of
wireless telegraphy. The city has the best of schools, business
organizations, hotels, and streets.
_Pearl Harbor_ contains a large area of water, most of which is deep
enough for the largest vessels afloat. It is intended to deepen the
entrance and establish a United States naval station at this place. The
village of _Hilo_ is the chief port of the island of Hawaii.
=The Philippine Islands= are an archipelago of about two thousand islands,
the two largest of which, Luzon and Mindanao, are each nearly the size
of New York State. Luzon is by far the most important.
After their cession to the United States (December 10, 1898), they were
held under military control, but this has given place to local
self-government as rapidly as the circumstances permitted. A general
school system has been established and is extended wherever practicable.
In a considerable number of the islands civil organization is still
impossible.
The following are the principal islands and their mineral resources:
----------------+----------------------+---------------------
NAME |CHIEF CITIES AND PORTS|MINERAL RESOURCES
----------------+----------------------+---------------------
Luzon |Manila, Lipa, Batangas|Coal, gold, copper
Mindanao |Zamboanga |Coal, gold, copper
Samar |Catbalogan |Coal, gold
Negros |Bacolor |Coal
Panay |Iloilo |Coal, gold, petroleum
Leyte |Tacloban |Coal, petroleum
Mindoro |Calapan |Coal, gold
Cebu |Cebu |Coal, petroleum, gold
----------------+----------------------+----------------------
The native population is mainly of the Malay race, but there are also
many Negritos. Of the native element the Tagals are the most advanced,
and are the dominant people. The foreign population includes nearly one
hundred thousand Chinese, who are the chief commercial factors of the
islands, and the leading industries are controlled by them. There is a
considerable population of Chinese and Tagal mixed blood, commonly known
as "Chinese mestizos"; they inherit, in the main, the Chinese
characteristics. The European and American population consists mainly of
officials, troops, and merchant-agents for Philippine products.
The principal products for export are "Manila" hemp, sugar, and tobacco.
The hemp is used in the manufacture of cordage and paper. On account of
the great strength of the fibre it has no equal among cordage fibres.
The imports from the United States consist mainly of machinery and
cotton textiles. The total trade of the islands amounted in 1901 to
about fifty million dollars, most of which was shared by Great Britain
and the United States.
Coal is mined in the island of Cebu and is abundant in most of the
islands. Iron ore, copper, and sulphur occur, but they have not been
made commercially available to any extent. Gold is mined in the island
of Luzon. A stable government only is needed to make these great
resources productive. An abundance of timber is found in most of the
islands. Cedar, ebony, and sapan-wood are available for ornamental
purposes; there is also a great variety of economic woods.
_Manila_ is the commercial centre. Manila Bay is one of the finest
harbors in the Pacific Ocean, but much work is necessary to give the
water-front a navigable depth for large steamships. With an improved
harbor the city is bound to be a great emporium of Oriental trade.
Steamship lines connect the city with Hongkong, Australia, Japan,
Singapore, and Liverpool. There is also a military transport service to
Seattle. A railway to Dagupan extends through the most important
agricultural region. The wagon-roads throughout the island are very
poor.
_Lipa_, _Batanzas_, _Bauan_, and _Cavite_ are cities of about forty
thousand population, all more or less connected with the industries of
Manila. _Iloilo_ is the second port of importance of the islands, and is
the centre of a considerable export trade in tobacco, hemp, sugar, and
sapan-wood. _Cebu_ is also a port having a considerable trade.
=Tutuila=, one of the Samoan Islands, was acquired by treaty for use as a
coal-depot and naval station. _Pago Pago_ is a port of call for
steamships between San Francisco and Australia. =Guam=, one of the Ladrone
Islands, is a naval station. These possessions are strategic and are
designed to secure the interests of the United States in the Pacific. An
ocean telegraphic cable connects the Pacific Ocean possessions with the
United States and Asia.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why are mountain-regions apt to be sparsely peopled?
Why are arid regions sparsely peopled, as a rule?
Why are not gold-mining settlements so apt to be permanent as
agricultural settlements?
From the Abstract of Statistics find the production of gold and silver
of this region for each ten years ending the last half of the century.
What causes the difference between the wool clip of southern California
and that of the Eastern States?
Follow the route of a grain-carrying ship from San Francisco to
Liverpool.
What are the advantages to the United States of the accession of the
Hawaiian Islands?--of the Philippine Islands?--of Alaska? What are the
disadvantages?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Mineral Resources of the United States.
Abstract of Statistics.
U.S. Coast Survey Chart of Alaska.
Map of Hawaiian Islands.
Map of Philippine Islands.
[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (EXTERIOR)]
[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (INTERIOR)]
CHAPTER XXI
CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND
A very large part of Canada is so far north that the ordinary
food-stuffs cannot be grown there; the river-valleys of British Columbia
and the basin of the Saskatchewan excepted, there are but few marks of
human industry beyond the fiftieth parallel. The general conditions of
topography resemble those of the United States--a central plain between
the high Rocky Mountain ranges in the west and the lower Laurentian
ranges in the east.
Canada is an agricultural country, and because of the great skill with
which its resources have been made commercially available, it is the
most important colony of Great Britain. The basin of the Great Lakes and
the St. Lawrence River is the most populous part of the country. This
region is highly cultivated and produces dairy products, beef, and the
ordinary farm-crops.
From Lake Winnipeg westward, nearly to the Rocky Mountains, the land is
a succession of prairies admirably suited to wheat-growing.[56] The
wheat is a hard, spring variety, and the average yield per acre is about
one-fourth greater than the average yield in the United States.
The area of forestry includes the larger remaining part of the great
pine belt, together with a very heavy reserve of merchantable
oak-timber. The part of the forest area in Canada aggregates one and
one-quarter million square miles, and yields an annual product of about
eighty million dollars; about one-third of the lumber is exported.
The northerly region of Canada produces furs and pelts. As long ago as
1670, Charles II. granted to Prince Rupert and a stock company the lands
comprising a very large part of Canada around Hudson Bay, and secured to
them the sole right to trap the fur-bearing animals of the region. In
time the company, known as the Hudson Bay Company, transferred all its
lands to Canada, and out of the domain thus annexed various provinces
and unorganized districts have been created.
The company now exists as a corporation for the merchandise of furs. For
the greater part, Indians are employed as hunters and trappers, and the
pelts are collected at the various trading-posts, known as "houses" and
"factories," to be sent to the head-quarters of the company near
Winnipeg. Nearly every Arctic animal furnishes a merchantable pelt. The
cheaper skins are made into garments in Canada and the United States;
those commonly classed as furs are sold in London. Several other fur
companies are also operating in Canada.
The fisheries of the coast-waters and the Great Lakes are among the most
productive in the world. Everything within the three-mile limit of the
shore is reserved for Canadian fishermen. The smaller bays and coves are
reserved also within the three-mile limit. Beyond this limit the waters
are open to all, and a fleet of swift gun-boats is necessary to prevent
illicit fishing. Salmon, cod, lobsters, and herring form most of the
catch, amounting in value to upward of twenty million dollars yearly.
The output of minerals varies from year to year; since 1900 it has
averaged about sixty million dollars a year. The gold product
constitutes nearly one-half and the coal about one-sixth of the total
amount. Nickel, petroleum, silver, and lead form the rest of the output.
Iron ore is abundant, but it is not at present available for production
on account of the distance from transportation.
Commerce is facilitated by about eighteen thousand miles of railway and
nearly three thousand miles of canal and improved river-navigation. One
ocean-to-ocean railway, the Canadian Pacific, is in operation; another,
an extension of the Grand Trunk, is under way. The rapids and shoals of
the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers are surmounted by canals and
locks. Welland Canal connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and the
Canadian lock at St. Mary's Falls joins Lake Superior to Lake Huron. By
means of the lakes and canals vessels drawing fourteen feet may load at
Canadian ports and discharge at Liverpool.
The harbors of the Atlantic coast have two great drawbacks--ice and high
tides. Some of the steamship lines make Portland, Me., their winter
terminus. The Pacific coast harbors are not obstructed by ice. An
attempt has been made in the direction of using Hudson Bay and Strait as
a grain-route, but the difficulties of navigation are very great and the
route is open only two months of the year.
Practically all the foreign trade is carried on with Great Britain and
the United States. The trade with each aggregates about one hundred and
fifty million dollars yearly. The exports are lumber and wood-pulp,
cheese and dairy products, wheat and flour, beef-cattle, hog products,
fish, and gold-quartz. The chief imports are steel, wool, sugar, and
cotton manufactures.
Politically, Canada consists of a number of provinces, each with the
usual corps of elective officers. A governor-general appointed by the
Crown of Great Britain is the chief executive officer.
=Nova Scotia.=--This province is prominent on account of its coal and
iron, and also because of its geographic position. The iron and coal are
utilized in steel smelteries and rolling-mills, glass-factories,
sugar-refineries, and textile-mills. It is one of the few localities in
the eastern part of the continent yielding gold. _Halifax_, the capital,
has one of the best harbors of the Atlantic coast of North America; it
is not often obstructed by ice, and is the chief winter port. Halifax is
the principal British naval station of North America, and this fact adds
much to its commercial activity.
=Prince Edward Island.=--The industries of this province are mainly
connected with the coast-fisheries. During the summer the island is
visited by thousands of fishing-vessels for the purpose of preparing the
catch for market. Fertilizer manufactured from the refuse is an
incidental product. _Charlottetown_ is the capital.
=New Brunswick.=--Fisheries and forest products are both resources of this
province. Coal is mined at _Grand Lake_, and an excellent lime for
export to the United States is made at _St. John_. Lumber, wood-pulp,
wooden sailing-vessels, cotton textiles, and structural steel for
ship-building are manufactured. A ship railway, seventeen miles long,
across the isthmus that connects this province to Nova Scotia, is under
construction. _St. John_, the capital, is the chief seat of trade.
=Quebec.=--This province was once a possession of France, and in the
greater part of it French customs are yet about as prevalent as they
were a century ago; moreover, the French population is increasing
rapidly. The English-speaking population lives mainly along the Vermont
border. As a rule the English are the manufacturers and traders; the
French people are the farmers.
_Montreal_ is the head of navigation of the St. Lawrence for ocean
steamships. It is also the chief centre of manufactures. These are
mainly sugar, rubber goods, textiles, light steel wares, and leather.
The last-named goes almost wholly to Great Britain; the rest are
consumed in Canada and the border American States. _Quebec_ is the most
strongly fortified city of the Dominion.
=Ontario.=--This province is a peninsula bordered by Lakes Huron, Erie,
and Ontario. Farming is the chief employment, and barley is an important
product. Most of it is used in the manufacture of malt, and "Canada
malt" is regarded as the best. Several of the trunk railways whose
terminals are in the United States traverse this peninsula. _Toronto_,
the capital and commercial centre, is one of the most rapidly growing
cities of North America. _Hamilton_ owes its existence to its harbor and
position at the head of Lake Ontario. _Ottawa_ is the capital of the
Dominion. At _Sudbury_ are the nickel-mines that are among the most
productive in the world.
=Manitoba=, =Saskatchewan=, and =Alberta=.--These provinces include the
level prairie lands of the Saskatchewan and the Red River of the North.
They comprise the great grain-field of Canada. A considerable part of
the wheat-growing lands are yet unproductive owing to the lack of
railways. Much of the product is carried to market by the Canadian
Pacific and its feeders, but a considerable part finds its way to the
Northern Pacific and Great Northern roads. The coal of Manitoba and
Alberta is an important fuel supply not only to the provinces and states
surrounding, but to the railways above named. A good quality of
anthracite coal is also mined in Alberta. _Winnipeg_, the metropolis of
the region, is one of the great railway centres of Canada.
=British Columbia.=--British Columbia, the Pacific coast province, has
several resources of great value. The gold mines led to its settlement
and commercial opening. The salmon-fisheries are surpassed by those of
the United States only. The beds of lignite coal have produced a very
large part of the coal used in the Pacific coast States. The forests
produce lumber for shipment both to the Atlantic coast of America and
the Pacific coast of Asia.
_Vancouver_, the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is connected
with various Asian ports by fast steamships. _Nanaimo_, _Wellington_,
and _Commox_ are the centres of the coal-mining industry. The
copper-mines at _Rossland_ produce most of the copper mined in Canada.
=Newfoundland.=--Although a Crown possession, Newfoundland is not a member
of the Dominion of Canada. The extensive fisheries are its chief
resource. The Labrador coast, which is used as a resort for curing and
preserving the catch, is attached to Newfoundland for the purpose of
government. _St. Johns_ is the capital.
The islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre, south of Newfoundland, are a
French possession. Fishing is the ostensible industry, but a great deal
of smuggling is carried on.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What, if any, climatic or topographic boundaries separate Canada and the
United States?
Which of the two countries is the more fortunately situated for the
production of food-stuffs?
Which will support the larger population?--why?
The harbors of the Labrador coast and of Cape Breton Island are superior
to those of the British Islands, situated in about the same latitude;
why do the latter have a commerce far greater than that of the former?
Compare the industries of the eastern, middle, and western regions of
Canada with the corresponding regions of the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Statesman's Year-Book.
Statistical Year-Book of Canada (official government publication,
Ottawa).
CHAPTER XXII
MEXICO--CENTRAL AMERICA--WEST INDIES
Mexico and the Central American states occupy the narrow, southerly part
of North America. Structurally they consist of a plateau about a mile
high, bordered on each side by a low coast-plain. The table-land, or
_tierra templada_, has about the same climate as southern California;
the low coast-plains, or _tierra caliente_, are tropical.
=Mexico.=--The United States of Mexico is the most important part of this
group. The people are of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, but there are
many families of pure Castilian descent. The latter, in general, are the
landed proprietors; the former constitute the tradesmen, herders, and
peons. There is also a large unproductive class, mainly of Indians, who
are living in a savage state. In general the manners and customs are
those of Spain.
The agricultural pursuits are in a backward condition, partly for the
want of good system and an educated people, but mainly for lack of the
capital and engineering skill to construct the irrigating canals that
are needed to make the land productive. Maize, rice, sugar (cane and
panocha), and wheat are grown for home consumption.
The agricultural products which connect Mexico with the rest of the
world are sisal-hemp (henequin), coffee, logwood, and fruit. Sisal-hemp
is grown in the state of Yucatan, and has become one of its chief
financial resources. Oaxaca coffee is usually sold as a "Mocha" berry.
The logwood goes mainly to British textile makers; and the fruit,
chiefly oranges and bananas, finds a market in the large cities of the
United States, to which large consignments of vanilla and tropical woods
are also sent. Cattle are grown on more than twenty thousand ranches,
and the greater part are sent alive to the markets of the United States.
The native long-horn stock is giving place to improved breeds.
[Illustration: MEXICO]
Gold and silver are the products that have made Mexico famous, and the
mines have produced a total of more than three billion dollars' worth of
precious metal. The native methods of mining have always been primitive,
and low-grade ores have been neglected. In recent years American and
European capital has been invested in low-grade mines, and the bullion
production has been about doubled in value; it is now about one hundred
million dollars yearly. Iron ore is abundant, and good coal exists.
The manufactures, at present of little importance, are growing rapidly.
The cotton-mills consume the home product and fill their deficiency from
the Texas crop. All the finer textiles, however, are imported. Most of
the commodities are supplied by the United States, Great Britain, and
Germany, the first-named having about half the trade. Most of the
hardware and machinery is purchased in the United States.
Railway systems, with American terminal points at El Paso, San Antonio,
and New Orleans, extend from the most productive parts of the country.
One of the most important railways crosses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,
and, in order to encourage commerce, the harbors at Coatzacoalcos and
Salina Cruz have been deepened and improved. This interoceanic route is
destined to become a very important factor in commerce. It shortens the
route between European ports and San Francisco by six thousand miles,
and between New York and San Francisco by twelve hundred miles.[57]
_Mexico_, the capital, is the financial and commercial centre. _Vera
Cruz_ and _Tampico_ are connected with the capital by railway, but both
have very poor port facilities. Steamship lines connect the former with
New York, New Orleans, Havana, and French ports. It is the chief port of
the country. _Matamoros_ on the American frontier has a considerable
cattle-trade. The crop of sisal-hemp is shipped mainly from _Progresso_
and _Merida_. _Acapulco_, _Manzanillo_, and _Mazatlan_ for want of
railway connections have but little trade. The first-named is one of the
best harbors in the world. _Guadalajara_ has important textile and
pottery manufactures.
=The Central American States.=--The physical features and climate of
these states resemble those of Mexico. The Spanish-speaking people live
in the table-lands, where the climate is healthful. The coast-plain of
the Atlantic is forest-covered and practically uninhabited save by
Indians. Guatemala is the most important state. A railway from _Puerto
Barrios_, its Atlantic port, through its capital, _Guatemala_, to its
Pacific port, _San Jose_, is nearly completed. British Honduras is a
British territory acquired mainly for the mahogany product, which is
shipped from _Belize_. Honduras has great resources in mines, cultivable
lands, and forests, but these are undeveloped. Salvador is the smallest
but most progressive state.
[Illustration: ROUTE OF PROPOSED NICARAGUA CANAL.]
Nicaragua is politically of importance on account of the possibilities
of an interoceanic canal. A treaty for this canal, involving both
Nicaragua and Great Britain, has already been signed by the powers
interested. Many engineers regard the Nicaragua as preferable to that of
the Panama canal. The shorter distance between New York and the Pacific
ports of the United States, a saving of about four hundred miles, is in
its favor. The longer distance of transit and the dangers of navigating
Lake Nicaragua are against it. Costa Rica is favorably situated for
commerce, but its resources are not developed. A railway from _Puerto
Limon_ is nearly completed to _Puenta Arenas_, an excellent harbor on
the Pacific side.
Coffee, hides, mahogany, and fruit are the only products of importance
that connect these states with the rest of the world. About half the
trade goes to the United States. The Germans and English supply a
considerable part of the textiles and manufactured articles. The coffee
of Costa Rica is a very superior product. Much of the mahogany and
forest products goes to Great Britain. Fruit-steamers call at the
Atlantic ports for bananas, which are sold in New Orleans and the
Atlantic cities.
=The West Indies.=--The climate and productions of these islands are
tropical in character. Sugar, fruit, coffee, tobacco, and cacao are the
leading products. From the stand-point of the planter, the sugar
industry has been a history of misfortunes. The abolition of slavery
ruined the industry in many of the islands belonging to Great Britain.
The competition of the beet-sugar made in Europe drove the Cubans into
insurrection on account of the excessive taxes levied by the Spaniards,
and ended in the Spanish-American War.
The fruit-crop--mainly pineapples, oranges, and grapefruit--is shipped
to the United States. New York, Philadelphia, and the Gulf ports are the
destination of the greater part of it.
Cuba, the largest island, is one of the most productive regions of the
world. The famous "Havana" tobacco grows mainly in the western part,
although practically all Cuban tobacco is classed under this name.
According to popular opinion it is pre-eminently the best in flavor,
and the price is not affected by that of other tobaccos.[58] About
two-thirds of the raw leaf and cigars are purchased by the tobacco
manufacturers of the United States. _Havana_, _Santiago_, and
_Cienfuegos_ are the shipping-ports; most of the export is landed at New
York, Key West, and Tampa.
From 1900 to 1903 the small fraction of the sugar industry that survived
the war and the insurrection was crippled by the high tariff on sugar
imported into the United States. The latter, which was designed to
protect the home sugar industry, was so high that the Cubans could not
afford to make sugar at the ruling prices in New York. Hides, honey, and
Spanish cedar for cigar-boxes are also important exports.
The United States is the chief customer of Cuba, and in turn supplies
the Cubans with flour, textile goods, hardware, and coal-oil. Smoked
meat from Latin America and preserved fish from Canada and Newfoundland
are the remaining imports. There are no manufactures of importance. The
railways are mainly for the purpose of handling the sugar-crop.
_Havana_, the capital and financial centre, is connected with New York,
New Orleans, and Key West by steamship lines. _Santiago_, _Matanzas_,
and _Cienfuegos_ are ports having a considerable trade.
The British possessions in the West Indies are commercially the most
important of the European possessions. The Bahamas are low-lying coral
islands, producing but little except sponges, fruit, and sisal-hemp.
_Nassau_, the only town of importance, is a winter resort. Fruit, sugar,
rum, coffee, and ginger are exported from _Kingston_, the port of
Jamaica. _St. Lucia_ has probably the strongest fortress in the
Caribbean Sea.
Barbados produces more sugar than any other British possession in the
West Indies. The raw sugar, muscovado, is shipped to the United States.
Bermuda, an outlying island, furnishes the Atlantic states with onions,
Easter lilies, and early potatoes. From Trinidad is obtained the
asphaltum, or natural tar, that is used for street paving. Brea Lake,
the source of the mineral, is leased to a New York company. Sugar and
cacao are also exported from Port of Spain. The products of St. Vincent
and Dominica are similar to those of the other islands.
The French own Martinique (_Fort de France_) and Guadeloupe (_Basse
Terre_). St. Thomas (_Charlotte Amalie_), St. Croix, and St. John are
Danish possessions. Various attempts to transfer the Danish islands to
the United States have failed. They are admirably adapted for naval
stations. The island of Haiti consists of two negro republics, Haiti and
San Domingo. The only important product is coffee. Most of the product
is shipped to the United States, which supplies coal oil and textiles in
return.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What part of the United States was formerly a possession of Mexico, and
how did it become a possession of the United States?
From a cyclopedia learn the character of the political organization of
Mexico and the Central American states.
From the report listed below find what commercial routes gain, and what
ones lose in distance by the Nicaragua, as compared with the Panama
canal.
From a good atlas make a list of the islands of the West Indies; name
the country to which each belongs, and its exports to the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
The Statesman's Year-Book.
Great Canals of the World--pp. 4058-4059.
[Illustration: SOUTH AMERICA]
CHAPTER XXIII
SOUTH AMERICA--THE ANDEAN STATES
In its general surface features South America resembles North
America--that is, a central plain is bordered by low ranges on the east
and by a high mountain system on the west. In the southern part,
midsummer is in January and midwinter in July. The mineral-producing
states are traversed by the ranges of the Andes and all of them except
Chile are situated on both slopes of the mountains.
=Colombia.=--This republic borders both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific
Ocean. One port excepted, however, most of its commerce is confined to
the shores of the Caribbean Sea. The lowlands east of the Andes are
admirably adapted for grazing, and such cattle products as hides, horns,
and tallow are articles of export. This region, however, even with the
present facilities for transportation, produces only a small fraction of
the products possible.
The intermontane valleys between the Andean ranges have the climate of
the temperate zone; wheat and sheep are produced. The chief industrial
development, however, is confined to the lands near the Caribbean coast.
Coffee, cacao, and tobacco are grown for export, the business of
cultivation being largely controlled by Americans and Europeans. Rubber,
copaiba, tolu, and vegetable ivory[59] are gathered by Indians from the
forests.
[Illustration: A PASS IN THE ANDES]
The montane region has long been famous for its mines of gold and
silver. The salt mines near Bogota are a government monopoly and yield a
considerable revenue. Near the same city are the famous Muzo emerald
mines.
The rivers are the chief channels of internal trade. During the rainy
season steamboats ascend the Orinoco to Cabugaro, about two hundred
miles from Bogota. About fifty steamboats are in commission on the
Magdalena and its tributary, the Cauca. Mule trains traversing wretched
trails require from one to two weeks to transport the goods from the
river landings to the chief centres of population. Improvements now
under way in clearing and canalizing these rivers will add about five
hundred miles of additional water-way. The railways consist of short
lines mainly used as portages around obstructions of the rivers.
An unstable government and an onerous system of export taxes hamper
trade. Coffee, a leading product, goes mainly to Europe. Cattle
products, and balsam of tolu are purchased mainly in the United States.
Great Britain purchases the gold and silver ores. The chief
imports--textiles, flour, and petroleum--are purchased in the United
States. _Bogota_ and _Medellin_ are the largest cities. The isolation of
the region in which they are situated shapes the indifferent foreign
policy of the government. _Barranquilla_, _Sabanilla_, and _Cartagena_
are the chief ports.
=Panama.=--This state, formerly a part of Colombia, includes the isthmus
of Panama. Geographically it belongs to North America, and practically
it can be approached from Colombia by water only. The secession of
Panama was brought about by the complications of the isthmian canal. A
treaty with the United States gives the latter sovereign control over
the canal and the strip of land ten miles wide bordering it. _Panama_
and _Colon_ are the two ports of the canal. The United States exercises
police and sanitary regulations in these cities, but it has no
sovereignty over them.
=Peru.=--Peru has great resources, both agricultural and mineral. Cotton
is one of the chief products. The ordinary fibre is excelled only by the
sea-island cotton of the United States; the long-staple fibre of the
Piura is the best grown. The former is generally employed for mixing
with wool in the manufacture of underwear, and is sold in the United
States and Europe; the latter, used in the manufacture of thread and the
web of pneumatic tires, goes mainly to Great Britain.
Cane-sugar is a very large export crop, Great Britain, the United
States, and Chile being the principal customers. The area of coffee
production is growing rapidly. Coca-growing has become an important
industry, and the plantations aggregate about three million trees;[60] a
large part of the product is sent to the chemical laboratories of the
United States. A small crop of rice for export is grown on the coast.
The Amazon forest products yield a considerable revenue. Rubber and
vegetable ivory are the most valuable. Cinchona, or Peruvian bark,
however, is the one for which the state is best known; and there is
probably not a drug-shop in the civilized world that does not carry it
in stock.[61]
Cattle are grown for their hides, and of these the United States is the
chief purchaser. The wool of the llama, alpaca, and vicuna is used in
manufacture of the cloth known as alpaca, and the value of the shipments
to Great Britain usually exceeds one million dollars a year. In the
mining regions the llama is used as a pack-animal, and a large part of
the mine products reach the markets by this means of transportation. The
mines yield silver and copper; in the main the ores are exported to
Great Britain to be smelted.
The products already named are the chief exports; the imports are cotton
textiles, machinery, steel wares, and coal-oil. Great Britain has about
one-half the foreign trade; the United States controls about one-fourth.
_Callao_, the port of _Lima_, is the market through which most of the
foreign trade is carried on. Steamship lines connect it with San
Francisco and with British ports. _Mollendo_ is the outlet of Bolivian
trade. The railways are short lines extending from the coast.
=Ecuador.=--This state has but little commercial importance. The only
cultivated products for export are cacao, coffee, and sugar. The
first-named constitutes three-fourths of the exports, and most of it
goes to France. The land is held in large estates, and most of the
laboring people are in a condition of practical slavery. The
bread-stuffs consumed by the foreign population and the land proprietors
are imported. Animals are grown for their hides and these are sold to
the United States.
Another manufacture that connects Ecuador with the rest of the world is
the so-called "Panama" hat. The material used is toquilla straw, the
mid-rib of the screw-pine (_Carlodovica palmata_). The prepared straw
can be plaited only when the atmosphere is very moist, and much of the
work is done at night. The hats are made by Indians, who are governed
by their own ideas regarding style and shape. They bring from
twenty-five to fifty dollars apiece in the American markets, where
nearly all the product is sold.[62]
Mule-paths are the only means of inland communication. There is a
considerable local traffic on the estuaries of the rivers, but this is
confined to the rainy seasons. A railway built by an American company is
in operation from _Guayaquil_, a short distance inland. This city is the
chief market for foreign goods, and it is the only foreign port of the
Pacific coast of South America in which the volume of trade of the
United States approximates that of Germany and Great Britain.
=Bolivia.=--Bolivia lost much of its possible commercial possible future
when, after a disastrous war, its Pacific coast frontage became a
possession of Chile. The agricultural lands are unfortunately situated
with reference to the mining population; as a result, a considerable
amount of food-stuffs must be imported from Argentina. Coffee, cacao,
and coca are the principal cultivated products. Rubber from the Amazon
forest is the most valuable vegetable product, but a considerable amount
of cinchona bark and ivory nuts are also exported.
The mines, however, are the chief wealth of the state and give it the
only excuse for its political existence. They produce silver, tin,
copper, gold, and borate of lime. Inasmuch as a large part of the ore
and ore products must be transported by llamas and mules, only the
richest mines can be profitably worked. With adequate means of
transportation, the mines should make Bolivia one of the most powerful
South American states.
Railways already connect _Oruro_ with the sea-coast. A railway now
under construction will connect _La Paz_ (the pass) with the Pacific
coast, and also Buenos Aires. Excellent roads to take the place of the
pack-trains are under construction.
Practically all the imports, consisting of cotton and woollen textiles,
machinery, and steel wares, are purchased in Great Britain. The exports
are more than double the imports. Most of the goods pass through the
Chilean port Antofagasto, or Mollendo, Peru. _La Paz_, _Oruro_, and
_Sucre_ are the chief cities.
The hypothetical state of Acre is situated in the angle where Bolivia,
Peru, and Brazil join. The rubber forests, together with the absence of
legal government, led to its existence. The government is wholly
insurrectionary, but it at least uses its powers to encourage the rubber
trade.
=Chile.=--This state comprises the narrow western slope of the Andes,
extending from the tropic of Capricorn to Cape Horn, a distance of about
three thousand miles. The resources of the state have been so skilfully
handled, that with the drawback of a very small proportion of cultivable
land, Chile is the foremost Andean state.
The cultivation of the ordinary crops is confined to the flood-plains of
the short rivers. These, as a rule, are from twenty to fifty miles long
and a mile or two in width. They are densely peopled and cultivated to
the limit. Between the river-valleys are long stretches of unproductive
land.
Within the valleys wheat, barley, fruit, and various food-stuffs are
grown. Of these there are not only enough for home consumption, but
considerable quantities are exported to Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Much
of the cultivable land requires to be watered, and the system of
irrigation has been developed with extraordinary skill. The grazing
lands are extensive. In the northern part an excellent quality of merino
wool is produced; the greater part of the clip, however, is an ordinary
fibre. The cattle furnish a considerable amount of leather for export.
The conditions which have made the northern part a desert have also
given to the state its greatest resource--nitre.[63] The nitrate occurs
in the northern desert region. The crude salt is crushed and partly
refined at the mines, and carried by rail to the nearest port. The
working of the nitrate beds is largely carried on by foreign companies.
Nearly all the product is used as a fertilizer in Germany, France, and
Great Britain. Nitrate constitutes about two-thirds of the exports.
Iodine and bromine are also obtained from the nitrates, and the Chilean
product yields nearly all the world's supply.
Copper is extensively mined and, next to the nitrates, is the most
valuable product. Great Britain is the customer for the greater part.
Coal occurs in the southern part of the state, and is mined for export
to the various states of the Pacific coast. It is not a good coal for
iron smelting, however, and about three times as much is imported as is
exported. A considerable part of the imported coal comes from Australia,
and with it structural steel is made from pig-iron that is also
imported.
Chile is well equipped with railways, a part of which has been built and
are operated by the state. The most important line traverses the valley
between the Andes and the coast ranges, from Concepcion to Valparaiso.
In this region are most of the manufacturing enterprises.
The imports are chiefly coal, machinery, textile goods, and sugar. The
British control about two-thirds of the foreign trade; the Germans and
the French have most of the remainder. The United States supplies the
Chileans with a part of the textiles, a considerable quantity of Oregon
pine, and practically all the coal-oil used.
[Illustration: VALPARASIO]
_Valparaiso_ is the chief business centre of the Pacific coast of South
America. Most of the forwarding business is carried on by British and
German merchants. The transandine railway, now about completed, will
make it one of the most important ports of the world. _Santiago_ is the
capital. _Concepcion_ and _Talca_ are important centres of trade.
_Chillan_ is the principal cattle-market of the Pacific coast of South
America. _Copiapo_ is the focal point of the mining interests. _Iquique_
is the port from which about all the nitrates are shipped. _Punta
Arenas_, one of the "end towns" of the world, is an ocean post-office
for vessels passing through the Straits of Magellan. It is about as far
south as Calgary, B.C., is north.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What will be the probable effect of an interoceanic canal on the
commerce of these states?
From the Abstract of Statistics make a list of the exports from the
United States to these countries.
From the statistics of trade in the Statesman's Year-Book compare the
trade of the United States with that of other countries in these states.
How have race characteristics affected the commerce and development of
these states?
What is meant by peonage?
What cities of the tropical part of these states are in the climate of
the temperate zone?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Carpenter's South America.
Vincent's Around and About South America.
Fiske's Discovery of America--Chapters IX-X.
Procure, if possible, specimens of the following: Cacao and its
products, ivory nuts, cinchona bark, crude nitrate, Panama straw, iodine
(in a sealed vial), llama wool, alpaca cloth, Peruvian cotton.
CHAPTER XXIV
SOUTH AMERICA--THE LOWLAND STATES
The eastern countries of South America are mainly lowland plains. The
llanos of the Orinoco and the pampas of Plate (La Plata) River are
grazing lands. The silvas of the Amazon are forest-covered. In tropical
regions the coast-plain is usually very unhealthful; the seaports
excepted, most of the cities and towns are therefore built on higher
land beyond the coast-plain.
=Venezuela.=--The greater part of Venezuela is a region of llanos, or
grassy plains, shut off from the harbors of the Caribbean Sea, by
mountain-ranges. On account of their pleasant climate the
mountain-valleys constitute the chief region of habitation. The plains
are flooded in the rainy season and sun-scorched during the period of
drought; they are therefore unfit for human habitation.
Coffee is cultivated in the montane region; and cacao in the lower coast
lands. Almost every part of the coast lowlands is fit for sugar
cultivation, and in order to encourage this industry, the importation of
sugar is forbidden. As is usual in similar cases, the domestic sugar is
poor in quality and high in price. Among the forest products rubber,
fustic, divi-divi,[64] and tonka beans, the last used as a perfume, are
the only ones of value. The cattle of the llanos, the native long-horns,
furnish a poor quality of hide, and poorer beef. A few thousand head are
shipped yearly down the Orinoco to be sent to Cuba and Porto Rico.
The placer gold-mines of the Yuruari country, a region also claimed by
Great Britain, have been very productive. Coal, iron ore, and asphaltum
are abundant. Concessions for mining the two last-named have been
granted to American companies. The pearl-fisheries around Margarita
Island, also leased to a foreign company, have become productive under
the new management.
The means of intercommunication are as primitive as those of Colombia.
Short railways extend from several seaports to the regions of
production, and from these coffee and cacao are the only exports of
importance. The Orinoco River is the natural outlet for the
cattle-region, but the commerce of this region is small. The lagoon of
Maracaibo is becoming the centre of a rapidly growing commercial region.
_Caracas_, the capital and largest city, receives the imports of
textiles, domestic wares, flour, and petroleum from the United States
and Great Britain. The railway to its port, _La Guaira_, is a remarkable
work of engineering. _Puerto Cabello_, the most important port, receives
the trade of _Valencia_. From _Maracaibo_, the port on the lagoon of the
same name, is shipped the Venezuelan coffee. _Ciudad Bolivar_ is the
river-port of the Orinoco and an important rubber-market.
=The Guianas.=--The surface conditions and climate of the Guianas resemble
those of Venezuela. The native products are also much the same, but good
business organization has made the countries bearing the general name
highly productive. For the greater part, the coast-plain is the region
of cultivation. Sugar is still the most important crop; but on account
of the fierce competition of beet-sugar, on many of the plantations
cane-sugar cultivation is unprofitable and has been abandoned for that
of rice, cacao, and tobacco. Great Britain, Holland, and France possess
the country. The divisions are known respectively as British Guiana,
Surinam, and Cayenne, and the trade of each accrues to the
mother-country. British Guiana is noted quite as much for its
gold-fields on the Venezuelan border (Cuyuni River) as for its vegetable
products. _Georgetown_, better known by the name of the surrounding
district, _Demerara_, is the focal point of business. _New Amsterdam_ is
also a port of considerable trade. The gold-mining interests centre at
_Bartica_.
[Illustration: A CACAO PLANTATION]
[Illustration: PREPARING THE BEANS FOR SHIPMENT]
[Illustration: CACAO-TREE]
[Illustration: MAKING CHOCOLATE]
Surinam, in addition to its export of vegetable products, contains rich
gold-mines, and these contribute a considerable revenue. _Paramaribo_ is
the port and centre of trade. Phosphates and gold are among the
important exports of Cayenne, whose port bears the same name.
=Brazil.=--This state, nearly the size of the United States, comprises
about half the area of South America. Much of it, including the greater
part of the Amazon River basin, is unfit for the growth of food-stuffs.
There are three regions of production. The Amazon forests yield the
greater part of the world's rubber supply. The middle coast region has
various agricultural products, of which cotton and cane-sugar are the
most important. From the southern region comes two-thirds of the world's
coffee-crop. There are productive gold-mines in the state of Minas
Geraes, but this region is best known for the "old mine" diamonds, the
finest produced.
The Amazon rubber-crop includes not only the crude gum obtained in
Brazil, but a considerable part, if not the most, of the crop from the
surrounding states. The bifurcating Cassiquiare, which flows both into
Amazonian and Orinocan waters, drains a very large area of forest which
yields the best rubber known. The yield of 1901 aggregated about one
hundred and thirty million pounds, of which about one-half was sold in
the United States, one-third in Liverpool, and the rest mainly in
Antwerp and Le Havre. The price of rubber is fixed in New York and
London.
The cotton and cane-sugar are grown in the middle coast region. The
cotton industry bids fair to add materially to the prosperity of the
state. A considerable part of the raw cotton is exported, but the
reserve is sufficient to keep ten thousand looms busy. About three
hundred and fifty million pounds of the raw sugar is purchased by the
refineries of the United States, and much of the remainder by British
dealers.
The seeds of a species of myrtle (_Bertholletia excelsa_) furnish the
Brazil nuts of commerce, large quantities of which are shipped to Europe
and the United States.[65] Manganese ore is also an important export,
and Great Britain purchases nearly all of it.
The coffee-crop of the southern states is the largest in the world; and
about eight hundred million pounds are landed yearly at the ports of the
United States. The coffee-crop, more than any other factor, has made the
great prosperity of the state; for while the rubber yield employs
comparatively few men and yields but little public revenue, the
coffee-crop has brought into Brazil an average of about fifty million
dollars a year for three-quarters of a century.
Cattle products also afford a considerable profit in the vicinity of the
coffee-region. The hides and tallow are shipped to the United States.
For want of refrigerating facilities, most of the beef is "jerked" (or
sun-dried), and shipped in this form to Cuba.
The facilities for transportation, the rivers excepted, are poor. The
Amazon is navigable for ocean steamships nearly to the junction of the
Ucayale. The Paraguay affords a navigable water-way to the mouth of
Plate River. Rapids and falls obstruct most of the rivers at the
junction of the Brazilian plateau and the low plains, but these streams
afford several thousand miles of navigable waters both above and below
the falls.
Nearly all the railways are plantation roads, extending from the various
ports to regions of production a few miles inland. The most important
railway development is that in the vicinity of Rio, where short local
roads to the suburban settlements and the coffee-plantations converge at
the harbor. About fourteen thousand miles of railway are completed and
under actual construction. A considerable part of the mileage is owned
and operated by the state, and it has become the policy of the latter to
control its roads and to encourage immigration. One result of this
policy is the increasing number of German and Italian colonies, that
establish settlements in every district penetrated by a new road.
In 1900 the total foreign trade aggregated upward of two hundred and
seventy-five million dollars. The imports consist of cotton and woollen
manufactures, structural steel and machinery, preserved fish and meats,
and coal-oil. Great Britain, Germany, the United States, and France have
nearly all the trade. The United States sells to Brazil textiles and
coal-oil to the amount of over eleven million dollars yearly, and buys
of the country coffee and rubber to the amount of six times as much.
_Rio de Janeiro_, commonly called "Rio," is the capital and commercial
centre. Its harbor is one of the best in South America. Formerly all the
coffee was shipped from this port, but the greater part now goes from
_Santos_. _Porto Alegre_, the port of the German colonies, has also a
growing export trade.
_Bahia_, _Pernambuco_ (or _Recife_), _Maceio_, _Ceara_ are the markets
for cotton, sugar, and tobacco, much of which is shipped to other
Brazilian ports for home consumption. _Para_ and _Ceara_ monopolize
nearly all the rubber trade. The position of _Manaos_, at the confluence
of several rivers, makes it one of the most important markets of the
Amazon basin, and most of the crude rubber is first collected there for
shipment. _Cuyaba_ is the commercial centre of the mining region; its
outlet is the Paraguay River, and Buenos Aires profits by its trade.
=Argentina and the Plate River Countries.=--These states are situated in a
latitude corresponding to that of the United States. The entire area
from the coast to the slopes of the Andes is a vast prairie-region. As a
result of position, climate, and surface the agricultural industries are
the same as in the United States--grazing and wheat-growing.
Cattle-growing is the chief employment, and the cost per head of rearing
stock is practically nothing. For want of better means of transportation
the shipments of live beef are not very heavy; the quality of the beef
is poor, and until recently there have been no adequate facilities for
getting it to market.[66] A small amount of refrigerator beef and a
large amount of jerked beef are exported, however. Near the markets,
there are large plants in which the hides, horns, tallow, and meat are
utilized--the last being converted to the famous "beef extract," which
finds a market all over the world.
The sheep industry is on a much better business basis. Both the wool and
the mutton have been improved by cross-breeding with good stock. As a
result the trade in mutton and wool has increased by leaps and bounds;
and nearly three million sheep carcasses are landed at the other ports
of Brazil, at Cuba, and at various European states. The wool is bought
mainly by Germany and France, but the United States is a heavy
purchaser. The quality of the fibre, formerly very poor, year by year is
improving.
Wheat, the staple product, is grown mainly within a radius of four
hundred miles around the mouth of Plate River. The area of cultivation
is increasing as the facilities for transportation are extended and,
little by little, is encroaching on the grazing lands. The wheat
industry is carried on very largely by German and Italian colonists.
Flax, grown for the seed, is a very large export crop. Maize, partly for
export and partly for home consumption, is also grown.
The timber resources, chiefly in Paraguay and the Gran Chaco, are very
great, but for want of means of transportation the timber-trade cannot
successfully compete with that of Central America and Mexico. Workable
gold and silver ores are abundant along the Andean cordillera; gold,
silver, and copper are exported to Europe. A poor quality of lignite
occurs in several provinces, but there are no available mines yielding
coal suitable for making steam. There are petroleum wells near Mendoza.
Most of the manufactures pertain to the preparation of cattle products,
although a considerable amount of coarse textiles are made in the larger
cities from the native cotton and wool. Hats, paper (made from grass),
and leather goods are also made. In general, all manufactures are
hampered by the difficulties of getting good fuel at a low price.
Transportation is carried on along Plate River and the lower parts of
its tributaries. The railway has become the chief factor in the carriage
of commodities, however, and the railways of Argentina have been
developed on the plans of North American roads. About twelve thousand
miles are in actual operation, one of which is a transcontinental line,
about completed between Buenos Aires and Valparaiso. Electric railways
have become very popular, and the mileage is rapidly increasing.
The import trade, consisting of textile goods, machinery, steel, and
petroleum, is carried on with Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium
(mainly transit trade), the United States, and Italy. The competition
between the European states for this trade is very strong, and not a
little has been acquired at the expense of the United States, whose
trade has not materially increased.
[Illustration: AREA OF THE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF MATE]
_Buenos Aires_ is the financial centre of this part of South America.
Among its industries is the largest meat-refrigerating plant in the
world. The harbor at _La Plata_ is excellent and has drawn a
considerable part of the foreign trade from Buenos Aires. _Rosario_,
_Cordoba_, _Santa Fe_, and _Parana_ are the markets of extensive farming
regions. _Mendoza_ is the focal point of the mining interests.
=Paraguay= has a large forest area, but for want of means of
transportation it is without value. Even the railway companies find it
cheaper to buy their ties in the United States and Australia, rather
than to procure them in Paraguay. In spite of the extent of good land,
the wheat and much of the bread-stuffs are purchased from Argentina.
Tobacco and mate are the only export crops, and they have but little
value. The Parana and Paraguay Rivers are the only commercial outlet of
the state.
=Uruguay.=--Owing to its foreign population Uruguay is becoming a rich
country. The native cattle have been improved by cross-breeding with
European stock, and the state has become one of the foremost cattle and
sheep ranges of the world. The value of animal products is not far from
forty million dollars yearly. These go mainly to Europe, and so also
does the wheat-crop.
France and Argentina purchase most of the exports and Great Britain
supplies most of the textiles and machinery imported. The trade of the
United States is about one-fourth that of Great Britain. _Montevideo_ is
the chief market and port. At _Fray Bentos_ is one of the largest plants
in the world for the manufacture of cattle products.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What kind of commerce has led to the establishment of the various ports
along the Spanish Main?
What advantages has the American fruit-shipper, trading at South
American ports, over his European competitor?
What is meant by "horse latitudes," and what was the origin of the name?
In what way may the opening of an interoceanic canal affect the
coffee-trade of Brazil?--the nitrate trade of Chile?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From the Abstract of Statistics find the exports of the United States to
each of these countries.
From the Statesman's Year-Book compare the trade of the United States in
each of these countries with that of Great Britain, France, Germany, and
Italy.
If possible, obtain specimens of the following: Crude rubber, pampas
grass, Brazil nuts (in pod), and raw coffee of several grades for
comparison with Java and Mocha coffees.
CHAPTER XXV
EUROPE--GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY
Almost all the commercial activity of Europe is south of the parallel
and west of the meridian of St. Petersburg. Most of the great industries
are controlled by Germanic and Latin peoples, and among these Great
Britain and Germany stand first.
=Great Britain and Ireland.=--The United Kingdom, or Great Britain and
Ireland, are commonly known as the British Isles. The British Empire
consists of the United Kingdom and its colonial possessions; it includes
also a large number of islands occupied as coaling stations and for
strategic purposes. All told, the empire embraces about one-seventh of
the land area of the world and about one-fourth its population.
The wonderful power and great commercial development is due not only to
conditions of geographic environment but also to the intelligence of a
people who have adjusted themselves to those conditions. The insular
position of the United Kingdom has given it natural protection, and for
more than eight hundred years there has been no successful invasion by a
foreign power. Its commercial position is both natural and artificial.
It has utilized the markets to the east and south, and has founded great
countries which it supplies with manufactured products.
[Illustration: THE BRITISH EMPIRE]
The position of the kingdom with respect to climate is fortunate. The
movement of the Gulf Stream on the American coast carries a large volume
of water into the latitude of the prevailing westerly winds, and these
in turn carry warm water to every part of the coast of the islands. As a
result, the harbors of the latter are never obstructed by ice; those of
the Labrador coast, situated in the same latitude, are blocked nearly
half the year.
The high latitude of the islands is an advantage so far as the
production of food-stuffs is concerned. The summer days in the latitude
of Liverpool are very nearly eighteen hours in length, and this fact
together with the mild winters, adds very largely to the food-producing
power of the islands.
The highlands afford considerable grazing. Great care is taken in
improving the stock, both of cattle and sheep. In the north the cattle
are bred mainly as meat producers; in the south for dairy products.
Durham, Alderney, and Jersey stock are exported to both Americas for
breeding purposes. The sheep of the highlands produce the heavy, coarse
wool of which the well known "cheviot" and "frieze" textiles are made.
Elsewhere they are bred for mutton, of which the "South Down" variety is
an example.
The lowland regions yield grain abundantly where cultivated. The average
yield per acre is about double that of the United States, and is
surpassed by that of Denmark only. Both Ireland and England are famous
for fine dairy products. These are becoming the chief resource of the
former country, which is practically without the coal necessary for
extensive manufacture. The fishing-grounds form an important food
resource.
The cultivated lands do not supply the food needed for consumption. The
grain-crop lasts scarcely three months; the meat-crop but little longer.
Bread-stuffs from the United States and India, and meats from the United
States, Australia, and New Zealand make up the shortage. The annual
import of food-stuffs amounts to more than fifty dollars per capita.
The growing of wool and flax for cloth-making became an industry of
great importance just after the accession of Henry VII. With the advent
of peace, it became possible to manufacture into cloth the fibres that
before had been sent for that purpose to Flanders. The utilization of
the coal and the iron ore years afterward brought about an economic
revolution that was intensified by the invention of the steam-engine and
the power-loom.
These quickly brought the country into the foremost rank as a
manufacturing centre. Moreover, they also demanded the foreign markets
that have made the country a maritime power as well--for an insular
country must also have the ships with which to carry its merchandise to
its markets.
The development of the manufactures, therefore, is inseparably connected
with that of the mineral and metal industries. From very early times the
metal deposits of the country have been a source of power. Copper and
tin were used by the aboriginal Britons long before Caesar's
reconnaissance of the islands, and it is not unlikely that the Bronze
Period was the natural development that resulted from the discovery of
these metals.
Coal occurs in various fields that extend from the River Clyde to the
River Severn. The annual output of these mines at the close of the
century was about two hundred and twenty-five million tons. In the past
century the inroads upon the visible supply were so great that the
output in the near future will be considerably lessened. Not far from
one-sixth of the output is sold to consumers in Russia and the
Mediterranean countries, but a growing sentiment to forbid any sale of
coal to foreign buyers is taking shape.
[Illustration: BRITISH ISLES]
Iron ores are fairly abundant, but the hematite required for the best
Bessemer steel is limited to the region about Manchester and Birmingham.
The shortage of this ore has become so apparent within recent years that
Great Britain has become a heavy purchaser of ores in foreign markets.
The coal in the Clyde basin is employed mainly in the manufacture of
railway iron, steamship material, and rolling stock. The manufacture of
Bessemer steel is gradually moving to the vicinity of South Wales, at
the ports of which foreign pig-iron can be most cheaply landed. In
west-central England the several coal-fields form a single centre of
manufacture, where are located some of the largest woollen and cotton
mills in Europe. It also includes the plants for the manufacture of
machinery, cutlery, and pottery.
The import trade of Great Britain consists mainly of food-stuffs and raw
materials.[67] Of the latter, cotton is by far the most important. Most
of it comes from the United States, but the Nile delta, Brazil, the
Dekkan of India, the Iran plateau, and the Piura Valley of Peru send
portions, each region having fibre of specific qualities designed for
specific uses. The native wool clip forms only a small part of the
amount used in manufacture. The remainder, more than three million
pounds, comes from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
The supply of flax is small, and 100,000 tons are imported to meet the
wants of the mills. The greater part is purchased in Russia, but the
finer quality is imported from Belgium. Jute is purchased from India and
manufactured into burlap and rugs.
But little available standing timber remains, and lumber must,
therefore, be imported. The pine is purchased mainly in Sweden, Norway,
Canada, and the United States. A considerable amount of wood-pulp is
imported from Canada for paper-making. Mahogany for ornamental
manufactures is obtained from Africa and British Honduras. Oak, and the
woods for interior finish, are purchased largely from Canada and the
United States.
The export trade of Great Britain consists almost wholly of the articles
manufactured with British coal as the power. These are made from the raw
materials purchased abroad, and the stamp of the British craftsman is a
guarantee of excellence and honesty. Of the total export trade,
amounting yearly to about one billion, two hundred million dollars,
nearly one-third consists of cotton, woollen, linen, and jute textiles;
one-fifth consists of iron and steel manufactured stuffs made from
British ores. About one-third goes to the colonies of the
mother-country, with whom she keeps in close touch; Germany, the United
States, and the South American states are the chief foreign buyers.
For the handling and carriage of these goods there is an admirable
system of railways reaching from every part of the interior to the
numerous ports. The rolling stock and the locomotives are not nearly so
heavy as those used in the United States; the railway beds and track
equipment, on the whole, are probably the best in the world. Freight
rates are considerably higher than on the corresponding classes of
merchandise in the United States. The public highways are most
excellent, but the means of street traffic in the cities are very poor.
The harbor facilities at the various ports are of the best. The docks
and basins are usually arranged so that while the import goods are being
landed the export stuffs are made ready to be loaded. The facilities for
the rapid transfer of freights have been improved by the reconstruction
of the various river estuaries so as to make them ship-channels. The
estuaries of the Clyde, Tyne, and Mersey have been thus improved, while
Manchester has been made a seaport by an artificial canal. The British
merchant marine is the largest in the world, and about ninety per cent.
of the vessels are steamships.
_London_ is the capital; it is also one of the first commercial and
financial centres of the world. The Thames has not a sufficient depth of
water for the largest liners, and these dock usually about twenty miles
below the city. The colonial commerce at London is very heavy,
especially the India traffic, and it is mainly for this trade that the
British acquired the control of the Suez Canal.
_Liverpool_ is one of the most important ports of Europe, and receives
most of the American traffic. The White Star and Cunard Lines have their
terminals at this port.
_Southampton_ is also a port which receives a large share of American
traffic. The American and several foreign steamship lines discharge at
that place. _Hull_ and _Shields_ have a considerable part of the
European traffic. _Glasgow_ is one of the foremost centres of steel
ship-building. _Cardiff_ and _Swansea_ are ports connected with the coal
and iron trade. _Queenstown_ is a calling point for transatlantic
liners.
_Manchester_ is both a cotton port and a great market for the cotton
textiles made in the nearby towns of the Lancashire coal-field. _Leeds_
and _Bradford_ and the towns about them are the chief centres of woollen
manufacture. _Wilton_ and _Kidderminster_ are famous for carpets.
_Birmingham_ is the centre of the steel manufactures. _Sheffield_ has a
world-wide reputation for cutlery. In and near the Staffordshire
district are the potteries that have made the names of _Worcester_,
_Coalport_, _Doulton_, _Copeland_, and _Jackfield_ famous. _Belfast_ is
noted for its linen textiles, and also for some of the largest
steamships afloat that have been built in its yards. _Dundee_ is the
chief centre of jute manufacture.
=The German Empire.=--The German Empire consists of the kingdoms of
Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Wuertemburg, together with a number of
small states. The "free" cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck, whose
independence was purchased in feudal times, are also incorporated within
the empire. The present empire was formed in 1871, at the close of the
war between Germany and France. The merging of the states into the
empire was designed as a political step, but it proved a great
industrial revolution as well.
The plain of Europe which slopes to the north and the Baltic Sea, the
flood-plains of the rivers excepted, is feebly productive of grain. It
is a fine grazing region, however, and the dairy products are of the
best quality. Among European states Russia alone surpasses Germany in
the number of cattle grown. The province of Schleswig-Holstein is famous
the world over for its fine cattle. Cavalry horses are a special feature
of the lowland plain, and the government is the chief buyer. The wool
product has hitherto been important, but the sheep ranges are being
turned into crop lands, on account of the increase of population in the
industrial regions.
The midland belt, however, between the coast-plain and the mountains, is
the chief food-producing part of Germany. Rye and wheat are grown
wherever possible, but the entire grain-crop is consumed in about eight
months. The United States, Argentina, and Russia supply the wheat and
flour; Russia supplies the rye.
[Illustration: GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES]
The sugar-beet is by far the most important export crop, and Germany
produces yearly about one million, eight hundred thousand tons, or
nearly as much as Austria-Hungary and France combined. This industry is
encouraged by a bounty paid on all sugar exported.[68] A considerable
amount of raw beet-sugar is sold to the refineries of the United States;
Great Britain also is a heavy buyer. The home consumption is relatively
small, being about one-third per capita that of the United States.
Silesia, the Rhine Valley, and the lowlands of the Hartz Mountains are
the most important centres of the sugar industry.
Germany is rich in minerals.[69] Zinc occurs in abundance, and the mines
of Silesia furnish the world's chief supply. Most of the lithographic
stone in use is obtained in Bavaria. Copper and silver are mined in the
Erz and Hartz Mountains. During the sixteenth century the mines of the
latter region brought the states then forming Germany into commercial
prominence and thereby diverted the trade between the North and
Mediterranean Seas to the valleys of the Rhine and Elbe Rivers.
These two metal products made Germany a great financial power. The
Franco-Prussian War added to Germany the food-producing lands of the
Rhine and Moselle, and the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. At the same
time it gave the Germans organization by welding the various German
states into an empire. As a result there has been an industrial
development that has placed Germany in the class with the United States
and Great Britain.
By unifying the various interstate systems of commerce and
transportation, the iron and steel industry has greatly expanded. The
chief centre of this industry is the valley of the Ruhr River.
Coal-measures underlie an area somewhat larger than the basin of the
river. To the industrial centres of this valley iron ore is brought by
the Rhine and Moselle barges from Alsace-Lorraine and Luxemburg, and
also from the Hartz Mountains.
In the importance and extent of manufactures, Germany ranks next to
Great Britain among European states, and because of the extent of their
coal-fields the Germans seem destined in time to surpass their rivals.
The manufacture of textiles is one of the leading industries, and, next
to Great Britain, Germany is the heaviest purchaser of raw cotton from
the United States. The Rhine district is the chief centre of cotton
textile manufacture. Raw cotton is delivered to the mills by the Rhine
boats, and these carry the manufactured product to the seaboard. Central
and South America are the chief purchasers.
Woollen goods are also extensively manufactured, the industry being in
the region that produces Saxony wool. In Silesia and the lower Rhine
provinces there are also extensive woollen textile manufactures, but the
goods are made mainly from imported wool. Argentina and the other Plate
River countries are the chief buyers of these goods. There is a
considerable linen manufacture from German-grown flax, and silk-making,
mainly from raw silk imported from Italy.
The great expansion and financial success of the manufacturing
enterprises is due very largely to the admirable organization of the
lines of transportation. The rivers, with their connecting canals,
supplement the railways instead of competing with them. They are
utilized mainly for slow freights, while the railways carry the traffic
that demands speed. The possibilities of both inland water-ways and
railway transportation have been utilized by the Germans to the utmost,
with the result of a very low rate both for coal and ore, and for
structural iron and steel. The latter is carried from the various
steel-making plants in the Ruhr Valley to the seaboard at a rate of
eighty to ninety cents per ton.[70]
[Illustration: LUeBECK]
[Illustration: BREMEN]
All this has resulted in a wonderful commercial expansion of the
empire. In 1875 Germany was neither a maritime nor a naval power. At the
close of the century it ranked about with the United States as a naval
power, and far surpassed that country in the tonnage of merchant marine.
The German steamship fleet includes the largest and fastest vessels
afloat.
German trade may be summed up as an export of manufactured goods and an
import of food-stuffs and raw materials. At the close of the century the
annual movement of industrial products amounted to nearly two and
one-half billion dollars. About one-half the trade of the empire is
carried on with Great Britain, the United States, Austria-Hungary, and
Russia. A large part of the foreign trade is carried on through the
ports of Belgium and Holland.
_Berlin_, the capital, is one of the few cities having a population of
more than one million. It is not only a great centre of trade, but it is
one of the leading money-markets of Europe; it is also the chief railway
centre. _Hamburg_ and _Bremen_ are important ports of German-American
trade, the former being the largest seaport of continental Europe.
_Breslau_ is an important market, into which the raw materials of
eastern Europe are received, and from which they are sent to the
manufacturing districts. The art galleries of _Dresden_ have had the
effect of making that city a centre of art manufactures which are famous
the world over. _Luebeck_ is one of the free cities that was formerly in
the Hanse League.
The twin cities, _Barmen-Eberfeld_, in the Ruhr coal-field, form one of
the principal centres of cotton manufacture in the world. _Dortmund_ is
a coal-market. At _Essen_ are the steel-works founded by Herr Krupp.
They are the largest and one of the most complete plants in the world.
The output includes arms, heavy and light ordnance, and about every kind
of structural iron and steel used. About forty thousand men are
employed. _Chemnitz_ is an important point, not only of cotton
manufacture, but also of Saxony wools, underwear and shawls being its
most noteworthy products. At _Stettin_, _Danzig_, and _Kiel_ are built
the steamships that have given to Germany its great commercial power.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what ways are Great Britain and Germany commercial rivals?
What are the advantages of each with respect to position?--with respect
to natural resources?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports of
each;--the leading imports of each. What exports have they in common?
From the Abstract of Statistics find what commodities the United States
sells to each.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--Chapter III.
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Book III, Chapters III-V.
CHAPTER XXVI
EUROPE--THE BALTIC AND NORTH SEA STATES
These states, like Great Britain and Germany, belong to Germanic Europe,
and their situation around the North and Baltic Seas makes their
commercial interests much the same. From the stand-point of commerce
Holland might be regarded as an integral part of Germany, inasmuch as a
large part of the foreign commerce of Germany must reach the sea by
crossing that state.
=Sweden and Norway.=--Sweden and Norway occupy the region best known as
the Scandinavian peninsula. The western side faces the warm, moist winds
of the Atlantic, but the surface is too rugged to be productive. The
lands suitable for farming, on the other hand, are on the east side,
where, owing to the high latitude, the winters are extremely cold.
The plateau lands are in the latitude of the great pine-forest belt that
extends across the two continents. The forests of the Scandinavian
peninsula are near the most densely peopled part of Europe, and they are
also readily accessible. Moreover, the rugged surface offers unlimited
water-power. As a result Norway and Sweden practically control the
lumber-market of Europe, and their lumber products form one of the most
important exports of the kingdom. Norway pine competes with California
redwood in Australia. The "naval stores," tar and pitch, compete with
those of Georgia and the Carolinas. The wood-pulp from this region is
the chief supply of the paper-makers of Europe. Next to Russia, Sweden
has the largest lumber-trade in Europe. The Mediterranean states are the
chief buyers.
The mineral products are a considerable source of income. Building stone
is shipped to the nearby lowland countries. The famous Swedish
manganese-iron ores, essential in steel manufacture, are shipped to the
United States and Europe. For this purpose they compete with the ores of
Spain and Cuba. The mines of the Gellivare iron district are probably
the only iron-mines of consequence within the frigid zone. The ore is
sent to German and British smelteries.
The fisheries are the most important of Europe, and this fact has had a
great influence on the history of the people. Centuries ago the people
living about the _vigs_ or fjords of the west coast were compelled to
depend almost wholly on the fisheries for their food-supplies. As a
result they became the most famous sailors of the world. They
established settlements in Iceland and Greenland; they also planted a
colony in North America 500 years before the voyage of Columbus.
Herring, salmon, and cod are the principal catch of the fisheries, and
about four-fifths of the product is cured and exported to the Catholic
European states and to South America.
South of Kristiania farming is the principal industry. Much of the land
is suitable for wheat-growing, but the productive area is so small that
a considerable amount of bread-stuffs must be imported from the United
States. On account of the high latitude the winters are too long and
severe for any but the hardiest grains. Dairy products are commercially
the most important output of the farms, and they find a ready market in
the popular centres of Europe--London, Hamburg, Paris, and Berlin.
The lumber, furniture, matches, fish, ores, and dairy products sold
abroad do not pay for the bread-stuffs, coal, petroleum, clothing, and
machinery. In part, this is made up by the carrying trade of Norwegian
vessels; the rest of the deficit is more than met by the money which the
throngs of tourists spend during the summer months.
The United States buys from these countries fish and ores to the amount
of about three million dollars a year; it sells them cotton, petroleum,
bread-stuffs, and machinery to the amount of about twelve million
dollars.
_Stockholm_, the capital of Sweden, is the chief financial and
distributing centre of the Scandinavian trade. Its railway system
reaches about every area of production. Although having a good harbor of
its own, it must depend on _Trondhjem_ (Drontheim) for winter traffic,
because the Baltic ports are closed by ice three or four months of the
year. _Kristiania_, the capital of Norway, is the export market of the
fish and lumber products.
_Goteborg_, owing to recently completed railway and canal connections,
is becoming an important port of trade. It is convenient to other
European ports, and it is rarely closed by ice. _Bergen_, _Trondhjem_,
and _Hammerfest_ derive a heavy income from their fisheries and likewise
from the tourists who visit the coast during midsummer. The last-named
port, although farther north than any town in the world, has an open
harbor during the winter.
=Denmark.=--Denmark is essentially an agricultural state, and almost every
square mile of available land is under cultivation. Even the sand-dunes
have been reclaimed and converted into pasturage. The yield of wheat is
greater per acre than in any other country, but as only a small area is
sown, wheat and flour are imported.
About half the area of the state is used in growing fodder for horses
and cattle. The dairy products, especially butter, are unrivalled
elsewhere in Europe. The dairy business is largely controlled by a
cooperative association of dairymen and farmers. Pastures, fodder,
cattle, sheds, creameries, and all the processes involved are subject to
a most rigid sanitary inspection.
_Copenhagen_, the capital, is the financial centre of the kingdom.
Commercially it is one of the most important ports of Europe. Various
shipments consigned to Baltic ports are landed at this city; here the
cargoes break bulk and are again trans-shipped to their destination. In
order to facilitate this forwarding business, the Crown has made
Copenhagen a free port. Steamship lines connect it with New York,
British ports, and the East Indies.
A great deal of farming and dairy machinery is manufactured; coal,
cotton goods, and structural machinery are imported from the United
States. Little, however, is exported to that country, almost all the
dairy products being sold to Great Britain and other populous centres of
western Europe. _Aalborg_ and _Aarhuus_ are dairy-markets.
Greenland and Iceland are colonies of Denmark, and the fishing industry
of the kingdom is carried on mainly along the shores of these islands.
The furs, seal-skins, seal-oil, and eider-down of Greenland are a
government monopoly. The mineral cryolite occurs at Ivigtut and is mined
by soda-making establishments in the United States. Iceland produces
sheep, cattle, and fish; these are shipped from _Reikiavik_. The Faroe
Islands produce but little save wool, feathers, and birds' eggs.
=Belgium.=--Probably in no other country of Europe has nature done so
little and man so much to make a great state as in Belgium. The lowland
region has been made so fertile by artificial means that it yields more
wheat per acre than any other country except Denmark. The Ardennes
highland in the southeast is naturally unproductive, but it has become
one of the great manufacturing centres of Europe. Less than one-twelfth
of the area of the state is unproductive.
The coast, more than twoscore miles in extent, has not a single harbor
for large vessels, and the two navigable rivers, the Scheldt and Meuse,
flow into another state before reaching the sea.
[Illustration: HOLLAND AND BELGIUM]
The low sand-barrens next the coast have been reclaimed by means of a
grass that holds in place the sand that formerly shifted with each
movement of the wind. This region is now cultivated pasture-land that
produces the finest of horses, cattle, and dairy products. The dairy
products go mainly to London. The Flemish horses, like those of the
sand-barrens of Germany and France, are purchased in the large cities,
where heavy draught-horses are required. Many of them are sold to the
express companies of the United States.
Bordering the sand-barrens is a belt of land that produces grain and the
sugar-beet. Flax is an important product, and its cultivation has had
much to do with both the history and the political organization of the
state. Before the advent of the cotton industry, woollen and linen were
practically the only fibres used in cloth-making. Belgium was then the
chief flax-growing and cloth-making country, and all western Europe
depended upon the Flemish looms for cloth. This industry, therefore,
gave the country not only commercial prominence, but was largely
responsible for its political independence as well. Flax is still an
important product, and the linen textiles made in the state are without
a superior. Much of the flax is grown in the valley of the River Lys.
One of the most productive coal-fields of Europe stretches across
Belgium, and a few miles south of it are the iron-ore deposits that
extend also into Luxemburg and Germany. In addition to these, the
zinc-mines about Moresnet are among the richest in the world. Belgium
is, therefore, one of the great metal-working centres of Europe. A small
portion of the coal is exported to France, but most of it is required in
the manufactures.
_Liege_, _Seraing_, and _Verviers_ are the great centres of the metal
industry. They were built at the eastern extremity of the coal-field,
within easy reach of the iron ores. Firearms, railroad steel, and
tool-making machinery are the chief products of the region, and because
of the favorable situation, these products easily compete with the
manufactures of Germany and France.
_Ghent_ is the chief focal point for the flax product, which is
converted into the finest of linen cloth and art fabrics. Much of the
weaving and spinning machinery employed in Europe is made in this city.
_Mechlin_ and the villages near by are famous the world over for
hand-worked laces.
Expensive porcelains, art tiles, glassware, and cheap crockery are made
in the line of kilns that reaches almost from one end of the coal-field
to the other; these products, moreover, are extensively exported.
The railways are owned and operated by the state. They are managed so
judiciously, moreover, that the rates of carriage are lower than in most
European states. The Scheldt is navigable for large ocean steamers to
_Antwerp_, and this city is the great Belgian port for ocean traffic.
The city owes its importance to its position. One branch of the Scheldt
leads toward the Rhine; the other is connected by a canal with the
rivers of France; the main stem of the river points toward London. It is
therefore the meeting of three ways. It is the terminal of the
steamships of American, and of various other lines. It is also the depot
of the Kongo trade. Ship-canals deep enough for coasters and freighters
connect _Ghent_, _Bruges_, and _Brussels_ with tide-water. These are
about to be converted to deep-water ship-canals.
The foreign commerce of Belgium is much like that of other European
states. Wheat, meat, maize, cotton, and petroleum are imported mainly
from the United States; iron ore is purchased from Luxemburg and
Germany, and various raw materials are brought from France. In exchange
there are exported fine machinery, linen fabrics, porcelains, fire-arms,
glassware, and beet-sugar. From the Kongo state, at the head of which is
the King of the Belgians, are obtained rubber and ivory. The rubber is
sold mainly to the United States.
_Brussels_ is the capital and financial centre. On account of the state
control of the railways, it is also the directive centre of all the
industries pertaining to commerce and transportation.
=Holland.=--The names Holland and Netherlands mean "lowland," and the
state itself has a lower surface than any other country of Europe.
Nearly half the area is at high-tide level or else below it. A large
part, mainly the region about the Zuider[71] Sea, has been reclaimed
from the sea.
In the reclamation of these lands stone dikes are built to enclose a
given area, and from the basin thus constructed the water is pumped. The
reclaimed lands, or "polders," include not only the sea-bottom, but the
coast marshes as well; even the rivers are bordered with levees in order
to prevent overflows. Windmills are the machinery by which the water is
pumped from the polders into the sea. In no other part of the world is
wind-power so extensively used. Almost every acre of the polders is
under cultivation, and these lands grow a very large part of the
vegetables and flowers consumed in the great cities of England, France,
and Belgium.
The coast sand-barrens have been converted into pasture-lands that
produce draught-horses, beef cattle, and dairy cattle. The horses find a
ready market in the United States and the large European cities; the
dairy cattle not needed at home are exported, the United States being a
heavy purchaser. The beef cattle are grown mainly for the markets of
London. Dutch butter is used far beyond the boundaries of the state, and
Edam cheese reaches nearly every large city of Europe and America.
The sugar-beet is extensively cultivated, in spite of the great trade
resulting from the cane-sugar industry of the East Indies. It is more
profitable to import wheat from the United States and rye from Russia in
order to use the land for the sugar-beet.
Practically no timber suitable for lumber manufacture exists, and
building material therefore must be imported. Pine is purchased from
Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States. Stone is purchased wherever
it may be obtained as return freight, or as ballast. The coast fisheries
yield oysters, herrings, and "anchovies," which are not anchovies, but
sprats.
For want of coal and iron there are few manufactures, and the garden and
dairy products are about the only export articles. There is an
abundance of clay, and of this brick for road-making, tiles for building
purposes, and porcelains are made. But little of the raw sugar is
refined; most of it is sold to foreign refiners, and the United States
is one of the chief customers.
Holland is a great commercial country, and for more than five hundred
years the Dutch flag has been found in almost every large port of the
world. Much of the commerce is derived from the tobacco, sugar, and
coffee plantations of the Dutch East Indies.
A very large part of the commerce, however, is neither import or export
trade, but a "transit" commerce. Thus, American coal-oil is transferred
from the great ocean tank-steamers to smaller tank-boats, and is then
carried across the state into Germany, France, and Belgium, through the
numerous canals.
This trade applies also to many of the products of the German industries
which will not bear a heavy freight tariff, such as coal, ores, etc. It
reaches the Rhine and Rhone river-basins and extends even to the Danube.
Both Switzerland and Austria-Hungary send much of their exports through
Holland. All trade at the various ports and through the canals is free,
it being the policy to encourage and not to obstruct commerce.
_Amsterdam_, the constitutional capital, is one of the great financial
and banking centres of Europe. The completion of the Nord Holland canal
makes the docks and basins accessible to the largest steamships.
Diamond-cutting is one of the unique industries of the city. Since the
discovery of the African mines its former trade in diamonds has been
largely absorbed by London.
More than half the carrying trade of the state centres at _Rotterdam_.
By the improvement of the river estuaries and canals this city has
become one of the best ports of Europe, and the tonnage of goods
handled at the docks is enormously increasing. _Vlissingen_ (Flushing)
and the _Hook_ are railway terminals that handle much of the local
freights consigned to London. _Delft_ is famous the world over for the
beautiful porcelain made at its potteries.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How has the topography of each of these states affected its commerce?
How is their commerce affected by latitude and climate?
How has the cultivation of the sugar-beet affected the cane-sugar
industry in the British West Indies?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports and
imports of each country.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of the United States with
each of these countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--pp. 153-159.
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Book III, Chapters I and VIII.
CHAPTER XXVII
EUROPE--THE MEDITERRANEAN STATES AND SWITZERLAND
The Mediterranean states are peopled mainly by races whose social and
economic development was moulded largely by the Roman occupation of the
Mediterranean basin for a period of more than one thousand years. The
occupations of the people have been shaped to a great extent by the
slope of the land and by the mountain-ranges that long isolated them
from the Germanic peoples north of the Alps.
=France.=--The position of France with respect to industrial development
is fortunate. The North Sea coast faces the ports of Great Britain; the
Atlantic ports are easily accessible to American centres of commerce;
the Mediterranean ports command a very large part of the trade of that
sea.
The easily travelled overland routes between the Mediterranean and North
Seas in very early times gave the country a commercial prominence that
ever since has been retained. Even before the time of Caesar it was a
famous trading-ground for Mediterranean merchants, and the conquest of
the country was not so much for the spoils of war as for the extension
of Roman commercial influence.
The greater part of France is an agricultural region, and nowhere is the
soil cultivated with greater skill. Although the state is not quite as
large as Texas, there are more farms than in all the United States,
their small size making thorough cultivation a necessity. Much of the
land is too valuable for wheat-farming, and so the eastern
manufacturing districts depend upon the Russian wheat-farms for their
supply. Northwestern France, however, has a surplus of wheat, and this
is sold to Great Britain.
[Illustration: FRANCE]
The sugar-beet is the most profitable crop, and its cultivation is aided
indirectly by the government, which gives a bounty on all exported
sugar. The area of sugar-beet cultivation will probably increase to its
limit for this reason.
The French farmer is an artist in the cultivation of small fruits, and
the latter form an important source of revenue. Of the fruit-crop, the
grape is by far the most important commercially. French wines,
especially the champagnes, are exported to a greater extent than the
wines of any other country.[72] Most of the wine is sold in Great
Britain and the countries north of the grape belt; a considerable part
is sold in the United States and the eastern countries. Champagne,
Bordeaux, the Loire, and the Rhone Valleys are famous wine districts.
Wine is also imported, to be refined or to be made into brandy.
Cattle-breeding, both for meat and for dairy purposes, is extensively
carried on. The meat is consumed at home. Butter is an important export,
especially in the northwest, where a large amount is made for London
consumers. This region produces Camembert and Neufchatel cheese, both of
which are largely exported; Brie cheese is made chiefly along the German
border. The Roquefort product, made of ewe's milk, is fermented in
limestone caves and cellars. All these varieties have a large sale, the
United States and Great Britain being heavy purchasers.
The Percheron draught-horse is raised for export as well as for home
use; mules are extensively raised for the army wagon-trains of Great
Britain and Germany. Sheep are grown for the finer grades of wool, but
so much of the sheep pasture has been given to the cultivation of the
sugar-beet, that a considerable part of the woollen textiles are now
made of wool imported from Argentina. A large part of the eggs and table
poultry consumed in London are products of northwestern France.
The coal-fields of the north produce nearly two-thirds of the total
amount consumed. Iron ores are found near the German border; they are
sent to coal-fields in the neighborhood of St. Etienne and Le Creuzot to
be manufactured into steel. Both coal and iron ore are deficient. To
meet the requirements of consumption, the former is imported from Great
Britain, Germany, and Belgium; the latter, mainly from Germany and
Spain.
The manufactures of France have a wide influence. From the coal and iron
are derived the intricate machinery that has made the country famous,
the railways, the powerful navy, and the merchant marine that has made
the country a great commercial nation. Because of the great creative
skill and taste of the people, French textiles are standards of good
taste, and they find a ready market in all parts of the world. In
textile manufactures more than one million people and upward of one
hundred thousand looms are employed.
The United States is a heavy buyer of the woollen cloths and the finer
qualities of dress goods. Inasmuch as these goods have not been
successfully imitated elsewhere, the French trade does not suffer from
competition. The best goods are made from the fleeces of French merino
sheep, and are manufactured mainly in the northern towns. The Gobelin
tapestries of Paris are famous the world over.
The cotton manufactures depend mainly on American cotton. About
two-thirds of the cotton is purchased in the United States, a part of
which returns in the form of fine goods that may be classed as muslins,
tulles, and art textiles. The market for such goods is also general. In
the manufacture of fine laces, such as the Point d'Alencon fabrics, the
French have few equals and no superiors. The flax is imported mainly
from Belgium.
Silk culture is aided by the government, and is carried on mainly in
the south. The amount grown, however, is insufficient to keep the
factories busy, and more than four-fifths of the raw silk and cocoons
are imported from Italy and other southern countries.
The chief imports to France are coal, raw textile fibres, wine, wheat,
and lumber. The last two products excepted, they are again exported in
the form of manufactured products. The great bulk of the imports comes
from Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Russia, and
Argentina. In 1900 the import trade from these countries aggregated
about five hundred million dollars. The total export trade during the
same year was about eight hundred million dollars; it consisted mainly
of high-priced articles of luxury.
The foreign trade is supported by a navy, which ranks second among the
world's navies, and a merchant marine of more than fifteen thousand
vessels. Aside from the subsidies given to mail steamships, government
encouragement is given for the construction and equipment of home-built
vessels. It is a settled policy that French vessels shall carry French
traffic.
Of the 24,000 miles of railway, about 2,000 miles are owned by the
state. The rivers are connected by canals, and these furnish about 7,000
miles of navigable waters. As in Germany, the water-routes supplement
the railway lines. Practically all lines of transportation converge at
Paris.
_Paris_, the capital, is a great centre of finance, art, science, and
literature, whose influence in these features has been felt all over the
world. The character of fine textiles, and also the fashions in the
United States and Europe, are regulated largely in this city.
_Marseille_ is the chief seaport, and practically all the trade between
France and the Mediterranean countries is landed at this port; it is
also the focal point of the trade between France and her African
colonies, and a landing-place for the cotton brought from Egypt and
Brazil.
_Havre_, the port receiving most of the trade from the United States, is
the port of Paris. _Rouen_ is the chief seat of cotton manufacture.
_Paris_ and _Rheims_ are noted for shawls. _Lille_ and _Roubaix_ are
centres of woollen manufacture. _Lyons_ is the great seat of silk
manufacture.
=Italy.=--Italy is a spur of the Alps extending into the Mediterranean
Sea. From its earliest history it has been an agricultural state, and,
excepting the periods when it has been rent by wars, it has been one of
the most productive countries in the world.
Wheat is extensively grown, but the crop is insufficient for home
consumption, and the deficit is imported from Russia and Hungary. A
large part of the wheat-crop is grown in the valley of the Po River.
Flax and hemp are grown for export in this region; and corn for home
consumption is a general product. Cotton is a good crop in Sicily and
the south, but the amount is insufficient for use and must be made up by
imports from the United States and Egypt.
Silk, fruit, and vegetables are the staple products that connect Italy
commercially with the rest of the world. About a million people are
concerned in the silk industry, and Italy is one of the foremost
countries in the world in the production of raw silk. Most of the crop
is produced in northern Italy; western Europe and the United States are
the chief buyers. The silk of the Piedmont region is the best in
quality.
Fruit is the crop next in value to raw silk. Sicilian oranges and
lemons, from about twenty millions of trees, find a ready market in
Europe; the oranges come into competition with the California and
Florida oranges of the United States, in spite of the tariff imposed
against them by the latter country. Olives are probably the most
important fruit-crop. Both the preserved fruit and the oil are exported
to nearly every civilized people. Much of the oil is consumed at home,
very largely taking the place of meat and butter. Lucca-oil is regarded
as the best.
[Illustration: ITALY]
The grape-crop is enormous, and the fruit itself is exported. Some of
the fruit sold as "Malaga" grapes throughout the United States during
winter months comes from Italy. Chianti wine, from the vineyards around
Florence, has hitherto been regarded as an inferior product, but the
foreign demand for it is steadily increasing. The Marsala wines of
Sicily are largely exported.
Among mineral products the iron deposits in the island of Elba are
undoubtedly the most valuable, but they are yet undeveloped to any great
extent. The quarries at Carrara produce a fine marble that has made
Italy famous in sculpture and architecture. Much of the boracic acid
used in the arts comes from Tuscany, and the world's chief supply of
sulphur comes from the neighborhood of Mount Etna in Sicily. Of this
Americans buy about one-third.
On account of the lack of coal, the manufactures are restricted mainly
to art wares, such as jewelry, silk textiles, and fine glassware. The
Venetian glassware, the Florentine and mosaic jewelry, and the pink
coral ornaments are famous the world over. Within recent years, however,
imported coal, together with native lignite, have given steel
manufacture an impetus. Steel ships and rails made at home are meeting
the demands of commerce. Goods of American cotton are made for export to
Turkey and South American countries.
Raw silk, wine, olive-oil, straw goods, sulphur, and art goods are
exported. Cotton, wheat, tobacco, and farm machinery from the United
States, and coal, woollen textiles, and steel goods from Great Britain
are the chief imports. Most of the foreign trade is with the nearby
states. The raw silk goes to France.
Since the unification of Italy the railways have been readjusted to the
needs of commerce. Before that time the lines were wholly local in
character; with the readjustment they were organized into trunk lines.
They enter France through the Mont Cenis tunnel; they reach Switzerland
and Germany by way of St. Gotthard Pass; they cross the Austrian border
through Brenner Pass.
_Rome_, the capital, is a political rather than an industrial centre.
_Milan_, the Chicago of the kingdom, is the chief market for the crops
of northern Italy and a great railway centre. It is also the market for
raw silk. _Genoa_, the principal port, is the one at which most of the
trade of the United States is landed. _Naples_ monopolizes most of the
marine traffic between Italy and Great Britain. _Leghorn_ is famous for
its manufacture and trade in straw goods. A considerable part of the
grain harvested in the Po Valley is stored for shipment at _Venice_--not
in elevators, but in pits. _Palermo_ is the trading centre of Sicily.
Most of the sulphur is shipped from _Catania_. _Brindisi_ and _Ancona_
are shipping-points for the Suez Canal route.
=Spain and Portugal.=--The surface of these states is too rugged and the
climate too arid for any great agricultural development. Less than half
the area is under cultivation; nevertheless, they are famous for several
agricultural products--merino wool, wine, and fruit. The merino wool of
the Iberian peninsula has no equal for fine dress goods; it is imported
into almost every other country having woollen manufactures. A
considerable amount of ordinary wool is grown, but not enough for home
needs.
The fruit industry is an important source of income. Oranges, limes, and
lemons are extensively grown for exports; among these products is the
bitter orange, from which the famous liqueur curacao, a Dutch
manufacture, is made. The heavy, sweet port wine, now famous the world
over, was first made prominent in the vineyards of Spain and Portugal.
Malaga raisins are sold in nearly every part of England and America. The
olive is more extensively cultivated than in any other state, but both
the fruit and the oil are mainly consumed at home--the latter taking the
place of butter. Raw silk is grown for export to France.
Although a larger part of the peninsula must depend on the American and
Scandinavian forests for lumber, there is one tree product that is in
demand wherever bottles are used--namely, cork. The cork is prepared
from the bark of a tree (_Quercus suber_) commonly known as the cork
oak,[73] which grows freely in the Iberian peninsula and northern
Africa.
[Illustration: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL]
Metals and minerals of economic use are abundant. Iron ore is sold to
Great Britain, France, and Germany. Since the Spanish-American War,
however, there have been extensive developments in utilizing the coal
and the ore which before that time had been sold to other countries.
The undeveloped coal and iron resources are very great, and must figure
in the payment of a national debt that is near the limit of bankruptcy.
The state, however, is entering a period of industrial prosperity.
The most available metal resource is quicksilver. Of this metal the
mines in Almaden produce about one-half the world's supply. The working
of these mines is practically a government monopoly, and the income was
mortgaged for many years ahead when Spain was at war with her rebellious
colonies.
Both Spain and Portugal are poorly equipped with means for
transportation. The railways lack organization, and freight rates are
excessive. Not a little of the transportation still depends on the
ox-cart and the pack-train. The merchant marine has scarcely more than a
name; the foreign commerce is carried almost wholly in British or French
bottoms. The imports are mainly cotton, coal, lumber, and
food-stuffs--these in spite of the fact that every one save lumber might
be produced at home.
Wine and fruit products, iron ore, and quicksilver are leading exports.
Of these the United States purchases wine and raisins for home
consumption and lace and filigree work for the trade with Mexico. Spain
has a considerable trade in cotton goods with her colonies, the Canary
Islands, and the African provinces of Rio de Oro and Adrar.
Portugal likewise supplies her foreign possessions--Goa (India), Macao
(China), and the Cape Verde and Azores Islands--with home products. The
chief Portuguese trade, however, is with Great Britain and Brazil.
_Madrid_ is the capital of Spain. _Barcelona_ is the chief commercial
centre. _Valencia_, _Alicante_, _Cartagena_, and _Malaga_, are all ports
of fruit and wine trade. _Oporto_ has been made famous for the port wine
that bears its name. Probably not one per cent. of the port now used,
however, comes from Oporto, and not many Malaga raisins come from
Malaga.
=Switzerland.=--This state is situated in the heart of the highest Alps.
The southeastern half is above the altitude in which food-stuffs can be
produced, and probably no other inhabited country has a greater
proportion of its area above the limits of perpetual snow. A
considerable area of the mountain-slopes affords grazing. The
valley-lands of the lake-region produce a limited amount of food-stuffs,
but not enough for the sparse population.
Politically, Switzerland is a republic, having the position of a
"buffer" state between Germany, Italy, France, and Austria-Hungary.
Racially, the state is divided among Italians, French, and Germans; as a
matter of fact, however, the old Helvetian spirit, which not even Caesar
could destroy, is still a great factor in dominating the people; this,
with their montane environment, gives the Swiss a very positive
nationality.
The agricultural interests of the state are developed to their utmost;
two-thirds of the bread-stuffs, however, are purchased from the United
States, the plains of Bohemia, and Russia. Cherries, apples, grapes, and
other fruit are cultivated in every possible place, and as these can be
delivered to any part of western and central Europe within a day, the
fruit industry is a profitable one.
Cattle are bred for dairy purposes, but those for beef must be very
largely imported, Austria-Hungary and Italy selling the needed supply.
Goats are raised for their hides, and the latter are converted into
Morocco leather. Of the dairy products, cheese is in many respects the
most important; Gruyere cheese is exported to nearly every country. On
account of the long distance from populous centres milk cannot be
transported; much of it is, therefore, condensed, and in that form
exported.
A peculiar feature of the dairy industry is the fact that it is
constantly moving. The dairy herds begin to pasture in the lowlands as
soon as the snow melts, and as fast as the snow line recedes up the
mountains the cattle follow. The milk is converted into butter and
cheese wherever the herds may be, and the second crop of grass below
them is cut and cured for winter forage.
In spite of the fact that Switzerland has no available coal,[74]
manufacture is pre-eminently the industry of the state. During the long
winters the Alpine herdsman and his family whittle out wooden toys from
the stock of rough lumber laid by for the purpose. Farther down in the
valley-lands the exquisite brocades and muslins are made on hand-looms,
or by the aid of the abundant water-power. Each industrial district has
its special line of manufacture, so that there is scarcely an idle day
in the year.
In the cities and towns of the lowland district, watches, clocks,
music-boxes, and fine machinery are manufactured. For many years Swiss
watches were about the only ones used in the United States, but on
account of the competition of American watches this trade has fallen
off. The mechanical music-player, operated by perforated paper, has also
interfered with the trade in music-boxes.
Switzerland is provided with excellent facilities for transportation,
and this has done about as much for the commercial welfare of the state
as all other industrial enterprises. In proportion to its area, the
railway mileage is greater than that of the surrounding states. The
roads are well built and the rates of transportation are low.
In addition to the ordinary trip-tickets, monthly time-tickets are
issued to travellers, allowing the holders to travel when and where they
please within the limits of the state on all roads and lake-steamers.
These are sold to the traveller for about two-thirds the price of the
1,000-mile book of the American railway. The carriage roads have no
superiors, and they penetrate about every part of the state below the
snow line; they also cross the main passes of the Alps.
Through one or another of these passes most of the foreign traffic of
the state must be carried. To Genoa and Milan it crosses the Alps via
the St. Gotthard tunnel, or the Simplon Pass;[75] to Paris it goes by
the Rhone Valley; between Vienna and Switzerland, by the Arlberg tunnel;
and to Germany or to Amsterdam through the valley of the Main.
As a result of this most excellent system of transportation, Switzerland
is thronged with visiting tourists at all times of the year; moreover,
it has always been the policy of the Swiss Government not only to
provide for them, but also to make the country attractive to them. The
result has shown the wisdom of the policy. Indeed, the foreign tourist
has become one of the chief sources of income of the Swiss people, and
the latter profit by the transaction to the amount of about forty
million dollars a year.
About all the raw material used in manufacture must be imported. The
cotton is purchased mainly from the United States, and enters by way of
Marseille. The raw silk is purchased from Italy, China, and Japan. Coal,
sugar, food-stuffs, and steel are purchased from Germany, and this state
supplies about half the imports. From the United States are purchased
wheat, cotton, and coal-oil.
The manufactures are intended for export. The fine cotton textiles sold
to the United States are worth far more than the raw cotton purchased
therefrom. Silk textiles, straw wares, toys, watches, jewelry, and dairy
products are leading exports. The surrounding states are the chief
buyers, and none of them competes with Switzerland to any extent in the
character of the exports.
_Geneva_, situated at the head of the Rhone Valley, is the chief trade
depot; it is noted especially for the manufacture of watches, of which
many hundred thousand are made yearly. _Zurich_ is the centre of
manufactures of textiles and fine machinery. The silk-brocade industry
is centred chiefly in this city and _Basel_.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why did not France prosper commercially prior to the time of the
revolution of 1793?
What are the chief natural advantages of the state in favor of
commercial development?
In what ways have the natural disadvantages of Switzerland been
overcome?
How has the loss of her colonies affected the industrial development of
Spain?
Comparing Spain and Italy, which has the better situation with reference
to the Suez Canal traffic?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the amount of foreign trade of each
state.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of each one with the
United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire, pp. 160-168.
Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. II, Chapter XI.
Procure for inspection specimens of raw silk and also of the choice
textile goods made in these states.
CHAPTER XXVIII
EUROPE--THE DANUBE AND BALKAN STATES
The Danube and Balkan states derive their commercial importance partly
from the large area in which bread-stuffs may be produced, and also
because the valley of the Danube has become an overland trade-route of
growing importance between the Suez Canal and the North Sea.
=Austria-Hungary.=--This empire is composed of the two monarchies, Austria
and Hungary, each practically self-governed, but united under a single
general government. The greater part of the country is walled in by the
ranges of the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains.
The region known as the Tyrol is topographically continuous with
Switzerland, and the people have Swiss characteristics. Galicia,
northeast of the Carpathian Mountains, the fragment of Poland that fell
to Austria at the time of partition, is a part of the great Russian
plain. Bohemia, which derives its name from the Keltic peoples, whom
Caesar called the Boii, comprises the upper part of the Elbe river-basin.
Its natural commercial outlet is Germany, but the race-hatred which the
Czechs have for the Germans, retards commercial progress. Hungary is a
country of plains occupying the lower basin of the Danube. The Huns are
of Asian origin. Austria proper occupies the upper valley of the Danube,
adjoining Germany; the country and the people are Germanic.
To the student of history it is a surprise that a country of such
diverse peoples, having but little in common save mutual race-hatred,
should hold together under the same general government. The explanation,
however, is found in the topography of the region. The basin of the
Danube is a great food-producing region, and the upper valley of the
Elbe River forms the easiest passage from the Black to the Baltic Sea.
The topography therefore gives the greater part of the country
commercial unity.
The climate and surface of the low plains of Hungary are much the same
as those of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Grain-growing and stock-raising are
the chief employments. High freight rates, a long haul, and the
competition of Russia and Roumania have retarded the development of
these industries, however. Bohemia is likewise a grain-growing country,
and the easy route into Germany through the Elbe Valley makes the
industry a profitable one. Bohemia is also in the sugar-beet area.
There is an abundance of coal in Austria, but most of it is unfit for
the manufacture of iron and steel. Steel manufacture, however, is
carried on, the industry being protected by the distance from the German
steel-making centres. The lead-mines about Bleiberg (or "Leadville") are
very productive; at Idria are the only quicksilver-mines in Europe that
compete with those of Almaden, Spain. The salt-mines near Krakow are in
a mass of rock-salt twelve hundred feet thick.
Most of the manufactured products are for home consumption. American
cotton and home-grown wool supply the greater part of the textiles. The
flour-mills are equipped with the very best of machinery, and much of
the product is for export to Germany and the countries to the south. The
manufactures that have made the state famous, however, are gloves and
glassware, both of which are widely exported. The sand, fluxes, and
coloring minerals of Bohemian glassware are all peculiar to the region,
and the wares, therefore, cannot be imitated elsewhere. The gloves are
made from the skins of Hungarian sheep and goats.
The railways are not well organized, and the mileage is insufficient for
the needs of the country. Ludwig Canal (in Germany) connects the Danube
with the Main, a navigable tributary of the Rhine; the Elbe is navigable
from a point above Prague to the Baltic; the Moravian Gate opens a
passage from Vienna northward; the Iron Gate, through which the Danube
flows, is the route to the Black Sea; Semmering Pass and its tunnel is
the gateway to the ports of the Adriatic. These great routes practically
converge at Vienna, which also is the great railway centre of the
empire.
The foreign trade consists mainly of the export of food-stuffs (of which
sugar and eggs are heavy items), fine cabinet ware, woollen textiles
(made from imported wool), barley and malt, and fine glassware. Much of
the German and Italian wine is sent to market in casks made of Austrian
stock; the coal goes mainly to Italy. The imports are raw cotton from
the United States and Egypt, wool, silk, and tobacco. Coal is both
exported and imported. The United States sells to Austria-Hungary
cotton, pork, and corn--buying porcelain ware, glassware, and gloves,
amounting to about one-fifth the value of the exports.
_Vienna_, the capital, is the financial centre and commercial
clearing-house of central Europe; it has also extensive manufactures.
_Budapest_ is the great focal point of Hungarian railways and commerce.
_Prague_ controls the coal, textile, and glass trade of Bohemia.
_Lemberg_ is the metropolis of Galicia. The states of Liechtenstein,
Bosnia, and Herzegovina are commercially under the control of Austria.
=The Lower Danube States.=--Roumania and Bulgaria, the plain of the lower
Danube, are enclosed by the Carpathian and Balkan ranges. They
constitute a great wheat-field whose chief commercial outlets are the
Iron Gate into Germanic Europe, and the Sulina mouth of the Danube into
the Black Sea. The growing of maize for home consumption and wheat for
export form the only noteworthy industries. Most of the grain is shipped
up the Danube and sold in Great Britain and Germany.
From the Iron Gate to the Black Sea the Danube is held as an
international highway, and the control of its navigation is directed by
a commission of the various European powers, having its head-quarters at
Galatz, Roumania.
[Illustration: TURKEY AND GREECE]
In the Balkan Mountains is the famous Vale of Roses which furnishes
about half the world's supply of attar-of-roses. The petals of the
damask rose are pressed between layers of cloth saturated with lard. The
latter absorbs the essential oil, from which it is easily removed. About
half a ton of roses are required to make a pound of the attar. Kazanlik,
noted also for rugs, is the great market for attar. _Galatz_ and
_Rustchuk_ are grain-markets and river-ports; from the latter a railway
extends to _Varna_, the chief port of the Black Sea. From _Sofia_, near
the Bulgarian frontier, a trunk line of railway extends through
Budapest to western Europe.
=Turkey-in-Europe.=--The European part of the Ottoman Empire has long been
politically known as the "Sick Man" of Europe, and so far as the
industries and commerce of the state are concerned, there is no excuse
for its separate existence as a state. Its political existence, however,
is regarded as a necessity, in order to prevent the Russians from
obtaining military and naval control of the Mediterranean and Black
Seas, and thereby becoming a menace to all western Europe. Less than
one-half the people are Turks; the greater part of the population
consists of Armenians, Jews, Magyars, and Latins.
Most of the country is rugged and unfit for grain-growing. The internal
government is bad, the taxes are so ruinous that the agricultural
resources are undeveloped, and every sort of farming is primitive. In
many instances the taxes levied on the growing crops become practical
confiscation when they are collected. Much of the cultivable land is
idle because there are no means of getting the crops to market.
Grapes and wine, silk, opium, mohair and wool, valonia (acorn cups used
in tanning leather), figs, hides, cigarettes, and carpets are the
leading exports, and these about half pay for the American cotton
textiles, woollen goods, coal-oil, sugar, and other food-stuffs
imported. Choice Mocha coffee is imported for home use, and poorer
grades are exported. Most of the foreign commerce is in the hands of
English and French merchants. Armenians, Jews, and Greeks are the native
middlemen and traders.
The native population is subject to the Sultan, whose rule is absolute;
most foreign merchants and residents are permitted by treaties to remain
subject to the regulations of the consuls.
_Constantinople_ is the capital. Its situation on the Bosphorus is such
that under any other European government it would command a tremendous
foreign commerce. It is naturally the focal point of the trade between
Europe and Asia. A trunk line of railway connects the city with Paris.
_Salonica_ is the port of western Turkey, and is likewise connected by
rail with western Europe. A great deal of the foreign commerce of the
state is now landed at this port.
[Illustration: HARBOR OF CONSTANTINOPLE]
The chief possessions of the Ottoman Empire are Asia Minor, Armenia,
Mesopotamia, Syria, and Arabia.
=Greece.=--Greece is a rugged peninsula, no part of which is more than
forty miles from the sea. The country is without resources in the way of
coal, timber, or available capital. Its former commercial position, in
ancient times, was due largely to the silver-mines near Ergasteria, and
subsequently to the gold-mines of eastern Macedonia; these, however, are
no longer productive.
There is but little land suitable for farming, and not far from one-half
the bread-stuffs must be imported. Much of the timber has been
destroyed, and this has resulted in a deterioration not only of the
water-power, but of the cultivable lands as well. The railway lines are
short and their business is local; there are practically no trunk line
connections with the great centres of commerce.
The harbors and the natural position of the country are its best
remaining resources. The Greeks are born sailors, and the country is in
the pathway of European and Asian commerce. Most of the grain-trade
between the Black and Mediterranean Seas is controlled by Greek
merchants, and the Greeks are everywhere in evidence in the carrying
trade of the Mediterranean. The construction of the Corinthian canal has
also given Greek commerce a material impetus.
The chief exports are Corinthian grapes--commonly known as
"currants"--fruit, and iron ore from Ergasteria. Great Britain, France,
and Belgium are the chief buyers of the fruit-crop. The exports scarcely
pay for the American cotton, Russian wheat, and the timber products that
are purchased abroad. There has been a material growth in the
manufacture of cotton, woollens, and silk in the past few years, much of
the work being done in households. _Athens_ is the capital and largest
city. _The Piraeus_ and _Patras_ are the chief ports.
=Servia= and =Montenegro= are stock-growing countries. The former has
suffered greatly from misgovernment and the waste of its resources.
Wine-cask stock and cattle are sold to Austria, which has five-sixths of
its trade. _Belgrade_ is its metropolis. Tobacco and live-stock are
exported from Montenegro to Austria.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
On a good map of central Europe trace an all-water route from the mouth
of the Danube to the ports of the lower Rhine and the North Sea; what
connection have the cities of Ratisbon and Lemberg with this route?
How do the forests of these states affect the wine industry of Germany?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the amount and movement of the
exports and imports of these countries.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the volume of trade of these
countries with the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Great Canals of the World--p. 4089.
A good map of central Europe.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN EMPIRE]
CHAPTER XXIX
EUROPE-ASIA--THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
The great plain of Eurasia, which borders about half the circuit of the
Arctic Ocean, is undivided by topographic barriers or boundaries. It is
physically a unit.
=Russia.=--Russia comprises more than one-half the area of Europe; the
Russian Empire embraces about one-half of Europe and Asia combined, and
constitutes more than one-seventh of the land surface of the earth. East
and west, from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, the distance is about six
thousand miles. It has a similar position with respect to southern
Europe and China as has Canada to the United States.
In latitude the country is unfortunately situated. North of the latitude
of St. Petersburg the climate is too cold to grow bread-stuffs; a large
part of the country is, therefore, unproductive. The central belt is
forest-covered; the southern part, or "black earth" belt, comprises the
greater part of the productive lands, and this region is the chief
granary of Europe.
Russia is an agricultural country. Maize and rye grown for home
consumption, and wheat for export, are the chief products. Flax is a
leading export product, and the Russian crop constitutes about
four-fifths of the world's supply. Lands too remote from markets for
grain-growing produce cattle and sheep, which are grown mainly for their
hides and tallow. The wool of the Don is a very coarse textile that is
much used in the manufacture of American carpets; that of the arid
plateaus of the southern country is a fine rug wool.
Agriculture in Russia is on a much lower plane than in western Europe.
Most of the land is owned in large estates. Individual farming is rare,
land tillage being usually a community affair. A village community rents
or purchases a tract of land, and the latter is allotted to the families
composing it, a part of the land being reserved for pasturage. The
business is transacted by "elders," or trustees, who exercise a general
management and supervision over the "mir," or community.
The methods of farming are not the best, and an acre of land produces
scarcely one-third as much as the same area is made to yield in other
states. The farming class, or peasantry, was in a condition of serfdom
until within a few years. Poverty unfits them to compete with farmers of
western Europe; moreover, the laws of land ownership and tenure also
serve to discourage farming.
The metal and mineral resources are very great. Iron ore is abundant,
and the yearly output of both is greatly increasing. There are extensive
deposits in southern Russia, in the Ural Mountains, and in Poland. Coal
of good quality is plentiful, and coal mining is encouraged by a heavy
tariff on the foreign coal that enters regions where the home product is
available. The most productive coal-fields are those of the lower Don
River and of Poland.
Gold is obtained in various parts of Siberia and in the Ural Mountains,
but scarcely enough is mined for the requirements of coinage. Copper is
also mined in the Ural and Caucasus Mountains. More than nine-tenths of
the world's supply of platinum is also obtained in the Ural Mountains.
The petroleum fields of Transcaucasia have a yearly output a little
greater than those of the United States.
The forest area is surpassed only by the timber belt of North America,
both of which are in about the same latitudes. This area, within a very
few years, is destined to be the chief lumber supply of all Europe.
Moreover, the forests, the grain-growing lands, and the iron and coal
constitute national resources which are surpassed in no other countries
save the United States and China.
The Russian Government has done much to encourage manufactures.
Steel-making in the Ural district, in Poland, and in the iron regions of
the Don has progressed to the extent that home-made railway material and
rolling stock are now generally used. Farming machinery is made in the
cities of the grain-growing region. The manufacture of cotton, woollen,
and linen fabrics has developed to the extent that the state is becoming
an exporter rather than an importer of such goods.
Railway building has progressed under government aid, and about
two-thirds of the 37,000 miles of track are owned by the state. The
Transsiberian Railway connecting Vladivostok with the trunk lines of
Europe was built by the state both for strategic and economic purposes.
Large bodies of emigrants are carried into Siberia at nominal rates and
are settled on lands that are practically free. The return cargoes
consist of Chinese products--mainly silk textiles and tea--destined for
western Europe.
A network of railways covers the grain-growing districts; trunk lines,
mainly for strategic purposes, extend through Russian Turkestan to the
Chinese border. For many years Russia has endeavored to acquire the
territory that would afford commercial outlets to the Indian Ocean and
into China. In this the state has been thwarted by two great
powers--Great Britain and Japan. The construction of canals and the
improvements of river-navigation are under government management, and
the internal water-ways aggregate about fifty thousand miles of
navigation.
The foreign commerce is changing in character as manufactures develop.
Wheat, flour, timber products, flax, and petroleum are the chief
exports. Cotton, tea, wool, and coal are the leading imports, the
first-named coming mainly from the United States. Germany, Great
Britain, France, Holland, and the United States are the chief European
countries utilizing Russian trade. The commerce between Russia and China
is growing rapidly. The Transsiberian railway is its chief northern
outlet, and a branch of this road, now under construction, extends
through to the leading commercial centres of Manchuria, to Port Arthur.
A considerable amount of manufactured goods is sent to Asia Minor and
the Iran countries.
The most available ports opening into the Atlantic are on the Baltic
Sea, but these are blocked by ice in winter; the best ports are on the
Black Sea, but the Russians do not control the navigable waters that
connect them with the Atlantic.
Much of the internal trade is carried on by means of annual fairs. The
most important of these are held at _Nijni_, (lower) _Novgorod_,
_Kharkof_, _Kief_, and other points. At the first-named fair goods to
the amount of $80,000,000 have changed hands during a single season, and
the annual fair is the recognized common ground on which the oriental
traders meet the buyers of European and American firms.
Unlike the schemes of colonization of other European states, the various
possessions of the Czar are practically in a single area, the
dependencies being contiguous. The lines between them, with few
exceptions, are political rather than natural boundaries.
_St. Petersburg_, the capital, is the centre of finance and trade.
_Riga_ is the port from which most of the lumber is exported; it
receives the coal purchased from Great Britain for the factories of the
Baltic coast. The harbor of Riga is not greatly obstructed by ice.
_Archangel_ has an export trade of lumber and flax during the few months
when the White Sea is free from ice. _Odessa_ and _Rostof_ are the
grain-markets of the empire. _Astrakhan_ is the centre of trade for the
Iran countries, and _Baku_ is the petroleum-market. _Moscow_ is the
chief focal point of the railways; and in consequence has become a great
centre of manufacture and trade. _Warsaw_, next to Moscow, is the most
important city.
=Siberia.=--This great territory resembles Russia in surface and climatic
features. Like the former "west" of the United States, Siberia is the
open "east" into which much of the surplus population of Russia,
Germany, and the Scandinavian countries is moving, attracted by fine
farming lands. The European emigrant becomes a producer when settled in
Siberia, and, at the same time, a consumer of Russian manufactures. In
five years more than one million people thus became occupants of the new
country in Siberia. Russian trade is encouraged by a heavy tariff on
foreign goods brought into Siberia.
_Tobolsk_, _Tomsk_, and _Semipalatinsk_ are collecting stations for
Siberian products, and each is built on navigable waters. _Irkutsk_
receives the caravan trade that goes from Peking through _Urga_ and
_Kiakhta_, the frontier post of Chinese trade. _Vladivostok_ is the
great Pacific outlet and the terminus of the Transsiberian Railway. It
is ice-bound in winter. _Harbin_, in Manchuria, China, is a Russian
trading post of great commercial importance.
=Bokhara= and =Khiva= are Russian vassal states. The former was acquired
chiefly as a trade-route. A railway from _Krasnovodsk_ on the Caspian
Sea extends through _Merv_, _Bokhara_, and _Samarkand_ to _Kashgar_,
where it meets the caravan trade from central China. The building of
this railway has caused a great development of cotton-growing in these
countries, which furnish Europe and America with the choice Afghan,
Khiva, and Bokhara rugs.
=Transcaucasia=, now joined to Russia, is a part of the plateau of Iran. A
railway extends across the country from _Batum_ to _Baku_, connecting
the Black and Caspian Seas. Transcaucasia is the petroleum region of the
East. It is also noted for the Shirvan, Kabistan, Daghestan, and Kazak
rugs which are sold all over Europe and America. The so-called
"Cashmere" rugs are not a product of Kashmir, but are made in the town
of _Shemaka_. Kabistan rugs are made in _Kuba_. Kazak fabrics are
usually the sleeping-blankets of the Kazak (Cossack) rough-riders.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How will the development of the coal, iron, and lumber resources most
likely affect the industrial future of Russia?
Discuss the policy of Siberian immigration;--what are its advantages to
German colonists?
From the map accompanying this chapter show how the tributary streams of
the great rivers have served to extend Russian commerce through Siberia.
Note the situation of the cities and towns of Siberia with reference to
the rivers.
What effect has the high latitude of Russia on its agricultural
industries?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports and
imports of Russia by articles, and also the volume of trade with other
countries.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the statistics of trade between
Russia and the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Commercial life in Russia--preferably from the article, "Russia," in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
For a rug of the Caucasus type, see illustration, p. 351; compare the
Kabistan with the Persian piece--which has the floral and which the
geometric figures?
CHAPTER XXX
THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA
The countries of the Iran plateau extend from the Mediterranean Sea to
the valley of the Indus River. The Arabian Peninsula is not a part of
it, but its climate and general character are similar. The Iran
countries are exceedingly rugged, and a great part of their surface is
more than a mile above sea-level. The climate is one of great extremes;
the summer hot-waves and the winter hurricanes are probably unknown
elsewhere in severity. The greater part of Arabia is an unhabitable
desert.
[Illustration: THE RUG-MAKING COUNTRIES]
The rigorous conditions of surface and climate have placed their stamp
upon the population of the region. They are full of the intelligent
cunning and ferocity that mark people living under such conditions of
environment. In many parts the sterile soil and arid climate force the
sparse population into nomadic habits of life and predatory pursuits.
For the greater part, the land hardly yields enough food-stuffs for the
population, and any great development of agriculture is out of the
question. The flood-plain of the Tigris and Euphrates, and a few of the
river-valleys are highly productive.
[Illustration: AN ANTIQUE TREE-OF-LIFE, KERMANSHAH (PERSIAN) RUG]
Before the Christian era several trade-routes between Europe and the
Orient lay across this region, and along the caravan routes there were
the usual industries pertaining to commercial peoples. The cities of
Sinope, Trebizond, Astrabad, Phasis, Mashad, and Bactra (now Balkh) grew
into existence along one of the northern routes. Tyre, Nineveh, Tarsus,
Palmyra, Babylon, and Persepolis were founded along one or another of
the southern routes. Of these, Trebizond only retains its importance,
being a seaport with a considerable trade. The commerce that once passed
over this route was crushed out of existence during the invasions by
Jenghis Khan.
[Illustration: A KABISTAN RUG--CAUCASUS DISTRICT]
Of the various industries of the Iran plateau, practically but one
extends beyond its borders, namely, the manufacture of the textile
fabrics known as Oriental rugs. These are unique; they are made of
materials, colored with dyes, and are ornamented with designs that
cannot be successfully imitated anywhere else in the world. The filling
of the rugs consists of fine wool, selected not only from particular
localities, but also from certain parts of the fleece. The dye-stuffs
are common to other parts of the world, and their names--indigo,
saffron, coccus, madder, and orchil--are familiar. But both the wool and
the dye-stuffs possess qualities imparted to them by soil and climate
that are not found elsewhere.
The absence of floors, and of the furniture found in European dwellings,
make the rugs essential household articles rather than luxuries. The
hearth-rug, the bath-mat, the divan-cover, the sleeping-blanket, and the
saddle-mat must be regarded as necessities. Religion also has its
requirements, and the prayer rug, sometimes ornamented with the hands of
the Prophet, is a part of every household equipment, whether of the
nomadic Arab or the wealthy merchant. Each district and people have
their own designs and methods of workmanship, and the rugs of each are
easily distinguished.[76]
For the greater part these are gathered by caravans and conveyed to
convenient shipping-points. Nearly all the cottage-made product is
obtained in this manner. As a rule the rugs are named from the town or
district in which they are made. Smyrna and Constantinople are the chief
ports of shipment. Many of them find their way to European dealers, but
New York is probably the largest rug-market in the world. The great
majority are retailed at from ten to fifty dollars each; choice
fabrics, however, bring from three hundred to ten thousand dollars.
Oriental rugs are hand-woven, and a weaver frequently spends several
years on a single piece, earning perhaps less than ten cents a day. The
factory-made rugs are inferior to the cottage-manufactured product.
=Turkish Possessions.=--Anatolia is the common name of the Turkish
possession formerly known as Asia Minor. The name properly belongs,
however, to only a small part of the region. The Asiatic possessions of
the Ottoman Empire comprise Asia Minor, Armenia, Kurdistan, Syria,
Mesopotamia, and Arabia. The Armenians are the commercial people of the
greater part of this region, and although thousands have been massacred
because of Turkish hatred of them, they practically wield the chief
power because of their business enterprise.
During the Roman occupation many miles of roads were built from
Constantinople and other coast-points to the interior. One of these
extended to Mesopotamia, and became a much-travelled route of the trade
which centred at Constantinople. Within recent years German capitalists
have built railways along these roads, thereby creating a considerable
export trade in fruit, rugs, and mohair cloth.
_Angora_ and _Konieh_ (_Iconium_) are important marts. _Trebizond_ is
the chief port of the Black Sea, but it lacks railway connections with
the interior. _Smyrna_ is the chief port of the Mediterranean, and from
it are shipped to European and American markets the fruit and textile
fabrics that have made its importance. In Syria, _Damascus_, one of the
oldest cities in the world, is the centre of a considerable trade in
textile manufactures. Rugs, dates, figs, and damask fabrics are exported
to Europe through _Beirut_, its seaport, with which it is connected by
rail. Much of the stuffs exported is gathered from Persia. _Yafa_ is
the port of Jerusalem. _Bagdad_ is the chief trade-centre of
Mesopotamia.
=Arabia.=--Arabia is nominally a Turkish possession, but the coast-regions
only are under the control of the Sultan. The interior is peopled by
nomadic tribes, who do not acknowledge the sovereignty of Turkey. The
province of Yemen, on the Red Sea, is about the only noteworthy part of
the peninsula. Hides and Mocha coffee, gathered by Arab traders, are
shipped from the port of _Hodeida_. _Mecca_ is the yearly meeting-place
of thousands of Mohammedan pilgrims, who go thither as a religious duty;
it is also the centre from which Asiatic cholera radiates. _Aden_, the
chief coaling-station of the British Empire in the Indian Ocean, is also
a free port, having a considerable trade in American cotton and
coal-oil.
Although Arabia itself is practically of no commercial importance, the
same cannot be said of the Arabic people. They are keen, thrifty
traders, and as brutal in their instincts as they are keen. The commerce
which connects the western part of Asia with Europe is largely of their
making. They collect and transport the goods from the interior,
delivering them to Jewish and Armenian middlemen, who turn them over to
European and American merchants. Arab traders also control the greater
part of the commerce of northern Africa. The slave-trade, which is
wholly in their hands, is very largely the key to the situation. A party
of slave-dealers makes an attack upon a village and, after massacring
all who are not able-bodied, load the rest with the goods to be
transported to the coast.
=Persia.=--Persia is the modernized name of the province now called Fars,
or Farsistan. Within its borders, however, the name Persia is almost
unknown; the native people call the country Iran. In the times of
Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius, Persia was one of the great powers of the
world. The cultivable lands produced an abundance of food-stuffs. The
mines of copper, lead, silver, and iron were worked to their utmost
extent, and the chief trade-routes between Europe and the Orient crossed
the country to the Indus River.
The conquest by Alexander the Great changed the course of trade and
diverted it to other routes, thus depriving the country of much of its
revenue; the invasions of the Arabs left the empire a hopeless wreck.
Iran blood dominates the country at the present time, it is true, but
the religion of Islam does not encourage any material development, and
the industries are now purely local. There is no organization of trade,
nor any system of transportation except by means of wretched wagon-roads
with innumerable toll-gates. "Turkish" tobacco, opium, and small fruits
are grown for export; silk and wool, however, are the most important
crops. The former is manufactured into brocaded textiles; the latter
into rugs and carpets. There are famous pearl-fisheries in the Persian
Gulf.
_Tabriz_, situated in the midst of an agricultural region, has important
manufactures of shawls and silk fabrics of world renown. The Tabriz rugs
are regarded as among the finest of the rug-maker's art. _Shiraz_, the
former capital, _Kermanshah_,[77] and _Hamadan_ are noted for rug and
carpet manufactures. _Mashad_ is the centre of the trade with Russia.
_Bushire_ and _Bender-Abbas_ are seaports, but have no great importance.
Most of the trade with Russia passes through the port of Trebizond.
=Afghanistan.=--The nomadic tribes that inhabit Afghanistan have but
little in common with the British civilization that is slowly but surely
closing in upon them, and driving them from routes of commerce. A
considerable local traffic is carried on between Bokhara and Herat, and
between Bokhara and Kabul through Balkh, all being fairly prosperous
centres of population in regions made productive by irrigation.
By far the most important route lies between Kabul and Peshawur, at the
head of the Indus River. A railway, the Sind-Pishin, extends along the
valley of this river from Karachi, a port of British India, to Peshawur,
also in British India near the Afghan border, and the route lies thence
through Khaibar Pass to Jelalabad and Kabul. A branch of this road is
completed through Bolan Pass nearly to Kandahar.
_Kabul_, the capital, is a military stronghold rather than a business
centre, although it is a collection depot for the Khiva-Bokhara rugs and
carpets that are marketed at Peshawur. _Kandahar_ has a growing trade
resulting from the railway of the Indus Valley. _Herat_ is the market of
the famous Herati rugs. There is no organized commercial system; a small
amount of British manufactures--mainly stuffs for domestic use--are
imported; rugs and dried fruit are the only exports to Europe and
America. The imports enter mainly by way of Karachi, India; the exports
are carried to Europe, for the greater part, by the Russian railway.
The importance of Afghanistan is due to its position as a buffer state
between Russia and British India. The various strategic points for
years, therefore, have been military strongholds. There is an old
saying: "Whoso would be master of India must first make himself lord of
Kabul." The meaning of this is seen in the history of Khaibar Pass,
which for many years has been a scene of slaughter; indeed, it has been
the chief gateway between occidental and oriental civilizations for
more than twenty centuries. Since the acquisition of India by Great
Britain Afghanistan has been under British protectoracy.
=Baluchistan.=--The general features of Baluchistan resemble those of the
other parts of the Iran plateau. The coast has no harbors in the proper
sense, but the anchorage off _Gwador_ has fair protection from storms
and heavy winds. The few valleys produce enough food-stuffs for the
half-savage population. There is but little organization to the
government save that which is military in character. The state is a
protectorate of Great Britain.
Rug-making is the only industry that connects Baluchistan with the rest
of the world. _Quetta_, the largest town, is a military station
controlling Bolan Pass. Its outlet is the Kandahar branch of the
Sind-Pishin Railway.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What climatic factors prevent these countries from being regions of
great production?
How do climate and soil affect the character of the wool clip?
How do Arabian horses compare with American thorough-bred stock with
respect to usefulness?--how do they compare with the mustang stock?
Why is Khaibar Pass regarded as the key to India?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia (or from McCarthy's History of Our Own Times) read an
account of the British disaster at Kabul.
Study, if possible, one or more rugs of the following kinds, noting the
colors, designs, and warp of each: Bokhara (antique and modern),
Anatolian, Kermanshah, and Baluchistan.
CHAPTER XXXI
BRITISH INDIA AND THE EAST INDIES
These countries are in tropical latitudes and in the main are regions of
great productivity. A few native states that have resisted annexation
and conquest excepted, almost the entire area is divided among Great
Britain, Holland, and France.
[Illustration: INDIA]
=British India.=--The Empire of India comprises an area half as large as
the United States, situated on the southern slope of Asia. It covers the
same latitude as the span between the Venezuelan coast and the Ohio
River; from the Indus to the Siam frontier the distance is about two
thousand miles. It includes also settlements in the Malay peninsula.
Excepting the plateau of the Dekkan, and the slopes of the Himalayan
ranges, most of the surface consists of plains and low, rolling land
covered with a great depth of soil. Through these rich lands flow four
large rivers--the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Irawadi, which afford
a great deal of internal communication. The Himalaya Mountains on the
north and the Hindu Kush on the northwest practically shut off
communication from the northward, so that all communication in this
direction is concentrated at Khaibar and Bolan Passes, the most
important gateways by land approach.
British India is one of the most populous regions of the world; the
average population per square mile is about one hundred and eighty, a
density considerably greater than that of New York State. The entire
population is about three times that of the United States. Nearly all
the food-stuffs grown are required for home consumption; indeed, dry
years are apt to be followed by a shortage of food-stuffs. Years ago
famines followed any considerable deficiency of crops, but since the
completion of the admirable railway systems the necessary food-stuffs
are quickly shipped to the district where the shortage occurs.
The Hindus constitute about three-fourths of the population. Along the
northern border there are many peoples of Afghan and Turkic descent; in
Burma there is a considerable admixture of Mongol blood. An elaborate
system of social castes imposed by the teachings of Brahmanism has made
the introduction of western methods of education and civilization
somewhat difficult to carry out. The educational system of the
dominating Brahmanic caste, although of a very high order, does not fit
the people to cope with the commercialism of western civilization.
Five-sevenths of the population are engaged in agricultural labor. Rice,
wheat, millet, meat, and sugar are the chief food-crops. Of these, rice
and wheat[78] only are exported; the others are required for home
consumption.
The articles grown for export are jute, cotton, opium, oil-yielding
seeds, tea, and opium. No meat is exported, but hides form a large item
of foreign trade.
The jute is used in the manufacture of rugs and grain-sacks. It is
cultivated mainly in the delta-lands of the Ganges-Brahmaputra. A
considerable part of the product is now manufactured in India and in
China; some is also shipped to California, to be made into wheat-sacks;
perhaps the larger part is sent to Dundee, Scotland, where it is woven
into textile fabrics. The choicest product is used to mix with silk
fibre, or is employed in the manufacture of rugs and coverings.
Cotton cultivation is rapidly taking first rank among the industries of
India, for which the conditions of soil, climate, and market are
admirably adapted. India stands second in cotton-growing, and the area
of production is gradually increasing. Most of the crop is exported to
Europe for manufacture, although there is an increasing amount sold to
Japan. Great Britain is the largest purchaser, and the cotton goods
manufactured at Manchester are reshipped in large quantities to India.
Owing to the low wages paid for labor both in the fields and the mills,
cotton manufacture is a rapidly growing industry in India. In many cases
the yarn is manufactured in India and then sent to China to be made into
coarse cloth. Some of the mills are equipped with machinery made in the
United States.
Tea has become one of the most important crops of India. It is grown
mainly in Ceylon and Assam, and is said to have grown wild in the latter
state. The quality of Indian tea is regarded as superior to the Chinese
product, and Indian teas have therefore very largely supplanted those of
China, in British consumption.
Silk cultivation and manufacture have been growing rapidly in the past
few years; a considerable part of the product is "tussar," or wild silk.
The silk rugs of India are not equalled anywhere else in the world. Wool
is a product of the mountain-regions, but is almost wholly used in the
manufacture of rugs and coverings.
The British occupation of India is commercial rather than political.
India furnishes a most valuable market for British manufactures; it
supplies the British people with a large amount of raw material for
manufacture. The general government is administrative only so far as the
construction of railways, irrigating canals, and harbors, and the
organization of financial affairs are concerned.
There are about two hundred and fifty native states included within the
territory of British India. In addition to the native ruler, a British
governor or magistrate carries out the administrative features of the
British Government. For administrative purposes most of the native
states are grouped into eight provinces, or "presidencies."
=Bengal.=--The states of Bengal, mainly in the valley of the Ganges River,
produce most of the rice and wheat. _Calcutta_, the capital of the
empire, is a comparatively young city. The Hugli at this point is
navigable both for ocean and river craft. The situation of the city is
much like that of New York, and it is therefore finely adapted for
commerce. Railways extending from the various food-producing districts
and from other centres of commerce converge at Calcutta. The city is not
only the centre of administration, but the chief focus of commerce and
finance as well.
=Bombay.=--Bombay includes a number of states bordering on the Arabian
Sea. The city of _Bombay_ is built on an island of the same name. Its
situation on the west coast makes it the most convenient port for the
European trade that passes through the Suez Canal. The opening of the
route gave Bombay a tremendous growth, and it is destined to become a
great commercial factor in Indian Ocean trade. It is also a great
manufacturing centre for cotton textiles. _Ahmedabad_, an important
military station, is also an important centre of cotton manufacture and
wheat-trade.
=Sind.=--The native state Sind includes the greater part of the basin of
the Indus. Its importance is military and strategic rather than
commercial. The ability of Great Britain to hold India depends very
largely on British control of the Indus Valley and the passes leading
from it. The Sind-Pishin Railway traverses the Indus Valley from Karachi
to Peshawur. _Haidarabad_, one of the largest cities of India, is the
centre of an agricultural district. _Karachi_, the port near the mouth
of the Indus, next to Khaibar Pass, is the most important strategic
point of India, and one that the Russians for more than a century have
been trying to possess.
=Punjab.=--The states of the Punjab are mainly at the upper part of the
Indus. _Amritsar_ is an important centre for the manufacture of silk
rugs and carpets. A large number of these are sold in the United States
at prices varying from two hundred to six thousand dollars. The designs
for these textiles are often made in New York. _Peshawur_ is important
chiefly as a military station.
=Burma.=--British Burma includes the basin of the Irawadi River. The
uplands are wheat-fields; the lowlands produce rice. _Mandalay_ is a
river-port and commercial centre. _Rangoon_ is the seaport, with a
considerable ship-building industry that results from the teak forests.
Although the Irawadi is navigable for light craft, railways along the
valley have become a necessity; these centre at Rangoon.
The province of Madras is one of the most densely peopled parts of
India. The chief commercial products are cotton and teak-wood. _Madras_,
its commercial centre, has a very heavy foreign trade in hides, spices,
and cotton. The cotton manufactures are extensive. A yarn-dyed cotton
cloth, now imitated both in Europe and the United States, has made the
name famous.
=Kashmir.=--The native state Kashmir, situated high on the slopes of the
Karakorum Mountains, is known chiefly for the "Cashmere" shawls made
there. The shawls are hand-woven and represent the highest style of the
weaver's art. The best require many years each in the making; they
command prices varying from five hundred to five thousand dollars. This
industry centres at _Srinagar_.
=Other British States.=--The Straits Settlements are so called because
they face the Straits of Malacca. They include several colonies, chief
of which are Singapore, Penang, and Malacca. The Straits ports are free
from export and import duties, a regulation designed to encourage the
concentration of Malaysian products there--in other words, to encourage
a transit trade.
The policy has proved a wise one, and the trade at the three
ports--_Singapore_, _Penang_, and _Malacca_--aggregates about six
hundred million dollars yearly. About two-thirds of this sum represents
the business of Singapore. Tin constitutes about half the exports, a
large share going to the United States. Spices, rubber, gutta-percha,
tapioca, and rattan constitute the remaining trade. Rice, cotton cloth,
and opium are the imports.
The Federated Malay States, situated in the Malay peninsula, and the
northern part of Borneo are also British possessions. Their trade and
products are similar to the rest of the Malaysian possessions.
=Dutch East India.=--The Dutch possessions include nearly all the islands
of the Malay Archipelago and the western part of New Guinea. Of these,
Java and Sumatra are the most important. They are divided into
"residencies," and the administering officers exercise control over the
various plantations. In addition, there are numerous private
plantations. The colonial administration is admirable.
Cane-sugar, coffee, rice, indigo, pepper, tobacco, and tea are the chief
products. The sugar industry has been somewhat crippled by the
beet-sugar product of Europe. Java and Sumatra coffees are in demand all
over Europe and the United States. Sumatra wrappers for cigars find also
a ready market wherever cigars are manufactured. The cultivation of
cinchona, or Peruvian bark, has proved successful, and this substance is
becoming an important export. The islands of Banka and Billiton (with
Riouw) yield a very large part of the world's supply of tin, much of
which goes finally to the United States. The mother-country profits by
the trade of these islands in two ways: the Dutch merchants are
practically middlemen who create and manage the commerce; the Dutch
Government receives an import tax of six per cent., and a small export
tax on nearly all articles except sugar. _Batavia_ is the focal point of
the commerce.
=Siam.=--This kingdom is chiefly important as a buffer state between
French and British India, and little by little has been pared by these
nations until practically nothing but the basin of the Menam River
remains. The administration of the state is progressive, and much of the
resources have been developed in the last few years.
Rice and teak are the leading products. The rice is cultivated by
native laborers--much of it by enforced labor--and is sold to Hongkong,
British India, and the more northerly states. It is collected by Chinese
middlemen, and by them sold to British and German exporters. The
teak-wood business is managed by British firms. The logs are cut by
natives, hauled to the Menam River, and floated to Bangkok; there they
are squared and sent to European markets. Pepper and preserved fish are
also exported. The Menam River is the chief trade-route, and _Bangkok_,
at its mouth, is the focal point of trade.
=French India.=--The French control the region south of China, called
French Indo-China, together with various areas in the peninsula of
Hindustan; of these Pondicheri and Karical are the most important.
Indo-China includes the basin of Mekong River, and rice is the staple
product. The most productive rice-fields are the delta-lands of the
Mekong, formerly known as Cochin-China.
From these lands more than half a million tons of rice are exported, the
product being sold mainly at Hongkong and Singapore. Pepper is also an
export of considerable value. France, China, and the Philippine Islands
are the final destination of the rice export. The imports are mainly
textiles, machinery, and coal-oil from the United States. The machinery
pertains chiefly to the manufactures of cotton and silk textiles. On
account of cheaply mined coal, there is a considerable growth of this
industry. _Saigon_ is the business centre and port at which the Chinese
middlemen meet the European merchants and forwarders.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What have been the chief effects of the British occupation of these
countries, so far as the natives are concerned?
What is the position of Khaibar Pass with respect to the commerce of
India?
How has the building of the Sind-Pishin Railway strengthened British
occupation of India?
Singapore and Batavia are the two great focal points of trade in the
East India Islands. At the former all trade is absolutely free; at the
latter there is both an import and an export tax. What are the
advantages of each policy?
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of the United States with
these countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia, preferably the Encyclopaedia Britannica, read the
following topics:
Caste
Lord Clive
Rattan
Pepper
CHAPTER XXXII
CHINA AND JAPAN
The relative position of China, Russia, and Japan is not unlike that of
continental Europe and Great Britain, and the struggle for supremacy in
the Japan and Yellow Seas is about the same as that which in times past
took place in the North Sea. In the latter case France and Holland were
the disturbing powers; in the former, it is Russia.
=The Chinese Empire.=--A comparison of the Chinese Empire with the United
States shows that the two countries have about the same position and
extent of latitude. There is also about the same proportion of
highlands, arid lands, and fertile lowlands. The similarity of the two
countries in geographic conditions is very marked.
The fertile lowland in the east and southeast is one of the most
productive regions in the world, and forms the chief resource of the
country; on account of its productivity it is densely peopled. The arid
and mountain lands are peopled mainly by cattle-herders and nomadic
tribes.
China is essentially an agricultural country, and the farms are held in
much the same way as in the United States, but the holdings are so small
that agricultural machinery is not required for their cultivation.
Wheat, millet, and pease are grown throughout the lowlands wherever they
can be cultivated. The cultivation of rice is confined mainly to the
coast lowlands. The amount of food-stuffs produced, however, is scarcely
sufficient for home consumption; indeed, a considerable amount is
imported, and the imports year by year are increasing. This is due not
so much to the density of population as to want of means of
transportation of the soil products from inland regions. It is often
much cheaper to import food-stuffs from abroad than to transport them,
even from an adjoining province.
Tea is extensively cultivated, and China exports nearly one-half of the
world's product; the total amount produced is considerably more than
half. Most of this goes to Great Britain and Canada. Raw silk is an
important product, and the mulberry-tree is extensively grown. Cotton is
one of the most general crops in the southern part of the empire,
especially along the lower Yangtze. It is a garden-crop, however, and
nearly all of it is consumed.
The mineral wealth is very great, and with proper management will make
China one of the most productive and powerful countries in the world.
Coal is found in every one of the provinces, and the city of Peking is
supplied with an excellent quality of anthracite from the Fang-shan
mines, only a few miles distant. It is thought that the coal-fields are
the most extensive in the world. Iron ore of excellent quality is
abundant, and in several localities, notably in the province of Shansi,
the two are near each other.
Foreign capitalists are seeking to develop these resources in several
localities. The Germans have obtained mining concessions in Shantung
peninsula, and these involve the iron ore and coal occurring there. The
Peking syndicate, a London company, has also obtained a coal-mining
concession in Shansi.
[Illustration: EASTERN CHINA]
For the greater part the manufactures are home industries.[79] Until
recently most of the cotton cloth was made by means of cottage looms,
and the beautiful silk brocades which are not surpassed anywhere else in
the world are still made in this manner. Porcelain-making is one of the
oldest industries, and to this day the wares sold in Europe and America
are known as "china." Straw carpet, or matting, and fans for export are
also important exports.
The mill system of manufacture is rapidly gaining ground, however, and
foreign companies find it economical to carry the yarn made in India
from American cotton into China to be made into cloth. In the vicinity
of Shanghai alone there are nearly three hundred thousand spindles. This
phase of the industry is due largely to the factor of cheap labor; the
Chinese skilled laborer is intelligent; he does not object to a
sixteen-hour working-day at wages varying from five to twenty cents.
There is no great localization of industrial centres, as in the United
States and Europe. Each centre of population is practically
self-supporting and independent from an economic stand-point. The
introduction of western methods, however, is gradually changing this
feature.
All industries of a general character are hampered for want of good
means of transportation. The empire is traversed by a network of unpaved
roads; but although these are always in a wretched condition, an
enormous traffic is carried over them by means of wheel-barrows,
pack-animals, and by equally primitive methods.
The numerous rivers form an important means of communication. The
Yangtze is now available to commerce a distance of 2,000 miles, and the
opening of the Si Kiang (West River) adds a large area that is
commercially tributary to Canton and Hongkong. The most important
water-way is the Grand Canal, extending from Hang Chow to Tientsin. This
canal is by no means a good one as compared with American and European
standards. It was built not so much for the necessities of traffic, as
to avoid the numerous pirate vessels that infest the coasts. Junks,
row-boats, house-boats, and foreign steam craft are all employed for
traffic. The internal water-ways aggregate about fifteen thousand miles
in length.
[Illustration: A TEA-PLANTATION--PICKING THE LEAVES]
[Illustration: PREPARING THE LEAVES FOR ROASTING]
[Illustration: TEA-BALES FOR EXPORT THROUGH RUSSIA]
Of railways there were less than three hundred and fifty miles at the
close of the century, the most important being the line from Tientsin to
Peking. About five thousand miles are projected and under construction
by American and European companies. A branch of the Transsiberian
railway is under construction to Port Arthur. Telegraph and telephone
lines have become popular and have been extended to the interior a
considerable distance. There are upward of twenty thousand miles of wire
communication, the most important, in many respects, being a direct
overland line between Peking and European cities. Inasmuch as there are
no letters in the Chinese language, the difficulties in using the Morse
code of telegraphy are very great. In some cases the messages are
translated into a foreign language before they are transmitted; in
others, a thousand or more words in colloquial and commercial use are
numbered, and the number is telegraphed instead of the word.
Most of the business between the natives and foreigners is carried on by
means of middlemen, or "compradors," and these include both the
commission merchants and the native bankers. They are intelligent,
thrifty, and trustworthy. They are the most capable merchants in Asia,
and have few if any superiors among the merchants of western nations. A
very large part of the retail trade of the Philippine Islands is carried
on by Chinese merchants.
The Chinese Empire consists of China and the five dependencies, as shown
in the following table:
---------------------+-------------+-------------
| | CAPITAL OR
STATE | POPULATION | CHIEF TOWN
---------------------+-------------+-------------
China proper | 380,000,000 | Peking
Manchuria | 7,500,000 | Kirin
Tibet | 6,000,000 | Lassa
Mongolia | 2,000,000 | Urga
Jungaria | 600,000 | Kur-kara-usu
Eastern Turkestan | 600,000 | Yarkand
---------------------+-------------+--------------
The five dependencies are mainly arid, unproductive, and sparsely
peopled. Their chief importance consists in the fact that they are
"buffer states" between China proper and European states. They produce
little except meat, wool, and live-stock.
China proper is divided into provinces, each governed by a viceroy
appointed by the throne. All business with foreign powers is transacted
through a Foreign Office, the Wai-wu-pu (formerly the Tsung-li-Yamen).
The government business is managed by a Grand Council whose members are
advisers to the throne. The government is controlled mainly by Manchu
officials.
[Illustration: HONGKONG]
Until within a few years China nominally allowed no foreign traders
within her borders; recently, however, about forty cities, commonly
known as "treaty ports," have been opened to the trade of foreign
countries. Goods going inland any distance are required to pay a "liken"
or internal tariff at the border of each province.
Several concessions of territory within recent years have been forced
from China by foreign powers: thus, Great Britain has Hongkong Island
(with the peninsula of Kaulung) and Weihaiwei; Germany has Kiaochou on
the bay of the same name; France has Kwang chau wan harbor. These
concessions carry with them the control of the port and surrounding
territory. The German concession includes the right to mine coal and
iron, and to build railways within a territory of much larger extent. At
the close of the war between Russia and Japan, the latter acquired Port
Arthur, the gateway to Manchuria.
Whatever may be the political significance of the opening of the treaty
ports and the granting of the various concessions, the effect has been
to increase the trade of the United States with China about twenty-fold.
The imports from the United States consist mainly of cotton and cotton
cloth, coal-oil, and flour. The chief exports to all countries are tea,
silk goods, and porcelain ware. Most of those sent to the United States
are landed at Seattle or San Francisco. Great Britain, through the port
of Hongkong, has a larger trade than any other nation. Japan and the
United States have most of the remaining trade.
_Peking_, the capital, is politically, but not commercially, important.
The part occupied by the foreign legations is modern and well kept.
_Tientsin_, the port of Peking, is a larger city, with much more
business. _Canton_, the largest city of the empire, and _Hongkong_, are
the commercial centres of nearly all the British trade. Most of the
American and Japanese trade centres at _Shanghai_. _Niuchwang_, on the
Manchurian frontier, is important mainly as a strategic point. _Macao_,
a Portuguese possession, is the open door of Portugal into China.
The inland divisions of the Chinese Empire have but little commercial
importance. Musk, wool, and skins are obtained from Tibet, into whose
capital, _Lassa_, scarcely half-a-dozen Europeans have penetrated. The
closed condition is due to the opposition of the Lamas, an order of
Buddhist priests. Mongolia is a grazing region that supplies the Chinese
border country with goats, sheep, and horses. It also supplies the
camels required for the caravan tea-trade to the Russian frontiers.
Eastern Turkestan is mainly a desert. _Kashgar_, the metropolis of the
fertile portion, is the exchange market for Chinese and Russian
products. Most of the mineral known as jade is obtained there. Manchuria
is a grazing and wheat-growing country, exporting food stuffs and
ginseng into China. _Harbin_, a Russian trading post, is connected with
Peking and with European cities by railway.
[Illustration: JAPAN AND KOREA]
=Korea=, formerly a vassal of China, became an independent state after the
war between China and Japan, this step being forced by Russia. The
country is a natural market for Japanese manufactures, and in turn
supplies Japan with a considerable amount of food-stuffs. _Chemulpo_ is
the chief centre of its commerce.
=Japan.=--Japan is an insular empire, the commercial part of which has
about the same latitude as the Atlantic coast of the United States; the
empire extends from Formosa to Kamchatka. It is sometimes called the
"Great Britain of the East," and the people are also called the "Yankees
of the East." Structurally, the chain of islands consists of ranges of
volcanic mountains. The abundant rains, however, have made many fertile
river-valleys, and have fringed most of the islands with coast-plains.
Since the opening of Japan to foreigners the Japanese have so thoroughly
adapted themselves to western commercial methods that they have become
the dominating power in eastern Asia. Their influence has been greatly
strengthened by a treaty for defensive purposes with Great Britain. A
most excellent army and a modern navy make the alliance a strong one.
The Japanese are better adapted to mould the commercial policy of China
than any other people.
With a population of more than half that of the United States, occupying
an area not larger than the State of California, every square foot of
available land must be cultivated. Yet the Japanese not only grow most
of the food-stuffs they consume, but are able to export rice. There is
scant facility for growing beef cattle, but fish very largely takes the
place of beef. The cattle grown are used as draught-animals in farm
labor. Ordinary dairy products are but little used.
Rice, tea, and silk are the staple crops. Rice is grown on the coast
lowlands, the west or rainy side[80] producing the larger crop. The
Japanese crop is so superior that the larger part is exported, while an
inferior Chinese grain is imported for home consumption. The quality of
the Japanese rice is due to skilful cultivation.
[Illustration: NATIVE PLOUGHING RICE-FIELDS]
[Illustration: IRRIGATING A RICE-FIELD]
[Illustration: RICE-FIELDS]
Tea has become the staple crop, and is cultivated from Formosa to the
forty-fifth parallel. Tea-farms occupy nearly every acre of the
cultivable hill-side areas in some of the islands, and the soil is
enriched with a fertilizer made from fish and fish refuse, dried and
broken. Most of the tea product is made into green tea, and on account
of its quality it commands a high price. Formosa tea is considered the
best in the market.
Silk culture is confined almost wholly to the island of Hondo. The raw
silk is of superior quality, and the exported material is used mainly in
the manufacture of ribbons and brocades. A limited amount of cotton is
grown, but the staple is short, and its cultivation is not profitable
except in a few localities.
Among the forestry there is comparatively little timber suitable for
building purposes, and a considerable amount of timber is purchased from
the mills of Puget Sound. Bamboo is largely employed for buildings.
Camphor is the product of a tree (_Camphora officinarum_) allied to the
cinnamon and the sassafras. It is cultivated in the island of Kiushiu.
The best gum, however, is now obtained from Formosa, and this island now
controls the world's supply. The camphor product is a government
monopoly leased to a British company.
The lacquer-tree (_Rhus vernicifera_) grows mainly in the island of
Hondo. The sap, after preparation, forms the most durable varnish known.
Black lacquer is obtained by treating the sap with nutgalls. Lacquered
wooden-ware is sold all over Europe and the United States. The lacquered
surface is exceedingly hard and water-proof; it is not affected by
climate.
Gold, porcelain clay, silver, copper, and petroleum are mined. The gold
and silver are used both for coinage and in the arts; the clay has made
Japanese porcelains famous. The copper comes from the most productive
mines of Asia; a considerable amount is exported, but much is used in
the manufacture of Japanese bronze goods. Coal is mined, and this has
given a great impetus to manufacture; iron ore is deficient, and steel
must be imported. The quantity of petroleum is increasing yearly, and is
becoming an important factor in the world's product.
Manufacturing industries are giving shape to the industrial future of
the country. The cotton-mills alone employ seventy thousand people and
keep more than one million spindles busy. More than one million
operatives are engaged in textile manufactures. Much of the cloth, both
cotton and silk, is still woven on cottage looms. The cotton cloth is
sold mainly in China and Korea; the surplus silk textiles find a ready
market in the United States. The best straw matting used as a
floor-covering is now made in Japan and constitutes a very important
export.
Three thousand miles of railway aid the internal industries of the
country; several steamship lines to Hongkong and Shanghai, and one or
more each to Vladivostok, Bombay, San Francisco, Seattle, Honolulu,
Australia, and Vancouver (B.C.) carry the tea, raw silk, and
manufactured products to Europe and America. Much, if not most, of the
steamship interests are owned by the Japanese, and the lines are
encouraged by government subsidies. France and the United States buy
most of the raw silk. The latter country purchases most of the tea,
sending coal-oil, cotton, leather, and lumber in return. Great Britain
and Germany sell to the Japanese a large part of the textiles and the
machinery they use. The exports to the United States are consigned
mainly to San Francisco, New York and Seattle.
_Tokio_ is the capital; _Yokohama_ is the chief port for American
traffic, and the market for most of the foreign trade. Most of the trade
between China and Japan centres at _Nagasaki_, which is the Japanese
naval station. _Osaka_ and _Kioto_ are the chief centres of cotton and
textile manufactures.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How has the policy of seclusion affected the commercial development of
China?
What has been its effect on the social life of the people?
How did the cultivation of opium in India become a factor in the opening
of China to foreign trade?
What is meant by "treaty ports"? Make a list of those shown on the map
of eastern China.
Name two Chinese statesmen who have been factors in the relations
between China and the United States.
Compare the position of Japan with that of the British Isles with
reference to commerce.
What advantages has Japan with reference to latitude?--what
disadvantages with reference to cultivable lands?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the leading exports and imports and
the volume of trade of these states.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the leading articles of trade
between these states and the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia read the following topics: The opium war, Commodore
Perry's expedition.
CHAPTER XXXIII
AFRICA
Africa is in a state of commercial transition. During the last quarter
of the nineteenth century the partition of its area among European
nations left but few of the names that formerly were familiar. At the
beginning of the twentieth century the British, French, and Germans
controlled the greater part of the continent, although the Portuguese,
Belgians, Italians, and Spanish have various possessions.
The partition of Africa was designed for the expansion of European
markets. The population of Africa is about one hundred and seventy
million, and the continent is practically without manufacturing
enterprises. The people, therefore, must be supplied with clothing and
other commodities. In 1900 the total trade of Africa with the rest of
the world was about one and one-third billion dollars, of which the
United States had a little more than two per cent., mainly cotton cloth
and coal-oil.
=Egypt.=--The Egypt of the maps is a region of indefinite extent so far as
its western and southern boundaries are concerned; the Egypt of history
is the flood plain of the Nile. From the Mediterranean Sea to Cairo the
cultivable area is not far from one hundred miles in width; from Cairo
to Khartum it varies from three to seven or eight miles wide.
[Illustration: AFRICA]
The food-producing power of Egypt depends on the Nile. In lower Egypt a
considerable area is made productive at the ordinary stage of water by
means of irrigating canals, but in upper Egypt the crops must depend
upon the annual flood of the river, which occurs from June until
September. During this period the river varies from twenty-five to forty
feet above the low-water mark. In the irrigated regions three crops a
year may be produced; in the flooded lands only one is grown.
In order to add to the cultivable area two great engineering works have
been constructed. A barrage and lock control the flow of water at
Assiut; a huge dam at Assuan impounds the surplus of the flood season.
These structures, it is thought, will increase the productive power of
the country about one-fourth. Rice, maize (an Egyptian variety), sugar,
wheat, and beans are the staple crops.
Rice is the food of the native people, but the crop is insufficient, and
the deficit must be imported. The wheat, maize, and beans are grown for
export to Europe, the last named being extensively used for
horse-fodder. The sugar-growing industry is protected by the heavy yield
and the cheap fellahin labor. The raw sugar is sent to the refineries
along the Mediterranean. Onions are exported to the United States.
The cotton-crop is an important factor, and in spite of its own crop the
United States is a heavy purchaser of the long-staple Egyptian cotton,
which is used in the manufacture of thread and hosiery. The cultivation
of tobacco is forbidden by law, but Egyptian cigarettes are an item of
considerable importance. They are made of imported Turkish tobacco by
foreign workmen. There is a heavy export duty on native tobacco
exported, and the ban on the inferior native-grown article is intended
to prevent its admixture with the high-grade product from Turkey, and
thereby to keep up the standard of the cigarettes.
Egypt is nominally a vassal of Turkey, paying to the Sultan a yearly
tribute of $3,600,000. Great Britain's is the real controlling hand,
because the Suez Canal is Great Britain's gateway to India. By a
purchase of the stock held by a former Khedive, Great Britain secured
financial control of the canal, a necessary step from the fact that more
than half the trade carried through the canal is British commerce.
The country is deficient in the resources that make most nations
powerful. There is neither coal, iron, nor timber available, and these
must be imported. Great Britain supplies the first, and Norway the last.
Some traffic is carried on the Nile, but railways have been built
through the crop-lands. One of these threads the Nile Valley and will
become a part of the "Cape to Cairo" route.
_Alexandria_ is the port at which most of the Egyptian commerce lands.
_Cairo_, the largest city of Africa, derives its importance from its
position at the head of the Nile delta. It is a favorite winter-resort.
_Port Said_ and _Suez_ are the terminal ports of the Suez Canal; their
commerce is mainly the transit trade of the canal.
=Other Independent States.=--Most of the independent states of Africa are
in a condition of barbarism and have but little importance to the rest
of the world. Abyssinia has the natural advantages of gold, iron,
pasture-lands, and forestry, and the possibilities of cotton
cultivation. Valuable mining concessions have been granted to foreign
companies. Ivory, coffee, and gold are shipped to India in exchange for
textiles. A railway from the coast is under construction, but all the
traffic is carried by mule-trains, mainly to _Harrar_.
Morocco has an admirable strategic position at the entrance of the
Strait of Gibraltar, and is most likely, in time, to become a possession
of Spain. There are exported, mainly to Great Britain, beans, almonds,
goat-skins, and wool. The goat-skins are sumac-tanned and are still
used in making the best book-binding leather. Only a small part of the
so-called Morocco leather of commerce is genuine. There are no railways;
caravan routes from the Sahara cross the country. _Tangier_ and one or
two other ports are open to foreign trade. Coal-oil is the only import
from the United States.
The state of Liberia was established for the benefit of freed slaves
from the United States. The products are those of tropical Africa,
including caoutchouc. Coffee cultivation is extensively carried on, and
coffee is the leading export. _Monrovia_ is the chief centre of trade.
=North African Possessions.=--French influence is paramount in northern
Africa. Algeria and Tunis are both French colonies, and the caravan
trade of the Sahara is generally tributary to French trade. The region
known as the Tell, a strip between the coast and the Atlas Mountains, is
the chief agricultural region, and the products are similar to those on
the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. The ordinary grains are grown
for home consumption, but the macaroni wheat crop is manufactured into
macaroni paste for export. The fruit-crop, especially the olive, date,
and grape, and their products, is exported.
Esparto grass, for making paper, was formerly an important export, but
the increasing use of wood-pulp for this purpose has had the effect of
increasing the grazing area, and therefore the wool-crop. Date-palms
grow in great profusion, and the excess forms an important export, going
to nearly every part of Europe and the United States. A large part of
the crop, however, is consumed by the Arabs. Sumac-tanned goat-skins,
for book-binding leather, are also exported.
The colonies must import coal. Manufactures are therefore restricted to
the preparation of the fruit and food products. Sponges are an
important product. Railways provide the necessary transportation for the
crops. _Algiers_, the metropolis, is a finely built city and a favorite
winter-resort. _Oran_ is the shipping-port for grain and esparto grass.
_Biskra_ is the market for dates.
The caravan trade of northern Africa is considerable, and the greater
part converges at _Tripoli_, to which not far from ten thousand
camel-loads of merchandise are brought annually. This trade is carried
on mainly by the Arabs, who cover the region from _Timbuctu_ to Lake
Chad. They bring ivory, ostrich feathers, gold, goat-skins, and slaves.
In return they carry cloth, fire-arms, ammunition, and various
commodities to the negro villages of the Sudan. The district is a
possession of Turkey. Its chief exports are esparto grass, sponges, and
dye-stuffs.
=Central Africa.=--Central Africa is divided among the chief European
powers. Great Britain and Germany divide the lake-region and the
Zanzibar coast. On the Guinea coast the French are an additional factor.
The trade of these regions consists of an exchange of tropical
products--palm-oil, rubber, ebony, camwood, ivory, and hides--for cloth,
tobacco, fire-arms, beads and trinkets, and preserved foods. Most of
this trade is carried on by companies holding royal charters.
The Kongo State is a semi-official corporation of this character, the
King of the Belgians being its chief executive officer. The active
administration is carried on by agents of the company. The chief of each
tribe or village is required, under penalty, to furnish a certain quota
of crude rubber and other products; and between the agent and the Arab
slave-driver the natives have little to choose.
The Kongo River is the outlet of the state, and to facilitate the
transportation of the products, railways have been built, or are under
construction, around the rapids. This region is about the only
remaining source of elephant ivory, but most of the supply consists of
the tusks of animals long since dead. A fleet of steamboats carries the
commercial products to the coast. _Stanley Pool_, at the head of the
rapids, is the chief depot for collection. Ocean steamships ascend the
river to a point above _Boma_, the place of administration.
Nigeria and Ashanti are British possessions on the Guinea coast,[81]
having a trading company organization. Sierra Leone is an organized
colony, a product of which is the kola-nut. British East Africa is
important for strategic purposes, inasmuch as it includes the upper Nile
basin, a territory sometimes known as the Egyptian Sudan. _Akra_ is the
trading port of Nigeria, and _Khartum_ of the upper Nile Valley.
_Zanzibar_ is the metropolis of the east coast.
The French possessions include a large territory at the mouth of the
Kongo, the western part of the Sahara, and the islands of Madagascar and
Reunion. In German East Africa the commercial development has been
substantial, and large plantations for the cultivation of tropical
products are in operation. A railway from the coast to the lake-district
is under construction. _Mombasa_ is its commercial outlet.
The Italians have nominal possession of a territory facing the Strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb, and also of the peninsula of Guardafui. Their actual
possession, however, is restricted to the island and trading-post of
_Massawa_. Their attempts to conquer Abyssinia have been unsuccessful.
=Cape of Good Hope and the South African Colonies.=--Up to the time of the
Suez Canal, Cape of Good Hope was a sort of half-way house between
British ports and India, and this position made it commercially
important. Even at the present time more than fifteen hundred vessels,
many of them in the Indian Ocean trade, call at the chief port of the
colony every year.
Agriculture is the chief industry of these colonies, though not the one
yielding the greatest returns. Enough wheat, maize (or "mealies"), and
fruit are grown for home consumption, but the climate is too arid for
any excess of bread-stuffs. The aridity is a resource, however, in the
matter of wool, the superior quality of which is due largely to the
deficient rainfall. As a matter of fact the whole country is a great
grazing veldt; wool, a very fine quality of Angora mohair, hides, and
cattle products are exports.
From December to March the fruits ripen, and these, especially the
grapes, are carried in cold-storage vessels to British and other
European ports. The wine is likewise of excellent quality and is
becoming an export of great value. Both the fruit and the wine are
similar to those of Australia and California.
The business of ostrich farming is in the hands of several large
companies, and, next to the wool-crop, ostrich plumes are the leading
product. There are about a quarter of a million birds, and each produces
about one pound of feathers. The ordinary quality of plumes varies from
five to ten dollars a pound; very choice plumes command as much as two
hundred dollars a pound. London is the chief market for them, but most
of them sooner or later find their way to the milliners of the great
cities.
The diamond-mines of Griqualand West furnish practically the whole of
the world's supply. The mines are operated on a most thorough business
system, and the output of rough stones is carefully regulated to meet
the demand. All wholesale dealers know the output from year to year, and
no more stones are put upon the market than the number required to meet
the demand. All the Kimberley mines are now consolidated under one
company. The yearly output does not vary much from twenty million
dollars' worth of stones. The stones are marketed from Kimberley, but
London dealers buy most of them.
The mines that for several years produced more gold than any others in
existence are in the Transvaal.[82] Other undeveloped mines in the
territory of Rhodesia are known to be extremely rich in precious metals;
indeed, there is much evidence that the famous mines of Ophir were in
this region. Copper ore is an important export.
The industries of Natal colony do not differ materially from those of
Cape of Good Hope. The rainfall is sufficient for the growing of
sugar-cane, and sugar is an important export to the mother-country. The
colony has productive coal-mines, and these are destined to become an
important resource.
The home government has encouraged railway building, and a trunk line
through Rhodesia affords an outlet to the ports of the south coast. It
is the policy of the mother-country to extend this road along the
lake-region and the Nile Valley (known as the "Great Rift") to the
Mediterranean Sea. This plan when carried out will give Great Britain a
practical control of the trade of eastern Africa. The imports are mainly
textiles, machinery, and steel wares.
_Cape Town_ is the most important centre of trade in South Africa. A
considerable trade, however, is carried on at _Port Elizabeth_ and at
_Durban_, the port of Natal. _Kimberley_ is the seat of the
diamond-mining interests, and _Johannesberg_ of the gold-mines.
Germany and Portugal divide the southwest coast. _Walfisch Bay_ is the
outlet of the former. Portuguese East Africa is an outlet for the trade
of the Transvaal region, with which it is connected by rail. The port
_Lourenco Marquez_ has a fine harbor.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Has the partition of Africa been an advantage or a disadvantage to the
native races of the continent?
What advantages will accrue to Great Britain from the Cape to Cairo
railway?
Compare the basin of the Kongo with that of the Amazon with respect to
climate, products, and civilization.
From Commercial Africa prepare a list of the exports and imports between
the United States and the various African countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Statesman's Year-Book.
Commercial Africa--pp. 3679 and following.
From a cyclopaedia read the following topics: Ivory, Suez Canal,
Gibraltar, Livingstone, Diamonds, Canary Islands.
CHAPTER XXXIV
OCEANIA
Oceania, the island division of the world, includes Australasia and the
great groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Some of the larger islands
are regions of great productivity; others are important as
coaling-stations; still others have positions of great strategic value.
When it is considered that more than half the people in the world live
on the slopes of the Pacific Ocean, and that they depend on the
metal-working and manufacturing people of the Atlantic slopes for
clothing and commodities, it is apparent that the commerce of the
Pacific Ocean must reach enormous proportions.
For this reason the various island groups of Oceania have been acquired
by Europeans, and from the moment of their occupation their commercial
development began. The great majority of these groups are within the
limits of the sago-palm, bread-fruit, cocoanut, and banana, and these
yield not only the food-stuffs of the native people, but the export
products as well. Copra, or dried cocoanut meat, is the general export.
It is marketed in Marseille, London, and San Francisco. Sago is prepared
from the pith of a species of palm. Considerable quantities are also
exported, and it is used as a table delicacy. The banana is the
food-stuff upon which many millions of people must depend. In spite of
their small aggregate area, the food-producing power of these islands is
very great.[83]
On account of its central position, Honolulu, the capital and chief
port of Hawaii, is the most important mid-ocean station of the Pacific.
It is almost in the direct line of traffic between the Pacific ports of
the United States and Canada on the one hand, and those of Australia,
Japan and China on the other. It is also in the route of vessels that
may hereafter use the American isthmian canal in going between European
and Asian ports.
In the cultivation of export products native Malay labor is almost
always employed, inasmuch as Europeans cannot bear out-of-door labor in
the tropics. The natives are generally known as "Kanakas," and there is
not a little illicit traffic in their labor. Chinese and Japanese
coolies are also employed as laborers.
=The Commonwealth of Australia.=--The commonwealth of Australia consists
of the various states of Australia together with Tasmania. Their
position corresponds very closely to that of Mexico and Central America,
and the climate and products are not unlike. A considerable part of
Australia is a desert, and a large area is too arid for the production
of bread-stuffs; the eastern coast, however, receives abundant rains.
Australia produces nearly one-third of the wool-clip of the world. On
account of the climate, the quality of the wool, much of it merino, is
excellent. More than half the clip comes from New South Wales.
Two-thirds of the wool goes to Great Britain to be manufactured; nearly
all the rest is purchased by France, Germany, and Belgium. Less than two
per cent. is sold to the United States.
Since the introduction of cold-storage plants in steamships, Australia
has become a heavy exporter of meat. Areas long unproductive are now
cattle-ranges; mutton constitutes the heaviest shipment. Inasmuch as the
transportation is almost wholly by water, the cost is very light, and
the mutton can be sold to London dealers at less than four cents per
pound.
[Illustration: THE COMMERCE OF THE PACIFIC]
[Illustration: AUSTRALIA]
Wheat is grown mainly for home consumption. Grapes for wine and for
raisins are good-paying crops in Victoria and New South Wales. Both
products find a ready market in Great Britain. Australian claret is a
strong competitor of California claret for public favor, and the two are
similar in character. Cane-sugar is grown in the moist regions of
Queensland; it is the chief supply of the commonwealth and the
neighboring islands. The forests produce an abundance of hard woods, but
practically no building-timber. Jarrah wood paving-blocks are an
important export. British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon supply much
of the building-timber.
Gold has been the chief mineral product since the settlement of the
country. The mints convert the metal into coin. As a rule the value of
the exports exceeds that of the imports, and the excess swells the
amount of metal exported. The most productive mines are in the district
of Ballarat. Coal is abundant on the east coast, and a considerable part
is sold to California, and more to Asian ports. Tin is extensively mined
in Tasmania.
More than fifteen thousand miles of railway have been built to carry the
traffic of the country. Most of them were built by private corporations,
but on account of financial difficulties and poor service they were
acquired by the government. The policy proved a wise one.
Great Britain encourages the trade of her colonies, and gets about
three-fourths of the traffic of the commonwealth, the imports being
manufactured goods. Of the foreign trade the United States has about
half, nearly all of which is landed at San Francisco and Puget
Sound. Wool, cattle products, and coal are exported to the United
States, and the latter sends to Australia structural steel--mainly
rails--printing-paper, and coal-oil.
_Melbourne_ is the largest city. _Sydney_ is the port at which most of
the ocean trade is landed. _Brisbane_, mainly a coal and a wool market,
is connected with British Columbia by an ocean cable. Steamships by way
of the Suez Canal generally call at _Perth_ and _Adelaide_. _Hobart_ and
_Launcestown_ are the markets of Tasmania.
=New Zealand.=--This colony is one of the most prosperous and best
administered states in existence. The cultivable lands produce enough
wheat for home use, and an excess for export. Cattle and sheep are the
chief resource, however, and pretty nearly everything--meat, hides,
wool, horn, and bones--is exported. Dairy products are not forgotten,
and under the management of an association, these are of the best
quality.
New Zealand flax (_Phormium tenax_), a kind of marsh hemp, yields a
fibre used in making cordage. The kauri pine furnishes the chief supply
of lumber. A fossil kauri gum is collected for export; it makes a
varnish almost equal to Japanese lacquer. Gold is mined, and there being
no mint, all the bullion is exported. The only manufactures are those
which are connected with the meat export and the dairy industry. The
exports noted more than pay for the manufactured goods. Most of the
trade is carried on with Great Britain. _Wellington_, the capital, and
_Auckland_ are the centres of trade.
=New Guinea.=--This island, one of the largest in the world, is somewhat
larger than the State of Texas, or about one-third larger than Germany
or France. The gold-mines first led to the exploration and settlement of
the island, but it was soon apparent that the agricultural resources
were even more valuable, and it was divided among the British, Germans,
and Dutch.
The western part of the island is distinctly Asian in character; the
eastern and southern parts resemble Australia. Coffee, rice, and tobacco
plantations have been established in the former; grazing is the chief
industry in the latter. Ebony and bamboo are among the forest products.
=British Possessions.=--The Fiji Islands are among the most important
British possessions. They number about eighty habitable and twice as
many small islands. Sugar is the chief export product, and it goes
mainly to Australia and New Zealand. Cocoanuts are also a large item of
export trade. _Suva_ is the chief trading-port.
The Tonga Islands are nominally independent, but are practically a
British protectorate. Among other British possessions are Cook, Gilbert,
and Ellice archipelagoes, and Pitcairn Island.
=German Possessions.=--The Samoa Islands are perhaps the most important
German possession, and German planters have made them highly productive.
They were formerly held under a community-of-interest plan by Great
Britain, Germany, and the United States. A joint commission awarded the
greater part of the territory to Germany. In addition to the ordinary
products, pineapples and limes are exported. Most of the trade is
carried on by way of Australia. _Apia_ is the trading-port.
Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon, Marshall, and Caroline groups
have also been acquired by Germany. The last named was purchased from
Spain at the close of the Spanish-American War.
=French Possessions.=--New Caledonia, together with Loyalty Islands,
Fortuna, and the New Hebrides group, have great wealth in the matter of
resources. New Caledonia, a penal colony, has productive mines of chrome
iron ore and copper. It is the source of a considerable supply of nickel
and cobalt. A railway to the coast has been built for the carriage of
these products.
Tahiti is the principal island of the Society group, and under the
missions long established there, the natives have become civilized. In
addition to the usual trade, sugar and mother-of-pearl are important
exports.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How will the commerce of the Pacific be changed by the construction of
an isthmian canal?
What has been the effect of the Australian wool-clip on the cloth-making
industry of England and Germany?
How will the acquisition of Hawaii and the Philippine Islands affect the
commerce of the United States?
From Commercial Australia find the trade of the United States with the
Commonwealth.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia read the history of Australia as a convict colony.
Commercial Australia.
APPENDIX
TRADE OF THE PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
Sells Buys
Country Imports Exports to U.S. from U.S.
Argentina $110,000,000 $161,850,000 $10,000,000 $11,000,000
Australia 201,000,000 224,000,000 5,263,000 28,164,000
Austria-
Hungary 335,486,000 383,748,000 10,000,000 6,844,000
Belgium 428,651,000 352,850,000 14,920,000 51,444,000
Bolivia 5,845,000 15,618,000 22 120,000
Brazil 97,330,000 165,461,000 64,914,000 11,517,000
Canada 181,238,000 177,443,000 42,482,000 105,790,000
Chile 46,916,000 61,201,000 7,474,000 4,507,000
China 203,421,000 124,528,000 18,126,000 18,176,000
Colombia 10,695,000 18,487,000 4,811,000 2,924,000
Cuba 66,584,000 63,278,000 46,664,000 27,007,000
Denmark 111,542,000 75,549,000 797,000 15,500,000
Ecuador 6,541,000 7,509,000 1,578,000 1,590,000
Egypt 75,366,000 77,754,000 8,867,000 1,321,000
France 843,255,000 774,497,000 81,315,000 78,406,000
Germany 1,290,254,000 1,054,685,000 99,970,000 184,679,000
Greece 26,782,000 18,100,000 1,447,000 286,000
India,
British 264,318,000 392,025,000 47,172,000 5,647,000
India,
Dutch 67,755,000 100,632,000 32,309,000 1,653,000
India,
French 36,576,000 30,513,000 ... 118,000
Italy 331,668,000 265,270,000 27,631,000 34,046,000
Japan 127,397,000 124,209,000 36,855,000 21,163,000
Mexico 64,036,000 77,583,000 17,273,000 83,722,000
Netherlands 815,442,000 695,763,000 17,273,000 83,722,000
Norway 83,255,000 43,616,000 ... ...
Peru 11,276,000 21,890,000 2,911,000 2,312,000
Philippine
Islands 30,279,000 23,215,000 4,421,000 4,027,000
Portugal 62,497,000 30,546,000 3,642,000 4,454,000
Roumania 41,878,000 54,041,000 101,000 31,000
Russia 269,493,000 375,276,000 7,236,000 6,506,000
Spain 161,867,000 129,399,000 7,041,000 16,786,000
Sweden 143,363,000 104,878,000 4,370,000 11,521,000
Switzerland 202,651,000 161,458,000 16,035,000 233,000
Turkey 103,110,000 64,876,000 2,437,000 184,000
United
Kingdom 2,540,265,000 1,362,729,000 155,292,000 598,767,000
United
States 903,321,000 1,355,482,000 ... ...
Uruguay 24,497,000 28,674,000 1,975,000 1,481,000
Venezuela 8,457,000 17,962,000 6,610,000 2,737,000
INDEX
Acapulco, 269
Acre, 281
Activities classified, 4
Adams, 220
Aden, 354
Adjustment to environment, 86
Afghanistan, 355
Alaska, 254
Alberta, 265
Alexandria, 384
Alfa, 124
Algeria, 385
Alpaca, 111, 115
Altitude, effects of, 32
Aluminium, 179
Amazon River, 53
Amber, 146
Ambergris, 204
American Indians, 86
Amritsar, 362
Amsterdam, 318
Anaconda, 250
Anchovy, 207
Angora wool, 115
Anthracite coal, 224
Appalachian region, 222
Arabia, 354
Argentina, 291
Arid region of U.S., 240
Arkwright, 108
Asian Rivers, navigation of, 53
Asphalt, 157
Assiniboia, 265
Astrakhan, 347
Athens, 341
Atlanta, 239
Atlantic coast-plain, 213, 221
Attar-of-roses, 338
Australia, 392
Austria-Hungary, 335
Bagdad, 354
Baku, 347, 348
Baltimore, 217
Baluchistan, 357
Banca, 181, 364
Barbados, 273
Barley, 101
Barmen-Elberfeld, 308
Batavia, 364
Bauxite, 179
Beef, exports of U.S., 244
Beet sugar, 186, 303, 321
Beginnings of cities, 82
Belgium, 313
Belgrade, 341
Bengal, 361
Benzine, 156
Bergen, 312
Berlin, 308
Bermuda, 273
Bessemer-steel boilers, 63
Big tree, 198
Billiton, 364
Birmingham, Ala., 165, 225
Birmingham, Eng., 302
Bismarck Archipelago, 397
Black walnut, 199
Blende, 182
Bluefish, 206
Boers, 86
Bogota, 277
Bohemian glass, 336
Boise City, 250
Bokhara, 347
Bolivia, 280
Bombay, 362
Bosnia, 337
Boston, 215
Boxwood, 200
Brass, 178
Brazil, 288
nuts, 289
Breakfast, travels of a, 1
Bremen, 308
Brenner Pass, 66
Brick tea, 134
Bridgeport, 221
British Columbia, 265
India, 358
Bronze Age, 181
Brussels, 316
Budapest, 337
Buenos Aires, 293
Buffalo, 225
Bulgaria, 338
Burlington, 237
Burma, British, 362
Burr clover, 34
Butte, 250
Cacao, 134
Cairo, 384
Calcutta, 123
California fruits, 251
Callao, 279
Camel's hair, 116
Camphor, 378
Canada, 261
Canadian Pacific Railway, 263
Canal, Chesapeake & Ohio, 56
Chicago ship, 56
Erie, 55
Grand, 370
Kaiser Wilhelm, 57
Ludwig, 337
Manchester, 57
Nicaragua, 59, 270
Nord Holland, 57, 318
Panama, 58
Rideau, 54
St. Mary's Falls, 228, 263
Suez, 57
Welland, 54, 263
Canyons, effects of, 18
Canton, 374
Caoutchouc, 141
Capacity of locomotives, 63, 64
Cape Nome, 254
Cape of Good Hope, 387
Cape Town, 389
Caravan tea, 134
Carpet wools, 112
Cashmere shawls, 363
Cattle-growing, 240
Cavite, 258
Cereals, 88
Charleston, 218
Cheviot, 112
Cheyenne, 244
Chicago, 84, 228, 230, 234
Chicago River, 228
Chicory, 131
Chile, 281
Chinook winds, 261
Chocolate, 136
Cigars, manufacture of, 137
Cincinnati, 236
Cities, growth of, 83
Clearing-houses, 215
Cleveland, 225, 230
Climate, 29
Clipper ship, 44
Cloth, antiquity of, 105
Coal, 148, 257, 258, 264, 265, 268, 298, 323, 333, 344, 365, 368, 379
areas of the world, 147
prices of, in U.S., 149
tar products, 153
Coast commerce of U.S., 222
Coastplains, 22
Coca, 278
Cocoa, 134
Cocoon silk, 119
Cod fisheries, 204
Coffee, 127, 271, 277, 290
Coke, 151
Colombia, 275
Columbus, voyages of, 11
Commerce in Western Europe, 13
Communal life, 81, 344
Competition and pools, 67
Constantinople, 340
Copal, 146
Copenhagen, 313
Copper, 159, 162, 177, 248, 266, 279, 344, 379
Cordage, 122
Corn, 98, 232
Corn, oil of, 100
Cotton, 106, 238, 269, 289, 302, 306, 326
Cotton, Egyptian, 109, 383
gin, 109
Indian, 360
Peruvian, 108, 278
sea island, 108
Cotton crop, distribution of, 239
Creosote, 145
Cripple Creek, 248
Crompton, 108
Crusades, wars of, 8
Cuba, 271
bast, 124
Currant grapes, 341
Da Gama, voyage of, 11
Dammar, 146
Davenport, 237
Deadwood, 250
Demerara, 286
Denmark, 312
Denver, 250
Detroit, 230
Diamonds, 388
Dias, voyage of, 11
Differentials, 71, 73
Divi-divi, 285
Division of industries, 41
Dubuque, 237
Dutch East Indies, 364
standards, 188
Eastern Turkestan, 376
Ebony, 200
Economic regions of U.S., 213
Ecuador, 279
Egypt, 381
Electric railways, 76
Eminent domain, 76
Esparto grass, 124, 385
Exchange of products, 5
Fairs, 346
Fall line, 53, 221
Fall River, 220
Felt hats, 209
Fertility of irrigated regions, 33
Feudalism, 7
Fiji Islands, 396
Fisheries, 266
Fish hatcheries, 207
Flax, 120, 300, 314, 343
New Zealand, 124
Forced draught, 63
Forest areas, 193, 261, 288, 299, 310
Fort Dearborn, 228
France, 320
Freight rates, 63, 69
French India, 365
Galveston, 238
Gasoline, 156
Geneva, 334
German Empire, 303
Ghent, 314, 316
Glucose, 100, 191
Gold, 166, 172, 248, 264, 268, 286, 344, 379, 395
Grain elevators, 94
Grape industry in New York, 36
Graphite, 153
Grasses, 88
Great Britain, 295
Great Central Plain, 22
Great Lakes, 227
Great Salt Lake, 247
Greece, 340
Griqualand West, 388
Guam, 258
Guatemala, 270
Guayaquil, 280
Guiana, 286
Gulf coast, 237
Gums, 141
Gutta-percha, 144
Halibut, 256
Halifax, 264
Hamburg, 308
Hamilton, 265
Hanse League, 13
Harbors, 26, 47, 84
Hargreaves, 109
Hartford, 221
Havana, 272
cigars, 137
Hawaiian Islands, 255
Helena, 250
Hematite, 163
Hemp, 121, 257
Henequen, 122
Herodotus quoted, 106
Herring fisheries, 205
Herzegovina, 337
Hickory, 199
Hilo, 256
Hodeida, 130
Holland, 316
Hongkong, 365, 374
Honolulu, 256, 392
Houston, 238
Hudson's Bay Company, 208, 262
Iloilo, 258
Inclination of axis, 36
Indianapolis, 237
Inland waters, 50
Intermontane valleys, 18
Interstate Commerce Commission, 76
Iodine, 282
Iquique, 283
Iran plateau, 349
Ireland, 265
Irkutsk, 347
Iron, 162, 236, 300, 323
galvanized, 182
ore, 163, 166, 300, 306, 311, 315, 323
Iron Gate, 338
Italy, 325
Jade, 159
Japan, 375
Jarrah, 200, 394
Java, 364
Joint tariff associations, 72
Jute, 122, 360
Kabue, 356
Kansas City, 236
Kashmir, 363
Kauri, 146, 396
Kerosene, 154, 157
Key West cigars, 137
Khaibar Pass, 356
Khiva, 347
Kiakhta, 347
Kiel, 309
Kimberley, 389, 390
Klondike mines, 254
Kongo River, navigation of, 54
Kongo State, 386
Korea, 376
Kristiania, 311, 312
Lac, 145
Lacquer, 378
La Guaira, 286
Lanolin, 114
Lassa, 374
Las Vegas, 250
Laudanum, 139
Lawrence, 220
Lead, 180
Lead pencils, 153
Leadville, 250
Leather goods, 221
Liechtenstein, 337
Lignum vitae, 200
Lithographic stone, 305
Liverpool, 302
Llama, 115
Lobster fisheries, 207
Locomotive, Central-Atlantic type, 64
Logwood, 201
London, 302
Los Angeles, 157, 252
Louisville, 237
Lourenco Marquez, 390
Lowell, 220
Lynn, 221
Macao, 374
Mackerel, 206
Mackintosh, 143
Madagascar, 387
Madras, 363
Magnetite, 163
Maguey sugar, 187
Mahogany, 199
Malay States, Federated, 363
Manchester, Eng., 382
Manchester, N.H., 220
Manchuria, 376
Mandalay, 362
Manganese, 182
Manila, 258
hemp, 121
Manitoba, 265
Maple, 199
sugar, 186
Marco Polo, 9
Martinique, 273
Mate, 136
Maverick, 240
Melbourne, 395
Memphis, 238
Merino wool, 111, 112
Metals, influence of, in cities, 85
Mexico, 267
city of, 269
Milan, 328
Mileage books, 72
Millet, 359
Milwaukee, 230
Mingo Junction, 224
Mining, 248
Minneapolis, 230, 236
Miquelon, 266
Mississippi River, 52
valley, 232
Mobile, 240
Mocha coffee, 130
Mohair, 115
Mohawk valley, 220
Molasses, 191
Moline, 237
Mongolia, 376
Mont Cenis tunnel, 66
Montenegro, 341
Montreal, 264
Morocco, 384
Mountains, contents of, 17
Moscow, 347
Mulberry, 116
Nagasaki, 380
Nankeen cotton, 108
Naphtha, 154, 156
Nashua, 220
Natural gas, 157
Naval stores, 145
Nearchus, 107
New Brunswick, 264
New Caledonia, 397
New England Plateau, 219
New Guinea, 396
New Haven, 221
New Orleans, 238
New York City, 84, 214, 215, 230, 238, 250
New Zealand, 395
New Zealand flax, 123, 396
Newfoundland, 266
Nicaragua, 270
Nickel, 182
Nieuwchwang, 374
Nigeria, 387
Nile River, barrage of, 383
floods of, 33
navigation of, 54
Nitrate, 282
Norfolk, 218
Northern Securities Company, 227
Norway, 310
Nova Scotia, 264
Novgorod, 209
Oak, 198
Oats, 101
Ocean steamships, 45
Odessa, 134, 347
Ogden, 250
Ohio River, 52
Oil of theobroma, 135
Old Government Java, 129
Oleo-resins, 141
Omaha, 236
Ontario, 265
Opium, 139, 360
Oregon pine, 252
Ottawa, 265
Oyster fisheries, 207
Pacific Coast lowlands, 250
Paddy, 103
Pago Pago Harbor, 258
Panama, 277
hats, 133, 279
Para, 291
Paraffine, 157
Paraguay, 293
tea, 136
Paris, 324
Passes, 19
Pearl Harbor, 256
Peking, 374
Penang, 363
Pepper, 365
Persia, 354
Persian lamb, 208
Peru, 278
Peshawur, 356, 362
Petroleum, 154, 225, 344, 379
jelly, 157
Philadelphia, 216
Philippine Islands, 256
Pine, 197
Piraeus, The, 341
Pitch, 145
Pittsburg, 106, 224
Plains, 21
Plaiting straw, 124
Plateaus, 21, 247
Ponce, 255
Pools, 68
Population, distribution of, 81
Pork, 234
Port Arthur, 347
Port Huron, 230
Port Said, 384
Port wine, 330
Portland, Me., 217
Portland, Ore., 252
Porto Rico, 254
Portugal, 328
Pribilof Islands, 208, 254
Prince Edward Island, 264
Providence, 221
Puget Sound, 228, 252
Punjab, 362
Pyrites, 164
Quebec, 264
city of, 265
Quicksilver, 180
Rabbit skins, 209
Railway, Canadian Pacific, 263
Chesapeake & Ohio, 71
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, 68
New York Central, 65, 67
Northern Pacific, 227
Sind-Pishin, 356
Southern, 71
Tehuantepec, 269
Transportation, 62
Transsiberian, 345, 372
Union Pacific, 66
Rainfall, effects of, 33
deficiency of, 33
Ramie, 123
Rangoon, 362
Raw silk, 118
Rebates, 71
Redwood, 198, 252
Resins, 141
Rhodesia, 389
Rice, 102, 359
Richmond, 221
Riga, 347
Rio Janeiro, 290
River navigation in Europe, 53
valleys, 21
Roads, macadamized, 78
Rock Island, 237
Rome, 327
Rotterdam, 318
Roumania, 338
Rubber, 141, 275, 278, 281, 288
Rug wools, 114
Rugs, oriental, 351, 355
Ruhr iron fields, 306
Russia, 343
Rye, 101, 344
Sacramento, 252
Sahara, 385
Saigon, 365
Sailing vessels, 47
St. Gotthard tunnel, 66
St. Louis, 234
St. Paul, 230, 236
St. Petersburg, 346
St. Pierre, 266
St. Thomas, 273
Salmon, 205
Salonica, 340
Samoa Islands, 396
San Antonio, 239
San Francisco, 252
San Joaquin valley, 250
San Juan, P.R., 255
San Pedro, 252
Sandarach, 146
Santa Fe, 250
Santiago, 283
Santos, 290
Saskatchewan, 265
Savannah, 238
Schooners, 44, 47
Scranton, 224
Seal fisheries, 208
Seasonal rains, 34
Seattle, 84, 252
Servia, 341
Shad, 256
Shanghai, 374
Sheep-growing, 242
Shell-lac, 145
Shoe manufacture, 221
Siam, 364
Siberia, 347
Silk, 116, 323, 326, 368, 378
Silver, 162, 176, 248, 268, 278, 304, 340
Sind, 362
Singapore, 363, 365
Sioux City, 236
Sisal hemp, 122, 267
Skagway, 254
Smyrna, 139, 353
Sorghum, 187
Sound Valley, 250
South Bethlehem, 224
South Chicago, 225
Southampton, 302
Spain, 328
Spermaceti, 204
Spokane, 250
Sponge, 208
Steel, Bessemer, 160, 169, 170, 222, 300, 304, 345
Stephenson, 63
Stockholm, 312
Stockton, 252
Sugar, 185, 289, 303, 314, 318, 364
Swash channel, 50
Sweden, 310
Switzerland, 331
Sydney, 395
Tacoma, 252
Tar, 145
Tea, 131, 360, 368, 378
Teak, 200, 365
Temperate zone, activities of, 32
Textiles, 105
Three-mile fishing limit, 262
Thrown silk, 118
Tientsin, 134, 374
Tin, 181, 364
Tobacco, 136, 237, 240, 364, 383
Tokio, 380
Toledo, 225
Topography and trade routes, 24
Toronto, 265
Torrid zone, temperature of, 30
Tortilla, Mexican, 100
Trade routes, ancient, 8
Transcaucasia, 348
Transvaal, 389
Treaty ports, 373
Trebizond, 351
Triple-expansion principle, 45
Tripoli, 386
Tunis, 385
Turf grass, 34
Turkey-in-Europe, 339
Turks invade Europe, 9
Turpentine, 144
Tussar silk, 119
Tutuila, 258
Tweed, 112
Uruguay, 294
Valparaiso, 283
Vancouver, 266
Vanderbilt locomotive fire-box, 64
Vanilla, 268
Vaseline, 157
Venezuela, 285
Vicksburg, 238
Vienna, 337
Virginia City, 250
Vladivostok, 347
Vuelta Abajo, 137
Vulcanized rubber, 142
Wai-wu-pu, 373
Walla Walla, 250
Warsaw, 347
Water-power, 84
Waterproof cloth, 143
Welland Canal, 263
Wellington, 396
Whale fisheries, 203
Wheat, 88, 96, 244, 344, 359, 367
White Pass, 254
Willamette Valley, 250
Winnipeg, 265
Wood-pulp, 124
Wool, 110,115, 117, 244, 251, 292, 297, 323
Yafa, 354
Yokohama, 380
Youngstown, 166
Yucatan, 267
Zinc, 182
Zinfandel, 251
Footnotes:
[1] If the edition for free distribution is exhausted, these may be
purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, Public Printer,
Washington, D.C.
[2] The greatness of Palmyra was due to the trade along this route, and
its decay began when the route was abandoned. The present town of Tadmor
is near the ruins of the former city.
[3] Cosmas Indicopleustes--in early life a merchant, in later years a
monk--visited India and Ceylon during the first part of the sixth
century. His writings contain much valuable knowledge, but in the main
they are theological arguments intended to disprove the Geography
written by Ptolemy.
[4] The date is variously given as 1169, 1200, and 1241.
[5] To Waldemar III. of Denmark it dictated terms that made its power in
Scandinavia supreme.
[6] For a complete list of books for reference, see p. xii.
[7] The record time on this route was made by the Lucania in five days,
seven hours, and twenty-three minutes, from Daunts Rock, Queenstown, to
Sandy Hook light. The fastest day's run yet recorded was made by the
Deutschland--601 nautical miles, a speed of 24.19 knots.
[8] In Congress the River and Harbor Bill always receives a generous
appropriation.
[9] In many instances goods designed for the spring trade in the Western
States are started via the canal in October, reaching their destination
at Chicago some time in April, the cargo having been frozen up in one or
another of the canal basins during the winter. The rate paid for this
slow transit is considerably less than the amount which otherwise would
have been paid for storage; moreover, it is nearly all clear profit to
the canal boatmen.
[10] The minimum depth of the canal is 22 feet; its width at the bottom
is 160 feet. It was begun September, 1892, and completed January 2,
1902, at a cost of thirty-four million dollars. More than forty million
cubic yards of earth and rock were excavated. All the bridges crossing
it are movable.
[11] This is on the supposition that night travel will be too dangerous
a risk. With a continuous travel the time would be about thirty-three
hours.
[12] On one great trunk system the average ton-mile rate in 1870 was one
and one-seventh cents; in 1900 it was just one-half that sum.
[13] The modern steam-making boiler has from thirty to one hundred or
more tubes passing through it from end to end. The heat from the
fire-box as a rule passes under the boiler and through the tubular
flues; it thus increases the heating surface very greatly. The forced
draught is made by allowing the exhaust steam to escape into the
smokestack, thereby increasing the draught through the fire-box.
[14] A single locomotive of the New York Central has hauled 4,000 tons
of freight at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour. A "camel-back" of
the Philadelphia & Reading hauled 4,800 tons of coal from the mines to
tide-water without a helper.
[15] The Vanderbilt boiler with cylindrical corrugated fire-box invented
by Cornelius Vanderbilt, great-grandson of the founder of the New York
Central, marks an important step in locomotive building. The cylindrical
form largely obviates the necessity of an array of stay-bolts to prevent
warping; the corrugated surface gives greater heating power.
[16] The Central-Atlantic type of locomotive illustrates a modern
improvement. The driving-wheels are placed a little forward of their
usual position, while the fire-box, formerly set between the wheels, now
overhangs each side of a pair of low trailing-wheels. By this means the
heating surface of the fire-box is increased nearly one-half. A lever
controlled by the engineer enables the latter to transfer 5,000 pounds
weight from the trucks to the driving-wheels when a grade is to be
surmounted. The daily run of such a locomotive is greatly increased.
(_See cut, p. 61._)
[17] A line from Vienna to Triest was opened about 1854; Germany was
joined to Italy across Brenner Pass in 1868; France was connected with
Italy through a tunnel near Mont Cenis in 1871; in 1882 the traffic of
Germany was opened to Mediterranean ports by a tunnel under St.
Gotthard. In this manner trunk systems have gradually developed.
[18] The building of the West Shore Railroad is an illustration. After
both roads had suffered tremendous losses the New York Central settled
the matter by purchasing the West Shore. This was one of a great number
of similar cases both in the United States and Europe.
[19] In Great Britain the ton-rate is about $2.30 per hundred miles; in
Germany, $1.75; in Russia, $1.30; in the United States, $0.70. The
difference is due as much to the length of distance hauled as to
economical management.
[20] Thus, A, B, and C are roads whose chief terminal points are Chicago
and New York City. The road C is the shortest of the three lines, but
its grades are very heavy. B is, say, one hundred miles longer, but has
no heavy grades. A is a very indirect route, and its New York traffic
must be trans-shipped at Boston, or perhaps at New London, and sent a
part of the way by water. If now an absolute ton-mile rate is fixed for
either road, it is evident that neither of the others can carry through
freight without altering rates. If C fixes a rate, then A and B must
either charge higher rates between Chicago and Montreal, or Chicago and
Albany, than between their terminals. And although this is illegal in
most States, the laws are evaded by "rebate," or repayment of a certain
sum to the shipper. Of the three roads B, on account of easy grades, is
in the best position to fix rates. It therefore makes, not the lowest
rate, but the one that will yield the best returns. C conforms to this,
and A takes what it can get, hauling at a very small profit. But if A
happens to be outside of the limits of the United States, it may openly
cut rates, because pretty nearly all the through freight it gets is
clear profit, and inasmuch as none of the laws of a State apply to the
Canadian portion of the road, it may do what the others cannot. And
while B is struggling with A, the three roads X, Y, and Z are perhaps
endeavoring to have some of the freight sent from Buffalo eastward over
their own lines. In instances similar to the foregoing it is customary
for B and C to divide the through business and to allow a "differential"
to A--that is, on account of its slower delivery of through freight, to
carry it at a slightly lower rate. B then adjusts its traffic with X, Y,
and Z in a similar manner; and on the whole this is the fairest way to
all concerned.
The following, one of many instances, shows the difficulties in fixing
rates that will not be unjust to either party: Danville and Lynchburg
compete for a certain trade. The Southern Railway passes through both
cities, but the Chesapeake & Ohio makes Lynchburg by another route;
Danville, therefore, is not a competing point, while Lynchburg is. As a
result, the Southern Railway charged $1.08 for a certain traffic from
Chicago to Danville and only 72 cents to Lynchburg, some distance
beyond, this being the rate over the other road. The matter finally
reached the Court of Appeals, and the latter sustained the Southern
Railway. The rate to Danville was shown to be not excessive, but if the
railway were required to maintain a rate to Lynchburg higher than 72
cents, it would lose all its traffic to that point, amounting to
$433,000 yearly. In a case of this kind there can be no help except by a
consolidation of the two roads; by virtue of the consolidation all the
Lynchburg freight will then go over the line having the easiest haul.
[21] That is, the Government pledged its credit for the money borrowed,
and in addition gave the companies alternate sections of public land on
both sides of the proposed line, the land-grants being designed partly
to encourage immigration and partly to increase the building funds of
the various companies. In several instances both the land-grants and the
money subsidies were scandalously used. At least one road used its
earnings to build a competing line and, after disposing of the
land-grant and pocketing the proceeds, allowed the Government to
foreclose the mortgage and sell the original road.
[22] From the Latin "castra," a camp.
[23] In 1897 the world's crop was 2,226,750,000 bushels, and as a
result, the countries in which the crop was short suffered from high
prices. Had it not been for the prompt carrying service of railways and
steamships famine would have resulted.
[24] In order to yield a crop of twenty-five bushels per acre the soil
must supply 110 lbs. of nitrogen, 45 lbs. of phosphoric acid, 30.5 lbs.
of lime, 14.5 lbs. of magnesia, and 142 lbs. of potash; these are
approximately the mineral elements taken out of the soil with each crop,
and it is needless to say that they must be replaced or the grain will
starve for want of nutrient substances.
[25] In the United States there are about seven wheat-districts, each
characterized by particular varieties that grow best in the given
locality. In the New England and most of the middle Atlantic division
Early Genesee Giant, Jones Winter Fife, and Fultz are chiefly grown. In
the Southern States Fultz, Fulcaster, Purple Straw, and May are
foremost. In the north central group of States Early Red Clawson, Poole,
Dawson's Golden Chaff, Buda Pest, and Fultz are common. In the Dakotas
and Minnesota Scotch Fife and Velvet Blue Stem (both spring wheats) are
generally planted. In Kansas and Texas and the adjacent locality the
principal varieties are Turkey, Fulcaster, and Mediterranean (all winter
wheats). In California and the southern plateau region Sonora,
California Club, and Defiance are the principal kinds (all winter
wheats). In Washington and Oregon Little Club, Red Chaff, and Blue Stem
(which are either winter or spring) are the main varieties.
[26] Sometimes the owner sends it to the nearest elevator at tide-water
where the grain is stored, not in bulk, but in the original packages,
subject to his demand. In the course of a month or six weeks it absorbs
so much moisture that the gain in weight more than pays the storage
charges.
[27] The elevators are equipped with "legs" or long spouts, within which
belts with metal scoops transfer the grain from car to vessel or _vice
versa_. The elevators at Buffalo will fill a canal-boat in an hour's
time, or load six grain-cars in five minutes. A large whaleback
steamship may be relieved of its 200,000 bushels in about three hours.
Most of the east-bound wheat of the Middle West is transferred to the
seaboard by rail, but that of the northwest, which forms the chief part
of the crop, is shipped from Duluth through the St. Marys Falls Canal to
Buffalo, where it is transferred to cars or to canal-boats. New York is
the leading export market, but Boston, New Orleans, Galveston,
Baltimore, and Philadelphia are also important shipping ports.
[28] The following is approximately the yield of the chief wheat-growing
countries in bushels per acre:
Denmark 42
England 29
New Zealand 26
Germany 23.2
Holland & Belgium 21.5
Hungary 18.5
France 19.5
Austria 16.3
Canada 15.5
United States 12.3
Argentina 12.2
Italy 12.1
Australia 10
India 9.2
Russia 8.6
Algeria 7.5
The low average in Australia, India, and Algeria is due mainly to lack
of rainfall; in the United States and Russia, mainly to unskilful
cultivation.
[29] It seems to have been introduced into Turkey from India about the
latter part of the fifteenth century, after which it was occasionally
heard of in Europe as "Turkey corn."
[30] The "tortilla," the national bread of the Mexican, consists of a
thick corn-meal paste pressed into thin wafers between the hands, and
baked on hot slabs of stone. The corn-meal "mush" of the American, the
"polenta" of the Italian, and the "mamaliga" of the Rumanian are all
practically corn-meal boiled to a thick paste in water.
[31] The gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, enabled one man to do by
machinery about the same amount of work as previously had required one
hundred laborers. For want of the laws necessary to protect his
invention, Whitney was defrauded of the profits arising from it. Neither
Congress nor the courts gave him any relief from the numerous
infringements, and he died a poor man.
[32] The commercial distinction is a sensible one: hair is hard, crisp,
straight, and does not felt; wool is soft, curly, and felts readily.
[33] An ounce of eggs produces about forty thousand worms, and these,
during the grub stage, require about fifteen hundred pounds of leaves,
about one-half of which is actually consumed.
[34] Charles II. of England also forbade its use (1675) and attempted to
close the coffee-houses that had sprung up in London, but in spite of
the ban and the prohibitive tax laid upon it, the use of coffee became
general. Similar efforts to close the coffee-houses in Constantinople
failed.
[35] The full-grown leaf attains a length of from four to nine inches;
those picked rarely exceed one-and-a-half inches in length.
[36] Brick tea consists of leaves moulded into bricks under heavy
pressure. Refuse and stems are also thus prepared for the cheaper
grades.
[37] The following are the chief rubber-producing trees: _Siphonia
elastica_, or _Hevea brasiliensis_, Amazon forests, yields Para rubber;
_Manihot Glaziovii_, also a tapioca-producing shrub, Ceara province,
Brazil, furnishes Ceara rubber; _Castilloa elastica_, Central American
States, Nicaragua rubber; _Ficus elastica_, British India, and _Urceola
elastica_, Borneo, Indian rubber. There are rubber-producing trees in
Florida, but they have little commercial value at the present time.
African rubber is taken from a variety of plants.
[38] The process of vulcanizing was made practicable during the ten
years ending in 1850. It was invented and perfected by Goodyear in the
United States and by Hancock in England; for ordinary purposes, where
both strength and elasticity are required, about five per cent. of
sulphur is added. The addition of about fifty per cent. changes the
rubber to a hard black substance known as "ebonite," or "hard rubber."
[39] In 1823 a Scotchman, Mackintosh, applied the discovery, that rubber
gum was soluble in benzine, to the water-proofing of the cloth that
bears his name. This invention was about the first extensive commercial
use to which rubber had been put.
[40] From the fact that most of the dwellings in the United States are
built of wood, the United States is a very heavy consumer of turpentine.
[41] A slender strip of metallic lead was used instead of graphite in
the first pencils made. The use of graphite did not become general until
about 1850. The hardness of a pencil is regulated by mixing clay with
the powdered graphite.
[42] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[43] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[44] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[45] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[46] The limestone has no essential part in the smelting of the ore
except to produce an easily-flowing, liquid slag; hence it is called a
_flux_. Some ores smelt and flow so easily that a flux is not required.
[47] Under ordinary circumstances about two tons of coal, or
three-quarters of a ton of coke, are required to produce a ton of
pig-iron.
[48] Terne plate is sheet-iron coated with an alloy of lead and tin.
[49] Heredity is likewise a factor. The seeds of knotty, scraggly trees
are very apt to produce trees of their own kind and _vice versa_.
[50] This sum represents more than ten times the amount of gold coin now
in existence. Less than five per cent. of the business of the great
industrial centres is a cash business. Even if the money existed, the
transfer of such immense sums would greatly retard commerce. In order to
effect a speedy settlement of payments, clearing-houses are established.
At the clearing-house the representatives of the various banks meet
daily and liquidate the checks drawn against one another; and although
the total yearly volume of payment aggregates the sum mentioned above,
the _balances_ for a year are but little more than two billion dollars.
Even this does not always represent cash payment, for a bank that is a
debtor to another at the close of one day may be a creditor for an equal
sum on the next.
[51] These roads are financed by the Northern Securities Company and
form a link in the Hill-Morgan lines. Their intercontinental traffic is
large.
[52] Their dividing line is the centre of a street.
[53] The brand consisted of any specific device, such as an initial, a
monogram, or a conventional form that might be easily recognized. The
device was registered and imprinted with a red-hot iron on the flank of
the animal. Ear-marks, such as notches or similar devices, also
indicated ownership.
[54] In many cases Government land, not owned by the rancher, has been
fenced in. No objection was made, however, until the sheep-grazier came.
He demanded the removal of the fences, claiming that he had an equal
right to graze his herds on public lands. But inasmuch as a range once
grazed by sheep is ruined for cattle-growing, the quarrel between the
grazier and the rustler has become one in which both the grazier and the
rustler turned upon the sheep-owner.
[55] It is one-third of their capital stock plus the bonded
indebtedness.
[56] The high latitude of the wheat-region, which in most cases is too
cold for the growing of food-stuffs, in this region is tempered by
occasional warm winds known as "Chinook winds." These winds are the
saving feature of wheat-growing. They prevail also in British Columbia,
Washington, and Oregon.
[57] Freight rates from Coatzacoalcos to San Francisco are already fixed
at $6.50 per ton; by the transcontinental railways they vary from $12 to
$15 per ton.
[58] The entire Cuban crop is comparatively small, being but little more
than one-eighth that of the United States.
[59] Vegetable ivory is the seed or nut of a species of palm
(_Phytelephas macrocarpa_). The kernel of the nut gradually acquires the
hardness and appearance of the best ivory, for which it is employed as a
substitute.
[60] The leaves of this shrub (_Erythroxylon coca_) contain a stimulant
substance that in its effects is much like the active principle of
coffee. They are much used by the native laborers to ward off the
feeling of lassitude that comes with severe labor in a tropical climate.
A native porter will carry a load of one hundred pounds a distance of
sixty miles with no food or rest, but merely chewing a few coca-leaves.
The plant yields the substance _cocaine_, now in demand all over the
world as an anaesthetic in eye and throat surgery.
[61] More than a score of species of the tree from which this bark is
obtained grow in the higher eastern slopes of the Andes, but a very
large part is obtained from the tree, _Cinchona calisaya_. The medicinal
substance, quinine, is extracted from the bark, and in the past
half-century it has become the specific for malarial fevers. So great is
the demand for it, that the cinchona-tree is now cultivated in India,
Java, and Mexico.
[62] Only a very small proportion of the Panama hats in the market are
genuine. Many of the imitations, selling at retail for ten dollars or
more, are serviceable hats; most of them, however, have but little
worth.
[63] Nitre, or "nitrate," is a native nitrate of potash, or nitrate of
soda. The latter, commonly called cubic nitre or Chile saltpetre, is the
kind occurring in Chile. Inasmuch as it is very soluble, a plentiful
rainfall would soon leach it from the ground and carry it to the sea.
The nitrate is thought to be of vegetable origin.
[64] The pod of a shrub (_Caesalpina coriaria_); it contains a
considerable proportion of tannin and is used for tanning leather.
[65] The pericarp or pod contains about twenty-four prismatic-shaped
nuts.
[66] The cattle for Cuba and Brazil must be shipped in open pens in
crossing the tropics. With the exports for Europe the case is different.
If it is summer at the one port it is winter at the other, but it is
always summer in the tropics, and cattle-ships fit for one zone are not
fit for the other--hence the great difficulties in shipment of live
animals to Europe.
[67] For this reason Great Britain is practically a free-trade country.
A protective tariff on imported food-stuffs and materials to be
manufactured would hurt rather than protect British industries.
[68] This is equivalent to the imposition of a tax on all the sugar
consumed at home.
[69] Most of the lithographic stone is obtained at Solnhofen.
[70] This is a little greater than the average ton-mile rate on the New
York Central Railroad between New York and Chicago.
[71] The name Zuider, or Zuyder, means "south"; it was so named to
distinguish it from the North Sea.
[72] Some years ago many of the most valuable vineyards were destroyed
by an insect pest known as the _phylloxera_, introduced from California.
The trouble was overcome by replanting with American vines, the roots of
which were immune to the pest. On these roots were grafted the choice
French vines, the leaves and twigs of which were immune. In this manner
the vineyards were restored with vines that are proof against attack,
and the wine output has reached its normal amount.
[73] It is cultivated as an ornamental tree in the Southern States and
in California.
[74] A small vein of coal occurs near Freiburg.
[75] The St. Gotthard tunnel is almost nine and one-half miles long; the
Arlberg tunnel is six and one-half miles in length. The tunnel now
nearing completion under the Simplon Pass is more than twelve miles
long. Five railways cross the northern frontier into Germany, and German
commerce profits most by them.
[76] Persian rugs are the finest. As a rule the designs are floral and
many of them contain legendary history worked in fantastic but beautiful
patterns. Among those of especial merit are the Kermanshah tree-of-life
fabrics, now somewhat rare. The rugs of Tabriz and Shiraz are also of
high value. In general, Persian fabrics are characterized by very fine
weaving, a short pile, and elaborate designs. Turkoman rugs are usually
a rich brown or maroon in color, and are apt to contain slightly
elongated octagonal figures. The Bokhara and Khiva-Bokhara, or Afghan
rugs, are the best examples. The Baluchistan rugs are usually very dark
in color, with bright red designs and striped ends of cotton warp.
Turkish rugs are made almost wholly in Asia Minor or Anatolia. Large
carpets of American and European designs are made at Ushak and Smyrna.
"Smyrna" rugs are made in Philadelphia.
[77] The most valuable Kermanshah rug, now no longer made there, is the
tree-of-life prayer-rug, an illustration of which is shown on p. 350.
The design is emblematic of the story of the Garden of Eden.
[78] In 1900 the aggregate value of the wheat exported to Great Britain
was only L2,200.
[79] Since the treaty of 1901, which forbids the importation of
fire-arms, a number of large plants for the manufacture of fire-arms,
smokeless powder, and fixed ammunition have been established on the
lower Yangtze.
[80] The islands are mainly in the belt of prevailing westerly winds.
More rain, therefore, falls on the west than on the east coasts.
[81] This region is also known us the Gold Coast. Formerly it furnished
the chief British supply of gold, and the gold coin known as the
"guinea" received its name from this circumstance.
[82] This region was formerly comprised in the Boer republics, Orange
Free State and South African Republic. In 1899 they declared war against
Great Britain, with the result that they were defeated and annexed to
that country--the former as Orange Colony, the latter as Transvaal
Colony.
[83] It is estimated that twenty-two acres of land are necessary to
sustain one adult on fresh meat. The same area of wheat would feed
forty-two people; of oats about eighty-five people; of maize, potatoes,
and rice, one hundred and seventy people. But twenty-two acres planted
with bread-fruit or bananas will support about six thousand.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Commercial Geography, by Jacques W. Redway
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Title: Commercial Geography
A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges
Author: Jacques W. Redway
Release Date: March 20, 2008 [eBook #24884]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY
A Book for High Schools
Commercial Courses, and
Business Colleges
by
JACQUES W. REDWAY, F.R.G.S.
Author of "A Series of Geographies," "An Elementary
Physical Geography," "The New Basis of Geography"
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York ... 1907
Copyright, 1903, by
Jacques W. Redway
PREFACE
The quiet industrial struggle through which the United States passed
during the last decade of the nineteenth century cannot fail to impress
the student of political economy with the fact that commercial
revolution is a normal result of industrial evolution. Within a period
of twenty-five years the transportation of commodities has grown to be
not only a science, but a power in the betterment of civil and political
life as well; and the world, which in the time of M. Jules Verne was
eighty days wide, is now scarcely forty.
The invention of the Bessemer process for making steel was intended
primarily to give the railway-operator a track that should be free from
the defects of the soft, wrought-iron rail; in fact, however, it created
new industrial centres all over the world and brought Asia and Africa
under commercial conquest. The possibilities of increased trade between
the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific Coast States led to the building
of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railways. But when these were
thoroughly organized, there unexpectedly resulted a new trade-route that
already is drawing traffic away from the Suez Canal and landing it at
Asian shores by way of the ports of Puget Sound. It is a repetition of
the adjustment that occurred when the opening of the Cape route to India
transferred the trade that had gathered about Venice and Genoa to the
shores of the North and Baltic Seas.
In other words, a new order of things has come about, and the world and
the people therein are readjusting themselves to the requirements made
upon them by commerce. And so at the beginning of a new century,
civilized man is drawing upon all the rest of the world to satisfy his
wants, and giving to all the world in return; he is civilized because of
this interchange and not in spite of it.
The necessity for instruction in a subject that pertains so closely to
the welfare of a people is apparent, and an apology for presenting this
manual is needless. Moreover, it should not interfere in any way with
the regular course in geography; indeed, more comprehensive work in the
latter is becoming imperative, and it should be enriched rather than
curtailed.
In the preparation of the work, I wish to express my appreciation of the
great assistance of Principal Myron T. Pritchard, Edward Everett School,
Boston, Mass. I am also much indebted to the map-engraving department of
Messrs. The Matthews-Northrup Company, Buffalo, N.Y.
J.W.R.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 1
II. HOW COMMERCE CIVILIZED MANKIND 7
III. TOPOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE 17
IV. CLIMATIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE 29
V. TRANSPORTATION--OCEAN AND INLAND NAVIGATION 39
VI. TRANSPORTATION--RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY ORGANIZATION;
PUBLIC HIGHWAYS 62
VII. FACTORS IN THE LOCATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS 81
VIII. THE CEREALS AND GRASSES 88
IX. TEXTILE FIBRES 105
X. PLANT PRODUCTS OF ECONOMIC USE--BEVERAGES AND
MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES 127
XI. GUMS AND RESINS USED IN THE ARTS 141
XII. COAL AND PETROLEUM 147
XIII. METALS OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES 159
XIV. SUGAR AND ITS COMMERCE 185
XV. FORESTS AND FOREST PRODUCTS 193
XVI. SEA PRODUCTS AND FURS 203
XVII. THE UNITED STATES--THE SEAPORTS AND THE ATLANTIC
COAST-PLAIN 211
XVIII. THE UNITED STATES--THE NEW ENGLAND PLATEAU
AND THE APPALACHIAN REGION 219
XIX. THE UNITED STATES--THE BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES
AND THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 227
XX. THE UNITED STATES--THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS AND
TERRITORIAL POSSESSIONS 247
XXI. CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND 261
XXII. MEXICO--CENTRAL AMERICA--WEST INDIES 267
XXIII. SOUTH AMERICA--THE ANDEAN STATES 275
XXIV. SOUTH AMERICA--THE LOWLAND STATES 285
XXV. EUROPE--GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY 295
XXVI. EUROPE--THE BALTIC AND NORTH SEA STATES 310
XXVII. EUROPE--THE MEDITERRANEAN STATES AND SWITZERLAND 320
XXVIII. EUROPE--THE DANUBE AND BALKAN STATES 335
XXIX. EUROPE-ASIA--THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 343
XXX. THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA 349
XXXI. BRITISH INDIA AND THE EAST INDIES 358
XXXII. CHINA AND JAPAN 367
XXXIII. AFRICA 381
XXXIV. OCEANIA 391
APPENDIX 398
INDEX 399
COLORED MAPS
PAGE
PRINCIPAL TRANSPORTATION LINES AND REGIONS OF LARGEST
COMMERCE x, xi
MEAN ANNUAL RAINFALL 28
CITY OF NEW YORK AND VICINITY, WITH HARBOR APPROACHES 49
DISTRIBUTION OF VEGETATION 80
NORTH AMERICA 210
PUGET SOUND 253
MEXICO 268
SOUTH AMERICA 274
BRITISH ISLES 299
GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES 304
HOLLAND AND BELGIUM 314
FRANCE 321
ITALY 326
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 329
TURKEY AND GREECE 338
RUSSIAN EMPIRE 342
THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA 349
EASTERN CHINA 369
JAPAN AND KOREA 375
AFRICA 382
THE COMMERCE OF THE PACIFIC 393
[Illustration: PRINCIPAL TRANSPORTATION LINES AND REGIONS OF LARGEST
COMMERCE]
TO THE TEACHER:--The contents of this book are so topicalized and
arranged that, if the time for the study is limited, a short course may
be selected. Under no circumstances, however, should Chapters V, VI,
VIII, IX, XII, and XIII be omitted. A casual inspection of the questions
at the end of each chapter will serve to show that they cannot be
answered from the pages of the book, and they have been selected with
this idea in view. They are intended first of all to stimulate
individual thought, and secondly to encourage the pupil to investigate
the topics by consulting original sources. The practice of corresponding
with pupils in other parts of the world cannot be too highly commended.
The following list represents a minimum rather than a maximum reference
library. It may be enlarged at the judgment of the teacher. A good atlas
and a cyclopaedia are also necessary.
Industrial Evolution of the United States. WRIGHT. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
History of Commerce in Europe. GIBBINS. The Macmillan Company.
Discovery of America. FISKE. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The New Empire. ADAMS. The Macmillan Company.
Statesman's Year-Book. KELTIE. The Macmillan Company.
Outlines of Political Science. GUNTON AND ROBBINS. D. Appleton &
Co.
The Wheat Problem. CROOKES. G.P. Putnam's Sons.
South America. CARPENTER. American Book Company.
From the Bureau of Statistics, Department of Commerce, Washington,
D.C., the following monographs may be procured:[1]
Commercial China. American Commerce. Commercial Australia.
Commercial Japan. Commercial Africa. Commercial India. Statistical
Abstract. Great Canals of the World. World's Sugar Production and
Consumption.
The following from the Department of Agriculture is necessary:
Check List of Forest Trees of the United States.
Lantern slides illustrating the subjects treated in this book may be
procured from T.H. McAllister, 49 Nassau Street, New York. Stereoscopic
views may be obtained from Underwood & Underwood, Fifth Avenue and
Nineteenth Street, New York.
COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
Commerce and modern civilization go hand in hand, and the history of the
one is the history of the other; and whatever may be the basis of
civilization, commerce has been the chief agent by which it has been
spread throughout the world. Peoples who receive nothing from their
fellow-men, and who give nothing in return, are usually but little above
a savage state. Civilized man draws upon all the rest of the world for
what he requires, and gives to the rest of the world in return. He is
civilized because of this fact and not in spite of it.
There is scarcely a country in the world that does not yield something
or other to civilized peoples. There is scarcely a household whose
furnishings and contents do not represent an aggregate journey of
several times around the earth. A family in New York at breakfast occupy
chairs from Grand Rapids, Mich.; they partake of bread made of wheat
from Minnesota, and meat from Texas prepared in a range made in St.
Louis; coffee grown in Sumatra or Java, or tea from China is served in
cups made in Japan, sweetened with sugar from Cuba, stirred with spoons
of silver from Nevada. Spices from Africa, South America, and Asia
season the food, which is served on a table of New Hampshire oak,
covered with a linen spread made from flax grown in Ireland or in
Russia. Rugs from Bokhara, or from Baluchistan, cover the floors;
portieres made in Constantinople hang at the doors; and the room is
heated with coal from Pennsylvania that burns in a furnace made in Rhode
Island.
Now all these things may be, and usually are, found in the great
majority of families in the United States or Europe, and most of them
will be found in nearly all households. Certain it is that peoples do
exist who, from the immediate vicinity in which they live, procure all
the things they use or consume. In the main, however, such peoples are
savages.
A moment's thought will make it clear that before an ordinary meal can
be served there must be railways, steamships, great manufacturing
establishments, iron quarries, and coal mines, aggregating many thousand
millions of dollars, and employing many million people. A casual
inspection, too, reveals the fact that all of the substances and things
required by mankind come from the earth, and, a very few excepted, every
one requires a certain amount of manufacture or preliminary treatment
before it is usable. The grains and nearly all the other food-stuffs
require various processes of preparation before they are ready for
consumption by civilized peoples. Iron and the various other ores used
in the arts must undergo elaborate processes of manufacture; coal must
be mined, broken, cleaned, and transported; the soil in which
food-stuffs are grown must be fertilized and mechanically prepared; and
even the water required for domestic purposes in many instances must be
transported long distances.
[Illustration: AGRICULTURE AND MANUFACTURE SUPPLEMENT EACH OTHER]
A little thought will suffice to show that not only are all food-stuffs
derived from the earth, but that also every usable resource which
constitutes wealth is also drawn from the same source. The same is also
pretty nearly true of the various forms of energy, for although the sun
is the real source of light and heat, and probably of electricity, these
agents are usable only when they have been transformed into earth
energies. Thus, the physical energy generated by falling water is merely
a transformed portion of solar heat; so also the coal-beds contain both
the chemical and physical energy of solar heat and light converted into
potential energy--that is, into force that can be used at the will of
intelligence. Indeed, the physical being of mankind is an organism born
of the earth, and adapted to the earth; and when that physical form
dies, it merely is transformed again to ordinary earth substances.
The chief activities of living beings are those relating to the
maintenance of life. In other words, animals must feed, and they must
also protect themselves against extermination. In the case of all other
animals this is a very simple matter, they simply live in immediate
contact with their food, migrating or perishing if the supply gives out.
In the case of mankind the conditions are different and vastly more
elaborate. Savage peoples excepted, man does not live within close touch
of the things he requires; indeed, he cannot, for he depends upon all
the world for what he uses. In a less enlightened state many of these
commodities were luxuries; in a civilized state they have become
necessities. Moreover, nearly everything civilized man employs has been
prepared by processes in which heat is employed.
Therefore one may specify several classes of human activities and
employments:
(_a_) The production of food-stuffs and other commodities by the
cultivation of the soil--_Agriculture_.
(_b_) The preparation of food-stuffs and things used for shelter,
protection, or ornament--_Manufacture_.
(_c_) The production of minerals for the generation of power, such
as coal, or those such as iron, copper, stone, etc., required in
the arts and sciences--_Mining_.
(_d_) The exchange of food stuffs and commodities--_Commerce_.
(_e_) The transfer of commodities--_Transportation_.
It is evident that the prosperity and happiness of a people depend very
largely on the condition of their surroundings--that is, their
environment. If a country or an inhabited area produces all the
food-stuffs and commodities required by its people, the conditions are
very fortunate. A very few nations, notably China and the United States,
have such diverse conditions of climate, topography, and mineral
resources, that they can, if necessary, produce within their national
borders everything needed by their peoples.
The prosecution of such a policy, however, is rarely economical; in the
history of the past it has always resulted in weakness and
disintegration. China is to-day helpless because of a policy of
self-seclusion; and the marvellous growth of Japan began when her trade
was thrown open to the world.
For the greater part the environment of a people is deficient--that is,
the locality of a people does not yield all that is required for the
necessities of life. For instance, the New England plateau requires an
enormous amount of fuel for its manufacturing enterprises; but
practically no coal is found within its borders; hence the manufacturers
must either command the coal to be shipped from other regions or give up
their employment. The people of Canada require a certain amount of
cotton cloth; but the cotton plant will not grow in a cold climate, so
they must either exchange some of their own commodities for cotton, or
else go without it. The inhabitants of Great Britain produce only a
small part of the food-stuffs they consume; therefore they are
constantly exchanging their manufactured products for the food-stuffs
that of necessity must be produced in other parts of the world.
The dwellers of the New England plateau might grow the bread-stuffs they
require, and in times past they did so. At that time, however, a barrel
of flour was worth twelve dollars. But the wheat of the prairie regions
can be grown, manufactured into flour, transported a thousand miles, and
sold at a profit for less than five dollars a barrel. Therefore it is
evidently more economical to buy flour in Minnesota than to grow the
wheat and make it into flour in Massachusetts.
All these problems, and they exist without number, show that man may
overcome most of the obstacles that surround him. So we find civilized
man living in almost every part of the world. Tropical regions are not
too scorching, nor are arctic fastnesses too cold for him. In other
words, because of commerce and transportation, he can and usually does
master the conditions of his environment; his intelligence enables him
to do so, and his ability to do so is the result of the intelligent use
of experience and education.
CHAPTER II
HOW COMMERCE CIVILIZED MANKIND
The history of western civilization is so closely connected with the
development of the great routes of travel and the growth of commerce
that one cannot possibly separate them. Commerce cannot exist without
the intercourse of peoples, and peoples cannot be in mutual
communication unless each learns from the other.
=Feudalism.=--When the Roman Empire fell civilization in western Europe
was not on a high plane; indeed, the feudalism that followed was not
much above barbarism. The people were living in a manner that was not
very much unlike the communal system under which the serfs of Russia
lived only a few years ago. Each centre of population was a sort of
military camp governed by a feudal lord. The followers and retainers
were scarcely better off than slaves; indeed, many of them were slaves.
There was no ownership of the land except by the feudal lords, and the
latter were responsible for their acts to the king only.
But very few people cared to be absolutely free, because they had but
little chance to protect themselves; so it was the common custom to
attach one's self to a feudal lord in order to have his protection; even
a sort of peonage or slavery under him was better than no protection at
all. A few of the people were engaged in trade and manufacture of some
kind or other, and they were the only ones through whom the feudal lord
could supply himself with the commodities needed for his retainers and
the luxuries necessary to himself.
Each feudal estate, therefore, became a sort of industrial centre by
itself, producing its own food-stuffs and much of the coarser
manufactures. It was not a very high condition of enlightenment, but it
was much better than the one which preceded it, for at least it offered
protection. It encouraged a certain amount of trade and commerce,
because the feudal lord had many wants, and he was usually willing to
protect the merchant who supplied them.
=The Crusades and Commerce.=--The Crusades, or wars by which the
Christians sought to recover the Holy Land from the Turk, resulted in a
trade between Europe and India that grew to wonderful proportions. Silk
fabrics, cotton cloth, precious stones, ostrich plumes, ivory, spices,
and drugs--all of which were practically unknown in Europe--were eagerly
sought by the nobility and their dependencies. In return, linen and
woollen fabrics, leather goods, glassware, blacklead, and steel
implements were carried to the far East.
Milan, Florence, Venice and Genoa, Constantinople and a number of less
important towns along the Mediterranean basin became important trade
centres, but Venice and Genoa grew to be world powers in commerce. Not
only were they great receiving and distributing depots of trade, but
they were great manufacturing centres as well.
The routes over which this enormous commerce was carried were few in
number. For the greater part, the Venetian trade went to Alexandria, and
thence by the Red Sea to India. Genoese merchants sent their goods to
Constantinople and Trebizond, thence down the Tigris River to the
Persian Gulf and to India. There was also another route that had been
used by the Phoenicians. It extended from Tyre through Damascus and
Palmyra[2] to the head of the Persian Gulf; this gradually fell into
disuse after the founding of Alexandria.
The general effects of this trade were very far-reaching. To the greater
number of the people of Europe, the countries of India, China, and Japan
were mythical. According to tradition they were infested with dragons
and gryphons, and peopled by dog-headed folk or by one-eyed Arimaspians.
About the first real information of them to be spread over Europe was
brought by Marco Polo, whose father and uncle had travelled all through
these countries during the latter part of the thirteenth century.[3]
Marco Polo's writings were very widely read, and influenced a great many
people who could not be reached through the ordinary channels of
commerce. So between the wars of the Crusades on the one hand, and the
growth of commerce on the other, a new and a better civilization began
to spread over Europe.
=The Turkish Invasions.=--But the magnificent trade that had thus grown up
was checked for a time by an unforeseen factor. The half-savage
Turkomans living southeast of Russia had become converted to the
religion of Islam, and in their zeal for the new belief, determined to
destroy the commerce which seemed to be connected with Christianity. So
they moved in upon the borderland between Europe and Asia, and one after
another the trade routes were tightly closed. Then they captured
Constantinople, and the routes between Genoa and the Orient were
hermetically sealed. Moslem power also spread over Syria and Egypt, and
so, little by little, the trade of Venice was throttled.
[Illustration: ROUTES TO INDIA--THE TURK CHANGES THE COMMERCE OF THE
WORLD]
Now a commerce that involved not only many millions of dollars, but the
employment of thousands of people as well, is not likely to be given up
without a struggle. So the energy that had been devoted to this great
trade was turned in a new direction, and there began a search for a new
route to India--one that the Turks could not blockade.
=The Search for an All-Water Route to India.=--Overland routes were out of
the question; there were none that could be made available, and so the
search was made for a sea-route. Rather singularly the Venetians and
Genoese, who had hitherto controlled this trade, took no part in the
search; it was conducted by the Spanish and the Portuguese.
The Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, fitted out an
expedition under Christopher Columbus, a master-mariner and
cartographer, the funds being provided by Isabella, who pledged her
private property as security for the cost of the expedition. This
expedition resulted in the discovery, October 10-21, 1492, of the West
India Islands. In a subsequent voyage, Columbus discovered the mainland
of South America.
Even before the voyage of Columbus, the Portuguese had been trying to
find a way around Africa to India, and Pope Eugenius IV. had conferred
on Portugal "all heathen lands from Cape Bojador eastward even to the
Indies." Little by little, therefore, Portuguese navigators were pushing
southward until, in 1487, Bartholomew Dias sighted the Cape of Good
Hope, and got about as far as Algoa Bay. Then he unwillingly turned back
because of the threats of his crew. It was a most remarkable voyage, and
one of the shipmates of Dias was Bartholomew Columbus, a brother of the
discoverer of the New World.
Ten years later, or five years after the voyage of Columbus, Vasco da
Gama sailed from Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope. As he passed the Cape
he was terribly storm-tossed, but the storms carried him in a fortunate
direction. And when at last he got his reckonings, he was off the coast
of India; he therefore kept along the coast until in sight of a port.
The port was the well-known city of Calicut. Two years later he returned
to Europe by the same route, his ships laden with spices, precious
stones, beautiful tapestries and brocades, ivory and bronzes. The
long-sought sea-route to India had been discovered.
[Illustration: A HANSE CITY--HAMBURG, ALONG THE WATER-FRONT]
=Commerce in Western Europe.=--After the discovery of the new route,
Venice and Genoa were scarcely heard of in relation to commerce; they
lost everything and gained nothing. The great commerce with the Orient
was to have a new western terminus, and the latter was to be on the
shores of the North and Baltic Seas.
The commerce between Europe and India stimulated trade in western Europe
as well. As early as the twelfth century the manufacture of linen and
woollen cloth had grown to be a very important industry that had
resulted in the rapid growth of population. The older cities grew
rapidly, and new ones sprang up wherever the commodities of trade were
gathered, manufactured, or distributed.
These centres of trade had two hostile elements against them. The feudal
lords used to pillage them legally by extorting heavy taxes and forced
loans whenever their treasuries were empty. The portionless brothers and
relatives of the feudal lords, to whom no employments save war,
adventure, and piracy were open, pillaged them illegally. Along the
coasts especially, piracy was considered not only a legitimate, but a
genteel, profession. So in order to protect themselves, the cities began
to join themselves into leagues.
=The Hanse League.=--About the beginning of the thirteenth century[4]
Hamburg and Luebeck formed an alliance afterward called a _hansa_; at the
beginning of the fourteenth century it embraced seventy cities, having
the capital at Luebeck. At the time of its greatest power the League
embraced all the principal cities of western Europe nearly as far south
as the Danube. Large agencies, called "factories," were established in
London, Bruges, Novgorod, Bergen, and Wisby. The influence of the League
practically controlled western Europe.
The Hanse League performed a wonderful work. It stopped piracy on the
seas and robbery on the land. Industrially, it encouraged
self-government and obedience to constitutional authority. Shipbuilding
and navigation so greatly improved that the ocean traffic resulting from
the discovery of the cape route to India quickly fell into the hands of
Hanse sailors and master-mariners. The League not only encouraged and
protected all sorts of manufactures, but its schools trained thousands
of operatives. The mines were worked and the idle land cultivated. It
was the greatest industrial movement that ever occurred.
[Illustration: HANSE ROUTES--THE HANSE LEAGUE REORGANIZES THE TRADE OF
THE WORLD]
Socially, the Hanse League brought the wealth that gave those comforts
and conveniences before unknown. The standards of social life,
education, art, and science were raised from a condition scarcely
better than barbarism to a high plane of civilization. Indeed, the
civilization of western Europe was the most important result of it.
It forced the rights of individual freedom, as well as municipal
independence, from more than one monarch, and punished severely the
kings who sought to betray it. It crushed the power of those who opposed
it,[5] and rewarded those who were faithful to it. Its most important
mission, however, was the overthrow of feudalism and the gradual
substitution of popular government in its place.
Having accomplished the regeneration of Europe, the Hanse League died
partly by its own hand, because of its arrogance, but mainly from the
fact that, having educated western Europe to self-government and
commercial independence, there was no longer need for its existence.
Independent cities grew rapidly into importance, and these got along
very well without the protection of the League. The great industrial
progress was at times temporarily checked by wars, but it never took a
backward step. Indeed the progress of commerce has always been a contest
between brains and brute force, and in such a struggle there is never
any doubt about the final outcome.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What were some of the effects of Caesar's invasion of Germanic Europe so
far as commerce is concerned?
What were some of the effects on commerce of the breaking up of the
Roman Empire?
How did the invasion of England by William of Normandy affect the
commerce of the English people?
Who was Henry the Navigator, and what did he accomplish?
How did the blockade of the routes between Europe and India bring about
the discovery of America?
What was the result of the great voyage of the Cabots?
Was the overthrow of feudalism in Europe a gain or a loss to commerce?
Why are not commercial leagues, such as the Hanse, necessary at the
present time?
Why did Spain's commerce decline as Portugal's thrived?
COLLATERAL READING[6]
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Chapters IV-V.
Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. 1--Chapters IV-V.
CHAPTER III
TOPOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE
The great industry of commerce, which includes both the trade in the
commodities of life and the transportation of them, is governed very
largely by the character of the earth's surface. But very few
food-stuffs can be grown economically in mountain-regions. Steep
mountain-slopes are apt to be destitute of soil; moreover, even the
mountain-valleys are apt to be difficult of access, and in such cases
the cost of moving the crops may be greater than the market value of the
products. Mountainous countries, therefore, are apt to be sparsely
peopled regions.
But although the great mountain-systems are unhabitable, or at least
sparsely peopled, they have a very definite place in the economics of
life. Thus, the great western highland of the United States diverts the
flow of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico northward into the central
plain, and gives to the region most of its food-growing power. In a
similar manner, moisture intercepted by the Alps and the Himalayas has
not only created the plains of the Po and the Ganges from the rock-waste
carried from the slopes, but has also made them exceedingly fertile.
Mountain-ranges are also valuable for their contents. The broken
condition of the rock-folds and the rapid weathering to which they are
subjected have exposed the minerals and metals so useful in the arts of
commerce and civilization. Thus, the weathering of the Appalachian folds
has made accessible about the only available anthracite coal measures
yet worked; and the worn folds about Lake Superior have yielded the
ores that have made the United States the foremost copper and steel
manufacturing country of the world. Gold, silver, tin, lead, zinc,
platinum, granite, slate, and marble occur mainly in mountain-folds.
=Mountains and Valleys.=--Mountain-ranges are great obstacles to commerce
and intercommunication. The Greek peoples found it much easier to
scatter along the Mediterranean coast than to cross the Balkan
Mountains. For twenty years after the settlement of California, it was
easier and less expensive to send traffic by way of Cape Horn than to
carry it across the Rocky Mountains.
The deep canyons of mountainous regions are quite as difficult to
overcome as the high ranges. In modern methods of transportation a range
that cannot be surmounted may be tunnelled, and a tunnel five or six
miles in length is no uncommon feat of engineering. A canyon, however,
cannot be tunnelled, and if too wide for cantilever or suspension
bridges, a detour of many miles is necessary. In crossing a deep chasm
the route of transportation may aggregate ten or fifteen times the
distance spanned by a straight line.
Excepting the mining regions, the population of mountainous countries is
apt to be found mainly in the intermontane valleys. A reason for this is
not hard to find; the valleys are usually filled with rich soil brought
from the higher slopes and levelled by the water. The population,
therefore, is concentrated in the valley because of the food-producing
power of the land. For this reason the Sound, Willamette, and San
Joaquin-Sacramento Valleys contain the chief part of the Pacific coast
population. The Shenandoah and the Great Valley of Virginia are similar
instances.
What is true of the larger intermontane valleys is true also of the
narrow stream valleys of mountain and plateau regions. Thus, in the New
England plateau the chief growth during the past forty years has been in
the valley lands. In that time if the uplands have not suffered actual
loss, they certainly have made no material gains. Upland farming has not
proved a remunerative venture, and many of the farms have either been
abandoned or converted to other uses.
=Passes.=--Transverse valleys form very important topographic features of
mountain-regions. Inasmuch as the ranges themselves are obstacles to
communication, it follows that the latter must be concentrated at such
cross valleys or gaps as may be traversed. Khaibar Pass, a narrow defile
in the Hindu Kush Mountains, between Peshawur and Jelalabad, for many
years was the chief gateway between Europe and India. Even now the cost
of holding it is an enormous tax upon England.
Brenner, St. Gotthard, and the Mont Cenis Passes are about the only land
channels of commerce between Italy and transalpine Europe, and most of
the communication between northern Italy and the rest of Europe is
carried on by means of these passes. Every transcontinental railway of
the American continent crosses the various highlands by means of gaps
and passes, and some of them would never have been built were it not for
the existence of the passes. Fremont, South, and Marshall Passes have
been of historic importance for half a century.
The Hudson and Champlain Valley played an important part in the history
of the colonies a century before the existence of the United States, and
its importance as a gateway to eastern Canada is not likely to be
lessened. The Mohawk gap was the first practical route to be maintained
between the Atlantic seaboard and the food-producing region of the Great
Central Plain. It is to-day the most important one. It is so nearly
level that the total lift of freight going from Buffalo to tide-water is
less than five hundred feet.
[Illustration: A PASS--THE ROUTE OF A RAILWAY]
=Rivers.=--River-valleys are closely connected with the economic
development of a country. Navigable rivers are free and open highways of
communication. In newly settled countries the river is always the least
expensive means of carriage, and often it is the only one available for
the transportation of heavy goods.
In late years, since the railway has become the chief means for the
transportation of commodities, river transportation has greatly
declined. The river-valley, however, has lost none of its importance; in
most instances it is a naturally levelled and graded route, highly
suitable for the tracks of the railway. As a result, outside of the
level lands of the Great Central Plain, not far from eighty per cent. of
the railway mileage of the United States is constructed along
river-valleys.
=Plateaus.=--Plateaus are usually characterized by broken and more or less
rugged surface features. As a rule they are deficient in the amount of
rainfall necessary to produce an abundance of the grains and similar
food-stuffs, although this is by no means the case with all.
Most plateaus produce an abundance of grass, and cattle-growing is
therefore an important industry in such regions. Thus, the plateaus of
the Rocky Mountains are famous for cattle, and the same is true of the
Mexican and the South American plateaus. The Iberian plateau, including
Spain and Portugal, is noted for the merino sheep, which furnish the
finest wool known. The plateau of Iran is also noted for its wool, and
the rugs from this region cannot be imitated elsewhere in the world.
=Plains.=--Plains are of the highest importance to life and its
activities. Not only do they present fewer obstacles to
intercommunication than any other topographic features, but almost
always they are deeply covered with the fine rock-waste that forms the
chief components of soil. Plains, therefore, contain the elements of
nutrition, and are capable of supporting life to a greater extent than
either mountains or plateaus. About ninety per cent. of the world's
population dwell in the lowland plains.
The Great Central Plain of North America produces more than one-quarter
of the world's wheat, and about four-fifths of the corn. The southern
part of the great Arctic plain, and its extension, the plains of the
Baltic also yield immense quantities of grain and cattle products. The
coast-plains of the Atlantic Ocean, on both the American and the
European side, are highly productive.
River flood-plains are almost always densely peopled because of their
productivity. The bottom-lands of the Mississippi and the Yangtze Rivers
are among the chief food-producing regions of the world. Lacustrine
plains, the beds of former lakes, are also highly productive regions.
The valley of the Red River of the North is an example, and its wheat is
of a very high quality.
Fertile coast-plains and lowlands that are adjacent to good harbors, as
a rule are the most thickly peopled regions of the world. In many such
regions the density of population exceeds two hundred or more per square
mile. The reason is obvious. Life seeks that environment which yields
the greatest amount of nutrition with the least expenditure of energy.
The study of a good relief map shows that, as a rule, the Pacific Ocean
is bordered by a rugged highland, which has a more or less abrupt slope,
and a narrow coast-plain. Indeed, the latter is absent for the greater
part. The slopes of the Atlantic, on the other hand, are long and
gentle--being a thousand miles or more in width throughout the greater
part of their extent. The area of productive land is correspondingly
great, and the character of the surface features is such that
intercommunication is easy.
[Illustration: A RIVER FLOOD-PLAIN--A REGION ADAPTED TO CULTIVATION]
The result of these conditions is evident. The Atlantic slopes, though
not everywhere the most densely peopled areas, contain the great centres
of the world's activities and economies. In the past 400 years they have
not only overtaken the Pacific coast races, but have far surpassed them.
They are now entering upon a commercial invasion of the Pacific nations
that is resulting in a reorganization of the entire industrial world.
=Topography and Trade Routes.=--As the settlement and commerce of a
country grow, roads succeed trails, and trails are apt to follow the
paths of migrating animals. Until the time of the Civil War in the
United States, most of the great highways of the country were the direct
descendants of "buffalo roads," as they were formerly called.
In the crossing of divides from one river-valley to another, the
mountain-sections of the railways for the greater part follow the trails
of the bison. This is especially marked in the Pennsylvania, the
Baltimore and Ohio, and the Chesapeake and Ohio railways; in some
instances the tunnels through ranges have been constructed directly
under the trails. The reason is obvious; the instinct of the bison led
him along routes having the minimum of grade.
Throughout the Mississippi Valley and the great plains the Indian trails
usually avoided the bottom-lands of the river-valleys, following the
divides and portages instead. This selection of routes was probably due
to the fact that the lowlands were swampy and subject to overflow; the
portages and divides offered no steep grades, and were therefore more
easily traversed.
[Illustration: WHERE COMMODITIES ARE EXCHANGED--NEW YORK CITY
WATER-FRONT]
=Harbors.=--Coast outlines have much to do with the commercial
possibilities of a region. The "drowned valleys" and similar inlets
along the North Atlantic coast, both of Europe and America, form harbors
in which vessels ride at anchor in safety, no matter what the existing
conditions outside may be. As a result, the two greatest centres of
commerce in the world are found at these harbors--one on the American,
the other on the European coast.
From New York Bay southward along the Atlantic seaboard there are but
few harbors, and this accounts for the enormous development of commerce
in the stretch of coast between Portland and Baltimore. San Francisco
Bay and the harbors of Puget Sound monopolize most of the commerce of
the Pacific coast of the United States. South America has several good
harbors on the Atlantic seaboard, and in consequence a large city has
grown at the site of each. On the Pacific coast the good harbors are
very few in number, and they are not situated near productive regions.
Asiatic peoples, as a rule, are not promoters of foreign commerce, and,
those of Japan excepted, the only good harbors are those that have been
improved by European governments. These are confined mainly to India and
China. The many possible harbors make certain a tremendous commerce in
the future. Africa has but very few good harbors. There are excellent
harbors in the islands of the Pacific, and many of them are of great
strategic value as coaling stations and bases of supply to the various
maritime powers.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
The Pennsylvania Railroad has found it more economical to tunnel the
mountain-range under Horseshoe Curve, near Altoona, than to haul the
trains over the mountains; discuss the details in which there will be a
saving.
Why are rugged and mountainous regions apt to be sparsely peopled?
The first valuable discovery in the Rocky Mountains was gold; what were
the chief effects that resulted?
Would the industries of the Pacific coast of the United States be
benefited or impaired by the existence of a coast-plain?
Which are more conducive to commerce--the large mediterraneans, such as
the Gulf of Mexico, or the small estuaries, such as New York Bay?
Discuss the merits or demerits of each.
What are the chief products of mountains, of plateaus, of lowland
plains?
COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--Chapter I.
Redway's Physical Geography--Chapter IV.
A topographic map of the United States.
[Illustration: MEAN ANNUAL RAINFALL]
CHAPTER IV
CLIMATIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE
In its effect upon life and the various industries of peoples, climate
is a factor even more important than topography. Of the 53,000,000
square miles of the land surface of the earth, scarcely more than
one-half is capable of producing any great amount of food-stuffs, and
only a very small area can support a population of more than one hundred
people to each square mile.
=Climate and Habitability.=--In the main, regions that are inhabited by
human beings produce either food-stuffs or something of value that may
be exchanged for food-stuffs; and inasmuch as food and shelter are the
chief objects of human activity, regions that will not furnish them are
not habitable.
The growth and production of food-stuffs is governed even more by
conditions of climate than by those of topography. Thus the great
Russian plain is too cold to produce any great amount of food-stuffs,
and it is, therefore, sparsely peopled. The northern part of Africa and
the closed basins of North America and Asia lack the rainfall necessary
to insure productivity, and these regions are also unhabitable. The
basin of the Amazon has a rainfall too great for cereals and grasses,
and the larger part of it is unfit for habitation.
All the food-stuffs are exceedingly sensitive to climate. Rice will not
grow where swampy conditions do not prevail at least during part of the
year. Turf-grass will not live where there are repeated droughts of more
than three months' duration, and corn will not ripen in regions having
cool nights. Wheat does not produce a kernel fit for flour anywhere
except in the temperate zone; and the banana will not grow outside the
torrid zone.
The two chief factors of climate are temperature and moisture. No forms
of life can withstand a temperature constantly below the freezing-point
of water, and but few, if any, can endure a constant heat of one hundred
and twenty-five degrees, although most species can exist at temperatures
beyond these limits for a short time.
=Zones of Climate.=--The belt of earth upon which the sun's rays are
nearly or quite vertical is comparatively narrow. But the inclination of
the earth's axis and the fact that it is parallel to itself at all times
of the year create zones of climate. These differ materially in the
character of the life, forms, and the activities of the people who dwell
in them.
In the torrid zone the temperature varies but little. During the season
of rains it rarely falls to 70 deg. F., and in the dry season it is seldom
higher than 95 deg. F. As a result, all sorts of plants that are sensitive
to low temperatures thrive in the torrid zone. It is not a climate
suitable for heat-producing food-plants, and they are not required.
The constant heat and excessive moisture of the atmosphere in the torrid
zone is apt to produce a feeling of lassitude among the dwellers in such
regions, moreover, and great bodily activity is out of question. These
conditions seriously affect the lives of the people, and, with few
exceptions, tropical peoples are rarely noted for energy or enterprise.
Great commercial enterprises are the exception rather than the rule, and
they are usually carried on by foreigners who must live a part of the
time in cooler localities.
[Illustration: THE EFFECTS OF HIGH LATITUDE--TOO COLD TO PRODUCE
BREAD-STUFFS]
Polar regions are deficient both in the heat and light necessary for
food-stuffs. Neither the grasses nor the grains fructify. As a result,
but few herbivora can live there, and these are practically restricted
to the musk-ox and the reindeer, which subsist on mosses and lichens.
The native people are stunted in growth; their food consists mainly of
raw blubber, and they are scarcely above savagery.
The temperate zones are the regions of the great industries and
activities of human life. The larger part of the land surface of the
earth is situated in these zones; moreover, the people who dominate the
world also live in them, and their supremacy is due largely to
conditions of climate. The alternation of summer and winter causes a
struggle for existence that develops the intellectual faculties and
results in industrial supremacy.
=Effects of Altitude.=--There is a decrease of temperature of 1 deg. F. for
about every three hundred feet of ascent. But few people live at an
altitude of more than six thousand feet above sea-level, and in many
cases they depend on other localities for the greater part of their
food-stuffs, because very few of such regions produce food-stuffs
abundantly.
The chief exceptions to this rule are found in tropical regions. The
highlands of Mexico, the plateau-regions of Bolivia and Ecuador, and the
highlands of southern Asia are habitable, but they are not densely
peopled. Because of their altitude they are relieved of the enervating
effects of tropical climate at the sea-level.
Altitude likewise affects the amount of rainfall. Most plateaus are
arid. As a rule, they are arid because of their altitude; and because of
their aridity they are deficient in their power to produce food-stuffs.
They are therefore sparsely peopled.
=Effects of Rainfall.=--Regions having considerably more than one hundred
inches of rain annually are very apt to be forest-covered, and
therefore to be deficient in food-producing plants. Such localities have
usually a sparse population, in spite of the profusion of vegetation. In
some parts of India, lands that have been left idle for a few seasons
produce such a dense jungle of wild vegetation that to reclaim them for
cultivation is wellnigh impossible.
A deficiency of rainfall is even a greater factor in restricting the
density of population than too much rain. With less than fifteen or
twenty inches a year few regions produce good crops of grains and
grasses, and as a result they are sparsely peopled. Some of the
exceptions, however, are important. If the rainfall is not quite enough
to produce a normal overflow to the sea, the soil may be very rich,
because the nutrition is not leached out and carried away.
Many small areas of this character produce enormous crops when
artificially watered, and many of them, such as Persia, parts of Asia
Minor, northern Utah, and large areas of Australia and Chile have become
regions of considerable commercial importance. The products of such
regions are apt to be unique in character and of unusual value. Thus,
the wool of Persia and Australia and the fruit of the Iberian peninsula
are important articles of commerce.
In Egypt one may see the results of irrigated lands. The area of
geographical Egypt is somewhat less than half a million square miles;
the habitable part of the country is confined to a narrow strip, which,
one or two places excepted, varies from three to six miles in width. In
other words, almost the whole population of the country is massed in the
flood-plain and delta of the Nile; the remaining part is a desert
producing practically nothing.
The water that makes these lands productive falls, not in Egypt, but in
the highlands of Abyssinia, 2,000 miles away. The September overflow of
the flood-plain is the chief factor in the irrigation of these lands,
but the area has been greatly increased by the construction of barrages
and dams at Assiut and Assuan.
In the western highland region of the United States considerable areas
already have been made productive by irrigation, and it is estimated
that about two million acres of barren land can be reclaimed by
impounding the waters of the various streams now running to waste.
The distribution of rain with respect to the season in which it falls is
quite as important as its distribution with respect to quantity. In
tropical regions the ocean winds, and therefore the rainfall, come from
the east. The eastern slopes of such regions, therefore, have a season
in which rains may be expected daily, and another in which no rain falls
for several months. In the temperate zones seasonal rains for a similar
reason are on the western coasts.
Thus on the Pacific coast of the United States the rainfall varies from
about one hundred inches in southern Alaska to about twelve in San
Diego, Cal. Practically all the rain falls between October and the
following May; very little or none falls in the interval between May and
October. As a result, ordinary turf-grass, which will not withstand long
droughts, grows in only a few localities of the Pacific slope. It is
replaced by hardier grasses whose roots, instead of forming turf, grow
very deep in the soil.
Common clover will not grow in this region unless irrigated; it is
replaced by burr-clover, a variety of the plant that will not thrive in
moist regions. Now the quality of the merino wool clip of California
depends in no slight degree upon the burr-clover and other food-products
that thrive in regions of seasonal rains; that is, a great commercial
industry exists because of this feature of rainfall, and it could not
long survive in spite of it.
[Illustration: CLIMATICALLY ADAPTED TO CULTIVATION--THE LOWLANDS
PRODUCE BREAD-STUFFS AND FRUIT; THE MOUNTAIN-SLOPES ARE GRAZING REGIONS]
The seasonal rainfall also affects other agricultural industries. The
sacked wheat-crop may be left in the field without cover or protection
until the time is convenient for shipping it. The absence of summer
rains makes possible in California what would be out of question in the
Mississippi Valley, where a rainstorm may be expected every few days.
The quality of certain fruits depends largely on the season during which
the rainfall occurs. Apples, pears, and grapes grown in regions having
dry summers have usually a very superior flavor. The raisin-making
industry of California also depends on the same condition, because, in
order to insure a good quality of the product, the bunches of grapes,
after picking, must be dried on the ground. To a certain extent this is
also true of other fruits, such as dates, figs, and prunes, which
frequently are sun-dried.
The presence of large bodies of water, which both absorb and give out
their heat very slowly, tempers the climate of the nearby land and to
that extent modifies the commerce of such districts. The grape-growing
industry of central New York is a great one and its product is famous.
Its existence depends almost wholly upon the lake-tempered climate.
Elsewhere in the State the industry is on a precarious basis, and the
product is inferior.
=Effects of Inclination of the Earth's Axis.=--The inclination and
self-parallelism of the earth's axis is undoubtedly a very important
factor in climate. Practically it more than doubles the width of the
belts of ordinary food-stuffs by lengthening the summer day in the
temperate zone. Beyond the tropics the obliquity of the sun's rays are
more than balanced by the increased length of time in which they fall.
Thus, in the latitude of St. Paul, the longest day is about fifteen and
one-half hours long; at Liverpool it is nearly seventeen hours long; a
greater number of heat units therefore are received in these latitudes
during summer than are received in equatorial regions during the
twelve-hour day. Moreover, the summer temperature is higher in these
latitudes than in the torrid zone, because the sun is shining upon them
for a greater length of time.
The result of these various influences is far-reaching. Because of the
long summer days and short nights, wheat can be cultivated to the
sixtieth parallel. Corn, which gets scarcely enough warmth and light in
the torrid zone to become a prolific crop, attains its greatest yield in
the latitude of fourteen-hour days.
These factors, it is evident, carry the grain and meat industries into
regions that otherwise would not be habitable. Because the long summer
days produce these great food-crops, commerce and its allied industries
have reached their maximum development in these regions. Human
activities are greatest in the zones bounded by the thirty-fifth and
fifty-fifth parallels, the zone that includes the greater parts of the
United States, Europe, China, Japan. They are greatest, moreover,
because of their geographical position.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What would be the probable effect on the food-crops of the United States
were the main body of the country moved twenty degrees north in
latitude? Which would then be the wheat-growing States, the
cotton-producing States?
Illustrate the connection between occupation and altitude above
sea-level.
What difference would it make to the corn-crop were the days and nights
always twelve hours long?
What would be requisite to make Canada a centre of silk production?
Why is not cod-fishing an industry off the east coast of Florida?
Why is the greater part of the Russian Empire destined to be sparsely
peopled?
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
A rain chart of the world.
A chart of isothermal lines.
CHAPTER V
TRANSPORTATION--OCEAN AND INLAND NAVIGATION
Of all the adjustments which come into the lives of a people none has
been so far-reaching as the gradual localization of industries each in
the region best adapted to it. For instance, manufacturing industries
require power, but not fertile soil; therefore the manufacturing
industries seek nearness to fuel or to water-power, and a position
available for quick transportation.
Farming does not require any great amount of natural power; on the
contrary, level land having a great depth of fertile soil is the
essential feature. The farmer must therefore look first of all to
conditions of topography and climate, and secondly to the means of
transporting his crop.
Mining cannot be an industry in regions destitute of minerals; the miner
must therefore go where the mineral wealth is found, without regard to
climate, soil, centres of population, or topography. But two things are
required--the mineral products and the means of getting them to the
people--that is, ready means of transportation.
A century or more ago, each centre of population in the United States
was practically self-sustaining. Each grew its own food-stuffs, and
manufactured the articles used in the household. But very little was
required in the way of transportation. The means of carriage were mainly
ox-carts, pack-horses, and rafts. There was a mutual independence among
the various centres, it is true, but the independence was at the expense
of civilization and the comforts of life.
[Illustration: OCEAN TRANSPORTATION--ROYAL MAIL STEAMSHIP OCEANIC,
WHITE STAR LINE]
Beyond an independence that is more apparent than real, such a plan of
social and industrial organization has but little in it to commend.
Intercommunication increases knowledge, and under the conditions that
formerly prevailed, there was a lack of the breadth of knowledge that
comes with the mutual contact of peoples.
The utilization of national resources, such as the productiveness of the
land, the existence of iron ore, coal, copper, and other economic
minerals, finally brought about the policy of a territorial division of
industries. This, in turn, made the prompt transportation and exchange
of commodities essential; indeed, without such a plan, industrial
centres could not long exist.
The man whose sole business is manufacture must look to others for his
supply of food-stuffs and raw materials, and these are produced more
economically at a distance from the centre of manufacture. Thus England
must look to the United States for wheat and cotton, to the Australian
Commonwealth for wool, and to New Zealand and the United States for
meat. Her chief wealth is in her coal and iron, and these make the
nation a great manufacturing centre. So, also, the manufacturer of New
York must go to Pittsburg for steel, to Minneapolis for flour, and to
Chicago for beef.
The application of this principle is very broad; it is the foundation of
all commerce, and it underlies modern civilization. For this reason the
question of transportation is just as important to a community as the
industries of agriculture, mining, and manufacture. Food-stuffs are of
no use unless they can be transported to the people who want them; nor
can peoples remain in unproductive regions unless the food-stuffs are
brought to them.
The gross tonnage of goods is transported mainly in one or another or
all of three ways--namely, by animal power, by railway, or by water.
Thus, the cotton-crop of the United States is usually transported by
wagon from the plantation to the nearest station or boat-landing; by
rail or by barge to the nearest seaport; and by ocean steamship to the
foreign seaport.
Water transportation is more economical than land carriage, for the
reason that less power is required to move a given tonnage through the
water than on the most perfectly graded railway. Steamship freights, as
a rule, are lower than those of sailing-vessels, because a steamship has
more than twice the speed, and, being larger, can carry a greater
tonnage. Freight rates on the Great Lakes are higher per ton-mile than
on the ocean, because the vessels are necessarily smaller than those
built for ocean traffic. For a similar reason, river and canal freights
are higher than lake freights. Railway transportation is economical,
partly because a single locomotive will draw an enormous weight of
goods, and partly because of the high speed at which the goods move from
point to point. Animal transportation is more expensive than any other
means ordinarily employed.
=Ocean Transportation.=--In many respects, water-routes form the most
available and economical methods of transportation. Intercontinental
commerce must be carried on by means of deep-water vessels. Therefore an
extraordinary development of ocean carriers has taken place in the past
century.
One important period of development began with the rise of American
commerce. Just after the close of the War for Independence, it was found
that deep-water ships could be built of New England timber for
thirty-five dollars per ton, rated tonnage, while a vessel of the same
burden built in Europe cost about forty-five dollars per unit of
tonnage. Two types of vessels came into use--one, the clipper ship with
square sails, was used for long ocean voyages; the other, the schooner,
with fore-and-aft rigging, was employed mainly in the coast-trade.
[Illustration: A SQUARE-RIGGED SHIP--A TYPE NOW BEING REPLACED BY
FORE-AND-AFT RIGGED SCHOONERS]
In speed and ease of management these vessels surpassed anything that
had ever sailed. In time they became the standards for the
sailing-vessels of all the great commercial nations. The types of the
vessels are still standards.
[Illustration: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STEAMSHIP]
=The Development of the Steamship.=--Another important era in ocean
commerce began when steam was used as a motive power for vessels. The
first deep-water vessel thus to be propelled was the Savannah. Her
steam-power was merely incidental, however, and her paddle-wheels were
unshipped and taken aboard when there was enough wind for sailing. Up
to 1860 almost all the ocean steamships were side-wheelers, propelled by
low-pressure beam-engines.
The next most important improvement was the screw-blade propeller,
placed astern. This means of propulsion called for higher speed of the
engines, and in a very short time compactly built high-pressure engines
took the place of the low-pressure engine with its heavy walking-beam.
The latter carried steam at a pressure varying from twenty to thirty-two
pounds; the modern boiler has steam at 260 pounds per square inch.
Ocean steamships have gradually evolved into two types. The freighter,
broad in beam and capacious, is built to carry an enormous amount of
freight at a moderate speed. The White Star liner Celtic is a vessel of
this class; her schedule time between New York and Liverpool is about
nine days. The Philadelphia of the American line, though not the fastest
steamship, makes the same trip in an average time of five and one-half
days.[7]
Twin-screws, instead of a single propeller, are employed on nearly all
the large liners. The gain in speed is not greatly increased, but the
vessel is far more manageable with two screws than with one; moreover,
if one engine breaks down, the vessel can make excellent time with the
other.
Triple-expansion engines are almost universally used on modern
steamships, and a pound of coal now makes about three times as much
steam available as in the engines formerly used. As a result a bushel of
wheat is now carried from Fargo, N. Dak., to Liverpool for about
twenty-one cents--less than one-half the freight tariff of 1876.
[Illustration: THE SCHOONER THOMAS A. LAWSON. THE FIRST SEVEN-MASTED
SAILING-VESSEL]
The fastest liners consume from three hundred and fifty to more than
four hundred tons of coal a day, and for each additional knot of speed
the amount of coal burned must be greatly increased. Freighters like the
Celtic consume scarcely more than half as much as those of the Kaiser
Wilhelm II. type.
=Sailing-Craft.=--In spite of the growth and development of
steam-navigation, a large amount of freight is still carried by
sailing-craft; moreover, it is not unlikely that the relative proportion
of ocean freight carried by sailing-vessels will increase rather than
decrease, especially in the case of imperishable freight.
The square-rigged ship, or bark, has been very largely replaced by the
fore-and-aft, or schooner-rigged vessel. A large full-rigged ship
requires a crew of thirty to thirty-six men; a schooner-rigged vessel
needs from sixteen to twenty. These vessels are commonly built with
three and four masts; some of the largest have six or seven. They carry
as many as five thousand tons of freight at a speed of about ten
knots--only a trifle less than that of an ordinary tramp freighter. Some
of the larger vessels are provided with auxiliary engines and propelling
apparatus, which enables them to enter or to leave port without the
assistance of a tug. Donkey-engines hoist and lower the sails, and
perform the work of loading and unloading. They are admirable colliers
and grain-carriers.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, about ninety thousand
sailing-craft and thirty-five thousand steam-vessels were required to
carry the world's commerce. Of this number, Great Britain and her
colonies register nearly thirty-five thousand, and the United States
over twenty thousand.
HARBOR SAFEGUARDS.--Excepting the open anchorages formed by angles
in coast-lines, the greater number of harbors consist of small
coves and river-mouths. In these, although there may be a
considerable area of water, there is not apt to be much sailing
room; it is therefore necessary to mark off the navigable channels.
For this purpose buoys of different shapes and colors are used by
day; by night fixed and flashing lights are employed.
The buoys of permanent channels are usually hollow metal cylinders
or cones about two feet in diameter, anchored so that the end of
the cylinder projects about three feet above the water. On entering
a channel from the seaward, red buoys are on the starboard, or
right hand; white buoys are kept on the port, or left side. Buoys
at the end of a channel are usually surmounted each by some device
or other fastened at the upper end of a perch. Thus, at the outer
entrance of Gedney Channel in New York Harbor, a ball surmounts the
perch; at the inner entrance the buoy carries a double square.
Sharp angles in a channel are similarly marked. In many instances
the buoy carries, as a warning signal, a bell that rings as the
buoy is rocked by the waves; in others, a whistle that sounds by
the air which the rocking motion compresses within the cylinder;
still others carry electric or gas lights.
The color of a buoy is an index of its character. Thus, one with
black and red stripes indicates danger; one with black and white
vertical stripes is a channel-marker. Temporary channels are
frequently marked by pieces of spar floating upright. In some cases
it is customary to set untrimmed tree-tops on the port, and trimmed
sticks on the starboard.
Light-houses are built at all exposed points of navigated
coast-waters, and beacons are set at all necessary points within a
harbor for use at night. All lights are kept burning from sunset
until sunrise. The color, the duration, and the intervals of
flashing indicate the position of the beacon. In revolving lights
the beams, concentrated by powerful lenses, sweep the horizon as
the lantern about the light revolves. Flashing lights are produced
when the light is obscured at given intervals. Fixed lights burn
with a steady flame. In some instances a sector of colored glass is
set so as to cover a given part of a channel. Range lights, set so
that one shows directly above the other, are used as
channel-markers.
[Illustration: CITY OF NEW YORK AND VICINITY, WITH HARBOR
APPROACHES.]
The use of lights may be seen as a vessel enters New York Lower
Bay. A steamship drawing not more than eighteen feet of water may
enter through Swash Channel (_follow the course on the chart_). In
this case the pilot makes for Scotland lightship, and merely keeps
New Dorp and Elmtree beacons in range, giving Dry Romer a wide
berth to starboard, until Chapel Hill and Conover beacons come into
range on his port side. The vessel is then held on a course between
Coney Island and Fort Tompkins lights until Robbins Reef light
shows ahead.
For the liners that draw more than eighteen feet the task is more
difficult, inasmuch as the channel is tortuous. At Sandy Hook
lightship a course lying nearly west takes the vessel to the outer
entrance of Gedney Channel, marked by two buoy-lights. In passing
between the lights the vessel enters the channel, which is also
covered by the red sector of Hook beacon. The pilot continues
between the buoy-lights until Waacaack and Point Comfort beacons
are in range, and steers to this range until South Beacon and Sandy
Hook light are in range astern. The helm is then turned, keeping
these lights in range astern until Chapel Hill and Conover beacons
are in range on the port bow. Turning northward nearly eight
points, the pilot holds the bow of the vessel between Fort Tompkins
and Coney Island lights, keeping sharply to his range astern, until
Robbins Reef light comes into view through the narrows. From this
point on, the shore lights are the pilot's chief guide.
So difficult are harbor entrances, that in most cases the
underwriters will not insure a vessel unless the latter is taken
from the outer harbor to the dock by a licensed pilot, and the
latter must spend nearly half a lifetime as an apprentice before he
receives a license. The charges for pilotage are usually regulated
by the number of feet the vessel draws. The charges differ in
various ports, but the devices for marking and lighting the
channels are much the same in every part of the world. In the
United States all navigable channels are under the control of the
general Government.
=Inland Waters.=--Lakes, rivers, and canals furnish a very important means
of transportation. In Europe and Canada an enormous amount of slow
freight is transported by their use; in China they are the most
important means of internal traffic.
[Illustration: THE COMMERCE OF THE OHIO--TOWING COAL TO THE STEEL
MILLS, PITTSBURG]
In the United States the Great Lakes with the Erie Canal and Hudson
River form the most important internal water-way, and by them the
continent is penetrated as far west as Duluth, a distance of more than
one thousand three hundred miles. The traffic passing out of Lake
Superior alone is about one-third greater than that passing out of the
Mediterranean Sea at the Suez Canal. Much of this traffic goes across
the continent, and the route in question is one of the great commercial
highways of the world.
The Mississippi River and its branches afford not far from ten thousand
miles of navigable waters. Canals connect tributaries of this river with
the Great Lakes at Chicago and at several points in Ohio. The
development of the navigation of this great water-way was checked by the
Civil War, and after the close of the war the great advance in railway
building kept its improvement in the background. The general government,
nevertheless, has done much to encourage the use of the Mississippi as a
commercial highway, and many millions of dollars have been spent in
widening and deepening its channel.[8] On the upper river grain and
lumber form the chief traffic; on the lower part a large part of the
world's cotton-crop starts on its journey to the various markets.
On account of the soft-coal fields and the steel manufacture in western
Pennsylvania, the commerce of the Ohio River is very heavy, aggregating
not far from fifteen million tons yearly. Much of this traffic extends
to ports on the Mississippi.
The navigable parts of the Hudson and Delaware Rivers are estuaries of
the sea or "drowned valleys." In each case navigation extends about to
the limits of high tide. Both rivers carry a heavy freight commerce; the
Hudson has a passenger traffic of several million fares each year.
Nearly every river of the Atlantic coast is navigable to the limit of
high tide or a little beyond. Navigation extends to the point where the
coast-plain joins the foot-hills. Above this limit, called the "Fall
Line," the streams are swift and shallow; below it they are deep and
sluggish. As a result, a chain of important river ports extends along
the Fall Line from Maine to Florida.
River-navigation in Europe in the main is inseparably connected with the
great canal systems. As a rule, the lower parts of the rivers are
navigable for steamboats of light draught. Some of the smaller streams
are made navigable by means of a long steel chain, which is laid along
the bed of the stream; the boat engages the chain by means of heavy
sprocket wheels driven by steam, and thus wind the boat up and down the
river.
Ocean steamers penetrate the Amazon Valley to a distance of one thousand
miles from its mouth; boats of light draught ascend the main stream and
some of its tributaries a thousand miles farther. The Orinoco is
navigable within one hundred miles of Bogota. Light-draught boats ascend
the tributaries of La Plata River a distance of fifteen hundred miles.
The Asian rivers that are important highways of commerce are few in
number. The Amur, Yangtze, Indus, and Cambodia have each considerable
local commerce. The Hugli, a channel in the delta of the Ganges, has a
channel deep enough for ocean steamships. The tributaries of the Lena,
Yenisei, and Ob have been of the greatest service in the commercial
development of northern Asia from the fact that their valleys are both
level and fertile.
Because of a high interior and abrupt slopes, the rivers of Africa are
not suitable for navigation to any considerable extent; the channels are
uncertain and the rivers are interrupted by rapids. The Nile has an
occasional steamboat service as far as the "First Cataract," but in high
water the service is sometimes extended farther. The Kongo has a long
stretch of navigable water, but is interrupted by rapids below Stanley
Pool. Similar conditions obtain in the Zambezi. The lower part of the
Senegal affords good navigation. The Niger has in many respects greater
commercial possibilities than other rivers of Africa. It is navigable to
a distance of three hundred miles.
=Canals.=--Canals easily rank among the most important means of traffic,
as a rule, supplementing other navigable waters. Thus, by means of an
elaborate system of canals, goods are transferred by water, from one
river-basin to another, so that practically all the navigable streams of
western Europe are connected. Canals are extensively used to avoid the
falls or rapids that separate the various reaches of rivers. The water
itself by means of locks lifts the boat to a higher level or transfers
it to a lower reach, thus saving the expense of unloading, transferring,
and reloading a cargo.
The manner in which canals supplement the obstructed navigation of a
river is seen in the case of the St. Lawrence. This river is obstructed
in several places by rapids, but by means of canals steamship service
connects the Great Lakes, not only with Quebec, but with ports of the
Mediterranean Sea as well; indeed, it is possible to send a cargo from
Duluth, at the head of Lake Superior, to Odessa or Batum, on the shores
of the Black Sea.
The internal water-ways of Canada have been splendidly developed. The
Canadian St. Marys Canal furnishes an outlet to Lake Superior for
vessels drawing twenty-one feet. The Welland Canal connects Lakes Erie
and Ontario. The Rideau Canal and River connect Kingston and Lake
Ontario with the Ottawa, and the latter with its canals is navigable to
the St. Lawrence. With a population of less than six millions the
Dominion Government has spent nearly one hundred million dollars in the
improvement of internal water-ways.
[Illustration: PROFILE OF ERIE CANAL
HORIZONTAL SCALE 100 MILES TO THE INCH, VERTICAL SCALE 1,000 FEET TO THE
INCH]
In the United States the possible development of canals has been
neglected and, to a certain extent, stifled by railway building. The
Erie Canal, built before the advent of the railway, connects Lake Erie
with tide-water at Albany, a distance of 387 miles. For many years it
was the chief means of traffic between the Mississippi Valley and the
Atlantic seaboard, and although paralleled by the six tracks of a great
railway system, it is still an important factor in the carriage of grain
and certain classes of slow freight.[9] The level way that made the
canal possible is largely responsible for the decline of its importance,
for the absence of steep grades enables a powerful locomotive to haul
so many cars that the quick transit more than overbalances a very low
ton rate by the canal.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, designed to connect the Mississippi
Valley with the Atlantic seaboard, fared much worse than the Erie Canal.
Less than two hundred miles have been completed, and practically no work
except that of repair has been done since 1850; the heavy grades between
Cumberland and Pittsburg render its completion improbable.
An excellent system of canals, the Ohio and Erie and the Miami and Erie,
connect the Ohio River with Lake Erie. These canals are in the State of
Ohio and aggregate about six hundred miles in length. They are important
as coal and ore carriers. Several hundred miles of canals were built
along the river-valleys of eastern Pennsylvania before 1840 for carrying
coal to tide-water. Most of them have been abandoned; one, the Delaware
& Hudson Canal Co., survives as a railway. Inasmuch as the coal went on
a down grade from the mines to the markets, it could be carried more
economically by railway than by canal.
Of far greater importance are the St. Marys Canal on the Canadian side,
and the St. Marys Falls Canal on the American side, of St. Marys River.
These canals obviate the falls in St. Marys River and form the
commercial outlet of Lake Superior. The tonnage of goods, mainly iron
ore and coal, is about one-half greater than that of the Suez Canal.
About twenty-five thousand vessels pass through these canals yearly.
The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal,[10] from Lake Michigan to Lockport,
on the Illinois River, was designed mainly to carry the sewage of
Chicago which, prior to the construction of the canal, was poured into
the lake through the Chicago River. The completion of the canal turned
the course of the river and caused the water to flow out of the lake,
carrying the city's sewage. It is intended to complete a navigable
water-way from Chicago to St. Louis deep enough for vessels drawing
fourteen feet. Its value is therefore strategic as well as industrial,
for by means of it gun-boats may readily pass from the Gulf of Mexico to
the Great Lakes.
Oceanic canals are designed both for naval strategic purposes and for
industrial uses. Thus, the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, from the mouth of the
Elbe to Kiel Bay, across the base of Jutland, saves two days between
Hamburg and the Baltic ports. It also enables German war-vessels to
concentrate quickly in either the North or the Baltic Sea. The
Manchester Ship Canal makes Manchester a seaport and saves the cost of
trans-shipping freights by rail from Liverpool. The Corinth Canal across
the isthmus that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece
affords a much shorter route between Italian ports and Odessa. The North
Holland Ship Canal makes Amsterdam practically a seaport.
Probably no other highway of commerce since the discovery of the Cape
route around Africa has caused such a great change and readjustment of
trade between Europe and Asia as the Suez Canal. Sailing-vessels still
take the Cape route, because the heavy towage tolls through the canal
more than offset the gain in time. Steamships have their own power and
generally take the canal route, thereby saving about ten days in time
and fuel, and about four thousand eight hundred miles in distance. In
spite of the heavy tolls the saving is considerable. About three
thousand five hundred vessels pass through the canal yearly.
The Suez Canal, constructed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, for some time was
under the control of French capitalists. Subsequently, by the purchase
of stock partly in open market and partly from the Khedive of Egypt, the
control of the canal passed into the hands of the English. The
restrictions placed upon the passage of war-ships is such that the canal
would be of little use to nations at war.
[Illustration: THE ROUTE OF THE PANAMA CANAL]
The necessity of an interoceanic canal across the American continent has
become more imperative year by year for fifty years. The discovery of
gold in California caused an emigration from the Atlantic to the Pacific
coast which resulted in a permanent settlement of the latter region. A
railway across the Isthmus of Panama and another across the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec have afforded very poor means of communication between
oceans.
In 1881 work on a tide-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama was
begun, but the plan was afterward changed to a high-level canal. The
change was thought necessary partly on account of the great cost of the
former, and partly because of the difficulties of constructing so deep a
cut--about three hundred and forty feet--at the summit of the Culebra
ridge. The construction company, after spending the entire
capital--about one hundred and twenty million dollars--in accomplishing
one-tenth of the work, became bankrupt. The United States subsequently
purchased the franchise.
A canal by way of Lake Nicaragua has also been projected, and two
treaties with Great Britain, whereby the United States agreed to build
no fortifications to guard it, have been made. No work beyond the
surveys has yet been undertaken, however. The cost of each canal is
estimated between one hundred and fifty million and two hundred million
dollars. The Panama route will require about twelve hours for the
passage of a vessel; the Nicaragua route about sixty hours.[11] (_See
map, p. 270._)
The completion of a canal by either route will cause a readjustment of
the world's commerce far greater than that which followed the
construction of the Suez Canal. By such a route San Francisco is brought
nearer to London than Calcutta now is, and the all-water route between
the Atlantic ports of the United States and those of China and Japan
will be shortened by upward of eight thousand miles. The importance of
the Hawaiian Islands, already a great ocean depot, will be greatly
increased, and the latter is becoming one of the great commercial
stations of the world.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What were some of the effects which resulted from the various embargo
and non-intercourse acts that preceded the war of 1812?
What is the effect upon an industry when all means of getting the
products to market are cut off?
In the early history of the country rivers were the most important
highways of commerce; obtain an account of some instance of this in
detail.
Certain commodities have been carried about four-fifths of the distance
between Moscow and Vladivostok by water, across Siberia. Illustrate
this, using the map of the Russian Empire, plate, p. 342.
What has been the effect of cheap steel on ocean navigation?
Discuss the difference between a screw-steamship and a side-wheeler; a
ship and a schooner. How are vessels steered?
How does a triple-expansion engine differ from an ordinary steam-engine?
Cargoes are carried by water across Europe from Havre to Marseilles, and
from The Hague to the mouth of the Danube; illustrate the route on a map
of Europe.
The following instruction occasionally is found in the pilothouse of a
vessel--what is its meaning?
"Green to green and red to red--
Perfect safety; go ahead."
From the chart on p. 49 show how a pilot uses the range lights in
entering New York Harbor.
The new freighter Minnesota is designed to carry a load of 30,000 tons;
how many trains of fifty cars, each car holding 30,000 pounds, are
required to furnish her cargo?
From the map on pp. x-xi describe the new ocean routes that will be
created by an interoceanic canal across the American continent.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Photographs or illustrations of various steam and sailing craft.
An Atlantic Coast Pilot Chart--any month.
A map showing the canals of the United States.
A map showing the canals of Europe.
[Illustration: A MODERN LOCOMOTIVE--THE TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED AT A
SPEED EXCEEDING NINETY MILES AN HOUR]
CHAPTER VI
TRANSPORTATION--RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY ORGANIZATION; PUBLIC HIGHWAYS
In the United States and western Europe, in spite of the low cost of
water transportation, the railways have almost wholly monopolized the
transportation of commodities. This is due in part to the saving of time
in transit--for under the demands of modern business, the only economy
is economy of time--and in part to prompt delivery at the specified
time.
Into a large centre of population like New York, London, or Berlin, many
millions of pounds of perishable food-stuffs must be brought daily for
consumption. Now these food-stuffs must be delivered with promptness,
and no delay can be tolerated. A shipper having half a million pounds of
meat or a hundred thousand pounds of flour or a car-load of fruit to
deliver can take no risks; he sends it by rail, not only because it is
the quickest way, but because experience has shown it to be the most
prompt way; as a rule, it is delivered on the exact minute of schedule
time.
Cargoes of silks and teas from China and Japan might be sent all the way
to London by water, but experience has shown a more profitable way. The
consignments are sent by swift steamships to Seattle; thence by fast
express trains to New York; there they are transferred to swift liners
that take them across the Atlantic to European ports. And although this
method of shipment is enormously expensive as compared with the
all-water route, the saving of time and certainty of prompt delivery
more than offset the extra cost of delivery.
In the last half of the nineteenth century the cost of haulage in the
United States by rail decreased so materially that in a few instances
only--notably the Great Lakes and the Hudson River--do inland waters
compete with the railways.[12] This is due in part to better
organization of the railways, but mainly to the substitution of Bessemer
steel for iron rails and the great improvements in locomotives and
rolling stock.
The use of a steam-driven locomotive became possible for the first time
when Stephenson used the tubular boiler and the forced draught,[13]
thereby making steam rapidly enough for a short, quick stroke. In 1865 a
good freight locomotive weighing thirty tons could haul about forty
box-cars, each loaded with ten tons. This was the maximum load for a
level track; the average load for a single locomotive was about
twenty-five or thirty cars. Heavier locomotives could not well be used
because the iron rails went to pieces under them.
The invention of Bessemer steel produced a rail that was safe under the
pounding of a locomotive three or four times as heavy as those formerly
employed; it produced boilers that would carry steam at 250 instead of
60 pounds pressure per square inch. As a result, with only a moderate
increase in the fuel burned, a single locomotive on a level track will
haul eighty or ninety box-cars, each carrying nearly seventy thousand
pounds.[14]
The application of the double and the triple expansion principle has
been quite as successful with locomotive as with marine engines in
saving fuel and gaining power--that is, it has decreased the cost per
ton-mile of hauling freight and likewise the cost of transporting
passengers. Enlarged "fire-boxes," or furnaces,[15] enable steam to be
made more rapidly and to give higher speed.[16] Only a few years ago
forty-eight hours was the scheduled time between New York and Chicago;
now there are about forty trains a day between these two cities, several
of which make the trip in twenty-four hours or less.
=Railway Development.=--The railway as a common carrier, having its right
by virtue of a government charter, dates from 1801, when a tramway was
built between Croydon and Wandsworth, two suburbs of London. The rails
were iron straps, nailed to wooden stringers. The charter was carefully
drawn in order to prevent the road from competing with omnibus lines and
public cabs.
When the steam locomotive succeeded horse-power, however, there
followed an era of railway development that in a few years
revolutionized the carrying trade in the thickly settled parts of the
United States and Europe. Short, independent lines were constructed
without any reference whatever to the natural movement of traffic. There
seemed but one idea, namely, to connect two cities or towns. Indeed, the
absence of a definite plan was much similar to that of the interurban
electric roads a century later; local traffic was the only
consideration.
At first an opinion prevailed that the road-bed of the railway ought to
be a public highway upon which any individual or company might run its
own conveyances, on the payment of a fixed toll; indeed, in both Europe
and the United States, public opinion could see no difference between
the railway and the canal. The employment of a steam-driven locomotive
engine, however, made such a plan impossible, and demonstrated that the
roads must be thoroughly organized.
At the close of 1850 there were nearly four hundred different railway
companies in England; in the United States about a dozen companies were
required to make the connection of New York City and Buffalo. A few of
these paid dividends; a large majority barely met their operating
expenses, defaulting the interest on their bonds; a great many were
hopelessly bankrupt.
=Consolidation of Connecting Lines.=--Between 1850 and 1865 a new feature
entered into railway management, namely, the union of connecting lines.
This was a positive advantage, for the operating expenses of the sixteen
lines, now a part of the New York Central, between New York and Buffalo
were scarcely greater than the expenses of one-third that number. The
service was much quicker, better, and cheaper. In England the several
hundred companies were reduced to twelve; in France the thirty-five or
more companies were reduced to six in number.
The consolidation of connecting lines brought about another desirable
feature--the extension of the existing lines.[17] The lines of
continental Europe were extended eastward to the Russian frontier, and
to Constantinople; then the Alps were surmounted. In the United States
railway extension was equally great. The Union and Central Pacific
railways were opened in 1869, giving the first all-rail route to the
Pacific coast. Other routes to the Pacific followed within a few years,
one of which, the Canadian Pacific, was built from Quebec to Vancouver.
[Illustration: A TRUNK SYSTEM--THE VARIOUS BRANCHES EXTEND INTO COAL,
GRAIN, IRON, CATTLE, TIMBER, AND TOBACCO REGIONS]
The period from 1864 was one of extensive railway building both in the
United States and Europe. Some of the roads, such as the transalpine
railways of Europe and the Pacific roads of the United States, were
greatly needed. Others that created new fields of industry by opening to
communication productive lands were also wise and necessary; the lands
would have been valueless without them. Not a few lines that were to be
needed in time were built so far ahead of time that they did not even
pay their operating expenses for many years.
Another class of roads was intended for speculative purposes. Thus,
there were instances in which a line occupying a given territory had
antagonized its patrons by poor service, and extortionate charges.
Thereupon another company would obtain a charter--which was then easily
done--and build a competing line in the same territory, the former most
likely having scarcely enough business for one road.[18] The results
were almost always the same; a war of rate-cutting followed; the
stockholders of both roads lost heavily; and one or both went into the
hands of receivers.
=Competition and Pools.=--In many instances the consolidation of roads,
while cutting off disastrous competition in the territory jointly
occupied by the two roads, brought the consolidated road into fierce
competition with another adjacent system. If the roads had practically
the same territory but different terminals the competition was confined
mainly to local traffic. On the other hand, they might have the same
terminals but cover different local territories; in this case the roads
must compete for through traffic. Thus the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy
is brought into competition with the Union Pacific in Nebraska, but
inasmuch as the roads have different and widely distant terminals, their
local traffic is easily adjusted. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and
the Northwestern have common terminals at Chicago, St. Paul, Denver,
Omaha, and Kansas City. They must therefore compete with each other, and
with half-a-dozen other roads for their through traffic.
Competition between railways differs greatly from that between two
firms. If one of two firms cannot afford to compete, the manager may
discharge his help, and close doors; he then does not suffer actual
loss. But a railway, being a common carrier, cannot do this; the road
must keep its trains moving or lose its charter. If it cannot carry
goods at a profit it must carry them at cost or at a loss. Even the
latter is better than not carrying them at all, for the operating
expenses of the road must go on.
So between 1870 and 1880 most of the railway managements were busy
devising ways to stop a rate-cutting and competition that was ruinous.
In many instances great trunk lines would have consolidated had not
State laws prevented. They could not maintain rates because one or
another of the weaker roads would be compelled to lower their rates in
order to meet their operating expenses. Therefore they were compelled to
do one of three things, namely, to divide the territory, to divide
traffic, or to divide earnings. Either of the two latter plans is called
a _pool_.
Of these two forms of pooling the division of the traffic is the easier,
but it is often unsatisfactory to the patrons of the road. The second
plan, the division of the earnings, is a more difficult matter to adjust
because each road is usually dissatisfied with its proportion. As a
matter of fact, however, the first plan of pooling is very apt to grow
into the second.
In several instances pools have been declared illegal by the courts,
but, in general, railway service has been more satisfactory under the
pool system than under any other. They have always aroused popular
suspicion, however, from the fact that they increase power of the
railway itself. In various instances important trunk lines have formed a
general company, each having its separate organization, because they
could accomplish under a combined organization what they could not as
independent companies. The restrictions against pooling have therefore
encouraged combination of competing lines.
Because the railway is an absolute necessity, and because it has power
given neither to individuals nor to other corporations, it is a settled
policy that both the State and general Government should have the power
to regulate its rates, and should in every way prevent unjust
discrimination. Both problems are very difficult, however, and the
unintelligent adjustment of rates has frequently resulted in injustice
both to the roads and their patrons.
A rate per ton-mile for each class of freight is out of question,
because a large part of the cost to the company consists in loading,
handling, and storing the goods. Once aboard the car, it costs but
little more to carry a ton of freight one hundred miles than to move it
one mile. The rates per mile, therefore, are necessarily greater for
short distances than for long runs. A mile-rate based on a ten-mile haul
would be prohibitive to the shipper if applied to a run between Chicago
and New York. On the other hand, were the charges based on the long run,
the local rates would be far less than the cost of the service.[19]
As a result freight rates are based very largely on the cost of the
service, and this is particularly true of local freights. This practice
is also modified by charging _what the traffic will bear_, and, on the
whole, a combination of the two ideas gives the most reasonable and the
fairest method of basing charges. Thus, a car filled with fine, crated
furniture, which is light and bulky, can afford a higher rate than one
filled with scrap-iron. Cars filled with grain, lumber, coal, or ore are
made up in train-loads, and form a part of the daily haul; they can
afford to be taken at a lower rate than the stuffs of which only an
occasional car-load is hauled. In order to adjust this problem it is
customary to divide freights into six general classes.
[Illustration: THE PROBLEM OF FREIGHT RATES]
In handling through freights the problems are many, and, if two or more
roads have the same terminal points, a great deal of friction of
necessity results. The longest roads must either make their through
rates lower than local rates between distant points, or lose much of
their through business. They cannot afford to do the latter and the
statutory laws may forbid the former. As a result the laws most likely
are evaded, or else openly disobeyed.[20]
The difficulties in adjusting the matter of the long and the short
haul, as has been shown, have caused the formation of pools and various
other traffic associations, the object of which has been to prevent
rate-wars. To this extent they resulted in positive good, for a
rate-war in the end is apt to be as hurtful to the community as to the
railway company. The attempt to settle such questions has also resulted
in a great deal of legislation. Some of this has been wise and good; but
not a little has been hurtful both to the railroads and to the
community. The general result is seen in the great combination of
competing lines and, more recently, of competing systems.
=Passenger Service.=--Passenger traffic is more easily managed than the
movement of freight. For the greater part the rates are fixed by law. On
a few eastern roads local rates are two cents per mile; in the main,
however, a three-cent rate prevails, except that in sparsely peopled
regions the rates are four and five cents per mile. On many roads
1,000-mile books are sold at the rate of twenty dollars; on some the
rate is twenty-five dollars per book.
Long-distance rates involving passage over several roads are somewhat
less than the local rates. These rates are determined by joint
passenger-tariff associations. Each individual road fixes its own
excursion and commutation rates; one or another of the joint passenger
associations determines the rates where several roads divide the
traffic. The latter are usually one, or one and one-third fares for the
round trip.
Except on a few local roads in densely peopled regions the passenger
service is much less remunerative than freight business, and not a few
railways would abolish passenger trains altogether were they permitted
to do so. Rate-cutting between competing roads has not been common since
the existence of joint passenger associations. It is sometimes done
secretly, however, through the use of ticket-brokers, or "scalpers," who
are employed to sell tickets at less than the usual rate; it is also
done by the illicit use of tickets authorized for given purposes, such
as "editors'," "clergymen's," and "advertising" transportation.
In many instances, where several roads have the same terminal points, it
is customary for the road or roads having the quickest service to allow
a lower rate to the others. Thus, of the seven or eight roads between
New York and Chicago, the two best equipped roads charge a fare of
twenty dollars on their ordinary, and a higher rate on their limited,
trains. Because of slower time the other roads charge a sum less by two
or three dollars for the same service. This cut in the rate is called a
"differential."
=Railway Mileage.=--The railways of the world in 1900 had an aggregate of
nearly four hundred and eighty thousand miles distributed as follows:
North America 216,000
Europe 173,000
Asia 36,000
South America and West Indies 28,000
Australasia 15,000
Africa 12,000
In western Europe and the eastern United States there is an average of
one mile of railway to each six or eight square miles of area. In these
countries railway construction has reached probably its highest
development, and the proportion seems to represent the mileage necessary
for the commercial interests of the people.
The railways of the United States aggregate 193,000 miles--nearly
one-half the total mileage of the world. Over this enormous trackage
38,000 locomotives and 1,400,000 coaches and cars carry yearly
600,000,000 passengers and 1,000,000,000 tons of freight. They represent
an outlay of about $5,000,000,000. Owing to the absence of the
international problems that have greatly interfered with the
organization of European railways, the roads of the United States have
developed "trunk-system" features to a higher degree than is found
elsewhere.
In the United States and Canada the farms of the great central plain,
together with the coal-mines, are the great centres of production, while
the seaports of the two coasts form great centres of distribution. Most
of the trunk lines, therefore, extend east and west; of the north and
south lines only two are important. The reason for the east-west
direction of the great trunk lines is obvious; the great markets of
North America, Europe, and Asia lie respectively to the east and the
west.
[Illustration: THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE RAILWAYS OF THE UNITED STATES
THEIR POSITION DEPENDS ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE LAND]
=Railway Ownership.=--The ownership of railways is vested either in
national governments or else in corporate companies; in only a few
instances are roads held individually by private owners, and these are
mainly lumber or plantation roads. Thus, the railways of Prussia are
owned by the state; most of those of the smaller German states are owned
either by the state or by the empire; still others are owned by
corporate companies and managed by the imperial government. In their
management military use is considered as first in importance.
In France governmental ownership and management have been less
successful. Plans for an elaborate system of state railways failed, and
the state now owns and operates only 1,700 miles, mainly, in the
southwest. Belgium controls and operates all her lines, but as the
latter are short and the area of the state small, there are no
difficulties in the way of excellent management. In Great Britain all
the railways are owned and controlled by corporate companies. The great
transcontinental line of the Russian Empire was built by the government,
but the latter does not own it.
In the United States the railways are now owned by corporate companies.
Some of the western roads were built by Government subsidies;[21] other
roads were built by the aid of States, counties, or cities, which
afterward sold them to corporate companies. The first transcontinental
railways required Government assistance, and could not have been built
without it; nowadays, however, corporate companies find no difficulty in
providing the capital for any railway that is needed.
Inasmuch as the railway is a positive necessity, upon whose existence
depends the transportation of the food daily required in the great
centres of population, the charter of the railway gives the company
extraordinary powers. Most steam railway companies are permitted by the
State to exercise the power of _eminent domain_--that is, they may seize
and hold the land on which to locate their tracks and buildings, if it
cannot be acquired by the consent of the owners; they may also seize
coal and other materials consigned to them for shipment if such
materials are necessary to operate their lines.
Therefore, in consideration of the unusual powers possessed by the
companies, the various States reserve the right to regulate the freight
and passenger tariffs. They may also compel the companies to afford
equal facilities to all patrons, and take the measures necessary to
prevent discrimination.
The control of the railways by the government may be absolute, as in the
German state of Prussia; or it may consist of a general supervision, as
in the case of the Canadian railways. In almost every European state
there is a director or else a commission to act as a representative
between the railways and the people. In the United States the various
States have each a railway commission, while the general Government is
represented by the Interstate Commerce Commission.
=Electric Railways.=--The use of electricity as a motive power has not
only revolutionized suburban traffic but it has become a great factor in
rural transportation as well. The speed of the horse-car rarely exceeded
five or six miles per hour, while that of the electric car is about ten
miles per hour in city streets and about twice as great over rural
roads. As a result, the suburban limits of the large centres of
population have greatly extended, and the population of the outlying
districts has been increased from four to ten fold.
[Illustration: ELECTRIC RAILWAY--ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
[Illustration: ELECTRIC FREIGHT LOCOMOTIVE--ERIE RAILROAD]
From some of the larger cities the electric roads reach out to
distances of one hundred miles or more and have become the carriers of
perishable freight, such as fruit and dairy products. These are not only
delivered just as promptly as though they were sent over the steam
roads, but the delivery is more frequent. Indeed, the marvellous success
of the electric interurban railway is due mainly to the frequency of its
service.
=Public Roads and Highways.=--Carriages propelled by steam, electric, and
gasoline motors have become an important factor in the delivery of goods
in nearly every city of Europe and America. They are not only speedier
than the horse and wagon, but their keeping costs less. They are
economical only on good roads. The bicycle, no longer a plaything,
exerted a very decided effect on transportation when the "pneumatic" or
inflated rubber tire came into use. Through the bicycle came the demand
for good roads; and several thousand miles of the best surfaced roads
are built in the United States each year.
The ordinary highways or roads, the paved streets of the large cities
excepted, are popularly known either as "dirt" roads or "macadamized"
roads, the latter name being applied to about every sort of graded
highway that has been surfaced with broken rock. Most of the roads of
western Europe are of this character. They are laid out with easy
grades, and a thick foundation of heavy stone is covered with smaller
pieces of broken rock, the whole being finished off with a top-dressing
of fine material. Once built, the expense of keeping them in good order
is less than that of keeping a dirt road in bad order.
Most of the country highways of the United States are dirt roads that
are deep with dust in dry weather and almost impassable at the breaking
of winter. Roads of this character are such a detriment that grain
farming will not pay when the farm is distant twenty miles or more from
the nearest railway. Many a farmer pays more to haul his grain to the
nearest railway station than from the railway station to London.
Since it has become apparent that the commercial development of many
agricultural regions depends quite as much on good wagon roads as upon
railways and expensive farming machinery, there has been a disposition
to grade and rock-surface all roads that are important highways.
Intercommunication becomes vastly easier; the cost of transportation is
lessened by more than one-half; and the wear and destruction of vehicles
is reduced to a minimum. In every case the improvement of the road is
designed to increase traffic by making a given power do more work in
less time.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What have been the effects of Bessemer steel on the carrying power of
railways?--on cheapening freight rates?
What would be some of the effects first apparent were a large city like
London or New York suddenly cut off from railway communication?
What is meant by a tubular boiler?--by a forced draught?--by a
switch?--by an automatic coupler?
Ascertain from a railway official the various danger-signals as
indicated by lights, flags, and whistle-blasts.
Why should not crated furniture and coal have the same freight rate?
What is meant by a pool?--by long haul and short haul?--by rebate?
If the rate on a given weight of merchandise is one dollar and fifty
cents for five miles, should it be three hundred dollars for one
thousand miles?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Hartley's Railroad Transportation.
American Railways.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF VEGETATION]
CHAPTER VII
FACTORS IN THE LOCATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS
The population of the world is very unevenly distributed. Not far from
nine-tenths live in lowland plains, below an altitude of 1,200 feet, in
regions where food-stuffs grow. The remainder live mainly in the
grass-producing regions of the great plateaus, the mining regions or the
flood-plains and grassy slopes of the higher montane regions.
=Communal Life.=--In each of these regions, also, there is a very unequal
massing of population. In part, the various families live isolated from
one another; in part, they gather into cities and villages. In other
words the population of a habitable region may be classed as _rural_ and
_urban_. In the United States and western Europe, agricultural pursuits
encourage rural life, each family living on its own estate. In Russia,
the agricultural population usually cluster in villages.
The farmer or freeholder who owns or controls his estate, exemplifies
the most advanced condition of personal and political liberty. Only a
few centuries have elapsed since not only the land but also the life of
a subject was the property of the king or the feudal lord, and in those
days about the only people living in isolation were outlaws. In most
cases the communal system, best exemplified in Russia, marks an
intermediate stage between a low and a high state of civilization; in
other instances it is necessary in order to insure safety. German
farmers in Siberia usually adopt the village plan for this reason.
For the greater part, the non-agricultural population of the civilized
world is massed in villages and cities for reasons that have nothing to
do with either civilization or self-defence. The causes that bring about
the massing of urban population are many and their operation is complex.
In general, however, it is to facilitate one or more of several things,
namely--the receiving, distribution, and transportation of commodities,
the manufacture of products, the existence of good harbors, and the
existence of minerals and metals necessary in the various industries.
=The Beginnings of Towns and Cities.=--The "country town" of agricultural
regions in many ways is the best type of the centre of population
engaged in receiving and disbursing commodities. The farmers living in
their vicinity send their crops to it for transportation or final
disposition. The country store is a sort of clearing-house, exchanging
household and other commodities, such as sugar, tea, coffee, spices,
drugs, silks, woollens, cotton goods, farming machinery, and furniture
for farm products. A railway station, grain elevator, and one or more
banks form the rest of its business equipment.
Usually the town has resulted from a position of easy access. It may be
the crossing of two highways, a good landing-place on a river, the
existence of a fording-place, a bridge, a ferry, a toll gate, or a point
that formed a convenient resting-place for a day's journey. The towns
and villages along the "buffalo" roads are examples almost without
number.
The "siding" or track where freight cars may be held for unloading, has
formed the beginning of many a town. The siding was located at the
convenience of the railway company; the village resulting could have
grown equally well almost anywhere else along the line.
[Illustration: THE EFFECT OF POSITION--BUFFALO IS AT THE FOOT OF LAKE
ERIE AND THE HEAD OF ERIE CANAL; AN EXCELLENT HARBOR FACILITATES ITS
COMMERCE]
In the early history of nearly every country, military posts formed the
beginnings of many centres that have grown to be large cities. Thus,
Rome, Paris, London, the various "chesters"[22] of England, Milan,
Turin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburg, and Albany were established first as
military outposts. The trading post was most conveniently established
under the protection of the military camp, and the subsequent growth
depended partly on an accessible position, and partly on the
intelligence of the men who controlled the trade of the surrounding
regions.
=Harbors as Factors in the Growth of Cities.=--A good harbor draws trade
from a great distance. Thus, with a rate of 14-1/2 cents on a bushel of
wheat from Chicago, New York City draws a trade from a region having a
radius of more than one thousand miles. In its trade with Chinese ports,
Seattle, the chief port of Puget Sound, reaches as far eastward as
London and Hamburg.
=Water-Power as a Factor.=--The presence of water-power has brought about
the establishment of many centres that have grown into populous cities.
The water-power of the New England plateau had much to do with the rapid
growth of the New England States. At the time of the various embargo and
non-intercourse acts preceding the war of 1812, a great amount of
capital was thrown into idleness. The water-power was made available
because, during this time, the people were compelled to manufacture for
themselves the commodities that before had been imported.
The manufacturing industry at first was prosecuted in the southern
Appalachians as well as in the New England plateau. It survived in the
latter, partly because of the capital available, and partly owing to the
business experience of the people. In the meantime villages sprang up in
pretty nearly every locality in which there was available water-power.
Since the use of coal and the advent of cheap railway transportation,
steam has largely supplanted water-power, unless the latter is unlimited
in supply. As a result, there is a marked growth of the smaller centres
of population along the various water-fronts. In such cases the
advantages of a water-front offset the loss of water-power.
=The Effects of Metals on the Growth of Cities.=--The character of the
industry of a region has much to do with the character of its
manufactures. Thus, coal is absolutely essential to the manufacture of
iron and steel; and, inasmuch as from two to eight tons of the former
are necessary to manufacture a ton of steel, it is cheaper to ship the
ore to a place to which coal can be cheaply brought.
The coal-fields are responsible for the greater part of Pittsburg's
population, and almost wholly for that of Scranton, Wilkesbarre, and
many other Pennsylvania towns. Iron and coal are responsible, also, for
many cities and towns in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. Birmingham,
Salford, and Cardiff in Great Britain, Dortmund and Essen in Germany,
and St. Etienne in France have resulted from the presence of coal and
iron.
In many instances man is a great factor in the establishment of a centre
of population. Chicago would have been quite as well off in two or three
other locations; its present location is the result of man's energy and
is not likely to be changed. St. Louis might have been built at a dozen
different places and would have fared just as well; the same is true of
St. Paul, or of Indianapolis.
Leavenworth at one time was a more promising city than Kansas City, but
the building of an iron bridge over the Missouri River at the latter
place gave it a start, and wide-awake men kept it in the lead. It has
grown at the expense of Leavenworth and St. Joseph, neither one of which
has become a commercial centre. Cairo, at the junction of the
Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, has the geographical position for a great
city; it waits for the man who can concentrate the commerce there.
=Adjustment to Environment.=--San Francisco was wisely located at first,
but its grain trade was more economically carried on at Karquinez
Strait, while its oriental trade is gradually concentrating at Seattle.
Philadelphia lost its commercial supremacy when the completion of the
Erie Canal gave return cargoes to foreign vessels discharging at New
York City. Oswego, N.Y., had the advantage of both harbor facilities and
water-power, but Syracuse, with practically no advantages except those
of leadership, has far outstripped it.
Such instances of the readjustment of centres of population have been
common in the past; they will also occur in the future. In nearly every
case the readjustment results from economic causes, the opening of new
lines of transportation, the lowering of the cost of the production of a
commodity, the discovery of new economic processes--all these cause a
disturbance of population, and the latter must readjust itself to new
and changed conditions.
Not all peoples have the necessary intelligence and training at first to
adapt themselves to their environment. For the greater part, the
American Indians were unable to take advantage of the wonderful
resources of the continent in which they lived. The Boers occupied about
the richest part of Africa, but made no use of the natural wealth of the
country beyond the grazing industry; in fact, their nomadic life reduced
them to a plane of civilization materially lower than that of their
ancestors.
People of the highest state of civilization do not always adjust
themselves to their environment readily. The people of the New England
plateau were nearly a century in learning that they possessed nearly all
the best harbors of the Atlantic coast of North America. When, however,
the great commerce of the country had been wiped out of existence, it
did not take them long to readjust themselves to the industry of
manufacture, the water-power being the natural resource that made the
industry profitable.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Were the middle Atlantic coast of the United States to undergo an
elevation of 100 feet, what would be the effect on New York City?
Find the factors that led to the settlement of the city or town in which
or near which you live. What caused the settlement of the three or four
largest towns in the same county?--of the following places: Minneapolis,
Fall River, New Haven, New Bedford, Cairo (Ill.), Cairo (Egypt),
Marseille, Aix-la-Chapelle, Alexandria (Egypt), Washington (D.C.),
Columbus (O.), Johannesburg (Africa), Kimberley (Africa), Albany (N.Y.),
Punta Arenas (S.A.), Scranton (Pa.), Vancouver (B.C.), San Francisco,
Cape Nome?
What circumstances connected with commerce led to the passing of the
following-named places: Palmyra, Carthage, Babylon, Genoa, Venice,
Ancient Rome, Jerusalem?
COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Any good cyclopaedia.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CEREALS AND GRASSES
Of all the plants connected with the economies of mankind the grasses
hold easily the first place. Not only are the seeds of certain species
the chief food of nearly all peoples, but the plants themselves are the
food of most animals whose flesh is used as meat. Wheat, maize, and rice
are used by all except a very few peoples; and about all the animals
used for food, fish and mollusks excepted, are grain eaters, or grass
eaters, or both.
The grasses of the Plains in Texas, the Veldt in South Africa, and the
hills of New Zealand by nature's processes are converted into meat that
feeds the great cities of western Europe and the eastern United States.
The corn of the Mississippi valley becomes the pork which, yielded from
the carcasses of more than forty million swine, is exported to half the
countries of the world. Even the two and one-half billion pounds of wool
consumed yearly is converted grass.
=Wheat.=--The wheat of commerce is the seed of several species of cereal
grass, one of which, _Triticum sativum_, is the ordinary cultivated
plant. Wild species are found in the highlands of Kurdistan, in Greece,
and in Mesopotamia, that are identical with species cultivated to-day.
It is thought that the cultivation of the grain began in Mesopotamia,
but it is also certain that it was grown by the Swiss lake-dwellers far
back in prehistoric times. It is the "corn" Joseph's brothers sought to
buy when they went to Egypt, and the records of its harvesting are
scattered all over the pages of written history.
[Illustration: THE GRAIN CROP--MODERN METHODS OF CULTIVATION AND
HARVESTING]
Of the one and one-half billion people that constitute the world's
population, more than one-third, or about eight times the population of
the United States, are consumers of wheat-bread; and this number is
yearly increasing by twelve million. Moreover, each individual of this
aggregate consumes yearly very nearly one barrel of flour, or about four
and one-half bushels of wheat. In other words, it requires somewhat more
than two billion three hundred million bushels of wheat each year to
supply the world's demand.[23] As a matter of fact the world's crop is
yearly consumed so nearly to the danger-line that very often the
"visible supply," or the amount known to be in the market, is reduced to
a few million bushels.
Wheat will grow under very wide ranges of climate, but it thrives best
between the parallels of 25 deg. and 55 deg. In a soil very rich in
vegetable mould it is apt to "run to stalk." A rather poor clay-loam
produces the best seed,[24] and a hard seed, rather than a heavy stalk,
is required.
In the latitude of Kansas the seeds planted in the fall will retain
their vitality through the winter; in the latitude of Dakota they are
"winter-killed," as a rule. Because of this feature two broad classes or
divisions of the crop are recognized in commerce--the winter and the
spring varieties. In general, the spring wheats are regarded as the
better, and this is nearly always the case in localities too cold for
winter wheat. There are exceptions to this rule, however. In the main,
winter wheat ripens first, and is therefore first in the market.[25]
[Illustration: WHEAT]
In Europe the plain that faces the North and Baltic Seas, and that part
which extends through southern Russia, yield the chief part of the
crop, although the plains of the Po, the Danube, and Bohemia furnish
heavy crops. Russia, France, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy are all
wheat states.
In a normal year all Europe produces a little more than one-half
(fifty-five per cent.) of the world's crop. Russia and France excepted,
scarcely another state produces as much as is consumed. Great Britain
consumes her entire crop in three months; Germany in about six months.
France sends a part of her crop to Great Britain and buys of Russia to
fill the deficiency. Russia consumes but very little of her wheat-crop;
it is nearly all sold to the states of western Europe. All Europe
consumes about one billion seven hundred and ten million bushels, but
produces about one billion two hundred and fifty million; the remainder
is supplied by the United States, India, Argentina, Africa, and
Australia.
[Illustration: WHEAT IN UNITED STATES]
In the United States the great bulk of the crop comes from the upper
Mississippi valley and Pacific coast States. About one-third is
consumed where it is grown; more than one-third is required for the
populous centres of the east; a little less than one-third is exported,
of which about ninety per cent. goes to Europe.
[Illustration: WHEAT PRODUCTION]
Much of this, especially the Pacific coast product, is sold unground,
but each year an increasing amount is made into flour. The flour
manufacture of the United States aggregates somewhat more than
160,000,000 barrels yearly--the output of 16,000 flour-mills; the
Pillsbury mills of Minneapolis alone have a capacity of 60,000 barrels a
week. In Europe the Hungarian mills and their output of Bohemian flour
are the chief competitors of the United States.
[Illustration: WHEAT]
The wheat-crop of the Pacific coast has usually been a factor by itself.
On account of the absence of summer rains, the kernel is both plump and
hard. After the threshing process it is sacked and stored in the fields
in which it has grown.[26] Heretofore much of the sacked wheat has been
shipped to European markets by the Cape Horn route, but in late years a
yearly increasing amount is made into flour and sold in China, Japan,
and Siberia. In 1900 nearly two million barrels were thus sent.
East of the Rocky Mountains, after the grain is harvested much of it is
sold to dealers whose storage elevators[27] are scattered all over the
wheat-growing region, and at all great points of shipment, such as
Duluth, Minneapolis, Buffalo, and the eastern seaports. Before the grain
is transferred to the elevators it is inspected and graded, and the cars
which contain it are sealed. This wheat constitutes the "visible
supply." All the business concerning it is transacted by means of
"warehouse receipts," that have almost the currency of ready money.
Banks loan money on them almost to their market value.
Under normal conditions, the cost of growing and harvesting a bushel of
wheat--including interest on the land and deterioration of the
machinery, etc.--is between fifty and fifty-five cents. The market
price, when not affected by "corners" and other gambling transactions,
usually varies between sixty-two and eighty-five cents. The difference
between these figures is divided between the farmer and the "middlemen,"
the share of the latter being in the form of commissions and elevator
charges.
[Illustration: STORING PACIFIC COAST WHEAT]
In addition to bread-making wheat, certain varieties of grain known as
macaroni wheat have a certain importance in the market. Several
varieties are so hardy that they easily resist extremely cold winters;
they will also grow in regions too dry for ordinary varieties. In this
respect they are well adapted to the plains at the eastern base of the
Rocky Mountains. The only detriment is the lack of a steady market.
Macaroni wheat has a very hard kernel and is rich in gluten. It is used
mainly in the manufacture of macaroni paste, but in Europe, when mixed
with three times its weight of ordinary soft wheat, it is much used in
making flour. The small amount now grown in the United States is shipped
mainly to France.
The yield of wheat varies partly with the rainfall, but the difference
is due mainly to skill in cultivation. In western Europe it is from two
to three times as great as in the United States; in Russia and India it
is much less.[28]
The yearly consumption of wheat is increasing very rapidly both in the
United States and in Europe; moreover, China is becoming a
wheat-consuming country. In the United States the consumption is
increasing so rapidly that unless either the acreage of the crop, or
else the yield per acre, is materially increased, there will be no
surplus for export after the year 1931.
[Illustration: THE WHEAT INDUSTRY--GRAIN ELEVATORS AT BUFFALO, NEW
YORK]
In the United States the acreage may be somewhat increased by the
irrigation of arid lands now uncultivated, and by the reclamation of
overflowed and swamp lands. There are far greater possibilities,
however, in the employment of methods of cultivation which will double
the rate of present yield. It is doubtful if there can be much increase
of acreage in the States of the Mississippi Valley, where the acreage
will of necessity be lessened rather than increased.
In western Europe there can be no material increase of the acreage or
the rate of yield; in Russia both are possible. The plains of Argentina
now yield a notable quantity--about one hundred million bushels--and the
amount may be increased. Moreover, a large product may be obtained from
both Uruguay and Paraguay, and southern Brazil, neither one of which
produces a considerable quantity. At the present rate of the increase in
consumption, all of the available land, yielding its maximum, will not
produce a sufficient crop at the end of the twentieth century.
=Corn.=--Maize or Indian corn is the seed of a plant, _Zea mays_, a member
of the grass family. It is not known to exist in a wild state. The
species now cultivated are undoubtedly derived from the American
continent, but evidence is not wanting to show that it was known in
China and the islands of Asia before the discovery of America.[29] The
commercial history of corn begins with the discovery of America. Next to
meat it was the chief food of the native American; next to wheat it is
the chief food-stuff in the American continent to-day.
Corn requires a rich soil and is not so hardy as wheat. It thrives best
in regions having long summers and warm nights. The growing crop is
easily injured by too much rain. It is an abundant crop in the central
Mississippi Valley, but not near the coast; it is very prolific in
Nebraska, but not in Dakota; it thrives in Italy, Austria, and the
Balkan Peninsula, but not in the British Isles and Germany. It is a very
important crop in Australia, and is the staple grain of Mexico. It is
the crop of fourteen-hour days and warm nights.
[Illustration: CORN]
The United States is the chief producer of corn, and from an area of
80,000,000 acres--about that of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
combined--more than two billion bushels, or four-fifths of the world's
crop, are produced. In the past few years the area planted with corn has
not materially increased, and it is likely to be lessened rather than
increased in the future. From the same acreage, however, the annual
yield, now about twenty-five or thirty bushels per acre, can be more
than doubled by the use of more skilful methods of cultivation.
Corn contains more fatty substance, or natural oil, than wheat, and
therefore has a greater heating power. For this reason it is better than
wheat for out-of-door workers, and it is almost the only cereal
food-stuff consumed in Spanish America. It is also a staple food-stuff
in Egypt. Corn has been used as a bread-stuff in the United States,
Italy, and Rumania[30] for a long time. In recent years, however, its
use has become very popular in Europe.
[Illustration: CORN PRODUCTION]
In the United States by far the greater part of the crop is consumed
where it is grown, being used to fatten swine and cattle. The market
value of a pound of corn is about one-third of a cent; converted into
pork or beef, however, it is worth five or six times as much. By feeding
the corn to stock, therefore, a farmer may turn an unmarketable product
into one for which there is a steady demand.
[Illustration: CORN]
Although corn is not so essential a staple as wheat, it has a much wider
range of usefulness. The starch made from it is considered a delicacy
and is used very largely in America and Europe as an article of food.
Glucose, a cheap but wholesome substitute for sugar, is made from it;
from the oil a substitute for rubber is prepared; smokeless powder and
other explosives are made from the pith of the stalk; while a very
large part of the product is used in the manufacture of liquor.
=Rye.=--Rye is the seed of a cereal grass, _Secale cereale_, a plant
closely resembling wheat in external appearance. Rye will grow in soils
that are too poor for wheat; its northern limit is in latitudes somewhat
greater than that of wheat, also. It is an ideal crop for the sandy
plain stretching from the Netherlands into central Russia, and this
locality produces almost the whole yield. The world's crop is about one
and a half billion bushels, of which Russia produces nearly two-thirds.
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Japan grow nearly all the rest. It is
consumed where it is grown. In the United States the yearly product is
about twenty-five million bushels, about one-tenth of which is exported
to Europe. Rye-bread is almost always sour, and this fact is its chief
disadvantage.
=Barley.=--Barley is the seed of several species of cereal grass, mainly
_Hordeum distichum_ and _Hordeum vulgare_. It is one of the oldest-used
of bread-stuffs. It can be cultivated farther north than wheat, and
about as far within the tropics as corn; it has, therefore, very wide
limits. Formerly it was much used in northwestern Europe as a
bread-stuff, but in recent years it has been in part supplanted by wheat
and corn. Barley is a most excellent food for horses, and in California
is grown mainly for this purpose. Its chief use is for the manufacture
of the malt used in brewing.
The world's crop of barley is not far from one billion bushels, of which
the United States produces about sixty million bushels. Most of the crop
is grown in the Germanic states of Europe, and in Russia.
=Oats.=--The oat is the seed of a cereal grass, _Avena sativa_ being the
species almost always cultivated. It is not known where the cultivated
species originated, but the earliest known locality is central Europe,
where it was certainly a domestic plant during the Bronze Age. It seems
probable that the species now cultivated in Scotland at one time grew
wild in western Europe; certain it is that wild species are found in
North America.
[Illustration: OATS PRODUCTION]
The oat grows within rather wider limits of latitude, and thrives in a
greater variety of soils than does wheat. Grown in a moist climate,
however, the grain is at its best. The oat-crop of the world aggregates
more than three billion bushels, surpassing that of wheat or corn in
measurement, but not in weight. A small portion of this is used as a
bread-stuff, but the greater part is used as horse-food, for which it is
remarkably adapted.
[Illustration: OATS]
In Europe, Russia is the greatest producer, and its yearly oat harvest
is about one-quarter of the world's crop. The states of northwestern
Europe yield about half the entire crop; the wheat-growing area of the
United States produces the remaining one-fourth. Russia and the United
States are both exporters, the grain going to western Europe. By far the
greater part of the grain is consumed where it is grown.
=Rice.=--Rice is the seed of a cereal grass, _Oryza sativa_. It is claimed
to be native to India, but it is known to have been cultivated in China
for more than five thousand years. It grows wild in Australia and
Malaysia.
Rice requires plenty of warmth and moisture. It is cultivated in the
warmer parts of the temperate zone, but it thrives best in the tropical
regions. In China a considerable upland rice is grown, but for the
greater part it is grown in level lowlands that may be flooded with
water. The preparation of the fields is a matter of great expense, for
they may require flooding and draining at a moment's notice. The crop
matures in from three to six months. After threshing, the seed is still
covered with a husk, and in this form it is known as "paddy."
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why is not wheat-growing a profitable industry in the New England
States?--in the plains at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains?--in
the southern part of the United States?
What are meant by the following terms: No. 1 spring, a corner, a disk
harrow, a cradle, a flail, a separator, futures, warehouse certificates?
In 1855 the price of a barrel of flour in New York or Boston was about
twelve dollars; at the close of the century it was less than five.
Explain how the lessened price came about.
From a census or other report make a list of the ten leading
wheat-producing States; the ten that produce the most corn.
Why are the foreign shipments of oats less than those of wheat?
What are the prices current of wheat, corn, oats, and barley to-day?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain samples of the different kinds of wheat, oats, barley, corn,
millet, and rice. Put the grain in small, closely stoppered vials;
attach the heads of the small grains to sheets of cardboard of the
proper size.
Read "The Wheat Problem"--Chapter I.
[Illustration: PICKING COTTON, ALABAMA]
[Illustration: TRANSPORTING COTTON FROM WHARF, CHARLESTON, S.C.]
[Illustration: COTTON PRESS YARD, NEW ORLEANS, LA.]
CHAPTER IX
TEXTILE FIBRES
Under the term "textile" are included the fibrous substances that can be
spun into threads, and woven or felted into cloth. Some of these, like
the covering of the sheep, goat, and llama, or the cocoon of the
silk-worm, are of animal origin; others, like cotton furze, the husk of
the cocoanut, and the bast of the flax-plant are vegetable products.
Their use in the manufacture of cloth antedates the period at which
written history begins; it probably begins with the time when primitive
man gradually ceased to have the hairy covering necessary to protect him
from the conditions of climate and weather.
As body coverings all these substances are dependent on a single
principle, namely--they are poor conductors of heat; that is, they do
not permit the natural heat of the body to pass away quickly, nor do
they allow sudden changes of the temperature to reach the body quickly.
In other words, because of the artificial covering which mankind alone
requires, bodily heat is not dissipated more rapidly than it is created;
if it were, the covering would be worthless. A suit of clothes made of
steel wire, for instance, because it conducts heat so rapidly, might
chill, or perhaps heat the body more quickly than the open air.
With respect to warming qualities wool surpasses all other textiles. It
is employed for clothing in every part of the world and by nearly all
peoples. Cotton is used mainly also for body coverings, but it is
inferior to wool for protection against cold. It is used by practically
all peoples, savage and civilized, outside of the frigid zones. Linen
is inferior both to cotton and wool for clothing; its use is also
restricted by its great cost. Silk is used mainly for ornamental cloths.
Hemp is used mainly for cordage, and the use of ramie, jute, and sisal
hemp is confined mainly to the manufacture of very coarse cloths and
rugs.
=Cotton.=--The cotton fibre of commerce is the lint surrounding the seeds
of several species of _Gossypium_, plants belonging to the same natural
order as the marshmallow and the hollyhock. The cultivated species have
been carried from India to different parts of the world, but
cotton-bearing plants are also native to the American. A native
tree-cotton, known as Barbados cotton, occurs in the West Indies; a
herbaceous cotton-plant is known to have been cultivated in Peru long
before the discovery of Columbus.
[Illustration: COTTON-PRODUCING REGIONS]
More than four hundred years before the Christian era Herodotus
describes it and mentions a gin for separating the lint from the seed.
Nearchus, an admiral serving under Alexander the Great, brought to
Europe specimens of cotton cloth, and in the course of time it became an
article of commerce among Greek and Roman merchants.
The cotton-plant requires warmth, moisture, and a long season. It also
thrives best near the sea. It grows better, on the whole, in subtropical
rather than in tropical regions, and the difference is due probably to
the longer days and higher temperature of the subtropical latitudes. In
the United States the northern limit is approximately the thirty-eighth
parallel. The seeds are planted, as a rule, during the first three weeks
of April and the first two of May. The plants bloom about the middle of
June; the boll or pod matures during July, and bursts about the first of
August. The picking begins in August.
[Illustration: COTTON IN THE UNITED STATES]
The yield and the quality of the textile depend not only on conditions
of the soil, but on locality. In the river flood-plains of the southern
United States the yield is about two bales per acre; on the bluff lands
it is but little more than one, unless unusual care is taken in the
preparation of the land. The islands off the Carolina coast produce a
very fine long-staple variety, commercially known as _sea island
cotton_. A district in China produces a good fibre of brownish color
known as _nankeen_, named for the city of Nanking, whence formerly it
was exported. The valley of Piura River, Peru, produces varieties of
long-staple cotton that in quality closely resemble silk.
The fibre of ordinary American cotton is about seven-eighths of an inch
long; it is made into the fabrics commercially known as "domestics" and
"prints," or calico. If the fibre averages a little longer than the
common grades it is reserved for canvas. Ordinary Peruvian cotton has a
fibre nearly two inches long; it is used in the manufacture of hosiery
and balbriggan underwear, and also to adulterate wool. The long-staple
cotton of the Piura Valley is bought by British manufacturers at a high
price, and used in the webbing of rubber tires and hose. Egyptian cotton
is very fine and is used mainly in the manufacture of thread and the
finer grades of balbriggan underwear. Sea island fibre is nearly two
inches long and is used almost wholly in the making of thread and lace.
The introduction of cotton cultivation resulted in very far-reaching
consequences both from a political as well as an economic stand-point.
The invention of the steam-engine by Watt gave England an enormous
mechanical power. To utilize this the cotton industry was wrested from
Hindustan; the mills were concentrated in Manchester and Lancashire; the
cotton-fields were transferred to the United States.
As a result, the plains of Hindustan were strewn with the bodies of
starved weavers and spinners, but a great industry grew into existence
in England. The invention of spinning machinery by Arkwright, Crompton,
and Hargreaves, and the gradual improvement of the power-loom, greatly
reduced the cost of making the cloth and, at the same time, enormously
increased the demand for it.
[Illustration: COTTON PRODUCTION]
In the United States the consequences were far more serious. The
invention of the engine or "gin" for separating the lint from the seed
made cotton cultivation highly profitable.[31] The negro slaves, who had
been scattered throughout the colonies and the States that succeeded
them, were soon drawn to the cotton-growing States to supply the needed
field-labor; and, indeed, white workmen could not stand the hot, moist
climate of the cotton-fields.
The cotton-mills grew up in the Northern manufacturing States. The
Northern manufacturer needed a tariff on imported goods to protect him
from European competition; the Southern cotton-planter who purchased
much of his supplies abroad was hurt by the tariff. After about sixty
years of strained relations between the two sections there occurred the
Civil War which wiped out nearly one million lives, and rolled up a
debt, direct and indirect, of nearly six billions of dollars.
The world's cotton-crop aggregates from twelve million to fifteen
million bales yearly, of which the United States produces, as a rule, a
little more than three-fourths. Egypt is rapidly taking an important
place among cotton-producing countries, and, with the completion of the
various irrigating canals, will very soon rank next to the United
States. India ranks about third; China and Korea produce about the same
quantity. There are a few cotton-cloth mills in these states, but in
Japan the manufacture is increasing, the mills being equipped with the
best of modern machinery. Brazil has a small product, and Russia in Asia
needs transportation facilities only to increase largely its growing
output.
[Illustration: COTTON]
The cotton-crop of the United States is quite evenly distributed;
one-third is manufactured at home; one-third is purchased by Great
Britain; and the remaining third goes mainly to western Europe. In the
past few years China has become a constantly increasing purchaser of
American cotton. New Orleans, Galveston, Savannah, and New York are the
chief ports of shipment. The imported Egyptian and Peruvian cotton is
landed mainly at New York. Most of the cotton manufacture is carried on
in the New England States, but there is a very rapid extension of cotton
manufacture in the South.
=Wool.=--The wool of commerce is a term applied to the fleece of the
common sheep, to that of certain species of goat, and to that of the
camel and its kind. There is no hard-and-fast distinction between hair
and wool,[32] but, in general, wool fibres have rough edges, much
resembling overlapping scales which interlock with one another; hair, as
a rule, has a hard, smooth surface. If a mass of loose wool be spread
out and beaten, or if it be pressed between rollers, the fibres
interlock so closely that there results a thick, strong cloth which has
been made without either spinning or weaving.
This property, known as "felting," gives to wool a great part of its
value, and is its chief distinction from hair. Some kinds of hair,
however, have a slight felting property, and if sufficiently fine may be
spun and woven. The hair of the common goat is worthless for this
purpose, but that of the Cashmere and Angora species have the properties
of wool. The hair of the Bactrian camel, and also that of the llama,
alpaca, and vicuna is soft and fine, possessing felting qualities that
make it very superior as a textile.
[Illustration: WOOL PRODUCING REGIONS]
The quality of wool varies greatly according to the conditions of soil,
climate, and the character of the food of the animal. In commerce,
however, the fleeces are commonly graded as "long-staple,"
"short-staple," "merino," and "coarse."
In long-staple wools the fibres are from four to eight inches long;
they are more easily separated by a process much like combing, and are
therefore called "combing" wools. The cotswold, cheviot, and most of the
wools of the British Isles are of this kind; indeed, in fairly moist
lowland regions such as Canada and the United States, there is a
tendency toward the development of a long-staple product. The English
long-staple wools are largely made into worsted cloth, the Scotch
cheviot into tweeds, and the French into the best dress cloth.
If the fibres are materially less than four inches in length, the
product is classed as a short-staple or "carding" wool. By far the
greater part of the wool of the United States, Canada, and Europe is of
this class. It is disposed of according to its fineness or fitness for
special purposes, the greater part being made into cloths for the medium
grades of men's clothing.
The finest and softest wool as a rule is grown in arid, plateau regions,
and of this kind of staple the merino is an example. The fibres are fine
as silk, and the goods made from them are softer. The Mission wool of
California is the product of merino sheep, and, indeed, the conditions
of climate in southern California and Australia are such as to produce
the best merino wool. The famous Electoral wool of Saxony is a merino,
the sheep having been introduced into that country from Spain about
three hundred years ago. The merino wools, as a rule, are used in the
most highly finished dress and fancy goods.
The coarse-staple wools are very largely used for American carpets,
coarse blankets, and certain kinds of heavy outer clothing. The Russian
Donskoi wool, some of the Argentine fleeces, such as the Cordoban, and
many of those grown in wet lowlands are very coarse and harsh. The
quality is due more to climatic conditions and food than to the species
of sheep; indeed, sheep that in other regions produce a fine wool, when
introduced to this locality, after a few generations produce coarse
wool.
[Illustration: SHEEP FEEDING ON ALFALFA]
[Illustration: SHEEP RANGE, UTAH]
[Illustration: SHEEP IN FEEDING YARD
THE WOOL-GROWING INDUSTRY]
The rug wools grown in Persia, Turkestan, Turkey in Asia, and the
Caucasus Mountains are also characteristic. They vary in fineness, and
because they do not readily felt they are the best in the world for rug
stock. The "pile" or surface of the rug remains elastic and stands
upright even after a hundred years of wear. This quality is due mainly
to conditions of climate and soil.
[Illustration: WOOL PRODUCTION]
In some instances the wool is obtained by a daily combing of the
half-grown lambs. This process, however, is employed in the rug-making
districts only; in general, the fleeces are clipped either with shears
or machine clippers. In the United States the latter are generally
employed, and but little attempt is made either to sort the fleeces or
to separate the various qualities of wool in the same fleece.
The raw wool always contains foreign matter such as burs and dirt; it is
also saturated with a natural oil which prevents felting. The oil,
commonly called "grease," or "yolk," is an important article of
commerce; under the name of "lanolin" (_adeps lanae_) it is used in
medicine and pharmacy as a basis for ointments.
The world's yearly clip is a little more than two and one-half billion
pounds, of which the United States produces about one-eighth. In Europe
and the United States, owing to the increasing value of the land, the
area of production is decreasing; in Australia, South Africa, and
Argentina, where land is cheap, it is increasing. From these three
regions wool is exported; most European countries and the United States
buy it. In the latter country the consumption is about six pounds for
each person.
[Illustration: WOOL]
The wools of the Mediterranean countries--France, Spain, Italy, Algiers,
Egypt, etc.--are the best for fine cloths; those of central Asia for
rugs and shawls; the others are used mainly in medium and low grade
textiles.
=Other Wools.=--The Angora goat, originally grown in Anatolia (Asia
Minor), and the Iran States (Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan),
furnishes a beautiful white wool, commercially known as "mohair." Smyrna
is an important market for it, and England is the chief buyer. The
Angora goat has been introduced into South Africa and California, where
it is successfully grown. From the former country there is a large
export of mohair.
Cashmere wool is a fine, downy undercovering, obtained by combing the
fleece of a goat native to the Kashmir Valley in India. A single animal
yields scarcely more than an ounce or two, and the best product is worth
about its weight in gold. It is used in the manufacture of the famous
Cashmere shawls, which are sold at prices varying from five hundred to
five thousand dollars. They are made in Persia and India.
Llama and alpaca wool are fine textile obtained from animals of the
camel kind native to South America. The wool is either black or brown in
color. A considerable part is used for native-made articles, such as
saddle-blankets, etc., but much of it is exported to England.
Most of the "camel's hair" of commerce was originally worn by goats,
being called by its commercial name because of a similarity in texture
to that of the camel's hair. The camel of Turkestan, however, furnishes
a silky textile that is much used. The brown wool often found in Hamadan
rugs is natural camel's hair, and a considerable amount mixed with
sheep's wool is used in certain textiles. The camel's hair of China is
made into artists' brushes.
=Silk.=--The silk of commerce is the fibre spun by the larvae or
caterpillars of a moth, _Bombyx mori_, as they enter the chrysalis stage
of existence. The silk-growing industry includes the care and feeding of
the insect in all its stages. The leaves of the white mulberry-tree
(_morus alba_) are the natural food of the insect, and silk-growing
cannot be carried on in regions where this tree does not thrive. Not all
areas that produce the mulberry-tree, however, will also grow the
silk-worm; the latter cannot exist in regions having very cold winters,
and therefore the industry is restricted by climate.
The moth, shortly after emerging from the chrysalis stage, lays from two
or three hundred to seven hundred eggs. These are "hardy"--that is, they
will remain fertile for a long time if kept in a cool, dry place;
moisture will cause them to putrify, and heat to germinate. If well
protected, they may be transported for distances.
In rearing the silk-worm, as soon as the latter is hatched, it is placed
on mulberry-leaves, and for five weeks it does nothing but eat, in that
time consuming many times its weight of food.[33] Then it begins to spin
the material that forms its chrysalis case or cocoon. The outer part of
the case consists of a tough envelope not unlike coarse tissue-paper;
the inner part is a fine thread about one thousand feet long that has
been wound around the body of the worm. This thread or filament is the
basis of the silk textile industry.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1898, by Nature Study Pub. Co._
SILK INDUSTRY
1. Silkworm Eggs
2. Fourth-stage Worm
3. Pupa in Cocoon
4. Cocoon
5. Male Moth
6. Female Moth
7. Unspun Silk
8. Raw Manufactured Silk
9. Manufactured Silk]
[Illustration: SILK PRODUCING REGIONS]
At the proper time the cocoons are gathered and, if immediately to be
used, are plunged into hot water. This not only kills the chrysalids but
softens the cocoons as well, so that the outer cases may be removed. The
cases removed, the rest of the cocoon is soaked in warm water until the
gummy matter is softened and the fibres are free enough to be reeled. In
the latter process the ends of a number of cocoons, varying from five to
twenty, are caught and loosely twisted into a single strand. The silk
thus prepared forms the "raw silk" of commerce. Sometimes a number of
strands of raw silk are twisted into a coarse thread, thereby forming
"thrown silk." For convenience in handling, both raw and thrown silk
are made into large skeins called hanks, and most of the silk product is
exported in this form.
A given quantity of cocoons yields scarcely more than one-tenth its
weight in good raw silk. The remaining part, consisting of broken fibres
and cases, is shredded and spun into silk thread of inferior quality.
This material, commonly called "husks" or "knubs," forms an important
item in silk manufacture, and much of it is exported to Europe and
America.
[Illustration: SILK PRODUCTION]
According to traditions, not wholly trustworthy, eggs of the silk-worm
were smuggled to India in the head-dress of a Chinese princess. Thence
sericulture slowly made its way westward to Persia, Asia Minor, and the
Mediterranean countries. Wild silk, a coarse but strong product, is
grown in many of these countries, but mainly in China, where it forms an
important export. The Chinese product is commercially known as "tussar"
silk. Of the product of raw silk, about thirty-five million pounds,
China yields about two-fifths, Japan and Italy each one-fifth. The
remainder is grown in the Levant, Spain, and France.
Most of the raw silk of China is exported from Shanghai and Canton; that
of Japan is shipped mainly from Yokohama. Among European countries Italy
is the first producer of raw silk, and France the chief manufacturer.
By the operation of a heavy tariff a considerable manufacture of silk
textiles has grown up in the United States. New York City and Paterson,
N.J., are the chief centres of the industry.
The southern part of the United States offers an ideal locality for
sericulture. Various attempts at silk-worm breeding have failed from
lack of training, but not on account of geographic conditions.
=Flax.=--The flax of commerce, the basis of linen cloth, is the bast or
inner bark-fibre of an annual plant (_Linum usitalissimum_, _i.e._, most
useful fibre), native probably to the Mediterranean basin. It ranks
among the oldest known textiles. Bundles of unwrought fibre have been
found in the lake dwellings of Switzerland, and linen cloth constituted
a part of the sepulture wrappings of the ancient Egyptian dead.
Flax has a very wide range, thriving in the colder parts of Europe as
well as in tropical Asia; it does equally well in the dry summers of
California or the moist regions of the Mississippi Valley. The chief
requisite is a firm soil that contains plenty of nutrition.
After the stalks have passed maturity they are pulled up by hand;
"rippled," or deprived of their seeds and leaves; "retted," or moistened
in soft water until the bast separates; "broken" and "scutched" by a
machine which gets rid of the woody fibres; and finally the loosened
bast fibre is "hetcheled" or combed in order to separate the long, or
"line," threads from the "tow" or refuse.
Russia produces more than one-half the world's crop, but the finest and
choicest is that known as Courtrai fibre, which is grown in Belgium.
This is thought to be due to the quality of the water in the Lys River.
A considerable amount of flax grown elsewhere in Europe is sent to this
part of Belgium to be retted. Ireland and Germany produce considerable
amounts, and a small quantity is grown in the United States.
The prepared flax is used in the manufacture of linen cloth, and the
latter is almost exclusively used for table-cloths, napkins,
shirt-bosoms, collars, cuffs, and handkerchiefs. France is noted for the
manufacture of linen lawns and cambrics, and Belfast, Ireland, for
table-cloths and napkins. Nearly the whole linen product is consumed in
the United States, Canada, and western Europe; indeed, linen is a mark
of western civilization. Great Britain handles the greater part of the
linen textiles.
=Hemp.=--The true hemp of commerce is the bast or inner bark of a plant,
_Cannabis sativa_, belonging to the nettle order. It is an annual plant
having a very wide range; it occurs in pretty nearly every country of
North America, Europe, and Asia. In Europe the chief countries producing
it for commercial uses are Russia, France, Italy, and Hungary; in the
United States it is grown in California and the central Mississippi
Valley. Russia produces the largest crop; Italy the finest quality of
fibre, the best coming from the vicinity of Bologna.
The stalks grow three feet or more in height. When cultivated for the
fibre they are pulled from the ground, stripped of their leaves and
soaked until the fibre is free. They are then "retted," or beaten, and
the fibre is removed. After preparation the fibre is used mainly for the
manufacture of wrapping-twine, cordage, and a coarse canvas. Great
Britain is the chief purchaser and manufacturer.
=Manila Hemp.=--Manila hemp is the name given to a fibre obtained from the
leaves of a plant, _Musa textilis_, belonging to the banana family. The
best fibres are from six to nine feet in length, of light amber color,
and very strong. The leaves, torn into narrow strips by hand, are
afterward scraped by hand until the fibre is free of pulp. The long and
coarser fibres are made into rope; the shorter fibres are beaten and
hetcheled in the same manner as flax, until fine enough to weave into
mats, carpets, and fine cloth. The fibres that have served their
usefulness as rope are pulped and manufactured into manila paper.
Practically all the manila fibre of commerce--which is not hemp at
all--is grown in the Philippine Islands, and since peace has prevailed,
the growth and production is increasing. The crude fibre is prepared by
hand, by Filipino or by Chinese labor. The manufacture of cordage and
paper is done mainly in the United States and Great Britain. Fine
hand-made textiles are made by a few Filipino natives, but most of the
goods of this character are manufactured in France. Very fine fibre is
sometimes used as an adulterant of silk. Great Britain and the United
States are the chief purchasers.
=Sisal Hemp.=--Sisal hemp, or henequen, is a stout, stringy fibre obtained
from the thick leaves of several species of agave, to which the maguey
and century-plant belong. The cultivated species, from which most of the
commercial product is obtained, is the _Agave sisalina_, which much
resembles the ordinary century-plant.
The essential feature in the economic production of sisal hemp is
machinery for separating the fibre from the pulp of the leaf. The fibre
is whiter, cleaner, and lighter than jute; moreover, in strength it
ranks next to the best quality of manila hemp. It is used mainly in the
manufacture of grain-sacks, and the twine used on self-binding
harvesters. Nearly all the fibre of commerce is grown in the Mexican
state of Yucatan and consumed in the United States. The cultivation of
this material has made Yucatan one of the most prosperous states of
Mexico.
=Jute.=--Jute is a fibre obtained from the inner bark of a tropical plant,
_Corchorus olitorius_, belonging to the same order as the linden-tree.
The plant is an annual, growing in various moist, tropical countries,
but is extensively cultivated in India and parts of China for commercial
purposes. The fibre is prepared for manufacture in much the same manner
as hemp and flax. In India it is used mainly for the manufacture of a
coarse textile known as gunny cloth, used as bale-wrappers, and sacks
for coffee and rice. On the Pacific coast states it is used for
wheat-sacks. Calcutta is the chief centre of manufacture, but jute-sacks
are extensively manufactured by the Chinese in California and China.
=Ramie.=--This fibre, also known as China grass, is the best of two or
more species of nettles, prepared in the same manner as hemp fibre. It
is finer and stronger than jute, and will take dye-stuffs in a superior
manner. With the introduction of machinery for separating and handling
the fibre, the cultivation of the ramie-plant has spread from China to
India, Japan, and the United States. Fine textiles are now manufactured
from it, the most important being carpets, mattings, and American
"Smyrna" rugs. The last are generally sold as jute-rugs, and they are
nearly as durable as woollen floor-covers.
=Other Economic Fibres.=--The fibre of _cocoanut husk_ is largely employed
in the manufacture of coarse matting. A part of this is obtained from
tropical America, but it is a regular export of British India, where it
is known as _coir_.
The mid-rib of the _screw pine_ growing in the forests of tropical
America furnishes the material of which "Panama" hats are made. The hats
are made in various parts of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia, and were
formerly marketed in Panama. Hats made of a score of grasses and fibres
are also sold as Panamas.
A plant (_Phormium tenax_) having leaves somewhat like those of the iris
or common flag furnishes the material of which New Zealand flax is
prepared. It is used mainly in the manufacture of cordage.
_Plaiting straw_, used in the manufacture of hats and bonnets, is grown
extensively in northern Italy and in Belgium. For this product spring
wheat is very thickly sown in a soil rich in lime. The thick sowing
produces a long, slender stalk; the lime gives it whiteness and
strength. Plaiting straw is also exported from China and Japan. British
merchants handle most of the product.
_Cuba bast_, a fibre readily bleached to whiteness, is exported to the
various establishments in which women's hats are made.
_Esparto grass_, also called _alfa_, grows in Spain and the northern
part of Africa. It was formerly much used in the manufacture of the
cheaper grades of paper, but it has been largely supplanted by wood-pulp
for this purpose. The decline of the esparto grass industry led to no
little unrest among some of the native tribes of northern Africa.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What fibres were used in cloth-making in Europe before cotton was
employed?
What textiles are of necessity made of cotton?
What is a spinning jenny?--a Jacquard loom?
What are the specific differences between cotswold and merino wool?
Why were most of the cloth-making mills of the United States built at
first in the New England States?
How is the silk-making industry encouraged in the United States?
What are the chief linen manufacturing countries?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of the cotton seed, boll, raw cotton (sea island,
Peruvian, and ordinary), cotton thread, calico, gingham, domestic,
canvas, and some of the fancy textiles such as organdie, lawn, etc.
Obtain specimens of the cocoons of the silk-worm, raw silk gros-grain
cloth, pongee, and tussar silk cloth.
Obtain also specimens of merino cloth, cashmere, cheviot, and other
similar goods; compare them and note the difference.
Examine the fibres of cotton, silk, and wool under a microscope and note
the difference.
[Illustration: BRANCH OF COFFEE TREE, WEST BRAZIL]
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANTATION NEAR JOLO, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS]
[Illustration: COFFEE DRYING FIELD, BRAZIL]
CHAPTER X
PLANT PRODUCTS OF ECONOMIC USE--BEVERAGES AND MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES
It may be assumed that practically all beverages derived from plants owe
their popularity to the stimulant effects they produce. In coffee, tea,
cocoa, and mate, the stimulant principle is identical with _cafein_, the
active principle of coffee; in liquors it is a powerful narcotic
_alcohol_; non-potable substances, tobacco, opium, etc., owe their
popularity also to narcotic poisons.
=Coffee.=--The coffee "beans" of commerce are the seeds of a tree (_Coffea
arabica_) probably native to Abyssinia, but now cultivated in various
parts of the world. It was introduced into Aden from Africa late in the
fifteenth century, and from there its use spread to other cities. Rather
singularly its popularity resulted from the strong efforts made to
forbid its use.
It was regarded as a stimulant and therefore it was forbidden to
followers of Islam.[34] But its power to prevent drowsiness and sleep
during the intolerably long religious exercises was a winning feature,
and so its use became general in spite of the fulminations against it.
Coffee culture was confined to Arabia until the close of the seventeenth
century; it was then introduced into the Dutch East Indies, and for many
years the island of Java became the main supply of the world. At the
present time, Java is second only to Brazil in coffee production. In the
Old World it is now also cultivated along the Guinea coast of Africa, in
Madagascar, India, and Ceylon. In the New World the chief areas are
Brazil, Venezuela, the Central American States, and the West Indies.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCING REGIONS]
The coffee-tree may be cultivated in almost any soil that is fertile; it
thrives best, however, in red soil. Old, decomposed red lavas produce
the choicest beans. Coffee grows in any moist climate in which the
temperature does not range higher than 80 deg. F. nor lower than 55 deg.
F. An occasional frost injures but does not necessarily kill the trees,
which grow better in the shade than in the sunlight. For convenience in
gathering the crop, the trees are pruned until they are not higher than
bushes.
The fruit of the coffee-tree is a deep-red berry not quite so large as a
cherry. A juicy pulp encloses a double membrane, or endocarp, and within
the latter are the seeds which constitute the coffee of commerce.
Normally there are two seeds, but in some varieties there is a tendency
for one seed to mature, leaving the other undeveloped; this is the
"peaberry" coffee of commerce. The so-called Mocha coffee is a peaberry.
In their preparation the berries are picked when ripe and deprived of
their pulp. After pulping they are cured in the sun for about a week and
then hulled, or divested of the endocarp, a process requiring expensive
machinery. The coffee is then cleaned, and sacked.
The value of the product depends on two factors, age and the care with
which it is sorted. Formerly, in the Dutch East Indies, coffee-growing,
for the greater part, was a government privilege, and the crop was kept
for several years in storage before it was permitted to be
sold--therefore the term "Old Government" Java. Other coffee was
designated as "Private Plantations." The quality of coffee is greatly
improved with age. Brazilian and other American coffee-beans are rarely
seasoned by storage.
American coffees are almost wholly sorted by machinery. This process,
however, merely collects beans of the same size; it still leaves the
good and the bad beans together, though it is to be said that among the
largest beans there are fewer poor ones. In the coffees handled by the
Arab dealers all the sorting is done by hand, the very choice grade
selling in the large cities of Europe for the equivalent of nearly three
dollars per pound. All machine-sorted coffee is greatly improved by a
subsequent hand-sorting to remove the imperfect beans.
The naming of the different kinds of coffee is somewhat arbitrary. Thus,
Brazilian coffees are commercially known as _Rio_ because they are
shipped from the port of Rio de Janeiro; the same name is applied to the
product shipped from Santos. Nearly all Venezuela coffees are called
_Maracaibo_ although they differ much in kind and quality; most Central
American coffee is sold as _Costa Rica_; most peaberry varieties are
known as _Mocha_; and most of the East India product is popularly called
_Java_, no matter whence it comes.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCTION]
Of the American coffees Rio constitutes about half the world's product.
After sorting, the larger beans are often marketed as Java coffee, and
when the beans have been roasted it is exceedingly difficult to tell the
difference. The best Maracaibo is regarded as choice coffee, but its
flavor is not liked by all coffee-drinkers. The best Honduras and Puerto
Rico coffees take a high rank and command very high prices, retailing in
some instances at sixty cents per pound. A very choice peaberry is grown
in the volcanic soils of Mexico to which the name of _Oaxaca_ is given;
most of it is sold in the United States as a choice Mocha.
Mocha is the commercial name of a coffee at one time marketed in the
Arabian city of that name. Since the completion of the Suez Canal,
Hodeida has been the chief centre of the Arabian coffee-trade. Formerly
most of this coffee was grown in the Province of Yemen, but now it is
brought to Hodeida, from Egypt, Ceylon, and India.
About all the product is hand-sorted. The choicest is sold in
Constantinople, Cairo, and other cities near by, in some instances
bringing five dollars per pound. Very little, and only that of the most
inferior quality, ever finds its way into western Europe or the United
States. Even the best Mocha is not superior to fine Oaxaca coffee.
Java coffee is renowned the world over for its fine flavor. The best
quality was formerly that which had been held in storage to season for a
few years. The government coffee was generally the better, but some of
the private plantations crop is now equally good. Some of the Sumatra
coffees are equal to the best Java beans.
The Liberia coffees have never been favorites in the United States on
account of their flavor. In Europe they are used for blending with other
varieties.
Of the entire coffee-crop of the world, the United States consumes more
than three-quarters of a billion pounds--a yearly average of very nearly
eleven pounds for each inhabitant. This is nearly three times as much
per inhabitant as is consumed in Germany, and almost fifteen times the
average used in Great Britain. Nearly all the world's crop is consumed
in the United States and western Europe.
Chicory, parched grain, pease, and burnt parsnip are sometimes added as
adulterants to ground coffee. Of those, chicory most nearly resembles
coffee in flavor and taste. It is harmless and usually improves the
flavor of inferior coffee. A tariff recently placed upon chicory has
somewhat lessened the use of it.
=Tea.=--The tea of commerce consists of the dried and prepared leaves of
an evergreen shrub (_Thea chinensis_) belonging most probably to the
_camellia_ family. Tea has been a commercial product of China for more
than fourteen hundred years, but seems to have been carried thither from
India about five hundred years before the Christian era; for its virtues
were praised by (the probably mythical) Chinung, an emperor of that
period.
The cultivated plants are scarcely higher than bushes, but the wild
plant found in India is a tree fifteen or twenty feet in height. The
cultivated plant is quite hardy; severe winters kill it but ordinary
freezing weather merely retards its growth. It thrives best in red,
mouldy soils; the choicest varieties are grown in new soils. The leaves
are not picked until the plants are three or four years old.
Two general classes of tea are known in commerce--the green and the
black. Formerly these were grown on different varieties of the plant,
but in the newer plantations no distinction is made in the matter of
variety; the color is due wholly to the manner of preparation.
The plants are watched carefully during the seasons of picking, of which
there are three or four each year. The April picking yields the choicest
crop of leaves, and only the youngest leaves and buds are taken.[35] A
single plant rarely yields more than four or five ounces of tea yearly.
Each acre of a tea-garden yields about three hundred and fifty pounds.
After picking, the leaves are partly crushed and allowed to wilt until
they begin to turn brown in color. They are then rolled between the
hands and either dried very slowly in the sun, or else rapidly in pans
over a charcoal fire--a process known as "firing." The former method
produces _black_, the latter _green_, tea. The color of the latter is
sometimes heightened by the use of a mixture of powdered gypsum and
Prussian blue. In the black teas the green coloring matter of the leaf
is destroyed by fermentation; in the green teas it remains unchanged.
The greater part of the Chinese tea designed for export is packed rather
loosely in wooden chests lined with sheet-lead, the folds and joints of
which are soldered in order to make the cover both air-tight and
moisture-tight. A full chest contains seventy-five pounds of tea. The
Japan product is also packed in moisture-tight wrappers, the original
parcels being usually ten-pound, five-pound, and pound packages. Similar
devices are used in preparing the India and Formosa teas for ocean
shipment.
The chief tea-producing countries are India (including Ceylon) China,
Japan (including Formosa), and Java. A successful tea-garden is in
operation near Charleston, S.C. A small amount is grown in the Fiji and
Samoan Islands. The Ceylon and Formosa teas take a very high rank.
[Illustration: AREA OF TEA PRODUCTION]
Great Britain and her colonies consume the bulk of the tea-crop. The
average yearly consumption per person is eight pounds in Australia, six
in Great Britain and Cape of Good Hope, and more than four in Canada. In
the United States and Russia it is less than one pound per person.
Before the opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, most of the crop for the
English market was despatched by way of Cape of Good Hope. So important
was it to get the consignments to London without loss of time, that fast
clipper ships were built especially for carrying tea. Since the opening
of the canal the crop has been shipped mainly by the Suez route.
A part of the tea required for the United States reaches New York by way
of the Suez Canal, but the movement is gradually changing since the
building of the fast liners that now ply between Asian and American
ports. These steamships carry it to Seattle, or to Vancouver, whence it
is distributed by rail. The increased cost of shipment by this route is
more than offset by a gain of from five to seven days in time.
In some respects the Russian "caravan route" is the most important
channel of the tea-trade. The tea is collected mainly at Tientsin, and
sent by camel caravans through Manchuria to the most convenient point on
the Siberian railway. Not only the shipments of brick tea[36] for the
Russian market, but the choicest products for western Europe also are
sent by this route. It is probably an economical way of shipping the
brick tea, but a more expensive method of shipment for the latter could
not be found easily; it is preferred from the fact that, no matter how
carefully sealed, the flavor of tea is materially injured by an ocean
voyage.
It is evident, therefore, that for the tea product alone the Siberian
railway will soon become an important factor in the commerce of Europe.
Shipments of tea are also sent from Canton to Odessa, Russia, but this
route is not less expensive in the long run than the Cape route, and the
tea suffers as much deterioration from the shorter as from the longer
voyage.
=Cacao.=--Cacao, the "cocoa" of commerce, consists of the prepared seeds
of several species of _Theobroma_, the greater part being obtained from
the _Theobroma cacao_. The name is unfortunately confused with that of
the cocoa-palm, but there is no relation whatever between the two.
The seeds of the cacao were used in ancient America long before its
discovery by Columbus, and the latter carried the first knowledge of it
to Europe. By the middle of the seventeenth century it was much used in
Spain, and less than a hundred years later it had become the fashionable
drink of western Europe.
The cacao-tree, originally native to Mexico, is now cultivated
throughout tropical America and the West Indies. It is not cultivated to
any extent in the Eastern continent. The fruit consists of large, fleshy
pods, which are cut from the trees usually in June and December. The
seeds are then piled in heaps, or else packed in pits, and allowed to
undergo a rapid fermentation for a period of several days, to which
process their flavor is mainly due. The roasted and broken seeds are the
cocoa-nibs of commerce. The husks are known as cocoa-shells.
A very large part of the cacao product comes from Ecuador, Guayaquil
being perhaps the chief market of the world. The Venezuelan and
Brazilian products, however, are the choicest; these are known in
commerce respectively as Caracas and Trinidad cacao. Spain, Portugal,
and France are the chief purchasers, and in the first-named country the
consumption per person is five or six times as great as in other
countries.
Cacao is not only a stimulant beverage, but a food as well; about
one-half its weight is fat, and about one-third consists of starch and
flesh-making substances. The stimulant principle is the same as that
occurring in tea and coffee, but the proportion is considerably less. In
preparing the cocoa for the market, much of the fat is intentionally
withdrawn. The fat, commercially known as "cocoa-butter," and "oil of
theobroma," does not turn rancid.
Chocolate consists of cocoa ground to a paste with sugar and flavoring
matter, and then cast in moulds to harden. It is used mainly in the
manufacture of confectionery. Most of the chocolate is made in France,
Spain, and the United States. More than forty million pounds of cocoa
are yearly consumed in the United States.
=Mate.=--Mate, yerba mate, or Paraguay tea, is the leaf of a shrub, a
species of holly, growing profusely in the forests of Brazil, Paraguay,
Argentina, and Uruguay. In many instances, the shrub is cultivated. The
leaves are prepared in much the same manner as tea-leaves are, but
instead of being rolled, they are broken by beating.
The mate of commerce has a stimulant principle identical with that of
tea and coffee, which is the only reason for its use. The consumption,
about fifteen thousand tons a year, is confined almost wholly to the
countries named.
=Tobacco.=--The tobacco of commerce is the prepared and manufactured leaf
of several species of plant, belonging to the nightshade family. Most of
the product is derived from the species known as Virginia tobacco
(_Nicotiana tabacum_) and the Brazilian species (_Nicotiana rustica_).
The former is cultivated in the United States, West Indies, the
Philippine Islands, and Turkey; the latter has been transplanted to
central Europe and the East Indies.
The use of tobacco was prevalent in the New World at the time of
Columbus's first voyage, and was quickly introduced into Europe. The
prepared leaf contains a substance, nicotine, which is one of the most
deadly of poisons when swallowed, and an intense narcotic stimulant when
inhaled. On account of the evil effects arising from its introduction,
its use was forbidden by the Church and also by sovereigns of several
European states. The latter, however, finding that its use was becoming
general, made it a Crown monopoly. In Great Britain its cultivation was
forbidden in order to encourage its cultivation in Virginia.
Tobacco does not thrive best in a poor soil, but the latter produces a
thin, half-developed leaf, which in other plants would be called
"sickly." It grows in almost any kind of soil, but requires warm summer
nights. In many instances the tobacco of temperate latitudes yields a
more salable leaf when grown under cover. The flavor is due partly to
soil and climate, and partly to skill in curing. The choicest product is
obtained in only a few localities of limited area. It sometimes happens
that the products of two plantations almost side by side, and similarly
situated, are very unlike in character and quality.
[Illustration: TOBACCO]
The choicest cigar-tobacco is grown on the Vuelta Abajo district in the
province of Pinar del Rio, Cuba; another very choice Cuban leaf is known
as Partidos. Cuban-made cigars of fine quality are commercially "Havana"
cigars, although tobacco from Manila and Porto Rico is apt to be largely
used in their manufacture. In order to avoid the very heavy duty on
cigars, which is not far from six dollars per pound, a great deal of the
Havana tobacco is exported to points along the Florida coast, mainly Key
West and Tampa. The unmanufactured tobacco pays a comparatively small
duty, and the cigars made from it are commercially known as "Key West."
In some parts of Mexico a fine-flavored tobacco is grown, but as the
cigars are not uniform in quality they are not popular. Some of the
Brazilian tobacco is a high-class product, but not much is exported.
Porto Rican leaf has a fine flavor, but is not popular because of its
dark color. The demand for it in the United States is growing, however.
Of the leaf grown in the East, that from Sumatra and the Philippine
Islands is by far the best, and the exports are heavy. Cuban
manufacturers purchase the Manila leaf; the Sumatra wrappers are
purchased in the United States.
The choicest cigarette-tobacco is grown in Asiatic Turkey,
Transcaucasia, and Egypt. It is selected with great care, and is
"long-cut." The common grades are made of chopped Virginia tobacco, or
of chopped cigar-trimmings. The cheapest grades consist of refuse leaf
mixed with half-smoked cigar-stumps. The United States leads in the
manufacture of cigarettes, and a large part of the product is sold in
China, India, and Japan. Most of the world's product of snuff is made in
the United States, and nearly all of it is sold abroad.
The United States produces yearly about seven hundred million pounds. A
large part of this is sold to European countries. Great Britain
purchases about four-fifths of the tobacco there consumed from the
United States. The latter country purchases from Europe (mainly the
Netherlands) about half as much as it sells to Europe. Louisville, Ky.,
is probably the largest tobacco-market in the world. New York,
Baltimore, Richmond, Manila, and Havana are the chief shipping-ports.
In almost every civilized country tobacco is heavily taxed. In the
United States there is not only a heavy import duty, but an internal
revenue in addition. In Austria, France, Italy, Japan, and Spain the
manufacture and sale is in the hands of the government. The consumption
of tobacco varies greatly. In the Netherlands it averages about seven
pounds a year to each individual; in the United States it is more than
four pounds; in central Europe, three pounds; in Spain, Sweden, Great
Britain, and Italy, it is less than two pounds.
=Opium.=--The opium of commerce is the hardened juice obtained from the
seed capsules of several species of the poppy-plant. A variety having a
large capsule (_Papaver somniferum_) is most commonly cultivated for the
commercial production of the substance. Half-a-dozen times during the
season the capsules are scratched or cut; the juice exuding when hard is
picked or scraped off and pressed into cakes.
Opium is not only a narcotic poison, but it has the property of
lessening the pain of disease, and this is its chief use in medicine. In
Mohammedan countries where the use of alcoholic liquors is forbidden as
a religious custom, opium is used as a substitute. In Turkey, Persia,
Arabia, and Egypt the production of opium is an important industry
connected with social and religious life. In British India it is a
political factor, being extensively cultivated as a government monopoly
to be sold to the Chinese, who are probably the chief consumers of it.
The Indian Government derives a revenue sometimes reaching twenty
million dollars from this source.
The best quality of opium is marketed at Smyrna, and most of this is
purchased by the United States. A considerable amount of Chinese opium
is imported for the use of the Chinese, and a larger amount is probably
smuggled over the Canadian and Mexican borders. Laudanum is an alcoholic
tincture, and morphine an extractive of opium; both are used as
medicine.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Consult a good physiology and learn the effects of coffee, tea, tobacco,
and opium.
Where and what are the following: Mocha, Java, Maracaibo, Yokohama,
Amoy, Canton, Oaxaca, Hodeida, Rio Janeiro, Santos, Havana; how is each
connected commercially with this chapter?
From the map, Fig. 1, trace the route of a cargo of tea overland from
China to Great Britain.
Consult an English history or a cyclopaedia and learn about the opium
war.
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain samples of the following, preserving them for study and
inspection in closely stoppered vials: Mocha, Java, Rio, and Sumatra
coffees; green, black, and gunpowder tea. Soak a tea-leaf a few minutes
in warm water; unroll the leaf and attach it to a white card, for study.
Obtain samples of gum opium, laudanum, and morphine; note the odor of
the first two and the taste of the last. Remember that they are
poisonous.
Unroll a cheap cigarette and note the character of the tobacco in it,
using a magnifying glass.
CHAPTER XI
GUMS AND RESINS USED IN THE ARTS
Most vegetable juices exposed to the air harden into firm substances,
commonly called _gum_. Some of these dissolve, or at least soften, in
water; these technically are known as "gums," and usually are so
designated in commerce. Others are insoluble in water, but dissolve
readily in alcohol, in naphtha, in turpentine, or in other essential
oils; these are designated as "gum-resins." Still others yield oils or
pitchy substances on distillation; these are known as "oleo-resins."
There are many other dried vegetable juices, however, that in commerce
are not classified among the gums and resins, and of these the most
important is the substance commonly known as india-rubber.
=Rubber and Rubber Products.=--"Caoutchouc" is approximately the name
given by Indians of the Amazon forests to a substance that had also been
found in India. Some of it was brought to Europe from the Amazon region
as early as 1736, and for nearly one hundred years no general purpose
was discovered for which it could be used, except to erase lead-pencil
marks--hence the name india-rubber, which has held ever since.
Common rubber is the prepared juice of a dozen or more shrubs and trees,
all of which grow in tropical regions.[37] The belt of rubber-producing
plants extends around the world and includes such well-known species as
the fig, the manihot (or manioc), and the oleander; indeed, it is a
condition of sap rather than a definite species of plant that produces
rubber, and the latter is a manufactured rather than a natural product.
The process of preparing the juice is practically the same in every part
of the world.
The rubber-gatherer of the Amazon, who is practically a slave, wades
into the swamp, makes several incisions in the bark of the tree,
fashions a rough trough of clay under it, and waits till the sap fills
the clay vessel. When the sap has been gathered he makes a fire of the
nuts of the urucuri palm and places an inverted funnel over it to
concentrate the smoke. He first dips the end of a wooden spindle into
the juice and then holds it in the smoke until the juice coagulates;
this process is repeated until there has formed a ball of rubber
weighing from five to ten pounds. The smoke of the palm-nuts is a
chemical agent that converts the juice into the crude rubber of
commerce.
Crude gum, however, is lacking both in strength and elasticity. The
process that makes it a finished product is known as _vulcanization_.
The crude rubber, having been exported to the manufacturer in the United
States or Europe, is shredded, washed, and cleansed, and partly fused
with varying proportions of sulphur. For a very soft product, such as
the inner surface of tires, only a small proportion is used; where the
wear is considerable, a larger proportion is employed.[38] White clay is
sometimes added to give body to the product; coloring matter is also
sometimes added.
By far the greater part of the crude rubber comes from the Amazon
forests. Brazil produces about one-half, but a considerable quantity is
obtained in Acre, the territory formed where the borders of Brazil,
Bolivia, and Peru meet, and now ceded to Brazil. Nearly all this
product, that of the Ceara region excepted, is marketed at Para and is
known as Para rubber. It is the best produced. The African product,
mainly from the forests of the Kongo, and Madagascar, and nearly all the
East Indian product is sent to Europe.
[Illustration: REGIONS YIELDING RUBBER]
The world's product is about one hundred and thirty-three million pounds
of crude rubber. Of this product the United States takes nearly
one-half. The greater part is used in the manufacture of pneumatic
tires, hose, and overshoes. A large part is used for making water-proof
cloth,[39] and considerable is made into the small elastic bands for
which there is a growing use.
=Gutta-Percha.=--Gutta-percha is obtained from the juices of several
plants (chiefly _Dichopsis gutta_ and _Supota muelleri_) both of which
abound in the Malay peninsula and the East Indies. It is prepared in a
manner somewhat similar to that employed in making crude rubber; it is
also easily vulcanized by heating with sulphur. It is used to a limited
extent in the manufacture of golf-balls, but mainly as the insulating
cover of copper wires used in ocean telegraph cables. For this purpose
it has no known substitute, and its essential merit is the fact that it
is not altered by salt water. Nearly all the product is shipped from
Singapore to England.
=Pine-Tree Products.=--The various members of the pine and cone-bearing
trees yield valuable essential oils and oleo-resins that are very
important in the arts and sciences. These, in nearly every instance, are
prepared from the sap of the tree.
_Oil of turpentine_ is known as an "essential oil," and in chemical
structure and properties it does not differ from the various essential
oils, such as lemon, orange, peppermint, etc. Commercial turpentine is
generally made from the sap of the long-leafed pine of the Atlantic
coast-plain.
The bark of the tree is cut near the foot, and the sap that oozes from
the scar quickly hardens into a gum. The gum, generally known as "crude
turpentine," is distilled and yields about one-fourth its weight of oil
or "spirit" of turpentine. It is a staple article of manufacture in
Europe, India, and the United States, and is used chiefly to dilute the
oil paints and varnishes used in indoor work. The United States supplies
about two-thirds of the world's product, a large part of which is
shipped from Savannah and Brunswick, Ga., to Great Britain.[40]
_Resin_ is the substance remaining after the crude turpentine has been
distilled. It is used in the manufacture of varnish, sealing-wax, and
soap. Finely powdered resin is also mixed with wood-pulp in the
manufacture of wrapping-paper. It gives the latter a glazed surface and
renders it almost water-proof. Most of the world's product of resin
comes from the turpentine district of the United States, and about
four-fifths of it is exported to Europe.
When resin is subjected to distillation at a still higher temperature,
_resin oil_, a very heavy turpentine, is given off, and a viscous
substance known as _pitch_ remains. A considerable amount of this is
still made in the United States, but the greater part comes from the
pine-forests of Russia and Scandinavia. When pine-wood is distilled,
_tar_ is the chief product. In Russia tar is generally made by burning
green logs covered with turf, over a pit. _Creosote_, or wood
preservative, is made from tar. The various pine-tree products, creosote
excepted, are commonly known as "naval stores," the tar being used in
water-proofing the rigging of vessels, the pitch in calking the seams in
between planks, in the decks and hulls.
=Other Resins and Gums Used in the Arts.=--Most of the gums and resins
used in the arts and sciences are the hardened sap of plants--in some
cases exuding by natural means from the bark, in others resulting from
the puncture of the bark.
The _lac_ of commerce is due to the puncture of the young branches of a
tree, frequently a fig (_Ficus religiosa_) growing in the tropical
forests of India. The hardened sap incrusts twigs forming _stick-lac_;
when crushed, washed, and freed from the woody matter it is _seed-lac_;
when melted and cooled in flakes it is _shell-lac_, the form best known
in commerce. It is the chief ingredient in sealing-wax, and is
extensively used as a varnish. It is also used in fireworks on account
of its inflammability.
_Dammar_ is the product of a tree growing in the East Indies; it is the
basis of a very fine white varnish. _Copal_ is a term applied to
oleo-resins soluble in turpentine, and used almost universally as
varnishes. They come from the tropical regions of South America, Africa,
and from the East Indies. _Kauri_ is the fossil gum of a cone-bearing
tree dug from the ground in northern New Zealand. _Amber_ is the fossil
gum of extinct cone-bearing trees found mainly along the Baltic coast of
Prussia. It is used chiefly for the mouth-pieces of tobacco-pipes and
cigar-holders; the inferior product is made into varnish. It is sold
wherever tobacco is used. _Sandarach_, found on the north African coast,
is used principally in Europe, being employed as a varnish. The United
States and Great Britain consume most of the foregoing products.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Name any elastic substance you know about that is in every way a
substitute for rubber.
What has been the relation between rubber and good roads?
Describe the structure of a bicycle tire.
Why are tar, pitch, and turpentine called naval stores?--and what
determines the locality in which they are made?
What is varnish, and for what purposes is it used?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of crude rubber, vulcanized rubber, and hard rubber;
note carefully the characteristics of each.
Burn a very small piece of cheap white rubber-tubing in an iron spoon or
a fire-shovel; note the character of the residue.
Obtain specimens of gutta-percha, resin, pitch, turpentine, shellac,
copal, dammar, and creosote for study and inspection.
CHAPTER XII
COAL AND PETROLEUM
The economic history of nearly every country that has achieved eminence
in modern times dates from its use of coal and iron; and indeed the
presence of these substances in workable deposits means almost unlimited
power. The present era is sometimes called the Age of Steel, but the
possibilities of producing steel in enormous quantities, at less than
one-fifth its price at the beginning of the nineteenth century, depended
mainly upon the use of mineral coal instead of charcoal in its
manufacture.
Coal consists of accumulations of vegetable matter that were formed in
prior geological ages. Under the action of heat and moisture, and also
the tremendous pressure of the rock layers that afterward covered them,
the vegetable matter was converted to mineral coal.
The aggregate coal-fields of the United States are not far from two
hundred thousand square miles in extent, but of this area not much more
than one-half is workable. In Europe there are estimated to be about one
hundred thousand square miles of coal-lands, of which about half are
productive at the present time. Of this Great Britain has 12,000 square
miles, Spain 4,000, France 2,000, Germany 1,800, and Belgium 500. In
Canada there are about 20,000 square miles of coal-land; a part of this
is included in the Nanaimo field on the Pacific coast, but the most
important are the Nova Scotia beds, which form about the only supply for
the British naval stations of America. China has extensive coal-fields.
In character coal is broadly divided into two classes--anthracite or
hard, and bituminous or soft, coal. Anthracite coal occurs in folded and
metamorphic rocks. It is hard and glassy, and does not split into thin
layers or leaves. The beds have been subjected to intense heat and
pressure, and the coal has but a very small amount--rarely more than
five per cent.--of volatile matter; it burns, therefore, with little or
no smoke and soot, and on this account is very desirable as a fuel in
cities. Two areas in Colorado and New Mexico produce small quantities of
pure anthracite; practically all the commercial anthracite comes from
three small basins in Pennsylvania. In quality it is known as "red ash"
and "white ash," the former being the superior.
The yearly output of the anthracite mines is upward of fifty-five
million long tons a year, or somewhat less than five million tons per
month. In winter the rate of consumption is somewhat greater than that
of production. A shortage in the summer production is therefore apt to
be keenly felt in the winter. Before shipment to the market the coal is
crushed at the breakers, sorted in different sizes, and washed.
Most of the anthracite coal-mines are owned by the railway companies
centring at New York and Philadelphia, or else are operated by companies
controlled by the railways. About one-fourth of the output is produced
by independent operators who, as a rule, sell their coal to the railway
companies. The Reading, Pennsylvania, Central of New Jersey, Lackawanna,
Lehigh Valley, Ontario & Western, Erie, and Delaware & Hudson are
popularly known as "coalers" because the larger part of their eastern
business consists in carrying anthracite coal.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF THREE COLLIERIES IN THE ANTHRACITE COAL BASIN
NEAR MAHANOY CITY, PA.]
Formerly much of the coal was shipped by canals, but the latter were
not able to compete with the railways, and most of the coal-canals have
been abandoned. The price of anthracite at tide-water (New York) varies
from $3.20 to $4.50 per long ton. At Philadelphia the price is about
one-fourth less. Buffalo is the chief lake-port for anthracite. Steam
sizes are about two-thirds the price of house fuel.
[Illustration: COAL FIELDS IN UNITED STATES]
Bituminous, or soft coal furnishes the larger part of the house fuel in
the United States, and nearly all the house coal used in other parts of
the world. It contains from fifteen to more than forty per cent. of
volatile matter, burning with a long and smoky flame. The coal which
contains twenty per cent. or less of volatile matter is a free-burning
coal that may develop heat enough to partly fuse the ash, forming
"clinkers"; it is therefore called "caking" coal, and is not only well
adapted for use as fuel and steam-making, but it is also a good smelting
coal.
Coal which contains more than thirty per cent. of volatile matter is
known as "fat" coal and is generally used in the manufacture of coke and
illuminating gas. Western Pennsylvania produces the largest amount of
fat coal, but it is found here and there in nearly all soft-coal
regions. A so-called smokeless bituminous coal occurs in various
localities; its low percentage of volatile matter makes it an excellent
house fuel.
Bituminous coal is mined in twenty-five States of the Union,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, and Ohio heading the list. In
about half the mines the coal is cut from the seam by means of machinery
and is known as machine-mined coal. A very large part of the product is
consumed within a short distance of the mines, and this is especially
true of the region about the upper Ohio River.
[Illustration: COAL PRODUCTION]
Most of the product is shipped to the large manufacturing cities of the
middle west, where it is used for steam as well as fuel; a very large
amount also is sent down the Ohio in barges to the lower Mississippi
River. The spot value of bituminous coal varies from $0.80 to $1.60 per
ton; the product of the Pacific coast mines, however, is from $3 to $5.
The output of the mines of the United States aggregates about two
hundred and forty million long tons yearly, and this is about one-third
of the world's product. For many years there has been an export trade to
Canada, the West Indies, Central and South America, amounting in 1900 to
8,000,000 tons. Within a few years, however, the decreased cost of
mining due to machinery, and the low rates of transportation to the
seaboard has developed an export trade to Russia, Germany, and France.
[Illustration: COAL]
A small amount of coal is imported into the United States. A superior
quality of Australian coal finds a ready market in Pacific coast points
as far north as San Francisco, and large quantities of Nanaimo, B.C.,
coal are sold in Oregon, Washington, and California. A small quantity of
the "slack" or waste of the Nova Scotia mines is imported to Boston to
be made into coke. The Canadian fields supply a considerable part of the
coal used in Montana.
=Coke and Coal-Tar Products.=--In the manufacture of iron and steel a fuel
having a high percentage of carbon free from volatile matter is
essential. The great cost of wood charcoal forbids its use, and so a
charcoal made from soft coal is used. Fat coal is heated in closed
chambers until the volatile matter is driven off. The product is "coke";
the closed chamber is an "oven." The ovens are built of stone or
fire-brick, in a long row. They are usually on an abrupt slope, so that
the coal can be dumped into the top, while the coke can be withdrawn
from the bottom, to be loaded into cars.
About three thousand one hundred and forty pounds of coal are required
to make a short ton of coke; from three thousand to five thousand cubic
feet of illuminating gas, together with varying amounts of coal-tar and
ammonia, are driven off and generally wasted. In a few instances
"scientific" ovens are in use for the purpose of saving these products;
but in the coal-mining regions such devices are the exception and not
the rule. The great waste of energy-products in the manufacture of coke
is partly offset by the employment of refuse and slack, which could not
be otherwise used.
There are more than five hundred and eighteen thousand coke-ovens in
the United States, of which eighty per cent. are in use. Most of them
are in the region about the upper Ohio River, and nearly half the total
number is in the vicinity of Connellsville. The region around
Birmingham, Ala., ranks next in number. The coke product of the United
States is more than twenty million short tons a year. This is
considerably less than the product of Great Britain, which is upward of
twenty-five million tons.
Most of the "scientific" ovens are near or in large cities where the
gas, after purification, is used for illuminating purposes. In some
instances the coke, and not the gas, is a by-product. The coal-tar is
used in part for fuel, but a portion of it goes to the chemical
laboratory, where it is made to yield ammonia, benzine, carbolic acid,
and aniline dyes to the value of nearly seven million dollars.
=Graphite.=--Graphite, plumbago, or "black lead," as it is popularly
named, is found in many parts of the United States, but only a few
localities produce a good commercial article; these are Ticonderoga, N.Y.,
which yields from six hundred to two thousand tons a year, and
Chester County, Pa., which yields a small but increasing amount; a good
quality is mined near Ottawa, Canada. It is extensively mined in Ceylon,
and this island produces the chief bulk of the world's ordinary product.
The finest grade comes from the Alibert mine in Siberia. A good article
is manufactured artificially at Niagara Falls.
Graphite is used as a stove polish and for crucibles; in the main,
however, it is employed in the manufacture of lead[41] pencils; for this
purpose only a very soft mineral, absolutely free from grit, is
employed, and the Siberian output is used almost wholly. One German firm
and two American firms supply most of the pencils used.
=Petroleum.=--Petroleum is the name given to a natural liquid mineral from
which the well-known illuminating oil "kerosene" is derived, and to
obtain which it is mined. Petroleum is a mixture of various compounds
known as hydrocarbons. Some of these compounds are gaseous, some are
liquid, and some are solid; all of them are articles of commercial
value. The petroleum from different localities differs greatly in
appearance and composition.
The pitch that coated Noah's ark, the slime of the builders of the Tower
of Babel, and the slime-pits of the Vale of Siddim all refer to mineral
products associated with petroleum. Under the name of "naphtha" it has
been known in Persia for thirty centuries, and for more than half as
long a flowing oil spring has existed in the Ionian Islands. The Seneca
Indians knew of a petroleum spring near the village of Cuba, N.Y., and
used it as a medicine long before the advent of the white man.
As early as 1850 illuminating oil, known as "coal" oil, was made in the
United States by distilling cannel coal, but this product was supplanted
within a few years by the natural petroleum discovered in Pennsylvania.
In 1859 Colonel Drake completed a well bored in solid rock near
Titusville, Pa. The venture proved successful, and in a few years
petroleum mining became one of the great industries of the United
States.
Petroleum is known to exist in a great many parts of the world; the
United States and Russia, however, produce practically all the
commercial product; a very small amount is obtained from a horizon on
the south slope of the Carpathian Mountains, situated in Rumania and
Galicia, Austria-Hungary. There are also a few producing wells in Peru,
Germany, Italy, Burma, Argentina, and Sumatra.
[Illustration: PETROLEUM FIELDS IN THE UNITED STATES]
In the United States the largest horizon is that of the Appalachian
region. Since 1859 it has produced more than forty million gallons of
crude oil. The Lima, Ind., horizon produces about twenty million
barrels. The California and Texas horizons have become very important
factors. The crude petroleum is transported partly in tank cars, but
mainly by means of long lines of pipe, flowing from one pumping station
to another by gravity. There are pipe-line terminals on the Great Lakes
and at Pittsburg, but the principal are at the refining and exporting
stations in New York, Philadelphia, and on the Delaware River.
A considerable amount is exported to European countries to be there
refined, but in the main the crude oil is refined before exporting it.
Some of the refined oil is exported in barrels, and some in tin cases;
the greater part, however, goes in tank steamers, and from these it is
pumped into tank cars to be distributed. Most of the product is
controlled by the Standard Oil Company, and it reaches nearly every
country in the world. It is carried into Arctic regions on sledges, and
over the African deserts by caravans. Great Britain, Germany, and the
Netherlands are the chief purchasers and distributors. The value of the
entire product is about one hundred and eighty-five million dollars.
The Russian oil-producing region is on and near the Apsheron peninsula,
a small area of Trans-Caucasia, that extends into the Caspian Sea; the
region is commonly known as the Baku field, and in 1900 the production
of crude oil surpassed that of the United States. The petroleum is
conveyed by pipe lines to the refineries at Baku. From this port it is
shipped in tank cars by rail to Batum, whence it is conveyed to the
various European markets. A considerable part of the product is sent by
tank steamers to Astrakhan, and thence up the Volga to Russian markets.
Great Britain takes about one-third; about the same amount is shipped to
Port Said for China, India, and other Asian markets; the rest is
consumed in central Europe.
=Petroleum Products.=--The various constituents of crude petroleum differ
greatly in character, some being much more volatile than others. They
are separated by distillation at different temperatures. By this process
naphtha, rhigoline, gasoline, benzine, and other highly inflammable
products are obtained in separate receivers. By a similar process the
illuminating or refined oil and the lubricating oils are also separated.
The residuum consists of a gummy mass from which paraffine and petroleum
jelly are extracted.
_Naphtha_ usually contains several volatile compounds, including
_benzine_ and _gasoline_. It is used as a solvent of grease and also of
crude india-rubber, but chiefly the manufacture of illuminating gas.
_Kerosene_ is the name commonly given to the refined oil. A good
quality should have a fire test of not less than one hundred and fifty
degrees; that is, when heated to that temperature, it should not give
off any inflammable gas. This test is now mandatory in most States.
_Lubricating oil_ is used almost wholly for the lubrication of heavy
machinery. It varies greatly in composition and quality.
_Paraffine_ or petroleum wax has largely superseded beeswax; it is used
mainly in the manufacture of candles and as an insulator for electric
wires. A native mineral paraffine, known as ozocerite, is mined in Utah
and Galicia; it is used as an insulating material.
"_Vaseline_," "_cosmoline_," or _petroleum "jelly"_ is very largely used
in pharmacy as the basis of ointments and also as a lubricant for heavy
machinery.
_Asphalt_ is produced by the distillation of petroleum, but the greater
part of the world's product comes from two "pitch lakes"--one in
Bermudez, Venezuela, the other in the island of Trinidad, off the
Venezuelan coast. The former is the larger and produces a superior
quality. Small deposits occur near Los Angeles, Cal., and in Utah. The
output of the Venezuelan asphalt is used almost wholly for street
pavement.
Probably no other mineral has had a wider influence on both social and
economic life, and the industrial arts, than petroleum and its
compounds. The kerosene lamp, the aniline dye, the insulation of
electric wires, the lubrication of machinery, the cosmetic, the
india-rubber solution, and the physician's sedative dose represent only
a few of the devices that are derived from petroleum.
=Natural Gas.=--A natural inflammable gas occurs in or near several of the
petroleum horizons. One important belt extends through western
Pennsylvania and New York, and another through northwestern Ohio and
northeastern Indiana. It is conveyed through pipe-lines and used both as
fuel and for lighting. Natural gas occurs in a great many localities,
but is used commercially only in the regions noted. It is better adapted
for making glass than any other fuel, and on this account extensive
glass-making establishments have concentrated in the natural-gas belt of
western Pennsylvania.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
The statement is sometimes made to the effect that coal is "condensed
sunlight"; is it true, or untrue; and why?
Why are the coal areas of Europe and America also areas of various
manufactures?
A recent cartoon had for its title--"John Bull and his coal piles
(_i.e._, coaling stations) rule the world"; show why this statement
contains a great deal of truth.
What are some of the advantages of steam-vessels over sailing-vessels?
Whale oil, crude turpentine, kerosene, and gas have been used each in
turn for illuminants; what is the advantage of each over the preceding?
Describe the structure of an ordinary kerosene lamp-burner, an argand
burner, a Welsbach burner.
For what are aniline, paraffine, naphtha, and carbolic acid used?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of anthracite, bituminous, and cannel coal, and coke
for comparison and study.
Obtain specimens of crude petroleum, naphtha, refined oil, aniline dye,
paraffine, and carbolic acid; note the properties of each. Throw away
the naphtha after using.
Read Mineral Resources of the United States on the foregoing subjects.
CHAPTER XIII
METALS OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES
The development of modern civilization is directly connected with the
mining and manufacture of the useful metals. Their effect on the affairs
of mankind can be rightly understood only when they are studied in their
relations to one another, as well as to the people who used them. Next
to the discovery of the use of fire, an appreciation of the use of
metals has been the chief thing to develop the intellect of mankind.
When human beings discarded natural caves for artificially constructed
dwellings--when they began to cook their food and clothe their bodies,
they required tools. These, in the main, consisted of the spears and
arrow-heads used as weapons of the chase, and the axes and knives used
as constructive tools.
Rough stone gave place to flint because the latter would take a better
edge. For the same reason the people of central Europe sent to the
deserts of central Asia for jade wherewith to make axes and knives.
Again, for the same reason, jade was discarded, because an alloy of
copper and tin produced a bronze that would not only take a sharper edge
than stone, but it was hard enough to cut and dress the latter. Egypt
rose to a commanding position because of her control of the copper mines
in the Sinaitic peninsula, and subsequently of the gold products coming
from the upper Nile.
A meridian drawn through Cairo, Egypt, practically divides the world
into two kinds of civilization. East of this meridian the population is
almost wholly agricultural and, excepting Japan and India, the
character of the civilization has changed but little in the past 2,000
years. West of the line the population is essentially characterized as
metal-workers. It controls the world--not especially by virtue of a high
degree of intellectual development, but because it has availed itself of
the properties and characteristics of metals and their applications to
commerce.
The four metals that have had the greatest influence on western
civilization are gold, silver, iron, and copper. The discovery of gold
and silver has always resulted in a rapid settlement of the regions in
which the discoveries were made, and usually in the building of great
industrial centres. Thus, the discovery of gold in California was the
first step in making the United States a world power. The acquisition of
so large an amount of gold caused an industrial expansion that hurried
the Civil War, and led to the manufacture of iron and steel both for
agricultural machinery and railroad transportation. This, in turn,
brought the country so closely in touch with the affairs of China and
Japan, that European and American diplomacy in eastern Asia are a common
concern. The commercial position of Great Britain is very largely due to
her iron mines.
The production of Bessemer steel at a price far less than that of iron
at the beginning of the nineteenth century lowered the cost of
transporting commodities to the extent that large areas, once of
necessity very moderately productive of food-stuffs, are now densely
peopled because food-stuffs can be transported to these regions more
economically than they can be grown there. Thus, owing to the
improvements in iron and steel manufacture, the farmer of Minnesota, the
planter of Louisiana, the miner of Colorado, and the factory operative
of Massachusetts have each the same comforts of living that are enjoyed
by all the others, and have them at scarcely more than half the cost of
fifty years ago.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--THE NATIONAL STEEL COMPANY'S SMELTERY
AND ROLLING-MILLS, MINGO JUNCTION, OHIO]
The gradual decrease in the production of the silver mines near the
present site of Ergasteria proved a beginning of the fall of Athens; and
when gold was discovered in the Perim Mountains of Macedonia, the seat
of Greek power moved thither. Philip of Macedon hoarded the treasure
from the mines of Pangaeus, and with the capital thus acquired his son,
Alexander the Great, conquered the East, implanted Hellenic business
methods there, and drew the various trade routes between Europe and Asia
under one control.
In the fifteenth century copper from the mines near Budapest and silver
from the Schwarz Mountains of Germany were the resources that made
Germanic Europe pre-eminent. The wresting of the trade in these two
metals from Venice caused the rise of Antwerp and brought immense gains
to Luebeck, London, Brussels, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. In the latter part
of the nineteenth century copper again reached a high position of
importance from the fact that upon it largely depends electric motive
power and transportation.
=Iron.=--Iron is one of the most widely diffused of metals. It is abundant
in the sun; meteorites contain from more than ten to eighty or ninety
per cent. of it; all earths and rocks contain at least traces of it; and
in various places the deposits of ore in nearly pure form aggregate
cubic miles in extent.
In only a few localities is iron ore found in a metallic or "native"
form. Many meteorites consist of metallic iron mixed with nickel and
manganese, and in Greenland a volcanic dyke or ledge of metallic iron is
known to exist. The iron of commerce is derived from "ores," or chemical
compounds of iron and oxygen, or iron and carbon. The cheapness of the
product depends upon the ease with which the ore may be quarried,
transported to coal, and smelted. The following are the ores commonly
employed in the production of iron:
_Red hematite_ has a reddish metallic lustre and when pure contains
seventy per cent. of iron.[42] It is the most abundant of the workable
ores, and certainly the best for the manufacture of Bessemer steel. The
ores of the Lake Superior region are mainly red hematite, and the latter
constitutes more than four-fifths of the output of the United States.
[Illustration: THE COMPARATIVE PRODUCTION OF IRON AND STEEL]
_Brown hematite_, or limonite, has a chestnut brown color and contains
very nearly sixty per cent. of iron[43]; it includes the "bog" ores, and
is very abundant. Not far from one-quarter of the Appalachian ores are
brown hematite; it constitutes about one-eighth of the output of the
United States.
_Magnetic_ iron ore, or magnetite, of which loadstone, a natural magnet,
is an example, has a metallic, steel lustre and contains 72.4 per cent.
of iron.[44] Most of the ores obtained in Pennsylvania and New York are
magnetite. The magnetites furnish about one-sixteenth of the output of
the United States.
_Carbonate of Iron_, or siderite, occurs in a few localities, the ore
produced in Ohio being almost wholly of this kind. It contains when
pure about forty-eight per cent. of iron.[45] It constitutes less than
one per cent. of the output of the United States.
_Iron pyrites_, or sulphide of iron, sometimes called "fools' gold," is
a very common mineral. It is used in the manufacture of sulphuric acid,
but is worthless for the production of iron; indeed, the presence of a
very small percentage of sulphur in iron renders the latter worthless
for many purposes.
Extensive deposits of iron are known to exist in very nearly every
country in the world, but those which can be advantageously worked are
few in number. In order to be available, the deposits must be within
easy transporting distance of the people who use it, and likewise within
a short distance of the coal used to manufacture it.
For these reasons most of the workable deposits of ore are in or near
the great centres of population in western Europe and the eastern part
of the United States; as a matter of fact, practically all the iron and
steel of the latter country is produced in the populous centres of the
Atlantic slopes. In most great steel-making districts it is essential to
mix the native ores with special ores brought from a distance, the
latter being used to give strength and hardness to the resulting metal.
Ores from Sweden, and from Juragua, Cuba, are employed for this purpose
in the steel-making establishments of the United States.
In the past few years the United States has jumped from an insignificant
position in the production of iron and steel to the first rank among the
iron-producing countries. This great advance is due to the fortunate
geographic position of the iron ore and the coal, and also to the
discovery of the Bessemer process of making steel.
In general it is more economical to ship the ore to the coal than _vice
versa_. The position of the steel-making plant is largely determined by
the cost of moving the coke and ore, together with that of getting the
steel to the place of use. Formerly, iron manufacture in the United
States was not profitable unless the coal, ore, and limestone[46] were
very near to one another.
These conditions still obtain in the southern Appalachian mineral
fields; the ore and the coal are at no great distance apart, and a great
iron-making industry, in which Birmingham and Bessemer form the
principal centre, has grown into existence. For the greater part the
coal is coked; and in this form less than a ton[47] is sufficient to
make a ton of pig-iron. The smelteries and rolling-mills are built at
places where the materials are most conveniently hauled.
In the past few years the iron and steel industry which formerly centred
about the navigable waters at the head of the Ohio River, has undergone
a readjustment. Rolling-mills and smelteries exist at Pittsburg and
vicinity, and at Youngstown, New Castle, and other nearby localities,
but greater steel-making plants have been built along the south shores
of Lakes Michigan and Erie, all of which have come about because of
reasons that are purely geographic.
Immense deposits of excellent hematite ore in the old mountain-ranges
near Lake Superior have recently become available. For the greater part
the ore is very easily quarried. In many instances it is taken out of
the quarry or pit by steam-shovels which dump it into self-discharging
hopper-cars. Thence the ore is carried on a down grade to the nearest
shipping-port on the lake. There it is dumped into huge bunkers built at
the docks, and from these it slides down chutes into the holds of the
steam-barges. A 6,000-ton barge is loaded in less than two hours; a car
is unloaded in a few seconds.
[Illustration: MOVEMENT OF IRON ORE]
Water transportation is very cheap compared with railway transportation,
even when the road is built and equipped as an ore-hauling road. The ore
is therefore carried a distance varying from one thousand to one
thousand five hundred miles for less than it could be loaded, on cars
hauled one-tenth that distance by rail, and unloaded.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--ORE DOCKS]
At the south shore of Lake Erie, the ore meets the coke from western
Pennsylvania and coal from the Ohio coal-fields, and as a result new
centres of iron and steel manufacture have grown up along this line of
"least resistance." The ore is unloaded at the docks by means of
mechanical scoops and shovels. So cheaply and quickly is it mined and
transported that it is delivered to the smelteries at a cost varying
from $1.75 to $3.25 per ton.
[Illustration: LAKE SUPERIOR IRON ORE FIELDS]
There are three forms in which iron is used--cast iron, wrought iron,
and steel. Cast iron is crystalline and brittle. The product as it comes
from the blast furnace is called pig-iron. In making such commodities as
stoves, and articles that do not require great strength, the pig-iron is
again melted and cast into moulds which give them the required shape.
Cast iron contains from one to five per cent. of carbon.
Wrought iron is malleable, ductile, and very flexible; when pure it is
also very soft. It is prepared by melting pig-iron in furnaces having
such a shape that the molten metal can be stirred or "puddled" in
contact with the air. By this means the carbon is burnt out, and while
still at a white heat the pasty iron is kneaded or "wrought," in order
to expel other impurities.
Steel is a form of iron which is thought to contain a chemical compound
of iron with carbon. It is stronger than iron and finer in grain.
Formerly, steel was made by packing bars of pure iron in charcoal
powder, the whole being enclosed in clay retorts that were heated to
whiteness for about three days. The product obtained by this method is
known as cementation steel. It is still used in the manufacture of
cutlery, tools, and fine machinery; it is likewise very expensive. In
smelting certain ores it is easy to burn out the carbon in open
furnaces, and "open-hearth" steel is an important factor.
Just about the beginning of the Civil War, when the railways of the
United States were taxed beyond their capacity to carry the produce of
the country, it became apparent that something more durable than iron
must be used for rails. The locomotives, then weighing from twenty-five
to thirty-five tons each, were too light to haul the freight offered the
roads; they were also too heavy for the rails, which split at the ends
and frayed at the edges.
[Illustration: IRON AND STEEL]
The Bessemer process of making steel was the result of the demand for a
better and a cheaper method. By this process, the iron is put into a
"converter" along with certain Swedish or Cuban ores to give the product
hardness. A hot blast is then forced into the converter which not only
melts the mass but burns out the excess of carbon as well. The color of
the flame indicates the moment when the conversion to steel is
accomplished.
In 1860, before the establishment of the Bessemer process, steel
commanded a price of about one hundred and twenty-five dollars per ton;
at the beginning of the twentieth century steel billets were about
eighteen dollars per ton. In western Europe and the United States there
are used about three hundred pounds of iron and steel per capita; in
South America the rate of consumption is about fifteen pounds; in Asia
(Japan excepted) it is probably less than three pounds.
The economic results of low-priced steel are very far-reaching. Steam
boilers of steel carry a pressure of more than two hundred and fifty
pounds to each square inch of surface--about four times as great as in
the iron boilers formerly used. Locomotives of eighty tons draw the fast
passenger trains at a speed of sixty miles an hour. Ponderous
compounding engines weighing one hundred and twenty tons haul ninety or
more steel freight cars that carry each a load of 100,000 pounds. The
iron rails formerly in use weighed about forty pounds per yard; now
steel rails of one hundred pounds per yard are employed on most trunk
lines.
In the large commercial buildings steel girders have entirely supplanted
timber, while in nearly all modern buildings of more than six stories in
height, the frame is constructed of Bessemer steel. Indeed, a
steel-framed building of twenty-five stories has greater stability than
a brick or stone building of six. Such a structure as the "Flatiron
Building" in New York or the Masonic Temple in Chicago would have been
impossible without Bessemer steel.
In ocean commerce cheap steel has worked even a greater revolution. In
1860, a vessel of 4,000 tons displacement was thought to be almost up to
the limit. The Oceanic of the White Star Line has a displacement of
about twenty-eight thousand five hundred tons. This is nearly equalled
by the measurement of half a dozen other liners, and is exceeded by the
freighters built by Mr. J.J. Hill for the China trade.
[Illustration: _From a copyrighted photograph by C.L. Ritzmann, N.Y._
STEEL MANUFACTURE
THE FULLER (FLATIRON) BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY]
HISTORICAL
1619.--Iron works established on Falling Creek, Va.
1643.--First foundry in Massachusetts, at Lynn.
1658.--Blast furnace and forge at New Haven, Conn.
1679.--Father Hennepin discovers coal in Illinois.
1703.--Mordecai Lincoln, ancestor of Abraham Lincoln, establishes
iron works at Scituate, Mass.
1717.--First bar iron exported from American Colonies to West
Indies.
1728.--Steel made, Hebron, Ct.
1732.--Father of George Washington establishes furnace in Virginia.
1740.--First iron works in New York, near Hudson.
1750.--Bituminous coal mined in Virginia.
1766.--Anthracite coal discovered in Pennsylvania.
1770.--First rolling-mill in Colonies, Boonton, N.J.
1801-1803.--Lake Champlain iron district, New York, developed.
1812.--First rolling-mill at Pittsburg.
1828.--Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, first steam railway in the United
States, begun.
1829.--"Stourbridge Lion," first locomotive in America, used in
Delaware & Hudson Railway.
1830.--The T rail invented by Robert L. Stevens.
1830.--First American locomotive, "Tom Thumb," built by Peter
Cooper at Baltimore.
1830.--Twenty-three miles of railway in the United States.
1844.--Lake Superior iron ores discovered by William Burt.
1850.--First shipment of Lake Superior ore, ten tons.
1857.--Iron industry founded in Chicago.
1862.--Phoenix wrought iron column, or girder, first made.
1864.--Bessemer steel first made in the United States.
1865.--First Bessemer steel rails in the United States rolled at
Chicago.
1890.--First armor-plate made in the United States rolled at
Bethlehem, Pa.
1890.--The United States surpasses Great Britain in production of
pig-iron.
1900.--The United States leads in the production of open-hearth
steel.
=Gold.=--Gold is one of the metals earliest to be mined. It is mentioned
by the ancient profane as well as by sacred writers. Pictorial
representations of fusing and working the metal are sculptured on early
Egyptian tombs, and beautiful gold ornaments have been found that were
made by the prehistoric peoples who once occupied ancient Etruria, in
Italy. Columbus found gold ornaments in the possession of the aboriginal
Americans. The Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico possessed large
quantities of gold.
[Illustration: LEACHING (CYANIDE) TANKS DISSOLVING THE GOLD FROM THE
ROASTED ORE]
[Illustration: STOPING OUT A TUNNEL]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF MILL]
[Illustration: GOLD MINING]
Gold is one of the most widely diffused of metals. Traces of it are
found in practically all igneous and most sedimentary rocks. It occurs
in sea-water, and quite frequently in beach-sands. Traces of it are also
usually to be found in alluvial deposits and in the soils of most
mountain-folds. In spite of its wide diffusion, however, all the gold
that has been mined could be stored readily in the vaults of any large
New York bank.
In all probability most of the gold now in use has been deposited by
solution in quartz veins, the latter usually filling seams and crevices
in granitic or volcanic rocks. Quartz veins seldom yield very great
returns, but they furnish a steady supply of the metal. The rock must be
mined, hoisted to the surface, and crushed. The gold is then dissolved
by quicksilver (forming an amalgam from which the quicksilver is removed
by heat), by potassium cyanide solution, or by chlorine solution.
In many instances the quartz veins have been broken and weathered by
natural forces. In such cases the gold is usually carried off by swiftly
running water and deposited in the channel lower down. In this way
"placer" deposits of gold occur. Placer deposits are sometimes very
rich, but they are quickly exhausted. The first gold discovered in
California was placer gold.
Nearly all the gold mined in the United States has come from the western
highlands. In 1900, Colorado, California, South Dakota (Black Hills),
Montana, and Alaska yielded about seven-eighths of the entire product.
The placer mines of Alaska are confined mainly to the beach-sands and
the tributaries of Yukon River. Since 1849 the average annual yield of
gold in the United States is about forty-three million dollars.
The Guinea coast of Africa, Australia, California, the Transvaal of
South Africa, and Venezuela have each stood at the front in the
production of gold. The aggregate annual production of the world has
increased from one hundred and sixty million dollars in 1853 to more
than three hundred million dollars in 1900.
A considerable part of the gold product is used in gilding
picture-frames, book-titles, sign-letters, porcelain, and ornamental
brass work. Practically, all of this is lost, and in the United States
alone the loss aggregates about fifteen million dollars yearly. The
abrasion and unavoidable wear of gold coin is another great source of
loss.
An enormous amount is used in the manufacture of jewelry, most of which
is used over and over again. By far the greater part, however, is used
as a commercial medium of exchange--that is, as coin. For this purpose
its employment is wellnigh universal; and indeed this has been its chief
use since the beginning of written history. Gold coin of the United
States is 900 fine, that is, 900 parts of every thousand is pure gold;
gold coin of Great Britain is 916-2/3 fine. In each case a small amount
of silver, or silver and copper, is added to give the coin the requisite
hardness. The coining of gold, and also other metals, is a government
monopoly in every civilized country.
The fiat value of gold throughout the commercial world is the equivalent
of $20.6718 per troy ounce of fine metal; an eagle weighs, therefore,
2580 grains. The real value, however, is reckoned by a different and a
more accurate standard, namely, the labor of man, and this, the
sporadic finds of placer gold excepted, has not changed much in two
thousand years or more. The increased production has scarcely equalled
the demand for the metal; moreover, the longer a mine is worked the
greater becomes the expense of its operation. Improved processes for the
extraction of gold have not created any surplus of gold; indeed, the
supply is not equal to the demand; and this fact keeps the metal
practically at a fixed value.
=Silver.=--Silver is about as widely diffused as is gold, but it is more
plentiful. It is found sparingly in most of the older rocks and also in
sea-water. It was used by the Greeks for coinage more than eight hundred
years before the Christian era, and was known to the Jewish people in
very early times. According to the writer of the Book of Kings (1 Kings
x. 21), "It was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon," but
Tacitus declares that in ancient Germany silver was even more valuable
than gold. The mines of Laureion (Laurium) gave the Greek state of
Attica its chief power, and the failure of the mines marked the
beginning of Athenian decline.
Silver is rarely found in a metallic state. For the greater part it
occurs combined with chlorine ("horn silver"), or with sulphur ("silver
glance"), or in combination with antimony and sulphur ("ruby ore"). The
ranges of the western highland region of the American continent yield
most of the present supply. The mines of Colorado, Montana, Utah, and
Idaho produce about six-sevenths of the yield in the United States,
which in 1900 was 74,500,000 ounces. In Europe the Hartz Mountains have
been famous for silver for several centuries.
About four-fifths of the silver bullion is used in the arts, most of it
being manufactured into ornaments or into table-service called "plate."
A considerable amount is used in photography, certain silver salts,
especially the chloride and the bromide, changing color by exposure to
the light. The remaining part of the silver output is made into coin.
The ratio of silver and gold has fluctuated much in the history of
civilization. In the United States the value of an ounce of fine silver
is fixed at $1.2929, thereby making the ratio 16 to 1. The silver
dollars, 900 fine, were coined on this basis, weighing 412.5 grains.
With the tremendous output of the silver mines between 1870 and 1880 the
price of silver fell to such an extent that, in time, most countries
limited the amount of coinage or demonetized it altogether. In the
United States the purchase of silver bullion for coinage has been
practically suspended, and the silver purchased is bought at the bullion
value--about fifty cents per troy ounce in 1900. In Japan the ratio has
been officially fixed at 32 to 1.
=Copper.=--Copper is probably the oldest metal known that has been used in
making tools. An alloy of copper and tin, hard enough to cut and dress
stone, succeeded the use of flint and jade, and its employment became so
general as to give the name "bronze" to the age following that
characterized by the use of stone implements.
Copper is very widely distributed. It occurs in quantities that pay for
mining in pretty nearly every country in the world. The rise of Egypt as
a commercial power was due to the fact that the Egyptians controlled the
world's trade in that metal, and it is highly probable that the
conquests of Cyprus at various times were chiefly for the possession of
the copper mines of Mount Olympus.
At the present time there are several great centres of production which
yield most of the metal used. These are the Rocky Mountain region,
including Mexico; the Lake Superior region of the United States; the
Andean region, including Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia; the
Iberian region, consisting of Spain and Portugal; and the Hartz
Mountain region of Germany. In 1900 they produced about four hundred and
fifty thousand tons, of which two hundred and eighty thousand were mined
in the United States.
Montana, the Lake Superior mines, and Arizona are the most productive
regions of the United States, and the mines of these three localities
yield more than half the world's product. Of these mines the Calumet and
Hecla of the Lake Superior region is the most famous. It was discovered
by Jesuit explorers about 1660, but was not worked until 1845. It is one
of the most productive mines in the world, its yearly output averaging
fifty million tons.
The export trade in copper is very important, amounting at the close of
the past century to about one hundred and seventy thousand short tons.
Of this amount, half goes to Germany (most of it through ports of the
Netherlands), and one-fifth each to France and Great Britain. The market
price to the consumer during the ten years closing the century averaged
about sixteen cents per pound. Most of the product is exported from New
York and Baltimore. The head-quarters of the great copper-mining
companies of America are at Boston. The imports of raw ores and partly
reduced ores called "regulus," come mainly from Mexico to New York and
Baltimore, and from Mexico and Japan to Puget Sound ports. The most
important American refineries are at New York and Baltimore.
A part of the copper is mixed with zinc to form brass, an alloy much
used in light machinery. A considerable quantity is rolled into sheets
to sheath building fronts and the iron hulls of vessels. By far the
greater part, however, is drawn into wire for carrying electricity, and
for this purpose it is surpassed by silver alone. The decrease in the
price of copper in the past few years is due, not to a falling off in
the demand, but to methods of reducing the ores and transporting the
product more economically.
=Aluminium.=--Aluminium is the base of clay, this mineral being its oxide.
It occurs in the various feldspars and feldspathic rocks, and in mica.
The expense of extracting the metal from these minerals has been so
great as to prohibit its commercial use. In 1870 there were probably
less than twenty pounds of the metal in existence, and it was to be
found only as a curiosity in the chemical laboratories. The discovery
that the metal could be extracted cheaply from cryolite, a mineral with
an aluminium base, obtained from Ivigtut, Greenland, led to a sparing
use of the metal in the economic arts.
The chief step in the production of the metal dates from the time that
the mineral _bauxite_, a hydroxide of aluminium and iron, was decomposed
in the electric furnace. The process has been repeatedly improved, and
under the patents covered by the Hall process the crude metal is now
produced at a market price of about eighteen cents per pound. The entire
production of the United States is controlled by the Pittsburg Reduction
Company, which also manufactures much of the commercial product of
England. The competitor of the Pittsburg Reduction Company is an
establishment in Germany, near Bremen.
Aluminium does not corrode; it is easily rolled, drawn, or cast; and,
bulk for bulk, it is less than one-third as heavy as copper. Because of
these properties it has a great and constantly growing economic value.
Because of its greater size, a pound of aluminium wire will carry a
greater electric current than a pound of copper wire of the same length.
It therefore has an increasing use as a conductor of electricity.
Bauxite, the mineral from which the metal is now chiefly extracted, is
obtained in two localities. One extends through Georgia and Alabama;
the other is in Arkansas.
=Lead.=--Lead is neither so abundant nor so widely diffused as iron,
copper, and the precious metals, but the supply is fully equal to the
demand. Lead ores, mainly galena or lead sulphide, occur abundantly in
the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah, producing more than half
the total output of the United States. In these localities, in Mexico,
and in the Andean states of South America it is used mainly in the
smelting of silver ores.
Metallic lead is used largely in the manufacture of water-pipes, and for
this purpose it must be very nearly pure. It is also rolled into sheets
to be used as lining for water-tanks. The fact that the edges of
sheet-lead and the ends of pipes may be readily joined with solder gives
to lead a great part of its economic value. Alloyed with arsenic it is
used in making shot; alloyed with antimony it forms type metal; alloyed
with tin it forms pewter and solder.
The greater part, however, is manufactured into the carbonate or "white"
lead that is used as a pigment, or paint. Red lead, an oxide, is a
pigment; litharge, also an oxide, is used for glazing the cheaper kinds
of pottery. About two hundred and thirty thousand tons of lead are
produced in the United States and one-half as much is imported--mainly
from Mexico and Canada. The linotype machines, now used in all large
printing establishments, have increased the demand for lead.
=Other Metals.=--Most of the remaining economic metals occur in small
quantities as compared with iron, copper, gold, and silver. Some of
them, however, are highly important from the fact that in various
industrial processes no substitutes for them are known.
_Quicksilver_, or _mercury_, is the only industrial metal that at
ordinary temperatures is a liquid. It is the base of the substance
calomel, a chloride, and corrosive sublimate, a dichloride, both of
which are employed as medicines. It is essential in the manufacture of
thermometers and barometers, but is used chiefly, however, as a solvent
of gold, which it separates from the finely powdered ore by solution or
amalgamation. Quicksilver occurs in the mineral cinnabar, a sulphide.
Nearly one-half the world's product comes from California. The New
Almaden mines of Santa Clara County produce over five thousand flasks
(each seventy-six and one-half pounds net); those of Napa County nearly
nine thousand flasks; the mines of the whole State yield about
twenty-six thousand flasks, valued at $1,200,000. Almaden, Spain, and
Idria, Austria, produce nearly all the rest of the output. An average of
about fifteen thousand flasks are exported from San Francisco, mainly to
the mines of Mexico, and Central and South America.
_Tin_ is about the only metal of industrial value whose ores are not
found in paying quantities in the United States. Small quantities occur
in San Bernardino County, Cal., and in the vicinity of Bering Strait,
Alaska, but it is doubtful if either will ever pay for development.
About three-fifths of the world's product comes from the Straits
Settlements on the Malay Peninsula; the nearby islands of Banca and
Billiton also yield a considerable quantity.
The mines of Cornwall, England, have been worked for two thousand years
and were probably the source of the tin that made the "bronze age." The
United States imports yearly about twenty million dollars worth of tin,
about half of which comes from the Straits Settlements. This is used
almost wholly for the manufacture of tin plate[48]--that is, sheet-iron
coated with tin. Much of the block tin imported from Great Britain is
returned there in the form of tin plate, being manufactured in the
United States much more economically than in Europe.
_Nickel_ occurs in New Caledonia, in Canada, and in the State of
Missouri. It is used in the manufacture of small coins and for plating
iron and steel. It is an essential in the metal known as "nickel steel"
which is now generally used in armor-plate and propeller-shafts, about
four per cent. of nickel being added to the steel. Most of the product
used in the United States is imported from Canada.
_Manganese_, a metal resembling iron, occurs in Russia, Brazil, and
Cuba, Russia producing about half the total output. It is used mainly to
give hardness to steel. The propeller-blades of large steamships are
usually made of manganese bronze. The building of war-ships in the
United States during the past few years has led to the extensive use of
manganese for armor-plate, and manganese ores to the amount of more than
two hundred and fifty thousand tons were imported in 1900. More than
one-half of this came from Russia; most of the remaining half from
Brazil.
_Zinc_ is abundant in nearly every part of the world. In the United
States the best known mines are in the Galena-Joplin District, in
Missouri and Kansas, which produce about two-thirds of the home
product--mainly from the ore _blende_, a sulphide. There are also
extensive zinc-mining operations in Illinois, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania. The lower Rhine District, Great Britain, and Silesia are
the chief European sources. Sheet-zinc is found in nearly every dwelling
in the United States, and zinc-coated or "galvanized" iron has become a
domestic necessity. Zinc-white is extensively used as a pigment. About
two hundred and fifty million pounds of crude zinc, or "spelter," are
produced in the United States; forty-five million pounds were exported
in 1900, mainly to Great Britain.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the qualities that make iron the most valuable of metals?
In what ways does commerce depend on iron and steel?
What substances are used for food, clothing, or domestic purposes that
are not manufactured by the aid of iron?
Ingot or billet steel is rated at about one cent per pound; the
hair-springs of watches are worth several thousand dollars per pound;
what makes the difference in their value?
What are the qualities that give to gold its value?
Would all the gold mined in the United States pay the national debt at
the end of the Civil War?
What causes have led to the increasing price of copper during the past
few years?
What is the market price each of copper, silver, steel rails, and
aluminium to-day?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of the following iron ores: Hematite, brown hematite,
magnetite, carbonate, and pyrites. Note the color and physical
appearance of each; scratch the first four with a very hard steel point
and note the color of the streak.
Obtain specimens of pig-iron, cast iron, wrought iron, and cast steel;
note carefully the fracture or "break" of each; how does cast iron
differ from wrought iron?
Obtain specimens of the following copper ores: Malachite, azurite,
chalcopyrite, and red oxide; wet a very small fragment with an acid and
note the color when it is held in the flame of an alcohol lamp or a
Bunsen burner; dissolve a crystal of blue vitriol (copper sulphate) in
water and note what occurs if the end of a bright iron wire be dipped in
the solution.
Name the various uses to which nickel, tin, lead, and aluminium are put.
Consult the chapters on these subjects in any cyclopaedia.
[Illustration: TRANSPORTING SUGAR-CANE, CUBA]
[Illustration: SUGAR-CANE GROWING IN CUBA]
[Illustration: HAVEMEYER SUGAR-REFINERY, BROOKLYN, N.Y.]
CHAPTER XIV
SUGAR AND ITS COMMERCE
The term sugar is applied rather loosely to a large number of substances
characterized by the quality of sweetness. In a few instances the name
is given to certain mineral salts, such as sugar of lead, but in the
main the sugars are plant products very similar in chemical structure to
the starches. They are very closely connected with plant growth, and
even in animal life, starchy substances are changed to sugar in the
process of digestion. Although sugar does not sustain life, it is
necessary as an adjunct to other food-stuffs, and it is probably
consumed by a greater number of people than any other food-stuffs except
starch and water.
Three kinds of sugar are found in commerce, namely--_cane_-sugar,
_grape_-sugar, and _milk_-sugar. Cane-sugar occurs in the sap of the
sugar-cane, sorghum-cane, certain of the palms, and the juice of the
beet. Grape-sugar is the sweet principle of most fruits and of honey.
Sugar of milk occurs in milk, and in several kinds of nuts.
=Sugar-Cane Sugar.=--Cane-sugar is so called because until recently it was
derived almost wholly from the sap of the sugar-cane (_Saccharum
officinarum_). The plant belongs to the grass family and much resembles
maize before the latter has matured. It is thought to be native to Asia,
but it is now cultivated in nearly all tropical countries in the world.
Practically every moist tropical region in the world, the basins of the
Kongo and Amazon Rivers excepted, is a cane-sugar-producing region. As
a rule it is grown in the states under native rule for home consumption,
and in European colonial possessions for commercial purposes. India and
China are probably the foremost in the production of sugar-cane sugar,
but the product is not exported. Cuba, Java, the Gulf coast of the
United States, Mauritius, the Philippine and the Hawaiian Islands
produce the most of the supply that enters into commerce.
=Beet-Sugar.=--During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the
demands for sugar increased so greatly that it became necessary either
to raise the price of the commodity, or else to utilize some plant other
than the sugar-cane as a source. After a few years of experimental work
it was found that sugar could be readily extracted from the juice of the
common beet (_Beta vulgaris_). Several varieties of this plant have been
improved and are now very largely cultivated for the purpose. Beet-sugar
and cane-sugar are identical.
Almost all the beet-sugar of commerce comes from northwestern Europe;
Germany leads with nearly one-third the world's product; France,
Austria, and Russia follow, each producing about one-sixth. A small
amount is produced in the United States--mainly in California and
Michigan. The area of production, however, is increasing.
=Other Cane-Sugars.=--Maple-sugar is derived from the sap of several
species of maple-trees occurring mainly in the northeastern United
States and in Canada. The sap is obtained by tapping the trees in early
spring, a single tree often yielding several gallons. The value of
maple-sugar lies mainly in its pleasant flavor. It is used partly as a
confection, but in the main as a sirup. A very large part of the
maple-sirup and not a little of the sugar is artificial, consisting of
ordinary sugar colored with caramel and flavored with an extract
prepared from the maple-tree.
Sorghum-sugar is obtained from a cane known as Chinese grass, or Chinese
millet. It has been introduced into the United States from southeastern
Asia and Japan. The sorghum-cane grows well in the temperate zone, and
its cultivation in the Mississippi Valley States has been successful.
The sugar is not easily crystallizable, however, and it is usually made
into table-sirup.
Maguey-sugar is derived from the sap of the maguey-plant (_Agave
Americana_). It is much used in Mexico and the Central American states.
The method of manufacture is very crude and the product is not exported.
Palm-sugar is obtained from the sap of several species of palm growing
in India and Africa.
=Sugar Manufacture.=--Sugar manufacture includes three
processes--expressing the sap, evaporating, and refining. The first two
are carried on at or near the plantations; the last is an affair
requiring an immense capital and a most elaborately organized plant. The
refining is done mainly in the great centres of population at places
most convenient for transportation. The raw sugar may travel five or ten
thousand miles to reach the refinery; the refined product rarely travels
more than a thousand miles.
After it has been cut and stripped of its leaves the sugar-cane is
crushed between powerful rollers in order to express the juice. The
sugar-beet is rasped or ground to a pulp and then subjected to great
pressure. The expressed juice contains about ten or twelve per cent. of
sugar. In some factories the beet, or the cane, is cut into thin slices
and thrown into water, the juice being extracted by the solvent
properties of the latter. This is known as the "diffusion" process.
The juice is first strained or filtered under pressure in order to
remove all foreign matter and similar impurities. It is then clarified
by adding slacked lime, at the same time heating the liquid nearly to
the boiling point and skimming off the impurities that rise to the
surface. The purified juice is then boiled rapidly in vacuum pans until
it is greatly concentrated.
When the proper degree of concentration is reached, the liquid is
quickly run off into shallow pans, in which most of it immediately
crystallizes. The crystalline portion forms the _raw sugar_ of commerce;
the remaining part is molasses. The whole mass is then shovelled into a
centrifugal machine which in a few minutes separates the two products.
In purchasing raw sugar, the refiner was formerly at a loss to know just
how much pure sugar could be made from a given weight of the raw sugar.
In order to aid in making a correct determination, the Dutch government
formerly prepared sixteen samples put up in glass flasks and sealed.
These samples varied in color according to the amount of pure sugar
contained. The pure solution was known in commerce as No. 16 Dutch
standard, and this was generally taken all over the world as the
standard of pure sugar. Within recent years the polariscope, an optical
instrument that determines the percentage of sugar by means of polarized
light, has largely replaced the Dutch standard.
The refineries, as a rule, are built with reference to a minimum
handling and transportation of the raw product. The cane-sugar
refineries are mainly at the great seaports, where the raw sugar does
not pay railway transportation. The beet-sugar refineries are in the
midst of the beet-growing districts. So nearly perfect and economically
managed are these processes, that raw sugar imported from Europe or
from the West Indies, at a cost of from two and a quarter to two and a
half cents per pound, is refined and sold at retail at about five cents.
The margin of profit is so very close, however, that in the United
States, as well as most European states, the sugar industry is protected
by government enactments. In the United States imported raw sugar pays a
tariff in order to protect the cane-sugar industry of the Gulf coast and
the beet-sugar grower of the Western States. The duty at the close of
the nineteenth century was about 1.66 cents per pound; or, if the sugar
came from a foreign country paying a bounty on sugar exported, an
additional countervailing duty equal to the bounty was also charged.
In the various states of western Europe the beet-sugar industry is
governed by a cartel or agreement among the states, which makes the
whole business a gigantic combination arrayed against the tropical sugar
interests. In general, the government of each state pays a bounty on
every pound of beet-sugar exported. The real effect of the export bounty
is about the same as the imposition of a tax on the sugar purchased for
consumption at home.
Two-thirds of the entire sugar product are made from the beet, at an
average cost of about 2.5 cents a pound. In the tropical islands the
yield of cane-sugar per acre is about double that of beet-sugar and it
is produced for about five dollars less per ton. This difference is in
part offset by the fact that the raw cane-sugar must pay transportation
for a long distance to the place of consumption, and in part by the
government bounties paid on the beet product.
Both the political and the economic effects of beet sugar-making have
been far-reaching. In Germany the agricultural interests of the country
have been completely reorganized. The uncertain profits of cereal
food-stuffs have given place to the sure profits of beet-sugar
cultivation, with the result that the income of the Germans has been
enormously increased. In the other lowland countries of western Europe
the venture has been equally successful. Even the Netherlands has
profited by it.
In the case of Spain, the result of beet-sugar cultivation was
disastrous. The price of cane-sugar in Cuba and the Philippine Islands
fell to such a low point that the islands could not pay the taxes
imposed by the mother country. Instead of lowering the taxes and
adjusting affairs to the changed conditions, the Spaniards drove the
islands into rebellion, and the latter finally resulted in war with the
United States, and the loss of the colonies. Great Britain wisely
adjusted her colonial affairs to the changed conditions, but the British
colonies suffered greatly from beet-sugar competition.
=Production and Consumption.=--The production and consumption of sugar
increased about sevenfold during the latter half of the nineteenth
century, the increase being due very largely to the decreased price.
Thus, in 1850, white (loaf) sugar was a luxury, retailing at about
twenty cents per pound; in 1870 the wholesale price of pure granulated
sugar was fourteen cents; in 1902 it was not quite five cents.
Although the tropical countries are greatly handicapped by the political
legislation of the European states, they cannot supply the amount of
sugar required, unless the area of production be greatly extended. It is
also certain that without governmental protection, sugar growing in the
temperate zone cannot compete with that of the tropical countries.
Of the eight million tons of sugar yearly consumed, two-thirds are
beet-sugar. The annual consumption per capita is about ninety pounds in
Great Britain, seventy pounds in the United States, and not far from
thirty-five pounds in Germany and France. In Russia and the eastern
European countries it is less than fifteen pounds.
=Molasses.=--The molasses of commerce is the uncrystallizable sugar that
is left in the vacuum pans at the close of the process of evaporation.
The molasses formerly known as "sugar house" is a filthy product that
nowadays is scarcely used, except in the manufacture of rum. The color
of molasses is due mainly to the presence of "caramel" or half-charred
sugar; it cannot be wholly removed by any ordinary clarifying process.
Purified molasses is usually known as "sirup," and much of it is made by
boiling a solution of raw sugar to the proper degree of concentration. A
considerable part is made from the sap of the sorghum-cane, and probably
a larger quantity consists of glucose solution colored with caramel.
Maple-sirup, formerly a solution of maple-sugar, is now very largely
made from raw cane-sugar clarified and artificially flavored.
=Glucose.=--Glucose, or grape-sugar, is the natural sugar of the grape and
most small fruits. Honey is a nearly pure, concentrated solution of
glucose. Grape-sugar has, roughly, about three-fifths the sweetening
power of cane-sugar. Natural grape-sugar is too expensive for ordinary
commercial use; the commercial product, on the other hand, is
artificial, and is made mainly from cornstarch.
Glucose is employed in the cheaper kinds of confectionery in the United
States; most of it, however, is exported to Great Britain, the annual
product being worth about four million dollars. From the fact that it
can be made more economically from corn than from any other grain,
practically all the glucose is made in the United States.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
It frequently happens that the prices of sugar and tin-plate rise and
fall together; show how the fruit-crop may cause this fluctuation.
Which of the possessions of the United States are adaptable for
cane-sugar?--for beet-sugar?
In what ways has the manufacture of sugar brought about international
complications?
What is meant by "Dutch Standard" tests?--by polariscope tests?
FOR REFERENCE AND STUDY
Obtain specimens of rock candy, granulated sugar, raw sugar, and
caramel; observe each carefully with a magnifying glass and note the
difference.
World's Sugar Production.
CHAPTER XV
FORESTS AND FOREST PRODUCTS
Outside the food-stuffs, probably no other material is more generally
used by human beings than the products of the forests. More people are
sheltered by wooden dwellings than by those of brick or stone, and more
people are warmed by wood fires than by coal. Even in steam-making a
considerable power is still produced by the use of wood for fuel.
Neither stone nor metal can wholly take the place of wood as a building
material; indeed, for interior fittings, finishings, and furniture, no
artificial substitute has yet been found that is acceptable. For such
purposes it is carried to the interior of continents and transported
across the oceans; and although the cost has enormously increased, the
demand has scarcely fallen off.
=Forest Areas.=--The great belts of forests girdle the land surface of the
earth. A zone of tropical forest forms a broad belt on each side of the
equator, but mainly north of it. This forest includes most of the
ornamental woods, such as mahogany, ebony, rosewood, sandal-wood, etc.
It also includes the most useful teak as well as the rubber-tree and the
cinchona. Another forest belt in the north temperate zone is situated
mainly between the thirty-fifth and fiftieth parallels. It traverses
middle and northern Europe and the northern United States.
This forest contains the various species of pine, cedar, and other
conifers, the oaks, maples, elms, birches, etc. Most of the forests of
western Europe have been greatly depleted, though those of Norway and
Sweden are still productive. The forests of the United States, extending
from Maine to Dakota, have been so wellnigh exhausted that by 1950 only
a very little good lumber-making timber will be left.
The destruction of forests has been most wasteful. When a forest-covered
region is settled, a large area is burnt off in order to clear the land
for cultivation. In many instances the fires are never fully
extinguished until the forest disappears. The timber of the United
States has been depleted not only by frequent fires but in various other
ways. The lumbermen take the best trees and these are cut into
building-lumber. The railways follow the lumbermen, cutting out
everything suitable for ties. The paper-makers vie with the tie-cutters,
and what is left is the plunder of the charcoal-burner.
=Forestry.=--In most of Europe the care of the remaining forests is
usually a government charge. Only a certain number of mature trees may
be removed each year, and many are planted for each one removed--in the
aggregate, several million each year. In the United States, where the
value of the growing timber destroyed by fire each year nearly equals
the national debt, not very much has been done to either check the
ravage or to reforest the denuded areas. Many of the States, however,
encourage tree-planting. In several, Arbor Day is a holiday provided by
law.
The general Government has established timber preserves in several
localities in the West. The State of New York has converted the whole
Adirondack region into a great preserve. Forest wardens and guards are
employed both to keep fires in check and to prevent the ravages of
timber thieves; excepting the State preserves however, the means of
prevention are inadequate for either purpose.
[Illustration: THE LUMBER INDUSTRY--A LOG JAM]
To be valuable for lumber of the best quality, a forest tree must be
"clear"; that is, it must be free from knots at least fifteen feet from
the ground. In the case of pines and cedars, the clear part of the trunk
must have a greater length. To produce such conditions, the trees must
grow thickly together, in order that the lower branches may not mature.
The growth of trees thus set is very slow. Isolated pine-trees will
reach the size large enough for cutting in about fifty years, but the
lumber will be practically worthless because of the knots. On the other
hand, pine forests with the trees so thickly set as to make a clear,
merchantable lumber require at least a century for maturity.[49] Oak
forests require a much greater period.
As a rule, the forest growths of the United States are found in the
areas characterized by sandy and gravelly soils. Thus, the glaciated
region of the United States and Canada for the greater part is
forest-covered. The sand barrens along the Atlantic coast usually are
forest areas. The older bottom-lands of most rivers are often
forest-covered, especially when their soil is coarse and sandy.
There are large areas, however, in both the United States and Europe,
that are treeless. In some instances this condition, without doubt,
resulted from the fires that annually burnt the grass. With the
cessation of the prairie fires, forest growths have steadily increased.
In other instances these areas are treeless because the seeds of trees
have never been planted there. The high plains at the eastern base of
the Rocky Mountains are an example. This region is deficient in the
moisture required to give young trees the vigorous start that will
carry them to maturity. Moreover, the westerly winds and the streams of
this region come from localities also deficient in forestry, and there
are therefore no seeds to be carried.
As a rule, the distribution of forests is effected by the winds and by
moving water. The prevailing westerly winds of the temperate zones have
carried many species eastward and have extended the forest areas in that
direction. Freshets, floods, and overflows have been even more active in
carrying seeds, sprouts, and even trees into new territories. Waves and
currents have likewise played a similar part. Wherever the soil of the
region into which the species have been carried is moist and nutritious,
the forest growth has usually extended.
=The Pine Family.=--The pine family includes the various species of pine,
tamarack, spruce, hemlock, fir, juniper, larch, cypress, and cedar. A
few members of the family thrive in the warmer parts of the temperate
zone, but for the greater part they flourish between the fortieth and
sixtieth parallels. Most of the species found in low latitudes are
mountain-trees. They constitute the greater part of the American and
Russian forests. The American pine forest is thought to be the largest
in the world.
The _white pine_ (_Pinus strobus_) is the most valuable member of the
family. Its value is due in part to the fact that the wood is soft,
clear, and easily worked, and in part to the accessibility of the
forests. Not much inroad has yet been made upon the great Russian
forest, owing to the fact that the timber is too far away from seaports
and water transportation. Rough lumber becomes too expensive for use
when transported by land, but it will stand the expense of shipment by
water many miles.
The _Georgia_ or _long-leafed pine_ (_Pinus palustris_) is also
commonly called _pitch pine_, _turpentine pine_, and _southern pine_; it
grows chiefly along the south Atlantic coast and in the northern
counties of Georgia. It is harder than white pine and makes excellent
flooring.
The _sugar pine_ (_Pinus lambertiana_) occurs mainly in Oregon and
California. The grain is fine and soft and the trees reach a large
girth.
The _loblolly pine_ (_Pinus taeda_) has a considerably larger area than
the Georgia pine, extending into Indian Territory. The _short-leaf pine_
(_Pinus echinata_) occurs in small areas from New York to the Gulf of
Mexico, and across to Missouri; it is the Chattahoochee pine of Florida.
The _pitch pine_ (_Pinus rigida_) occurs in various areas mainly north
of the Ohio River and west of the prairies. The lumber cut annually from
these pines aggregates about thirty billion feet.
The common _white cedar_ (_Chamaecyparis thyoides_) occurs along the
Atlantic and Gulf coasts nearly to the Mississippi. On account of its
fine grain it is much used in cabinet work and as a finishing wood. _Red
cedar_, probably a different species, occurs along the Atlantic coast.
It is largely used in the manufacture of lead-pencils, and the forests
are wellnigh exhausted.
The _redwoods_ are confined to the California coast, mainly in the coast
ranges, near the ocean. Ordinary redwood (_Sequoia sempervirens_)
resembles red cedar, is soft, and very fine in grain, and shrinks but
little in seasoning. It is a most valuable timber both for common and
for ornamental use. It very frequently attains a diameter of five or six
feet; the big tree sometimes exceeds sixteen feet in diameter and
reaches a height of nearly four hundred feet.
=Other Industrial Woods.=--The oaks, like the pines, form a nearly
continuous belt across the northern continents, lying mainly south of
the pines; they do not extend much south of the thirtieth parallel. The
white oak of the New England plateau and Canada commands a high price on
account of its strength; a considerable quantity is exported.
The "quartering" of the lumber used in ornamental work is produced by
sawing the logs, which have been split in quarters, so that the
silver-grain shows on the faces of the boards. The bark of the oak is
rich in tannic acid and it is much used in tanning leather. _Cork oak_
(_Quercus suber_) grows mainly in Spain and Algeria.
_Black walnut_ (_Juglans nigra_) grows in the river-bottoms of the
Mississippi Valley and in Texas. The merchantable supply is not great,
and the wood is therefore growing more valuable each year. _Hickory_ is
used where great strength is required, and also for various
tool-handles. _Maple_ is largely employed in making furniture. _Ash_ is
a very common wood for tool-handles.
=Shade-Trees and Ornamental Woods.=--A large number of trees are yearly
transplanted, or else grown from seed, to be used as ornamental
shade-trees. For this purpose the elm, maple, acacia ("locust"), linden
("lime"), catalpa, ash, horse-chestnut ("buckeye"), poplar, and willow
are most common in ordinary temperate latitudes, both in Europe and
America. In warmer latitudes the Australian eucalyptus ("red gum" and
"blue gum"), magnolia, palmetto, laurel, arbutus, and tulip are common.
The local trade in ornamental trees is very heavy; the trade is local
for the reason that the transportation of them is very expensive.
=Tropical Woods and Tree Products.=--Many of the tropical woods are in
demand on account of their beautiful appearance, and in many species
this quality is combined with strength and hardness. _Mahogany_ is
obtained from Mexico and the Central American states, and also from the
West Indies. The former is classed as "Honduras"; the latter is
generally known as San Domingo mahogany and commands the highest price.
_Rosewood_ is obtained from Brazil, and is used almost exclusively in
piano-cases. Both are cut into thin veneers, to be glued to a less
expensive body.
_Ebony_ is the heart of a species of persimmon obtained mainly in Ceylon
and the East Indies. Very little of the so-called ebony is genuine, most
of the ebony of commerce consisting of fine-grained hardwood, stained
black. _Jarrah_, an Australian wood, is now very generally used for
street-paving, and for this purpose it has no superior. _Teak_ probably
has no equal for strength and durability. It is not touched by the
teredo and other marine worms.
_Boxwood_ (_Buxus balearica_) is a high-growing tree, native to India,
but growing best in the islands of the Mediterranean. The wood is very
hard, of yellowish-brown color, and so fine in grain that it finds a
ready market in nearly every part of the world. Probably the larger part
is used by engravers. A large amount of the wood is also used in the
manufacture of folding-rules, and in inlaying. Constantinople is the
principal market, and nearly ten thousand tons of the selected wood are
sold yearly.
_Lignum vitae_, or _guaiac wood_ (_Guaiacum officinale_), grows profusely
in the West Indies and along the Spanish Main. It is used both in
medicine and in the arts. Shavings of the wood steeped in water were
once considered a cure-all, hence the name. The wood is very hard,
heavy, and is split with the greatest difficulty. It is therefore much
employed in making mallet-heads, tool-handles, nine-pin balls, and
pulley-blocks. In tropical countries it is employed for railway ties.
West India ports are the chief markets, and the United States is the
chief consumer.
[Illustration: A LOG RAFT, WINONA, WIS.]
[Illustration: HAULING LOGS TO THE RIVER]
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1898, Detroit Photographic Co._
THE LUMBER INDUSTRY--A LOGGING STREAM, MENOMINEE, WIS.]
_Logwood_ is the wood of a tree (_Haematoxylon campechianum_) growing in
Central America and the West Indies. The best quality comes from
Campeche, and it is marketed mainly from Central American ports. It is
almost universally used for dyeing the black of woollen and cotton
textiles, and logwood blacks are the standard of color-prints.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what structures has timber been supplanted by iron and steel?
In what manufactured article has timber supplanted the use of rags?
When a pine forest is cut away, what kinds of timber are apt to come up
in place of the pines?
In what manner does the railway draw upon the forests?--the
paper-maker?--the farmer?--the tanner?--the beaver?--the teredo, or
ship-worm?
From what country or countries do the following come: boxwood, rosewood,
sandal-wood, cinchona, bog oak, jarrah?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Make a list of the forestry growing in the State in which you live; so
far as possible, obtain a specimen of each wood, prepared so as to show
square, oblique, split, and polished sections; for what purpose, if any,
is each used?
Consult "Check-list of Forestry of the United States" (U.S. Department
of Agriculture).
CHAPTER XVI
SEA PRODUCTS AND FURS
The world's fish-catch amounts probably to more than one-quarter of a
billion dollars in value and employs upward of a million people; in the
United States 200,000 are employed. In some localities, such as the
oceanic islands, far distant from the grazing lands of the continents,
the flesh of fish is about the only fresh meat obtainable. Even on the
continents fish is more available and cheaper than beef. The
fish-producing areas pay no taxes; they require no cultivation;
moreover, they do not require to be purchased. In general, fish
supplements beef as an article of food; it is not a substitute for the
latter.
The whale-catch excepted, fish are generally caught in the shallow
waters of the continental coasts. The fish, in great schools, resort to
such localities at certain seasons, and the seasons in which they school
is the fisherman's opportunity. For the greater part, such shallows and
banks are spawning-places. Most of the fish, however, are caught off the
Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America, these localities being
nearest to the great centres of population.
=Whales.=--The whale is sought mainly in cold waters, and at the present
time the chief whaling-grounds are in the vicinity of Point Barrow. In
the first half of the nineteenth century whale-fishing was an industry
involving hundreds of vessels and a large aggregate capital. The
industry centred about New England seaports.
The train-oil obtained from the blubber of the animal was used partly
as a lubricant, but mainly for illuminating purposes. For this purpose,
however, it has been superseded by coal-oil, gas, and electricity. It is
still in demand as a lubricant, but the whale-oil of commerce is quite
as apt to come from the blubber of the porpoise or the sea-cow as from
the right whale. Whalebone is a horny substance taken from the animal's
jaw, and is worth from three dollars to eight dollars per pound. It is
used chiefly in the manufacture of whips. For other purposes, steel,
hard rubber, and celluloid have taken its place.
The substance called _spermaceti_ is derived from the sperm-whale, an
inhabitant of warm ocean-waters. Spermaceti is identical in its physical
properties with paraffine, and the latter is now almost universally its
substitute.
_Ambergris_, thought to be a morbid secretion or disease of the
sperm-whale, is found in the body cavity of the animal and also in
masses floating in the sea. It is used chiefly to give intensity to the
odor of perfumes, and the best quality brings as much as five dollars
per ounce. Most of the ambergris of commerce is obtained from the
neighborhood of the Bahama Islands.
=Cod.=--In the amount of the product the cod-fisheries are the most
important. The meat of the fish is not strong in flavor, and it is cured
with little expense. So valuable is the annual catch that the banks and
shallows which the schools frequent are governed by international
treaties.
The cod is a cold-water fish, and the fishing-grounds are confined to
rather high latitudes. The coast-waters of the Scandinavian peninsula
and the shores of the Canadian coast, especially the Banks of
Newfoundland, are the chief areas. The fishing-grounds of the Canadian
coast are closed to foreign vessels inside a three-mile limit; beyond
the limit they are occupied mainly by Canadian, French, and American
fishermen. By the terms of treaties foreign vessels may enter the
three-mile limit under restriction to purchase bait and food-supplies,
and to cure their fish.
A large part of the cod-catch is exported. Tropical countries buy much
of the product. In such countries it is more wholesome than meat; it is
cheaper; moreover, the salted cod will keep for an indefinite length of
time. A large part of the catch is sold to the Catholic states of Europe
and America, where during certain times the eating of the flesh of
animals is forbidden. Gloucester, Mass., London, England, and Trondhjem,
Norway, are great markets for salted fish. The oil from the liver of the
cod is much used in medicine.
=Herring, Alewives, and Sardine.=--The herring is a much smaller fish than
the cod, and, commercially, is much less important. They school in about
the same waters as the cod, but are caught at a different season,
gill-nets being usually employed. Practically no distinction is made
between full-grown herring and alewives of the same size. The fish are
usually cured by smoking, pickling, or salting, and in this form are
either exported or sold in interior markets.
The true sardine is found in latitudes a little farther south than the
schooling-grounds of the cod. The most important fisheries are along the
coasts of the Latin states of Europe. Sardine fishing is a great
industry all along the New England coast of the United States, but the
"sardines" marketed from this region are young herring. Indeed, nearly
all sorts of small fry are sold in boxes bearing spurious French labels.
=Salmon.=--Most of the salmon are caught in the rivers flowing into the
North Pacific Ocean. The fish are caught in traps and weirs at the time
of the spring run, when they ascend the river to spawn. The rivers are
frequently so congested with the salmon that thousands of tons are
caught in a single stream during the run.
The salmon canneries of the Columbia River are very extensive
establishments, but in the past few years they have been surpassed by
the Alaskan fisheries, which produce not far from fifty million pounds
each year. The dressed fish is cooked by steam, canned, and exported to
all parts of the world. The growth and development of the industry has
also made an enormous demand on the tin mines of the world. Canned
salmon is the largest fish export of the United States. There are
extensive salmon-fisheries in Norway, Japan, and Russia.
=Other Fish.=--_Mackerel_ and _haddock_ are caught near the shores of the
North Atlantic. Most of the mackerel-catch is pickled in brine and sold
in small kegs known as "kits." The _menhaden_-catch of the North
Atlantic is converted into fertilizer. The _halibut_ is a large fish
that is rarely preserved. The area in which it is caught is about the
same as that of the cod. _Shad_ are usually caught when ascending the
rivers of the middle Atlantic coast. In the United States, Chesapeake,
Delaware, and New York Bays yield the chief supply. The _bluefish_ and
_barracuda_ are warm-water fish. The market for fresh fish has been
greatly enlarged by the use of refrigerator-cars.
The _sturgeon_ is captured mainly in the rivers and lakes of the
temperate zone. Those of the Black Sea sometimes attain a weight of
2,000 pounds. The flesh is of less importance than the eggs, of which
caviare is made. Russian caviare is sold all over Europe and America,
and not a small part of the product is made in Maine. The caviare made
from the roe of the Delaware River sturgeon is exported to Germany. The
_tunny_ is confined to Mediterranean waters.
The _anchovy_ is caught on the coast of Europe; most of the product is
preserved, or made into the well-known "anchovy sauce." The
_beche-de-mere_, or "sea cucumber," is a product of Australasian and
Malaysian waters. Almost the whole catch is purchased by the Chinese,
and it is exported to all countries having a Chinese population.
=Oysters and Lobsters.=--The oyster is among the foremost sea products of
the United States in value. The oyster thrives best in moderately warm
and sheltered waters. The coves and estuaries along the middle Atlantic
coast produce the best in the world. Chesapeake Bay and Long Island
Sound yield the greater part of the output. In the latter waters
elaborate methods of propagation are carried out, and the yearly crop is
increasing both in quality and quantity. The output of the Chesapeake
beds has decreased materially; that of the Long Island Sound beds has
increased.
Oysters are plentiful along the Pacific coast of the United States and
also in European coast-waters, but they are inferior in size and
quality. The use of refrigerator-cars and vessels has extended the trade
to the extent that fresh oysters are shipped to points 2,000 miles
inland; they are also exported to Europe. Baltimore is the chief
oyster-market.
The consumption of the lobster has been so great that the catch of the
New England coast has decreased about one-half in the past fifty years,
and the United States is now an importer. Most of the import, amounting
to about one million dollars yearly, comes from Canada. The so-called
lobsters of the Pacific coast of the United States are not lobsters, but
crayfish.
=Fish Hatcheries.=--The demand for fish has grown so great in past years
that in many countries the waters, especially the lakes and rivers, are
restocked. The eggs are hatched and the young fry are fed until they
are large enough to take care of themselves. The chief hatchery and
laboratory of the United States Fish Commission is at Woods Holl, Mass.
As many as 860,000,000 eggs, small fry, and adult fish have been
distributed in a single year. The State of New York has also a similar
department for restocking its waters.
=Sponge.=--This substance is practically the skeleton of a low order of
animal, growing at the bottom of the sea. The sponge is cut from the
place of attachment, and the gelatinous matter is washed away after
putrefaction. The chief sponge-fisheries are in the neighborhood of
Florida and the Bahama Islands.
=Seal.=--The fur-seal is an amphibian, found only in cold waters. A few
pelts are obtained along the Greenland coast, but the chief
sealing-grounds of the world have been at the Pribilof Islands, in
Bering Sea. The pelts of the young males only are taken. The rookeries
of the Pribilof Islands have been so nearly exhausted, that the killing
season has been suspended for a term of years. Much illicit
seal-catching is still going on, however.
The skins are taken to London, via San Francisco, where the fur is dyed
a rich brown color; London is the chief market for dyed pelts; San
Francisco for raw pelts; and New York, Paris, and St. Petersburg for
garments. The pelts of the sea-otter are obtained mainly in the North
Pacific Ocean.
=Other Furs.=--The furs employed in the finest garments are in part the
pelts of land animals living in polar regions. The sable, stone-marten,
otter, beaver, and red fox are the most valuable. The Persian lamb,
however, is not a polar animal. The Russian Empire and Canada are the
chief sources of supply. The Hudson Bay Company, with head-quarters at
Fort Garry, near Winnipeg, controls most of the fur-trade of North
America; the Russian furs are marketed mainly at Lower Novgorod.
Leipzig, Germany, is also an important fur-market.
Enormous quantities of rabbit-skins from Australia and nutria from
Argentina are imported into the United States and Europe for the
manufacture of the felt of which hats are made. The amount of this
substance may be realized when one considers that not far from two
hundred million people in the two countries wear felt hats.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Note an instance in which the search for deep-sea fishing-grounds has
resulted in the discovery of unknown lands.
Why are not whale products as essential now as a century ago?
What international complications have arisen between the United States
and Great Britain concerning the cod-fisheries?--the seal-catch?
[Illustration: NORTH AMERICA]
CHAPTER XVII
THE UNITED STATES--THE SEAPORTS AND THE ATLANTIC COAST-PLAIN
The United States of America together with the possessions included
within the domain of the Republic comprise an area somewhat greater than
that of Europe.
With respect to latitude, the position of the main body of the United
States is extremely fortunate. Practically all its area is situated in
the warmer half of the temperate zone. Only a small part lies beyond the
northern limit of the corn belt; wheat, oats, and barley are cultivated
successfully throughout four-fifths of its extent in latitude; grass,
and therefore cattle and sheep are grown in nearly every part. Coal,
iron, copper, gold, and silver, the minerals and metals which give to a
nation its greatest material power, exist in abundance, and the
successful working of these deposits have placed the country upon a very
high commercial plane.
Topographically the United States may be divided into the following
regions:
The Atlantic Coast-Plain,
The Appalachian Ranges and the New England Plateau,
The Basin of the Great Lakes,
The Northern Mississippi Valley Region,
The Southern Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast,
The Arid Plains,
The Plateau Region,
The Pacific Coast Lowlands.
[Illustration: A HARBOR--NEW YORK BAY, AT THE BATTERY]
The topographic and climatic features of these various regions have had
a great influence not only on the political history of the country, but
their effect has been even greater in determining its industrial
development. They have resulted in the establishment of the various
industries, each in the locality best adapted to it, instead of their
diffusion without respect to the necessary conditions of environment.
The foregoing regions are also approximately areas of fundamental
industries. Thus, the New England plateau supplies the rest of the
United States with light manufactures, such as cotton textiles, woollen
clothing, hats, shoes, cutlery, books, writing-paper, household metal
wares, etc., but sells the excess abroad. The middle and southern
Appalachians, with the coal which forms their chief resource, supply the
rest of the country with structural steel, from ores obtained in the
lake regions, and sell the excess to foreign countries.
The northern Mississippi Valley grows nearly one-fourth of the world's
wheat-crop. The wheat of this region and the Pacific coast lowlands
supplies the country with bread-stuffs, and exports the excess to
western Europe. The Gulf states, which produce three-fourths of the
world's cotton-crop, supply the whole country and about one-half the
rest of the world besides with cotton textiles. The grazing regions
produce an excess of meat for export; the western highlands furnish the
gold and silver necessary to carry on the enormous commerce.
In the last twenty years the imports of merchandise per capita varied
but little from $11.50; the exports per capita varied from about $12 to
more than $18.
=The Atlantic Coast-Plain and the Seaports.=--Throughout most of its
extent the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is bordered by a low
coast-plain. Along the northeastern coast of the United States the
coast-plain is very narrow; south of New York Bay it has a width in
some places of more than two hundred miles.
The existence of this plain has had a marked effect on the commercial
development of the country. The sinking or "drowning" of the northern
part of it has made an exceedingly indented coast. The drowned valleys,
enclosed by ridges and headlands, form the best of harbors, and nearly
all of them are northeast of New York Bay. South of New York Bay good
harbors are comparatively few. For the greater part they occur only when
old, buried river-channels permit approach to the shore.
The most important port of entry in these harbors is _New York_, and it
derives its importance from two factors. It has a very capacious harbor,
into which vessels drawing as much as thirty-five feet may enter; its
situation at the lower end of a series of valleys and passes makes it
almost a dead level route from the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard.
The importance of New York as the commercial gateway between European
ports and the food-producing region of the American continent began when
the Erie Canal was opened between the Great Lakes and tide-water. The
completion of the canal for the first time opened the rich farming lands
of the interior to European markets. Probably a greater tonnage of
freight is carried yearly over this route than over any other channel of
trade in the world.
Not far from two-thirds of the foreign commerce of the country passes
through the port of New York. The water-front of the city has an
aggregate length of about three hundred miles, of which one-third is
available for anchorage. The docks and piers, including those of Jersey
City and Hoboken, aggregate about ninety miles in frontage.
About sixteen thousand sea-going craft enter and clear yearly, and an
average of nearly twenty large passenger and freight steamships arrive
and clear daily, about one-half of them being foreign. The latter
receive their cargoes from about three thousand freight-cars that are
daily switched into the various freight-yards, a large part of which is
through freight from the west.
The port of entry of _New York_ is a centre of population of about four
million, and although there are the industries usually found in great
communities, the greater business enterprises practically reduce
themselves to export, import, and exchange. For this reason New York
City is the financial, as well as the commercial centre of the
continent. Most of the great industrial corporations of the country have
their head offices in the city. These are financed by more than one
hundred banks, together with a clearing-house whose yearly business
amounted in 1902 to considerably more than seventy billions of
dollars.[50]
[Illustration: BOSTON HARBOR]
_Boston_ has been one of the leading ports of the United States for
considerably more than a century. It ranks second among the ports of the
United States. Regular lines of transit connect it with the principal
ports of Great Britain and Canada. The coast trade is also very heavy.
Boston is the financial and commercial centre of New England; the
cotton, woollen, and leather goods passing through the port find their
way to nearly every inhabited part of the world. The city controls a
considerable export trade of food-stuffs from the upper Mississippi
Valley. The vessels entering and clearing at Boston indicate a movement
of about four million five hundred thousand tons, about one-fourth that
of New York. The clearing-house exchanges average about six billion
dollars yearly.
_Philadelphia_, on account of its distance inland, is not fortunately
situated for ocean commerce. Steamships of deep draught reach their
docks at the lower end of the city under their own steam, but
sailing-craft pay heavy towage fees. There are regular lines to
Liverpool, Antwerp, West Indian ports, Baltimore, and Boston.
Philadelphia is the centre of the anthracite coal trade, and this is the
chief factor of its domestic trade. The imports of fruit from the West
Indies, carpet-wool from Europe, and raw sugar from the West Indies,
form the greater part of its foreign business. The manufactures are
mainly carpets and rugs, locomotives and iron steamships, and refined
sugar. The carpet-weaving and the ship-building plants are among the
largest in the world. The ocean movement of freight is more than three
million five hundred thousand tons yearly. The business of the
clearing-house in 1902 aggregated nearly six billion dollars.
_Baltimore_ is likewise handicapped by its distance inland.
Sailing-vessels, however, require only a short towage, the docks being
scarcely a dozen miles from Chesapeake Bay. The harbor is deep and
capacious. The Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio railway systems have
made Baltimore an important railway centre. The completion of the Gould
railway system to the Atlantic seaboard has made the city second to New
York only in the export of corn, wheat, flour, and tobacco. The most
noteworthy local industry is the oyster product, which is the greatest
in the world. Nearly ten thousand people are employed, and during the
busy season--from September to the end of April--about thirty carloads
of oysters a day are shipped.
[Illustration: CHARLESTON HARBOR]
The yearly movement of marine freight, entering and clearing, aggregates
about three million tons. In 1902 the clearing-house exchanges
aggregated about two and one-quarter billion dollars.
_Portland_, Me., has good harbor facilities, but is distant from the
great lines of traffic. Steamship lines, which in summer make Montreal a
terminal point, occasionally make Portland their winter harbor. _Newport
News_, _Savannah_, _Charleston_, and _Brunswick_ are growing in
importance as clearing ports for the cotton and produce from the region
west of them. _Norfolk_ obtains importance on account of the United
States Navy-Yard; it is also the great peanut-market of the world.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the requisites of a good seaport?
What is meant by the draught of a vessel?
For what purposes are pilots?
How are navigable channels marked and designated?
From the Statistical Abstract find six or more of the leading exports
from each of the following ports: New York, Boston, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and the port nearest which you live.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Statistical Abstract of the United States.
Statesman's Year-Book.
Industrial Evolution of the United States--Chapter II.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE UNITED STATES--THE NEW ENGLAND PLATEAU AND THE APPALACHIAN REGION
The manufacturing regions of the United States, which connect the
country with the rest of the world, include mainly the New England
plateau and the Appalachian ranges.
=The New England Plateau.=--This region embraces the New England States
and practically includes all the eastern part of New York and northern
New Jersey. The abruptly sloping surface affords a great wealth of
water-power, and the region is one of the most important centres of
light manufacture in the world. This industry resulted very largely from
the conditions imposed by the War of 1812 and its consequent
non-intercourse acts.
The interruption of foreign commerce not only cut off the importation of
manufactured commodities, but also made idle the capital employed.
Manufacturing enterprises started in various parts of the United States,
but they prospered in this region for three reasons--an abundance of
power, plenty of capital, and business experience. Steam-power is
largely supplanting water-power in the manufacturing enterprises, and in
many instances the establishments have been moved to tide-water in order
to get their coal at the lowest rates of transportation.
Chief among the manufactures are cotton textiles, the yearly output of
which is about three hundred million dollars. About nine-tenths of the
cotton goods made are consumed at home. Of the remainder, China
purchases one-half. Great Britain and Canada take one-fourth, the South
American and Central American states purchase most of the remaining
output. The great improvement of spinning and weaving machinery has
enabled the cotton manufacturer to export his wares to about every
country in the world.
Boots, shoes, and other leather goods are also important manufactures.
The invention of improved machinery for making shoes has revolutionized
the industry to the extent that a pair of stylish shoes may be purchased
anywhere in the United States for about half the price charged in 1880.
Another result is the enormous importation of hides from South American
countries and Mexico.
The New England plateau is also the centre of a large number of
manufactures that require a high degree of mechanical skill and
intellectual training, such as small fire-arms, machinery, watches and
clocks, jewelry, machine-tools, etc. The location of such industries
depends but little upon climate, topography, or the cost of
transportation; it is wholly a question of an educated and trained
people. This region is likely to lose a considerable part of its
manufactures of cotton textiles, inasmuch as the industry is gradually
moving to the cotton-growing region. The manufactures requiring training
and skill, however, are likely to remain in the region where they have
grown up.
_Lawrence_, _Lowell_, _Manchester_, and _Nashua_--all on the Merrimac
River; _Lewiston_, _Waterville_, _Augusta_, _Woonsocket_, and
_Adams_--each situated at falls or rapids--are great centres of cotton
manufacture. Fall River has an abundance of water-power, and at the same
time is situated on tide-water. Having the advantage of good power and
cheap transportation, it has probably the greatest output of cotton
textiles of any city in the world. Textile establishments have also
grown up in the cities and towns of the Mohawk Valley, being attracted
by the excellent facilities for transportation and also by the available
water-power. _Lynn_, _Brockton_, _Haverhill_, _Marlboro_, and
_Worcester_ are centres of boot and shoe manufacture; they turn out
about two-thirds of the product of the United States.
_Bridgeport_ and _New Haven_ have very large plants for the manufacture
of fire-arms and fixed ammunition; _Waterbury_ and _Ansonia_ for
watches, clocks, and brass goods; _Meriden_ for silverware, and
_Waltham_ for watches. _Worcester_, _Hartford_, _North Adams_,
_Fitchburg_, and _Providence_ have each a great variety of manufactures.
The foreign commerce of these manufacturing centres is carried on mainly
through _Boston_. _New Haven_, _New Bedford_, _Providence_, _Salem_,
_Gloucester_, and _New London_ control each a very large local commerce.
South of New York Bay the Atlantic coast-plain attains an average width
of nearly two hundred miles. The pine forests of this plain yield
lumber, tar, pitch, and turpentine. The productive lands are valuable
chiefly for their output of dairy stuffs, fruit, and "garden truck,"
which find a ready market in the larger cities. In order to encourage
this industry, the railways make special rates for dairy products,
fruit, and vegetables, and afford quick transit for such freight.
Manufacturing industries are rapidly taking shape in this part of the
United States. Along the line where the coast-plain proper joins the
foot-hills of the Appalachian ranges, the rivers reach the lower levels
by rapids or falls. The estuaries into which they flow are usually
navigable for river-craft. The manufacturer thus has the double
advantage of water-power and low transportation. The opening of the
southern Appalachian coal-mines has also greatly encouraged manufacture
in this region. _Richmond_, _Columbia_, _Milledgeville_, _Augusta_, and
_Columbus_ are thus situated. Their manufactures are very largely
connected with the cotton-crop.
The domestic commerce of the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is
probably larger than that of any other similar region in the world. It
is considerably larger than the "round-the-island" trade of Great
Britain. Much of this trade is carried by steam-vessels, but the
three-masted schooner is everywhere in evidence, and these craft carry a
very large part of the coal that is moved by water. This trade is
restricted to vessels flying the American flag.
=The Appalachian Region.=--The middle and southern Appalachian region has
become the most important centre of iron and steel manufacture in the
world. This great development has resulted from several causes, the
chief being the existence of coal and unlimited quantities of iron ore
on the one hand, and unusual facilities for cheap transportation on the
other. There are practically three areas of steel manufacture--one along
the Ohio River and its tributaries in western Pennsylvania; another is
situated along the south shores of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan; the
third includes the Birmingham district in the southern Appalachians.
The steel-making plants of the Ohio River are located with reference to
the transportation of their products, and therefore are built usually
alongside the river. The coal or coke is commonly shipped in barges of
light draught; the manufactured products are carried by rail. The
greater part of the ore is brought from the Lake Superior region. It is
shipped at a very small cost from the ore quarries to the lake-shore,
and by rail from the lake-shore to the manufacturing plant. In order to
avoid heavy grades the ore railways are also built along the
river-valleys.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--ERECTING SHOP OF THE BALDWIN
LOCOMOTIVE WORKS, PHILADELPHIA]
Some of the various steel-making plants are equipped for the
manufacture of building or "structural" steel, others for rails and
railway equipments, still others for tin-plate, or for wire, or for tool
steel. In a few mills armor-plate and ordinary plate for steel vessels
form the exclusive product. The diversity of the product has led to the
organization of great corporations, each of which controls half-a-dozen
or more plants, the transportation lines necessary to carry the product,
the ore quarries, and the fuel-mines.
The wonderful development of the steel industry in the United States is
due to the use of labor-saving machinery, and to the superb
organization. The wages paid for labor are higher than those paid in
European steel-making centres; the cost of living is not materially
greater. The price of steel rails, which in 1880 was forty-eight dollars
per ton, in 1900 was about twenty dollars per ton.
_Pittsburg_, together with _Homestead_, _Carnegie_, _McKeesport_,
_Duquesne_, and _Braddock_, is the chief steel-making centre of the Ohio
River Valley. There are also large plants at _New Castle_, _Sharon_,
_Scranton_, _Johnstown_, _Bellaire_, _Youngstown_, _Mingo Junction_, and
_Wheeling_. The steel-plant and rolling-mills at _South Bethlehem_ are
designed especially for the manufacture of the heavy ordnance used in
the army and navy. Nearly all the cities and towns of Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, and eastern Ohio carry on manufacturing enterprises that
depend on coal mining and steel manufacture. The great and diversified
manufactures of Philadelphia are due to its fortunate situation at
tide-water, near the coal-mines. Cheap fuel and water transportation
have made it one of the great industrial centres of the world.
The anthracite coal of this region is used wholly for fuel and
steam-making; it is shipped partly by water from Philadelphia, but
mainly in specially constructed cars to the various points of
consumption. The soft coal is used also for fuel and steam-making, but a
large part of the product is converted into coke and used in the
steel-plants.
The petroleum of this region is a leading export of the country, the
states of western Europe being the chief purchasers. Of agricultural
products, hay, dairy products, and tobacco are the only ones of
importance. Natural gas is used both as a fuel and in manufactures.
The lake-shore centre of steel manufacture depends largely on the low
cost of transporting the iron ore, which in part is offset by the
increased cost of coal. The low cost of shipping the manufactured
product over nearly level trunk lines is a very substantial gain. _South
Chicago_, _Toledo_, _Sandusky_, _Lorain_, _Cleveland_, _Ashtabula_,
_Conneaut_, _Erie_, and _Buffalo_ are centres of steel manufacture or
ore shipment, because they are situated on this great trade-route or
line of least resistance.
The coal-mines and iron-making plants of the southern Appalachians have
a considerable area. The chief manufacturing centres are _Birmingham_,
_Richmond_, _Roanoke_, and _Chattanooga_. A considerable part of the
Virginia ores find their way to the Ohio River steel-mills. Open-hearth
steel is an important manufacture in Birmingham. A large part of the
ores smelted in the southern Appalachian region are made into foundry
iron.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the advantages and the disadvantages of manufacturing cotton
textiles in the New England States?
Why have the mining of ore and the manufacture of steel become generally
unprofitable in the New England States?
What causes have brought about the lowering of the prices of cotton
textiles during the past fifty years?--of shoes?
What makes the manufacture of artificial ice a precarious business north
of the latitude of Philadelphia?
What are the advantages and the disadvantages arising from the location
of a manufacturing industry at a seaport?
What is the design of a protective tariff? What are its advantages and
disadvantages?
Why are most of the great steel-making plants so remote from the mines
of iron ore used in making steel?
FOR COLLATERAL READING
Industrial Evolution of the United States--Chapters III-V.
Mineral Resources of the United States.
Outlines of Political Science--Chapters VIII-X.
CHAPTER XIX
THE UNITED STATES--THE BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES AND THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY
The principal agricultural region of the United States extends from the
Appalachian ranges to the Rocky Mountains. A certain amount of
bread-stuffs, meat, and dairy products are grown in nearly every part of
the country for local use, but the grain, meat, and cotton of this
region are designed for export, and are therefore factors in the world's
commerce. The basin of the Great Lakes connects the Mississippi Valley
with the Atlantic seaboard.
=The Basin of the Great Lakes.=--This region includes not only the Great
Lakes and the area drained by the streams flowing into them, but also a
considerable region surrounding that commercially is tributary to the
traffic passing over the lakes. This basin itself is a part of a
trade-route destined very shortly to become one of the greatest highways
of traffic in the world.
The lakes afford a navigable water-way which, measured due east and
west, aggregates nearly six hundred miles. This route is interrupted at
Niagara Falls and at St. Mary's Falls, between Lake Superior and Lake
Huron. On the Canadian side, Welland Canal, Lake Ontario, and the St.
Lawrence connect Lake Erie with tide-water. In the United States the
Erie Canal connects the lake with the Hudson River and New York Bay.
From the head of Lake Superior railway routes of minimum grades--the
Great Northern and the Northern Pacific[51]--cross the continent to
Puget Sound, the best harbor approach to the Pacific coast of the
American continent. The harbors of Puget Sound, moreover, are materially
nearer the great Asian ports than any other port of the United States.
The level margins of these lakes are roadbeds for many miles of railway
track; in many instances the railways are built on the tops of terraces
that once were shores of the lakes.
[Illustration: DULUTH]
_Duluth_, at the head of Lake Superior, became commercially important
when the St. Mary's Falls Canal was completed. Much of the tremendous
tonnage of freight passing through the canal is assembled at this place.
The freight shipped consists mainly of farm products collected from an
area reaching as far west as the Rocky Mountains. There is also a
considerable shipment of iron ores obtained near by. _Buffalo_, at the
lower end of Lake Erie, owes its activity to the trade in lumber, grain,
and other farm products that come from Western lake-ports. It is the
eastern terminus of the lake-commerce and the western terminus of the
Erie Canal.
_Chicago_, at the head of Lake Michigan, has a very heavy lake-trade.
The mouth of Chicago River, the natural harbor of the city, has been
improved by a system of basins and breakwaters. The river itself has
been converted into a ship and drainage canal that is connected with the
Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. It is now an outlet instead of a feeder
to the lake, and the city built about old Fort Dearborn has become the
greatest railway centre in the world.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF LOCKS AND CANAL, SAULT STE. MARIE]
_Milwaukee_ has a situation in many ways resembling that of Chicago,
its harbor being the mouth of Milwaukee River. Like Chicago, it owes its
importance to its lake-trade. _Detroit_ (with _Windsor_, Ont.) owes its
growth partly to its strategic position on the strait connecting Lake
Huron and Lake Erie, and partly for its position between the lakes. It
is an important collecting and distributing point for lake-freights, and
the chief centre of commerce with Canada. Several east-and-west trunk
lines and local lines of railway have freight terminals in the city; it
is also the centre of the most complete system of interurban electric
railways in the world. _Port Huron_ (with _Sarnia_, Ont.) has a
geographic position similar to that of Detroit, and is also an important
lake-port. The St. Clair River is tunnelled at this point. _Cleveland_,
_Toledo_, _Sandusky_, and _Erie_ contribute very largely to the
lake-trade. _Grand Rapids_ is the business centre of furniture
manufacture of the United States.
The great iron-ore ranges about Lake Superior have had much to do with
the growth of the local lake-trade. This has resulted in the
establishment of a large number of shipping-ports near the head of the
lakes, and also a number of receiving ports on the south shores of Lake
Erie and Lake Michigan. Some of the latter have become also great
manufacturing centres of structural iron and steel.
Various centres of industry at a considerable distance from the Great
Lakes are contributors to their trade. Thus, on account of the low rate
for grain between _Chicago_ and _New York City_--about 5-1/4 cents per
bushel--there are yearly very heavy shipments of the grain designed for
Liverpool. _St. Paul_ and _Minneapolis_ are also collecting and
distributing centres of lake-freights. A considerable part of the
business of the lake-region is carried on by the Canadians, who have
improved their resources for production and transportation to the
utmost.
[Illustration: _Copyright, Detroit Photographic Co._
AURORA IRON MINES, IRONWOOD, MICHIGAN]
=The Northern Mississippi Valley Region.=--This region extends from the
Appalachian ranges to the western limit of wheat and cotton growing. On
the south it is limited by the cotton-growing region. Its boundaries are
therefore climatic and commercial.
The surface is level; there is a rich, deep soil and an abundant
rainfall. It has therefore become one of the foremost regions of the
world in the production of corn, wheat, pork, dairy-stuffs, and general
farm produce. The evolution of farming machinery is the direct result of
topographic conditions. A level, fertile region naturally invites
grain-farming on a large scale. This, in turn, must depend very largely
on the ability of the farmer to plant and harvest his crops with the
minimum of expense and time.
Hand-work in harvesting and planting has almost wholly given way to
machine-work. Farming carried on under such conditions requires not only
a considerable capital, but close business management as well. Some of
the results have been very far-reaching. The machinery and other
equipments require capital, and this in late years has been borrowed
from Eastern capitalists. The prompt business methods of the
money-lender brought about no little friction, and it is only within
recent years that each adjusted himself to the requirements of the
other.
The system of machine-farming to a great extent has prevented the
subdivision of farms. As a rule, quarter and half sections represent the
size of most of the farms, but tracts varying from five thousand to ten
thousand acres are by no means uncommon. The chief drawback to this
method in the case of wheat-farming, however, is the low yield per acre.
The average yield per acre for the United States, a little more than
twelve bushels, is scarcely half the average yield in Europe. Although
the farmer has done much to reorganize his business methods, he has done
but little to maintain the productivity of his land.
[Illustration: THE WHEAT INDUSTRY--HARVESTING WITH McCORMICK
SELF-BINDING REAPERS]
The cities and towns of this region are mainly receiving and collecting
points for farm produce. Nearly every village is equipped with elevators
and grain-handling machinery; the larger towns, as a rule, have
stock-yards and the necessary facilities for cattle shipment; the large
cities are usually centres of meat-packing. Most of the meat-packing is
a necessity; for although cattle may be shipped alive and beef may be
transported in refrigerator ships and cars, pork is not marketable
unless pickled, salted, or smoked. The pork thus exported, aggregating
about six hundred million pounds yearly, must be prepared, therefore,
somewhere near the cornfields. Manufacturing enterprises are operated on
a very large scale, but in the main their products are farm-machinery
and the commodities required by a farming population.
Education in agriculture is provided for in nearly every State in the
Union. The agricultural colleges in the States composing this group rank
among the best in the world. In addition to the ordinary courses in such
institutions, there are also many experiment stations for the study of
economic plants, cattle diseases, and insect pests.
_Chicago_ is the largest food-market in the world. The industries of the
city are almost wholly connected with the commerce of grain, pork, meat,
and other food-stuffs. For the transportation of these commodities about
thirty great trunk lines enter the city and about twelve hundred
passenger trains daily arrive and depart from its stations.
The freight terminals are connected by transfer and belt lines, which
receive and distribute the cars passing between the eastern and the
western roads. More than five hundred freight trains, aggregating about
twenty thousand cars, arrive and depart daily.
_St. Louis_ originally derived its importance as a river-port of the
Mississippi, having been the connecting commercial link between the
upper and the lower river. In recent years it has become the metropolis
of the southern part of the food-producing region. In addition to the
river-trade, still largely controlled at this point, it is the focus of
more than twenty trunk lines of railway. Some of these, like the trunk
lines of Chicago, handle freight exchanged between the East and West;
but a large proportion are receiving and distributing roads for Southern
freight.
[Illustration: AUTOMOTIVE POWER IN THE INDUSTRIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY]
_St. Paul_ and _Minneapolis_ are the metropolis of the upper
Mississippi. The former grew from a trading-post at the head of
navigation; the latter gained its commercial prominence from the
water-power at the falls of St. Anthony. The former has become the chief
railway and distributing centre of the northern Mississippi Valley; the
latter has the greatest flour-mills in the world, and an extensive
lumber-trade. Both are situated on the trade-route between the United
States and Asian ports, and distribute a part of the trade that comes
from them.
The two _Kansas Cities_,[52] _Omaha_, _South Omaha_, and _Sioux City_
are stock-markets and meat-packing centres. The first two named are
collecting and distributing points not only for the Mississippi Valley,
but also for a considerable share of the Pacific Coast trade. Kansas
City is also a transfer station for the cotton destined for China. From
this place it is sent by way of Billings to Seattle, and thence shipped
to China.
_Cincinnati_ is the metropolis of the Ohio Valley. Its situation on a
bend of the river gives most excellent landing facilities; the easy
grade from the bluff to the bottom-lands along the flood-plain of Mill
Creek makes it accessible to the railways that enter the city. On
account of low rates of transportation by river-barges, about three
million tons of coal and one million tons of pig-iron and steel billets
are floated to the city to be manufactured into other steel products.
_Indianapolis_ is a great railway centre, where much of the freight
passing between Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg is
exchanged. _Columbus_ (O.) is similarly situated as a railway and
farming centre.
[Illustration: CATTLE AND DAIRY PRODUCTS]
_Louisville_ is a market of the tobacco region, and has probably a
larger business in this industry than any other city in the world.
_Davenport_, _Rock Island_, and _Moline_ form a single commercial
centre, the last-named having the largest establishment for the
manufacture of ploughs in the world. _Dubuque_, _Burlington_, _Quincy_,
and _Muscatine_ are river-ports, all having a considerable trade in the
lumber that is carried down the river.
=The Southern Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast.=--This region receives a
generous warmth and rainfall. Cotton is its staple product, and nearly
all the industries are connected with the growth, shipment, and
manufacture of the crop and its side products. The cotton, raw or
manufactured, is sold in about every country in the world.
The commercial part of handling the cotton-crop begins within a very
few weeks from the time of the first picking. The baled cotton is hauled
by team from the plantation to the nearest market-town, an item
sometimes greater than the entire freightage from the nearest seaport to
Liverpool.
The season for export lasts from September until the middle of January,
during which time brokers are visiting the smaller markets in order to
buy it on commission. It is then shipped by rail or by river to the
nearest general market, where it is sold to the foreign buyers and
domestic manufacturers.
_New Orleans_, the metropolis of the South, has usually the heaviest
export of cotton, amounting to about one billion pounds each year. Much
of this is received by water from the various river-ports. The city is
not only a river-port, but an important seaport as well, controlling a
large part of the foreign commerce of the Gulf. Several trunk lines of
railway enter the city, which is a receiving and distributing depot for
both Atlantic and Pacific freights. A considerable part of the former
are sent by ocean steamships from New York. An elaborate system of
sewerage, well-paved streets, and a good water-supply--all recently put
into operation--have made the city one of the most attractive in the
United States.
_Galveston_ is destined to become a leading port for cotton export. It
has the advantage of a fine harbor on the seaboard, and the disadvantage
of a location so low that very heavy south winds flood the streets with
water from the Gulf. The growth of the export trade is due chiefly to
the increasing crop of Texas. Shipments from Galveston begin in
September, the Texas crop being the first to mature. _Savannah_ and _New
York_ rank next in their exports. _Pensacola_ and _Brunswick_ are also
important points of export. _Memphis_, _Vicksburg_, _Shreveport_,
_Houston_, and _Montgomery_ are important collecting stations for the
cotton.
About one-third of the crop is retained for manufacture in the United
States; one-third is purchased by Great Britain, one-sixth by Germany,
and most of the remainder by France, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Of the
manufactured cotton goods, the Chinese are the heaviest buyers, taking
about half the entire export. Most of the Chinese purchase is landed at
Shanghai.
In the main, the manufactures of this region closely concern the cotton
industry. The increase in the manufacture of textile goods has been very
great, and a large part of the cotton now manufactured in the New
England States and abroad, in time will be made in the cities and towns
of this section. In addition to the textile goods, cottonseed-oil is an
important product. A part of this is used in the mechanical arts, but
the refined oil is used mainly for domestic purposes. A considerable
part of the latter is used to adulterate olive-oil, and in some
instances is substituted for it. The refuse of the seed is made into
fertilizer.
_Atlanta_ is one of the foremost cities in the South in the manufacture
of cotton textiles and products. Commercially its situation resembles
that of Indianapolis; it is a focal point of the chief trunk lines of
railway in the South, and has the principal railway clearing-house. Like
New Orleans, it is an educational centre and one of the foremost in the
South. _Macon_, _Dallas_, _Fort Worth_, and _San Antonio_ are growing
commercial centres.
The manufacture of cane-sugar has been an industry of Louisiana for more
than a century. Since the advent of beet-sugar, however, it has been a
somewhat precarious venture, and has depended for existence very largely
upon tariff protection and bounties paid to the American sugar-makers.
Tobacco manufacture centres at Tampa and Key West. Cuban leaf is there
converted into cigars.
Fruit culture is a great industry. Millions of melons and great
quantities of pineapples, oranges, and small fruit form the early crop
that is shipped North. The orange groves are mainly in Florida. The crop
is exhausted about the time that California oranges are shipped East. A
great deal of tropical fruit is brought from Mexican, Central American,
and South American ports. This trade is controlled mainly at _Mobile_,
which is also a lumber-market.
=The Arid Plains and the Grazing Region.=--This region includes the high
plains approximately west of the 2,000-foot contour of level, together
with a part of the plateaus of the western highland region. It is
essentially one of grazing. Formerly there was an attempt to make
wheat-growing the chief industry, but on account of the limited rainfall
not more than three crops out of five reached maturity.
The earlier cattle-growing was carried on in a somewhat primitive
manner; the cattle herded on open lands, wandering from one range to
another, wherever the grazing might be good. The ownership of the cattle
was determined by the brand the animal bore,[53] and the herds were
"rounded up" twice a year to be sorted; at the round-up the "mavericks,"
or unmarked calves and yearlings, were branded. In time the ranges
became greatly overstocked; the winter losses by starvation were so
heavy that a better system became imperative. "Rustling," or
cattle-stealing, also became a factor in improving the methods of
cattle-ranching. The cautious rustler would purchase a few head of
cattle and add to the number by capturing stray mavericks.
[Illustration: A DESERT REGION--TOO DRY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF
FOOD-STUFFS]
[Illustration: OPEN GRAZING RANGES, IN WESTERN HIGHLANDS]
Both the legitimate graziers and the rustlers at first were bitterly
opposed to fencing the land. In time, however, the grazier was compelled
to do this, and also to grow alfalfa for winter foddering. The great
open ranges have therefore been broken up and fenced wholly or in part.
The fencing, moreover, has kept a dozen or more of the largest
wire-mills in the world turning out a product that is at once shipped
West. As a rule, the top wire is set on insulators and used for
telephone connection.[54] This method of cattle-growing has improved the
business in every way. The cattle are better kept; the loss by winter
killing is very small; the "long-horn" cattle have given place to the
best breeds of "meaters," which are heavier, and mature more quickly.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co._
ON A TEXAS CATTLE RANCH]
The success of stock-growing in this region is largely a question of
climate. The sparse rainfall permits the growth of several species of
grass that retain nutrition and vitality after turning brown under the
fierce summer heat. Ordinary turf-grass will not live in this region,
nor will it retain its nutrition after turning brown if rain falls upon
it. The native grass is not materially affected by a shower or two; it
is fairly good fodder even when buried under the winter's snow. The
existence of this industry, therefore, turns on a very delicate climatic
balance.
Of the beef grown in the United States the export product is derived
mainly from this region. Nearly four hundred thousand animals are
shipped alive; about three hundred million pounds of fresh beef are
shipped to the Atlantic seaboard in refrigerator-cars and then
transferred to refrigerator-steamships. Two-thirds of the cattle and
fresh beef exported are shipped from New York and Boston.
Upward of one hundred and fifty million pounds of canned and pickled
beef are also exported. All but a very small part of this product is
consumed in Great Britain, France, and Germany. The cattle are collected
for transportation at various stations and sidings along the railways
that traverse this region. _Cheyenne_ is one of the largest
cattle-markets in the world.
Wool has become a very valuable product, and the sheep grown in this
region number about one-half the total in the United States. The growing
of macaroni-wheat is extending to lands that fail to produce crops of
ordinary wheat.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what ways does the basin of the Great Lakes facilitate the commerce
of the United States?
How has the topography of the Mississippi Valley affected the evolution
of farming-machinery?
Why are shippers willing in many cases to pay an all-rail rate on wheat
sent to the Atlantic seaboard, nearly three times as great as the lake
and canal rates?
The acre-product of wheat in the United States is about twelve bushels;
in western Europe it varies from twenty-five to more than forty bushels;
to what is the difference due?
What is meant by sea-island cotton?--for what reasons is cotton imported
from Egypt and Peru into the United States?
In what manner is cotton used in the manufacture of pneumatic tires, and
why is it thus used?
What are refrigerator-cars?--refrigerator-steamships? Name some of the
regulations required in shipping cattle.
Why have American meats been debarred at times from European markets?
Find the value of cotton and meat exported to the following-named
countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, China.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
The Wheat Problem--pp. 191 _et seq._
Statistical Abstract.
[Illustration: DIFFICULT RAILROADING--LAS ANIMAS CANYON]
CHAPTER XX
THE UNITED STATES--THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS AND TERRITORIAL POSSESSIONS
The western part of the United States consists of a succession of high
mountain-ranges extending nearly north and south. The two highest
ranges, each about two miles high, enclose a basin-shaped plateau about
one mile high. This basin is commonly called the "plateau region." The
rim ranges are broken in a few places by passes that the
transcontinental railways thread. West of the Sierra Nevada ranges are
the fertile Pacific coast lowlands.
=The Plateau Region.=--This region is generally arid, but on the higher
plateaus there is sufficient rainfall to produce a considerable forestry
and grazing. The general conditions of rainfall and topography forbid
any great development of agriculture. Farming is confined to the
river-flood-plains, the parks, and the old lake beds and margins.
A considerable area, estimated at more than two million acres, may be
made productive by irrigation, and the United States Government is
undertaking the construction of an elaborate and extensive system of
reservoirs for the impounding of stream and storm waters now running to
waste. The irrigated lands of this region, when their products are
accessible to markets, are very valuable. The river-bottom lands of New
Mexico, and the old margins of Great Salt Lake in Utah are examples.
They produce abundantly, and a single acre often yields as much as four
or five acres in regions of plentiful rainfall.
Not much of the crop of this region, the fruit and wool excepted,
leaves the vicinity in which it is grown, on account of the expense of
transportation. In the matter of the transportation of their
commodities, the dwellers of the western highland are doubly
handicapped. The building of railways is enormously expensive, and in a
region of sparse population there is comparatively little local freight
to be hauled. The difficulties of developing such a region from a
commercial stand-point, therefore, are very great.
Mining is the chief industry of this section, and silver, gold, and
copper are its most important products. Since the discovery of precious
metals in the United States, this region has produced gold and silver
bullion to the value of about four billion dollars. This sum is about
one-half the value of the railways of the country,[55] and from 1865 to
1880 a large part of the capital invested in railway building represents
the gold and silver of these mines. In the last twenty years of the past
century they produced an average of about one hundred and twenty-five
million dollars per year, and this average is constantly increasing.
Coal-measures extend along the eastern escarpment of the Rocky
Mountains, and these are destined at no remote day to create a centre of
steel and other manufactures. Several of the railways operate coal-mines
in Colorado and Wyoming for the fuel required. A limited supply of steel
is also made, the industry being protected by the great distance from
the Eastern smelteries.
[Illustration: GOLD MINING--CRIPPLE CREEK, COLORADO]
_Denver_ is the chief active centre of finance of the mining industry
in the western highlands, although many of the great enterprises derive
the capital necessary to develop them from _New York_ and _San
Francisco_. _Leadville_, _Cripple Creek_, _Butte_, _Helena_, and
_Deadwood_ are regions of gold and silver production. _Virginia City_ is
the operating centre of the famous Comstock mines. At _Anaconda_ is the
chief copper-mine of this region. _Salt Lake City_ and _Ogden_ are the
centre of the Mormon agricultural enterprises. _Santa Fe_, _Las Vegas_,
and _Albuquerque_ are centres of agricultural interests and
stock-growing.
_Spokane_ and _Walla Walla_ are commercial centres of the plains of the
Columbia River. The former is the focal point of a network of local
roads that collect the wheat and other farm products of this region; the
latter is the collecting point for much of the freight sent by
steamboats down the Columbia River from _Wallula_. Railway
transportation has largely superseded river-navigation for all except
local freights, however. _Boise City_ is the financial centre of
considerable mining interests.
=The Pacific Coast Lowlands.=--Climatically this region differs from the
rest of the United States in having a rainy and a dry season--that is,
the rainfall is wholly seasonal. In the northern part the rainfall is
sixty inches or more, and rain may be expected daily from the middle of
October to May. In central California the precipitation is about half as
much, the rainy season beginning later and ending earlier. In southern
California there are occasional showers during the winter months,
aggregating ten or twenty inches.
The level valley-lands have no superior for wheat-farming, and in but
one or two places is the rainfall insufficient to insure a good crop. In
the San Joaquin and southern valleys of California the harvest begins in
May, in the Sacramento Valley in June, and in the Willamette and Sound
Valleys of Oregon and Washington in July. The wheat goes mainly to Great
Britain by way of Cape Horn. It cannot be safely shipped in bulk, and
the manufacture of jute grain-sacks has become an important industry in
consequence. The yearly wheat product of this region is not far from
eighty million bushels.
Fruit is a valuable product of the foot-hills of the Sierras, and in
southern California oranges, lemons, and grapes are now the staple crop.
In some cases the average yield per acre has reached a value of five
hundred dollars. Some of the largest vineyards in the world are in this
region. The Zinfandel claret wine and the raisins find a market as far
east as London, and considerable quantities are sold in China and Japan.
The navel orange, although not native to California, reaches its finest
development in that State. A large part of the fruit-crop of California
is handled at Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York. It is
transported in special cars attached to fast trains.
Wool is an important crop. In the northern part the sheep thrive best in
the foot-hills. The valley of Umpqua River, Ore., produces nearly
seventeen million pounds of wool yearly, the staple being an ordinary
variety. California produces nearly as much of the finest merino staple.
A considerable part is manufactured in the mills of the Pacific coast.
The Mission Mills blankets made in San Francisco are without an equal
elsewhere.
The discovery of gold by John Marshall in 1848 resulted in a tremendous
inflow of people to the gold-fields of California. It also was a factor
in the acquisition of the territory composing the Pacific coast States.
The first mining consisted merely in separating the metal deposited in
the bed-rock of streams by washing away the lighter material. In time
the quartz ledges which had produced the placer gold became the chief
factor in gold mining. California is still one of the leading States in
the production of gold. Quicksilver mining is an important feature of
the mining interests of the Pacific coast, and the mines of the coast
ranges produce about half the world's output.
Lumber manufacture is an important industry. Douglas spruce, commonly
known as "Oregon pine," grows profusely on the western slopes of the
high ranges, the belt extending nearly to the Mexican border. It makes a
most excellent building-lumber, especially for bridge-timber and
framework. Masts and spars of this material are used in almost every
maritime country. Sugar-pine is less common, but is abundant. It is
largely used for interior work. Several species of redwood occur in
central California, confined to a limited area. The wood is fine-grained
and makes a most beautiful interior finish.
_San Francisco_ is the metropolis of the Pacific coast of the United
States. It is the terminus of the Santa Fe and Union Pacific railways,
and the centre of a network of local roads. Steamship lines connect the
city with Panama, the Hawaiian Islands, Japan, and Australian ports;
coast steamships reach to the various ports of Alaska, Oregon, and
California. It is also the financial as well as the commercial centre of
the Pacific coast. _Los Angeles_ is the centre of the fruit-growing
region; its port is _San Pedro_. _Stockton_, _Port Costa_, and
_Sacramento_, all on navigable waters, are wheat-markets. _Portland_
(Ore.) is the metropolis of the basin of the Columbia and Willamette
Rivers. Navigation of the former is interrupted by falls or rapids at
_Dalles_ and _Cascades_, but boats ascend as far as _Wallula_. The lower
Willamette is also made navigable by means of a canal and locks at
Oregon Falls.
Puget Sound is a "drowned valley," with an abundance of deep water. The
score or more of harbors are among the best in the world. _Seattle_ and
_Tacoma_, the leading ports, are terminals of great transcontinental
railways, and also of the most important trade-route across the
continent. Lines of steamships connect Seattle with Japan and China, and
the commerce passing through this gateway is drawn from a territory
that extends more than half-way around the world. These ports are
destined to become the chief American ports in the Asian trade.
=Alaska.=--The most productive industry of the insular part of the
territory is the fisheries. For many years the Pribilof Islands produced
practically all the seal-pelts used in the manufacture of seal-fur
garments. So many seals were killed, however, that the species seemed
likely to become extinct, and seal-catching has been forbidden for a
term of years.
[Illustration: PUGET SOUND]
The discovery of gold along the Klondike River and in the beach-sands of
Cape Nome was followed by the development of surface mines that produced
a large amount of gold. For the better transportation of products, a
railway has been completed from _Skagway_ across White Pass to _White
Horse_, the head of navigation of the Yukon. About twenty steamboats are
engaged in the commerce of the river. _Skagway_ and _Dyea_ are
collecting points for the commerce of the Klondike mines. _Juneau_ has
probably the largest quartz-mill in the world.
=Porto Rico.=--Porto Rico, formerly a Spanish colony, is now a possession
of the United States. The island is about the size of Connecticut and
has a population somewhat greater. The industries are almost wholly
agricultural, and nearly the whole surface is under cultivation. Sugar,
coffee, and tobacco are grown for export, and these constitute the chief
source of income. The coffee-crop, about sixty million pounds yearly, is
the most valuable product and commands a high price on account of its
superior quality. It is sold very largely to European coffee-merchants,
and is marketed as a "Mocha." Exports of fruit to the United States are
increasing. In 1900 the exports to United States markets, mainly sugar
and cattle products, were about six million dollars. The imports from
the United States were chiefly of cotton-prints and rice, to the amount
of nearly nine million dollars. The total export and import trade that
year was about twenty million dollars.
The facilities for the transportation of products are not good. The
railway lines have a total mileage of about one hundred and fifty miles.
An excellent wagon-road, built by the Spanish Government from San Juan
to Ponce, has been supplemented by several hundred miles of roads built
under the direction of the military authorities. _San Juan_ and _Ponce_
are the leading seaports and centres of trade.
=Hawaiian Islands.=--These islands were discovered by a Spanish sailor,
Gaetano, in 1549, and again visited by Captain Cook in 1778. Up to 1893
they formed a native kingdom. In 1893 foreign influence was sufficient
to overthrow the native government, and in 1898 they were formally
annexed to the United States and about the same time organized as a
territory. From an early date the geographic position of the islands has
made them a convenient mid-ocean post-station, and they have therefore
become a most important commercial centre.
[Illustration: HYDRAULIC GOLD MINING--CALIFORNIA]
Of the various islands composing the group, Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, Kaui,
Molokai, Lanai, and Niihau are inhabited. About one-fifth of the
population consists of native Hawaiians; a little more than one-fifth is
white; the remainder is composed of Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans.
The native population is decreasing. About ninety-five per cent. of the
property is owned by the white people--Americans, English, and Germans.
The volcanic soils are the very best sugar-lands, and a large amount of
capital is invested in this industry. The sugar-plantations employ more
than forty thousand laborers, all Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans.
The value of the sugar export is nearly twenty-five million dollars
yearly; that of fruit, rice, and hides is about two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Coffee is rapidly becoming a leading product. The bulk
of the imports comes from the United States, and consists of clothing,
cotton textiles, lumber, and machinery.
_Honolulu_, on the island of Oahu, is the capital and commercial centre,
and foreign steamships and sailing-craft are scarcely ever absent from
its harbor. Regular steamship service connects this port with San
Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, B.C., and the principal ports of China
and Japan. It is connected with the other islands by a system of
wireless telegraphy. The city has the best of schools, business
organizations, hotels, and streets.
_Pearl Harbor_ contains a large area of water, most of which is deep
enough for the largest vessels afloat. It is intended to deepen the
entrance and establish a United States naval station at this place. The
village of _Hilo_ is the chief port of the island of Hawaii.
=The Philippine Islands= are an archipelago of about two thousand islands,
the two largest of which, Luzon and Mindanao, are each nearly the size
of New York State. Luzon is by far the most important.
After their cession to the United States (December 10, 1898), they were
held under military control, but this has given place to local
self-government as rapidly as the circumstances permitted. A general
school system has been established and is extended wherever practicable.
In a considerable number of the islands civil organization is still
impossible.
The following are the principal islands and their mineral resources:
----------------+----------------------+---------------------
NAME |CHIEF CITIES AND PORTS|MINERAL RESOURCES
----------------+----------------------+---------------------
Luzon |Manila, Lipa, Batangas|Coal, gold, copper
Mindanao |Zamboanga |Coal, gold, copper
Samar |Catbalogan |Coal, gold
Negros |Bacolor |Coal
Panay |Iloilo |Coal, gold, petroleum
Leyte |Tacloban |Coal, petroleum
Mindoro |Calapan |Coal, gold
Cebu |Cebu |Coal, petroleum, gold
----------------+----------------------+----------------------
The native population is mainly of the Malay race, but there are also
many Negritos. Of the native element the Tagals are the most advanced,
and are the dominant people. The foreign population includes nearly one
hundred thousand Chinese, who are the chief commercial factors of the
islands, and the leading industries are controlled by them. There is a
considerable population of Chinese and Tagal mixed blood, commonly known
as "Chinese mestizos"; they inherit, in the main, the Chinese
characteristics. The European and American population consists mainly of
officials, troops, and merchant-agents for Philippine products.
The principal products for export are "Manila" hemp, sugar, and tobacco.
The hemp is used in the manufacture of cordage and paper. On account of
the great strength of the fibre it has no equal among cordage fibres.
The imports from the United States consist mainly of machinery and
cotton textiles. The total trade of the islands amounted in 1901 to
about fifty million dollars, most of which was shared by Great Britain
and the United States.
Coal is mined in the island of Cebu and is abundant in most of the
islands. Iron ore, copper, and sulphur occur, but they have not been
made commercially available to any extent. Gold is mined in the island
of Luzon. A stable government only is needed to make these great
resources productive. An abundance of timber is found in most of the
islands. Cedar, ebony, and sapan-wood are available for ornamental
purposes; there is also a great variety of economic woods.
_Manila_ is the commercial centre. Manila Bay is one of the finest
harbors in the Pacific Ocean, but much work is necessary to give the
water-front a navigable depth for large steamships. With an improved
harbor the city is bound to be a great emporium of Oriental trade.
Steamship lines connect the city with Hongkong, Australia, Japan,
Singapore, and Liverpool. There is also a military transport service to
Seattle. A railway to Dagupan extends through the most important
agricultural region. The wagon-roads throughout the island are very
poor.
_Lipa_, _Batanzas_, _Bauan_, and _Cavite_ are cities of about forty
thousand population, all more or less connected with the industries of
Manila. _Iloilo_ is the second port of importance of the islands, and is
the centre of a considerable export trade in tobacco, hemp, sugar, and
sapan-wood. _Cebu_ is also a port having a considerable trade.
=Tutuila=, one of the Samoan Islands, was acquired by treaty for use as a
coal-depot and naval station. _Pago Pago_ is a port of call for
steamships between San Francisco and Australia. =Guam=, one of the Ladrone
Islands, is a naval station. These possessions are strategic and are
designed to secure the interests of the United States in the Pacific. An
ocean telegraphic cable connects the Pacific Ocean possessions with the
United States and Asia.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why are mountain-regions apt to be sparsely peopled?
Why are arid regions sparsely peopled, as a rule?
Why are not gold-mining settlements so apt to be permanent as
agricultural settlements?
From the Abstract of Statistics find the production of gold and silver
of this region for each ten years ending the last half of the century.
What causes the difference between the wool clip of southern California
and that of the Eastern States?
Follow the route of a grain-carrying ship from San Francisco to
Liverpool.
What are the advantages to the United States of the accession of the
Hawaiian Islands?--of the Philippine Islands?--of Alaska? What are the
disadvantages?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Mineral Resources of the United States.
Abstract of Statistics.
U.S. Coast Survey Chart of Alaska.
Map of Hawaiian Islands.
Map of Philippine Islands.
[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (EXTERIOR)]
[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (INTERIOR)]
CHAPTER XXI
CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND
A very large part of Canada is so far north that the ordinary
food-stuffs cannot be grown there; the river-valleys of British Columbia
and the basin of the Saskatchewan excepted, there are but few marks of
human industry beyond the fiftieth parallel. The general conditions of
topography resemble those of the United States--a central plain between
the high Rocky Mountain ranges in the west and the lower Laurentian
ranges in the east.
Canada is an agricultural country, and because of the great skill with
which its resources have been made commercially available, it is the
most important colony of Great Britain. The basin of the Great Lakes and
the St. Lawrence River is the most populous part of the country. This
region is highly cultivated and produces dairy products, beef, and the
ordinary farm-crops.
From Lake Winnipeg westward, nearly to the Rocky Mountains, the land is
a succession of prairies admirably suited to wheat-growing.[56] The
wheat is a hard, spring variety, and the average yield per acre is about
one-fourth greater than the average yield in the United States.
The area of forestry includes the larger remaining part of the great
pine belt, together with a very heavy reserve of merchantable
oak-timber. The part of the forest area in Canada aggregates one and
one-quarter million square miles, and yields an annual product of about
eighty million dollars; about one-third of the lumber is exported.
The northerly region of Canada produces furs and pelts. As long ago as
1670, Charles II. granted to Prince Rupert and a stock company the lands
comprising a very large part of Canada around Hudson Bay, and secured to
them the sole right to trap the fur-bearing animals of the region. In
time the company, known as the Hudson Bay Company, transferred all its
lands to Canada, and out of the domain thus annexed various provinces
and unorganized districts have been created.
The company now exists as a corporation for the merchandise of furs. For
the greater part, Indians are employed as hunters and trappers, and the
pelts are collected at the various trading-posts, known as "houses" and
"factories," to be sent to the head-quarters of the company near
Winnipeg. Nearly every Arctic animal furnishes a merchantable pelt. The
cheaper skins are made into garments in Canada and the United States;
those commonly classed as furs are sold in London. Several other fur
companies are also operating in Canada.
The fisheries of the coast-waters and the Great Lakes are among the most
productive in the world. Everything within the three-mile limit of the
shore is reserved for Canadian fishermen. The smaller bays and coves are
reserved also within the three-mile limit. Beyond this limit the waters
are open to all, and a fleet of swift gun-boats is necessary to prevent
illicit fishing. Salmon, cod, lobsters, and herring form most of the
catch, amounting in value to upward of twenty million dollars yearly.
The output of minerals varies from year to year; since 1900 it has
averaged about sixty million dollars a year. The gold product
constitutes nearly one-half and the coal about one-sixth of the total
amount. Nickel, petroleum, silver, and lead form the rest of the output.
Iron ore is abundant, but it is not at present available for production
on account of the distance from transportation.
Commerce is facilitated by about eighteen thousand miles of railway and
nearly three thousand miles of canal and improved river-navigation. One
ocean-to-ocean railway, the Canadian Pacific, is in operation; another,
an extension of the Grand Trunk, is under way. The rapids and shoals of
the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers are surmounted by canals and
locks. Welland Canal connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and the
Canadian lock at St. Mary's Falls joins Lake Superior to Lake Huron. By
means of the lakes and canals vessels drawing fourteen feet may load at
Canadian ports and discharge at Liverpool.
The harbors of the Atlantic coast have two great drawbacks--ice and high
tides. Some of the steamship lines make Portland, Me., their winter
terminus. The Pacific coast harbors are not obstructed by ice. An
attempt has been made in the direction of using Hudson Bay and Strait as
a grain-route, but the difficulties of navigation are very great and the
route is open only two months of the year.
Practically all the foreign trade is carried on with Great Britain and
the United States. The trade with each aggregates about one hundred and
fifty million dollars yearly. The exports are lumber and wood-pulp,
cheese and dairy products, wheat and flour, beef-cattle, hog products,
fish, and gold-quartz. The chief imports are steel, wool, sugar, and
cotton manufactures.
Politically, Canada consists of a number of provinces, each with the
usual corps of elective officers. A governor-general appointed by the
Crown of Great Britain is the chief executive officer.
=Nova Scotia.=--This province is prominent on account of its coal and
iron, and also because of its geographic position. The iron and coal are
utilized in steel smelteries and rolling-mills, glass-factories,
sugar-refineries, and textile-mills. It is one of the few localities in
the eastern part of the continent yielding gold. _Halifax_, the capital,
has one of the best harbors of the Atlantic coast of North America; it
is not often obstructed by ice, and is the chief winter port. Halifax is
the principal British naval station of North America, and this fact adds
much to its commercial activity.
=Prince Edward Island.=--The industries of this province are mainly
connected with the coast-fisheries. During the summer the island is
visited by thousands of fishing-vessels for the purpose of preparing the
catch for market. Fertilizer manufactured from the refuse is an
incidental product. _Charlottetown_ is the capital.
=New Brunswick.=--Fisheries and forest products are both resources of this
province. Coal is mined at _Grand Lake_, and an excellent lime for
export to the United States is made at _St. John_. Lumber, wood-pulp,
wooden sailing-vessels, cotton textiles, and structural steel for
ship-building are manufactured. A ship railway, seventeen miles long,
across the isthmus that connects this province to Nova Scotia, is under
construction. _St. John_, the capital, is the chief seat of trade.
=Quebec.=--This province was once a possession of France, and in the
greater part of it French customs are yet about as prevalent as they
were a century ago; moreover, the French population is increasing
rapidly. The English-speaking population lives mainly along the Vermont
border. As a rule the English are the manufacturers and traders; the
French people are the farmers.
_Montreal_ is the head of navigation of the St. Lawrence for ocean
steamships. It is also the chief centre of manufactures. These are
mainly sugar, rubber goods, textiles, light steel wares, and leather.
The last-named goes almost wholly to Great Britain; the rest are
consumed in Canada and the border American States. _Quebec_ is the most
strongly fortified city of the Dominion.
=Ontario.=--This province is a peninsula bordered by Lakes Huron, Erie,
and Ontario. Farming is the chief employment, and barley is an important
product. Most of it is used in the manufacture of malt, and "Canada
malt" is regarded as the best. Several of the trunk railways whose
terminals are in the United States traverse this peninsula. _Toronto_,
the capital and commercial centre, is one of the most rapidly growing
cities of North America. _Hamilton_ owes its existence to its harbor and
position at the head of Lake Ontario. _Ottawa_ is the capital of the
Dominion. At _Sudbury_ are the nickel-mines that are among the most
productive in the world.
=Manitoba=, =Saskatchewan=, and =Alberta=.--These provinces include the
level prairie lands of the Saskatchewan and the Red River of the North.
They comprise the great grain-field of Canada. A considerable part of
the wheat-growing lands are yet unproductive owing to the lack of
railways. Much of the product is carried to market by the Canadian
Pacific and its feeders, but a considerable part finds its way to the
Northern Pacific and Great Northern roads. The coal of Manitoba and
Alberta is an important fuel supply not only to the provinces and states
surrounding, but to the railways above named. A good quality of
anthracite coal is also mined in Alberta. _Winnipeg_, the metropolis of
the region, is one of the great railway centres of Canada.
=British Columbia.=--British Columbia, the Pacific coast province, has
several resources of great value. The gold mines led to its settlement
and commercial opening. The salmon-fisheries are surpassed by those of
the United States only. The beds of lignite coal have produced a very
large part of the coal used in the Pacific coast States. The forests
produce lumber for shipment both to the Atlantic coast of America and
the Pacific coast of Asia.
_Vancouver_, the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is connected
with various Asian ports by fast steamships. _Nanaimo_, _Wellington_,
and _Commox_ are the centres of the coal-mining industry. The
copper-mines at _Rossland_ produce most of the copper mined in Canada.
=Newfoundland.=--Although a Crown possession, Newfoundland is not a member
of the Dominion of Canada. The extensive fisheries are its chief
resource. The Labrador coast, which is used as a resort for curing and
preserving the catch, is attached to Newfoundland for the purpose of
government. _St. Johns_ is the capital.
The islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre, south of Newfoundland, are a
French possession. Fishing is the ostensible industry, but a great deal
of smuggling is carried on.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What, if any, climatic or topographic boundaries separate Canada and the
United States?
Which of the two countries is the more fortunately situated for the
production of food-stuffs?
Which will support the larger population?--why?
The harbors of the Labrador coast and of Cape Breton Island are superior
to those of the British Islands, situated in about the same latitude;
why do the latter have a commerce far greater than that of the former?
Compare the industries of the eastern, middle, and western regions of
Canada with the corresponding regions of the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Statesman's Year-Book.
Statistical Year-Book of Canada (official government publication,
Ottawa).
CHAPTER XXII
MEXICO--CENTRAL AMERICA--WEST INDIES
Mexico and the Central American states occupy the narrow, southerly part
of North America. Structurally they consist of a plateau about a mile
high, bordered on each side by a low coast-plain. The table-land, or
_tierra templada_, has about the same climate as southern California;
the low coast-plains, or _tierra caliente_, are tropical.
=Mexico.=--The United States of Mexico is the most important part of this
group. The people are of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, but there are
many families of pure Castilian descent. The latter, in general, are the
landed proprietors; the former constitute the tradesmen, herders, and
peons. There is also a large unproductive class, mainly of Indians, who
are living in a savage state. In general the manners and customs are
those of Spain.
The agricultural pursuits are in a backward condition, partly for the
want of good system and an educated people, but mainly for lack of the
capital and engineering skill to construct the irrigating canals that
are needed to make the land productive. Maize, rice, sugar (cane and
panocha), and wheat are grown for home consumption.
The agricultural products which connect Mexico with the rest of the
world are sisal-hemp (henequin), coffee, logwood, and fruit. Sisal-hemp
is grown in the state of Yucatan, and has become one of its chief
financial resources. Oaxaca coffee is usually sold as a "Mocha" berry.
The logwood goes mainly to British textile makers; and the fruit,
chiefly oranges and bananas, finds a market in the large cities of the
United States, to which large consignments of vanilla and tropical woods
are also sent. Cattle are grown on more than twenty thousand ranches,
and the greater part are sent alive to the markets of the United States.
The native long-horn stock is giving place to improved breeds.
[Illustration: MEXICO]
Gold and silver are the products that have made Mexico famous, and the
mines have produced a total of more than three billion dollars' worth of
precious metal. The native methods of mining have always been primitive,
and low-grade ores have been neglected. In recent years American and
European capital has been invested in low-grade mines, and the bullion
production has been about doubled in value; it is now about one hundred
million dollars yearly. Iron ore is abundant, and good coal exists.
The manufactures, at present of little importance, are growing rapidly.
The cotton-mills consume the home product and fill their deficiency from
the Texas crop. All the finer textiles, however, are imported. Most of
the commodities are supplied by the United States, Great Britain, and
Germany, the first-named having about half the trade. Most of the
hardware and machinery is purchased in the United States.
Railway systems, with American terminal points at El Paso, San Antonio,
and New Orleans, extend from the most productive parts of the country.
One of the most important railways crosses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,
and, in order to encourage commerce, the harbors at Coatzacoalcos and
Salina Cruz have been deepened and improved. This interoceanic route is
destined to become a very important factor in commerce. It shortens the
route between European ports and San Francisco by six thousand miles,
and between New York and San Francisco by twelve hundred miles.[57]
_Mexico_, the capital, is the financial and commercial centre. _Vera
Cruz_ and _Tampico_ are connected with the capital by railway, but both
have very poor port facilities. Steamship lines connect the former with
New York, New Orleans, Havana, and French ports. It is the chief port of
the country. _Matamoros_ on the American frontier has a considerable
cattle-trade. The crop of sisal-hemp is shipped mainly from _Progresso_
and _Merida_. _Acapulco_, _Manzanillo_, and _Mazatlan_ for want of
railway connections have but little trade. The first-named is one of the
best harbors in the world. _Guadalajara_ has important textile and
pottery manufactures.
=The Central American States.=--The physical features and climate of
these states resemble those of Mexico. The Spanish-speaking people live
in the table-lands, where the climate is healthful. The coast-plain of
the Atlantic is forest-covered and practically uninhabited save by
Indians. Guatemala is the most important state. A railway from _Puerto
Barrios_, its Atlantic port, through its capital, _Guatemala_, to its
Pacific port, _San Jose_, is nearly completed. British Honduras is a
British territory acquired mainly for the mahogany product, which is
shipped from _Belize_. Honduras has great resources in mines, cultivable
lands, and forests, but these are undeveloped. Salvador is the smallest
but most progressive state.
[Illustration: ROUTE OF PROPOSED NICARAGUA CANAL.]
Nicaragua is politically of importance on account of the possibilities
of an interoceanic canal. A treaty for this canal, involving both
Nicaragua and Great Britain, has already been signed by the powers
interested. Many engineers regard the Nicaragua as preferable to that of
the Panama canal. The shorter distance between New York and the Pacific
ports of the United States, a saving of about four hundred miles, is in
its favor. The longer distance of transit and the dangers of navigating
Lake Nicaragua are against it. Costa Rica is favorably situated for
commerce, but its resources are not developed. A railway from _Puerto
Limon_ is nearly completed to _Puenta Arenas_, an excellent harbor on
the Pacific side.
Coffee, hides, mahogany, and fruit are the only products of importance
that connect these states with the rest of the world. About half the
trade goes to the United States. The Germans and English supply a
considerable part of the textiles and manufactured articles. The coffee
of Costa Rica is a very superior product. Much of the mahogany and
forest products goes to Great Britain. Fruit-steamers call at the
Atlantic ports for bananas, which are sold in New Orleans and the
Atlantic cities.
=The West Indies.=--The climate and productions of these islands are
tropical in character. Sugar, fruit, coffee, tobacco, and cacao are the
leading products. From the stand-point of the planter, the sugar
industry has been a history of misfortunes. The abolition of slavery
ruined the industry in many of the islands belonging to Great Britain.
The competition of the beet-sugar made in Europe drove the Cubans into
insurrection on account of the excessive taxes levied by the Spaniards,
and ended in the Spanish-American War.
The fruit-crop--mainly pineapples, oranges, and grapefruit--is shipped
to the United States. New York, Philadelphia, and the Gulf ports are the
destination of the greater part of it.
Cuba, the largest island, is one of the most productive regions of the
world. The famous "Havana" tobacco grows mainly in the western part,
although practically all Cuban tobacco is classed under this name.
According to popular opinion it is pre-eminently the best in flavor,
and the price is not affected by that of other tobaccos.[58] About
two-thirds of the raw leaf and cigars are purchased by the tobacco
manufacturers of the United States. _Havana_, _Santiago_, and
_Cienfuegos_ are the shipping-ports; most of the export is landed at New
York, Key West, and Tampa.
From 1900 to 1903 the small fraction of the sugar industry that survived
the war and the insurrection was crippled by the high tariff on sugar
imported into the United States. The latter, which was designed to
protect the home sugar industry, was so high that the Cubans could not
afford to make sugar at the ruling prices in New York. Hides, honey, and
Spanish cedar for cigar-boxes are also important exports.
The United States is the chief customer of Cuba, and in turn supplies
the Cubans with flour, textile goods, hardware, and coal-oil. Smoked
meat from Latin America and preserved fish from Canada and Newfoundland
are the remaining imports. There are no manufactures of importance. The
railways are mainly for the purpose of handling the sugar-crop.
_Havana_, the capital and financial centre, is connected with New York,
New Orleans, and Key West by steamship lines. _Santiago_, _Matanzas_,
and _Cienfuegos_ are ports having a considerable trade.
The British possessions in the West Indies are commercially the most
important of the European possessions. The Bahamas are low-lying coral
islands, producing but little except sponges, fruit, and sisal-hemp.
_Nassau_, the only town of importance, is a winter resort. Fruit, sugar,
rum, coffee, and ginger are exported from _Kingston_, the port of
Jamaica. _St. Lucia_ has probably the strongest fortress in the
Caribbean Sea.
Barbados produces more sugar than any other British possession in the
West Indies. The raw sugar, muscovado, is shipped to the United States.
Bermuda, an outlying island, furnishes the Atlantic states with onions,
Easter lilies, and early potatoes. From Trinidad is obtained the
asphaltum, or natural tar, that is used for street paving. Brea Lake,
the source of the mineral, is leased to a New York company. Sugar and
cacao are also exported from Port of Spain. The products of St. Vincent
and Dominica are similar to those of the other islands.
The French own Martinique (_Fort de France_) and Guadeloupe (_Basse
Terre_). St. Thomas (_Charlotte Amalie_), St. Croix, and St. John are
Danish possessions. Various attempts to transfer the Danish islands to
the United States have failed. They are admirably adapted for naval
stations. The island of Haiti consists of two negro republics, Haiti and
San Domingo. The only important product is coffee. Most of the product
is shipped to the United States, which supplies coal oil and textiles in
return.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What part of the United States was formerly a possession of Mexico, and
how did it become a possession of the United States?
From a cyclopedia learn the character of the political organization of
Mexico and the Central American states.
From the report listed below find what commercial routes gain, and what
ones lose in distance by the Nicaragua, as compared with the Panama
canal.
From a good atlas make a list of the islands of the West Indies; name
the country to which each belongs, and its exports to the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
The Statesman's Year-Book.
Great Canals of the World--pp. 4058-4059.
[Illustration: SOUTH AMERICA]
CHAPTER XXIII
SOUTH AMERICA--THE ANDEAN STATES
In its general surface features South America resembles North
America--that is, a central plain is bordered by low ranges on the east
and by a high mountain system on the west. In the southern part,
midsummer is in January and midwinter in July. The mineral-producing
states are traversed by the ranges of the Andes and all of them except
Chile are situated on both slopes of the mountains.
=Colombia.=--This republic borders both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific
Ocean. One port excepted, however, most of its commerce is confined to
the shores of the Caribbean Sea. The lowlands east of the Andes are
admirably adapted for grazing, and such cattle products as hides, horns,
and tallow are articles of export. This region, however, even with the
present facilities for transportation, produces only a small fraction of
the products possible.
The intermontane valleys between the Andean ranges have the climate of
the temperate zone; wheat and sheep are produced. The chief industrial
development, however, is confined to the lands near the Caribbean coast.
Coffee, cacao, and tobacco are grown for export, the business of
cultivation being largely controlled by Americans and Europeans. Rubber,
copaiba, tolu, and vegetable ivory[59] are gathered by Indians from the
forests.
[Illustration: A PASS IN THE ANDES]
The montane region has long been famous for its mines of gold and
silver. The salt mines near Bogota are a government monopoly and yield a
considerable revenue. Near the same city are the famous Muzo emerald
mines.
The rivers are the chief channels of internal trade. During the rainy
season steamboats ascend the Orinoco to Cabugaro, about two hundred
miles from Bogota. About fifty steamboats are in commission on the
Magdalena and its tributary, the Cauca. Mule trains traversing wretched
trails require from one to two weeks to transport the goods from the
river landings to the chief centres of population. Improvements now
under way in clearing and canalizing these rivers will add about five
hundred miles of additional water-way. The railways consist of short
lines mainly used as portages around obstructions of the rivers.
An unstable government and an onerous system of export taxes hamper
trade. Coffee, a leading product, goes mainly to Europe. Cattle
products, and balsam of tolu are purchased mainly in the United States.
Great Britain purchases the gold and silver ores. The chief
imports--textiles, flour, and petroleum--are purchased in the United
States. _Bogota_ and _Medellin_ are the largest cities. The isolation of
the region in which they are situated shapes the indifferent foreign
policy of the government. _Barranquilla_, _Sabanilla_, and _Cartagena_
are the chief ports.
=Panama.=--This state, formerly a part of Colombia, includes the isthmus
of Panama. Geographically it belongs to North America, and practically
it can be approached from Colombia by water only. The secession of
Panama was brought about by the complications of the isthmian canal. A
treaty with the United States gives the latter sovereign control over
the canal and the strip of land ten miles wide bordering it. _Panama_
and _Colon_ are the two ports of the canal. The United States exercises
police and sanitary regulations in these cities, but it has no
sovereignty over them.
=Peru.=--Peru has great resources, both agricultural and mineral. Cotton
is one of the chief products. The ordinary fibre is excelled only by the
sea-island cotton of the United States; the long-staple fibre of the
Piura is the best grown. The former is generally employed for mixing
with wool in the manufacture of underwear, and is sold in the United
States and Europe; the latter, used in the manufacture of thread and the
web of pneumatic tires, goes mainly to Great Britain.
Cane-sugar is a very large export crop, Great Britain, the United
States, and Chile being the principal customers. The area of coffee
production is growing rapidly. Coca-growing has become an important
industry, and the plantations aggregate about three million trees;[60] a
large part of the product is sent to the chemical laboratories of the
United States. A small crop of rice for export is grown on the coast.
The Amazon forest products yield a considerable revenue. Rubber and
vegetable ivory are the most valuable. Cinchona, or Peruvian bark,
however, is the one for which the state is best known; and there is
probably not a drug-shop in the civilized world that does not carry it
in stock.[61]
Cattle are grown for their hides, and of these the United States is the
chief purchaser. The wool of the llama, alpaca, and vicuna is used in
manufacture of the cloth known as alpaca, and the value of the shipments
to Great Britain usually exceeds one million dollars a year. In the
mining regions the llama is used as a pack-animal, and a large part of
the mine products reach the markets by this means of transportation. The
mines yield silver and copper; in the main the ores are exported to
Great Britain to be smelted.
The products already named are the chief exports; the imports are cotton
textiles, machinery, steel wares, and coal-oil. Great Britain has about
one-half the foreign trade; the United States controls about one-fourth.
_Callao_, the port of _Lima_, is the market through which most of the
foreign trade is carried on. Steamship lines connect it with San
Francisco and with British ports. _Mollendo_ is the outlet of Bolivian
trade. The railways are short lines extending from the coast.
=Ecuador.=--This state has but little commercial importance. The only
cultivated products for export are cacao, coffee, and sugar. The
first-named constitutes three-fourths of the exports, and most of it
goes to France. The land is held in large estates, and most of the
laboring people are in a condition of practical slavery. The
bread-stuffs consumed by the foreign population and the land proprietors
are imported. Animals are grown for their hides and these are sold to
the United States.
Another manufacture that connects Ecuador with the rest of the world is
the so-called "Panama" hat. The material used is toquilla straw, the
mid-rib of the screw-pine (_Carlodovica palmata_). The prepared straw
can be plaited only when the atmosphere is very moist, and much of the
work is done at night. The hats are made by Indians, who are governed
by their own ideas regarding style and shape. They bring from
twenty-five to fifty dollars apiece in the American markets, where
nearly all the product is sold.[62]
Mule-paths are the only means of inland communication. There is a
considerable local traffic on the estuaries of the rivers, but this is
confined to the rainy seasons. A railway built by an American company is
in operation from _Guayaquil_, a short distance inland. This city is the
chief market for foreign goods, and it is the only foreign port of the
Pacific coast of South America in which the volume of trade of the
United States approximates that of Germany and Great Britain.
=Bolivia.=--Bolivia lost much of its possible commercial possible future
when, after a disastrous war, its Pacific coast frontage became a
possession of Chile. The agricultural lands are unfortunately situated
with reference to the mining population; as a result, a considerable
amount of food-stuffs must be imported from Argentina. Coffee, cacao,
and coca are the principal cultivated products. Rubber from the Amazon
forest is the most valuable vegetable product, but a considerable amount
of cinchona bark and ivory nuts are also exported.
The mines, however, are the chief wealth of the state and give it the
only excuse for its political existence. They produce silver, tin,
copper, gold, and borate of lime. Inasmuch as a large part of the ore
and ore products must be transported by llamas and mules, only the
richest mines can be profitably worked. With adequate means of
transportation, the mines should make Bolivia one of the most powerful
South American states.
Railways already connect _Oruro_ with the sea-coast. A railway now
under construction will connect _La Paz_ (the pass) with the Pacific
coast, and also Buenos Aires. Excellent roads to take the place of the
pack-trains are under construction.
Practically all the imports, consisting of cotton and woollen textiles,
machinery, and steel wares, are purchased in Great Britain. The exports
are more than double the imports. Most of the goods pass through the
Chilean port Antofagasto, or Mollendo, Peru. _La Paz_, _Oruro_, and
_Sucre_ are the chief cities.
The hypothetical state of Acre is situated in the angle where Bolivia,
Peru, and Brazil join. The rubber forests, together with the absence of
legal government, led to its existence. The government is wholly
insurrectionary, but it at least uses its powers to encourage the rubber
trade.
=Chile.=--This state comprises the narrow western slope of the Andes,
extending from the tropic of Capricorn to Cape Horn, a distance of about
three thousand miles. The resources of the state have been so skilfully
handled, that with the drawback of a very small proportion of cultivable
land, Chile is the foremost Andean state.
The cultivation of the ordinary crops is confined to the flood-plains of
the short rivers. These, as a rule, are from twenty to fifty miles long
and a mile or two in width. They are densely peopled and cultivated to
the limit. Between the river-valleys are long stretches of unproductive
land.
Within the valleys wheat, barley, fruit, and various food-stuffs are
grown. Of these there are not only enough for home consumption, but
considerable quantities are exported to Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Much
of the cultivable land requires to be watered, and the system of
irrigation has been developed with extraordinary skill. The grazing
lands are extensive. In the northern part an excellent quality of merino
wool is produced; the greater part of the clip, however, is an ordinary
fibre. The cattle furnish a considerable amount of leather for export.
The conditions which have made the northern part a desert have also
given to the state its greatest resource--nitre.[63] The nitrate occurs
in the northern desert region. The crude salt is crushed and partly
refined at the mines, and carried by rail to the nearest port. The
working of the nitrate beds is largely carried on by foreign companies.
Nearly all the product is used as a fertilizer in Germany, France, and
Great Britain. Nitrate constitutes about two-thirds of the exports.
Iodine and bromine are also obtained from the nitrates, and the Chilean
product yields nearly all the world's supply.
Copper is extensively mined and, next to the nitrates, is the most
valuable product. Great Britain is the customer for the greater part.
Coal occurs in the southern part of the state, and is mined for export
to the various states of the Pacific coast. It is not a good coal for
iron smelting, however, and about three times as much is imported as is
exported. A considerable part of the imported coal comes from Australia,
and with it structural steel is made from pig-iron that is also
imported.
Chile is well equipped with railways, a part of which has been built and
are operated by the state. The most important line traverses the valley
between the Andes and the coast ranges, from Concepcion to Valparaiso.
In this region are most of the manufacturing enterprises.
The imports are chiefly coal, machinery, textile goods, and sugar. The
British control about two-thirds of the foreign trade; the Germans and
the French have most of the remainder. The United States supplies the
Chileans with a part of the textiles, a considerable quantity of Oregon
pine, and practically all the coal-oil used.
[Illustration: VALPARASIO]
_Valparaiso_ is the chief business centre of the Pacific coast of South
America. Most of the forwarding business is carried on by British and
German merchants. The transandine railway, now about completed, will
make it one of the most important ports of the world. _Santiago_ is the
capital. _Concepcion_ and _Talca_ are important centres of trade.
_Chillan_ is the principal cattle-market of the Pacific coast of South
America. _Copiapo_ is the focal point of the mining interests. _Iquique_
is the port from which about all the nitrates are shipped. _Punta
Arenas_, one of the "end towns" of the world, is an ocean post-office
for vessels passing through the Straits of Magellan. It is about as far
south as Calgary, B.C., is north.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What will be the probable effect of an interoceanic canal on the
commerce of these states?
From the Abstract of Statistics make a list of the exports from the
United States to these countries.
From the statistics of trade in the Statesman's Year-Book compare the
trade of the United States with that of other countries in these states.
How have race characteristics affected the commerce and development of
these states?
What is meant by peonage?
What cities of the tropical part of these states are in the climate of
the temperate zone?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Carpenter's South America.
Vincent's Around and About South America.
Fiske's Discovery of America--Chapters IX-X.
Procure, if possible, specimens of the following: Cacao and its
products, ivory nuts, cinchona bark, crude nitrate, Panama straw, iodine
(in a sealed vial), llama wool, alpaca cloth, Peruvian cotton.
CHAPTER XXIV
SOUTH AMERICA--THE LOWLAND STATES
The eastern countries of South America are mainly lowland plains. The
llanos of the Orinoco and the pampas of Plate (La Plata) River are
grazing lands. The silvas of the Amazon are forest-covered. In tropical
regions the coast-plain is usually very unhealthful; the seaports
excepted, most of the cities and towns are therefore built on higher
land beyond the coast-plain.
=Venezuela.=--The greater part of Venezuela is a region of llanos, or
grassy plains, shut off from the harbors of the Caribbean Sea, by
mountain-ranges. On account of their pleasant climate the
mountain-valleys constitute the chief region of habitation. The plains
are flooded in the rainy season and sun-scorched during the period of
drought; they are therefore unfit for human habitation.
Coffee is cultivated in the montane region; and cacao in the lower coast
lands. Almost every part of the coast lowlands is fit for sugar
cultivation, and in order to encourage this industry, the importation of
sugar is forbidden. As is usual in similar cases, the domestic sugar is
poor in quality and high in price. Among the forest products rubber,
fustic, divi-divi,[64] and tonka beans, the last used as a perfume, are
the only ones of value. The cattle of the llanos, the native long-horns,
furnish a poor quality of hide, and poorer beef. A few thousand head are
shipped yearly down the Orinoco to be sent to Cuba and Porto Rico.
The placer gold-mines of the Yuruari country, a region also claimed by
Great Britain, have been very productive. Coal, iron ore, and asphaltum
are abundant. Concessions for mining the two last-named have been
granted to American companies. The pearl-fisheries around Margarita
Island, also leased to a foreign company, have become productive under
the new management.
The means of intercommunication are as primitive as those of Colombia.
Short railways extend from several seaports to the regions of
production, and from these coffee and cacao are the only exports of
importance. The Orinoco River is the natural outlet for the
cattle-region, but the commerce of this region is small. The lagoon of
Maracaibo is becoming the centre of a rapidly growing commercial region.
_Caracas_, the capital and largest city, receives the imports of
textiles, domestic wares, flour, and petroleum from the United States
and Great Britain. The railway to its port, _La Guaira_, is a remarkable
work of engineering. _Puerto Cabello_, the most important port, receives
the trade of _Valencia_. From _Maracaibo_, the port on the lagoon of the
same name, is shipped the Venezuelan coffee. _Ciudad Bolivar_ is the
river-port of the Orinoco and an important rubber-market.
=The Guianas.=--The surface conditions and climate of the Guianas resemble
those of Venezuela. The native products are also much the same, but good
business organization has made the countries bearing the general name
highly productive. For the greater part, the coast-plain is the region
of cultivation. Sugar is still the most important crop; but on account
of the fierce competition of beet-sugar, on many of the plantations
cane-sugar cultivation is unprofitable and has been abandoned for that
of rice, cacao, and tobacco. Great Britain, Holland, and France possess
the country. The divisions are known respectively as British Guiana,
Surinam, and Cayenne, and the trade of each accrues to the
mother-country. British Guiana is noted quite as much for its
gold-fields on the Venezuelan border (Cuyuni River) as for its vegetable
products. _Georgetown_, better known by the name of the surrounding
district, _Demerara_, is the focal point of business. _New Amsterdam_ is
also a port of considerable trade. The gold-mining interests centre at
_Bartica_.
[Illustration: A CACAO PLANTATION]
[Illustration: PREPARING THE BEANS FOR SHIPMENT]
[Illustration: CACAO-TREE]
[Illustration: MAKING CHOCOLATE]
Surinam, in addition to its export of vegetable products, contains rich
gold-mines, and these contribute a considerable revenue. _Paramaribo_ is
the port and centre of trade. Phosphates and gold are among the
important exports of Cayenne, whose port bears the same name.
=Brazil.=--This state, nearly the size of the United States, comprises
about half the area of South America. Much of it, including the greater
part of the Amazon River basin, is unfit for the growth of food-stuffs.
There are three regions of production. The Amazon forests yield the
greater part of the world's rubber supply. The middle coast region has
various agricultural products, of which cotton and cane-sugar are the
most important. From the southern region comes two-thirds of the world's
coffee-crop. There are productive gold-mines in the state of Minas
Geraes, but this region is best known for the "old mine" diamonds, the
finest produced.
The Amazon rubber-crop includes not only the crude gum obtained in
Brazil, but a considerable part, if not the most, of the crop from the
surrounding states. The bifurcating Cassiquiare, which flows both into
Amazonian and Orinocan waters, drains a very large area of forest which
yields the best rubber known. The yield of 1901 aggregated about one
hundred and thirty million pounds, of which about one-half was sold in
the United States, one-third in Liverpool, and the rest mainly in
Antwerp and Le Havre. The price of rubber is fixed in New York and
London.
The cotton and cane-sugar are grown in the middle coast region. The
cotton industry bids fair to add materially to the prosperity of the
state. A considerable part of the raw cotton is exported, but the
reserve is sufficient to keep ten thousand looms busy. About three
hundred and fifty million pounds of the raw sugar is purchased by the
refineries of the United States, and much of the remainder by British
dealers.
The seeds of a species of myrtle (_Bertholletia excelsa_) furnish the
Brazil nuts of commerce, large quantities of which are shipped to Europe
and the United States.[65] Manganese ore is also an important export,
and Great Britain purchases nearly all of it.
The coffee-crop of the southern states is the largest in the world; and
about eight hundred million pounds are landed yearly at the ports of the
United States. The coffee-crop, more than any other factor, has made the
great prosperity of the state; for while the rubber yield employs
comparatively few men and yields but little public revenue, the
coffee-crop has brought into Brazil an average of about fifty million
dollars a year for three-quarters of a century.
Cattle products also afford a considerable profit in the vicinity of the
coffee-region. The hides and tallow are shipped to the United States.
For want of refrigerating facilities, most of the beef is "jerked" (or
sun-dried), and shipped in this form to Cuba.
The facilities for transportation, the rivers excepted, are poor. The
Amazon is navigable for ocean steamships nearly to the junction of the
Ucayale. The Paraguay affords a navigable water-way to the mouth of
Plate River. Rapids and falls obstruct most of the rivers at the
junction of the Brazilian plateau and the low plains, but these streams
afford several thousand miles of navigable waters both above and below
the falls.
Nearly all the railways are plantation roads, extending from the various
ports to regions of production a few miles inland. The most important
railway development is that in the vicinity of Rio, where short local
roads to the suburban settlements and the coffee-plantations converge at
the harbor. About fourteen thousand miles of railway are completed and
under actual construction. A considerable part of the mileage is owned
and operated by the state, and it has become the policy of the latter to
control its roads and to encourage immigration. One result of this
policy is the increasing number of German and Italian colonies, that
establish settlements in every district penetrated by a new road.
In 1900 the total foreign trade aggregated upward of two hundred and
seventy-five million dollars. The imports consist of cotton and woollen
manufactures, structural steel and machinery, preserved fish and meats,
and coal-oil. Great Britain, Germany, the United States, and France have
nearly all the trade. The United States sells to Brazil textiles and
coal-oil to the amount of over eleven million dollars yearly, and buys
of the country coffee and rubber to the amount of six times as much.
_Rio de Janeiro_, commonly called "Rio," is the capital and commercial
centre. Its harbor is one of the best in South America. Formerly all the
coffee was shipped from this port, but the greater part now goes from
_Santos_. _Porto Alegre_, the port of the German colonies, has also a
growing export trade.
_Bahia_, _Pernambuco_ (or _Recife_), _Maceio_, _Ceara_ are the markets
for cotton, sugar, and tobacco, much of which is shipped to other
Brazilian ports for home consumption. _Para_ and _Ceara_ monopolize
nearly all the rubber trade. The position of _Manaos_, at the confluence
of several rivers, makes it one of the most important markets of the
Amazon basin, and most of the crude rubber is first collected there for
shipment. _Cuyaba_ is the commercial centre of the mining region; its
outlet is the Paraguay River, and Buenos Aires profits by its trade.
=Argentina and the Plate River Countries.=--These states are situated in a
latitude corresponding to that of the United States. The entire area
from the coast to the slopes of the Andes is a vast prairie-region. As a
result of position, climate, and surface the agricultural industries are
the same as in the United States--grazing and wheat-growing.
Cattle-growing is the chief employment, and the cost per head of rearing
stock is practically nothing. For want of better means of transportation
the shipments of live beef are not very heavy; the quality of the beef
is poor, and until recently there have been no adequate facilities for
getting it to market.[66] A small amount of refrigerator beef and a
large amount of jerked beef are exported, however. Near the markets,
there are large plants in which the hides, horns, tallow, and meat are
utilized--the last being converted to the famous "beef extract," which
finds a market all over the world.
The sheep industry is on a much better business basis. Both the wool and
the mutton have been improved by cross-breeding with good stock. As a
result the trade in mutton and wool has increased by leaps and bounds;
and nearly three million sheep carcasses are landed at the other ports
of Brazil, at Cuba, and at various European states. The wool is bought
mainly by Germany and France, but the United States is a heavy
purchaser. The quality of the fibre, formerly very poor, year by year is
improving.
Wheat, the staple product, is grown mainly within a radius of four
hundred miles around the mouth of Plate River. The area of cultivation
is increasing as the facilities for transportation are extended and,
little by little, is encroaching on the grazing lands. The wheat
industry is carried on very largely by German and Italian colonists.
Flax, grown for the seed, is a very large export crop. Maize, partly for
export and partly for home consumption, is also grown.
The timber resources, chiefly in Paraguay and the Gran Chaco, are very
great, but for want of means of transportation the timber-trade cannot
successfully compete with that of Central America and Mexico. Workable
gold and silver ores are abundant along the Andean cordillera; gold,
silver, and copper are exported to Europe. A poor quality of lignite
occurs in several provinces, but there are no available mines yielding
coal suitable for making steam. There are petroleum wells near Mendoza.
Most of the manufactures pertain to the preparation of cattle products,
although a considerable amount of coarse textiles are made in the larger
cities from the native cotton and wool. Hats, paper (made from grass),
and leather goods are also made. In general, all manufactures are
hampered by the difficulties of getting good fuel at a low price.
Transportation is carried on along Plate River and the lower parts of
its tributaries. The railway has become the chief factor in the carriage
of commodities, however, and the railways of Argentina have been
developed on the plans of North American roads. About twelve thousand
miles are in actual operation, one of which is a transcontinental line,
about completed between Buenos Aires and Valparaiso. Electric railways
have become very popular, and the mileage is rapidly increasing.
The import trade, consisting of textile goods, machinery, steel, and
petroleum, is carried on with Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium
(mainly transit trade), the United States, and Italy. The competition
between the European states for this trade is very strong, and not a
little has been acquired at the expense of the United States, whose
trade has not materially increased.
[Illustration: AREA OF THE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF MATE]
_Buenos Aires_ is the financial centre of this part of South America.
Among its industries is the largest meat-refrigerating plant in the
world. The harbor at _La Plata_ is excellent and has drawn a
considerable part of the foreign trade from Buenos Aires. _Rosario_,
_Cordoba_, _Santa Fe_, and _Parana_ are the markets of extensive farming
regions. _Mendoza_ is the focal point of the mining interests.
=Paraguay= has a large forest area, but for want of means of
transportation it is without value. Even the railway companies find it
cheaper to buy their ties in the United States and Australia, rather
than to procure them in Paraguay. In spite of the extent of good land,
the wheat and much of the bread-stuffs are purchased from Argentina.
Tobacco and mate are the only export crops, and they have but little
value. The Parana and Paraguay Rivers are the only commercial outlet of
the state.
=Uruguay.=--Owing to its foreign population Uruguay is becoming a rich
country. The native cattle have been improved by cross-breeding with
European stock, and the state has become one of the foremost cattle and
sheep ranges of the world. The value of animal products is not far from
forty million dollars yearly. These go mainly to Europe, and so also
does the wheat-crop.
France and Argentina purchase most of the exports and Great Britain
supplies most of the textiles and machinery imported. The trade of the
United States is about one-fourth that of Great Britain. _Montevideo_ is
the chief market and port. At _Fray Bentos_ is one of the largest plants
in the world for the manufacture of cattle products.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What kind of commerce has led to the establishment of the various ports
along the Spanish Main?
What advantages has the American fruit-shipper, trading at South
American ports, over his European competitor?
What is meant by "horse latitudes," and what was the origin of the name?
In what way may the opening of an interoceanic canal affect the
coffee-trade of Brazil?--the nitrate trade of Chile?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From the Abstract of Statistics find the exports of the United States to
each of these countries.
From the Statesman's Year-Book compare the trade of the United States in
each of these countries with that of Great Britain, France, Germany, and
Italy.
If possible, obtain specimens of the following: Crude rubber, pampas
grass, Brazil nuts (in pod), and raw coffee of several grades for
comparison with Java and Mocha coffees.
CHAPTER XXV
EUROPE--GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY
Almost all the commercial activity of Europe is south of the parallel
and west of the meridian of St. Petersburg. Most of the great industries
are controlled by Germanic and Latin peoples, and among these Great
Britain and Germany stand first.
=Great Britain and Ireland.=--The United Kingdom, or Great Britain and
Ireland, are commonly known as the British Isles. The British Empire
consists of the United Kingdom and its colonial possessions; it includes
also a large number of islands occupied as coaling stations and for
strategic purposes. All told, the empire embraces about one-seventh of
the land area of the world and about one-fourth its population.
The wonderful power and great commercial development is due not only to
conditions of geographic environment but also to the intelligence of a
people who have adjusted themselves to those conditions. The insular
position of the United Kingdom has given it natural protection, and for
more than eight hundred years there has been no successful invasion by a
foreign power. Its commercial position is both natural and artificial.
It has utilized the markets to the east and south, and has founded great
countries which it supplies with manufactured products.
[Illustration: THE BRITISH EMPIRE]
The position of the kingdom with respect to climate is fortunate. The
movement of the Gulf Stream on the American coast carries a large volume
of water into the latitude of the prevailing westerly winds, and these
in turn carry warm water to every part of the coast of the islands. As a
result, the harbors of the latter are never obstructed by ice; those of
the Labrador coast, situated in the same latitude, are blocked nearly
half the year.
The high latitude of the islands is an advantage so far as the
production of food-stuffs is concerned. The summer days in the latitude
of Liverpool are very nearly eighteen hours in length, and this fact
together with the mild winters, adds very largely to the food-producing
power of the islands.
The highlands afford considerable grazing. Great care is taken in
improving the stock, both of cattle and sheep. In the north the cattle
are bred mainly as meat producers; in the south for dairy products.
Durham, Alderney, and Jersey stock are exported to both Americas for
breeding purposes. The sheep of the highlands produce the heavy, coarse
wool of which the well known "cheviot" and "frieze" textiles are made.
Elsewhere they are bred for mutton, of which the "South Down" variety is
an example.
The lowland regions yield grain abundantly where cultivated. The average
yield per acre is about double that of the United States, and is
surpassed by that of Denmark only. Both Ireland and England are famous
for fine dairy products. These are becoming the chief resource of the
former country, which is practically without the coal necessary for
extensive manufacture. The fishing-grounds form an important food
resource.
The cultivated lands do not supply the food needed for consumption. The
grain-crop lasts scarcely three months; the meat-crop but little longer.
Bread-stuffs from the United States and India, and meats from the United
States, Australia, and New Zealand make up the shortage. The annual
import of food-stuffs amounts to more than fifty dollars per capita.
The growing of wool and flax for cloth-making became an industry of
great importance just after the accession of Henry VII. With the advent
of peace, it became possible to manufacture into cloth the fibres that
before had been sent for that purpose to Flanders. The utilization of
the coal and the iron ore years afterward brought about an economic
revolution that was intensified by the invention of the steam-engine and
the power-loom.
These quickly brought the country into the foremost rank as a
manufacturing centre. Moreover, they also demanded the foreign markets
that have made the country a maritime power as well--for an insular
country must also have the ships with which to carry its merchandise to
its markets.
The development of the manufactures, therefore, is inseparably connected
with that of the mineral and metal industries. From very early times the
metal deposits of the country have been a source of power. Copper and
tin were used by the aboriginal Britons long before Caesar's
reconnaissance of the islands, and it is not unlikely that the Bronze
Period was the natural development that resulted from the discovery of
these metals.
Coal occurs in various fields that extend from the River Clyde to the
River Severn. The annual output of these mines at the close of the
century was about two hundred and twenty-five million tons. In the past
century the inroads upon the visible supply were so great that the
output in the near future will be considerably lessened. Not far from
one-sixth of the output is sold to consumers in Russia and the
Mediterranean countries, but a growing sentiment to forbid any sale of
coal to foreign buyers is taking shape.
[Illustration: BRITISH ISLES]
Iron ores are fairly abundant, but the hematite required for the best
Bessemer steel is limited to the region about Manchester and Birmingham.
The shortage of this ore has become so apparent within recent years that
Great Britain has become a heavy purchaser of ores in foreign markets.
The coal in the Clyde basin is employed mainly in the manufacture of
railway iron, steamship material, and rolling stock. The manufacture of
Bessemer steel is gradually moving to the vicinity of South Wales, at
the ports of which foreign pig-iron can be most cheaply landed. In
west-central England the several coal-fields form a single centre of
manufacture, where are located some of the largest woollen and cotton
mills in Europe. It also includes the plants for the manufacture of
machinery, cutlery, and pottery.
The import trade of Great Britain consists mainly of food-stuffs and raw
materials.[67] Of the latter, cotton is by far the most important. Most
of it comes from the United States, but the Nile delta, Brazil, the
Dekkan of India, the Iran plateau, and the Piura Valley of Peru send
portions, each region having fibre of specific qualities designed for
specific uses. The native wool clip forms only a small part of the
amount used in manufacture. The remainder, more than three million
pounds, comes from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
The supply of flax is small, and 100,000 tons are imported to meet the
wants of the mills. The greater part is purchased in Russia, but the
finer quality is imported from Belgium. Jute is purchased from India and
manufactured into burlap and rugs.
But little available standing timber remains, and lumber must,
therefore, be imported. The pine is purchased mainly in Sweden, Norway,
Canada, and the United States. A considerable amount of wood-pulp is
imported from Canada for paper-making. Mahogany for ornamental
manufactures is obtained from Africa and British Honduras. Oak, and the
woods for interior finish, are purchased largely from Canada and the
United States.
The export trade of Great Britain consists almost wholly of the articles
manufactured with British coal as the power. These are made from the raw
materials purchased abroad, and the stamp of the British craftsman is a
guarantee of excellence and honesty. Of the total export trade,
amounting yearly to about one billion, two hundred million dollars,
nearly one-third consists of cotton, woollen, linen, and jute textiles;
one-fifth consists of iron and steel manufactured stuffs made from
British ores. About one-third goes to the colonies of the
mother-country, with whom she keeps in close touch; Germany, the United
States, and the South American states are the chief foreign buyers.
For the handling and carriage of these goods there is an admirable
system of railways reaching from every part of the interior to the
numerous ports. The rolling stock and the locomotives are not nearly so
heavy as those used in the United States; the railway beds and track
equipment, on the whole, are probably the best in the world. Freight
rates are considerably higher than on the corresponding classes of
merchandise in the United States. The public highways are most
excellent, but the means of street traffic in the cities are very poor.
The harbor facilities at the various ports are of the best. The docks
and basins are usually arranged so that while the import goods are being
landed the export stuffs are made ready to be loaded. The facilities for
the rapid transfer of freights have been improved by the reconstruction
of the various river estuaries so as to make them ship-channels. The
estuaries of the Clyde, Tyne, and Mersey have been thus improved, while
Manchester has been made a seaport by an artificial canal. The British
merchant marine is the largest in the world, and about ninety per cent.
of the vessels are steamships.
_London_ is the capital; it is also one of the first commercial and
financial centres of the world. The Thames has not a sufficient depth of
water for the largest liners, and these dock usually about twenty miles
below the city. The colonial commerce at London is very heavy,
especially the India traffic, and it is mainly for this trade that the
British acquired the control of the Suez Canal.
_Liverpool_ is one of the most important ports of Europe, and receives
most of the American traffic. The White Star and Cunard Lines have their
terminals at this port.
_Southampton_ is also a port which receives a large share of American
traffic. The American and several foreign steamship lines discharge at
that place. _Hull_ and _Shields_ have a considerable part of the
European traffic. _Glasgow_ is one of the foremost centres of steel
ship-building. _Cardiff_ and _Swansea_ are ports connected with the coal
and iron trade. _Queenstown_ is a calling point for transatlantic
liners.
_Manchester_ is both a cotton port and a great market for the cotton
textiles made in the nearby towns of the Lancashire coal-field. _Leeds_
and _Bradford_ and the towns about them are the chief centres of woollen
manufacture. _Wilton_ and _Kidderminster_ are famous for carpets.
_Birmingham_ is the centre of the steel manufactures. _Sheffield_ has a
world-wide reputation for cutlery. In and near the Staffordshire
district are the potteries that have made the names of _Worcester_,
_Coalport_, _Doulton_, _Copeland_, and _Jackfield_ famous. _Belfast_ is
noted for its linen textiles, and also for some of the largest
steamships afloat that have been built in its yards. _Dundee_ is the
chief centre of jute manufacture.
=The German Empire.=--The German Empire consists of the kingdoms of
Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Wuertemburg, together with a number of
small states. The "free" cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck, whose
independence was purchased in feudal times, are also incorporated within
the empire. The present empire was formed in 1871, at the close of the
war between Germany and France. The merging of the states into the
empire was designed as a political step, but it proved a great
industrial revolution as well.
The plain of Europe which slopes to the north and the Baltic Sea, the
flood-plains of the rivers excepted, is feebly productive of grain. It
is a fine grazing region, however, and the dairy products are of the
best quality. Among European states Russia alone surpasses Germany in
the number of cattle grown. The province of Schleswig-Holstein is famous
the world over for its fine cattle. Cavalry horses are a special feature
of the lowland plain, and the government is the chief buyer. The wool
product has hitherto been important, but the sheep ranges are being
turned into crop lands, on account of the increase of population in the
industrial regions.
The midland belt, however, between the coast-plain and the mountains, is
the chief food-producing part of Germany. Rye and wheat are grown
wherever possible, but the entire grain-crop is consumed in about eight
months. The United States, Argentina, and Russia supply the wheat and
flour; Russia supplies the rye.
[Illustration: GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES]
The sugar-beet is by far the most important export crop, and Germany
produces yearly about one million, eight hundred thousand tons, or
nearly as much as Austria-Hungary and France combined. This industry is
encouraged by a bounty paid on all sugar exported.[68] A considerable
amount of raw beet-sugar is sold to the refineries of the United States;
Great Britain also is a heavy buyer. The home consumption is relatively
small, being about one-third per capita that of the United States.
Silesia, the Rhine Valley, and the lowlands of the Hartz Mountains are
the most important centres of the sugar industry.
Germany is rich in minerals.[69] Zinc occurs in abundance, and the mines
of Silesia furnish the world's chief supply. Most of the lithographic
stone in use is obtained in Bavaria. Copper and silver are mined in the
Erz and Hartz Mountains. During the sixteenth century the mines of the
latter region brought the states then forming Germany into commercial
prominence and thereby diverted the trade between the North and
Mediterranean Seas to the valleys of the Rhine and Elbe Rivers.
These two metal products made Germany a great financial power. The
Franco-Prussian War added to Germany the food-producing lands of the
Rhine and Moselle, and the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. At the same
time it gave the Germans organization by welding the various German
states into an empire. As a result there has been an industrial
development that has placed Germany in the class with the United States
and Great Britain.
By unifying the various interstate systems of commerce and
transportation, the iron and steel industry has greatly expanded. The
chief centre of this industry is the valley of the Ruhr River.
Coal-measures underlie an area somewhat larger than the basin of the
river. To the industrial centres of this valley iron ore is brought by
the Rhine and Moselle barges from Alsace-Lorraine and Luxemburg, and
also from the Hartz Mountains.
In the importance and extent of manufactures, Germany ranks next to
Great Britain among European states, and because of the extent of their
coal-fields the Germans seem destined in time to surpass their rivals.
The manufacture of textiles is one of the leading industries, and, next
to Great Britain, Germany is the heaviest purchaser of raw cotton from
the United States. The Rhine district is the chief centre of cotton
textile manufacture. Raw cotton is delivered to the mills by the Rhine
boats, and these carry the manufactured product to the seaboard. Central
and South America are the chief purchasers.
Woollen goods are also extensively manufactured, the industry being in
the region that produces Saxony wool. In Silesia and the lower Rhine
provinces there are also extensive woollen textile manufactures, but the
goods are made mainly from imported wool. Argentina and the other Plate
River countries are the chief buyers of these goods. There is a
considerable linen manufacture from German-grown flax, and silk-making,
mainly from raw silk imported from Italy.
The great expansion and financial success of the manufacturing
enterprises is due very largely to the admirable organization of the
lines of transportation. The rivers, with their connecting canals,
supplement the railways instead of competing with them. They are
utilized mainly for slow freights, while the railways carry the traffic
that demands speed. The possibilities of both inland water-ways and
railway transportation have been utilized by the Germans to the utmost,
with the result of a very low rate both for coal and ore, and for
structural iron and steel. The latter is carried from the various
steel-making plants in the Ruhr Valley to the seaboard at a rate of
eighty to ninety cents per ton.[70]
[Illustration: LUeBECK]
[Illustration: BREMEN]
All this has resulted in a wonderful commercial expansion of the
empire. In 1875 Germany was neither a maritime nor a naval power. At the
close of the century it ranked about with the United States as a naval
power, and far surpassed that country in the tonnage of merchant marine.
The German steamship fleet includes the largest and fastest vessels
afloat.
German trade may be summed up as an export of manufactured goods and an
import of food-stuffs and raw materials. At the close of the century the
annual movement of industrial products amounted to nearly two and
one-half billion dollars. About one-half the trade of the empire is
carried on with Great Britain, the United States, Austria-Hungary, and
Russia. A large part of the foreign trade is carried on through the
ports of Belgium and Holland.
_Berlin_, the capital, is one of the few cities having a population of
more than one million. It is not only a great centre of trade, but it is
one of the leading money-markets of Europe; it is also the chief railway
centre. _Hamburg_ and _Bremen_ are important ports of German-American
trade, the former being the largest seaport of continental Europe.
_Breslau_ is an important market, into which the raw materials of
eastern Europe are received, and from which they are sent to the
manufacturing districts. The art galleries of _Dresden_ have had the
effect of making that city a centre of art manufactures which are famous
the world over. _Luebeck_ is one of the free cities that was formerly in
the Hanse League.
The twin cities, _Barmen-Eberfeld_, in the Ruhr coal-field, form one of
the principal centres of cotton manufacture in the world. _Dortmund_ is
a coal-market. At _Essen_ are the steel-works founded by Herr Krupp.
They are the largest and one of the most complete plants in the world.
The output includes arms, heavy and light ordnance, and about every kind
of structural iron and steel used. About forty thousand men are
employed. _Chemnitz_ is an important point, not only of cotton
manufacture, but also of Saxony wools, underwear and shawls being its
most noteworthy products. At _Stettin_, _Danzig_, and _Kiel_ are built
the steamships that have given to Germany its great commercial power.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what ways are Great Britain and Germany commercial rivals?
What are the advantages of each with respect to position?--with respect
to natural resources?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports of
each;--the leading imports of each. What exports have they in common?
From the Abstract of Statistics find what commodities the United States
sells to each.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--Chapter III.
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Book III, Chapters III-V.
CHAPTER XXVI
EUROPE--THE BALTIC AND NORTH SEA STATES
These states, like Great Britain and Germany, belong to Germanic Europe,
and their situation around the North and Baltic Seas makes their
commercial interests much the same. From the stand-point of commerce
Holland might be regarded as an integral part of Germany, inasmuch as a
large part of the foreign commerce of Germany must reach the sea by
crossing that state.
=Sweden and Norway.=--Sweden and Norway occupy the region best known as
the Scandinavian peninsula. The western side faces the warm, moist winds
of the Atlantic, but the surface is too rugged to be productive. The
lands suitable for farming, on the other hand, are on the east side,
where, owing to the high latitude, the winters are extremely cold.
The plateau lands are in the latitude of the great pine-forest belt that
extends across the two continents. The forests of the Scandinavian
peninsula are near the most densely peopled part of Europe, and they are
also readily accessible. Moreover, the rugged surface offers unlimited
water-power. As a result Norway and Sweden practically control the
lumber-market of Europe, and their lumber products form one of the most
important exports of the kingdom. Norway pine competes with California
redwood in Australia. The "naval stores," tar and pitch, compete with
those of Georgia and the Carolinas. The wood-pulp from this region is
the chief supply of the paper-makers of Europe. Next to Russia, Sweden
has the largest lumber-trade in Europe. The Mediterranean states are the
chief buyers.
The mineral products are a considerable source of income. Building stone
is shipped to the nearby lowland countries. The famous Swedish
manganese-iron ores, essential in steel manufacture, are shipped to the
United States and Europe. For this purpose they compete with the ores of
Spain and Cuba. The mines of the Gellivare iron district are probably
the only iron-mines of consequence within the frigid zone. The ore is
sent to German and British smelteries.
The fisheries are the most important of Europe, and this fact has had a
great influence on the history of the people. Centuries ago the people
living about the _vigs_ or fjords of the west coast were compelled to
depend almost wholly on the fisheries for their food-supplies. As a
result they became the most famous sailors of the world. They
established settlements in Iceland and Greenland; they also planted a
colony in North America 500 years before the voyage of Columbus.
Herring, salmon, and cod are the principal catch of the fisheries, and
about four-fifths of the product is cured and exported to the Catholic
European states and to South America.
South of Kristiania farming is the principal industry. Much of the land
is suitable for wheat-growing, but the productive area is so small that
a considerable amount of bread-stuffs must be imported from the United
States. On account of the high latitude the winters are too long and
severe for any but the hardiest grains. Dairy products are commercially
the most important output of the farms, and they find a ready market in
the popular centres of Europe--London, Hamburg, Paris, and Berlin.
The lumber, furniture, matches, fish, ores, and dairy products sold
abroad do not pay for the bread-stuffs, coal, petroleum, clothing, and
machinery. In part, this is made up by the carrying trade of Norwegian
vessels; the rest of the deficit is more than met by the money which the
throngs of tourists spend during the summer months.
The United States buys from these countries fish and ores to the amount
of about three million dollars a year; it sells them cotton, petroleum,
bread-stuffs, and machinery to the amount of about twelve million
dollars.
_Stockholm_, the capital of Sweden, is the chief financial and
distributing centre of the Scandinavian trade. Its railway system
reaches about every area of production. Although having a good harbor of
its own, it must depend on _Trondhjem_ (Drontheim) for winter traffic,
because the Baltic ports are closed by ice three or four months of the
year. _Kristiania_, the capital of Norway, is the export market of the
fish and lumber products.
_Goteborg_, owing to recently completed railway and canal connections,
is becoming an important port of trade. It is convenient to other
European ports, and it is rarely closed by ice. _Bergen_, _Trondhjem_,
and _Hammerfest_ derive a heavy income from their fisheries and likewise
from the tourists who visit the coast during midsummer. The last-named
port, although farther north than any town in the world, has an open
harbor during the winter.
=Denmark.=--Denmark is essentially an agricultural state, and almost every
square mile of available land is under cultivation. Even the sand-dunes
have been reclaimed and converted into pasturage. The yield of wheat is
greater per acre than in any other country, but as only a small area is
sown, wheat and flour are imported.
About half the area of the state is used in growing fodder for horses
and cattle. The dairy products, especially butter, are unrivalled
elsewhere in Europe. The dairy business is largely controlled by a
cooperative association of dairymen and farmers. Pastures, fodder,
cattle, sheds, creameries, and all the processes involved are subject to
a most rigid sanitary inspection.
_Copenhagen_, the capital, is the financial centre of the kingdom.
Commercially it is one of the most important ports of Europe. Various
shipments consigned to Baltic ports are landed at this city; here the
cargoes break bulk and are again trans-shipped to their destination. In
order to facilitate this forwarding business, the Crown has made
Copenhagen a free port. Steamship lines connect it with New York,
British ports, and the East Indies.
A great deal of farming and dairy machinery is manufactured; coal,
cotton goods, and structural machinery are imported from the United
States. Little, however, is exported to that country, almost all the
dairy products being sold to Great Britain and other populous centres of
western Europe. _Aalborg_ and _Aarhuus_ are dairy-markets.
Greenland and Iceland are colonies of Denmark, and the fishing industry
of the kingdom is carried on mainly along the shores of these islands.
The furs, seal-skins, seal-oil, and eider-down of Greenland are a
government monopoly. The mineral cryolite occurs at Ivigtut and is mined
by soda-making establishments in the United States. Iceland produces
sheep, cattle, and fish; these are shipped from _Reikiavik_. The Faroe
Islands produce but little save wool, feathers, and birds' eggs.
=Belgium.=--Probably in no other country of Europe has nature done so
little and man so much to make a great state as in Belgium. The lowland
region has been made so fertile by artificial means that it yields more
wheat per acre than any other country except Denmark. The Ardennes
highland in the southeast is naturally unproductive, but it has become
one of the great manufacturing centres of Europe. Less than one-twelfth
of the area of the state is unproductive.
The coast, more than twoscore miles in extent, has not a single harbor
for large vessels, and the two navigable rivers, the Scheldt and Meuse,
flow into another state before reaching the sea.
[Illustration: HOLLAND AND BELGIUM]
The low sand-barrens next the coast have been reclaimed by means of a
grass that holds in place the sand that formerly shifted with each
movement of the wind. This region is now cultivated pasture-land that
produces the finest of horses, cattle, and dairy products. The dairy
products go mainly to London. The Flemish horses, like those of the
sand-barrens of Germany and France, are purchased in the large cities,
where heavy draught-horses are required. Many of them are sold to the
express companies of the United States.
Bordering the sand-barrens is a belt of land that produces grain and the
sugar-beet. Flax is an important product, and its cultivation has had
much to do with both the history and the political organization of the
state. Before the advent of the cotton industry, woollen and linen were
practically the only fibres used in cloth-making. Belgium was then the
chief flax-growing and cloth-making country, and all western Europe
depended upon the Flemish looms for cloth. This industry, therefore,
gave the country not only commercial prominence, but was largely
responsible for its political independence as well. Flax is still an
important product, and the linen textiles made in the state are without
a superior. Much of the flax is grown in the valley of the River Lys.
One of the most productive coal-fields of Europe stretches across
Belgium, and a few miles south of it are the iron-ore deposits that
extend also into Luxemburg and Germany. In addition to these, the
zinc-mines about Moresnet are among the richest in the world. Belgium
is, therefore, one of the great metal-working centres of Europe. A small
portion of the coal is exported to France, but most of it is required in
the manufactures.
_Liege_, _Seraing_, and _Verviers_ are the great centres of the metal
industry. They were built at the eastern extremity of the coal-field,
within easy reach of the iron ores. Firearms, railroad steel, and
tool-making machinery are the chief products of the region, and because
of the favorable situation, these products easily compete with the
manufactures of Germany and France.
_Ghent_ is the chief focal point for the flax product, which is
converted into the finest of linen cloth and art fabrics. Much of the
weaving and spinning machinery employed in Europe is made in this city.
_Mechlin_ and the villages near by are famous the world over for
hand-worked laces.
Expensive porcelains, art tiles, glassware, and cheap crockery are made
in the line of kilns that reaches almost from one end of the coal-field
to the other; these products, moreover, are extensively exported.
The railways are owned and operated by the state. They are managed so
judiciously, moreover, that the rates of carriage are lower than in most
European states. The Scheldt is navigable for large ocean steamers to
_Antwerp_, and this city is the great Belgian port for ocean traffic.
The city owes its importance to its position. One branch of the Scheldt
leads toward the Rhine; the other is connected by a canal with the
rivers of France; the main stem of the river points toward London. It is
therefore the meeting of three ways. It is the terminal of the
steamships of American, and of various other lines. It is also the depot
of the Kongo trade. Ship-canals deep enough for coasters and freighters
connect _Ghent_, _Bruges_, and _Brussels_ with tide-water. These are
about to be converted to deep-water ship-canals.
The foreign commerce of Belgium is much like that of other European
states. Wheat, meat, maize, cotton, and petroleum are imported mainly
from the United States; iron ore is purchased from Luxemburg and
Germany, and various raw materials are brought from France. In exchange
there are exported fine machinery, linen fabrics, porcelains, fire-arms,
glassware, and beet-sugar. From the Kongo state, at the head of which is
the King of the Belgians, are obtained rubber and ivory. The rubber is
sold mainly to the United States.
_Brussels_ is the capital and financial centre. On account of the state
control of the railways, it is also the directive centre of all the
industries pertaining to commerce and transportation.
=Holland.=--The names Holland and Netherlands mean "lowland," and the
state itself has a lower surface than any other country of Europe.
Nearly half the area is at high-tide level or else below it. A large
part, mainly the region about the Zuider[71] Sea, has been reclaimed
from the sea.
In the reclamation of these lands stone dikes are built to enclose a
given area, and from the basin thus constructed the water is pumped. The
reclaimed lands, or "polders," include not only the sea-bottom, but the
coast marshes as well; even the rivers are bordered with levees in order
to prevent overflows. Windmills are the machinery by which the water is
pumped from the polders into the sea. In no other part of the world is
wind-power so extensively used. Almost every acre of the polders is
under cultivation, and these lands grow a very large part of the
vegetables and flowers consumed in the great cities of England, France,
and Belgium.
The coast sand-barrens have been converted into pasture-lands that
produce draught-horses, beef cattle, and dairy cattle. The horses find a
ready market in the United States and the large European cities; the
dairy cattle not needed at home are exported, the United States being a
heavy purchaser. The beef cattle are grown mainly for the markets of
London. Dutch butter is used far beyond the boundaries of the state, and
Edam cheese reaches nearly every large city of Europe and America.
The sugar-beet is extensively cultivated, in spite of the great trade
resulting from the cane-sugar industry of the East Indies. It is more
profitable to import wheat from the United States and rye from Russia in
order to use the land for the sugar-beet.
Practically no timber suitable for lumber manufacture exists, and
building material therefore must be imported. Pine is purchased from
Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States. Stone is purchased wherever
it may be obtained as return freight, or as ballast. The coast fisheries
yield oysters, herrings, and "anchovies," which are not anchovies, but
sprats.
For want of coal and iron there are few manufactures, and the garden and
dairy products are about the only export articles. There is an
abundance of clay, and of this brick for road-making, tiles for building
purposes, and porcelains are made. But little of the raw sugar is
refined; most of it is sold to foreign refiners, and the United States
is one of the chief customers.
Holland is a great commercial country, and for more than five hundred
years the Dutch flag has been found in almost every large port of the
world. Much of the commerce is derived from the tobacco, sugar, and
coffee plantations of the Dutch East Indies.
A very large part of the commerce, however, is neither import or export
trade, but a "transit" commerce. Thus, American coal-oil is transferred
from the great ocean tank-steamers to smaller tank-boats, and is then
carried across the state into Germany, France, and Belgium, through the
numerous canals.
This trade applies also to many of the products of the German industries
which will not bear a heavy freight tariff, such as coal, ores, etc. It
reaches the Rhine and Rhone river-basins and extends even to the Danube.
Both Switzerland and Austria-Hungary send much of their exports through
Holland. All trade at the various ports and through the canals is free,
it being the policy to encourage and not to obstruct commerce.
_Amsterdam_, the constitutional capital, is one of the great financial
and banking centres of Europe. The completion of the Nord Holland canal
makes the docks and basins accessible to the largest steamships.
Diamond-cutting is one of the unique industries of the city. Since the
discovery of the African mines its former trade in diamonds has been
largely absorbed by London.
More than half the carrying trade of the state centres at _Rotterdam_.
By the improvement of the river estuaries and canals this city has
become one of the best ports of Europe, and the tonnage of goods
handled at the docks is enormously increasing. _Vlissingen_ (Flushing)
and the _Hook_ are railway terminals that handle much of the local
freights consigned to London. _Delft_ is famous the world over for the
beautiful porcelain made at its potteries.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How has the topography of each of these states affected its commerce?
How is their commerce affected by latitude and climate?
How has the cultivation of the sugar-beet affected the cane-sugar
industry in the British West Indies?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports and
imports of each country.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of the United States with
each of these countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--pp. 153-159.
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Book III, Chapters I and VIII.
CHAPTER XXVII
EUROPE--THE MEDITERRANEAN STATES AND SWITZERLAND
The Mediterranean states are peopled mainly by races whose social and
economic development was moulded largely by the Roman occupation of the
Mediterranean basin for a period of more than one thousand years. The
occupations of the people have been shaped to a great extent by the
slope of the land and by the mountain-ranges that long isolated them
from the Germanic peoples north of the Alps.
=France.=--The position of France with respect to industrial development
is fortunate. The North Sea coast faces the ports of Great Britain; the
Atlantic ports are easily accessible to American centres of commerce;
the Mediterranean ports command a very large part of the trade of that
sea.
The easily travelled overland routes between the Mediterranean and North
Seas in very early times gave the country a commercial prominence that
ever since has been retained. Even before the time of Caesar it was a
famous trading-ground for Mediterranean merchants, and the conquest of
the country was not so much for the spoils of war as for the extension
of Roman commercial influence.
The greater part of France is an agricultural region, and nowhere is the
soil cultivated with greater skill. Although the state is not quite as
large as Texas, there are more farms than in all the United States,
their small size making thorough cultivation a necessity. Much of the
land is too valuable for wheat-farming, and so the eastern
manufacturing districts depend upon the Russian wheat-farms for their
supply. Northwestern France, however, has a surplus of wheat, and this
is sold to Great Britain.
[Illustration: FRANCE]
The sugar-beet is the most profitable crop, and its cultivation is aided
indirectly by the government, which gives a bounty on all exported
sugar. The area of sugar-beet cultivation will probably increase to its
limit for this reason.
The French farmer is an artist in the cultivation of small fruits, and
the latter form an important source of revenue. Of the fruit-crop, the
grape is by far the most important commercially. French wines,
especially the champagnes, are exported to a greater extent than the
wines of any other country.[72] Most of the wine is sold in Great
Britain and the countries north of the grape belt; a considerable part
is sold in the United States and the eastern countries. Champagne,
Bordeaux, the Loire, and the Rhone Valleys are famous wine districts.
Wine is also imported, to be refined or to be made into brandy.
Cattle-breeding, both for meat and for dairy purposes, is extensively
carried on. The meat is consumed at home. Butter is an important export,
especially in the northwest, where a large amount is made for London
consumers. This region produces Camembert and Neufchatel cheese, both of
which are largely exported; Brie cheese is made chiefly along the German
border. The Roquefort product, made of ewe's milk, is fermented in
limestone caves and cellars. All these varieties have a large sale, the
United States and Great Britain being heavy purchasers.
The Percheron draught-horse is raised for export as well as for home
use; mules are extensively raised for the army wagon-trains of Great
Britain and Germany. Sheep are grown for the finer grades of wool, but
so much of the sheep pasture has been given to the cultivation of the
sugar-beet, that a considerable part of the woollen textiles are now
made of wool imported from Argentina. A large part of the eggs and table
poultry consumed in London are products of northwestern France.
The coal-fields of the north produce nearly two-thirds of the total
amount consumed. Iron ores are found near the German border; they are
sent to coal-fields in the neighborhood of St. Etienne and Le Creuzot to
be manufactured into steel. Both coal and iron ore are deficient. To
meet the requirements of consumption, the former is imported from Great
Britain, Germany, and Belgium; the latter, mainly from Germany and
Spain.
The manufactures of France have a wide influence. From the coal and iron
are derived the intricate machinery that has made the country famous,
the railways, the powerful navy, and the merchant marine that has made
the country a great commercial nation. Because of the great creative
skill and taste of the people, French textiles are standards of good
taste, and they find a ready market in all parts of the world. In
textile manufactures more than one million people and upward of one
hundred thousand looms are employed.
The United States is a heavy buyer of the woollen cloths and the finer
qualities of dress goods. Inasmuch as these goods have not been
successfully imitated elsewhere, the French trade does not suffer from
competition. The best goods are made from the fleeces of French merino
sheep, and are manufactured mainly in the northern towns. The Gobelin
tapestries of Paris are famous the world over.
The cotton manufactures depend mainly on American cotton. About
two-thirds of the cotton is purchased in the United States, a part of
which returns in the form of fine goods that may be classed as muslins,
tulles, and art textiles. The market for such goods is also general. In
the manufacture of fine laces, such as the Point d'Alencon fabrics, the
French have few equals and no superiors. The flax is imported mainly
from Belgium.
Silk culture is aided by the government, and is carried on mainly in
the south. The amount grown, however, is insufficient to keep the
factories busy, and more than four-fifths of the raw silk and cocoons
are imported from Italy and other southern countries.
The chief imports to France are coal, raw textile fibres, wine, wheat,
and lumber. The last two products excepted, they are again exported in
the form of manufactured products. The great bulk of the imports comes
from Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Russia, and
Argentina. In 1900 the import trade from these countries aggregated
about five hundred million dollars. The total export trade during the
same year was about eight hundred million dollars; it consisted mainly
of high-priced articles of luxury.
The foreign trade is supported by a navy, which ranks second among the
world's navies, and a merchant marine of more than fifteen thousand
vessels. Aside from the subsidies given to mail steamships, government
encouragement is given for the construction and equipment of home-built
vessels. It is a settled policy that French vessels shall carry French
traffic.
Of the 24,000 miles of railway, about 2,000 miles are owned by the
state. The rivers are connected by canals, and these furnish about 7,000
miles of navigable waters. As in Germany, the water-routes supplement
the railway lines. Practically all lines of transportation converge at
Paris.
_Paris_, the capital, is a great centre of finance, art, science, and
literature, whose influence in these features has been felt all over the
world. The character of fine textiles, and also the fashions in the
United States and Europe, are regulated largely in this city.
_Marseille_ is the chief seaport, and practically all the trade between
France and the Mediterranean countries is landed at this port; it is
also the focal point of the trade between France and her African
colonies, and a landing-place for the cotton brought from Egypt and
Brazil.
_Havre_, the port receiving most of the trade from the United States, is
the port of Paris. _Rouen_ is the chief seat of cotton manufacture.
_Paris_ and _Rheims_ are noted for shawls. _Lille_ and _Roubaix_ are
centres of woollen manufacture. _Lyons_ is the great seat of silk
manufacture.
=Italy.=--Italy is a spur of the Alps extending into the Mediterranean
Sea. From its earliest history it has been an agricultural state, and,
excepting the periods when it has been rent by wars, it has been one of
the most productive countries in the world.
Wheat is extensively grown, but the crop is insufficient for home
consumption, and the deficit is imported from Russia and Hungary. A
large part of the wheat-crop is grown in the valley of the Po River.
Flax and hemp are grown for export in this region; and corn for home
consumption is a general product. Cotton is a good crop in Sicily and
the south, but the amount is insufficient for use and must be made up by
imports from the United States and Egypt.
Silk, fruit, and vegetables are the staple products that connect Italy
commercially with the rest of the world. About a million people are
concerned in the silk industry, and Italy is one of the foremost
countries in the world in the production of raw silk. Most of the crop
is produced in northern Italy; western Europe and the United States are
the chief buyers. The silk of the Piedmont region is the best in
quality.
Fruit is the crop next in value to raw silk. Sicilian oranges and
lemons, from about twenty millions of trees, find a ready market in
Europe; the oranges come into competition with the California and
Florida oranges of the United States, in spite of the tariff imposed
against them by the latter country. Olives are probably the most
important fruit-crop. Both the preserved fruit and the oil are exported
to nearly every civilized people. Much of the oil is consumed at home,
very largely taking the place of meat and butter. Lucca-oil is regarded
as the best.
[Illustration: ITALY]
The grape-crop is enormous, and the fruit itself is exported. Some of
the fruit sold as "Malaga" grapes throughout the United States during
winter months comes from Italy. Chianti wine, from the vineyards around
Florence, has hitherto been regarded as an inferior product, but the
foreign demand for it is steadily increasing. The Marsala wines of
Sicily are largely exported.
Among mineral products the iron deposits in the island of Elba are
undoubtedly the most valuable, but they are yet undeveloped to any great
extent. The quarries at Carrara produce a fine marble that has made
Italy famous in sculpture and architecture. Much of the boracic acid
used in the arts comes from Tuscany, and the world's chief supply of
sulphur comes from the neighborhood of Mount Etna in Sicily. Of this
Americans buy about one-third.
On account of the lack of coal, the manufactures are restricted mainly
to art wares, such as jewelry, silk textiles, and fine glassware. The
Venetian glassware, the Florentine and mosaic jewelry, and the pink
coral ornaments are famous the world over. Within recent years, however,
imported coal, together with native lignite, have given steel
manufacture an impetus. Steel ships and rails made at home are meeting
the demands of commerce. Goods of American cotton are made for export to
Turkey and South American countries.
Raw silk, wine, olive-oil, straw goods, sulphur, and art goods are
exported. Cotton, wheat, tobacco, and farm machinery from the United
States, and coal, woollen textiles, and steel goods from Great Britain
are the chief imports. Most of the foreign trade is with the nearby
states. The raw silk goes to France.
Since the unification of Italy the railways have been readjusted to the
needs of commerce. Before that time the lines were wholly local in
character; with the readjustment they were organized into trunk lines.
They enter France through the Mont Cenis tunnel; they reach Switzerland
and Germany by way of St. Gotthard Pass; they cross the Austrian border
through Brenner Pass.
_Rome_, the capital, is a political rather than an industrial centre.
_Milan_, the Chicago of the kingdom, is the chief market for the crops
of northern Italy and a great railway centre. It is also the market for
raw silk. _Genoa_, the principal port, is the one at which most of the
trade of the United States is landed. _Naples_ monopolizes most of the
marine traffic between Italy and Great Britain. _Leghorn_ is famous for
its manufacture and trade in straw goods. A considerable part of the
grain harvested in the Po Valley is stored for shipment at _Venice_--not
in elevators, but in pits. _Palermo_ is the trading centre of Sicily.
Most of the sulphur is shipped from _Catania_. _Brindisi_ and _Ancona_
are shipping-points for the Suez Canal route.
=Spain and Portugal.=--The surface of these states is too rugged and the
climate too arid for any great agricultural development. Less than half
the area is under cultivation; nevertheless, they are famous for several
agricultural products--merino wool, wine, and fruit. The merino wool of
the Iberian peninsula has no equal for fine dress goods; it is imported
into almost every other country having woollen manufactures. A
considerable amount of ordinary wool is grown, but not enough for home
needs.
The fruit industry is an important source of income. Oranges, limes, and
lemons are extensively grown for exports; among these products is the
bitter orange, from which the famous liqueur curacao, a Dutch
manufacture, is made. The heavy, sweet port wine, now famous the world
over, was first made prominent in the vineyards of Spain and Portugal.
Malaga raisins are sold in nearly every part of England and America. The
olive is more extensively cultivated than in any other state, but both
the fruit and the oil are mainly consumed at home--the latter taking the
place of butter. Raw silk is grown for export to France.
Although a larger part of the peninsula must depend on the American and
Scandinavian forests for lumber, there is one tree product that is in
demand wherever bottles are used--namely, cork. The cork is prepared
from the bark of a tree (_Quercus suber_) commonly known as the cork
oak,[73] which grows freely in the Iberian peninsula and northern
Africa.
[Illustration: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL]
Metals and minerals of economic use are abundant. Iron ore is sold to
Great Britain, France, and Germany. Since the Spanish-American War,
however, there have been extensive developments in utilizing the coal
and the ore which before that time had been sold to other countries.
The undeveloped coal and iron resources are very great, and must figure
in the payment of a national debt that is near the limit of bankruptcy.
The state, however, is entering a period of industrial prosperity.
The most available metal resource is quicksilver. Of this metal the
mines in Almaden produce about one-half the world's supply. The working
of these mines is practically a government monopoly, and the income was
mortgaged for many years ahead when Spain was at war with her rebellious
colonies.
Both Spain and Portugal are poorly equipped with means for
transportation. The railways lack organization, and freight rates are
excessive. Not a little of the transportation still depends on the
ox-cart and the pack-train. The merchant marine has scarcely more than a
name; the foreign commerce is carried almost wholly in British or French
bottoms. The imports are mainly cotton, coal, lumber, and
food-stuffs--these in spite of the fact that every one save lumber might
be produced at home.
Wine and fruit products, iron ore, and quicksilver are leading exports.
Of these the United States purchases wine and raisins for home
consumption and lace and filigree work for the trade with Mexico. Spain
has a considerable trade in cotton goods with her colonies, the Canary
Islands, and the African provinces of Rio de Oro and Adrar.
Portugal likewise supplies her foreign possessions--Goa (India), Macao
(China), and the Cape Verde and Azores Islands--with home products. The
chief Portuguese trade, however, is with Great Britain and Brazil.
_Madrid_ is the capital of Spain. _Barcelona_ is the chief commercial
centre. _Valencia_, _Alicante_, _Cartagena_, and _Malaga_, are all ports
of fruit and wine trade. _Oporto_ has been made famous for the port wine
that bears its name. Probably not one per cent. of the port now used,
however, comes from Oporto, and not many Malaga raisins come from
Malaga.
=Switzerland.=--This state is situated in the heart of the highest Alps.
The southeastern half is above the altitude in which food-stuffs can be
produced, and probably no other inhabited country has a greater
proportion of its area above the limits of perpetual snow. A
considerable area of the mountain-slopes affords grazing. The
valley-lands of the lake-region produce a limited amount of food-stuffs,
but not enough for the sparse population.
Politically, Switzerland is a republic, having the position of a
"buffer" state between Germany, Italy, France, and Austria-Hungary.
Racially, the state is divided among Italians, French, and Germans; as a
matter of fact, however, the old Helvetian spirit, which not even Caesar
could destroy, is still a great factor in dominating the people; this,
with their montane environment, gives the Swiss a very positive
nationality.
The agricultural interests of the state are developed to their utmost;
two-thirds of the bread-stuffs, however, are purchased from the United
States, the plains of Bohemia, and Russia. Cherries, apples, grapes, and
other fruit are cultivated in every possible place, and as these can be
delivered to any part of western and central Europe within a day, the
fruit industry is a profitable one.
Cattle are bred for dairy purposes, but those for beef must be very
largely imported, Austria-Hungary and Italy selling the needed supply.
Goats are raised for their hides, and the latter are converted into
Morocco leather. Of the dairy products, cheese is in many respects the
most important; Gruyere cheese is exported to nearly every country. On
account of the long distance from populous centres milk cannot be
transported; much of it is, therefore, condensed, and in that form
exported.
A peculiar feature of the dairy industry is the fact that it is
constantly moving. The dairy herds begin to pasture in the lowlands as
soon as the snow melts, and as fast as the snow line recedes up the
mountains the cattle follow. The milk is converted into butter and
cheese wherever the herds may be, and the second crop of grass below
them is cut and cured for winter forage.
In spite of the fact that Switzerland has no available coal,[74]
manufacture is pre-eminently the industry of the state. During the long
winters the Alpine herdsman and his family whittle out wooden toys from
the stock of rough lumber laid by for the purpose. Farther down in the
valley-lands the exquisite brocades and muslins are made on hand-looms,
or by the aid of the abundant water-power. Each industrial district has
its special line of manufacture, so that there is scarcely an idle day
in the year.
In the cities and towns of the lowland district, watches, clocks,
music-boxes, and fine machinery are manufactured. For many years Swiss
watches were about the only ones used in the United States, but on
account of the competition of American watches this trade has fallen
off. The mechanical music-player, operated by perforated paper, has also
interfered with the trade in music-boxes.
Switzerland is provided with excellent facilities for transportation,
and this has done about as much for the commercial welfare of the state
as all other industrial enterprises. In proportion to its area, the
railway mileage is greater than that of the surrounding states. The
roads are well built and the rates of transportation are low.
In addition to the ordinary trip-tickets, monthly time-tickets are
issued to travellers, allowing the holders to travel when and where they
please within the limits of the state on all roads and lake-steamers.
These are sold to the traveller for about two-thirds the price of the
1,000-mile book of the American railway. The carriage roads have no
superiors, and they penetrate about every part of the state below the
snow line; they also cross the main passes of the Alps.
Through one or another of these passes most of the foreign traffic of
the state must be carried. To Genoa and Milan it crosses the Alps via
the St. Gotthard tunnel, or the Simplon Pass;[75] to Paris it goes by
the Rhone Valley; between Vienna and Switzerland, by the Arlberg tunnel;
and to Germany or to Amsterdam through the valley of the Main.
As a result of this most excellent system of transportation, Switzerland
is thronged with visiting tourists at all times of the year; moreover,
it has always been the policy of the Swiss Government not only to
provide for them, but also to make the country attractive to them. The
result has shown the wisdom of the policy. Indeed, the foreign tourist
has become one of the chief sources of income of the Swiss people, and
the latter profit by the transaction to the amount of about forty
million dollars a year.
About all the raw material used in manufacture must be imported. The
cotton is purchased mainly from the United States, and enters by way of
Marseille. The raw silk is purchased from Italy, China, and Japan. Coal,
sugar, food-stuffs, and steel are purchased from Germany, and this state
supplies about half the imports. From the United States are purchased
wheat, cotton, and coal-oil.
The manufactures are intended for export. The fine cotton textiles sold
to the United States are worth far more than the raw cotton purchased
therefrom. Silk textiles, straw wares, toys, watches, jewelry, and dairy
products are leading exports. The surrounding states are the chief
buyers, and none of them competes with Switzerland to any extent in the
character of the exports.
_Geneva_, situated at the head of the Rhone Valley, is the chief trade
depot; it is noted especially for the manufacture of watches, of which
many hundred thousand are made yearly. _Zurich_ is the centre of
manufactures of textiles and fine machinery. The silk-brocade industry
is centred chiefly in this city and _Basel_.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why did not France prosper commercially prior to the time of the
revolution of 1793?
What are the chief natural advantages of the state in favor of
commercial development?
In what ways have the natural disadvantages of Switzerland been
overcome?
How has the loss of her colonies affected the industrial development of
Spain?
Comparing Spain and Italy, which has the better situation with reference
to the Suez Canal traffic?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the amount of foreign trade of each
state.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of each one with the
United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire, pp. 160-168.
Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. II, Chapter XI.
Procure for inspection specimens of raw silk and also of the choice
textile goods made in these states.
CHAPTER XXVIII
EUROPE--THE DANUBE AND BALKAN STATES
The Danube and Balkan states derive their commercial importance partly
from the large area in which bread-stuffs may be produced, and also
because the valley of the Danube has become an overland trade-route of
growing importance between the Suez Canal and the North Sea.
=Austria-Hungary.=--This empire is composed of the two monarchies, Austria
and Hungary, each practically self-governed, but united under a single
general government. The greater part of the country is walled in by the
ranges of the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains.
The region known as the Tyrol is topographically continuous with
Switzerland, and the people have Swiss characteristics. Galicia,
northeast of the Carpathian Mountains, the fragment of Poland that fell
to Austria at the time of partition, is a part of the great Russian
plain. Bohemia, which derives its name from the Keltic peoples, whom
Caesar called the Boii, comprises the upper part of the Elbe river-basin.
Its natural commercial outlet is Germany, but the race-hatred which the
Czechs have for the Germans, retards commercial progress. Hungary is a
country of plains occupying the lower basin of the Danube. The Huns are
of Asian origin. Austria proper occupies the upper valley of the Danube,
adjoining Germany; the country and the people are Germanic.
To the student of history it is a surprise that a country of such
diverse peoples, having but little in common save mutual race-hatred,
should hold together under the same general government. The explanation,
however, is found in the topography of the region. The basin of the
Danube is a great food-producing region, and the upper valley of the
Elbe River forms the easiest passage from the Black to the Baltic Sea.
The topography therefore gives the greater part of the country
commercial unity.
The climate and surface of the low plains of Hungary are much the same
as those of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Grain-growing and stock-raising are
the chief employments. High freight rates, a long haul, and the
competition of Russia and Roumania have retarded the development of
these industries, however. Bohemia is likewise a grain-growing country,
and the easy route into Germany through the Elbe Valley makes the
industry a profitable one. Bohemia is also in the sugar-beet area.
There is an abundance of coal in Austria, but most of it is unfit for
the manufacture of iron and steel. Steel manufacture, however, is
carried on, the industry being protected by the distance from the German
steel-making centres. The lead-mines about Bleiberg (or "Leadville") are
very productive; at Idria are the only quicksilver-mines in Europe that
compete with those of Almaden, Spain. The salt-mines near Krakow are in
a mass of rock-salt twelve hundred feet thick.
Most of the manufactured products are for home consumption. American
cotton and home-grown wool supply the greater part of the textiles. The
flour-mills are equipped with the very best of machinery, and much of
the product is for export to Germany and the countries to the south. The
manufactures that have made the state famous, however, are gloves and
glassware, both of which are widely exported. The sand, fluxes, and
coloring minerals of Bohemian glassware are all peculiar to the region,
and the wares, therefore, cannot be imitated elsewhere. The gloves are
made from the skins of Hungarian sheep and goats.
The railways are not well organized, and the mileage is insufficient for
the needs of the country. Ludwig Canal (in Germany) connects the Danube
with the Main, a navigable tributary of the Rhine; the Elbe is navigable
from a point above Prague to the Baltic; the Moravian Gate opens a
passage from Vienna northward; the Iron Gate, through which the Danube
flows, is the route to the Black Sea; Semmering Pass and its tunnel is
the gateway to the ports of the Adriatic. These great routes practically
converge at Vienna, which also is the great railway centre of the
empire.
The foreign trade consists mainly of the export of food-stuffs (of which
sugar and eggs are heavy items), fine cabinet ware, woollen textiles
(made from imported wool), barley and malt, and fine glassware. Much of
the German and Italian wine is sent to market in casks made of Austrian
stock; the coal goes mainly to Italy. The imports are raw cotton from
the United States and Egypt, wool, silk, and tobacco. Coal is both
exported and imported. The United States sells to Austria-Hungary
cotton, pork, and corn--buying porcelain ware, glassware, and gloves,
amounting to about one-fifth the value of the exports.
_Vienna_, the capital, is the financial centre and commercial
clearing-house of central Europe; it has also extensive manufactures.
_Budapest_ is the great focal point of Hungarian railways and commerce.
_Prague_ controls the coal, textile, and glass trade of Bohemia.
_Lemberg_ is the metropolis of Galicia. The states of Liechtenstein,
Bosnia, and Herzegovina are commercially under the control of Austria.
=The Lower Danube States.=--Roumania and Bulgaria, the plain of the lower
Danube, are enclosed by the Carpathian and Balkan ranges. They
constitute a great wheat-field whose chief commercial outlets are the
Iron Gate into Germanic Europe, and the Sulina mouth of the Danube into
the Black Sea. The growing of maize for home consumption and wheat for
export form the only noteworthy industries. Most of the grain is shipped
up the Danube and sold in Great Britain and Germany.
From the Iron Gate to the Black Sea the Danube is held as an
international highway, and the control of its navigation is directed by
a commission of the various European powers, having its head-quarters at
Galatz, Roumania.
[Illustration: TURKEY AND GREECE]
In the Balkan Mountains is the famous Vale of Roses which furnishes
about half the world's supply of attar-of-roses. The petals of the
damask rose are pressed between layers of cloth saturated with lard. The
latter absorbs the essential oil, from which it is easily removed. About
half a ton of roses are required to make a pound of the attar. Kazanlik,
noted also for rugs, is the great market for attar. _Galatz_ and
_Rustchuk_ are grain-markets and river-ports; from the latter a railway
extends to _Varna_, the chief port of the Black Sea. From _Sofia_, near
the Bulgarian frontier, a trunk line of railway extends through
Budapest to western Europe.
=Turkey-in-Europe.=--The European part of the Ottoman Empire has long been
politically known as the "Sick Man" of Europe, and so far as the
industries and commerce of the state are concerned, there is no excuse
for its separate existence as a state. Its political existence, however,
is regarded as a necessity, in order to prevent the Russians from
obtaining military and naval control of the Mediterranean and Black
Seas, and thereby becoming a menace to all western Europe. Less than
one-half the people are Turks; the greater part of the population
consists of Armenians, Jews, Magyars, and Latins.
Most of the country is rugged and unfit for grain-growing. The internal
government is bad, the taxes are so ruinous that the agricultural
resources are undeveloped, and every sort of farming is primitive. In
many instances the taxes levied on the growing crops become practical
confiscation when they are collected. Much of the cultivable land is
idle because there are no means of getting the crops to market.
Grapes and wine, silk, opium, mohair and wool, valonia (acorn cups used
in tanning leather), figs, hides, cigarettes, and carpets are the
leading exports, and these about half pay for the American cotton
textiles, woollen goods, coal-oil, sugar, and other food-stuffs
imported. Choice Mocha coffee is imported for home use, and poorer
grades are exported. Most of the foreign commerce is in the hands of
English and French merchants. Armenians, Jews, and Greeks are the native
middlemen and traders.
The native population is subject to the Sultan, whose rule is absolute;
most foreign merchants and residents are permitted by treaties to remain
subject to the regulations of the consuls.
_Constantinople_ is the capital. Its situation on the Bosphorus is such
that under any other European government it would command a tremendous
foreign commerce. It is naturally the focal point of the trade between
Europe and Asia. A trunk line of railway connects the city with Paris.
_Salonica_ is the port of western Turkey, and is likewise connected by
rail with western Europe. A great deal of the foreign commerce of the
state is now landed at this port.
[Illustration: HARBOR OF CONSTANTINOPLE]
The chief possessions of the Ottoman Empire are Asia Minor, Armenia,
Mesopotamia, Syria, and Arabia.
=Greece.=--Greece is a rugged peninsula, no part of which is more than
forty miles from the sea. The country is without resources in the way of
coal, timber, or available capital. Its former commercial position, in
ancient times, was due largely to the silver-mines near Ergasteria, and
subsequently to the gold-mines of eastern Macedonia; these, however, are
no longer productive.
There is but little land suitable for farming, and not far from one-half
the bread-stuffs must be imported. Much of the timber has been
destroyed, and this has resulted in a deterioration not only of the
water-power, but of the cultivable lands as well. The railway lines are
short and their business is local; there are practically no trunk line
connections with the great centres of commerce.
The harbors and the natural position of the country are its best
remaining resources. The Greeks are born sailors, and the country is in
the pathway of European and Asian commerce. Most of the grain-trade
between the Black and Mediterranean Seas is controlled by Greek
merchants, and the Greeks are everywhere in evidence in the carrying
trade of the Mediterranean. The construction of the Corinthian canal has
also given Greek commerce a material impetus.
The chief exports are Corinthian grapes--commonly known as
"currants"--fruit, and iron ore from Ergasteria. Great Britain, France,
and Belgium are the chief buyers of the fruit-crop. The exports scarcely
pay for the American cotton, Russian wheat, and the timber products that
are purchased abroad. There has been a material growth in the
manufacture of cotton, woollens, and silk in the past few years, much of
the work being done in households. _Athens_ is the capital and largest
city. _The Piraeus_ and _Patras_ are the chief ports.
=Servia= and =Montenegro= are stock-growing countries. The former has
suffered greatly from misgovernment and the waste of its resources.
Wine-cask stock and cattle are sold to Austria, which has five-sixths of
its trade. _Belgrade_ is its metropolis. Tobacco and live-stock are
exported from Montenegro to Austria.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
On a good map of central Europe trace an all-water route from the mouth
of the Danube to the ports of the lower Rhine and the North Sea; what
connection have the cities of Ratisbon and Lemberg with this route?
How do the forests of these states affect the wine industry of Germany?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the amount and movement of the
exports and imports of these countries.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the volume of trade of these
countries with the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Great Canals of the World--p. 4089.
A good map of central Europe.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN EMPIRE]
CHAPTER XXIX
EUROPE-ASIA--THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
The great plain of Eurasia, which borders about half the circuit of the
Arctic Ocean, is undivided by topographic barriers or boundaries. It is
physically a unit.
=Russia.=--Russia comprises more than one-half the area of Europe; the
Russian Empire embraces about one-half of Europe and Asia combined, and
constitutes more than one-seventh of the land surface of the earth. East
and west, from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, the distance is about six
thousand miles. It has a similar position with respect to southern
Europe and China as has Canada to the United States.
In latitude the country is unfortunately situated. North of the latitude
of St. Petersburg the climate is too cold to grow bread-stuffs; a large
part of the country is, therefore, unproductive. The central belt is
forest-covered; the southern part, or "black earth" belt, comprises the
greater part of the productive lands, and this region is the chief
granary of Europe.
Russia is an agricultural country. Maize and rye grown for home
consumption, and wheat for export, are the chief products. Flax is a
leading export product, and the Russian crop constitutes about
four-fifths of the world's supply. Lands too remote from markets for
grain-growing produce cattle and sheep, which are grown mainly for their
hides and tallow. The wool of the Don is a very coarse textile that is
much used in the manufacture of American carpets; that of the arid
plateaus of the southern country is a fine rug wool.
Agriculture in Russia is on a much lower plane than in western Europe.
Most of the land is owned in large estates. Individual farming is rare,
land tillage being usually a community affair. A village community rents
or purchases a tract of land, and the latter is allotted to the families
composing it, a part of the land being reserved for pasturage. The
business is transacted by "elders," or trustees, who exercise a general
management and supervision over the "mir," or community.
The methods of farming are not the best, and an acre of land produces
scarcely one-third as much as the same area is made to yield in other
states. The farming class, or peasantry, was in a condition of serfdom
until within a few years. Poverty unfits them to compete with farmers of
western Europe; moreover, the laws of land ownership and tenure also
serve to discourage farming.
The metal and mineral resources are very great. Iron ore is abundant,
and the yearly output of both is greatly increasing. There are extensive
deposits in southern Russia, in the Ural Mountains, and in Poland. Coal
of good quality is plentiful, and coal mining is encouraged by a heavy
tariff on the foreign coal that enters regions where the home product is
available. The most productive coal-fields are those of the lower Don
River and of Poland.
Gold is obtained in various parts of Siberia and in the Ural Mountains,
but scarcely enough is mined for the requirements of coinage. Copper is
also mined in the Ural and Caucasus Mountains. More than nine-tenths of
the world's supply of platinum is also obtained in the Ural Mountains.
The petroleum fields of Transcaucasia have a yearly output a little
greater than those of the United States.
The forest area is surpassed only by the timber belt of North America,
both of which are in about the same latitudes. This area, within a very
few years, is destined to be the chief lumber supply of all Europe.
Moreover, the forests, the grain-growing lands, and the iron and coal
constitute national resources which are surpassed in no other countries
save the United States and China.
The Russian Government has done much to encourage manufactures.
Steel-making in the Ural district, in Poland, and in the iron regions of
the Don has progressed to the extent that home-made railway material and
rolling stock are now generally used. Farming machinery is made in the
cities of the grain-growing region. The manufacture of cotton, woollen,
and linen fabrics has developed to the extent that the state is becoming
an exporter rather than an importer of such goods.
Railway building has progressed under government aid, and about
two-thirds of the 37,000 miles of track are owned by the state. The
Transsiberian Railway connecting Vladivostok with the trunk lines of
Europe was built by the state both for strategic and economic purposes.
Large bodies of emigrants are carried into Siberia at nominal rates and
are settled on lands that are practically free. The return cargoes
consist of Chinese products--mainly silk textiles and tea--destined for
western Europe.
A network of railways covers the grain-growing districts; trunk lines,
mainly for strategic purposes, extend through Russian Turkestan to the
Chinese border. For many years Russia has endeavored to acquire the
territory that would afford commercial outlets to the Indian Ocean and
into China. In this the state has been thwarted by two great
powers--Great Britain and Japan. The construction of canals and the
improvements of river-navigation are under government management, and
the internal water-ways aggregate about fifty thousand miles of
navigation.
The foreign commerce is changing in character as manufactures develop.
Wheat, flour, timber products, flax, and petroleum are the chief
exports. Cotton, tea, wool, and coal are the leading imports, the
first-named coming mainly from the United States. Germany, Great
Britain, France, Holland, and the United States are the chief European
countries utilizing Russian trade. The commerce between Russia and China
is growing rapidly. The Transsiberian railway is its chief northern
outlet, and a branch of this road, now under construction, extends
through to the leading commercial centres of Manchuria, to Port Arthur.
A considerable amount of manufactured goods is sent to Asia Minor and
the Iran countries.
The most available ports opening into the Atlantic are on the Baltic
Sea, but these are blocked by ice in winter; the best ports are on the
Black Sea, but the Russians do not control the navigable waters that
connect them with the Atlantic.
Much of the internal trade is carried on by means of annual fairs. The
most important of these are held at _Nijni_, (lower) _Novgorod_,
_Kharkof_, _Kief_, and other points. At the first-named fair goods to
the amount of $80,000,000 have changed hands during a single season, and
the annual fair is the recognized common ground on which the oriental
traders meet the buyers of European and American firms.
Unlike the schemes of colonization of other European states, the various
possessions of the Czar are practically in a single area, the
dependencies being contiguous. The lines between them, with few
exceptions, are political rather than natural boundaries.
_St. Petersburg_, the capital, is the centre of finance and trade.
_Riga_ is the port from which most of the lumber is exported; it
receives the coal purchased from Great Britain for the factories of the
Baltic coast. The harbor of Riga is not greatly obstructed by ice.
_Archangel_ has an export trade of lumber and flax during the few months
when the White Sea is free from ice. _Odessa_ and _Rostof_ are the
grain-markets of the empire. _Astrakhan_ is the centre of trade for the
Iran countries, and _Baku_ is the petroleum-market. _Moscow_ is the
chief focal point of the railways; and in consequence has become a great
centre of manufacture and trade. _Warsaw_, next to Moscow, is the most
important city.
=Siberia.=--This great territory resembles Russia in surface and climatic
features. Like the former "west" of the United States, Siberia is the
open "east" into which much of the surplus population of Russia,
Germany, and the Scandinavian countries is moving, attracted by fine
farming lands. The European emigrant becomes a producer when settled in
Siberia, and, at the same time, a consumer of Russian manufactures. In
five years more than one million people thus became occupants of the new
country in Siberia. Russian trade is encouraged by a heavy tariff on
foreign goods brought into Siberia.
_Tobolsk_, _Tomsk_, and _Semipalatinsk_ are collecting stations for
Siberian products, and each is built on navigable waters. _Irkutsk_
receives the caravan trade that goes from Peking through _Urga_ and
_Kiakhta_, the frontier post of Chinese trade. _Vladivostok_ is the
great Pacific outlet and the terminus of the Transsiberian Railway. It
is ice-bound in winter. _Harbin_, in Manchuria, China, is a Russian
trading post of great commercial importance.
=Bokhara= and =Khiva= are Russian vassal states. The former was acquired
chiefly as a trade-route. A railway from _Krasnovodsk_ on the Caspian
Sea extends through _Merv_, _Bokhara_, and _Samarkand_ to _Kashgar_,
where it meets the caravan trade from central China. The building of
this railway has caused a great development of cotton-growing in these
countries, which furnish Europe and America with the choice Afghan,
Khiva, and Bokhara rugs.
=Transcaucasia=, now joined to Russia, is a part of the plateau of Iran. A
railway extends across the country from _Batum_ to _Baku_, connecting
the Black and Caspian Seas. Transcaucasia is the petroleum region of the
East. It is also noted for the Shirvan, Kabistan, Daghestan, and Kazak
rugs which are sold all over Europe and America. The so-called
"Cashmere" rugs are not a product of Kashmir, but are made in the town
of _Shemaka_. Kabistan rugs are made in _Kuba_. Kazak fabrics are
usually the sleeping-blankets of the Kazak (Cossack) rough-riders.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How will the development of the coal, iron, and lumber resources most
likely affect the industrial future of Russia?
Discuss the policy of Siberian immigration;--what are its advantages to
German colonists?
From the map accompanying this chapter show how the tributary streams of
the great rivers have served to extend Russian commerce through Siberia.
Note the situation of the cities and towns of Siberia with reference to
the rivers.
What effect has the high latitude of Russia on its agricultural
industries?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports and
imports of Russia by articles, and also the volume of trade with other
countries.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the statistics of trade between
Russia and the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Commercial life in Russia--preferably from the article, "Russia," in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
For a rug of the Caucasus type, see illustration, p. 351; compare the
Kabistan with the Persian piece--which has the floral and which the
geometric figures?
CHAPTER XXX
THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA
The countries of the Iran plateau extend from the Mediterranean Sea to
the valley of the Indus River. The Arabian Peninsula is not a part of
it, but its climate and general character are similar. The Iran
countries are exceedingly rugged, and a great part of their surface is
more than a mile above sea-level. The climate is one of great extremes;
the summer hot-waves and the winter hurricanes are probably unknown
elsewhere in severity. The greater part of Arabia is an unhabitable
desert.
[Illustration: THE RUG-MAKING COUNTRIES]
The rigorous conditions of surface and climate have placed their stamp
upon the population of the region. They are full of the intelligent
cunning and ferocity that mark people living under such conditions of
environment. In many parts the sterile soil and arid climate force the
sparse population into nomadic habits of life and predatory pursuits.
For the greater part, the land hardly yields enough food-stuffs for the
population, and any great development of agriculture is out of the
question. The flood-plain of the Tigris and Euphrates, and a few of the
river-valleys are highly productive.
[Illustration: AN ANTIQUE TREE-OF-LIFE, KERMANSHAH (PERSIAN) RUG]
Before the Christian era several trade-routes between Europe and the
Orient lay across this region, and along the caravan routes there were
the usual industries pertaining to commercial peoples. The cities of
Sinope, Trebizond, Astrabad, Phasis, Mashad, and Bactra (now Balkh) grew
into existence along one of the northern routes. Tyre, Nineveh, Tarsus,
Palmyra, Babylon, and Persepolis were founded along one or another of
the southern routes. Of these, Trebizond only retains its importance,
being a seaport with a considerable trade. The commerce that once passed
over this route was crushed out of existence during the invasions by
Jenghis Khan.
[Illustration: A KABISTAN RUG--CAUCASUS DISTRICT]
Of the various industries of the Iran plateau, practically but one
extends beyond its borders, namely, the manufacture of the textile
fabrics known as Oriental rugs. These are unique; they are made of
materials, colored with dyes, and are ornamented with designs that
cannot be successfully imitated anywhere else in the world. The filling
of the rugs consists of fine wool, selected not only from particular
localities, but also from certain parts of the fleece. The dye-stuffs
are common to other parts of the world, and their names--indigo,
saffron, coccus, madder, and orchil--are familiar. But both the wool and
the dye-stuffs possess qualities imparted to them by soil and climate
that are not found elsewhere.
The absence of floors, and of the furniture found in European dwellings,
make the rugs essential household articles rather than luxuries. The
hearth-rug, the bath-mat, the divan-cover, the sleeping-blanket, and the
saddle-mat must be regarded as necessities. Religion also has its
requirements, and the prayer rug, sometimes ornamented with the hands of
the Prophet, is a part of every household equipment, whether of the
nomadic Arab or the wealthy merchant. Each district and people have
their own designs and methods of workmanship, and the rugs of each are
easily distinguished.[76]
For the greater part these are gathered by caravans and conveyed to
convenient shipping-points. Nearly all the cottage-made product is
obtained in this manner. As a rule the rugs are named from the town or
district in which they are made. Smyrna and Constantinople are the chief
ports of shipment. Many of them find their way to European dealers, but
New York is probably the largest rug-market in the world. The great
majority are retailed at from ten to fifty dollars each; choice
fabrics, however, bring from three hundred to ten thousand dollars.
Oriental rugs are hand-woven, and a weaver frequently spends several
years on a single piece, earning perhaps less than ten cents a day. The
factory-made rugs are inferior to the cottage-manufactured product.
=Turkish Possessions.=--Anatolia is the common name of the Turkish
possession formerly known as Asia Minor. The name properly belongs,
however, to only a small part of the region. The Asiatic possessions of
the Ottoman Empire comprise Asia Minor, Armenia, Kurdistan, Syria,
Mesopotamia, and Arabia. The Armenians are the commercial people of the
greater part of this region, and although thousands have been massacred
because of Turkish hatred of them, they practically wield the chief
power because of their business enterprise.
During the Roman occupation many miles of roads were built from
Constantinople and other coast-points to the interior. One of these
extended to Mesopotamia, and became a much-travelled route of the trade
which centred at Constantinople. Within recent years German capitalists
have built railways along these roads, thereby creating a considerable
export trade in fruit, rugs, and mohair cloth.
_Angora_ and _Konieh_ (_Iconium_) are important marts. _Trebizond_ is
the chief port of the Black Sea, but it lacks railway connections with
the interior. _Smyrna_ is the chief port of the Mediterranean, and from
it are shipped to European and American markets the fruit and textile
fabrics that have made its importance. In Syria, _Damascus_, one of the
oldest cities in the world, is the centre of a considerable trade in
textile manufactures. Rugs, dates, figs, and damask fabrics are exported
to Europe through _Beirut_, its seaport, with which it is connected by
rail. Much of the stuffs exported is gathered from Persia. _Yafa_ is
the port of Jerusalem. _Bagdad_ is the chief trade-centre of
Mesopotamia.
=Arabia.=--Arabia is nominally a Turkish possession, but the coast-regions
only are under the control of the Sultan. The interior is peopled by
nomadic tribes, who do not acknowledge the sovereignty of Turkey. The
province of Yemen, on the Red Sea, is about the only noteworthy part of
the peninsula. Hides and Mocha coffee, gathered by Arab traders, are
shipped from the port of _Hodeida_. _Mecca_ is the yearly meeting-place
of thousands of Mohammedan pilgrims, who go thither as a religious duty;
it is also the centre from which Asiatic cholera radiates. _Aden_, the
chief coaling-station of the British Empire in the Indian Ocean, is also
a free port, having a considerable trade in American cotton and
coal-oil.
Although Arabia itself is practically of no commercial importance, the
same cannot be said of the Arabic people. They are keen, thrifty
traders, and as brutal in their instincts as they are keen. The commerce
which connects the western part of Asia with Europe is largely of their
making. They collect and transport the goods from the interior,
delivering them to Jewish and Armenian middlemen, who turn them over to
European and American merchants. Arab traders also control the greater
part of the commerce of northern Africa. The slave-trade, which is
wholly in their hands, is very largely the key to the situation. A party
of slave-dealers makes an attack upon a village and, after massacring
all who are not able-bodied, load the rest with the goods to be
transported to the coast.
=Persia.=--Persia is the modernized name of the province now called Fars,
or Farsistan. Within its borders, however, the name Persia is almost
unknown; the native people call the country Iran. In the times of
Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius, Persia was one of the great powers of the
world. The cultivable lands produced an abundance of food-stuffs. The
mines of copper, lead, silver, and iron were worked to their utmost
extent, and the chief trade-routes between Europe and the Orient crossed
the country to the Indus River.
The conquest by Alexander the Great changed the course of trade and
diverted it to other routes, thus depriving the country of much of its
revenue; the invasions of the Arabs left the empire a hopeless wreck.
Iran blood dominates the country at the present time, it is true, but
the religion of Islam does not encourage any material development, and
the industries are now purely local. There is no organization of trade,
nor any system of transportation except by means of wretched wagon-roads
with innumerable toll-gates. "Turkish" tobacco, opium, and small fruits
are grown for export; silk and wool, however, are the most important
crops. The former is manufactured into brocaded textiles; the latter
into rugs and carpets. There are famous pearl-fisheries in the Persian
Gulf.
_Tabriz_, situated in the midst of an agricultural region, has important
manufactures of shawls and silk fabrics of world renown. The Tabriz rugs
are regarded as among the finest of the rug-maker's art. _Shiraz_, the
former capital, _Kermanshah_,[77] and _Hamadan_ are noted for rug and
carpet manufactures. _Mashad_ is the centre of the trade with Russia.
_Bushire_ and _Bender-Abbas_ are seaports, but have no great importance.
Most of the trade with Russia passes through the port of Trebizond.
=Afghanistan.=--The nomadic tribes that inhabit Afghanistan have but
little in common with the British civilization that is slowly but surely
closing in upon them, and driving them from routes of commerce. A
considerable local traffic is carried on between Bokhara and Herat, and
between Bokhara and Kabul through Balkh, all being fairly prosperous
centres of population in regions made productive by irrigation.
By far the most important route lies between Kabul and Peshawur, at the
head of the Indus River. A railway, the Sind-Pishin, extends along the
valley of this river from Karachi, a port of British India, to Peshawur,
also in British India near the Afghan border, and the route lies thence
through Khaibar Pass to Jelalabad and Kabul. A branch of this road is
completed through Bolan Pass nearly to Kandahar.
_Kabul_, the capital, is a military stronghold rather than a business
centre, although it is a collection depot for the Khiva-Bokhara rugs and
carpets that are marketed at Peshawur. _Kandahar_ has a growing trade
resulting from the railway of the Indus Valley. _Herat_ is the market of
the famous Herati rugs. There is no organized commercial system; a small
amount of British manufactures--mainly stuffs for domestic use--are
imported; rugs and dried fruit are the only exports to Europe and
America. The imports enter mainly by way of Karachi, India; the exports
are carried to Europe, for the greater part, by the Russian railway.
The importance of Afghanistan is due to its position as a buffer state
between Russia and British India. The various strategic points for
years, therefore, have been military strongholds. There is an old
saying: "Whoso would be master of India must first make himself lord of
Kabul." The meaning of this is seen in the history of Khaibar Pass,
which for many years has been a scene of slaughter; indeed, it has been
the chief gateway between occidental and oriental civilizations for
more than twenty centuries. Since the acquisition of India by Great
Britain Afghanistan has been under British protectoracy.
=Baluchistan.=--The general features of Baluchistan resemble those of the
other parts of the Iran plateau. The coast has no harbors in the proper
sense, but the anchorage off _Gwador_ has fair protection from storms
and heavy winds. The few valleys produce enough food-stuffs for the
half-savage population. There is but little organization to the
government save that which is military in character. The state is a
protectorate of Great Britain.
Rug-making is the only industry that connects Baluchistan with the rest
of the world. _Quetta_, the largest town, is a military station
controlling Bolan Pass. Its outlet is the Kandahar branch of the
Sind-Pishin Railway.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What climatic factors prevent these countries from being regions of
great production?
How do climate and soil affect the character of the wool clip?
How do Arabian horses compare with American thorough-bred stock with
respect to usefulness?--how do they compare with the mustang stock?
Why is Khaibar Pass regarded as the key to India?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia (or from McCarthy's History of Our Own Times) read an
account of the British disaster at Kabul.
Study, if possible, one or more rugs of the following kinds, noting the
colors, designs, and warp of each: Bokhara (antique and modern),
Anatolian, Kermanshah, and Baluchistan.
CHAPTER XXXI
BRITISH INDIA AND THE EAST INDIES
These countries are in tropical latitudes and in the main are regions of
great productivity. A few native states that have resisted annexation
and conquest excepted, almost the entire area is divided among Great
Britain, Holland, and France.
[Illustration: INDIA]
=British India.=--The Empire of India comprises an area half as large as
the United States, situated on the southern slope of Asia. It covers the
same latitude as the span between the Venezuelan coast and the Ohio
River; from the Indus to the Siam frontier the distance is about two
thousand miles. It includes also settlements in the Malay peninsula.
Excepting the plateau of the Dekkan, and the slopes of the Himalayan
ranges, most of the surface consists of plains and low, rolling land
covered with a great depth of soil. Through these rich lands flow four
large rivers--the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Irawadi, which afford
a great deal of internal communication. The Himalaya Mountains on the
north and the Hindu Kush on the northwest practically shut off
communication from the northward, so that all communication in this
direction is concentrated at Khaibar and Bolan Passes, the most
important gateways by land approach.
British India is one of the most populous regions of the world; the
average population per square mile is about one hundred and eighty, a
density considerably greater than that of New York State. The entire
population is about three times that of the United States. Nearly all
the food-stuffs grown are required for home consumption; indeed, dry
years are apt to be followed by a shortage of food-stuffs. Years ago
famines followed any considerable deficiency of crops, but since the
completion of the admirable railway systems the necessary food-stuffs
are quickly shipped to the district where the shortage occurs.
The Hindus constitute about three-fourths of the population. Along the
northern border there are many peoples of Afghan and Turkic descent; in
Burma there is a considerable admixture of Mongol blood. An elaborate
system of social castes imposed by the teachings of Brahmanism has made
the introduction of western methods of education and civilization
somewhat difficult to carry out. The educational system of the
dominating Brahmanic caste, although of a very high order, does not fit
the people to cope with the commercialism of western civilization.
Five-sevenths of the population are engaged in agricultural labor. Rice,
wheat, millet, meat, and sugar are the chief food-crops. Of these, rice
and wheat[78] only are exported; the others are required for home
consumption.
The articles grown for export are jute, cotton, opium, oil-yielding
seeds, tea, and opium. No meat is exported, but hides form a large item
of foreign trade.
The jute is used in the manufacture of rugs and grain-sacks. It is
cultivated mainly in the delta-lands of the Ganges-Brahmaputra. A
considerable part of the product is now manufactured in India and in
China; some is also shipped to California, to be made into wheat-sacks;
perhaps the larger part is sent to Dundee, Scotland, where it is woven
into textile fabrics. The choicest product is used to mix with silk
fibre, or is employed in the manufacture of rugs and coverings.
Cotton cultivation is rapidly taking first rank among the industries of
India, for which the conditions of soil, climate, and market are
admirably adapted. India stands second in cotton-growing, and the area
of production is gradually increasing. Most of the crop is exported to
Europe for manufacture, although there is an increasing amount sold to
Japan. Great Britain is the largest purchaser, and the cotton goods
manufactured at Manchester are reshipped in large quantities to India.
Owing to the low wages paid for labor both in the fields and the mills,
cotton manufacture is a rapidly growing industry in India. In many cases
the yarn is manufactured in India and then sent to China to be made into
coarse cloth. Some of the mills are equipped with machinery made in the
United States.
Tea has become one of the most important crops of India. It is grown
mainly in Ceylon and Assam, and is said to have grown wild in the latter
state. The quality of Indian tea is regarded as superior to the Chinese
product, and Indian teas have therefore very largely supplanted those of
China, in British consumption.
Silk cultivation and manufacture have been growing rapidly in the past
few years; a considerable part of the product is "tussar," or wild silk.
The silk rugs of India are not equalled anywhere else in the world. Wool
is a product of the mountain-regions, but is almost wholly used in the
manufacture of rugs and coverings.
The British occupation of India is commercial rather than political.
India furnishes a most valuable market for British manufactures; it
supplies the British people with a large amount of raw material for
manufacture. The general government is administrative only so far as the
construction of railways, irrigating canals, and harbors, and the
organization of financial affairs are concerned.
There are about two hundred and fifty native states included within the
territory of British India. In addition to the native ruler, a British
governor or magistrate carries out the administrative features of the
British Government. For administrative purposes most of the native
states are grouped into eight provinces, or "presidencies."
=Bengal.=--The states of Bengal, mainly in the valley of the Ganges River,
produce most of the rice and wheat. _Calcutta_, the capital of the
empire, is a comparatively young city. The Hugli at this point is
navigable both for ocean and river craft. The situation of the city is
much like that of New York, and it is therefore finely adapted for
commerce. Railways extending from the various food-producing districts
and from other centres of commerce converge at Calcutta. The city is not
only the centre of administration, but the chief focus of commerce and
finance as well.
=Bombay.=--Bombay includes a number of states bordering on the Arabian
Sea. The city of _Bombay_ is built on an island of the same name. Its
situation on the west coast makes it the most convenient port for the
European trade that passes through the Suez Canal. The opening of the
route gave Bombay a tremendous growth, and it is destined to become a
great commercial factor in Indian Ocean trade. It is also a great
manufacturing centre for cotton textiles. _Ahmedabad_, an important
military station, is also an important centre of cotton manufacture and
wheat-trade.
=Sind.=--The native state Sind includes the greater part of the basin of
the Indus. Its importance is military and strategic rather than
commercial. The ability of Great Britain to hold India depends very
largely on British control of the Indus Valley and the passes leading
from it. The Sind-Pishin Railway traverses the Indus Valley from Karachi
to Peshawur. _Haidarabad_, one of the largest cities of India, is the
centre of an agricultural district. _Karachi_, the port near the mouth
of the Indus, next to Khaibar Pass, is the most important strategic
point of India, and one that the Russians for more than a century have
been trying to possess.
=Punjab.=--The states of the Punjab are mainly at the upper part of the
Indus. _Amritsar_ is an important centre for the manufacture of silk
rugs and carpets. A large number of these are sold in the United States
at prices varying from two hundred to six thousand dollars. The designs
for these textiles are often made in New York. _Peshawur_ is important
chiefly as a military station.
=Burma.=--British Burma includes the basin of the Irawadi River. The
uplands are wheat-fields; the lowlands produce rice. _Mandalay_ is a
river-port and commercial centre. _Rangoon_ is the seaport, with a
considerable ship-building industry that results from the teak forests.
Although the Irawadi is navigable for light craft, railways along the
valley have become a necessity; these centre at Rangoon.
The province of Madras is one of the most densely peopled parts of
India. The chief commercial products are cotton and teak-wood. _Madras_,
its commercial centre, has a very heavy foreign trade in hides, spices,
and cotton. The cotton manufactures are extensive. A yarn-dyed cotton
cloth, now imitated both in Europe and the United States, has made the
name famous.
=Kashmir.=--The native state Kashmir, situated high on the slopes of the
Karakorum Mountains, is known chiefly for the "Cashmere" shawls made
there. The shawls are hand-woven and represent the highest style of the
weaver's art. The best require many years each in the making; they
command prices varying from five hundred to five thousand dollars. This
industry centres at _Srinagar_.
=Other British States.=--The Straits Settlements are so called because
they face the Straits of Malacca. They include several colonies, chief
of which are Singapore, Penang, and Malacca. The Straits ports are free
from export and import duties, a regulation designed to encourage the
concentration of Malaysian products there--in other words, to encourage
a transit trade.
The policy has proved a wise one, and the trade at the three
ports--_Singapore_, _Penang_, and _Malacca_--aggregates about six
hundred million dollars yearly. About two-thirds of this sum represents
the business of Singapore. Tin constitutes about half the exports, a
large share going to the United States. Spices, rubber, gutta-percha,
tapioca, and rattan constitute the remaining trade. Rice, cotton cloth,
and opium are the imports.
The Federated Malay States, situated in the Malay peninsula, and the
northern part of Borneo are also British possessions. Their trade and
products are similar to the rest of the Malaysian possessions.
=Dutch East India.=--The Dutch possessions include nearly all the islands
of the Malay Archipelago and the western part of New Guinea. Of these,
Java and Sumatra are the most important. They are divided into
"residencies," and the administering officers exercise control over the
various plantations. In addition, there are numerous private
plantations. The colonial administration is admirable.
Cane-sugar, coffee, rice, indigo, pepper, tobacco, and tea are the chief
products. The sugar industry has been somewhat crippled by the
beet-sugar product of Europe. Java and Sumatra coffees are in demand all
over Europe and the United States. Sumatra wrappers for cigars find also
a ready market wherever cigars are manufactured. The cultivation of
cinchona, or Peruvian bark, has proved successful, and this substance is
becoming an important export. The islands of Banka and Billiton (with
Riouw) yield a very large part of the world's supply of tin, much of
which goes finally to the United States. The mother-country profits by
the trade of these islands in two ways: the Dutch merchants are
practically middlemen who create and manage the commerce; the Dutch
Government receives an import tax of six per cent., and a small export
tax on nearly all articles except sugar. _Batavia_ is the focal point of
the commerce.
=Siam.=--This kingdom is chiefly important as a buffer state between
French and British India, and little by little has been pared by these
nations until practically nothing but the basin of the Menam River
remains. The administration of the state is progressive, and much of the
resources have been developed in the last few years.
Rice and teak are the leading products. The rice is cultivated by
native laborers--much of it by enforced labor--and is sold to Hongkong,
British India, and the more northerly states. It is collected by Chinese
middlemen, and by them sold to British and German exporters. The
teak-wood business is managed by British firms. The logs are cut by
natives, hauled to the Menam River, and floated to Bangkok; there they
are squared and sent to European markets. Pepper and preserved fish are
also exported. The Menam River is the chief trade-route, and _Bangkok_,
at its mouth, is the focal point of trade.
=French India.=--The French control the region south of China, called
French Indo-China, together with various areas in the peninsula of
Hindustan; of these Pondicheri and Karical are the most important.
Indo-China includes the basin of Mekong River, and rice is the staple
product. The most productive rice-fields are the delta-lands of the
Mekong, formerly known as Cochin-China.
From these lands more than half a million tons of rice are exported, the
product being sold mainly at Hongkong and Singapore. Pepper is also an
export of considerable value. France, China, and the Philippine Islands
are the final destination of the rice export. The imports are mainly
textiles, machinery, and coal-oil from the United States. The machinery
pertains chiefly to the manufactures of cotton and silk textiles. On
account of cheaply mined coal, there is a considerable growth of this
industry. _Saigon_ is the business centre and port at which the Chinese
middlemen meet the European merchants and forwarders.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What have been the chief effects of the British occupation of these
countries, so far as the natives are concerned?
What is the position of Khaibar Pass with respect to the commerce of
India?
How has the building of the Sind-Pishin Railway strengthened British
occupation of India?
Singapore and Batavia are the two great focal points of trade in the
East India Islands. At the former all trade is absolutely free; at the
latter there is both an import and an export tax. What are the
advantages of each policy?
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of the United States with
these countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia, preferably the Encyclopaedia Britannica, read the
following topics:
Caste
Lord Clive
Rattan
Pepper
CHAPTER XXXII
CHINA AND JAPAN
The relative position of China, Russia, and Japan is not unlike that of
continental Europe and Great Britain, and the struggle for supremacy in
the Japan and Yellow Seas is about the same as that which in times past
took place in the North Sea. In the latter case France and Holland were
the disturbing powers; in the former, it is Russia.
=The Chinese Empire.=--A comparison of the Chinese Empire with the United
States shows that the two countries have about the same position and
extent of latitude. There is also about the same proportion of
highlands, arid lands, and fertile lowlands. The similarity of the two
countries in geographic conditions is very marked.
The fertile lowland in the east and southeast is one of the most
productive regions in the world, and forms the chief resource of the
country; on account of its productivity it is densely peopled. The arid
and mountain lands are peopled mainly by cattle-herders and nomadic
tribes.
China is essentially an agricultural country, and the farms are held in
much the same way as in the United States, but the holdings are so small
that agricultural machinery is not required for their cultivation.
Wheat, millet, and pease are grown throughout the lowlands wherever they
can be cultivated. The cultivation of rice is confined mainly to the
coast lowlands. The amount of food-stuffs produced, however, is scarcely
sufficient for home consumption; indeed, a considerable amount is
imported, and the imports year by year are increasing. This is due not
so much to the density of population as to want of means of
transportation of the soil products from inland regions. It is often
much cheaper to import food-stuffs from abroad than to transport them,
even from an adjoining province.
Tea is extensively cultivated, and China exports nearly one-half of the
world's product; the total amount produced is considerably more than
half. Most of this goes to Great Britain and Canada. Raw silk is an
important product, and the mulberry-tree is extensively grown. Cotton is
one of the most general crops in the southern part of the empire,
especially along the lower Yangtze. It is a garden-crop, however, and
nearly all of it is consumed.
The mineral wealth is very great, and with proper management will make
China one of the most productive and powerful countries in the world.
Coal is found in every one of the provinces, and the city of Peking is
supplied with an excellent quality of anthracite from the Fang-shan
mines, only a few miles distant. It is thought that the coal-fields are
the most extensive in the world. Iron ore of excellent quality is
abundant, and in several localities, notably in the province of Shansi,
the two are near each other.
Foreign capitalists are seeking to develop these resources in several
localities. The Germans have obtained mining concessions in Shantung
peninsula, and these involve the iron ore and coal occurring there. The
Peking syndicate, a London company, has also obtained a coal-mining
concession in Shansi.
[Illustration: EASTERN CHINA]
For the greater part the manufactures are home industries.[79] Until
recently most of the cotton cloth was made by means of cottage looms,
and the beautiful silk brocades which are not surpassed anywhere else in
the world are still made in this manner. Porcelain-making is one of the
oldest industries, and to this day the wares sold in Europe and America
are known as "china." Straw carpet, or matting, and fans for export are
also important exports.
The mill system of manufacture is rapidly gaining ground, however, and
foreign companies find it economical to carry the yarn made in India
from American cotton into China to be made into cloth. In the vicinity
of Shanghai alone there are nearly three hundred thousand spindles. This
phase of the industry is due largely to the factor of cheap labor; the
Chinese skilled laborer is intelligent; he does not object to a
sixteen-hour working-day at wages varying from five to twenty cents.
There is no great localization of industrial centres, as in the United
States and Europe. Each centre of population is practically
self-supporting and independent from an economic stand-point. The
introduction of western methods, however, is gradually changing this
feature.
All industries of a general character are hampered for want of good
means of transportation. The empire is traversed by a network of unpaved
roads; but although these are always in a wretched condition, an
enormous traffic is carried over them by means of wheel-barrows,
pack-animals, and by equally primitive methods.
The numerous rivers form an important means of communication. The
Yangtze is now available to commerce a distance of 2,000 miles, and the
opening of the Si Kiang (West River) adds a large area that is
commercially tributary to Canton and Hongkong. The most important
water-way is the Grand Canal, extending from Hang Chow to Tientsin. This
canal is by no means a good one as compared with American and European
standards. It was built not so much for the necessities of traffic, as
to avoid the numerous pirate vessels that infest the coasts. Junks,
row-boats, house-boats, and foreign steam craft are all employed for
traffic. The internal water-ways aggregate about fifteen thousand miles
in length.
[Illustration: A TEA-PLANTATION--PICKING THE LEAVES]
[Illustration: PREPARING THE LEAVES FOR ROASTING]
[Illustration: TEA-BALES FOR EXPORT THROUGH RUSSIA]
Of railways there were less than three hundred and fifty miles at the
close of the century, the most important being the line from Tientsin to
Peking. About five thousand miles are projected and under construction
by American and European companies. A branch of the Transsiberian
railway is under construction to Port Arthur. Telegraph and telephone
lines have become popular and have been extended to the interior a
considerable distance. There are upward of twenty thousand miles of wire
communication, the most important, in many respects, being a direct
overland line between Peking and European cities. Inasmuch as there are
no letters in the Chinese language, the difficulties in using the Morse
code of telegraphy are very great. In some cases the messages are
translated into a foreign language before they are transmitted; in
others, a thousand or more words in colloquial and commercial use are
numbered, and the number is telegraphed instead of the word.
Most of the business between the natives and foreigners is carried on by
means of middlemen, or "compradors," and these include both the
commission merchants and the native bankers. They are intelligent,
thrifty, and trustworthy. They are the most capable merchants in Asia,
and have few if any superiors among the merchants of western nations. A
very large part of the retail trade of the Philippine Islands is carried
on by Chinese merchants.
The Chinese Empire consists of China and the five dependencies, as shown
in the following table:
---------------------+-------------+-------------
| | CAPITAL OR
STATE | POPULATION | CHIEF TOWN
---------------------+-------------+-------------
China proper | 380,000,000 | Peking
Manchuria | 7,500,000 | Kirin
Tibet | 6,000,000 | Lassa
Mongolia | 2,000,000 | Urga
Jungaria | 600,000 | Kur-kara-usu
Eastern Turkestan | 600,000 | Yarkand
---------------------+-------------+--------------
The five dependencies are mainly arid, unproductive, and sparsely
peopled. Their chief importance consists in the fact that they are
"buffer states" between China proper and European states. They produce
little except meat, wool, and live-stock.
China proper is divided into provinces, each governed by a viceroy
appointed by the throne. All business with foreign powers is transacted
through a Foreign Office, the Wai-wu-pu (formerly the Tsung-li-Yamen).
The government business is managed by a Grand Council whose members are
advisers to the throne. The government is controlled mainly by Manchu
officials.
[Illustration: HONGKONG]
Until within a few years China nominally allowed no foreign traders
within her borders; recently, however, about forty cities, commonly
known as "treaty ports," have been opened to the trade of foreign
countries. Goods going inland any distance are required to pay a "liken"
or internal tariff at the border of each province.
Several concessions of territory within recent years have been forced
from China by foreign powers: thus, Great Britain has Hongkong Island
(with the peninsula of Kaulung) and Weihaiwei; Germany has Kiaochou on
the bay of the same name; France has Kwang chau wan harbor. These
concessions carry with them the control of the port and surrounding
territory. The German concession includes the right to mine coal and
iron, and to build railways within a territory of much larger extent. At
the close of the war between Russia and Japan, the latter acquired Port
Arthur, the gateway to Manchuria.
Whatever may be the political significance of the opening of the treaty
ports and the granting of the various concessions, the effect has been
to increase the trade of the United States with China about twenty-fold.
The imports from the United States consist mainly of cotton and cotton
cloth, coal-oil, and flour. The chief exports to all countries are tea,
silk goods, and porcelain ware. Most of those sent to the United States
are landed at Seattle or San Francisco. Great Britain, through the port
of Hongkong, has a larger trade than any other nation. Japan and the
United States have most of the remaining trade.
_Peking_, the capital, is politically, but not commercially, important.
The part occupied by the foreign legations is modern and well kept.
_Tientsin_, the port of Peking, is a larger city, with much more
business. _Canton_, the largest city of the empire, and _Hongkong_, are
the commercial centres of nearly all the British trade. Most of the
American and Japanese trade centres at _Shanghai_. _Niuchwang_, on the
Manchurian frontier, is important mainly as a strategic point. _Macao_,
a Portuguese possession, is the open door of Portugal into China.
The inland divisions of the Chinese Empire have but little commercial
importance. Musk, wool, and skins are obtained from Tibet, into whose
capital, _Lassa_, scarcely half-a-dozen Europeans have penetrated. The
closed condition is due to the opposition of the Lamas, an order of
Buddhist priests. Mongolia is a grazing region that supplies the Chinese
border country with goats, sheep, and horses. It also supplies the
camels required for the caravan tea-trade to the Russian frontiers.
Eastern Turkestan is mainly a desert. _Kashgar_, the metropolis of the
fertile portion, is the exchange market for Chinese and Russian
products. Most of the mineral known as jade is obtained there. Manchuria
is a grazing and wheat-growing country, exporting food stuffs and
ginseng into China. _Harbin_, a Russian trading post, is connected with
Peking and with European cities by railway.
[Illustration: JAPAN AND KOREA]
=Korea=, formerly a vassal of China, became an independent state after the
war between China and Japan, this step being forced by Russia. The
country is a natural market for Japanese manufactures, and in turn
supplies Japan with a considerable amount of food-stuffs. _Chemulpo_ is
the chief centre of its commerce.
=Japan.=--Japan is an insular empire, the commercial part of which has
about the same latitude as the Atlantic coast of the United States; the
empire extends from Formosa to Kamchatka. It is sometimes called the
"Great Britain of the East," and the people are also called the "Yankees
of the East." Structurally, the chain of islands consists of ranges of
volcanic mountains. The abundant rains, however, have made many fertile
river-valleys, and have fringed most of the islands with coast-plains.
Since the opening of Japan to foreigners the Japanese have so thoroughly
adapted themselves to western commercial methods that they have become
the dominating power in eastern Asia. Their influence has been greatly
strengthened by a treaty for defensive purposes with Great Britain. A
most excellent army and a modern navy make the alliance a strong one.
The Japanese are better adapted to mould the commercial policy of China
than any other people.
With a population of more than half that of the United States, occupying
an area not larger than the State of California, every square foot of
available land must be cultivated. Yet the Japanese not only grow most
of the food-stuffs they consume, but are able to export rice. There is
scant facility for growing beef cattle, but fish very largely takes the
place of beef. The cattle grown are used as draught-animals in farm
labor. Ordinary dairy products are but little used.
Rice, tea, and silk are the staple crops. Rice is grown on the coast
lowlands, the west or rainy side[80] producing the larger crop. The
Japanese crop is so superior that the larger part is exported, while an
inferior Chinese grain is imported for home consumption. The quality of
the Japanese rice is due to skilful cultivation.
[Illustration: NATIVE PLOUGHING RICE-FIELDS]
[Illustration: IRRIGATING A RICE-FIELD]
[Illustration: RICE-FIELDS]
Tea has become the staple crop, and is cultivated from Formosa to the
forty-fifth parallel. Tea-farms occupy nearly every acre of the
cultivable hill-side areas in some of the islands, and the soil is
enriched with a fertilizer made from fish and fish refuse, dried and
broken. Most of the tea product is made into green tea, and on account
of its quality it commands a high price. Formosa tea is considered the
best in the market.
Silk culture is confined almost wholly to the island of Hondo. The raw
silk is of superior quality, and the exported material is used mainly in
the manufacture of ribbons and brocades. A limited amount of cotton is
grown, but the staple is short, and its cultivation is not profitable
except in a few localities.
Among the forestry there is comparatively little timber suitable for
building purposes, and a considerable amount of timber is purchased from
the mills of Puget Sound. Bamboo is largely employed for buildings.
Camphor is the product of a tree (_Camphora officinarum_) allied to the
cinnamon and the sassafras. It is cultivated in the island of Kiushiu.
The best gum, however, is now obtained from Formosa, and this island now
controls the world's supply. The camphor product is a government
monopoly leased to a British company.
The lacquer-tree (_Rhus vernicifera_) grows mainly in the island of
Hondo. The sap, after preparation, forms the most durable varnish known.
Black lacquer is obtained by treating the sap with nutgalls. Lacquered
wooden-ware is sold all over Europe and the United States. The lacquered
surface is exceedingly hard and water-proof; it is not affected by
climate.
Gold, porcelain clay, silver, copper, and petroleum are mined. The gold
and silver are used both for coinage and in the arts; the clay has made
Japanese porcelains famous. The copper comes from the most productive
mines of Asia; a considerable amount is exported, but much is used in
the manufacture of Japanese bronze goods. Coal is mined, and this has
given a great impetus to manufacture; iron ore is deficient, and steel
must be imported. The quantity of petroleum is increasing yearly, and is
becoming an important factor in the world's product.
Manufacturing industries are giving shape to the industrial future of
the country. The cotton-mills alone employ seventy thousand people and
keep more than one million spindles busy. More than one million
operatives are engaged in textile manufactures. Much of the cloth, both
cotton and silk, is still woven on cottage looms. The cotton cloth is
sold mainly in China and Korea; the surplus silk textiles find a ready
market in the United States. The best straw matting used as a
floor-covering is now made in Japan and constitutes a very important
export.
Three thousand miles of railway aid the internal industries of the
country; several steamship lines to Hongkong and Shanghai, and one or
more each to Vladivostok, Bombay, San Francisco, Seattle, Honolulu,
Australia, and Vancouver (B.C.) carry the tea, raw silk, and
manufactured products to Europe and America. Much, if not most, of the
steamship interests are owned by the Japanese, and the lines are
encouraged by government subsidies. France and the United States buy
most of the raw silk. The latter country purchases most of the tea,
sending coal-oil, cotton, leather, and lumber in return. Great Britain
and Germany sell to the Japanese a large part of the textiles and the
machinery they use. The exports to the United States are consigned
mainly to San Francisco, New York and Seattle.
_Tokio_ is the capital; _Yokohama_ is the chief port for American
traffic, and the market for most of the foreign trade. Most of the trade
between China and Japan centres at _Nagasaki_, which is the Japanese
naval station. _Osaka_ and _Kioto_ are the chief centres of cotton and
textile manufactures.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How has the policy of seclusion affected the commercial development of
China?
What has been its effect on the social life of the people?
How did the cultivation of opium in India become a factor in the opening
of China to foreign trade?
What is meant by "treaty ports"? Make a list of those shown on the map
of eastern China.
Name two Chinese statesmen who have been factors in the relations
between China and the United States.
Compare the position of Japan with that of the British Isles with
reference to commerce.
What advantages has Japan with reference to latitude?--what
disadvantages with reference to cultivable lands?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the leading exports and imports and
the volume of trade of these states.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the leading articles of trade
between these states and the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia read the following topics: The opium war, Commodore
Perry's expedition.
CHAPTER XXXIII
AFRICA
Africa is in a state of commercial transition. During the last quarter
of the nineteenth century the partition of its area among European
nations left but few of the names that formerly were familiar. At the
beginning of the twentieth century the British, French, and Germans
controlled the greater part of the continent, although the Portuguese,
Belgians, Italians, and Spanish have various possessions.
The partition of Africa was designed for the expansion of European
markets. The population of Africa is about one hundred and seventy
million, and the continent is practically without manufacturing
enterprises. The people, therefore, must be supplied with clothing and
other commodities. In 1900 the total trade of Africa with the rest of
the world was about one and one-third billion dollars, of which the
United States had a little more than two per cent., mainly cotton cloth
and coal-oil.
=Egypt.=--The Egypt of the maps is a region of indefinite extent so far as
its western and southern boundaries are concerned; the Egypt of history
is the flood plain of the Nile. From the Mediterranean Sea to Cairo the
cultivable area is not far from one hundred miles in width; from Cairo
to Khartum it varies from three to seven or eight miles wide.
[Illustration: AFRICA]
The food-producing power of Egypt depends on the Nile. In lower Egypt a
considerable area is made productive at the ordinary stage of water by
means of irrigating canals, but in upper Egypt the crops must depend
upon the annual flood of the river, which occurs from June until
September. During this period the river varies from twenty-five to forty
feet above the low-water mark. In the irrigated regions three crops a
year may be produced; in the flooded lands only one is grown.
In order to add to the cultivable area two great engineering works have
been constructed. A barrage and lock control the flow of water at
Assiut; a huge dam at Assuan impounds the surplus of the flood season.
These structures, it is thought, will increase the productive power of
the country about one-fourth. Rice, maize (an Egyptian variety), sugar,
wheat, and beans are the staple crops.
Rice is the food of the native people, but the crop is insufficient, and
the deficit must be imported. The wheat, maize, and beans are grown for
export to Europe, the last named being extensively used for
horse-fodder. The sugar-growing industry is protected by the heavy yield
and the cheap fellahin labor. The raw sugar is sent to the refineries
along the Mediterranean. Onions are exported to the United States.
The cotton-crop is an important factor, and in spite of its own crop the
United States is a heavy purchaser of the long-staple Egyptian cotton,
which is used in the manufacture of thread and hosiery. The cultivation
of tobacco is forbidden by law, but Egyptian cigarettes are an item of
considerable importance. They are made of imported Turkish tobacco by
foreign workmen. There is a heavy export duty on native tobacco
exported, and the ban on the inferior native-grown article is intended
to prevent its admixture with the high-grade product from Turkey, and
thereby to keep up the standard of the cigarettes.
Egypt is nominally a vassal of Turkey, paying to the Sultan a yearly
tribute of $3,600,000. Great Britain's is the real controlling hand,
because the Suez Canal is Great Britain's gateway to India. By a
purchase of the stock held by a former Khedive, Great Britain secured
financial control of the canal, a necessary step from the fact that more
than half the trade carried through the canal is British commerce.
The country is deficient in the resources that make most nations
powerful. There is neither coal, iron, nor timber available, and these
must be imported. Great Britain supplies the first, and Norway the last.
Some traffic is carried on the Nile, but railways have been built
through the crop-lands. One of these threads the Nile Valley and will
become a part of the "Cape to Cairo" route.
_Alexandria_ is the port at which most of the Egyptian commerce lands.
_Cairo_, the largest city of Africa, derives its importance from its
position at the head of the Nile delta. It is a favorite winter-resort.
_Port Said_ and _Suez_ are the terminal ports of the Suez Canal; their
commerce is mainly the transit trade of the canal.
=Other Independent States.=--Most of the independent states of Africa are
in a condition of barbarism and have but little importance to the rest
of the world. Abyssinia has the natural advantages of gold, iron,
pasture-lands, and forestry, and the possibilities of cotton
cultivation. Valuable mining concessions have been granted to foreign
companies. Ivory, coffee, and gold are shipped to India in exchange for
textiles. A railway from the coast is under construction, but all the
traffic is carried by mule-trains, mainly to _Harrar_.
Morocco has an admirable strategic position at the entrance of the
Strait of Gibraltar, and is most likely, in time, to become a possession
of Spain. There are exported, mainly to Great Britain, beans, almonds,
goat-skins, and wool. The goat-skins are sumac-tanned and are still
used in making the best book-binding leather. Only a small part of the
so-called Morocco leather of commerce is genuine. There are no railways;
caravan routes from the Sahara cross the country. _Tangier_ and one or
two other ports are open to foreign trade. Coal-oil is the only import
from the United States.
The state of Liberia was established for the benefit of freed slaves
from the United States. The products are those of tropical Africa,
including caoutchouc. Coffee cultivation is extensively carried on, and
coffee is the leading export. _Monrovia_ is the chief centre of trade.
=North African Possessions.=--French influence is paramount in northern
Africa. Algeria and Tunis are both French colonies, and the caravan
trade of the Sahara is generally tributary to French trade. The region
known as the Tell, a strip between the coast and the Atlas Mountains, is
the chief agricultural region, and the products are similar to those on
the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. The ordinary grains are grown
for home consumption, but the macaroni wheat crop is manufactured into
macaroni paste for export. The fruit-crop, especially the olive, date,
and grape, and their products, is exported.
Esparto grass, for making paper, was formerly an important export, but
the increasing use of wood-pulp for this purpose has had the effect of
increasing the grazing area, and therefore the wool-crop. Date-palms
grow in great profusion, and the excess forms an important export, going
to nearly every part of Europe and the United States. A large part of
the crop, however, is consumed by the Arabs. Sumac-tanned goat-skins,
for book-binding leather, are also exported.
The colonies must import coal. Manufactures are therefore restricted to
the preparation of the fruit and food products. Sponges are an
important product. Railways provide the necessary transportation for the
crops. _Algiers_, the metropolis, is a finely built city and a favorite
winter-resort. _Oran_ is the shipping-port for grain and esparto grass.
_Biskra_ is the market for dates.
The caravan trade of northern Africa is considerable, and the greater
part converges at _Tripoli_, to which not far from ten thousand
camel-loads of merchandise are brought annually. This trade is carried
on mainly by the Arabs, who cover the region from _Timbuctu_ to Lake
Chad. They bring ivory, ostrich feathers, gold, goat-skins, and slaves.
In return they carry cloth, fire-arms, ammunition, and various
commodities to the negro villages of the Sudan. The district is a
possession of Turkey. Its chief exports are esparto grass, sponges, and
dye-stuffs.
=Central Africa.=--Central Africa is divided among the chief European
powers. Great Britain and Germany divide the lake-region and the
Zanzibar coast. On the Guinea coast the French are an additional factor.
The trade of these regions consists of an exchange of tropical
products--palm-oil, rubber, ebony, camwood, ivory, and hides--for cloth,
tobacco, fire-arms, beads and trinkets, and preserved foods. Most of
this trade is carried on by companies holding royal charters.
The Kongo State is a semi-official corporation of this character, the
King of the Belgians being its chief executive officer. The active
administration is carried on by agents of the company. The chief of each
tribe or village is required, under penalty, to furnish a certain quota
of crude rubber and other products; and between the agent and the Arab
slave-driver the natives have little to choose.
The Kongo River is the outlet of the state, and to facilitate the
transportation of the products, railways have been built, or are under
construction, around the rapids. This region is about the only
remaining source of elephant ivory, but most of the supply consists of
the tusks of animals long since dead. A fleet of steamboats carries the
commercial products to the coast. _Stanley Pool_, at the head of the
rapids, is the chief depot for collection. Ocean steamships ascend the
river to a point above _Boma_, the place of administration.
Nigeria and Ashanti are British possessions on the Guinea coast,[81]
having a trading company organization. Sierra Leone is an organized
colony, a product of which is the kola-nut. British East Africa is
important for strategic purposes, inasmuch as it includes the upper Nile
basin, a territory sometimes known as the Egyptian Sudan. _Akra_ is the
trading port of Nigeria, and _Khartum_ of the upper Nile Valley.
_Zanzibar_ is the metropolis of the east coast.
The French possessions include a large territory at the mouth of the
Kongo, the western part of the Sahara, and the islands of Madagascar and
Reunion. In German East Africa the commercial development has been
substantial, and large plantations for the cultivation of tropical
products are in operation. A railway from the coast to the lake-district
is under construction. _Mombasa_ is its commercial outlet.
The Italians have nominal possession of a territory facing the Strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb, and also of the peninsula of Guardafui. Their actual
possession, however, is restricted to the island and trading-post of
_Massawa_. Their attempts to conquer Abyssinia have been unsuccessful.
=Cape of Good Hope and the South African Colonies.=--Up to the time of the
Suez Canal, Cape of Good Hope was a sort of half-way house between
British ports and India, and this position made it commercially
important. Even at the present time more than fifteen hundred vessels,
many of them in the Indian Ocean trade, call at the chief port of the
colony every year.
Agriculture is the chief industry of these colonies, though not the one
yielding the greatest returns. Enough wheat, maize (or "mealies"), and
fruit are grown for home consumption, but the climate is too arid for
any excess of bread-stuffs. The aridity is a resource, however, in the
matter of wool, the superior quality of which is due largely to the
deficient rainfall. As a matter of fact the whole country is a great
grazing veldt; wool, a very fine quality of Angora mohair, hides, and
cattle products are exports.
From December to March the fruits ripen, and these, especially the
grapes, are carried in cold-storage vessels to British and other
European ports. The wine is likewise of excellent quality and is
becoming an export of great value. Both the fruit and the wine are
similar to those of Australia and California.
The business of ostrich farming is in the hands of several large
companies, and, next to the wool-crop, ostrich plumes are the leading
product. There are about a quarter of a million birds, and each produces
about one pound of feathers. The ordinary quality of plumes varies from
five to ten dollars a pound; very choice plumes command as much as two
hundred dollars a pound. London is the chief market for them, but most
of them sooner or later find their way to the milliners of the great
cities.
The diamond-mines of Griqualand West furnish practically the whole of
the world's supply. The mines are operated on a most thorough business
system, and the output of rough stones is carefully regulated to meet
the demand. All wholesale dealers know the output from year to year, and
no more stones are put upon the market than the number required to meet
the demand. All the Kimberley mines are now consolidated under one
company. The yearly output does not vary much from twenty million
dollars' worth of stones. The stones are marketed from Kimberley, but
London dealers buy most of them.
The mines that for several years produced more gold than any others in
existence are in the Transvaal.[82] Other undeveloped mines in the
territory of Rhodesia are known to be extremely rich in precious metals;
indeed, there is much evidence that the famous mines of Ophir were in
this region. Copper ore is an important export.
The industries of Natal colony do not differ materially from those of
Cape of Good Hope. The rainfall is sufficient for the growing of
sugar-cane, and sugar is an important export to the mother-country. The
colony has productive coal-mines, and these are destined to become an
important resource.
The home government has encouraged railway building, and a trunk line
through Rhodesia affords an outlet to the ports of the south coast. It
is the policy of the mother-country to extend this road along the
lake-region and the Nile Valley (known as the "Great Rift") to the
Mediterranean Sea. This plan when carried out will give Great Britain a
practical control of the trade of eastern Africa. The imports are mainly
textiles, machinery, and steel wares.
_Cape Town_ is the most important centre of trade in South Africa. A
considerable trade, however, is carried on at _Port Elizabeth_ and at
_Durban_, the port of Natal. _Kimberley_ is the seat of the
diamond-mining interests, and _Johannesberg_ of the gold-mines.
Germany and Portugal divide the southwest coast. _Walfisch Bay_ is the
outlet of the former. Portuguese East Africa is an outlet for the trade
of the Transvaal region, with which it is connected by rail. The port
_Lourenco Marquez_ has a fine harbor.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Has the partition of Africa been an advantage or a disadvantage to the
native races of the continent?
What advantages will accrue to Great Britain from the Cape to Cairo
railway?
Compare the basin of the Kongo with that of the Amazon with respect to
climate, products, and civilization.
From Commercial Africa prepare a list of the exports and imports between
the United States and the various African countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Statesman's Year-Book.
Commercial Africa--pp. 3679 and following.
From a cyclopaedia read the following topics: Ivory, Suez Canal,
Gibraltar, Livingstone, Diamonds, Canary Islands.
CHAPTER XXXIV
OCEANIA
Oceania, the island division of the world, includes Australasia and the
great groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Some of the larger islands
are regions of great productivity; others are important as
coaling-stations; still others have positions of great strategic value.
When it is considered that more than half the people in the world live
on the slopes of the Pacific Ocean, and that they depend on the
metal-working and manufacturing people of the Atlantic slopes for
clothing and commodities, it is apparent that the commerce of the
Pacific Ocean must reach enormous proportions.
For this reason the various island groups of Oceania have been acquired
by Europeans, and from the moment of their occupation their commercial
development began. The great majority of these groups are within the
limits of the sago-palm, bread-fruit, cocoanut, and banana, and these
yield not only the food-stuffs of the native people, but the export
products as well. Copra, or dried cocoanut meat, is the general export.
It is marketed in Marseille, London, and San Francisco. Sago is prepared
from the pith of a species of palm. Considerable quantities are also
exported, and it is used as a table delicacy. The banana is the
food-stuff upon which many millions of people must depend. In spite of
their small aggregate area, the food-producing power of these islands is
very great.[83]
On account of its central position, Honolulu, the capital and chief
port of Hawaii, is the most important mid-ocean station of the Pacific.
It is almost in the direct line of traffic between the Pacific ports of
the United States and Canada on the one hand, and those of Australia,
Japan and China on the other. It is also in the route of vessels that
may hereafter use the American isthmian canal in going between European
and Asian ports.
In the cultivation of export products native Malay labor is almost
always employed, inasmuch as Europeans cannot bear out-of-door labor in
the tropics. The natives are generally known as "Kanakas," and there is
not a little illicit traffic in their labor. Chinese and Japanese
coolies are also employed as laborers.
=The Commonwealth of Australia.=--The commonwealth of Australia consists
of the various states of Australia together with Tasmania. Their
position corresponds very closely to that of Mexico and Central America,
and the climate and products are not unlike. A considerable part of
Australia is a desert, and a large area is too arid for the production
of bread-stuffs; the eastern coast, however, receives abundant rains.
Australia produces nearly one-third of the wool-clip of the world. On
account of the climate, the quality of the wool, much of it merino, is
excellent. More than half the clip comes from New South Wales.
Two-thirds of the wool goes to Great Britain to be manufactured; nearly
all the rest is purchased by France, Germany, and Belgium. Less than two
per cent. is sold to the United States.
Since the introduction of cold-storage plants in steamships, Australia
has become a heavy exporter of meat. Areas long unproductive are now
cattle-ranges; mutton constitutes the heaviest shipment. Inasmuch as the
transportation is almost wholly by water, the cost is very light, and
the mutton can be sold to London dealers at less than four cents per
pound.
[Illustration: THE COMMERCE OF THE PACIFIC]
[Illustration: AUSTRALIA]
Wheat is grown mainly for home consumption. Grapes for wine and for
raisins are good-paying crops in Victoria and New South Wales. Both
products find a ready market in Great Britain. Australian claret is a
strong competitor of California claret for public favor, and the two are
similar in character. Cane-sugar is grown in the moist regions of
Queensland; it is the chief supply of the commonwealth and the
neighboring islands. The forests produce an abundance of hard woods, but
practically no building-timber. Jarrah wood paving-blocks are an
important export. British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon supply much
of the building-timber.
Gold has been the chief mineral product since the settlement of the
country. The mints convert the metal into coin. As a rule the value of
the exports exceeds that of the imports, and the excess swells the
amount of metal exported. The most productive mines are in the district
of Ballarat. Coal is abundant on the east coast, and a considerable part
is sold to California, and more to Asian ports. Tin is extensively mined
in Tasmania.
More than fifteen thousand miles of railway have been built to carry the
traffic of the country. Most of them were built by private corporations,
but on account of financial difficulties and poor service they were
acquired by the government. The policy proved a wise one.
Great Britain encourages the trade of her colonies, and gets about
three-fourths of the traffic of the commonwealth, the imports being
manufactured goods. Of the foreign trade the United States has about
half, nearly all of which is landed at San Francisco and Puget
Sound. Wool, cattle products, and coal are exported to the United
States, and the latter sends to Australia structural steel--mainly
rails--printing-paper, and coal-oil.
_Melbourne_ is the largest city. _Sydney_ is the port at which most of
the ocean trade is landed. _Brisbane_, mainly a coal and a wool market,
is connected with British Columbia by an ocean cable. Steamships by way
of the Suez Canal generally call at _Perth_ and _Adelaide_. _Hobart_ and
_Launcestown_ are the markets of Tasmania.
=New Zealand.=--This colony is one of the most prosperous and best
administered states in existence. The cultivable lands produce enough
wheat for home use, and an excess for export. Cattle and sheep are the
chief resource, however, and pretty nearly everything--meat, hides,
wool, horn, and bones--is exported. Dairy products are not forgotten,
and under the management of an association, these are of the best
quality.
New Zealand flax (_Phormium tenax_), a kind of marsh hemp, yields a
fibre used in making cordage. The kauri pine furnishes the chief supply
of lumber. A fossil kauri gum is collected for export; it makes a
varnish almost equal to Japanese lacquer. Gold is mined, and there being
no mint, all the bullion is exported. The only manufactures are those
which are connected with the meat export and the dairy industry. The
exports noted more than pay for the manufactured goods. Most of the
trade is carried on with Great Britain. _Wellington_, the capital, and
_Auckland_ are the centres of trade.
=New Guinea.=--This island, one of the largest in the world, is somewhat
larger than the State of Texas, or about one-third larger than Germany
or France. The gold-mines first led to the exploration and settlement of
the island, but it was soon apparent that the agricultural resources
were even more valuable, and it was divided among the British, Germans,
and Dutch.
The western part of the island is distinctly Asian in character; the
eastern and southern parts resemble Australia. Coffee, rice, and tobacco
plantations have been established in the former; grazing is the chief
industry in the latter. Ebony and bamboo are among the forest products.
=British Possessions.=--The Fiji Islands are among the most important
British possessions. They number about eighty habitable and twice as
many small islands. Sugar is the chief export product, and it goes
mainly to Australia and New Zealand. Cocoanuts are also a large item of
export trade. _Suva_ is the chief trading-port.
The Tonga Islands are nominally independent, but are practically a
British protectorate. Among other British possessions are Cook, Gilbert,
and Ellice archipelagoes, and Pitcairn Island.
=German Possessions.=--The Samoa Islands are perhaps the most important
German possession, and German planters have made them highly productive.
They were formerly held under a community-of-interest plan by Great
Britain, Germany, and the United States. A joint commission awarded the
greater part of the territory to Germany. In addition to the ordinary
products, pineapples and limes are exported. Most of the trade is
carried on by way of Australia. _Apia_ is the trading-port.
Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon, Marshall, and Caroline groups
have also been acquired by Germany. The last named was purchased from
Spain at the close of the Spanish-American War.
=French Possessions.=--New Caledonia, together with Loyalty Islands,
Fortuna, and the New Hebrides group, have great wealth in the matter of
resources. New Caledonia, a penal colony, has productive mines of chrome
iron ore and copper. It is the source of a considerable supply of nickel
and cobalt. A railway to the coast has been built for the carriage of
these products.
Tahiti is the principal island of the Society group, and under the
missions long established there, the natives have become civilized. In
addition to the usual trade, sugar and mother-of-pearl are important
exports.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How will the commerce of the Pacific be changed by the construction of
an isthmian canal?
What has been the effect of the Australian wool-clip on the cloth-making
industry of England and Germany?
How will the acquisition of Hawaii and the Philippine Islands affect the
commerce of the United States?
From Commercial Australia find the trade of the United States with the
Commonwealth.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia read the history of Australia as a convict colony.
Commercial Australia.
APPENDIX
TRADE OF THE PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
Sells Buys
Country Imports Exports to U.S. from U.S.
Argentina $110,000,000 $161,850,000 $10,000,000 $11,000,000
Australia 201,000,000 224,000,000 5,263,000 28,164,000
Austria-
Hungary 335,486,000 383,748,000 10,000,000 6,844,000
Belgium 428,651,000 352,850,000 14,920,000 51,444,000
Bolivia 5,845,000 15,618,000 22 120,000
Brazil 97,330,000 165,461,000 64,914,000 11,517,000
Canada 181,238,000 177,443,000 42,482,000 105,790,000
Chile 46,916,000 61,201,000 7,474,000 4,507,000
China 203,421,000 124,528,000 18,126,000 18,176,000
Colombia 10,695,000 18,487,000 4,811,000 2,924,000
Cuba 66,584,000 63,278,000 46,664,000 27,007,000
Denmark 111,542,000 75,549,000 797,000 15,500,000
Ecuador 6,541,000 7,509,000 1,578,000 1,590,000
Egypt 75,366,000 77,754,000 8,867,000 1,321,000
France 843,255,000 774,497,000 81,315,000 78,406,000
Germany 1,290,254,000 1,054,685,000 99,970,000 184,679,000
Greece 26,782,000 18,100,000 1,447,000 286,000
India,
British 264,318,000 392,025,000 47,172,000 5,647,000
India,
Dutch 67,755,000 100,632,000 32,309,000 1,653,000
India,
French 36,576,000 30,513,000 ... 118,000
Italy 331,668,000 265,270,000 27,631,000 34,046,000
Japan 127,397,000 124,209,000 36,855,000 21,163,000
Mexico 64,036,000 77,583,000 17,273,000 83,722,000
Netherlands 815,442,000 695,763,000 17,273,000 83,722,000
Norway 83,255,000 43,616,000 ... ...
Peru 11,276,000 21,890,000 2,911,000 2,312,000
Philippine
Islands 30,279,000 23,215,000 4,421,000 4,027,000
Portugal 62,497,000 30,546,000 3,642,000 4,454,000
Roumania 41,878,000 54,041,000 101,000 31,000
Russia 269,493,000 375,276,000 7,236,000 6,506,000
Spain 161,867,000 129,399,000 7,041,000 16,786,000
Sweden 143,363,000 104,878,000 4,370,000 11,521,000
Switzerland 202,651,000 161,458,000 16,035,000 233,000
Turkey 103,110,000 64,876,000 2,437,000 184,000
United
Kingdom 2,540,265,000 1,362,729,000 155,292,000 598,767,000
United
States 903,321,000 1,355,482,000 ... ...
Uruguay 24,497,000 28,674,000 1,975,000 1,481,000
Venezuela 8,457,000 17,962,000 6,610,000 2,737,000
INDEX
Acapulco, 269
Acre, 281
Activities classified, 4
Adams, 220
Aden, 354
Adjustment to environment, 86
Afghanistan, 355
Alaska, 254
Alberta, 265
Alexandria, 384
Alfa, 124
Algeria, 385
Alpaca, 111, 115
Altitude, effects of, 32
Aluminium, 179
Amazon River, 53
Amber, 146
Ambergris, 204
American Indians, 86
Amritsar, 362
Amsterdam, 318
Anaconda, 250
Anchovy, 207
Angora wool, 115
Anthracite coal, 224
Appalachian region, 222
Arabia, 354
Argentina, 291
Arid region of U.S., 240
Arkwright, 108
Asian Rivers, navigation of, 53
Asphalt, 157
Assiniboia, 265
Astrakhan, 347
Athens, 341
Atlanta, 239
Atlantic coast-plain, 213, 221
Attar-of-roses, 338
Australia, 392
Austria-Hungary, 335
Bagdad, 354
Baku, 347, 348
Baltimore, 217
Baluchistan, 357
Banca, 181, 364
Barbados, 273
Barley, 101
Barmen-Elberfeld, 308
Batavia, 364
Bauxite, 179
Beef, exports of U.S., 244
Beet sugar, 186, 303, 321
Beginnings of cities, 82
Belgium, 313
Belgrade, 341
Bengal, 361
Benzine, 156
Bergen, 312
Berlin, 308
Bermuda, 273
Bessemer-steel boilers, 63
Big tree, 198
Billiton, 364
Birmingham, Ala., 165, 225
Birmingham, Eng., 302
Bismarck Archipelago, 397
Black walnut, 199
Blende, 182
Bluefish, 206
Boers, 86
Bogota, 277
Bohemian glass, 336
Boise City, 250
Bokhara, 347
Bolivia, 280
Bombay, 362
Bosnia, 337
Boston, 215
Boxwood, 200
Brass, 178
Brazil, 288
nuts, 289
Breakfast, travels of a, 1
Bremen, 308
Brenner Pass, 66
Brick tea, 134
Bridgeport, 221
British Columbia, 265
India, 358
Bronze Age, 181
Brussels, 316
Budapest, 337
Buenos Aires, 293
Buffalo, 225
Bulgaria, 338
Burlington, 237
Burma, British, 362
Burr clover, 34
Butte, 250
Cacao, 134
Cairo, 384
Calcutta, 123
California fruits, 251
Callao, 279
Camel's hair, 116
Camphor, 378
Canada, 261
Canadian Pacific Railway, 263
Canal, Chesapeake & Ohio, 56
Chicago ship, 56
Erie, 55
Grand, 370
Kaiser Wilhelm, 57
Ludwig, 337
Manchester, 57
Nicaragua, 59, 270
Nord Holland, 57, 318
Panama, 58
Rideau, 54
St. Mary's Falls, 228, 263
Suez, 57
Welland, 54, 263
Canyons, effects of, 18
Canton, 374
Caoutchouc, 141
Capacity of locomotives, 63, 64
Cape Nome, 254
Cape of Good Hope, 387
Cape Town, 389
Caravan tea, 134
Carpet wools, 112
Cashmere shawls, 363
Cattle-growing, 240
Cavite, 258
Cereals, 88
Charleston, 218
Cheviot, 112
Cheyenne, 244
Chicago, 84, 228, 230, 234
Chicago River, 228
Chicory, 131
Chile, 281
Chinook winds, 261
Chocolate, 136
Cigars, manufacture of, 137
Cincinnati, 236
Cities, growth of, 83
Clearing-houses, 215
Cleveland, 225, 230
Climate, 29
Clipper ship, 44
Cloth, antiquity of, 105
Coal, 148, 257, 258, 264, 265, 268, 298, 323, 333, 344, 365, 368, 379
areas of the world, 147
prices of, in U.S., 149
tar products, 153
Coast commerce of U.S., 222
Coastplains, 22
Coca, 278
Cocoa, 134
Cocoon silk, 119
Cod fisheries, 204
Coffee, 127, 271, 277, 290
Coke, 151
Colombia, 275
Columbus, voyages of, 11
Commerce in Western Europe, 13
Communal life, 81, 344
Competition and pools, 67
Constantinople, 340
Copal, 146
Copenhagen, 313
Copper, 159, 162, 177, 248, 266, 279, 344, 379
Cordage, 122
Corn, 98, 232
Corn, oil of, 100
Cotton, 106, 238, 269, 289, 302, 306, 326
Cotton, Egyptian, 109, 383
gin, 109
Indian, 360
Peruvian, 108, 278
sea island, 108
Cotton crop, distribution of, 239
Creosote, 145
Cripple Creek, 248
Crompton, 108
Crusades, wars of, 8
Cuba, 271
bast, 124
Currant grapes, 341
Da Gama, voyage of, 11
Dammar, 146
Davenport, 237
Deadwood, 250
Demerara, 286
Denmark, 312
Denver, 250
Detroit, 230
Diamonds, 388
Dias, voyage of, 11
Differentials, 71, 73
Divi-divi, 285
Division of industries, 41
Dubuque, 237
Dutch East Indies, 364
standards, 188
Eastern Turkestan, 376
Ebony, 200
Economic regions of U.S., 213
Ecuador, 279
Egypt, 381
Electric railways, 76
Eminent domain, 76
Esparto grass, 124, 385
Exchange of products, 5
Fairs, 346
Fall line, 53, 221
Fall River, 220
Felt hats, 209
Fertility of irrigated regions, 33
Feudalism, 7
Fiji Islands, 396
Fisheries, 266
Fish hatcheries, 207
Flax, 120, 300, 314, 343
New Zealand, 124
Forced draught, 63
Forest areas, 193, 261, 288, 299, 310
Fort Dearborn, 228
France, 320
Freight rates, 63, 69
French India, 365
Galveston, 238
Gasoline, 156
Geneva, 334
German Empire, 303
Ghent, 314, 316
Glucose, 100, 191
Gold, 166, 172, 248, 264, 268, 286, 344, 379, 395
Grain elevators, 94
Grape industry in New York, 36
Graphite, 153
Grasses, 88
Great Britain, 295
Great Central Plain, 22
Great Lakes, 227
Great Salt Lake, 247
Greece, 340
Griqualand West, 388
Guam, 258
Guatemala, 270
Guayaquil, 280
Guiana, 286
Gulf coast, 237
Gums, 141
Gutta-percha, 144
Halibut, 256
Halifax, 264
Hamburg, 308
Hamilton, 265
Hanse League, 13
Harbors, 26, 47, 84
Hargreaves, 109
Hartford, 221
Havana, 272
cigars, 137
Hawaiian Islands, 255
Helena, 250
Hematite, 163
Hemp, 121, 257
Henequen, 122
Herodotus quoted, 106
Herring fisheries, 205
Herzegovina, 337
Hickory, 199
Hilo, 256
Hodeida, 130
Holland, 316
Hongkong, 365, 374
Honolulu, 256, 392
Houston, 238
Hudson's Bay Company, 208, 262
Iloilo, 258
Inclination of axis, 36
Indianapolis, 237
Inland waters, 50
Intermontane valleys, 18
Interstate Commerce Commission, 76
Iodine, 282
Iquique, 283
Iran plateau, 349
Ireland, 265
Irkutsk, 347
Iron, 162, 236, 300, 323
galvanized, 182
ore, 163, 166, 300, 306, 311, 315, 323
Iron Gate, 338
Italy, 325
Jade, 159
Japan, 375
Jarrah, 200, 394
Java, 364
Joint tariff associations, 72
Jute, 122, 360
Kabue, 356
Kansas City, 236
Kashmir, 363
Kauri, 146, 396
Kerosene, 154, 157
Key West cigars, 137
Khaibar Pass, 356
Khiva, 347
Kiakhta, 347
Kiel, 309
Kimberley, 389, 390
Klondike mines, 254
Kongo River, navigation of, 54
Kongo State, 386
Korea, 376
Kristiania, 311, 312
Lac, 145
Lacquer, 378
La Guaira, 286
Lanolin, 114
Lassa, 374
Las Vegas, 250
Laudanum, 139
Lawrence, 220
Lead, 180
Lead pencils, 153
Leadville, 250
Leather goods, 221
Liechtenstein, 337
Lignum vitae, 200
Lithographic stone, 305
Liverpool, 302
Llama, 115
Lobster fisheries, 207
Locomotive, Central-Atlantic type, 64
Logwood, 201
London, 302
Los Angeles, 157, 252
Louisville, 237
Lourenco Marquez, 390
Lowell, 220
Lynn, 221
Macao, 374
Mackerel, 206
Mackintosh, 143
Madagascar, 387
Madras, 363
Magnetite, 163
Maguey sugar, 187
Mahogany, 199
Malay States, Federated, 363
Manchester, Eng., 382
Manchester, N.H., 220
Manchuria, 376
Mandalay, 362
Manganese, 182
Manila, 258
hemp, 121
Manitoba, 265
Maple, 199
sugar, 186
Marco Polo, 9
Martinique, 273
Mate, 136
Maverick, 240
Melbourne, 395
Memphis, 238
Merino wool, 111, 112
Metals, influence of, in cities, 85
Mexico, 267
city of, 269
Milan, 328
Mileage books, 72
Millet, 359
Milwaukee, 230
Mingo Junction, 224
Mining, 248
Minneapolis, 230, 236
Miquelon, 266
Mississippi River, 52
valley, 232
Mobile, 240
Mocha coffee, 130
Mohair, 115
Mohawk valley, 220
Molasses, 191
Moline, 237
Mongolia, 376
Mont Cenis tunnel, 66
Montenegro, 341
Montreal, 264
Morocco, 384
Mountains, contents of, 17
Moscow, 347
Mulberry, 116
Nagasaki, 380
Nankeen cotton, 108
Naphtha, 154, 156
Nashua, 220
Natural gas, 157
Naval stores, 145
Nearchus, 107
New Brunswick, 264
New Caledonia, 397
New England Plateau, 219
New Guinea, 396
New Haven, 221
New Orleans, 238
New York City, 84, 214, 215, 230, 238, 250
New Zealand, 395
New Zealand flax, 123, 396
Newfoundland, 266
Nicaragua, 270
Nickel, 182
Nieuwchwang, 374
Nigeria, 387
Nile River, barrage of, 383
floods of, 33
navigation of, 54
Nitrate, 282
Norfolk, 218
Northern Securities Company, 227
Norway, 310
Nova Scotia, 264
Novgorod, 209
Oak, 198
Oats, 101
Ocean steamships, 45
Odessa, 134, 347
Ogden, 250
Ohio River, 52
Oil of theobroma, 135
Old Government Java, 129
Oleo-resins, 141
Omaha, 236
Ontario, 265
Opium, 139, 360
Oregon pine, 252
Ottawa, 265
Oyster fisheries, 207
Pacific Coast lowlands, 250
Paddy, 103
Pago Pago Harbor, 258
Panama, 277
hats, 133, 279
Para, 291
Paraffine, 157
Paraguay, 293
tea, 136
Paris, 324
Passes, 19
Pearl Harbor, 256
Peking, 374
Penang, 363
Pepper, 365
Persia, 354
Persian lamb, 208
Peru, 278
Peshawur, 356, 362
Petroleum, 154, 225, 344, 379
jelly, 157
Philadelphia, 216
Philippine Islands, 256
Pine, 197
Piraeus, The, 341
Pitch, 145
Pittsburg, 106, 224
Plains, 21
Plaiting straw, 124
Plateaus, 21, 247
Ponce, 255
Pools, 68
Population, distribution of, 81
Pork, 234
Port Arthur, 347
Port Huron, 230
Port Said, 384
Port wine, 330
Portland, Me., 217
Portland, Ore., 252
Porto Rico, 254
Portugal, 328
Pribilof Islands, 208, 254
Prince Edward Island, 264
Providence, 221
Puget Sound, 228, 252
Punjab, 362
Pyrites, 164
Quebec, 264
city of, 265
Quicksilver, 180
Rabbit skins, 209
Railway, Canadian Pacific, 263
Chesapeake & Ohio, 71
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, 68
New York Central, 65, 67
Northern Pacific, 227
Sind-Pishin, 356
Southern, 71
Tehuantepec, 269
Transportation, 62
Transsiberian, 345, 372
Union Pacific, 66
Rainfall, effects of, 33
deficiency of, 33
Ramie, 123
Rangoon, 362
Raw silk, 118
Rebates, 71
Redwood, 198, 252
Resins, 141
Rhodesia, 389
Rice, 102, 359
Richmond, 221
Riga, 347
Rio Janeiro, 290
River navigation in Europe, 53
valleys, 21
Roads, macadamized, 78
Rock Island, 237
Rome, 327
Rotterdam, 318
Roumania, 338
Rubber, 141, 275, 278, 281, 288
Rug wools, 114
Rugs, oriental, 351, 355
Ruhr iron fields, 306
Russia, 343
Rye, 101, 344
Sacramento, 252
Sahara, 385
Saigon, 365
Sailing vessels, 47
St. Gotthard tunnel, 66
St. Louis, 234
St. Paul, 230, 236
St. Petersburg, 346
St. Pierre, 266
St. Thomas, 273
Salmon, 205
Salonica, 340
Samoa Islands, 396
San Antonio, 239
San Francisco, 252
San Joaquin valley, 250
San Juan, P.R., 255
San Pedro, 252
Sandarach, 146
Santa Fe, 250
Santiago, 283
Santos, 290
Saskatchewan, 265
Savannah, 238
Schooners, 44, 47
Scranton, 224
Seal fisheries, 208
Seasonal rains, 34
Seattle, 84, 252
Servia, 341
Shad, 256
Shanghai, 374
Sheep-growing, 242
Shell-lac, 145
Shoe manufacture, 221
Siam, 364
Siberia, 347
Silk, 116, 323, 326, 368, 378
Silver, 162, 176, 248, 268, 278, 304, 340
Sind, 362
Singapore, 363, 365
Sioux City, 236
Sisal hemp, 122, 267
Skagway, 254
Smyrna, 139, 353
Sorghum, 187
Sound Valley, 250
South Bethlehem, 224
South Chicago, 225
Southampton, 302
Spain, 328
Spermaceti, 204
Spokane, 250
Sponge, 208
Steel, Bessemer, 160, 169, 170, 222, 300, 304, 345
Stephenson, 63
Stockholm, 312
Stockton, 252
Sugar, 185, 289, 303, 314, 318, 364
Swash channel, 50
Sweden, 310
Switzerland, 331
Sydney, 395
Tacoma, 252
Tar, 145
Tea, 131, 360, 368, 378
Teak, 200, 365
Temperate zone, activities of, 32
Textiles, 105
Three-mile fishing limit, 262
Thrown silk, 118
Tientsin, 134, 374
Tin, 181, 364
Tobacco, 136, 237, 240, 364, 383
Tokio, 380
Toledo, 225
Topography and trade routes, 24
Toronto, 265
Torrid zone, temperature of, 30
Tortilla, Mexican, 100
Trade routes, ancient, 8
Transcaucasia, 348
Transvaal, 389
Treaty ports, 373
Trebizond, 351
Triple-expansion principle, 45
Tripoli, 386
Tunis, 385
Turf grass, 34
Turkey-in-Europe, 339
Turks invade Europe, 9
Turpentine, 144
Tussar silk, 119
Tutuila, 258
Tweed, 112
Uruguay, 294
Valparaiso, 283
Vancouver, 266
Vanderbilt locomotive fire-box, 64
Vanilla, 268
Vaseline, 157
Venezuela, 285
Vicksburg, 238
Vienna, 337
Virginia City, 250
Vladivostok, 347
Vuelta Abajo, 137
Vulcanized rubber, 142
Wai-wu-pu, 373
Walla Walla, 250
Warsaw, 347
Water-power, 84
Waterproof cloth, 143
Welland Canal, 263
Wellington, 396
Whale fisheries, 203
Wheat, 88, 96, 244, 344, 359, 367
White Pass, 254
Willamette Valley, 250
Winnipeg, 265
Wood-pulp, 124
Wool, 110,115, 117, 244, 251, 292, 297, 323
Yafa, 354
Yokohama, 380
Youngstown, 166
Yucatan, 267
Zinc, 182
Zinfandel, 251
Footnotes:
[1] If the edition for free distribution is exhausted, these may be
purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, Public Printer,
Washington, D.C.
[2] The greatness of Palmyra was due to the trade along this route, and
its decay began when the route was abandoned. The present town of Tadmor
is near the ruins of the former city.
[3] Cosmas Indicopleustes--in early life a merchant, in later years a
monk--visited India and Ceylon during the first part of the sixth
century. His writings contain much valuable knowledge, but in the main
they are theological arguments intended to disprove the Geography
written by Ptolemy.
[4] The date is variously given as 1169, 1200, and 1241.
[5] To Waldemar III. of Denmark it dictated terms that made its power in
Scandinavia supreme.
[6] For a complete list of books for reference, see p. xii.
[7] The record time on this route was made by the Lucania in five days,
seven hours, and twenty-three minutes, from Daunts Rock, Queenstown, to
Sandy Hook light. The fastest day's run yet recorded was made by the
Deutschland--601 nautical miles, a speed of 24.19 knots.
[8] In Congress the River and Harbor Bill always receives a generous
appropriation.
[9] In many instances goods designed for the spring trade in the Western
States are started via the canal in October, reaching their destination
at Chicago some time in April, the cargo having been frozen up in one or
another of the canal basins during the winter. The rate paid for this
slow transit is considerably less than the amount which otherwise would
have been paid for storage; moreover, it is nearly all clear profit to
the canal boatmen.
[10] The minimum depth of the canal is 22 feet; its width at the bottom
is 160 feet. It was begun September, 1892, and completed January 2,
1902, at a cost of thirty-four million dollars. More than forty million
cubic yards of earth and rock were excavated. All the bridges crossing
it are movable.
[11] This is on the supposition that night travel will be too dangerous
a risk. With a continuous travel the time would be about thirty-three
hours.
[12] On one great trunk system the average ton-mile rate in 1870 was one
and one-seventh cents; in 1900 it was just one-half that sum.
[13] The modern steam-making boiler has from thirty to one hundred or
more tubes passing through it from end to end. The heat from the
fire-box as a rule passes under the boiler and through the tubular
flues; it thus increases the heating surface very greatly. The forced
draught is made by allowing the exhaust steam to escape into the
smokestack, thereby increasing the draught through the fire-box.
[14] A single locomotive of the New York Central has hauled 4,000 tons
of freight at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour. A "camel-back" of
the Philadelphia & Reading hauled 4,800 tons of coal from the mines to
tide-water without a helper.
[15] The Vanderbilt boiler with cylindrical corrugated fire-box invented
by Cornelius Vanderbilt, great-grandson of the founder of the New York
Central, marks an important step in locomotive building. The cylindrical
form largely obviates the necessity of an array of stay-bolts to prevent
warping; the corrugated surface gives greater heating power.
[16] The Central-Atlantic type of locomotive illustrates a modern
improvement. The driving-wheels are placed a little forward of their
usual position, while the fire-box, formerly set between the wheels, now
overhangs each side of a pair of low trailing-wheels. By this means the
heating surface of the fire-box is increased nearly one-half. A lever
controlled by the engineer enables the latter to transfer 5,000 pounds
weight from the trucks to the driving-wheels when a grade is to be
surmounted. The daily run of such a locomotive is greatly increased.
(_See cut, p. 61._)
[17] A line from Vienna to Triest was opened about 1854; Germany was
joined to Italy across Brenner Pass in 1868; France was connected with
Italy through a tunnel near Mont Cenis in 1871; in 1882 the traffic of
Germany was opened to Mediterranean ports by a tunnel under St.
Gotthard. In this manner trunk systems have gradually developed.
[18] The building of the West Shore Railroad is an illustration. After
both roads had suffered tremendous losses the New York Central settled
the matter by purchasing the West Shore. This was one of a great number
of similar cases both in the United States and Europe.
[19] In Great Britain the ton-rate is about $2.30 per hundred miles; in
Germany, $1.75; in Russia, $1.30; in the United States, $0.70. The
difference is due as much to the length of distance hauled as to
economical management.
[20] Thus, A, B, and C are roads whose chief terminal points are Chicago
and New York City. The road C is the shortest of the three lines, but
its grades are very heavy. B is, say, one hundred miles longer, but has
no heavy grades. A is a very indirect route, and its New York traffic
must be trans-shipped at Boston, or perhaps at New London, and sent a
part of the way by water. If now an absolute ton-mile rate is fixed for
either road, it is evident that neither of the others can carry through
freight without altering rates. If C fixes a rate, then A and B must
either charge higher rates between Chicago and Montreal, or Chicago and
Albany, than between their terminals. And although this is illegal in
most States, the laws are evaded by "rebate," or repayment of a certain
sum to the shipper. Of the three roads B, on account of easy grades, is
in the best position to fix rates. It therefore makes, not the lowest
rate, but the one that will yield the best returns. C conforms to this,
and A takes what it can get, hauling at a very small profit. But if A
happens to be outside of the limits of the United States, it may openly
cut rates, because pretty nearly all the through freight it gets is
clear profit, and inasmuch as none of the laws of a State apply to the
Canadian portion of the road, it may do what the others cannot. And
while B is struggling with A, the three roads X, Y, and Z are perhaps
endeavoring to have some of the freight sent from Buffalo eastward over
their own lines. In instances similar to the foregoing it is customary
for B and C to divide the through business and to allow a "differential"
to A--that is, on account of its slower delivery of through freight, to
carry it at a slightly lower rate. B then adjusts its traffic with X, Y,
and Z in a similar manner; and on the whole this is the fairest way to
all concerned.
The following, one of many instances, shows the difficulties in fixing
rates that will not be unjust to either party: Danville and Lynchburg
compete for a certain trade. The Southern Railway passes through both
cities, but the Chesapeake & Ohio makes Lynchburg by another route;
Danville, therefore, is not a competing point, while Lynchburg is. As a
result, the Southern Railway charged $1.08 for a certain traffic from
Chicago to Danville and only 72 cents to Lynchburg, some distance
beyond, this being the rate over the other road. The matter finally
reached the Court of Appeals, and the latter sustained the Southern
Railway. The rate to Danville was shown to be not excessive, but if the
railway were required to maintain a rate to Lynchburg higher than 72
cents, it would lose all its traffic to that point, amounting to
$433,000 yearly. In a case of this kind there can be no help except by a
consolidation of the two roads; by virtue of the consolidation all the
Lynchburg freight will then go over the line having the easiest haul.
[21] That is, the Government pledged its credit for the money borrowed,
and in addition gave the companies alternate sections of public land on
both sides of the proposed line, the land-grants being designed partly
to encourage immigration and partly to increase the building funds of
the various companies. In several instances both the land-grants and the
money subsidies were scandalously used. At least one road used its
earnings to build a competing line and, after disposing of the
land-grant and pocketing the proceeds, allowed the Government to
foreclose the mortgage and sell the original road.
[22] From the Latin "castra," a camp.
[23] In 1897 the world's crop was 2,226,750,000 bushels, and as a
result, the countries in which the crop was short suffered from high
prices. Had it not been for the prompt carrying service of railways and
steamships famine would have resulted.
[24] In order to yield a crop of twenty-five bushels per acre the soil
must supply 110 lbs. of nitrogen, 45 lbs. of phosphoric acid, 30.5 lbs.
of lime, 14.5 lbs. of magnesia, and 142 lbs. of potash; these are
approximately the mineral elements taken out of the soil with each crop,
and it is needless to say that they must be replaced or the grain will
starve for want of nutrient substances.
[25] In the United States there are about seven wheat-districts, each
characterized by particular varieties that grow best in the given
locality. In the New England and most of the middle Atlantic division
Early Genesee Giant, Jones Winter Fife, and Fultz are chiefly grown. In
the Southern States Fultz, Fulcaster, Purple Straw, and May are
foremost. In the north central group of States Early Red Clawson, Poole,
Dawson's Golden Chaff, Buda Pest, and Fultz are common. In the Dakotas
and Minnesota Scotch Fife and Velvet Blue Stem (both spring wheats) are
generally planted. In Kansas and Texas and the adjacent locality the
principal varieties are Turkey, Fulcaster, and Mediterranean (all winter
wheats). In California and the southern plateau region Sonora,
California Club, and Defiance are the principal kinds (all winter
wheats). In Washington and Oregon Little Club, Red Chaff, and Blue Stem
(which are either winter or spring) are the main varieties.
[26] Sometimes the owner sends it to the nearest elevator at tide-water
where the grain is stored, not in bulk, but in the original packages,
subject to his demand. In the course of a month or six weeks it absorbs
so much moisture that the gain in weight more than pays the storage
charges.
[27] The elevators are equipped with "legs" or long spouts, within which
belts with metal scoops transfer the grain from car to vessel or _vice
versa_. The elevators at Buffalo will fill a canal-boat in an hour's
time, or load six grain-cars in five minutes. A large whaleback
steamship may be relieved of its 200,000 bushels in about three hours.
Most of the east-bound wheat of the Middle West is transferred to the
seaboard by rail, but that of the northwest, which forms the chief part
of the crop, is shipped from Duluth through the St. Marys Falls Canal to
Buffalo, where it is transferred to cars or to canal-boats. New York is
the leading export market, but Boston, New Orleans, Galveston,
Baltimore, and Philadelphia are also important shipping ports.
[28] The following is approximately the yield of the chief wheat-growing
countries in bushels per acre:
Denmark 42
England 29
New Zealand 26
Germany 23.2
Holland & Belgium 21.5
Hungary 18.5
France 19.5
Austria 16.3
Canada 15.5
United States 12.3
Argentina 12.2
Italy 12.1
Australia 10
India 9.2
Russia 8.6
Algeria 7.5
The low average in Australia, India, and Algeria is due mainly to lack
of rainfall; in the United States and Russia, mainly to unskilful
cultivation.
[29] It seems to have been introduced into Turkey from India about the
latter part of the fifteenth century, after which it was occasionally
heard of in Europe as "Turkey corn."
[30] The "tortilla," the national bread of the Mexican, consists of a
thick corn-meal paste pressed into thin wafers between the hands, and
baked on hot slabs of stone. The corn-meal "mush" of the American, the
"polenta" of the Italian, and the "mamaliga" of the Rumanian are all
practically corn-meal boiled to a thick paste in water.
[31] The gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, enabled one man to do by
machinery about the same amount of work as previously had required one
hundred laborers. For want of the laws necessary to protect his
invention, Whitney was defrauded of the profits arising from it. Neither
Congress nor the courts gave him any relief from the numerous
infringements, and he died a poor man.
[32] The commercial distinction is a sensible one: hair is hard, crisp,
straight, and does not felt; wool is soft, curly, and felts readily.
[33] An ounce of eggs produces about forty thousand worms, and these,
during the grub stage, require about fifteen hundred pounds of leaves,
about one-half of which is actually consumed.
[34] Charles II. of England also forbade its use (1675) and attempted to
close the coffee-houses that had sprung up in London, but in spite of
the ban and the prohibitive tax laid upon it, the use of coffee became
general. Similar efforts to close the coffee-houses in Constantinople
failed.
[35] The full-grown leaf attains a length of from four to nine inches;
those picked rarely exceed one-and-a-half inches in length.
[36] Brick tea consists of leaves moulded into bricks under heavy
pressure. Refuse and stems are also thus prepared for the cheaper
grades.
[37] The following are the chief rubber-producing trees: _Siphonia
elastica_, or _Hevea brasiliensis_, Amazon forests, yields Para rubber;
_Manihot Glaziovii_, also a tapioca-producing shrub, Ceara province,
Brazil, furnishes Ceara rubber; _Castilloa elastica_, Central American
States, Nicaragua rubber; _Ficus elastica_, British India, and _Urceola
elastica_, Borneo, Indian rubber. There are rubber-producing trees in
Florida, but they have little commercial value at the present time.
African rubber is taken from a variety of plants.
[38] The process of vulcanizing was made practicable during the ten
years ending in 1850. It was invented and perfected by Goodyear in the
United States and by Hancock in England; for ordinary purposes, where
both strength and elasticity are required, about five per cent. of
sulphur is added. The addition of about fifty per cent. changes the
rubber to a hard black substance known as "ebonite," or "hard rubber."
[39] In 1823 a Scotchman, Mackintosh, applied the discovery, that rubber
gum was soluble in benzine, to the water-proofing of the cloth that
bears his name. This invention was about the first extensive commercial
use to which rubber had been put.
[40] From the fact that most of the dwellings in the United States are
built of wood, the United States is a very heavy consumer of turpentine.
[41] A slender strip of metallic lead was used instead of graphite in
the first pencils made. The use of graphite did not become general until
about 1850. The hardness of a pencil is regulated by mixing clay with
the powdered graphite.
[42] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[43] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[44] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[45] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[46] The limestone has no essential part in the smelting of the ore
except to produce an easily-flowing, liquid slag; hence it is called a
_flux_. Some ores smelt and flow so easily that a flux is not required.
[47] Under ordinary circumstances about two tons of coal, or
three-quarters of a ton of coke, are required to produce a ton of
pig-iron.
[48] Terne plate is sheet-iron coated with an alloy of lead and tin.
[49] Heredity is likewise a factor. The seeds of knotty, scraggly trees
are very apt to produce trees of their own kind and _vice versa_.
[50] This sum represents more than ten times the amount of gold coin now
in existence. Less than five per cent. of the business of the great
industrial centres is a cash business. Even if the money existed, the
transfer of such immense sums would greatly retard commerce. In order to
effect a speedy settlement of payments, clearing-houses are established.
At the clearing-house the representatives of the various banks meet
daily and liquidate the checks drawn against one another; and although
the total yearly volume of payment aggregates the sum mentioned above,
the _balances_ for a year are but little more than two billion dollars.
Even this does not always represent cash payment, for a bank that is a
debtor to another at the close of one day may be a creditor for an equal
sum on the next.
[51] These roads are financed by the Northern Securities Company and
form a link in the Hill-Morgan lines. Their intercontinental traffic is
large.
[52] Their dividing line is the centre of a street.
[53] The brand consisted of any specific device, such as an initial, a
monogram, or a conventional form that might be easily recognized. The
device was registered and imprinted with a red-hot iron on the flank of
the animal. Ear-marks, such as notches or similar devices, also
indicated ownership.
[54] In many cases Government land, not owned by the rancher, has been
fenced in. No objection was made, however, until the sheep-grazier came.
He demanded the removal of the fences, claiming that he had an equal
right to graze his herds on public lands. But inasmuch as a range once
grazed by sheep is ruined for cattle-growing, the quarrel between the
grazier and the rustler has become one in which both the grazier and the
rustler turned upon the sheep-owner.
[55] It is one-third of their capital stock plus the bonded
indebtedness.
[56] The high latitude of the wheat-region, which in most cases is too
cold for the growing of food-stuffs, in this region is tempered by
occasional warm winds known as "Chinook winds." These winds are the
saving feature of wheat-growing. They prevail also in British Columbia,
Washington, and Oregon.
[57] Freight rates from Coatzacoalcos to San Francisco are already fixed
at $6.50 per ton; by the transcontinental railways they vary from $12 to
$15 per ton.
[58] The entire Cuban crop is comparatively small, being but little more
than one-eighth that of the United States.
[59] Vegetable ivory is the seed or nut of a species of palm
(_Phytelephas macrocarpa_). The kernel of the nut gradually acquires the
hardness and appearance of the best ivory, for which it is employed as a
substitute.
[60] The leaves of this shrub (_Erythroxylon coca_) contain a stimulant
substance that in its effects is much like the active principle of
coffee. They are much used by the native laborers to ward off the
feeling of lassitude that comes with severe labor in a tropical climate.
A native porter will carry a load of one hundred pounds a distance of
sixty miles with no food or rest, but merely chewing a few coca-leaves.
The plant yields the substance _cocaine_, now in demand all over the
world as an anaesthetic in eye and throat surgery.
[61] More than a score of species of the tree from which this bark is
obtained grow in the higher eastern slopes of the Andes, but a very
large part is obtained from the tree, _Cinchona calisaya_. The medicinal
substance, quinine, is extracted from the bark, and in the past
half-century it has become the specific for malarial fevers. So great is
the demand for it, that the cinchona-tree is now cultivated in India,
Java, and Mexico.
[62] Only a very small proportion of the Panama hats in the market are
genuine. Many of the imitations, selling at retail for ten dollars or
more, are serviceable hats; most of them, however, have but little
worth.
[63] Nitre, or "nitrate," is a native nitrate of potash, or nitrate of
soda. The latter, commonly called cubic nitre or Chile saltpetre, is the
kind occurring in Chile. Inasmuch as it is very soluble, a plentiful
rainfall would soon leach it from the ground and carry it to the sea.
The nitrate is thought to be of vegetable origin.
[64] The pod of a shrub (_Caesalpina coriaria_); it contains a
considerable proportion of tannin and is used for tanning leather.
[65] The pericarp or pod contains about twenty-four prismatic-shaped
nuts.
[66] The cattle for Cuba and Brazil must be shipped in open pens in
crossing the tropics. With the exports for Europe the case is different.
If it is summer at the one port it is winter at the other, but it is
always summer in the tropics, and cattle-ships fit for one zone are not
fit for the other--hence the great difficulties in shipment of live
animals to Europe.
[67] For this reason Great Britain is practically a free-trade country.
A protective tariff on imported food-stuffs and materials to be
manufactured would hurt rather than protect British industries.
[68] This is equivalent to the imposition of a tax on all the sugar
consumed at home.
[69] Most of the lithographic stone is obtained at Solnhofen.
[70] This is a little greater than the average ton-mile rate on the New
York Central Railroad between New York and Chicago.
[71] The name Zuider, or Zuyder, means "south"; it was so named to
distinguish it from the North Sea.
[72] Some years ago many of the most valuable vineyards were destroyed
by an insect pest known as the _phylloxera_, introduced from California.
The trouble was overcome by replanting with American vines, the roots of
which were immune to the pest. On these roots were grafted the choice
French vines, the leaves and twigs of which were immune. In this manner
the vineyards were restored with vines that are proof against attack,
and the wine output has reached its normal amount.
[73] It is cultivated as an ornamental tree in the Southern States and
in California.
[74] A small vein of coal occurs near Freiburg.
[75] The St. Gotthard tunnel is almost nine and one-half miles long; the
Arlberg tunnel is six and one-half miles in length. The tunnel now
nearing completion under the Simplon Pass is more than twelve miles
long. Five railways cross the northern frontier into Germany, and German
commerce profits most by them.
[76] Persian rugs are the finest. As a rule the designs are floral and
many of them contain legendary history worked in fantastic but beautiful
patterns. Among those of especial merit are the Kermanshah tree-of-life
fabrics, now somewhat rare. The rugs of Tabriz and Shiraz are also of
high value. In general, Persian fabrics are characterized by very fine
weaving, a short pile, and elaborate designs. Turkoman rugs are usually
a rich brown or maroon in color, and are apt to contain slightly
elongated octagonal figures. The Bokhara and Khiva-Bokhara, or Afghan
rugs, are the best examples. The Baluchistan rugs are usually very dark
in color, with bright red designs and striped ends of cotton warp.
Turkish rugs are made almost wholly in Asia Minor or Anatolia. Large
carpets of American and European designs are made at Ushak and Smyrna.
"Smyrna" rugs are made in Philadelphia.
[77] The most valuable Kermanshah rug, now no longer made there, is the
tree-of-life prayer-rug, an illustration of which is shown on p. 350.
The design is emblematic of the story of the Garden of Eden.
[78] In 1900 the aggregate value of the wheat exported to Great Britain
was only L2,200.
[79] Since the treaty of 1901, which forbids the importation of
fire-arms, a number of large plants for the manufacture of fire-arms,
smokeless powder, and fixed ammunition have been established on the
lower Yangtze.
[80] The islands are mainly in the belt of prevailing westerly winds.
More rain, therefore, falls on the west than on the east coasts.
[81] This region is also known us the Gold Coast. Formerly it furnished
the chief British supply of gold, and the gold coin known as the
"guinea" received its name from this circumstance.
[82] This region was formerly comprised in the Boer republics, Orange
Free State and South African Republic. In 1899 they declared war against
Great Britain, with the result that they were defeated and annexed to
that country--the former as Orange Colony, the latter as Transvaal
Colony.
[83] It is estimated that twenty-two acres of land are necessary to
sustain one adult on fresh meat. The same area of wheat would feed
forty-two people; of oats about eighty-five people; of maize, potatoes,
and rice, one hundred and seventy people. But twenty-two acres planted
with bread-fruit or bananas will support about six thousand.
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Title: Commercial Geography
A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges
Author: Jacques W. Redway
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COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY
A Book for High Schools
Commercial Courses, and
Business Colleges
by
JACQUES W. REDWAY, F.R.G.S.
Author of "A Series of Geographies," "An Elementary
Physical Geography," "The New Basis of Geography"
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York ... 1907
Copyright, 1903, by
Jacques W. Redway
PREFACE
The quiet industrial struggle through which the United States passed
during the last decade of the nineteenth century cannot fail to impress
the student of political economy with the fact that commercial
revolution is a normal result of industrial evolution. Within a period
of twenty-five years the transportation of commodities has grown to be
not only a science, but a power in the betterment of civil and political
life as well; and the world, which in the time of M. Jules Verne was
eighty days wide, is now scarcely forty.
The invention of the Bessemer process for making steel was intended
primarily to give the railway-operator a track that should be free from
the defects of the soft, wrought-iron rail; in fact, however, it created
new industrial centres all over the world and brought Asia and Africa
under commercial conquest. The possibilities of increased trade between
the Atlantic seaboard and the Pacific Coast States led to the building
of the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railways. But when these were
thoroughly organized, there unexpectedly resulted a new trade-route that
already is drawing traffic away from the Suez Canal and landing it at
Asian shores by way of the ports of Puget Sound. It is a repetition of
the adjustment that occurred when the opening of the Cape route to India
transferred the trade that had gathered about Venice and Genoa to the
shores of the North and Baltic Seas.
In other words, a new order of things has come about, and the world and
the people therein are readjusting themselves to the requirements made
upon them by commerce. And so at the beginning of a new century,
civilized man is drawing upon all the rest of the world to satisfy his
wants, and giving to all the world in return; he is civilized because of
this interchange and not in spite of it.
The necessity for instruction in a subject that pertains so closely to
the welfare of a people is apparent, and an apology for presenting this
manual is needless. Moreover, it should not interfere in any way with
the regular course in geography; indeed, more comprehensive work in the
latter is becoming imperative, and it should be enriched rather than
curtailed.
In the preparation of the work, I wish to express my appreciation of the
great assistance of Principal Myron T. Pritchard, Edward Everett School,
Boston, Mass. I am also much indebted to the map-engraving department of
Messrs. The Matthews-Northrup Company, Buffalo, N.Y.
J.W.R.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES 1
II. HOW COMMERCE CIVILIZED MANKIND 7
III. TOPOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE 17
IV. CLIMATIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE 29
V. TRANSPORTATION--OCEAN AND INLAND NAVIGATION 39
VI. TRANSPORTATION--RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY ORGANIZATION;
PUBLIC HIGHWAYS 62
VII. FACTORS IN THE LOCATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS 81
VIII. THE CEREALS AND GRASSES 88
IX. TEXTILE FIBRES 105
X. PLANT PRODUCTS OF ECONOMIC USE--BEVERAGES AND
MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES 127
XI. GUMS AND RESINS USED IN THE ARTS 141
XII. COAL AND PETROLEUM 147
XIII. METALS OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES 159
XIV. SUGAR AND ITS COMMERCE 185
XV. FORESTS AND FOREST PRODUCTS 193
XVI. SEA PRODUCTS AND FURS 203
XVII. THE UNITED STATES--THE SEAPORTS AND THE ATLANTIC
COAST-PLAIN 211
XVIII. THE UNITED STATES--THE NEW ENGLAND PLATEAU
AND THE APPALACHIAN REGION 219
XIX. THE UNITED STATES--THE BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES
AND THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY 227
XX. THE UNITED STATES--THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS AND
TERRITORIAL POSSESSIONS 247
XXI. CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND 261
XXII. MEXICO--CENTRAL AMERICA--WEST INDIES 267
XXIII. SOUTH AMERICA--THE ANDEAN STATES 275
XXIV. SOUTH AMERICA--THE LOWLAND STATES 285
XXV. EUROPE--GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY 295
XXVI. EUROPE--THE BALTIC AND NORTH SEA STATES 310
XXVII. EUROPE--THE MEDITERRANEAN STATES AND SWITZERLAND 320
XXVIII. EUROPE--THE DANUBE AND BALKAN STATES 335
XXIX. EUROPE-ASIA--THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 343
XXX. THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA 349
XXXI. BRITISH INDIA AND THE EAST INDIES 358
XXXII. CHINA AND JAPAN 367
XXXIII. AFRICA 381
XXXIV. OCEANIA 391
APPENDIX 398
INDEX 399
COLORED MAPS
PAGE
PRINCIPAL TRANSPORTATION LINES AND REGIONS OF LARGEST
COMMERCE x, xi
MEAN ANNUAL RAINFALL 28
CITY OF NEW YORK AND VICINITY, WITH HARBOR APPROACHES 49
DISTRIBUTION OF VEGETATION 80
NORTH AMERICA 210
PUGET SOUND 253
MEXICO 268
SOUTH AMERICA 274
BRITISH ISLES 299
GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES 304
HOLLAND AND BELGIUM 314
FRANCE 321
ITALY 326
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 329
TURKEY AND GREECE 338
RUSSIAN EMPIRE 342
THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA 349
EASTERN CHINA 369
JAPAN AND KOREA 375
AFRICA 382
THE COMMERCE OF THE PACIFIC 393
[Illustration: PRINCIPAL TRANSPORTATION LINES AND REGIONS OF LARGEST
COMMERCE]
TO THE TEACHER:--The contents of this book are so topicalized and
arranged that, if the time for the study is limited, a short course may
be selected. Under no circumstances, however, should Chapters V, VI,
VIII, IX, XII, and XIII be omitted. A casual inspection of the questions
at the end of each chapter will serve to show that they cannot be
answered from the pages of the book, and they have been selected with
this idea in view. They are intended first of all to stimulate
individual thought, and secondly to encourage the pupil to investigate
the topics by consulting original sources. The practice of corresponding
with pupils in other parts of the world cannot be too highly commended.
The following list represents a minimum rather than a maximum reference
library. It may be enlarged at the judgment of the teacher. A good atlas
and a cyclopaedia are also necessary.
Industrial Evolution of the United States. WRIGHT. Charles
Scribner's Sons.
History of Commerce in Europe. GIBBINS. The Macmillan Company.
Discovery of America. FISKE. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
The New Empire. ADAMS. The Macmillan Company.
Statesman's Year-Book. KELTIE. The Macmillan Company.
Outlines of Political Science. GUNTON AND ROBBINS. D. Appleton &
Co.
The Wheat Problem. CROOKES. G.P. Putnam's Sons.
South America. CARPENTER. American Book Company.
From the Bureau of Statistics, Department of Commerce, Washington,
D.C., the following monographs may be procured:[1]
Commercial China. American Commerce. Commercial Australia.
Commercial Japan. Commercial Africa. Commercial India. Statistical
Abstract. Great Canals of the World. World's Sugar Production and
Consumption.
The following from the Department of Agriculture is necessary:
Check List of Forest Trees of the United States.
Lantern slides illustrating the subjects treated in this book may be
procured from T.H. McAllister, 49 Nassau Street, New York. Stereoscopic
views may be obtained from Underwood & Underwood, Fifth Avenue and
Nineteenth Street, New York.
COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
GENERAL PRINCIPLES
Commerce and modern civilization go hand in hand, and the history of the
one is the history of the other; and whatever may be the basis of
civilization, commerce has been the chief agent by which it has been
spread throughout the world. Peoples who receive nothing from their
fellow-men, and who give nothing in return, are usually but little above
a savage state. Civilized man draws upon all the rest of the world for
what he requires, and gives to the rest of the world in return. He is
civilized because of this fact and not in spite of it.
There is scarcely a country in the world that does not yield something
or other to civilized peoples. There is scarcely a household whose
furnishings and contents do not represent an aggregate journey of
several times around the earth. A family in New York at breakfast occupy
chairs from Grand Rapids, Mich.; they partake of bread made of wheat
from Minnesota, and meat from Texas prepared in a range made in St.
Louis; coffee grown in Sumatra or Java, or tea from China is served in
cups made in Japan, sweetened with sugar from Cuba, stirred with spoons
of silver from Nevada. Spices from Africa, South America, and Asia
season the food, which is served on a table of New Hampshire oak,
covered with a linen spread made from flax grown in Ireland or in
Russia. Rugs from Bokhara, or from Baluchistan, cover the floors;
portieres made in Constantinople hang at the doors; and the room is
heated with coal from Pennsylvania that burns in a furnace made in Rhode
Island.
Now all these things may be, and usually are, found in the great
majority of families in the United States or Europe, and most of them
will be found in nearly all households. Certain it is that peoples do
exist who, from the immediate vicinity in which they live, procure all
the things they use or consume. In the main, however, such peoples are
savages.
A moment's thought will make it clear that before an ordinary meal can
be served there must be railways, steamships, great manufacturing
establishments, iron quarries, and coal mines, aggregating many thousand
millions of dollars, and employing many million people. A casual
inspection, too, reveals the fact that all of the substances and things
required by mankind come from the earth, and, a very few excepted, every
one requires a certain amount of manufacture or preliminary treatment
before it is usable. The grains and nearly all the other food-stuffs
require various processes of preparation before they are ready for
consumption by civilized peoples. Iron and the various other ores used
in the arts must undergo elaborate processes of manufacture; coal must
be mined, broken, cleaned, and transported; the soil in which
food-stuffs are grown must be fertilized and mechanically prepared; and
even the water required for domestic purposes in many instances must be
transported long distances.
[Illustration: AGRICULTURE AND MANUFACTURE SUPPLEMENT EACH OTHER]
A little thought will suffice to show that not only are all food-stuffs
derived from the earth, but that also every usable resource which
constitutes wealth is also drawn from the same source. The same is also
pretty nearly true of the various forms of energy, for although the sun
is the real source of light and heat, and probably of electricity, these
agents are usable only when they have been transformed into earth
energies. Thus, the physical energy generated by falling water is merely
a transformed portion of solar heat; so also the coal-beds contain both
the chemical and physical energy of solar heat and light converted into
potential energy--that is, into force that can be used at the will of
intelligence. Indeed, the physical being of mankind is an organism born
of the earth, and adapted to the earth; and when that physical form
dies, it merely is transformed again to ordinary earth substances.
The chief activities of living beings are those relating to the
maintenance of life. In other words, animals must feed, and they must
also protect themselves against extermination. In the case of all other
animals this is a very simple matter, they simply live in immediate
contact with their food, migrating or perishing if the supply gives out.
In the case of mankind the conditions are different and vastly more
elaborate. Savage peoples excepted, man does not live within close touch
of the things he requires; indeed, he cannot, for he depends upon all
the world for what he uses. In a less enlightened state many of these
commodities were luxuries; in a civilized state they have become
necessities. Moreover, nearly everything civilized man employs has been
prepared by processes in which heat is employed.
Therefore one may specify several classes of human activities and
employments:
(_a_) The production of food-stuffs and other commodities by the
cultivation of the soil--_Agriculture_.
(_b_) The preparation of food-stuffs and things used for shelter,
protection, or ornament--_Manufacture_.
(_c_) The production of minerals for the generation of power, such
as coal, or those such as iron, copper, stone, etc., required in
the arts and sciences--_Mining_.
(_d_) The exchange of food stuffs and commodities--_Commerce_.
(_e_) The transfer of commodities--_Transportation_.
It is evident that the prosperity and happiness of a people depend very
largely on the condition of their surroundings--that is, their
environment. If a country or an inhabited area produces all the
food-stuffs and commodities required by its people, the conditions are
very fortunate. A very few nations, notably China and the United States,
have such diverse conditions of climate, topography, and mineral
resources, that they can, if necessary, produce within their national
borders everything needed by their peoples.
The prosecution of such a policy, however, is rarely economical; in the
history of the past it has always resulted in weakness and
disintegration. China is to-day helpless because of a policy of
self-seclusion; and the marvellous growth of Japan began when her trade
was thrown open to the world.
For the greater part the environment of a people is deficient--that is,
the locality of a people does not yield all that is required for the
necessities of life. For instance, the New England plateau requires an
enormous amount of fuel for its manufacturing enterprises; but
practically no coal is found within its borders; hence the manufacturers
must either command the coal to be shipped from other regions or give up
their employment. The people of Canada require a certain amount of
cotton cloth; but the cotton plant will not grow in a cold climate, so
they must either exchange some of their own commodities for cotton, or
else go without it. The inhabitants of Great Britain produce only a
small part of the food-stuffs they consume; therefore they are
constantly exchanging their manufactured products for the food-stuffs
that of necessity must be produced in other parts of the world.
The dwellers of the New England plateau might grow the bread-stuffs they
require, and in times past they did so. At that time, however, a barrel
of flour was worth twelve dollars. But the wheat of the prairie regions
can be grown, manufactured into flour, transported a thousand miles, and
sold at a profit for less than five dollars a barrel. Therefore it is
evidently more economical to buy flour in Minnesota than to grow the
wheat and make it into flour in Massachusetts.
All these problems, and they exist without number, show that man may
overcome most of the obstacles that surround him. So we find civilized
man living in almost every part of the world. Tropical regions are not
too scorching, nor are arctic fastnesses too cold for him. In other
words, because of commerce and transportation, he can and usually does
master the conditions of his environment; his intelligence enables him
to do so, and his ability to do so is the result of the intelligent use
of experience and education.
CHAPTER II
HOW COMMERCE CIVILIZED MANKIND
The history of western civilization is so closely connected with the
development of the great routes of travel and the growth of commerce
that one cannot possibly separate them. Commerce cannot exist without
the intercourse of peoples, and peoples cannot be in mutual
communication unless each learns from the other.
=Feudalism.=--When the Roman Empire fell civilization in western Europe
was not on a high plane; indeed, the feudalism that followed was not
much above barbarism. The people were living in a manner that was not
very much unlike the communal system under which the serfs of Russia
lived only a few years ago. Each centre of population was a sort of
military camp governed by a feudal lord. The followers and retainers
were scarcely better off than slaves; indeed, many of them were slaves.
There was no ownership of the land except by the feudal lords, and the
latter were responsible for their acts to the king only.
But very few people cared to be absolutely free, because they had but
little chance to protect themselves; so it was the common custom to
attach one's self to a feudal lord in order to have his protection; even
a sort of peonage or slavery under him was better than no protection at
all. A few of the people were engaged in trade and manufacture of some
kind or other, and they were the only ones through whom the feudal lord
could supply himself with the commodities needed for his retainers and
the luxuries necessary to himself.
Each feudal estate, therefore, became a sort of industrial centre by
itself, producing its own food-stuffs and much of the coarser
manufactures. It was not a very high condition of enlightenment, but it
was much better than the one which preceded it, for at least it offered
protection. It encouraged a certain amount of trade and commerce,
because the feudal lord had many wants, and he was usually willing to
protect the merchant who supplied them.
=The Crusades and Commerce.=--The Crusades, or wars by which the
Christians sought to recover the Holy Land from the Turk, resulted in a
trade between Europe and India that grew to wonderful proportions. Silk
fabrics, cotton cloth, precious stones, ostrich plumes, ivory, spices,
and drugs--all of which were practically unknown in Europe--were eagerly
sought by the nobility and their dependencies. In return, linen and
woollen fabrics, leather goods, glassware, blacklead, and steel
implements were carried to the far East.
Milan, Florence, Venice and Genoa, Constantinople and a number of less
important towns along the Mediterranean basin became important trade
centres, but Venice and Genoa grew to be world powers in commerce. Not
only were they great receiving and distributing depots of trade, but
they were great manufacturing centres as well.
The routes over which this enormous commerce was carried were few in
number. For the greater part, the Venetian trade went to Alexandria, and
thence by the Red Sea to India. Genoese merchants sent their goods to
Constantinople and Trebizond, thence down the Tigris River to the
Persian Gulf and to India. There was also another route that had been
used by the Phoenicians. It extended from Tyre through Damascus and
Palmyra[2] to the head of the Persian Gulf; this gradually fell into
disuse after the founding of Alexandria.
The general effects of this trade were very far-reaching. To the greater
number of the people of Europe, the countries of India, China, and Japan
were mythical. According to tradition they were infested with dragons
and gryphons, and peopled by dog-headed folk or by one-eyed Arimaspians.
About the first real information of them to be spread over Europe was
brought by Marco Polo, whose father and uncle had travelled all through
these countries during the latter part of the thirteenth century.[3]
Marco Polo's writings were very widely read, and influenced a great many
people who could not be reached through the ordinary channels of
commerce. So between the wars of the Crusades on the one hand, and the
growth of commerce on the other, a new and a better civilization began
to spread over Europe.
=The Turkish Invasions.=--But the magnificent trade that had thus grown up
was checked for a time by an unforeseen factor. The half-savage
Turkomans living southeast of Russia had become converted to the
religion of Islam, and in their zeal for the new belief, determined to
destroy the commerce which seemed to be connected with Christianity. So
they moved in upon the borderland between Europe and Asia, and one after
another the trade routes were tightly closed. Then they captured
Constantinople, and the routes between Genoa and the Orient were
hermetically sealed. Moslem power also spread over Syria and Egypt, and
so, little by little, the trade of Venice was throttled.
[Illustration: ROUTES TO INDIA--THE TURK CHANGES THE COMMERCE OF THE
WORLD]
Now a commerce that involved not only many millions of dollars, but the
employment of thousands of people as well, is not likely to be given up
without a struggle. So the energy that had been devoted to this great
trade was turned in a new direction, and there began a search for a new
route to India--one that the Turks could not blockade.
=The Search for an All-Water Route to India.=--Overland routes were out of
the question; there were none that could be made available, and so the
search was made for a sea-route. Rather singularly the Venetians and
Genoese, who had hitherto controlled this trade, took no part in the
search; it was conducted by the Spanish and the Portuguese.
The Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, fitted out an
expedition under Christopher Columbus, a master-mariner and
cartographer, the funds being provided by Isabella, who pledged her
private property as security for the cost of the expedition. This
expedition resulted in the discovery, October 10-21, 1492, of the West
India Islands. In a subsequent voyage, Columbus discovered the mainland
of South America.
Even before the voyage of Columbus, the Portuguese had been trying to
find a way around Africa to India, and Pope Eugenius IV. had conferred
on Portugal "all heathen lands from Cape Bojador eastward even to the
Indies." Little by little, therefore, Portuguese navigators were pushing
southward until, in 1487, Bartholomew Dias sighted the Cape of Good
Hope, and got about as far as Algoa Bay. Then he unwillingly turned back
because of the threats of his crew. It was a most remarkable voyage, and
one of the shipmates of Dias was Bartholomew Columbus, a brother of the
discoverer of the New World.
Ten years later, or five years after the voyage of Columbus, Vasco da
Gama sailed from Lisbon for the Cape of Good Hope. As he passed the Cape
he was terribly storm-tossed, but the storms carried him in a fortunate
direction. And when at last he got his reckonings, he was off the coast
of India; he therefore kept along the coast until in sight of a port.
The port was the well-known city of Calicut. Two years later he returned
to Europe by the same route, his ships laden with spices, precious
stones, beautiful tapestries and brocades, ivory and bronzes. The
long-sought sea-route to India had been discovered.
[Illustration: A HANSE CITY--HAMBURG, ALONG THE WATER-FRONT]
=Commerce in Western Europe.=--After the discovery of the new route,
Venice and Genoa were scarcely heard of in relation to commerce; they
lost everything and gained nothing. The great commerce with the Orient
was to have a new western terminus, and the latter was to be on the
shores of the North and Baltic Seas.
The commerce between Europe and India stimulated trade in western Europe
as well. As early as the twelfth century the manufacture of linen and
woollen cloth had grown to be a very important industry that had
resulted in the rapid growth of population. The older cities grew
rapidly, and new ones sprang up wherever the commodities of trade were
gathered, manufactured, or distributed.
These centres of trade had two hostile elements against them. The feudal
lords used to pillage them legally by extorting heavy taxes and forced
loans whenever their treasuries were empty. The portionless brothers and
relatives of the feudal lords, to whom no employments save war,
adventure, and piracy were open, pillaged them illegally. Along the
coasts especially, piracy was considered not only a legitimate, but a
genteel, profession. So in order to protect themselves, the cities began
to join themselves into leagues.
=The Hanse League.=--About the beginning of the thirteenth century[4]
Hamburg and Luebeck formed an alliance afterward called a _hansa_; at the
beginning of the fourteenth century it embraced seventy cities, having
the capital at Luebeck. At the time of its greatest power the League
embraced all the principal cities of western Europe nearly as far south
as the Danube. Large agencies, called "factories," were established in
London, Bruges, Novgorod, Bergen, and Wisby. The influence of the League
practically controlled western Europe.
The Hanse League performed a wonderful work. It stopped piracy on the
seas and robbery on the land. Industrially, it encouraged
self-government and obedience to constitutional authority. Shipbuilding
and navigation so greatly improved that the ocean traffic resulting from
the discovery of the cape route to India quickly fell into the hands of
Hanse sailors and master-mariners. The League not only encouraged and
protected all sorts of manufactures, but its schools trained thousands
of operatives. The mines were worked and the idle land cultivated. It
was the greatest industrial movement that ever occurred.
[Illustration: HANSE ROUTES--THE HANSE LEAGUE REORGANIZES THE TRADE OF
THE WORLD]
Socially, the Hanse League brought the wealth that gave those comforts
and conveniences before unknown. The standards of social life,
education, art, and science were raised from a condition scarcely
better than barbarism to a high plane of civilization. Indeed, the
civilization of western Europe was the most important result of it.
It forced the rights of individual freedom, as well as municipal
independence, from more than one monarch, and punished severely the
kings who sought to betray it. It crushed the power of those who opposed
it,[5] and rewarded those who were faithful to it. Its most important
mission, however, was the overthrow of feudalism and the gradual
substitution of popular government in its place.
Having accomplished the regeneration of Europe, the Hanse League died
partly by its own hand, because of its arrogance, but mainly from the
fact that, having educated western Europe to self-government and
commercial independence, there was no longer need for its existence.
Independent cities grew rapidly into importance, and these got along
very well without the protection of the League. The great industrial
progress was at times temporarily checked by wars, but it never took a
backward step. Indeed the progress of commerce has always been a contest
between brains and brute force, and in such a struggle there is never
any doubt about the final outcome.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What were some of the effects of Caesar's invasion of Germanic Europe so
far as commerce is concerned?
What were some of the effects on commerce of the breaking up of the
Roman Empire?
How did the invasion of England by William of Normandy affect the
commerce of the English people?
Who was Henry the Navigator, and what did he accomplish?
How did the blockade of the routes between Europe and India bring about
the discovery of America?
What was the result of the great voyage of the Cabots?
Was the overthrow of feudalism in Europe a gain or a loss to commerce?
Why are not commercial leagues, such as the Hanse, necessary at the
present time?
Why did Spain's commerce decline as Portugal's thrived?
COLLATERAL READING[6]
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Chapters IV-V.
Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. 1--Chapters IV-V.
CHAPTER III
TOPOGRAPHIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE
The great industry of commerce, which includes both the trade in the
commodities of life and the transportation of them, is governed very
largely by the character of the earth's surface. But very few
food-stuffs can be grown economically in mountain-regions. Steep
mountain-slopes are apt to be destitute of soil; moreover, even the
mountain-valleys are apt to be difficult of access, and in such cases
the cost of moving the crops may be greater than the market value of the
products. Mountainous countries, therefore, are apt to be sparsely
peopled regions.
But although the great mountain-systems are unhabitable, or at least
sparsely peopled, they have a very definite place in the economics of
life. Thus, the great western highland of the United States diverts the
flow of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico northward into the central
plain, and gives to the region most of its food-growing power. In a
similar manner, moisture intercepted by the Alps and the Himalayas has
not only created the plains of the Po and the Ganges from the rock-waste
carried from the slopes, but has also made them exceedingly fertile.
Mountain-ranges are also valuable for their contents. The broken
condition of the rock-folds and the rapid weathering to which they are
subjected have exposed the minerals and metals so useful in the arts of
commerce and civilization. Thus, the weathering of the Appalachian folds
has made accessible about the only available anthracite coal measures
yet worked; and the worn folds about Lake Superior have yielded the
ores that have made the United States the foremost copper and steel
manufacturing country of the world. Gold, silver, tin, lead, zinc,
platinum, granite, slate, and marble occur mainly in mountain-folds.
=Mountains and Valleys.=--Mountain-ranges are great obstacles to commerce
and intercommunication. The Greek peoples found it much easier to
scatter along the Mediterranean coast than to cross the Balkan
Mountains. For twenty years after the settlement of California, it was
easier and less expensive to send traffic by way of Cape Horn than to
carry it across the Rocky Mountains.
The deep canyons of mountainous regions are quite as difficult to
overcome as the high ranges. In modern methods of transportation a range
that cannot be surmounted may be tunnelled, and a tunnel five or six
miles in length is no uncommon feat of engineering. A canyon, however,
cannot be tunnelled, and if too wide for cantilever or suspension
bridges, a detour of many miles is necessary. In crossing a deep chasm
the route of transportation may aggregate ten or fifteen times the
distance spanned by a straight line.
Excepting the mining regions, the population of mountainous countries is
apt to be found mainly in the intermontane valleys. A reason for this is
not hard to find; the valleys are usually filled with rich soil brought
from the higher slopes and levelled by the water. The population,
therefore, is concentrated in the valley because of the food-producing
power of the land. For this reason the Sound, Willamette, and San
Joaquin-Sacramento Valleys contain the chief part of the Pacific coast
population. The Shenandoah and the Great Valley of Virginia are similar
instances.
What is true of the larger intermontane valleys is true also of the
narrow stream valleys of mountain and plateau regions. Thus, in the New
England plateau the chief growth during the past forty years has been in
the valley lands. In that time if the uplands have not suffered actual
loss, they certainly have made no material gains. Upland farming has not
proved a remunerative venture, and many of the farms have either been
abandoned or converted to other uses.
=Passes.=--Transverse valleys form very important topographic features of
mountain-regions. Inasmuch as the ranges themselves are obstacles to
communication, it follows that the latter must be concentrated at such
cross valleys or gaps as may be traversed. Khaibar Pass, a narrow defile
in the Hindu Kush Mountains, between Peshawur and Jelalabad, for many
years was the chief gateway between Europe and India. Even now the cost
of holding it is an enormous tax upon England.
Brenner, St. Gotthard, and the Mont Cenis Passes are about the only land
channels of commerce between Italy and transalpine Europe, and most of
the communication between northern Italy and the rest of Europe is
carried on by means of these passes. Every transcontinental railway of
the American continent crosses the various highlands by means of gaps
and passes, and some of them would never have been built were it not for
the existence of the passes. Fremont, South, and Marshall Passes have
been of historic importance for half a century.
The Hudson and Champlain Valley played an important part in the history
of the colonies a century before the existence of the United States, and
its importance as a gateway to eastern Canada is not likely to be
lessened. The Mohawk gap was the first practical route to be maintained
between the Atlantic seaboard and the food-producing region of the Great
Central Plain. It is to-day the most important one. It is so nearly
level that the total lift of freight going from Buffalo to tide-water is
less than five hundred feet.
[Illustration: A PASS--THE ROUTE OF A RAILWAY]
=Rivers.=--River-valleys are closely connected with the economic
development of a country. Navigable rivers are free and open highways of
communication. In newly settled countries the river is always the least
expensive means of carriage, and often it is the only one available for
the transportation of heavy goods.
In late years, since the railway has become the chief means for the
transportation of commodities, river transportation has greatly
declined. The river-valley, however, has lost none of its importance; in
most instances it is a naturally levelled and graded route, highly
suitable for the tracks of the railway. As a result, outside of the
level lands of the Great Central Plain, not far from eighty per cent. of
the railway mileage of the United States is constructed along
river-valleys.
=Plateaus.=--Plateaus are usually characterized by broken and more or less
rugged surface features. As a rule they are deficient in the amount of
rainfall necessary to produce an abundance of the grains and similar
food-stuffs, although this is by no means the case with all.
Most plateaus produce an abundance of grass, and cattle-growing is
therefore an important industry in such regions. Thus, the plateaus of
the Rocky Mountains are famous for cattle, and the same is true of the
Mexican and the South American plateaus. The Iberian plateau, including
Spain and Portugal, is noted for the merino sheep, which furnish the
finest wool known. The plateau of Iran is also noted for its wool, and
the rugs from this region cannot be imitated elsewhere in the world.
=Plains.=--Plains are of the highest importance to life and its
activities. Not only do they present fewer obstacles to
intercommunication than any other topographic features, but almost
always they are deeply covered with the fine rock-waste that forms the
chief components of soil. Plains, therefore, contain the elements of
nutrition, and are capable of supporting life to a greater extent than
either mountains or plateaus. About ninety per cent. of the world's
population dwell in the lowland plains.
The Great Central Plain of North America produces more than one-quarter
of the world's wheat, and about four-fifths of the corn. The southern
part of the great Arctic plain, and its extension, the plains of the
Baltic also yield immense quantities of grain and cattle products. The
coast-plains of the Atlantic Ocean, on both the American and the
European side, are highly productive.
River flood-plains are almost always densely peopled because of their
productivity. The bottom-lands of the Mississippi and the Yangtze Rivers
are among the chief food-producing regions of the world. Lacustrine
plains, the beds of former lakes, are also highly productive regions.
The valley of the Red River of the North is an example, and its wheat is
of a very high quality.
Fertile coast-plains and lowlands that are adjacent to good harbors, as
a rule are the most thickly peopled regions of the world. In many such
regions the density of population exceeds two hundred or more per square
mile. The reason is obvious. Life seeks that environment which yields
the greatest amount of nutrition with the least expenditure of energy.
The study of a good relief map shows that, as a rule, the Pacific Ocean
is bordered by a rugged highland, which has a more or less abrupt slope,
and a narrow coast-plain. Indeed, the latter is absent for the greater
part. The slopes of the Atlantic, on the other hand, are long and
gentle--being a thousand miles or more in width throughout the greater
part of their extent. The area of productive land is correspondingly
great, and the character of the surface features is such that
intercommunication is easy.
[Illustration: A RIVER FLOOD-PLAIN--A REGION ADAPTED TO CULTIVATION]
The result of these conditions is evident. The Atlantic slopes, though
not everywhere the most densely peopled areas, contain the great centres
of the world's activities and economies. In the past 400 years they have
not only overtaken the Pacific coast races, but have far surpassed them.
They are now entering upon a commercial invasion of the Pacific nations
that is resulting in a reorganization of the entire industrial world.
=Topography and Trade Routes.=--As the settlement and commerce of a
country grow, roads succeed trails, and trails are apt to follow the
paths of migrating animals. Until the time of the Civil War in the
United States, most of the great highways of the country were the direct
descendants of "buffalo roads," as they were formerly called.
In the crossing of divides from one river-valley to another, the
mountain-sections of the railways for the greater part follow the trails
of the bison. This is especially marked in the Pennsylvania, the
Baltimore and Ohio, and the Chesapeake and Ohio railways; in some
instances the tunnels through ranges have been constructed directly
under the trails. The reason is obvious; the instinct of the bison led
him along routes having the minimum of grade.
Throughout the Mississippi Valley and the great plains the Indian trails
usually avoided the bottom-lands of the river-valleys, following the
divides and portages instead. This selection of routes was probably due
to the fact that the lowlands were swampy and subject to overflow; the
portages and divides offered no steep grades, and were therefore more
easily traversed.
[Illustration: WHERE COMMODITIES ARE EXCHANGED--NEW YORK CITY
WATER-FRONT]
=Harbors.=--Coast outlines have much to do with the commercial
possibilities of a region. The "drowned valleys" and similar inlets
along the North Atlantic coast, both of Europe and America, form harbors
in which vessels ride at anchor in safety, no matter what the existing
conditions outside may be. As a result, the two greatest centres of
commerce in the world are found at these harbors--one on the American,
the other on the European coast.
From New York Bay southward along the Atlantic seaboard there are but
few harbors, and this accounts for the enormous development of commerce
in the stretch of coast between Portland and Baltimore. San Francisco
Bay and the harbors of Puget Sound monopolize most of the commerce of
the Pacific coast of the United States. South America has several good
harbors on the Atlantic seaboard, and in consequence a large city has
grown at the site of each. On the Pacific coast the good harbors are
very few in number, and they are not situated near productive regions.
Asiatic peoples, as a rule, are not promoters of foreign commerce, and,
those of Japan excepted, the only good harbors are those that have been
improved by European governments. These are confined mainly to India and
China. The many possible harbors make certain a tremendous commerce in
the future. Africa has but very few good harbors. There are excellent
harbors in the islands of the Pacific, and many of them are of great
strategic value as coaling stations and bases of supply to the various
maritime powers.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
The Pennsylvania Railroad has found it more economical to tunnel the
mountain-range under Horseshoe Curve, near Altoona, than to haul the
trains over the mountains; discuss the details in which there will be a
saving.
Why are rugged and mountainous regions apt to be sparsely peopled?
The first valuable discovery in the Rocky Mountains was gold; what were
the chief effects that resulted?
Would the industries of the Pacific coast of the United States be
benefited or impaired by the existence of a coast-plain?
Which are more conducive to commerce--the large mediterraneans, such as
the Gulf of Mexico, or the small estuaries, such as New York Bay?
Discuss the merits or demerits of each.
What are the chief products of mountains, of plateaus, of lowland
plains?
COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--Chapter I.
Redway's Physical Geography--Chapter IV.
A topographic map of the United States.
[Illustration: MEAN ANNUAL RAINFALL]
CHAPTER IV
CLIMATIC CONTROL OF COMMERCE
In its effect upon life and the various industries of peoples, climate
is a factor even more important than topography. Of the 53,000,000
square miles of the land surface of the earth, scarcely more than
one-half is capable of producing any great amount of food-stuffs, and
only a very small area can support a population of more than one hundred
people to each square mile.
=Climate and Habitability.=--In the main, regions that are inhabited by
human beings produce either food-stuffs or something of value that may
be exchanged for food-stuffs; and inasmuch as food and shelter are the
chief objects of human activity, regions that will not furnish them are
not habitable.
The growth and production of food-stuffs is governed even more by
conditions of climate than by those of topography. Thus the great
Russian plain is too cold to produce any great amount of food-stuffs,
and it is, therefore, sparsely peopled. The northern part of Africa and
the closed basins of North America and Asia lack the rainfall necessary
to insure productivity, and these regions are also unhabitable. The
basin of the Amazon has a rainfall too great for cereals and grasses,
and the larger part of it is unfit for habitation.
All the food-stuffs are exceedingly sensitive to climate. Rice will not
grow where swampy conditions do not prevail at least during part of the
year. Turf-grass will not live where there are repeated droughts of more
than three months' duration, and corn will not ripen in regions having
cool nights. Wheat does not produce a kernel fit for flour anywhere
except in the temperate zone; and the banana will not grow outside the
torrid zone.
The two chief factors of climate are temperature and moisture. No forms
of life can withstand a temperature constantly below the freezing-point
of water, and but few, if any, can endure a constant heat of one hundred
and twenty-five degrees, although most species can exist at temperatures
beyond these limits for a short time.
=Zones of Climate.=--The belt of earth upon which the sun's rays are
nearly or quite vertical is comparatively narrow. But the inclination of
the earth's axis and the fact that it is parallel to itself at all times
of the year create zones of climate. These differ materially in the
character of the life, forms, and the activities of the people who dwell
in them.
In the torrid zone the temperature varies but little. During the season
of rains it rarely falls to 70 deg. F., and in the dry season it is seldom
higher than 95 deg. F. As a result, all sorts of plants that are sensitive
to low temperatures thrive in the torrid zone. It is not a climate
suitable for heat-producing food-plants, and they are not required.
The constant heat and excessive moisture of the atmosphere in the torrid
zone is apt to produce a feeling of lassitude among the dwellers in such
regions, moreover, and great bodily activity is out of question. These
conditions seriously affect the lives of the people, and, with few
exceptions, tropical peoples are rarely noted for energy or enterprise.
Great commercial enterprises are the exception rather than the rule, and
they are usually carried on by foreigners who must live a part of the
time in cooler localities.
[Illustration: THE EFFECTS OF HIGH LATITUDE--TOO COLD TO PRODUCE
BREAD-STUFFS]
Polar regions are deficient both in the heat and light necessary for
food-stuffs. Neither the grasses nor the grains fructify. As a result,
but few herbivora can live there, and these are practically restricted
to the musk-ox and the reindeer, which subsist on mosses and lichens.
The native people are stunted in growth; their food consists mainly of
raw blubber, and they are scarcely above savagery.
The temperate zones are the regions of the great industries and
activities of human life. The larger part of the land surface of the
earth is situated in these zones; moreover, the people who dominate the
world also live in them, and their supremacy is due largely to
conditions of climate. The alternation of summer and winter causes a
struggle for existence that develops the intellectual faculties and
results in industrial supremacy.
=Effects of Altitude.=--There is a decrease of temperature of 1 deg. F. for
about every three hundred feet of ascent. But few people live at an
altitude of more than six thousand feet above sea-level, and in many
cases they depend on other localities for the greater part of their
food-stuffs, because very few of such regions produce food-stuffs
abundantly.
The chief exceptions to this rule are found in tropical regions. The
highlands of Mexico, the plateau-regions of Bolivia and Ecuador, and the
highlands of southern Asia are habitable, but they are not densely
peopled. Because of their altitude they are relieved of the enervating
effects of tropical climate at the sea-level.
Altitude likewise affects the amount of rainfall. Most plateaus are
arid. As a rule, they are arid because of their altitude; and because of
their aridity they are deficient in their power to produce food-stuffs.
They are therefore sparsely peopled.
=Effects of Rainfall.=--Regions having considerably more than one hundred
inches of rain annually are very apt to be forest-covered, and
therefore to be deficient in food-producing plants. Such localities have
usually a sparse population, in spite of the profusion of vegetation. In
some parts of India, lands that have been left idle for a few seasons
produce such a dense jungle of wild vegetation that to reclaim them for
cultivation is wellnigh impossible.
A deficiency of rainfall is even a greater factor in restricting the
density of population than too much rain. With less than fifteen or
twenty inches a year few regions produce good crops of grains and
grasses, and as a result they are sparsely peopled. Some of the
exceptions, however, are important. If the rainfall is not quite enough
to produce a normal overflow to the sea, the soil may be very rich,
because the nutrition is not leached out and carried away.
Many small areas of this character produce enormous crops when
artificially watered, and many of them, such as Persia, parts of Asia
Minor, northern Utah, and large areas of Australia and Chile have become
regions of considerable commercial importance. The products of such
regions are apt to be unique in character and of unusual value. Thus,
the wool of Persia and Australia and the fruit of the Iberian peninsula
are important articles of commerce.
In Egypt one may see the results of irrigated lands. The area of
geographical Egypt is somewhat less than half a million square miles;
the habitable part of the country is confined to a narrow strip, which,
one or two places excepted, varies from three to six miles in width. In
other words, almost the whole population of the country is massed in the
flood-plain and delta of the Nile; the remaining part is a desert
producing practically nothing.
The water that makes these lands productive falls, not in Egypt, but in
the highlands of Abyssinia, 2,000 miles away. The September overflow of
the flood-plain is the chief factor in the irrigation of these lands,
but the area has been greatly increased by the construction of barrages
and dams at Assiut and Assuan.
In the western highland region of the United States considerable areas
already have been made productive by irrigation, and it is estimated
that about two million acres of barren land can be reclaimed by
impounding the waters of the various streams now running to waste.
The distribution of rain with respect to the season in which it falls is
quite as important as its distribution with respect to quantity. In
tropical regions the ocean winds, and therefore the rainfall, come from
the east. The eastern slopes of such regions, therefore, have a season
in which rains may be expected daily, and another in which no rain falls
for several months. In the temperate zones seasonal rains for a similar
reason are on the western coasts.
Thus on the Pacific coast of the United States the rainfall varies from
about one hundred inches in southern Alaska to about twelve in San
Diego, Cal. Practically all the rain falls between October and the
following May; very little or none falls in the interval between May and
October. As a result, ordinary turf-grass, which will not withstand long
droughts, grows in only a few localities of the Pacific slope. It is
replaced by hardier grasses whose roots, instead of forming turf, grow
very deep in the soil.
Common clover will not grow in this region unless irrigated; it is
replaced by burr-clover, a variety of the plant that will not thrive in
moist regions. Now the quality of the merino wool clip of California
depends in no slight degree upon the burr-clover and other food-products
that thrive in regions of seasonal rains; that is, a great commercial
industry exists because of this feature of rainfall, and it could not
long survive in spite of it.
[Illustration: CLIMATICALLY ADAPTED TO CULTIVATION--THE LOWLANDS
PRODUCE BREAD-STUFFS AND FRUIT; THE MOUNTAIN-SLOPES ARE GRAZING REGIONS]
The seasonal rainfall also affects other agricultural industries. The
sacked wheat-crop may be left in the field without cover or protection
until the time is convenient for shipping it. The absence of summer
rains makes possible in California what would be out of question in the
Mississippi Valley, where a rainstorm may be expected every few days.
The quality of certain fruits depends largely on the season during which
the rainfall occurs. Apples, pears, and grapes grown in regions having
dry summers have usually a very superior flavor. The raisin-making
industry of California also depends on the same condition, because, in
order to insure a good quality of the product, the bunches of grapes,
after picking, must be dried on the ground. To a certain extent this is
also true of other fruits, such as dates, figs, and prunes, which
frequently are sun-dried.
The presence of large bodies of water, which both absorb and give out
their heat very slowly, tempers the climate of the nearby land and to
that extent modifies the commerce of such districts. The grape-growing
industry of central New York is a great one and its product is famous.
Its existence depends almost wholly upon the lake-tempered climate.
Elsewhere in the State the industry is on a precarious basis, and the
product is inferior.
=Effects of Inclination of the Earth's Axis.=--The inclination and
self-parallelism of the earth's axis is undoubtedly a very important
factor in climate. Practically it more than doubles the width of the
belts of ordinary food-stuffs by lengthening the summer day in the
temperate zone. Beyond the tropics the obliquity of the sun's rays are
more than balanced by the increased length of time in which they fall.
Thus, in the latitude of St. Paul, the longest day is about fifteen and
one-half hours long; at Liverpool it is nearly seventeen hours long; a
greater number of heat units therefore are received in these latitudes
during summer than are received in equatorial regions during the
twelve-hour day. Moreover, the summer temperature is higher in these
latitudes than in the torrid zone, because the sun is shining upon them
for a greater length of time.
The result of these various influences is far-reaching. Because of the
long summer days and short nights, wheat can be cultivated to the
sixtieth parallel. Corn, which gets scarcely enough warmth and light in
the torrid zone to become a prolific crop, attains its greatest yield in
the latitude of fourteen-hour days.
These factors, it is evident, carry the grain and meat industries into
regions that otherwise would not be habitable. Because the long summer
days produce these great food-crops, commerce and its allied industries
have reached their maximum development in these regions. Human
activities are greatest in the zones bounded by the thirty-fifth and
fifty-fifth parallels, the zone that includes the greater parts of the
United States, Europe, China, Japan. They are greatest, moreover,
because of their geographical position.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What would be the probable effect on the food-crops of the United States
were the main body of the country moved twenty degrees north in
latitude? Which would then be the wheat-growing States, the
cotton-producing States?
Illustrate the connection between occupation and altitude above
sea-level.
What difference would it make to the corn-crop were the days and nights
always twelve hours long?
What would be requisite to make Canada a centre of silk production?
Why is not cod-fishing an industry off the east coast of Florida?
Why is the greater part of the Russian Empire destined to be sparsely
peopled?
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
A rain chart of the world.
A chart of isothermal lines.
CHAPTER V
TRANSPORTATION--OCEAN AND INLAND NAVIGATION
Of all the adjustments which come into the lives of a people none has
been so far-reaching as the gradual localization of industries each in
the region best adapted to it. For instance, manufacturing industries
require power, but not fertile soil; therefore the manufacturing
industries seek nearness to fuel or to water-power, and a position
available for quick transportation.
Farming does not require any great amount of natural power; on the
contrary, level land having a great depth of fertile soil is the
essential feature. The farmer must therefore look first of all to
conditions of topography and climate, and secondly to the means of
transporting his crop.
Mining cannot be an industry in regions destitute of minerals; the miner
must therefore go where the mineral wealth is found, without regard to
climate, soil, centres of population, or topography. But two things are
required--the mineral products and the means of getting them to the
people--that is, ready means of transportation.
A century or more ago, each centre of population in the United States
was practically self-sustaining. Each grew its own food-stuffs, and
manufactured the articles used in the household. But very little was
required in the way of transportation. The means of carriage were mainly
ox-carts, pack-horses, and rafts. There was a mutual independence among
the various centres, it is true, but the independence was at the expense
of civilization and the comforts of life.
[Illustration: OCEAN TRANSPORTATION--ROYAL MAIL STEAMSHIP OCEANIC,
WHITE STAR LINE]
Beyond an independence that is more apparent than real, such a plan of
social and industrial organization has but little in it to commend.
Intercommunication increases knowledge, and under the conditions that
formerly prevailed, there was a lack of the breadth of knowledge that
comes with the mutual contact of peoples.
The utilization of national resources, such as the productiveness of the
land, the existence of iron ore, coal, copper, and other economic
minerals, finally brought about the policy of a territorial division of
industries. This, in turn, made the prompt transportation and exchange
of commodities essential; indeed, without such a plan, industrial
centres could not long exist.
The man whose sole business is manufacture must look to others for his
supply of food-stuffs and raw materials, and these are produced more
economically at a distance from the centre of manufacture. Thus England
must look to the United States for wheat and cotton, to the Australian
Commonwealth for wool, and to New Zealand and the United States for
meat. Her chief wealth is in her coal and iron, and these make the
nation a great manufacturing centre. So, also, the manufacturer of New
York must go to Pittsburg for steel, to Minneapolis for flour, and to
Chicago for beef.
The application of this principle is very broad; it is the foundation of
all commerce, and it underlies modern civilization. For this reason the
question of transportation is just as important to a community as the
industries of agriculture, mining, and manufacture. Food-stuffs are of
no use unless they can be transported to the people who want them; nor
can peoples remain in unproductive regions unless the food-stuffs are
brought to them.
The gross tonnage of goods is transported mainly in one or another or
all of three ways--namely, by animal power, by railway, or by water.
Thus, the cotton-crop of the United States is usually transported by
wagon from the plantation to the nearest station or boat-landing; by
rail or by barge to the nearest seaport; and by ocean steamship to the
foreign seaport.
Water transportation is more economical than land carriage, for the
reason that less power is required to move a given tonnage through the
water than on the most perfectly graded railway. Steamship freights, as
a rule, are lower than those of sailing-vessels, because a steamship has
more than twice the speed, and, being larger, can carry a greater
tonnage. Freight rates on the Great Lakes are higher per ton-mile than
on the ocean, because the vessels are necessarily smaller than those
built for ocean traffic. For a similar reason, river and canal freights
are higher than lake freights. Railway transportation is economical,
partly because a single locomotive will draw an enormous weight of
goods, and partly because of the high speed at which the goods move from
point to point. Animal transportation is more expensive than any other
means ordinarily employed.
=Ocean Transportation.=--In many respects, water-routes form the most
available and economical methods of transportation. Intercontinental
commerce must be carried on by means of deep-water vessels. Therefore an
extraordinary development of ocean carriers has taken place in the past
century.
One important period of development began with the rise of American
commerce. Just after the close of the War for Independence, it was found
that deep-water ships could be built of New England timber for
thirty-five dollars per ton, rated tonnage, while a vessel of the same
burden built in Europe cost about forty-five dollars per unit of
tonnage. Two types of vessels came into use--one, the clipper ship with
square sails, was used for long ocean voyages; the other, the schooner,
with fore-and-aft rigging, was employed mainly in the coast-trade.
[Illustration: A SQUARE-RIGGED SHIP--A TYPE NOW BEING REPLACED BY
FORE-AND-AFT RIGGED SCHOONERS]
In speed and ease of management these vessels surpassed anything that
had ever sailed. In time they became the standards for the
sailing-vessels of all the great commercial nations. The types of the
vessels are still standards.
[Illustration: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN STEAMSHIP]
=The Development of the Steamship.=--Another important era in ocean
commerce began when steam was used as a motive power for vessels. The
first deep-water vessel thus to be propelled was the Savannah. Her
steam-power was merely incidental, however, and her paddle-wheels were
unshipped and taken aboard when there was enough wind for sailing. Up
to 1860 almost all the ocean steamships were side-wheelers, propelled by
low-pressure beam-engines.
The next most important improvement was the screw-blade propeller,
placed astern. This means of propulsion called for higher speed of the
engines, and in a very short time compactly built high-pressure engines
took the place of the low-pressure engine with its heavy walking-beam.
The latter carried steam at a pressure varying from twenty to thirty-two
pounds; the modern boiler has steam at 260 pounds per square inch.
Ocean steamships have gradually evolved into two types. The freighter,
broad in beam and capacious, is built to carry an enormous amount of
freight at a moderate speed. The White Star liner Celtic is a vessel of
this class; her schedule time between New York and Liverpool is about
nine days. The Philadelphia of the American line, though not the fastest
steamship, makes the same trip in an average time of five and one-half
days.[7]
Twin-screws, instead of a single propeller, are employed on nearly all
the large liners. The gain in speed is not greatly increased, but the
vessel is far more manageable with two screws than with one; moreover,
if one engine breaks down, the vessel can make excellent time with the
other.
Triple-expansion engines are almost universally used on modern
steamships, and a pound of coal now makes about three times as much
steam available as in the engines formerly used. As a result a bushel of
wheat is now carried from Fargo, N. Dak., to Liverpool for about
twenty-one cents--less than one-half the freight tariff of 1876.
[Illustration: THE SCHOONER THOMAS A. LAWSON. THE FIRST SEVEN-MASTED
SAILING-VESSEL]
The fastest liners consume from three hundred and fifty to more than
four hundred tons of coal a day, and for each additional knot of speed
the amount of coal burned must be greatly increased. Freighters like the
Celtic consume scarcely more than half as much as those of the Kaiser
Wilhelm II. type.
=Sailing-Craft.=--In spite of the growth and development of
steam-navigation, a large amount of freight is still carried by
sailing-craft; moreover, it is not unlikely that the relative proportion
of ocean freight carried by sailing-vessels will increase rather than
decrease, especially in the case of imperishable freight.
The square-rigged ship, or bark, has been very largely replaced by the
fore-and-aft, or schooner-rigged vessel. A large full-rigged ship
requires a crew of thirty to thirty-six men; a schooner-rigged vessel
needs from sixteen to twenty. These vessels are commonly built with
three and four masts; some of the largest have six or seven. They carry
as many as five thousand tons of freight at a speed of about ten
knots--only a trifle less than that of an ordinary tramp freighter. Some
of the larger vessels are provided with auxiliary engines and propelling
apparatus, which enables them to enter or to leave port without the
assistance of a tug. Donkey-engines hoist and lower the sails, and
perform the work of loading and unloading. They are admirable colliers
and grain-carriers.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, about ninety thousand
sailing-craft and thirty-five thousand steam-vessels were required to
carry the world's commerce. Of this number, Great Britain and her
colonies register nearly thirty-five thousand, and the United States
over twenty thousand.
HARBOR SAFEGUARDS.--Excepting the open anchorages formed by angles
in coast-lines, the greater number of harbors consist of small
coves and river-mouths. In these, although there may be a
considerable area of water, there is not apt to be much sailing
room; it is therefore necessary to mark off the navigable channels.
For this purpose buoys of different shapes and colors are used by
day; by night fixed and flashing lights are employed.
The buoys of permanent channels are usually hollow metal cylinders
or cones about two feet in diameter, anchored so that the end of
the cylinder projects about three feet above the water. On entering
a channel from the seaward, red buoys are on the starboard, or
right hand; white buoys are kept on the port, or left side. Buoys
at the end of a channel are usually surmounted each by some device
or other fastened at the upper end of a perch. Thus, at the outer
entrance of Gedney Channel in New York Harbor, a ball surmounts the
perch; at the inner entrance the buoy carries a double square.
Sharp angles in a channel are similarly marked. In many instances
the buoy carries, as a warning signal, a bell that rings as the
buoy is rocked by the waves; in others, a whistle that sounds by
the air which the rocking motion compresses within the cylinder;
still others carry electric or gas lights.
The color of a buoy is an index of its character. Thus, one with
black and red stripes indicates danger; one with black and white
vertical stripes is a channel-marker. Temporary channels are
frequently marked by pieces of spar floating upright. In some cases
it is customary to set untrimmed tree-tops on the port, and trimmed
sticks on the starboard.
Light-houses are built at all exposed points of navigated
coast-waters, and beacons are set at all necessary points within a
harbor for use at night. All lights are kept burning from sunset
until sunrise. The color, the duration, and the intervals of
flashing indicate the position of the beacon. In revolving lights
the beams, concentrated by powerful lenses, sweep the horizon as
the lantern about the light revolves. Flashing lights are produced
when the light is obscured at given intervals. Fixed lights burn
with a steady flame. In some instances a sector of colored glass is
set so as to cover a given part of a channel. Range lights, set so
that one shows directly above the other, are used as
channel-markers.
[Illustration: CITY OF NEW YORK AND VICINITY, WITH HARBOR
APPROACHES.]
The use of lights may be seen as a vessel enters New York Lower
Bay. A steamship drawing not more than eighteen feet of water may
enter through Swash Channel (_follow the course on the chart_). In
this case the pilot makes for Scotland lightship, and merely keeps
New Dorp and Elmtree beacons in range, giving Dry Romer a wide
berth to starboard, until Chapel Hill and Conover beacons come into
range on his port side. The vessel is then held on a course between
Coney Island and Fort Tompkins lights until Robbins Reef light
shows ahead.
For the liners that draw more than eighteen feet the task is more
difficult, inasmuch as the channel is tortuous. At Sandy Hook
lightship a course lying nearly west takes the vessel to the outer
entrance of Gedney Channel, marked by two buoy-lights. In passing
between the lights the vessel enters the channel, which is also
covered by the red sector of Hook beacon. The pilot continues
between the buoy-lights until Waacaack and Point Comfort beacons
are in range, and steers to this range until South Beacon and Sandy
Hook light are in range astern. The helm is then turned, keeping
these lights in range astern until Chapel Hill and Conover beacons
are in range on the port bow. Turning northward nearly eight
points, the pilot holds the bow of the vessel between Fort Tompkins
and Coney Island lights, keeping sharply to his range astern, until
Robbins Reef light comes into view through the narrows. From this
point on, the shore lights are the pilot's chief guide.
So difficult are harbor entrances, that in most cases the
underwriters will not insure a vessel unless the latter is taken
from the outer harbor to the dock by a licensed pilot, and the
latter must spend nearly half a lifetime as an apprentice before he
receives a license. The charges for pilotage are usually regulated
by the number of feet the vessel draws. The charges differ in
various ports, but the devices for marking and lighting the
channels are much the same in every part of the world. In the
United States all navigable channels are under the control of the
general Government.
=Inland Waters.=--Lakes, rivers, and canals furnish a very important means
of transportation. In Europe and Canada an enormous amount of slow
freight is transported by their use; in China they are the most
important means of internal traffic.
[Illustration: THE COMMERCE OF THE OHIO--TOWING COAL TO THE STEEL
MILLS, PITTSBURG]
In the United States the Great Lakes with the Erie Canal and Hudson
River form the most important internal water-way, and by them the
continent is penetrated as far west as Duluth, a distance of more than
one thousand three hundred miles. The traffic passing out of Lake
Superior alone is about one-third greater than that passing out of the
Mediterranean Sea at the Suez Canal. Much of this traffic goes across
the continent, and the route in question is one of the great commercial
highways of the world.
The Mississippi River and its branches afford not far from ten thousand
miles of navigable waters. Canals connect tributaries of this river with
the Great Lakes at Chicago and at several points in Ohio. The
development of the navigation of this great water-way was checked by the
Civil War, and after the close of the war the great advance in railway
building kept its improvement in the background. The general government,
nevertheless, has done much to encourage the use of the Mississippi as a
commercial highway, and many millions of dollars have been spent in
widening and deepening its channel.[8] On the upper river grain and
lumber form the chief traffic; on the lower part a large part of the
world's cotton-crop starts on its journey to the various markets.
On account of the soft-coal fields and the steel manufacture in western
Pennsylvania, the commerce of the Ohio River is very heavy, aggregating
not far from fifteen million tons yearly. Much of this traffic extends
to ports on the Mississippi.
The navigable parts of the Hudson and Delaware Rivers are estuaries of
the sea or "drowned valleys." In each case navigation extends about to
the limits of high tide. Both rivers carry a heavy freight commerce; the
Hudson has a passenger traffic of several million fares each year.
Nearly every river of the Atlantic coast is navigable to the limit of
high tide or a little beyond. Navigation extends to the point where the
coast-plain joins the foot-hills. Above this limit, called the "Fall
Line," the streams are swift and shallow; below it they are deep and
sluggish. As a result, a chain of important river ports extends along
the Fall Line from Maine to Florida.
River-navigation in Europe in the main is inseparably connected with the
great canal systems. As a rule, the lower parts of the rivers are
navigable for steamboats of light draught. Some of the smaller streams
are made navigable by means of a long steel chain, which is laid along
the bed of the stream; the boat engages the chain by means of heavy
sprocket wheels driven by steam, and thus wind the boat up and down the
river.
Ocean steamers penetrate the Amazon Valley to a distance of one thousand
miles from its mouth; boats of light draught ascend the main stream and
some of its tributaries a thousand miles farther. The Orinoco is
navigable within one hundred miles of Bogota. Light-draught boats ascend
the tributaries of La Plata River a distance of fifteen hundred miles.
The Asian rivers that are important highways of commerce are few in
number. The Amur, Yangtze, Indus, and Cambodia have each considerable
local commerce. The Hugli, a channel in the delta of the Ganges, has a
channel deep enough for ocean steamships. The tributaries of the Lena,
Yenisei, and Ob have been of the greatest service in the commercial
development of northern Asia from the fact that their valleys are both
level and fertile.
Because of a high interior and abrupt slopes, the rivers of Africa are
not suitable for navigation to any considerable extent; the channels are
uncertain and the rivers are interrupted by rapids. The Nile has an
occasional steamboat service as far as the "First Cataract," but in high
water the service is sometimes extended farther. The Kongo has a long
stretch of navigable water, but is interrupted by rapids below Stanley
Pool. Similar conditions obtain in the Zambezi. The lower part of the
Senegal affords good navigation. The Niger has in many respects greater
commercial possibilities than other rivers of Africa. It is navigable to
a distance of three hundred miles.
=Canals.=--Canals easily rank among the most important means of traffic,
as a rule, supplementing other navigable waters. Thus, by means of an
elaborate system of canals, goods are transferred by water, from one
river-basin to another, so that practically all the navigable streams of
western Europe are connected. Canals are extensively used to avoid the
falls or rapids that separate the various reaches of rivers. The water
itself by means of locks lifts the boat to a higher level or transfers
it to a lower reach, thus saving the expense of unloading, transferring,
and reloading a cargo.
The manner in which canals supplement the obstructed navigation of a
river is seen in the case of the St. Lawrence. This river is obstructed
in several places by rapids, but by means of canals steamship service
connects the Great Lakes, not only with Quebec, but with ports of the
Mediterranean Sea as well; indeed, it is possible to send a cargo from
Duluth, at the head of Lake Superior, to Odessa or Batum, on the shores
of the Black Sea.
The internal water-ways of Canada have been splendidly developed. The
Canadian St. Marys Canal furnishes an outlet to Lake Superior for
vessels drawing twenty-one feet. The Welland Canal connects Lakes Erie
and Ontario. The Rideau Canal and River connect Kingston and Lake
Ontario with the Ottawa, and the latter with its canals is navigable to
the St. Lawrence. With a population of less than six millions the
Dominion Government has spent nearly one hundred million dollars in the
improvement of internal water-ways.
[Illustration: PROFILE OF ERIE CANAL
HORIZONTAL SCALE 100 MILES TO THE INCH, VERTICAL SCALE 1,000 FEET TO THE
INCH]
In the United States the possible development of canals has been
neglected and, to a certain extent, stifled by railway building. The
Erie Canal, built before the advent of the railway, connects Lake Erie
with tide-water at Albany, a distance of 387 miles. For many years it
was the chief means of traffic between the Mississippi Valley and the
Atlantic seaboard, and although paralleled by the six tracks of a great
railway system, it is still an important factor in the carriage of grain
and certain classes of slow freight.[9] The level way that made the
canal possible is largely responsible for the decline of its importance,
for the absence of steep grades enables a powerful locomotive to haul
so many cars that the quick transit more than overbalances a very low
ton rate by the canal.
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, designed to connect the Mississippi
Valley with the Atlantic seaboard, fared much worse than the Erie Canal.
Less than two hundred miles have been completed, and practically no work
except that of repair has been done since 1850; the heavy grades between
Cumberland and Pittsburg render its completion improbable.
An excellent system of canals, the Ohio and Erie and the Miami and Erie,
connect the Ohio River with Lake Erie. These canals are in the State of
Ohio and aggregate about six hundred miles in length. They are important
as coal and ore carriers. Several hundred miles of canals were built
along the river-valleys of eastern Pennsylvania before 1840 for carrying
coal to tide-water. Most of them have been abandoned; one, the Delaware
& Hudson Canal Co., survives as a railway. Inasmuch as the coal went on
a down grade from the mines to the markets, it could be carried more
economically by railway than by canal.
Of far greater importance are the St. Marys Canal on the Canadian side,
and the St. Marys Falls Canal on the American side, of St. Marys River.
These canals obviate the falls in St. Marys River and form the
commercial outlet of Lake Superior. The tonnage of goods, mainly iron
ore and coal, is about one-half greater than that of the Suez Canal.
About twenty-five thousand vessels pass through these canals yearly.
The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal,[10] from Lake Michigan to Lockport,
on the Illinois River, was designed mainly to carry the sewage of
Chicago which, prior to the construction of the canal, was poured into
the lake through the Chicago River. The completion of the canal turned
the course of the river and caused the water to flow out of the lake,
carrying the city's sewage. It is intended to complete a navigable
water-way from Chicago to St. Louis deep enough for vessels drawing
fourteen feet. Its value is therefore strategic as well as industrial,
for by means of it gun-boats may readily pass from the Gulf of Mexico to
the Great Lakes.
Oceanic canals are designed both for naval strategic purposes and for
industrial uses. Thus, the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, from the mouth of the
Elbe to Kiel Bay, across the base of Jutland, saves two days between
Hamburg and the Baltic ports. It also enables German war-vessels to
concentrate quickly in either the North or the Baltic Sea. The
Manchester Ship Canal makes Manchester a seaport and saves the cost of
trans-shipping freights by rail from Liverpool. The Corinth Canal across
the isthmus that joins the Peloponnesus to the mainland of Greece
affords a much shorter route between Italian ports and Odessa. The North
Holland Ship Canal makes Amsterdam practically a seaport.
Probably no other highway of commerce since the discovery of the Cape
route around Africa has caused such a great change and readjustment of
trade between Europe and Asia as the Suez Canal. Sailing-vessels still
take the Cape route, because the heavy towage tolls through the canal
more than offset the gain in time. Steamships have their own power and
generally take the canal route, thereby saving about ten days in time
and fuel, and about four thousand eight hundred miles in distance. In
spite of the heavy tolls the saving is considerable. About three
thousand five hundred vessels pass through the canal yearly.
The Suez Canal, constructed by Ferdinand de Lesseps, for some time was
under the control of French capitalists. Subsequently, by the purchase
of stock partly in open market and partly from the Khedive of Egypt, the
control of the canal passed into the hands of the English. The
restrictions placed upon the passage of war-ships is such that the canal
would be of little use to nations at war.
[Illustration: THE ROUTE OF THE PANAMA CANAL]
The necessity of an interoceanic canal across the American continent has
become more imperative year by year for fifty years. The discovery of
gold in California caused an emigration from the Atlantic to the Pacific
coast which resulted in a permanent settlement of the latter region. A
railway across the Isthmus of Panama and another across the Isthmus of
Tehuantepec have afforded very poor means of communication between
oceans.
In 1881 work on a tide-level canal across the Isthmus of Panama was
begun, but the plan was afterward changed to a high-level canal. The
change was thought necessary partly on account of the great cost of the
former, and partly because of the difficulties of constructing so deep a
cut--about three hundred and forty feet--at the summit of the Culebra
ridge. The construction company, after spending the entire
capital--about one hundred and twenty million dollars--in accomplishing
one-tenth of the work, became bankrupt. The United States subsequently
purchased the franchise.
A canal by way of Lake Nicaragua has also been projected, and two
treaties with Great Britain, whereby the United States agreed to build
no fortifications to guard it, have been made. No work beyond the
surveys has yet been undertaken, however. The cost of each canal is
estimated between one hundred and fifty million and two hundred million
dollars. The Panama route will require about twelve hours for the
passage of a vessel; the Nicaragua route about sixty hours.[11] (_See
map, p. 270._)
The completion of a canal by either route will cause a readjustment of
the world's commerce far greater than that which followed the
construction of the Suez Canal. By such a route San Francisco is brought
nearer to London than Calcutta now is, and the all-water route between
the Atlantic ports of the United States and those of China and Japan
will be shortened by upward of eight thousand miles. The importance of
the Hawaiian Islands, already a great ocean depot, will be greatly
increased, and the latter is becoming one of the great commercial
stations of the world.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What were some of the effects which resulted from the various embargo
and non-intercourse acts that preceded the war of 1812?
What is the effect upon an industry when all means of getting the
products to market are cut off?
In the early history of the country rivers were the most important
highways of commerce; obtain an account of some instance of this in
detail.
Certain commodities have been carried about four-fifths of the distance
between Moscow and Vladivostok by water, across Siberia. Illustrate
this, using the map of the Russian Empire, plate, p. 342.
What has been the effect of cheap steel on ocean navigation?
Discuss the difference between a screw-steamship and a side-wheeler; a
ship and a schooner. How are vessels steered?
How does a triple-expansion engine differ from an ordinary steam-engine?
Cargoes are carried by water across Europe from Havre to Marseilles, and
from The Hague to the mouth of the Danube; illustrate the route on a map
of Europe.
The following instruction occasionally is found in the pilothouse of a
vessel--what is its meaning?
"Green to green and red to red--
Perfect safety; go ahead."
From the chart on p. 49 show how a pilot uses the range lights in
entering New York Harbor.
The new freighter Minnesota is designed to carry a load of 30,000 tons;
how many trains of fifty cars, each car holding 30,000 pounds, are
required to furnish her cargo?
From the map on pp. x-xi describe the new ocean routes that will be
created by an interoceanic canal across the American continent.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Photographs or illustrations of various steam and sailing craft.
An Atlantic Coast Pilot Chart--any month.
A map showing the canals of the United States.
A map showing the canals of Europe.
[Illustration: A MODERN LOCOMOTIVE--THE TWENTIETH CENTURY LIMITED AT A
SPEED EXCEEDING NINETY MILES AN HOUR]
CHAPTER VI
TRANSPORTATION--RAILWAYS AND RAILWAY ORGANIZATION; PUBLIC HIGHWAYS
In the United States and western Europe, in spite of the low cost of
water transportation, the railways have almost wholly monopolized the
transportation of commodities. This is due in part to the saving of time
in transit--for under the demands of modern business, the only economy
is economy of time--and in part to prompt delivery at the specified
time.
Into a large centre of population like New York, London, or Berlin, many
millions of pounds of perishable food-stuffs must be brought daily for
consumption. Now these food-stuffs must be delivered with promptness,
and no delay can be tolerated. A shipper having half a million pounds of
meat or a hundred thousand pounds of flour or a car-load of fruit to
deliver can take no risks; he sends it by rail, not only because it is
the quickest way, but because experience has shown it to be the most
prompt way; as a rule, it is delivered on the exact minute of schedule
time.
Cargoes of silks and teas from China and Japan might be sent all the way
to London by water, but experience has shown a more profitable way. The
consignments are sent by swift steamships to Seattle; thence by fast
express trains to New York; there they are transferred to swift liners
that take them across the Atlantic to European ports. And although this
method of shipment is enormously expensive as compared with the
all-water route, the saving of time and certainty of prompt delivery
more than offset the extra cost of delivery.
In the last half of the nineteenth century the cost of haulage in the
United States by rail decreased so materially that in a few instances
only--notably the Great Lakes and the Hudson River--do inland waters
compete with the railways.[12] This is due in part to better
organization of the railways, but mainly to the substitution of Bessemer
steel for iron rails and the great improvements in locomotives and
rolling stock.
The use of a steam-driven locomotive became possible for the first time
when Stephenson used the tubular boiler and the forced draught,[13]
thereby making steam rapidly enough for a short, quick stroke. In 1865 a
good freight locomotive weighing thirty tons could haul about forty
box-cars, each loaded with ten tons. This was the maximum load for a
level track; the average load for a single locomotive was about
twenty-five or thirty cars. Heavier locomotives could not well be used
because the iron rails went to pieces under them.
The invention of Bessemer steel produced a rail that was safe under the
pounding of a locomotive three or four times as heavy as those formerly
employed; it produced boilers that would carry steam at 250 instead of
60 pounds pressure per square inch. As a result, with only a moderate
increase in the fuel burned, a single locomotive on a level track will
haul eighty or ninety box-cars, each carrying nearly seventy thousand
pounds.[14]
The application of the double and the triple expansion principle has
been quite as successful with locomotive as with marine engines in
saving fuel and gaining power--that is, it has decreased the cost per
ton-mile of hauling freight and likewise the cost of transporting
passengers. Enlarged "fire-boxes," or furnaces,[15] enable steam to be
made more rapidly and to give higher speed.[16] Only a few years ago
forty-eight hours was the scheduled time between New York and Chicago;
now there are about forty trains a day between these two cities, several
of which make the trip in twenty-four hours or less.
=Railway Development.=--The railway as a common carrier, having its right
by virtue of a government charter, dates from 1801, when a tramway was
built between Croydon and Wandsworth, two suburbs of London. The rails
were iron straps, nailed to wooden stringers. The charter was carefully
drawn in order to prevent the road from competing with omnibus lines and
public cabs.
When the steam locomotive succeeded horse-power, however, there
followed an era of railway development that in a few years
revolutionized the carrying trade in the thickly settled parts of the
United States and Europe. Short, independent lines were constructed
without any reference whatever to the natural movement of traffic. There
seemed but one idea, namely, to connect two cities or towns. Indeed, the
absence of a definite plan was much similar to that of the interurban
electric roads a century later; local traffic was the only
consideration.
At first an opinion prevailed that the road-bed of the railway ought to
be a public highway upon which any individual or company might run its
own conveyances, on the payment of a fixed toll; indeed, in both Europe
and the United States, public opinion could see no difference between
the railway and the canal. The employment of a steam-driven locomotive
engine, however, made such a plan impossible, and demonstrated that the
roads must be thoroughly organized.
At the close of 1850 there were nearly four hundred different railway
companies in England; in the United States about a dozen companies were
required to make the connection of New York City and Buffalo. A few of
these paid dividends; a large majority barely met their operating
expenses, defaulting the interest on their bonds; a great many were
hopelessly bankrupt.
=Consolidation of Connecting Lines.=--Between 1850 and 1865 a new feature
entered into railway management, namely, the union of connecting lines.
This was a positive advantage, for the operating expenses of the sixteen
lines, now a part of the New York Central, between New York and Buffalo
were scarcely greater than the expenses of one-third that number. The
service was much quicker, better, and cheaper. In England the several
hundred companies were reduced to twelve; in France the thirty-five or
more companies were reduced to six in number.
The consolidation of connecting lines brought about another desirable
feature--the extension of the existing lines.[17] The lines of
continental Europe were extended eastward to the Russian frontier, and
to Constantinople; then the Alps were surmounted. In the United States
railway extension was equally great. The Union and Central Pacific
railways were opened in 1869, giving the first all-rail route to the
Pacific coast. Other routes to the Pacific followed within a few years,
one of which, the Canadian Pacific, was built from Quebec to Vancouver.
[Illustration: A TRUNK SYSTEM--THE VARIOUS BRANCHES EXTEND INTO COAL,
GRAIN, IRON, CATTLE, TIMBER, AND TOBACCO REGIONS]
The period from 1864 was one of extensive railway building both in the
United States and Europe. Some of the roads, such as the transalpine
railways of Europe and the Pacific roads of the United States, were
greatly needed. Others that created new fields of industry by opening to
communication productive lands were also wise and necessary; the lands
would have been valueless without them. Not a few lines that were to be
needed in time were built so far ahead of time that they did not even
pay their operating expenses for many years.
Another class of roads was intended for speculative purposes. Thus,
there were instances in which a line occupying a given territory had
antagonized its patrons by poor service, and extortionate charges.
Thereupon another company would obtain a charter--which was then easily
done--and build a competing line in the same territory, the former most
likely having scarcely enough business for one road.[18] The results
were almost always the same; a war of rate-cutting followed; the
stockholders of both roads lost heavily; and one or both went into the
hands of receivers.
=Competition and Pools.=--In many instances the consolidation of roads,
while cutting off disastrous competition in the territory jointly
occupied by the two roads, brought the consolidated road into fierce
competition with another adjacent system. If the roads had practically
the same territory but different terminals the competition was confined
mainly to local traffic. On the other hand, they might have the same
terminals but cover different local territories; in this case the roads
must compete for through traffic. Thus the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy
is brought into competition with the Union Pacific in Nebraska, but
inasmuch as the roads have different and widely distant terminals, their
local traffic is easily adjusted. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and
the Northwestern have common terminals at Chicago, St. Paul, Denver,
Omaha, and Kansas City. They must therefore compete with each other, and
with half-a-dozen other roads for their through traffic.
Competition between railways differs greatly from that between two
firms. If one of two firms cannot afford to compete, the manager may
discharge his help, and close doors; he then does not suffer actual
loss. But a railway, being a common carrier, cannot do this; the road
must keep its trains moving or lose its charter. If it cannot carry
goods at a profit it must carry them at cost or at a loss. Even the
latter is better than not carrying them at all, for the operating
expenses of the road must go on.
So between 1870 and 1880 most of the railway managements were busy
devising ways to stop a rate-cutting and competition that was ruinous.
In many instances great trunk lines would have consolidated had not
State laws prevented. They could not maintain rates because one or
another of the weaker roads would be compelled to lower their rates in
order to meet their operating expenses. Therefore they were compelled to
do one of three things, namely, to divide the territory, to divide
traffic, or to divide earnings. Either of the two latter plans is called
a _pool_.
Of these two forms of pooling the division of the traffic is the easier,
but it is often unsatisfactory to the patrons of the road. The second
plan, the division of the earnings, is a more difficult matter to adjust
because each road is usually dissatisfied with its proportion. As a
matter of fact, however, the first plan of pooling is very apt to grow
into the second.
In several instances pools have been declared illegal by the courts,
but, in general, railway service has been more satisfactory under the
pool system than under any other. They have always aroused popular
suspicion, however, from the fact that they increase power of the
railway itself. In various instances important trunk lines have formed a
general company, each having its separate organization, because they
could accomplish under a combined organization what they could not as
independent companies. The restrictions against pooling have therefore
encouraged combination of competing lines.
Because the railway is an absolute necessity, and because it has power
given neither to individuals nor to other corporations, it is a settled
policy that both the State and general Government should have the power
to regulate its rates, and should in every way prevent unjust
discrimination. Both problems are very difficult, however, and the
unintelligent adjustment of rates has frequently resulted in injustice
both to the roads and their patrons.
A rate per ton-mile for each class of freight is out of question,
because a large part of the cost to the company consists in loading,
handling, and storing the goods. Once aboard the car, it costs but
little more to carry a ton of freight one hundred miles than to move it
one mile. The rates per mile, therefore, are necessarily greater for
short distances than for long runs. A mile-rate based on a ten-mile haul
would be prohibitive to the shipper if applied to a run between Chicago
and New York. On the other hand, were the charges based on the long run,
the local rates would be far less than the cost of the service.[19]
As a result freight rates are based very largely on the cost of the
service, and this is particularly true of local freights. This practice
is also modified by charging _what the traffic will bear_, and, on the
whole, a combination of the two ideas gives the most reasonable and the
fairest method of basing charges. Thus, a car filled with fine, crated
furniture, which is light and bulky, can afford a higher rate than one
filled with scrap-iron. Cars filled with grain, lumber, coal, or ore are
made up in train-loads, and form a part of the daily haul; they can
afford to be taken at a lower rate than the stuffs of which only an
occasional car-load is hauled. In order to adjust this problem it is
customary to divide freights into six general classes.
[Illustration: THE PROBLEM OF FREIGHT RATES]
In handling through freights the problems are many, and, if two or more
roads have the same terminal points, a great deal of friction of
necessity results. The longest roads must either make their through
rates lower than local rates between distant points, or lose much of
their through business. They cannot afford to do the latter and the
statutory laws may forbid the former. As a result the laws most likely
are evaded, or else openly disobeyed.[20]
The difficulties in adjusting the matter of the long and the short
haul, as has been shown, have caused the formation of pools and various
other traffic associations, the object of which has been to prevent
rate-wars. To this extent they resulted in positive good, for a
rate-war in the end is apt to be as hurtful to the community as to the
railway company. The attempt to settle such questions has also resulted
in a great deal of legislation. Some of this has been wise and good; but
not a little has been hurtful both to the railroads and to the
community. The general result is seen in the great combination of
competing lines and, more recently, of competing systems.
=Passenger Service.=--Passenger traffic is more easily managed than the
movement of freight. For the greater part the rates are fixed by law. On
a few eastern roads local rates are two cents per mile; in the main,
however, a three-cent rate prevails, except that in sparsely peopled
regions the rates are four and five cents per mile. On many roads
1,000-mile books are sold at the rate of twenty dollars; on some the
rate is twenty-five dollars per book.
Long-distance rates involving passage over several roads are somewhat
less than the local rates. These rates are determined by joint
passenger-tariff associations. Each individual road fixes its own
excursion and commutation rates; one or another of the joint passenger
associations determines the rates where several roads divide the
traffic. The latter are usually one, or one and one-third fares for the
round trip.
Except on a few local roads in densely peopled regions the passenger
service is much less remunerative than freight business, and not a few
railways would abolish passenger trains altogether were they permitted
to do so. Rate-cutting between competing roads has not been common since
the existence of joint passenger associations. It is sometimes done
secretly, however, through the use of ticket-brokers, or "scalpers," who
are employed to sell tickets at less than the usual rate; it is also
done by the illicit use of tickets authorized for given purposes, such
as "editors'," "clergymen's," and "advertising" transportation.
In many instances, where several roads have the same terminal points, it
is customary for the road or roads having the quickest service to allow
a lower rate to the others. Thus, of the seven or eight roads between
New York and Chicago, the two best equipped roads charge a fare of
twenty dollars on their ordinary, and a higher rate on their limited,
trains. Because of slower time the other roads charge a sum less by two
or three dollars for the same service. This cut in the rate is called a
"differential."
=Railway Mileage.=--The railways of the world in 1900 had an aggregate of
nearly four hundred and eighty thousand miles distributed as follows:
North America 216,000
Europe 173,000
Asia 36,000
South America and West Indies 28,000
Australasia 15,000
Africa 12,000
In western Europe and the eastern United States there is an average of
one mile of railway to each six or eight square miles of area. In these
countries railway construction has reached probably its highest
development, and the proportion seems to represent the mileage necessary
for the commercial interests of the people.
The railways of the United States aggregate 193,000 miles--nearly
one-half the total mileage of the world. Over this enormous trackage
38,000 locomotives and 1,400,000 coaches and cars carry yearly
600,000,000 passengers and 1,000,000,000 tons of freight. They represent
an outlay of about $5,000,000,000. Owing to the absence of the
international problems that have greatly interfered with the
organization of European railways, the roads of the United States have
developed "trunk-system" features to a higher degree than is found
elsewhere.
In the United States and Canada the farms of the great central plain,
together with the coal-mines, are the great centres of production, while
the seaports of the two coasts form great centres of distribution. Most
of the trunk lines, therefore, extend east and west; of the north and
south lines only two are important. The reason for the east-west
direction of the great trunk lines is obvious; the great markets of
North America, Europe, and Asia lie respectively to the east and the
west.
[Illustration: THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE RAILWAYS OF THE UNITED STATES
THEIR POSITION DEPENDS ON THE PRODUCTION OF THE LAND]
=Railway Ownership.=--The ownership of railways is vested either in
national governments or else in corporate companies; in only a few
instances are roads held individually by private owners, and these are
mainly lumber or plantation roads. Thus, the railways of Prussia are
owned by the state; most of those of the smaller German states are owned
either by the state or by the empire; still others are owned by
corporate companies and managed by the imperial government. In their
management military use is considered as first in importance.
In France governmental ownership and management have been less
successful. Plans for an elaborate system of state railways failed, and
the state now owns and operates only 1,700 miles, mainly, in the
southwest. Belgium controls and operates all her lines, but as the
latter are short and the area of the state small, there are no
difficulties in the way of excellent management. In Great Britain all
the railways are owned and controlled by corporate companies. The great
transcontinental line of the Russian Empire was built by the government,
but the latter does not own it.
In the United States the railways are now owned by corporate companies.
Some of the western roads were built by Government subsidies;[21] other
roads were built by the aid of States, counties, or cities, which
afterward sold them to corporate companies. The first transcontinental
railways required Government assistance, and could not have been built
without it; nowadays, however, corporate companies find no difficulty in
providing the capital for any railway that is needed.
Inasmuch as the railway is a positive necessity, upon whose existence
depends the transportation of the food daily required in the great
centres of population, the charter of the railway gives the company
extraordinary powers. Most steam railway companies are permitted by the
State to exercise the power of _eminent domain_--that is, they may seize
and hold the land on which to locate their tracks and buildings, if it
cannot be acquired by the consent of the owners; they may also seize
coal and other materials consigned to them for shipment if such
materials are necessary to operate their lines.
Therefore, in consideration of the unusual powers possessed by the
companies, the various States reserve the right to regulate the freight
and passenger tariffs. They may also compel the companies to afford
equal facilities to all patrons, and take the measures necessary to
prevent discrimination.
The control of the railways by the government may be absolute, as in the
German state of Prussia; or it may consist of a general supervision, as
in the case of the Canadian railways. In almost every European state
there is a director or else a commission to act as a representative
between the railways and the people. In the United States the various
States have each a railway commission, while the general Government is
represented by the Interstate Commerce Commission.
=Electric Railways.=--The use of electricity as a motive power has not
only revolutionized suburban traffic but it has become a great factor in
rural transportation as well. The speed of the horse-car rarely exceeded
five or six miles per hour, while that of the electric car is about ten
miles per hour in city streets and about twice as great over rural
roads. As a result, the suburban limits of the large centres of
population have greatly extended, and the population of the outlying
districts has been increased from four to ten fold.
[Illustration: ELECTRIC RAILWAY--ROCKY MOUNTAINS]
[Illustration: ELECTRIC FREIGHT LOCOMOTIVE--ERIE RAILROAD]
From some of the larger cities the electric roads reach out to
distances of one hundred miles or more and have become the carriers of
perishable freight, such as fruit and dairy products. These are not only
delivered just as promptly as though they were sent over the steam
roads, but the delivery is more frequent. Indeed, the marvellous success
of the electric interurban railway is due mainly to the frequency of its
service.
=Public Roads and Highways.=--Carriages propelled by steam, electric, and
gasoline motors have become an important factor in the delivery of goods
in nearly every city of Europe and America. They are not only speedier
than the horse and wagon, but their keeping costs less. They are
economical only on good roads. The bicycle, no longer a plaything,
exerted a very decided effect on transportation when the "pneumatic" or
inflated rubber tire came into use. Through the bicycle came the demand
for good roads; and several thousand miles of the best surfaced roads
are built in the United States each year.
The ordinary highways or roads, the paved streets of the large cities
excepted, are popularly known either as "dirt" roads or "macadamized"
roads, the latter name being applied to about every sort of graded
highway that has been surfaced with broken rock. Most of the roads of
western Europe are of this character. They are laid out with easy
grades, and a thick foundation of heavy stone is covered with smaller
pieces of broken rock, the whole being finished off with a top-dressing
of fine material. Once built, the expense of keeping them in good order
is less than that of keeping a dirt road in bad order.
Most of the country highways of the United States are dirt roads that
are deep with dust in dry weather and almost impassable at the breaking
of winter. Roads of this character are such a detriment that grain
farming will not pay when the farm is distant twenty miles or more from
the nearest railway. Many a farmer pays more to haul his grain to the
nearest railway station than from the railway station to London.
Since it has become apparent that the commercial development of many
agricultural regions depends quite as much on good wagon roads as upon
railways and expensive farming machinery, there has been a disposition
to grade and rock-surface all roads that are important highways.
Intercommunication becomes vastly easier; the cost of transportation is
lessened by more than one-half; and the wear and destruction of vehicles
is reduced to a minimum. In every case the improvement of the road is
designed to increase traffic by making a given power do more work in
less time.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What have been the effects of Bessemer steel on the carrying power of
railways?--on cheapening freight rates?
What would be some of the effects first apparent were a large city like
London or New York suddenly cut off from railway communication?
What is meant by a tubular boiler?--by a forced draught?--by a
switch?--by an automatic coupler?
Ascertain from a railway official the various danger-signals as
indicated by lights, flags, and whistle-blasts.
Why should not crated furniture and coal have the same freight rate?
What is meant by a pool?--by long haul and short haul?--by rebate?
If the rate on a given weight of merchandise is one dollar and fifty
cents for five miles, should it be three hundred dollars for one
thousand miles?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Hartley's Railroad Transportation.
American Railways.
[Illustration: DISTRIBUTION OF VEGETATION]
CHAPTER VII
FACTORS IN THE LOCATION OF CITIES AND TOWNS
The population of the world is very unevenly distributed. Not far from
nine-tenths live in lowland plains, below an altitude of 1,200 feet, in
regions where food-stuffs grow. The remainder live mainly in the
grass-producing regions of the great plateaus, the mining regions or the
flood-plains and grassy slopes of the higher montane regions.
=Communal Life.=--In each of these regions, also, there is a very unequal
massing of population. In part, the various families live isolated from
one another; in part, they gather into cities and villages. In other
words the population of a habitable region may be classed as _rural_ and
_urban_. In the United States and western Europe, agricultural pursuits
encourage rural life, each family living on its own estate. In Russia,
the agricultural population usually cluster in villages.
The farmer or freeholder who owns or controls his estate, exemplifies
the most advanced condition of personal and political liberty. Only a
few centuries have elapsed since not only the land but also the life of
a subject was the property of the king or the feudal lord, and in those
days about the only people living in isolation were outlaws. In most
cases the communal system, best exemplified in Russia, marks an
intermediate stage between a low and a high state of civilization; in
other instances it is necessary in order to insure safety. German
farmers in Siberia usually adopt the village plan for this reason.
For the greater part, the non-agricultural population of the civilized
world is massed in villages and cities for reasons that have nothing to
do with either civilization or self-defence. The causes that bring about
the massing of urban population are many and their operation is complex.
In general, however, it is to facilitate one or more of several things,
namely--the receiving, distribution, and transportation of commodities,
the manufacture of products, the existence of good harbors, and the
existence of minerals and metals necessary in the various industries.
=The Beginnings of Towns and Cities.=--The "country town" of agricultural
regions in many ways is the best type of the centre of population
engaged in receiving and disbursing commodities. The farmers living in
their vicinity send their crops to it for transportation or final
disposition. The country store is a sort of clearing-house, exchanging
household and other commodities, such as sugar, tea, coffee, spices,
drugs, silks, woollens, cotton goods, farming machinery, and furniture
for farm products. A railway station, grain elevator, and one or more
banks form the rest of its business equipment.
Usually the town has resulted from a position of easy access. It may be
the crossing of two highways, a good landing-place on a river, the
existence of a fording-place, a bridge, a ferry, a toll gate, or a point
that formed a convenient resting-place for a day's journey. The towns
and villages along the "buffalo" roads are examples almost without
number.
The "siding" or track where freight cars may be held for unloading, has
formed the beginning of many a town. The siding was located at the
convenience of the railway company; the village resulting could have
grown equally well almost anywhere else along the line.
[Illustration: THE EFFECT OF POSITION--BUFFALO IS AT THE FOOT OF LAKE
ERIE AND THE HEAD OF ERIE CANAL; AN EXCELLENT HARBOR FACILITATES ITS
COMMERCE]
In the early history of nearly every country, military posts formed the
beginnings of many centres that have grown to be large cities. Thus,
Rome, Paris, London, the various "chesters"[22] of England, Milan,
Turin, Paris, Chicago, Pittsburg, and Albany were established first as
military outposts. The trading post was most conveniently established
under the protection of the military camp, and the subsequent growth
depended partly on an accessible position, and partly on the
intelligence of the men who controlled the trade of the surrounding
regions.
=Harbors as Factors in the Growth of Cities.=--A good harbor draws trade
from a great distance. Thus, with a rate of 14-1/2 cents on a bushel of
wheat from Chicago, New York City draws a trade from a region having a
radius of more than one thousand miles. In its trade with Chinese ports,
Seattle, the chief port of Puget Sound, reaches as far eastward as
London and Hamburg.
=Water-Power as a Factor.=--The presence of water-power has brought about
the establishment of many centres that have grown into populous cities.
The water-power of the New England plateau had much to do with the rapid
growth of the New England States. At the time of the various embargo and
non-intercourse acts preceding the war of 1812, a great amount of
capital was thrown into idleness. The water-power was made available
because, during this time, the people were compelled to manufacture for
themselves the commodities that before had been imported.
The manufacturing industry at first was prosecuted in the southern
Appalachians as well as in the New England plateau. It survived in the
latter, partly because of the capital available, and partly owing to the
business experience of the people. In the meantime villages sprang up in
pretty nearly every locality in which there was available water-power.
Since the use of coal and the advent of cheap railway transportation,
steam has largely supplanted water-power, unless the latter is unlimited
in supply. As a result, there is a marked growth of the smaller centres
of population along the various water-fronts. In such cases the
advantages of a water-front offset the loss of water-power.
=The Effects of Metals on the Growth of Cities.=--The character of the
industry of a region has much to do with the character of its
manufactures. Thus, coal is absolutely essential to the manufacture of
iron and steel; and, inasmuch as from two to eight tons of the former
are necessary to manufacture a ton of steel, it is cheaper to ship the
ore to a place to which coal can be cheaply brought.
The coal-fields are responsible for the greater part of Pittsburg's
population, and almost wholly for that of Scranton, Wilkesbarre, and
many other Pennsylvania towns. Iron and coal are responsible, also, for
many cities and towns in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. Birmingham,
Salford, and Cardiff in Great Britain, Dortmund and Essen in Germany,
and St. Etienne in France have resulted from the presence of coal and
iron.
In many instances man is a great factor in the establishment of a centre
of population. Chicago would have been quite as well off in two or three
other locations; its present location is the result of man's energy and
is not likely to be changed. St. Louis might have been built at a dozen
different places and would have fared just as well; the same is true of
St. Paul, or of Indianapolis.
Leavenworth at one time was a more promising city than Kansas City, but
the building of an iron bridge over the Missouri River at the latter
place gave it a start, and wide-awake men kept it in the lead. It has
grown at the expense of Leavenworth and St. Joseph, neither one of which
has become a commercial centre. Cairo, at the junction of the
Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, has the geographical position for a great
city; it waits for the man who can concentrate the commerce there.
=Adjustment to Environment.=--San Francisco was wisely located at first,
but its grain trade was more economically carried on at Karquinez
Strait, while its oriental trade is gradually concentrating at Seattle.
Philadelphia lost its commercial supremacy when the completion of the
Erie Canal gave return cargoes to foreign vessels discharging at New
York City. Oswego, N.Y., had the advantage of both harbor facilities and
water-power, but Syracuse, with practically no advantages except those
of leadership, has far outstripped it.
Such instances of the readjustment of centres of population have been
common in the past; they will also occur in the future. In nearly every
case the readjustment results from economic causes, the opening of new
lines of transportation, the lowering of the cost of the production of a
commodity, the discovery of new economic processes--all these cause a
disturbance of population, and the latter must readjust itself to new
and changed conditions.
Not all peoples have the necessary intelligence and training at first to
adapt themselves to their environment. For the greater part, the
American Indians were unable to take advantage of the wonderful
resources of the continent in which they lived. The Boers occupied about
the richest part of Africa, but made no use of the natural wealth of the
country beyond the grazing industry; in fact, their nomadic life reduced
them to a plane of civilization materially lower than that of their
ancestors.
People of the highest state of civilization do not always adjust
themselves to their environment readily. The people of the New England
plateau were nearly a century in learning that they possessed nearly all
the best harbors of the Atlantic coast of North America. When, however,
the great commerce of the country had been wiped out of existence, it
did not take them long to readjust themselves to the industry of
manufacture, the water-power being the natural resource that made the
industry profitable.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Were the middle Atlantic coast of the United States to undergo an
elevation of 100 feet, what would be the effect on New York City?
Find the factors that led to the settlement of the city or town in which
or near which you live. What caused the settlement of the three or four
largest towns in the same county?--of the following places: Minneapolis,
Fall River, New Haven, New Bedford, Cairo (Ill.), Cairo (Egypt),
Marseille, Aix-la-Chapelle, Alexandria (Egypt), Washington (D.C.),
Columbus (O.), Johannesburg (Africa), Kimberley (Africa), Albany (N.Y.),
Punta Arenas (S.A.), Scranton (Pa.), Vancouver (B.C.), San Francisco,
Cape Nome?
What circumstances connected with commerce led to the passing of the
following-named places: Palmyra, Carthage, Babylon, Genoa, Venice,
Ancient Rome, Jerusalem?
COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Any good cyclopaedia.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CEREALS AND GRASSES
Of all the plants connected with the economies of mankind the grasses
hold easily the first place. Not only are the seeds of certain species
the chief food of nearly all peoples, but the plants themselves are the
food of most animals whose flesh is used as meat. Wheat, maize, and rice
are used by all except a very few peoples; and about all the animals
used for food, fish and mollusks excepted, are grain eaters, or grass
eaters, or both.
The grasses of the Plains in Texas, the Veldt in South Africa, and the
hills of New Zealand by nature's processes are converted into meat that
feeds the great cities of western Europe and the eastern United States.
The corn of the Mississippi valley becomes the pork which, yielded from
the carcasses of more than forty million swine, is exported to half the
countries of the world. Even the two and one-half billion pounds of wool
consumed yearly is converted grass.
=Wheat.=--The wheat of commerce is the seed of several species of cereal
grass, one of which, _Triticum sativum_, is the ordinary cultivated
plant. Wild species are found in the highlands of Kurdistan, in Greece,
and in Mesopotamia, that are identical with species cultivated to-day.
It is thought that the cultivation of the grain began in Mesopotamia,
but it is also certain that it was grown by the Swiss lake-dwellers far
back in prehistoric times. It is the "corn" Joseph's brothers sought to
buy when they went to Egypt, and the records of its harvesting are
scattered all over the pages of written history.
[Illustration: THE GRAIN CROP--MODERN METHODS OF CULTIVATION AND
HARVESTING]
Of the one and one-half billion people that constitute the world's
population, more than one-third, or about eight times the population of
the United States, are consumers of wheat-bread; and this number is
yearly increasing by twelve million. Moreover, each individual of this
aggregate consumes yearly very nearly one barrel of flour, or about four
and one-half bushels of wheat. In other words, it requires somewhat more
than two billion three hundred million bushels of wheat each year to
supply the world's demand.[23] As a matter of fact the world's crop is
yearly consumed so nearly to the danger-line that very often the
"visible supply," or the amount known to be in the market, is reduced to
a few million bushels.
Wheat will grow under very wide ranges of climate, but it thrives best
between the parallels of 25 deg. and 55 deg. In a soil very rich in
vegetable mould it is apt to "run to stalk." A rather poor clay-loam
produces the best seed,[24] and a hard seed, rather than a heavy stalk,
is required.
In the latitude of Kansas the seeds planted in the fall will retain
their vitality through the winter; in the latitude of Dakota they are
"winter-killed," as a rule. Because of this feature two broad classes or
divisions of the crop are recognized in commerce--the winter and the
spring varieties. In general, the spring wheats are regarded as the
better, and this is nearly always the case in localities too cold for
winter wheat. There are exceptions to this rule, however. In the main,
winter wheat ripens first, and is therefore first in the market.[25]
[Illustration: WHEAT]
In Europe the plain that faces the North and Baltic Seas, and that part
which extends through southern Russia, yield the chief part of the
crop, although the plains of the Po, the Danube, and Bohemia furnish
heavy crops. Russia, France, Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy are all
wheat states.
In a normal year all Europe produces a little more than one-half
(fifty-five per cent.) of the world's crop. Russia and France excepted,
scarcely another state produces as much as is consumed. Great Britain
consumes her entire crop in three months; Germany in about six months.
France sends a part of her crop to Great Britain and buys of Russia to
fill the deficiency. Russia consumes but very little of her wheat-crop;
it is nearly all sold to the states of western Europe. All Europe
consumes about one billion seven hundred and ten million bushels, but
produces about one billion two hundred and fifty million; the remainder
is supplied by the United States, India, Argentina, Africa, and
Australia.
[Illustration: WHEAT IN UNITED STATES]
In the United States the great bulk of the crop comes from the upper
Mississippi valley and Pacific coast States. About one-third is
consumed where it is grown; more than one-third is required for the
populous centres of the east; a little less than one-third is exported,
of which about ninety per cent. goes to Europe.
[Illustration: WHEAT PRODUCTION]
Much of this, especially the Pacific coast product, is sold unground,
but each year an increasing amount is made into flour. The flour
manufacture of the United States aggregates somewhat more than
160,000,000 barrels yearly--the output of 16,000 flour-mills; the
Pillsbury mills of Minneapolis alone have a capacity of 60,000 barrels a
week. In Europe the Hungarian mills and their output of Bohemian flour
are the chief competitors of the United States.
[Illustration: WHEAT]
The wheat-crop of the Pacific coast has usually been a factor by itself.
On account of the absence of summer rains, the kernel is both plump and
hard. After the threshing process it is sacked and stored in the fields
in which it has grown.[26] Heretofore much of the sacked wheat has been
shipped to European markets by the Cape Horn route, but in late years a
yearly increasing amount is made into flour and sold in China, Japan,
and Siberia. In 1900 nearly two million barrels were thus sent.
East of the Rocky Mountains, after the grain is harvested much of it is
sold to dealers whose storage elevators[27] are scattered all over the
wheat-growing region, and at all great points of shipment, such as
Duluth, Minneapolis, Buffalo, and the eastern seaports. Before the grain
is transferred to the elevators it is inspected and graded, and the cars
which contain it are sealed. This wheat constitutes the "visible
supply." All the business concerning it is transacted by means of
"warehouse receipts," that have almost the currency of ready money.
Banks loan money on them almost to their market value.
Under normal conditions, the cost of growing and harvesting a bushel of
wheat--including interest on the land and deterioration of the
machinery, etc.--is between fifty and fifty-five cents. The market
price, when not affected by "corners" and other gambling transactions,
usually varies between sixty-two and eighty-five cents. The difference
between these figures is divided between the farmer and the "middlemen,"
the share of the latter being in the form of commissions and elevator
charges.
[Illustration: STORING PACIFIC COAST WHEAT]
In addition to bread-making wheat, certain varieties of grain known as
macaroni wheat have a certain importance in the market. Several
varieties are so hardy that they easily resist extremely cold winters;
they will also grow in regions too dry for ordinary varieties. In this
respect they are well adapted to the plains at the eastern base of the
Rocky Mountains. The only detriment is the lack of a steady market.
Macaroni wheat has a very hard kernel and is rich in gluten. It is used
mainly in the manufacture of macaroni paste, but in Europe, when mixed
with three times its weight of ordinary soft wheat, it is much used in
making flour. The small amount now grown in the United States is shipped
mainly to France.
The yield of wheat varies partly with the rainfall, but the difference
is due mainly to skill in cultivation. In western Europe it is from two
to three times as great as in the United States; in Russia and India it
is much less.[28]
The yearly consumption of wheat is increasing very rapidly both in the
United States and in Europe; moreover, China is becoming a
wheat-consuming country. In the United States the consumption is
increasing so rapidly that unless either the acreage of the crop, or
else the yield per acre, is materially increased, there will be no
surplus for export after the year 1931.
[Illustration: THE WHEAT INDUSTRY--GRAIN ELEVATORS AT BUFFALO, NEW
YORK]
In the United States the acreage may be somewhat increased by the
irrigation of arid lands now uncultivated, and by the reclamation of
overflowed and swamp lands. There are far greater possibilities,
however, in the employment of methods of cultivation which will double
the rate of present yield. It is doubtful if there can be much increase
of acreage in the States of the Mississippi Valley, where the acreage
will of necessity be lessened rather than increased.
In western Europe there can be no material increase of the acreage or
the rate of yield; in Russia both are possible. The plains of Argentina
now yield a notable quantity--about one hundred million bushels--and the
amount may be increased. Moreover, a large product may be obtained from
both Uruguay and Paraguay, and southern Brazil, neither one of which
produces a considerable quantity. At the present rate of the increase in
consumption, all of the available land, yielding its maximum, will not
produce a sufficient crop at the end of the twentieth century.
=Corn.=--Maize or Indian corn is the seed of a plant, _Zea mays_, a member
of the grass family. It is not known to exist in a wild state. The
species now cultivated are undoubtedly derived from the American
continent, but evidence is not wanting to show that it was known in
China and the islands of Asia before the discovery of America.[29] The
commercial history of corn begins with the discovery of America. Next to
meat it was the chief food of the native American; next to wheat it is
the chief food-stuff in the American continent to-day.
Corn requires a rich soil and is not so hardy as wheat. It thrives best
in regions having long summers and warm nights. The growing crop is
easily injured by too much rain. It is an abundant crop in the central
Mississippi Valley, but not near the coast; it is very prolific in
Nebraska, but not in Dakota; it thrives in Italy, Austria, and the
Balkan Peninsula, but not in the British Isles and Germany. It is a very
important crop in Australia, and is the staple grain of Mexico. It is
the crop of fourteen-hour days and warm nights.
[Illustration: CORN]
The United States is the chief producer of corn, and from an area of
80,000,000 acres--about that of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
combined--more than two billion bushels, or four-fifths of the world's
crop, are produced. In the past few years the area planted with corn has
not materially increased, and it is likely to be lessened rather than
increased in the future. From the same acreage, however, the annual
yield, now about twenty-five or thirty bushels per acre, can be more
than doubled by the use of more skilful methods of cultivation.
Corn contains more fatty substance, or natural oil, than wheat, and
therefore has a greater heating power. For this reason it is better than
wheat for out-of-door workers, and it is almost the only cereal
food-stuff consumed in Spanish America. It is also a staple food-stuff
in Egypt. Corn has been used as a bread-stuff in the United States,
Italy, and Rumania[30] for a long time. In recent years, however, its
use has become very popular in Europe.
[Illustration: CORN PRODUCTION]
In the United States by far the greater part of the crop is consumed
where it is grown, being used to fatten swine and cattle. The market
value of a pound of corn is about one-third of a cent; converted into
pork or beef, however, it is worth five or six times as much. By feeding
the corn to stock, therefore, a farmer may turn an unmarketable product
into one for which there is a steady demand.
[Illustration: CORN]
Although corn is not so essential a staple as wheat, it has a much wider
range of usefulness. The starch made from it is considered a delicacy
and is used very largely in America and Europe as an article of food.
Glucose, a cheap but wholesome substitute for sugar, is made from it;
from the oil a substitute for rubber is prepared; smokeless powder and
other explosives are made from the pith of the stalk; while a very
large part of the product is used in the manufacture of liquor.
=Rye.=--Rye is the seed of a cereal grass, _Secale cereale_, a plant
closely resembling wheat in external appearance. Rye will grow in soils
that are too poor for wheat; its northern limit is in latitudes somewhat
greater than that of wheat, also. It is an ideal crop for the sandy
plain stretching from the Netherlands into central Russia, and this
locality produces almost the whole yield. The world's crop is about one
and a half billion bushels, of which Russia produces nearly two-thirds.
Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Japan grow nearly all the rest. It is
consumed where it is grown. In the United States the yearly product is
about twenty-five million bushels, about one-tenth of which is exported
to Europe. Rye-bread is almost always sour, and this fact is its chief
disadvantage.
=Barley.=--Barley is the seed of several species of cereal grass, mainly
_Hordeum distichum_ and _Hordeum vulgare_. It is one of the oldest-used
of bread-stuffs. It can be cultivated farther north than wheat, and
about as far within the tropics as corn; it has, therefore, very wide
limits. Formerly it was much used in northwestern Europe as a
bread-stuff, but in recent years it has been in part supplanted by wheat
and corn. Barley is a most excellent food for horses, and in California
is grown mainly for this purpose. Its chief use is for the manufacture
of the malt used in brewing.
The world's crop of barley is not far from one billion bushels, of which
the United States produces about sixty million bushels. Most of the crop
is grown in the Germanic states of Europe, and in Russia.
=Oats.=--The oat is the seed of a cereal grass, _Avena sativa_ being the
species almost always cultivated. It is not known where the cultivated
species originated, but the earliest known locality is central Europe,
where it was certainly a domestic plant during the Bronze Age. It seems
probable that the species now cultivated in Scotland at one time grew
wild in western Europe; certain it is that wild species are found in
North America.
[Illustration: OATS PRODUCTION]
The oat grows within rather wider limits of latitude, and thrives in a
greater variety of soils than does wheat. Grown in a moist climate,
however, the grain is at its best. The oat-crop of the world aggregates
more than three billion bushels, surpassing that of wheat or corn in
measurement, but not in weight. A small portion of this is used as a
bread-stuff, but the greater part is used as horse-food, for which it is
remarkably adapted.
[Illustration: OATS]
In Europe, Russia is the greatest producer, and its yearly oat harvest
is about one-quarter of the world's crop. The states of northwestern
Europe yield about half the entire crop; the wheat-growing area of the
United States produces the remaining one-fourth. Russia and the United
States are both exporters, the grain going to western Europe. By far the
greater part of the grain is consumed where it is grown.
=Rice.=--Rice is the seed of a cereal grass, _Oryza sativa_. It is claimed
to be native to India, but it is known to have been cultivated in China
for more than five thousand years. It grows wild in Australia and
Malaysia.
Rice requires plenty of warmth and moisture. It is cultivated in the
warmer parts of the temperate zone, but it thrives best in the tropical
regions. In China a considerable upland rice is grown, but for the
greater part it is grown in level lowlands that may be flooded with
water. The preparation of the fields is a matter of great expense, for
they may require flooding and draining at a moment's notice. The crop
matures in from three to six months. After threshing, the seed is still
covered with a husk, and in this form it is known as "paddy."
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why is not wheat-growing a profitable industry in the New England
States?--in the plains at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains?--in
the southern part of the United States?
What are meant by the following terms: No. 1 spring, a corner, a disk
harrow, a cradle, a flail, a separator, futures, warehouse certificates?
In 1855 the price of a barrel of flour in New York or Boston was about
twelve dollars; at the close of the century it was less than five.
Explain how the lessened price came about.
From a census or other report make a list of the ten leading
wheat-producing States; the ten that produce the most corn.
Why are the foreign shipments of oats less than those of wheat?
What are the prices current of wheat, corn, oats, and barley to-day?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain samples of the different kinds of wheat, oats, barley, corn,
millet, and rice. Put the grain in small, closely stoppered vials;
attach the heads of the small grains to sheets of cardboard of the
proper size.
Read "The Wheat Problem"--Chapter I.
[Illustration: PICKING COTTON, ALABAMA]
[Illustration: TRANSPORTING COTTON FROM WHARF, CHARLESTON, S.C.]
[Illustration: COTTON PRESS YARD, NEW ORLEANS, LA.]
CHAPTER IX
TEXTILE FIBRES
Under the term "textile" are included the fibrous substances that can be
spun into threads, and woven or felted into cloth. Some of these, like
the covering of the sheep, goat, and llama, or the cocoon of the
silk-worm, are of animal origin; others, like cotton furze, the husk of
the cocoanut, and the bast of the flax-plant are vegetable products.
Their use in the manufacture of cloth antedates the period at which
written history begins; it probably begins with the time when primitive
man gradually ceased to have the hairy covering necessary to protect him
from the conditions of climate and weather.
As body coverings all these substances are dependent on a single
principle, namely--they are poor conductors of heat; that is, they do
not permit the natural heat of the body to pass away quickly, nor do
they allow sudden changes of the temperature to reach the body quickly.
In other words, because of the artificial covering which mankind alone
requires, bodily heat is not dissipated more rapidly than it is created;
if it were, the covering would be worthless. A suit of clothes made of
steel wire, for instance, because it conducts heat so rapidly, might
chill, or perhaps heat the body more quickly than the open air.
With respect to warming qualities wool surpasses all other textiles. It
is employed for clothing in every part of the world and by nearly all
peoples. Cotton is used mainly also for body coverings, but it is
inferior to wool for protection against cold. It is used by practically
all peoples, savage and civilized, outside of the frigid zones. Linen
is inferior both to cotton and wool for clothing; its use is also
restricted by its great cost. Silk is used mainly for ornamental cloths.
Hemp is used mainly for cordage, and the use of ramie, jute, and sisal
hemp is confined mainly to the manufacture of very coarse cloths and
rugs.
=Cotton.=--The cotton fibre of commerce is the lint surrounding the seeds
of several species of _Gossypium_, plants belonging to the same natural
order as the marshmallow and the hollyhock. The cultivated species have
been carried from India to different parts of the world, but
cotton-bearing plants are also native to the American. A native
tree-cotton, known as Barbados cotton, occurs in the West Indies; a
herbaceous cotton-plant is known to have been cultivated in Peru long
before the discovery of Columbus.
[Illustration: COTTON-PRODUCING REGIONS]
More than four hundred years before the Christian era Herodotus
describes it and mentions a gin for separating the lint from the seed.
Nearchus, an admiral serving under Alexander the Great, brought to
Europe specimens of cotton cloth, and in the course of time it became an
article of commerce among Greek and Roman merchants.
The cotton-plant requires warmth, moisture, and a long season. It also
thrives best near the sea. It grows better, on the whole, in subtropical
rather than in tropical regions, and the difference is due probably to
the longer days and higher temperature of the subtropical latitudes. In
the United States the northern limit is approximately the thirty-eighth
parallel. The seeds are planted, as a rule, during the first three weeks
of April and the first two of May. The plants bloom about the middle of
June; the boll or pod matures during July, and bursts about the first of
August. The picking begins in August.
[Illustration: COTTON IN THE UNITED STATES]
The yield and the quality of the textile depend not only on conditions
of the soil, but on locality. In the river flood-plains of the southern
United States the yield is about two bales per acre; on the bluff lands
it is but little more than one, unless unusual care is taken in the
preparation of the land. The islands off the Carolina coast produce a
very fine long-staple variety, commercially known as _sea island
cotton_. A district in China produces a good fibre of brownish color
known as _nankeen_, named for the city of Nanking, whence formerly it
was exported. The valley of Piura River, Peru, produces varieties of
long-staple cotton that in quality closely resemble silk.
The fibre of ordinary American cotton is about seven-eighths of an inch
long; it is made into the fabrics commercially known as "domestics" and
"prints," or calico. If the fibre averages a little longer than the
common grades it is reserved for canvas. Ordinary Peruvian cotton has a
fibre nearly two inches long; it is used in the manufacture of hosiery
and balbriggan underwear, and also to adulterate wool. The long-staple
cotton of the Piura Valley is bought by British manufacturers at a high
price, and used in the webbing of rubber tires and hose. Egyptian cotton
is very fine and is used mainly in the manufacture of thread and the
finer grades of balbriggan underwear. Sea island fibre is nearly two
inches long and is used almost wholly in the making of thread and lace.
The introduction of cotton cultivation resulted in very far-reaching
consequences both from a political as well as an economic stand-point.
The invention of the steam-engine by Watt gave England an enormous
mechanical power. To utilize this the cotton industry was wrested from
Hindustan; the mills were concentrated in Manchester and Lancashire; the
cotton-fields were transferred to the United States.
As a result, the plains of Hindustan were strewn with the bodies of
starved weavers and spinners, but a great industry grew into existence
in England. The invention of spinning machinery by Arkwright, Crompton,
and Hargreaves, and the gradual improvement of the power-loom, greatly
reduced the cost of making the cloth and, at the same time, enormously
increased the demand for it.
[Illustration: COTTON PRODUCTION]
In the United States the consequences were far more serious. The
invention of the engine or "gin" for separating the lint from the seed
made cotton cultivation highly profitable.[31] The negro slaves, who had
been scattered throughout the colonies and the States that succeeded
them, were soon drawn to the cotton-growing States to supply the needed
field-labor; and, indeed, white workmen could not stand the hot, moist
climate of the cotton-fields.
The cotton-mills grew up in the Northern manufacturing States. The
Northern manufacturer needed a tariff on imported goods to protect him
from European competition; the Southern cotton-planter who purchased
much of his supplies abroad was hurt by the tariff. After about sixty
years of strained relations between the two sections there occurred the
Civil War which wiped out nearly one million lives, and rolled up a
debt, direct and indirect, of nearly six billions of dollars.
The world's cotton-crop aggregates from twelve million to fifteen
million bales yearly, of which the United States produces, as a rule, a
little more than three-fourths. Egypt is rapidly taking an important
place among cotton-producing countries, and, with the completion of the
various irrigating canals, will very soon rank next to the United
States. India ranks about third; China and Korea produce about the same
quantity. There are a few cotton-cloth mills in these states, but in
Japan the manufacture is increasing, the mills being equipped with the
best of modern machinery. Brazil has a small product, and Russia in Asia
needs transportation facilities only to increase largely its growing
output.
[Illustration: COTTON]
The cotton-crop of the United States is quite evenly distributed;
one-third is manufactured at home; one-third is purchased by Great
Britain; and the remaining third goes mainly to western Europe. In the
past few years China has become a constantly increasing purchaser of
American cotton. New Orleans, Galveston, Savannah, and New York are the
chief ports of shipment. The imported Egyptian and Peruvian cotton is
landed mainly at New York. Most of the cotton manufacture is carried on
in the New England States, but there is a very rapid extension of cotton
manufacture in the South.
=Wool.=--The wool of commerce is a term applied to the fleece of the
common sheep, to that of certain species of goat, and to that of the
camel and its kind. There is no hard-and-fast distinction between hair
and wool,[32] but, in general, wool fibres have rough edges, much
resembling overlapping scales which interlock with one another; hair, as
a rule, has a hard, smooth surface. If a mass of loose wool be spread
out and beaten, or if it be pressed between rollers, the fibres
interlock so closely that there results a thick, strong cloth which has
been made without either spinning or weaving.
This property, known as "felting," gives to wool a great part of its
value, and is its chief distinction from hair. Some kinds of hair,
however, have a slight felting property, and if sufficiently fine may be
spun and woven. The hair of the common goat is worthless for this
purpose, but that of the Cashmere and Angora species have the properties
of wool. The hair of the Bactrian camel, and also that of the llama,
alpaca, and vicuna is soft and fine, possessing felting qualities that
make it very superior as a textile.
[Illustration: WOOL PRODUCING REGIONS]
The quality of wool varies greatly according to the conditions of soil,
climate, and the character of the food of the animal. In commerce,
however, the fleeces are commonly graded as "long-staple,"
"short-staple," "merino," and "coarse."
In long-staple wools the fibres are from four to eight inches long;
they are more easily separated by a process much like combing, and are
therefore called "combing" wools. The cotswold, cheviot, and most of the
wools of the British Isles are of this kind; indeed, in fairly moist
lowland regions such as Canada and the United States, there is a
tendency toward the development of a long-staple product. The English
long-staple wools are largely made into worsted cloth, the Scotch
cheviot into tweeds, and the French into the best dress cloth.
If the fibres are materially less than four inches in length, the
product is classed as a short-staple or "carding" wool. By far the
greater part of the wool of the United States, Canada, and Europe is of
this class. It is disposed of according to its fineness or fitness for
special purposes, the greater part being made into cloths for the medium
grades of men's clothing.
The finest and softest wool as a rule is grown in arid, plateau regions,
and of this kind of staple the merino is an example. The fibres are fine
as silk, and the goods made from them are softer. The Mission wool of
California is the product of merino sheep, and, indeed, the conditions
of climate in southern California and Australia are such as to produce
the best merino wool. The famous Electoral wool of Saxony is a merino,
the sheep having been introduced into that country from Spain about
three hundred years ago. The merino wools, as a rule, are used in the
most highly finished dress and fancy goods.
The coarse-staple wools are very largely used for American carpets,
coarse blankets, and certain kinds of heavy outer clothing. The Russian
Donskoi wool, some of the Argentine fleeces, such as the Cordoban, and
many of those grown in wet lowlands are very coarse and harsh. The
quality is due more to climatic conditions and food than to the species
of sheep; indeed, sheep that in other regions produce a fine wool, when
introduced to this locality, after a few generations produce coarse
wool.
[Illustration: SHEEP FEEDING ON ALFALFA]
[Illustration: SHEEP RANGE, UTAH]
[Illustration: SHEEP IN FEEDING YARD
THE WOOL-GROWING INDUSTRY]
The rug wools grown in Persia, Turkestan, Turkey in Asia, and the
Caucasus Mountains are also characteristic. They vary in fineness, and
because they do not readily felt they are the best in the world for rug
stock. The "pile" or surface of the rug remains elastic and stands
upright even after a hundred years of wear. This quality is due mainly
to conditions of climate and soil.
[Illustration: WOOL PRODUCTION]
In some instances the wool is obtained by a daily combing of the
half-grown lambs. This process, however, is employed in the rug-making
districts only; in general, the fleeces are clipped either with shears
or machine clippers. In the United States the latter are generally
employed, and but little attempt is made either to sort the fleeces or
to separate the various qualities of wool in the same fleece.
The raw wool always contains foreign matter such as burs and dirt; it is
also saturated with a natural oil which prevents felting. The oil,
commonly called "grease," or "yolk," is an important article of
commerce; under the name of "lanolin" (_adeps lanae_) it is used in
medicine and pharmacy as a basis for ointments.
The world's yearly clip is a little more than two and one-half billion
pounds, of which the United States produces about one-eighth. In Europe
and the United States, owing to the increasing value of the land, the
area of production is decreasing; in Australia, South Africa, and
Argentina, where land is cheap, it is increasing. From these three
regions wool is exported; most European countries and the United States
buy it. In the latter country the consumption is about six pounds for
each person.
[Illustration: WOOL]
The wools of the Mediterranean countries--France, Spain, Italy, Algiers,
Egypt, etc.--are the best for fine cloths; those of central Asia for
rugs and shawls; the others are used mainly in medium and low grade
textiles.
=Other Wools.=--The Angora goat, originally grown in Anatolia (Asia
Minor), and the Iran States (Persia, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan),
furnishes a beautiful white wool, commercially known as "mohair." Smyrna
is an important market for it, and England is the chief buyer. The
Angora goat has been introduced into South Africa and California, where
it is successfully grown. From the former country there is a large
export of mohair.
Cashmere wool is a fine, downy undercovering, obtained by combing the
fleece of a goat native to the Kashmir Valley in India. A single animal
yields scarcely more than an ounce or two, and the best product is worth
about its weight in gold. It is used in the manufacture of the famous
Cashmere shawls, which are sold at prices varying from five hundred to
five thousand dollars. They are made in Persia and India.
Llama and alpaca wool are fine textile obtained from animals of the
camel kind native to South America. The wool is either black or brown in
color. A considerable part is used for native-made articles, such as
saddle-blankets, etc., but much of it is exported to England.
Most of the "camel's hair" of commerce was originally worn by goats,
being called by its commercial name because of a similarity in texture
to that of the camel's hair. The camel of Turkestan, however, furnishes
a silky textile that is much used. The brown wool often found in Hamadan
rugs is natural camel's hair, and a considerable amount mixed with
sheep's wool is used in certain textiles. The camel's hair of China is
made into artists' brushes.
=Silk.=--The silk of commerce is the fibre spun by the larvae or
caterpillars of a moth, _Bombyx mori_, as they enter the chrysalis stage
of existence. The silk-growing industry includes the care and feeding of
the insect in all its stages. The leaves of the white mulberry-tree
(_morus alba_) are the natural food of the insect, and silk-growing
cannot be carried on in regions where this tree does not thrive. Not all
areas that produce the mulberry-tree, however, will also grow the
silk-worm; the latter cannot exist in regions having very cold winters,
and therefore the industry is restricted by climate.
The moth, shortly after emerging from the chrysalis stage, lays from two
or three hundred to seven hundred eggs. These are "hardy"--that is, they
will remain fertile for a long time if kept in a cool, dry place;
moisture will cause them to putrify, and heat to germinate. If well
protected, they may be transported for distances.
In rearing the silk-worm, as soon as the latter is hatched, it is placed
on mulberry-leaves, and for five weeks it does nothing but eat, in that
time consuming many times its weight of food.[33] Then it begins to spin
the material that forms its chrysalis case or cocoon. The outer part of
the case consists of a tough envelope not unlike coarse tissue-paper;
the inner part is a fine thread about one thousand feet long that has
been wound around the body of the worm. This thread or filament is the
basis of the silk textile industry.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1898, by Nature Study Pub. Co._
SILK INDUSTRY
1. Silkworm Eggs
2. Fourth-stage Worm
3. Pupa in Cocoon
4. Cocoon
5. Male Moth
6. Female Moth
7. Unspun Silk
8. Raw Manufactured Silk
9. Manufactured Silk]
[Illustration: SILK PRODUCING REGIONS]
At the proper time the cocoons are gathered and, if immediately to be
used, are plunged into hot water. This not only kills the chrysalids but
softens the cocoons as well, so that the outer cases may be removed. The
cases removed, the rest of the cocoon is soaked in warm water until the
gummy matter is softened and the fibres are free enough to be reeled. In
the latter process the ends of a number of cocoons, varying from five to
twenty, are caught and loosely twisted into a single strand. The silk
thus prepared forms the "raw silk" of commerce. Sometimes a number of
strands of raw silk are twisted into a coarse thread, thereby forming
"thrown silk." For convenience in handling, both raw and thrown silk
are made into large skeins called hanks, and most of the silk product is
exported in this form.
A given quantity of cocoons yields scarcely more than one-tenth its
weight in good raw silk. The remaining part, consisting of broken fibres
and cases, is shredded and spun into silk thread of inferior quality.
This material, commonly called "husks" or "knubs," forms an important
item in silk manufacture, and much of it is exported to Europe and
America.
[Illustration: SILK PRODUCTION]
According to traditions, not wholly trustworthy, eggs of the silk-worm
were smuggled to India in the head-dress of a Chinese princess. Thence
sericulture slowly made its way westward to Persia, Asia Minor, and the
Mediterranean countries. Wild silk, a coarse but strong product, is
grown in many of these countries, but mainly in China, where it forms an
important export. The Chinese product is commercially known as "tussar"
silk. Of the product of raw silk, about thirty-five million pounds,
China yields about two-fifths, Japan and Italy each one-fifth. The
remainder is grown in the Levant, Spain, and France.
Most of the raw silk of China is exported from Shanghai and Canton; that
of Japan is shipped mainly from Yokohama. Among European countries Italy
is the first producer of raw silk, and France the chief manufacturer.
By the operation of a heavy tariff a considerable manufacture of silk
textiles has grown up in the United States. New York City and Paterson,
N.J., are the chief centres of the industry.
The southern part of the United States offers an ideal locality for
sericulture. Various attempts at silk-worm breeding have failed from
lack of training, but not on account of geographic conditions.
=Flax.=--The flax of commerce, the basis of linen cloth, is the bast or
inner bark-fibre of an annual plant (_Linum usitalissimum_, _i.e._, most
useful fibre), native probably to the Mediterranean basin. It ranks
among the oldest known textiles. Bundles of unwrought fibre have been
found in the lake dwellings of Switzerland, and linen cloth constituted
a part of the sepulture wrappings of the ancient Egyptian dead.
Flax has a very wide range, thriving in the colder parts of Europe as
well as in tropical Asia; it does equally well in the dry summers of
California or the moist regions of the Mississippi Valley. The chief
requisite is a firm soil that contains plenty of nutrition.
After the stalks have passed maturity they are pulled up by hand;
"rippled," or deprived of their seeds and leaves; "retted," or moistened
in soft water until the bast separates; "broken" and "scutched" by a
machine which gets rid of the woody fibres; and finally the loosened
bast fibre is "hetcheled" or combed in order to separate the long, or
"line," threads from the "tow" or refuse.
Russia produces more than one-half the world's crop, but the finest and
choicest is that known as Courtrai fibre, which is grown in Belgium.
This is thought to be due to the quality of the water in the Lys River.
A considerable amount of flax grown elsewhere in Europe is sent to this
part of Belgium to be retted. Ireland and Germany produce considerable
amounts, and a small quantity is grown in the United States.
The prepared flax is used in the manufacture of linen cloth, and the
latter is almost exclusively used for table-cloths, napkins,
shirt-bosoms, collars, cuffs, and handkerchiefs. France is noted for the
manufacture of linen lawns and cambrics, and Belfast, Ireland, for
table-cloths and napkins. Nearly the whole linen product is consumed in
the United States, Canada, and western Europe; indeed, linen is a mark
of western civilization. Great Britain handles the greater part of the
linen textiles.
=Hemp.=--The true hemp of commerce is the bast or inner bark of a plant,
_Cannabis sativa_, belonging to the nettle order. It is an annual plant
having a very wide range; it occurs in pretty nearly every country of
North America, Europe, and Asia. In Europe the chief countries producing
it for commercial uses are Russia, France, Italy, and Hungary; in the
United States it is grown in California and the central Mississippi
Valley. Russia produces the largest crop; Italy the finest quality of
fibre, the best coming from the vicinity of Bologna.
The stalks grow three feet or more in height. When cultivated for the
fibre they are pulled from the ground, stripped of their leaves and
soaked until the fibre is free. They are then "retted," or beaten, and
the fibre is removed. After preparation the fibre is used mainly for the
manufacture of wrapping-twine, cordage, and a coarse canvas. Great
Britain is the chief purchaser and manufacturer.
=Manila Hemp.=--Manila hemp is the name given to a fibre obtained from the
leaves of a plant, _Musa textilis_, belonging to the banana family. The
best fibres are from six to nine feet in length, of light amber color,
and very strong. The leaves, torn into narrow strips by hand, are
afterward scraped by hand until the fibre is free of pulp. The long and
coarser fibres are made into rope; the shorter fibres are beaten and
hetcheled in the same manner as flax, until fine enough to weave into
mats, carpets, and fine cloth. The fibres that have served their
usefulness as rope are pulped and manufactured into manila paper.
Practically all the manila fibre of commerce--which is not hemp at
all--is grown in the Philippine Islands, and since peace has prevailed,
the growth and production is increasing. The crude fibre is prepared by
hand, by Filipino or by Chinese labor. The manufacture of cordage and
paper is done mainly in the United States and Great Britain. Fine
hand-made textiles are made by a few Filipino natives, but most of the
goods of this character are manufactured in France. Very fine fibre is
sometimes used as an adulterant of silk. Great Britain and the United
States are the chief purchasers.
=Sisal Hemp.=--Sisal hemp, or henequen, is a stout, stringy fibre obtained
from the thick leaves of several species of agave, to which the maguey
and century-plant belong. The cultivated species, from which most of the
commercial product is obtained, is the _Agave sisalina_, which much
resembles the ordinary century-plant.
The essential feature in the economic production of sisal hemp is
machinery for separating the fibre from the pulp of the leaf. The fibre
is whiter, cleaner, and lighter than jute; moreover, in strength it
ranks next to the best quality of manila hemp. It is used mainly in the
manufacture of grain-sacks, and the twine used on self-binding
harvesters. Nearly all the fibre of commerce is grown in the Mexican
state of Yucatan and consumed in the United States. The cultivation of
this material has made Yucatan one of the most prosperous states of
Mexico.
=Jute.=--Jute is a fibre obtained from the inner bark of a tropical plant,
_Corchorus olitorius_, belonging to the same order as the linden-tree.
The plant is an annual, growing in various moist, tropical countries,
but is extensively cultivated in India and parts of China for commercial
purposes. The fibre is prepared for manufacture in much the same manner
as hemp and flax. In India it is used mainly for the manufacture of a
coarse textile known as gunny cloth, used as bale-wrappers, and sacks
for coffee and rice. On the Pacific coast states it is used for
wheat-sacks. Calcutta is the chief centre of manufacture, but jute-sacks
are extensively manufactured by the Chinese in California and China.
=Ramie.=--This fibre, also known as China grass, is the best of two or
more species of nettles, prepared in the same manner as hemp fibre. It
is finer and stronger than jute, and will take dye-stuffs in a superior
manner. With the introduction of machinery for separating and handling
the fibre, the cultivation of the ramie-plant has spread from China to
India, Japan, and the United States. Fine textiles are now manufactured
from it, the most important being carpets, mattings, and American
"Smyrna" rugs. The last are generally sold as jute-rugs, and they are
nearly as durable as woollen floor-covers.
=Other Economic Fibres.=--The fibre of _cocoanut husk_ is largely employed
in the manufacture of coarse matting. A part of this is obtained from
tropical America, but it is a regular export of British India, where it
is known as _coir_.
The mid-rib of the _screw pine_ growing in the forests of tropical
America furnishes the material of which "Panama" hats are made. The hats
are made in various parts of Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia, and were
formerly marketed in Panama. Hats made of a score of grasses and fibres
are also sold as Panamas.
A plant (_Phormium tenax_) having leaves somewhat like those of the iris
or common flag furnishes the material of which New Zealand flax is
prepared. It is used mainly in the manufacture of cordage.
_Plaiting straw_, used in the manufacture of hats and bonnets, is grown
extensively in northern Italy and in Belgium. For this product spring
wheat is very thickly sown in a soil rich in lime. The thick sowing
produces a long, slender stalk; the lime gives it whiteness and
strength. Plaiting straw is also exported from China and Japan. British
merchants handle most of the product.
_Cuba bast_, a fibre readily bleached to whiteness, is exported to the
various establishments in which women's hats are made.
_Esparto grass_, also called _alfa_, grows in Spain and the northern
part of Africa. It was formerly much used in the manufacture of the
cheaper grades of paper, but it has been largely supplanted by wood-pulp
for this purpose. The decline of the esparto grass industry led to no
little unrest among some of the native tribes of northern Africa.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What fibres were used in cloth-making in Europe before cotton was
employed?
What textiles are of necessity made of cotton?
What is a spinning jenny?--a Jacquard loom?
What are the specific differences between cotswold and merino wool?
Why were most of the cloth-making mills of the United States built at
first in the New England States?
How is the silk-making industry encouraged in the United States?
What are the chief linen manufacturing countries?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of the cotton seed, boll, raw cotton (sea island,
Peruvian, and ordinary), cotton thread, calico, gingham, domestic,
canvas, and some of the fancy textiles such as organdie, lawn, etc.
Obtain specimens of the cocoons of the silk-worm, raw silk gros-grain
cloth, pongee, and tussar silk cloth.
Obtain also specimens of merino cloth, cashmere, cheviot, and other
similar goods; compare them and note the difference.
Examine the fibres of cotton, silk, and wool under a microscope and note
the difference.
[Illustration: BRANCH OF COFFEE TREE, WEST BRAZIL]
[Illustration: COFFEE PLANTATION NEAR JOLO, PHILIPPINE ISLANDS]
[Illustration: COFFEE DRYING FIELD, BRAZIL]
CHAPTER X
PLANT PRODUCTS OF ECONOMIC USE--BEVERAGES AND MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES
It may be assumed that practically all beverages derived from plants owe
their popularity to the stimulant effects they produce. In coffee, tea,
cocoa, and mate, the stimulant principle is identical with _cafein_, the
active principle of coffee; in liquors it is a powerful narcotic
_alcohol_; non-potable substances, tobacco, opium, etc., owe their
popularity also to narcotic poisons.
=Coffee.=--The coffee "beans" of commerce are the seeds of a tree (_Coffea
arabica_) probably native to Abyssinia, but now cultivated in various
parts of the world. It was introduced into Aden from Africa late in the
fifteenth century, and from there its use spread to other cities. Rather
singularly its popularity resulted from the strong efforts made to
forbid its use.
It was regarded as a stimulant and therefore it was forbidden to
followers of Islam.[34] But its power to prevent drowsiness and sleep
during the intolerably long religious exercises was a winning feature,
and so its use became general in spite of the fulminations against it.
Coffee culture was confined to Arabia until the close of the seventeenth
century; it was then introduced into the Dutch East Indies, and for many
years the island of Java became the main supply of the world. At the
present time, Java is second only to Brazil in coffee production. In the
Old World it is now also cultivated along the Guinea coast of Africa, in
Madagascar, India, and Ceylon. In the New World the chief areas are
Brazil, Venezuela, the Central American States, and the West Indies.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCING REGIONS]
The coffee-tree may be cultivated in almost any soil that is fertile; it
thrives best, however, in red soil. Old, decomposed red lavas produce
the choicest beans. Coffee grows in any moist climate in which the
temperature does not range higher than 80 deg. F. nor lower than 55 deg.
F. An occasional frost injures but does not necessarily kill the trees,
which grow better in the shade than in the sunlight. For convenience in
gathering the crop, the trees are pruned until they are not higher than
bushes.
The fruit of the coffee-tree is a deep-red berry not quite so large as a
cherry. A juicy pulp encloses a double membrane, or endocarp, and within
the latter are the seeds which constitute the coffee of commerce.
Normally there are two seeds, but in some varieties there is a tendency
for one seed to mature, leaving the other undeveloped; this is the
"peaberry" coffee of commerce. The so-called Mocha coffee is a peaberry.
In their preparation the berries are picked when ripe and deprived of
their pulp. After pulping they are cured in the sun for about a week and
then hulled, or divested of the endocarp, a process requiring expensive
machinery. The coffee is then cleaned, and sacked.
The value of the product depends on two factors, age and the care with
which it is sorted. Formerly, in the Dutch East Indies, coffee-growing,
for the greater part, was a government privilege, and the crop was kept
for several years in storage before it was permitted to be
sold--therefore the term "Old Government" Java. Other coffee was
designated as "Private Plantations." The quality of coffee is greatly
improved with age. Brazilian and other American coffee-beans are rarely
seasoned by storage.
American coffees are almost wholly sorted by machinery. This process,
however, merely collects beans of the same size; it still leaves the
good and the bad beans together, though it is to be said that among the
largest beans there are fewer poor ones. In the coffees handled by the
Arab dealers all the sorting is done by hand, the very choice grade
selling in the large cities of Europe for the equivalent of nearly three
dollars per pound. All machine-sorted coffee is greatly improved by a
subsequent hand-sorting to remove the imperfect beans.
The naming of the different kinds of coffee is somewhat arbitrary. Thus,
Brazilian coffees are commercially known as _Rio_ because they are
shipped from the port of Rio de Janeiro; the same name is applied to the
product shipped from Santos. Nearly all Venezuela coffees are called
_Maracaibo_ although they differ much in kind and quality; most Central
American coffee is sold as _Costa Rica_; most peaberry varieties are
known as _Mocha_; and most of the East India product is popularly called
_Java_, no matter whence it comes.
[Illustration: COFFEE PRODUCTION]
Of the American coffees Rio constitutes about half the world's product.
After sorting, the larger beans are often marketed as Java coffee, and
when the beans have been roasted it is exceedingly difficult to tell the
difference. The best Maracaibo is regarded as choice coffee, but its
flavor is not liked by all coffee-drinkers. The best Honduras and Puerto
Rico coffees take a high rank and command very high prices, retailing in
some instances at sixty cents per pound. A very choice peaberry is grown
in the volcanic soils of Mexico to which the name of _Oaxaca_ is given;
most of it is sold in the United States as a choice Mocha.
Mocha is the commercial name of a coffee at one time marketed in the
Arabian city of that name. Since the completion of the Suez Canal,
Hodeida has been the chief centre of the Arabian coffee-trade. Formerly
most of this coffee was grown in the Province of Yemen, but now it is
brought to Hodeida, from Egypt, Ceylon, and India.
About all the product is hand-sorted. The choicest is sold in
Constantinople, Cairo, and other cities near by, in some instances
bringing five dollars per pound. Very little, and only that of the most
inferior quality, ever finds its way into western Europe or the United
States. Even the best Mocha is not superior to fine Oaxaca coffee.
Java coffee is renowned the world over for its fine flavor. The best
quality was formerly that which had been held in storage to season for a
few years. The government coffee was generally the better, but some of
the private plantations crop is now equally good. Some of the Sumatra
coffees are equal to the best Java beans.
The Liberia coffees have never been favorites in the United States on
account of their flavor. In Europe they are used for blending with other
varieties.
Of the entire coffee-crop of the world, the United States consumes more
than three-quarters of a billion pounds--a yearly average of very nearly
eleven pounds for each inhabitant. This is nearly three times as much
per inhabitant as is consumed in Germany, and almost fifteen times the
average used in Great Britain. Nearly all the world's crop is consumed
in the United States and western Europe.
Chicory, parched grain, pease, and burnt parsnip are sometimes added as
adulterants to ground coffee. Of those, chicory most nearly resembles
coffee in flavor and taste. It is harmless and usually improves the
flavor of inferior coffee. A tariff recently placed upon chicory has
somewhat lessened the use of it.
=Tea.=--The tea of commerce consists of the dried and prepared leaves of
an evergreen shrub (_Thea chinensis_) belonging most probably to the
_camellia_ family. Tea has been a commercial product of China for more
than fourteen hundred years, but seems to have been carried thither from
India about five hundred years before the Christian era; for its virtues
were praised by (the probably mythical) Chinung, an emperor of that
period.
The cultivated plants are scarcely higher than bushes, but the wild
plant found in India is a tree fifteen or twenty feet in height. The
cultivated plant is quite hardy; severe winters kill it but ordinary
freezing weather merely retards its growth. It thrives best in red,
mouldy soils; the choicest varieties are grown in new soils. The leaves
are not picked until the plants are three or four years old.
Two general classes of tea are known in commerce--the green and the
black. Formerly these were grown on different varieties of the plant,
but in the newer plantations no distinction is made in the matter of
variety; the color is due wholly to the manner of preparation.
The plants are watched carefully during the seasons of picking, of which
there are three or four each year. The April picking yields the choicest
crop of leaves, and only the youngest leaves and buds are taken.[35] A
single plant rarely yields more than four or five ounces of tea yearly.
Each acre of a tea-garden yields about three hundred and fifty pounds.
After picking, the leaves are partly crushed and allowed to wilt until
they begin to turn brown in color. They are then rolled between the
hands and either dried very slowly in the sun, or else rapidly in pans
over a charcoal fire--a process known as "firing." The former method
produces _black_, the latter _green_, tea. The color of the latter is
sometimes heightened by the use of a mixture of powdered gypsum and
Prussian blue. In the black teas the green coloring matter of the leaf
is destroyed by fermentation; in the green teas it remains unchanged.
The greater part of the Chinese tea designed for export is packed rather
loosely in wooden chests lined with sheet-lead, the folds and joints of
which are soldered in order to make the cover both air-tight and
moisture-tight. A full chest contains seventy-five pounds of tea. The
Japan product is also packed in moisture-tight wrappers, the original
parcels being usually ten-pound, five-pound, and pound packages. Similar
devices are used in preparing the India and Formosa teas for ocean
shipment.
The chief tea-producing countries are India (including Ceylon) China,
Japan (including Formosa), and Java. A successful tea-garden is in
operation near Charleston, S.C. A small amount is grown in the Fiji and
Samoan Islands. The Ceylon and Formosa teas take a very high rank.
[Illustration: AREA OF TEA PRODUCTION]
Great Britain and her colonies consume the bulk of the tea-crop. The
average yearly consumption per person is eight pounds in Australia, six
in Great Britain and Cape of Good Hope, and more than four in Canada. In
the United States and Russia it is less than one pound per person.
Before the opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, most of the crop for the
English market was despatched by way of Cape of Good Hope. So important
was it to get the consignments to London without loss of time, that fast
clipper ships were built especially for carrying tea. Since the opening
of the canal the crop has been shipped mainly by the Suez route.
A part of the tea required for the United States reaches New York by way
of the Suez Canal, but the movement is gradually changing since the
building of the fast liners that now ply between Asian and American
ports. These steamships carry it to Seattle, or to Vancouver, whence it
is distributed by rail. The increased cost of shipment by this route is
more than offset by a gain of from five to seven days in time.
In some respects the Russian "caravan route" is the most important
channel of the tea-trade. The tea is collected mainly at Tientsin, and
sent by camel caravans through Manchuria to the most convenient point on
the Siberian railway. Not only the shipments of brick tea[36] for the
Russian market, but the choicest products for western Europe also are
sent by this route. It is probably an economical way of shipping the
brick tea, but a more expensive method of shipment for the latter could
not be found easily; it is preferred from the fact that, no matter how
carefully sealed, the flavor of tea is materially injured by an ocean
voyage.
It is evident, therefore, that for the tea product alone the Siberian
railway will soon become an important factor in the commerce of Europe.
Shipments of tea are also sent from Canton to Odessa, Russia, but this
route is not less expensive in the long run than the Cape route, and the
tea suffers as much deterioration from the shorter as from the longer
voyage.
=Cacao.=--Cacao, the "cocoa" of commerce, consists of the prepared seeds
of several species of _Theobroma_, the greater part being obtained from
the _Theobroma cacao_. The name is unfortunately confused with that of
the cocoa-palm, but there is no relation whatever between the two.
The seeds of the cacao were used in ancient America long before its
discovery by Columbus, and the latter carried the first knowledge of it
to Europe. By the middle of the seventeenth century it was much used in
Spain, and less than a hundred years later it had become the fashionable
drink of western Europe.
The cacao-tree, originally native to Mexico, is now cultivated
throughout tropical America and the West Indies. It is not cultivated to
any extent in the Eastern continent. The fruit consists of large, fleshy
pods, which are cut from the trees usually in June and December. The
seeds are then piled in heaps, or else packed in pits, and allowed to
undergo a rapid fermentation for a period of several days, to which
process their flavor is mainly due. The roasted and broken seeds are the
cocoa-nibs of commerce. The husks are known as cocoa-shells.
A very large part of the cacao product comes from Ecuador, Guayaquil
being perhaps the chief market of the world. The Venezuelan and
Brazilian products, however, are the choicest; these are known in
commerce respectively as Caracas and Trinidad cacao. Spain, Portugal,
and France are the chief purchasers, and in the first-named country the
consumption per person is five or six times as great as in other
countries.
Cacao is not only a stimulant beverage, but a food as well; about
one-half its weight is fat, and about one-third consists of starch and
flesh-making substances. The stimulant principle is the same as that
occurring in tea and coffee, but the proportion is considerably less. In
preparing the cocoa for the market, much of the fat is intentionally
withdrawn. The fat, commercially known as "cocoa-butter," and "oil of
theobroma," does not turn rancid.
Chocolate consists of cocoa ground to a paste with sugar and flavoring
matter, and then cast in moulds to harden. It is used mainly in the
manufacture of confectionery. Most of the chocolate is made in France,
Spain, and the United States. More than forty million pounds of cocoa
are yearly consumed in the United States.
=Mate.=--Mate, yerba mate, or Paraguay tea, is the leaf of a shrub, a
species of holly, growing profusely in the forests of Brazil, Paraguay,
Argentina, and Uruguay. In many instances, the shrub is cultivated. The
leaves are prepared in much the same manner as tea-leaves are, but
instead of being rolled, they are broken by beating.
The mate of commerce has a stimulant principle identical with that of
tea and coffee, which is the only reason for its use. The consumption,
about fifteen thousand tons a year, is confined almost wholly to the
countries named.
=Tobacco.=--The tobacco of commerce is the prepared and manufactured leaf
of several species of plant, belonging to the nightshade family. Most of
the product is derived from the species known as Virginia tobacco
(_Nicotiana tabacum_) and the Brazilian species (_Nicotiana rustica_).
The former is cultivated in the United States, West Indies, the
Philippine Islands, and Turkey; the latter has been transplanted to
central Europe and the East Indies.
The use of tobacco was prevalent in the New World at the time of
Columbus's first voyage, and was quickly introduced into Europe. The
prepared leaf contains a substance, nicotine, which is one of the most
deadly of poisons when swallowed, and an intense narcotic stimulant when
inhaled. On account of the evil effects arising from its introduction,
its use was forbidden by the Church and also by sovereigns of several
European states. The latter, however, finding that its use was becoming
general, made it a Crown monopoly. In Great Britain its cultivation was
forbidden in order to encourage its cultivation in Virginia.
Tobacco does not thrive best in a poor soil, but the latter produces a
thin, half-developed leaf, which in other plants would be called
"sickly." It grows in almost any kind of soil, but requires warm summer
nights. In many instances the tobacco of temperate latitudes yields a
more salable leaf when grown under cover. The flavor is due partly to
soil and climate, and partly to skill in curing. The choicest product is
obtained in only a few localities of limited area. It sometimes happens
that the products of two plantations almost side by side, and similarly
situated, are very unlike in character and quality.
[Illustration: TOBACCO]
The choicest cigar-tobacco is grown on the Vuelta Abajo district in the
province of Pinar del Rio, Cuba; another very choice Cuban leaf is known
as Partidos. Cuban-made cigars of fine quality are commercially "Havana"
cigars, although tobacco from Manila and Porto Rico is apt to be largely
used in their manufacture. In order to avoid the very heavy duty on
cigars, which is not far from six dollars per pound, a great deal of the
Havana tobacco is exported to points along the Florida coast, mainly Key
West and Tampa. The unmanufactured tobacco pays a comparatively small
duty, and the cigars made from it are commercially known as "Key West."
In some parts of Mexico a fine-flavored tobacco is grown, but as the
cigars are not uniform in quality they are not popular. Some of the
Brazilian tobacco is a high-class product, but not much is exported.
Porto Rican leaf has a fine flavor, but is not popular because of its
dark color. The demand for it in the United States is growing, however.
Of the leaf grown in the East, that from Sumatra and the Philippine
Islands is by far the best, and the exports are heavy. Cuban
manufacturers purchase the Manila leaf; the Sumatra wrappers are
purchased in the United States.
The choicest cigarette-tobacco is grown in Asiatic Turkey,
Transcaucasia, and Egypt. It is selected with great care, and is
"long-cut." The common grades are made of chopped Virginia tobacco, or
of chopped cigar-trimmings. The cheapest grades consist of refuse leaf
mixed with half-smoked cigar-stumps. The United States leads in the
manufacture of cigarettes, and a large part of the product is sold in
China, India, and Japan. Most of the world's product of snuff is made in
the United States, and nearly all of it is sold abroad.
The United States produces yearly about seven hundred million pounds. A
large part of this is sold to European countries. Great Britain
purchases about four-fifths of the tobacco there consumed from the
United States. The latter country purchases from Europe (mainly the
Netherlands) about half as much as it sells to Europe. Louisville, Ky.,
is probably the largest tobacco-market in the world. New York,
Baltimore, Richmond, Manila, and Havana are the chief shipping-ports.
In almost every civilized country tobacco is heavily taxed. In the
United States there is not only a heavy import duty, but an internal
revenue in addition. In Austria, France, Italy, Japan, and Spain the
manufacture and sale is in the hands of the government. The consumption
of tobacco varies greatly. In the Netherlands it averages about seven
pounds a year to each individual; in the United States it is more than
four pounds; in central Europe, three pounds; in Spain, Sweden, Great
Britain, and Italy, it is less than two pounds.
=Opium.=--The opium of commerce is the hardened juice obtained from the
seed capsules of several species of the poppy-plant. A variety having a
large capsule (_Papaver somniferum_) is most commonly cultivated for the
commercial production of the substance. Half-a-dozen times during the
season the capsules are scratched or cut; the juice exuding when hard is
picked or scraped off and pressed into cakes.
Opium is not only a narcotic poison, but it has the property of
lessening the pain of disease, and this is its chief use in medicine. In
Mohammedan countries where the use of alcoholic liquors is forbidden as
a religious custom, opium is used as a substitute. In Turkey, Persia,
Arabia, and Egypt the production of opium is an important industry
connected with social and religious life. In British India it is a
political factor, being extensively cultivated as a government monopoly
to be sold to the Chinese, who are probably the chief consumers of it.
The Indian Government derives a revenue sometimes reaching twenty
million dollars from this source.
The best quality of opium is marketed at Smyrna, and most of this is
purchased by the United States. A considerable amount of Chinese opium
is imported for the use of the Chinese, and a larger amount is probably
smuggled over the Canadian and Mexican borders. Laudanum is an alcoholic
tincture, and morphine an extractive of opium; both are used as
medicine.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Consult a good physiology and learn the effects of coffee, tea, tobacco,
and opium.
Where and what are the following: Mocha, Java, Maracaibo, Yokohama,
Amoy, Canton, Oaxaca, Hodeida, Rio Janeiro, Santos, Havana; how is each
connected commercially with this chapter?
From the map, Fig. 1, trace the route of a cargo of tea overland from
China to Great Britain.
Consult an English history or a cyclopaedia and learn about the opium
war.
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain samples of the following, preserving them for study and
inspection in closely stoppered vials: Mocha, Java, Rio, and Sumatra
coffees; green, black, and gunpowder tea. Soak a tea-leaf a few minutes
in warm water; unroll the leaf and attach it to a white card, for study.
Obtain samples of gum opium, laudanum, and morphine; note the odor of
the first two and the taste of the last. Remember that they are
poisonous.
Unroll a cheap cigarette and note the character of the tobacco in it,
using a magnifying glass.
CHAPTER XI
GUMS AND RESINS USED IN THE ARTS
Most vegetable juices exposed to the air harden into firm substances,
commonly called _gum_. Some of these dissolve, or at least soften, in
water; these technically are known as "gums," and usually are so
designated in commerce. Others are insoluble in water, but dissolve
readily in alcohol, in naphtha, in turpentine, or in other essential
oils; these are designated as "gum-resins." Still others yield oils or
pitchy substances on distillation; these are known as "oleo-resins."
There are many other dried vegetable juices, however, that in commerce
are not classified among the gums and resins, and of these the most
important is the substance commonly known as india-rubber.
=Rubber and Rubber Products.=--"Caoutchouc" is approximately the name
given by Indians of the Amazon forests to a substance that had also been
found in India. Some of it was brought to Europe from the Amazon region
as early as 1736, and for nearly one hundred years no general purpose
was discovered for which it could be used, except to erase lead-pencil
marks--hence the name india-rubber, which has held ever since.
Common rubber is the prepared juice of a dozen or more shrubs and trees,
all of which grow in tropical regions.[37] The belt of rubber-producing
plants extends around the world and includes such well-known species as
the fig, the manihot (or manioc), and the oleander; indeed, it is a
condition of sap rather than a definite species of plant that produces
rubber, and the latter is a manufactured rather than a natural product.
The process of preparing the juice is practically the same in every part
of the world.
The rubber-gatherer of the Amazon, who is practically a slave, wades
into the swamp, makes several incisions in the bark of the tree,
fashions a rough trough of clay under it, and waits till the sap fills
the clay vessel. When the sap has been gathered he makes a fire of the
nuts of the urucuri palm and places an inverted funnel over it to
concentrate the smoke. He first dips the end of a wooden spindle into
the juice and then holds it in the smoke until the juice coagulates;
this process is repeated until there has formed a ball of rubber
weighing from five to ten pounds. The smoke of the palm-nuts is a
chemical agent that converts the juice into the crude rubber of
commerce.
Crude gum, however, is lacking both in strength and elasticity. The
process that makes it a finished product is known as _vulcanization_.
The crude rubber, having been exported to the manufacturer in the United
States or Europe, is shredded, washed, and cleansed, and partly fused
with varying proportions of sulphur. For a very soft product, such as
the inner surface of tires, only a small proportion is used; where the
wear is considerable, a larger proportion is employed.[38] White clay is
sometimes added to give body to the product; coloring matter is also
sometimes added.
By far the greater part of the crude rubber comes from the Amazon
forests. Brazil produces about one-half, but a considerable quantity is
obtained in Acre, the territory formed where the borders of Brazil,
Bolivia, and Peru meet, and now ceded to Brazil. Nearly all this
product, that of the Ceara region excepted, is marketed at Para and is
known as Para rubber. It is the best produced. The African product,
mainly from the forests of the Kongo, and Madagascar, and nearly all the
East Indian product is sent to Europe.
[Illustration: REGIONS YIELDING RUBBER]
The world's product is about one hundred and thirty-three million pounds
of crude rubber. Of this product the United States takes nearly
one-half. The greater part is used in the manufacture of pneumatic
tires, hose, and overshoes. A large part is used for making water-proof
cloth,[39] and considerable is made into the small elastic bands for
which there is a growing use.
=Gutta-Percha.=--Gutta-percha is obtained from the juices of several
plants (chiefly _Dichopsis gutta_ and _Supota muelleri_) both of which
abound in the Malay peninsula and the East Indies. It is prepared in a
manner somewhat similar to that employed in making crude rubber; it is
also easily vulcanized by heating with sulphur. It is used to a limited
extent in the manufacture of golf-balls, but mainly as the insulating
cover of copper wires used in ocean telegraph cables. For this purpose
it has no known substitute, and its essential merit is the fact that it
is not altered by salt water. Nearly all the product is shipped from
Singapore to England.
=Pine-Tree Products.=--The various members of the pine and cone-bearing
trees yield valuable essential oils and oleo-resins that are very
important in the arts and sciences. These, in nearly every instance, are
prepared from the sap of the tree.
_Oil of turpentine_ is known as an "essential oil," and in chemical
structure and properties it does not differ from the various essential
oils, such as lemon, orange, peppermint, etc. Commercial turpentine is
generally made from the sap of the long-leafed pine of the Atlantic
coast-plain.
The bark of the tree is cut near the foot, and the sap that oozes from
the scar quickly hardens into a gum. The gum, generally known as "crude
turpentine," is distilled and yields about one-fourth its weight of oil
or "spirit" of turpentine. It is a staple article of manufacture in
Europe, India, and the United States, and is used chiefly to dilute the
oil paints and varnishes used in indoor work. The United States supplies
about two-thirds of the world's product, a large part of which is
shipped from Savannah and Brunswick, Ga., to Great Britain.[40]
_Resin_ is the substance remaining after the crude turpentine has been
distilled. It is used in the manufacture of varnish, sealing-wax, and
soap. Finely powdered resin is also mixed with wood-pulp in the
manufacture of wrapping-paper. It gives the latter a glazed surface and
renders it almost water-proof. Most of the world's product of resin
comes from the turpentine district of the United States, and about
four-fifths of it is exported to Europe.
When resin is subjected to distillation at a still higher temperature,
_resin oil_, a very heavy turpentine, is given off, and a viscous
substance known as _pitch_ remains. A considerable amount of this is
still made in the United States, but the greater part comes from the
pine-forests of Russia and Scandinavia. When pine-wood is distilled,
_tar_ is the chief product. In Russia tar is generally made by burning
green logs covered with turf, over a pit. _Creosote_, or wood
preservative, is made from tar. The various pine-tree products, creosote
excepted, are commonly known as "naval stores," the tar being used in
water-proofing the rigging of vessels, the pitch in calking the seams in
between planks, in the decks and hulls.
=Other Resins and Gums Used in the Arts.=--Most of the gums and resins
used in the arts and sciences are the hardened sap of plants--in some
cases exuding by natural means from the bark, in others resulting from
the puncture of the bark.
The _lac_ of commerce is due to the puncture of the young branches of a
tree, frequently a fig (_Ficus religiosa_) growing in the tropical
forests of India. The hardened sap incrusts twigs forming _stick-lac_;
when crushed, washed, and freed from the woody matter it is _seed-lac_;
when melted and cooled in flakes it is _shell-lac_, the form best known
in commerce. It is the chief ingredient in sealing-wax, and is
extensively used as a varnish. It is also used in fireworks on account
of its inflammability.
_Dammar_ is the product of a tree growing in the East Indies; it is the
basis of a very fine white varnish. _Copal_ is a term applied to
oleo-resins soluble in turpentine, and used almost universally as
varnishes. They come from the tropical regions of South America, Africa,
and from the East Indies. _Kauri_ is the fossil gum of a cone-bearing
tree dug from the ground in northern New Zealand. _Amber_ is the fossil
gum of extinct cone-bearing trees found mainly along the Baltic coast of
Prussia. It is used chiefly for the mouth-pieces of tobacco-pipes and
cigar-holders; the inferior product is made into varnish. It is sold
wherever tobacco is used. _Sandarach_, found on the north African coast,
is used principally in Europe, being employed as a varnish. The United
States and Great Britain consume most of the foregoing products.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Name any elastic substance you know about that is in every way a
substitute for rubber.
What has been the relation between rubber and good roads?
Describe the structure of a bicycle tire.
Why are tar, pitch, and turpentine called naval stores?--and what
determines the locality in which they are made?
What is varnish, and for what purposes is it used?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of crude rubber, vulcanized rubber, and hard rubber;
note carefully the characteristics of each.
Burn a very small piece of cheap white rubber-tubing in an iron spoon or
a fire-shovel; note the character of the residue.
Obtain specimens of gutta-percha, resin, pitch, turpentine, shellac,
copal, dammar, and creosote for study and inspection.
CHAPTER XII
COAL AND PETROLEUM
The economic history of nearly every country that has achieved eminence
in modern times dates from its use of coal and iron; and indeed the
presence of these substances in workable deposits means almost unlimited
power. The present era is sometimes called the Age of Steel, but the
possibilities of producing steel in enormous quantities, at less than
one-fifth its price at the beginning of the nineteenth century, depended
mainly upon the use of mineral coal instead of charcoal in its
manufacture.
Coal consists of accumulations of vegetable matter that were formed in
prior geological ages. Under the action of heat and moisture, and also
the tremendous pressure of the rock layers that afterward covered them,
the vegetable matter was converted to mineral coal.
The aggregate coal-fields of the United States are not far from two
hundred thousand square miles in extent, but of this area not much more
than one-half is workable. In Europe there are estimated to be about one
hundred thousand square miles of coal-lands, of which about half are
productive at the present time. Of this Great Britain has 12,000 square
miles, Spain 4,000, France 2,000, Germany 1,800, and Belgium 500. In
Canada there are about 20,000 square miles of coal-land; a part of this
is included in the Nanaimo field on the Pacific coast, but the most
important are the Nova Scotia beds, which form about the only supply for
the British naval stations of America. China has extensive coal-fields.
In character coal is broadly divided into two classes--anthracite or
hard, and bituminous or soft, coal. Anthracite coal occurs in folded and
metamorphic rocks. It is hard and glassy, and does not split into thin
layers or leaves. The beds have been subjected to intense heat and
pressure, and the coal has but a very small amount--rarely more than
five per cent.--of volatile matter; it burns, therefore, with little or
no smoke and soot, and on this account is very desirable as a fuel in
cities. Two areas in Colorado and New Mexico produce small quantities of
pure anthracite; practically all the commercial anthracite comes from
three small basins in Pennsylvania. In quality it is known as "red ash"
and "white ash," the former being the superior.
The yearly output of the anthracite mines is upward of fifty-five
million long tons a year, or somewhat less than five million tons per
month. In winter the rate of consumption is somewhat greater than that
of production. A shortage in the summer production is therefore apt to
be keenly felt in the winter. Before shipment to the market the coal is
crushed at the breakers, sorted in different sizes, and washed.
Most of the anthracite coal-mines are owned by the railway companies
centring at New York and Philadelphia, or else are operated by companies
controlled by the railways. About one-fourth of the output is produced
by independent operators who, as a rule, sell their coal to the railway
companies. The Reading, Pennsylvania, Central of New Jersey, Lackawanna,
Lehigh Valley, Ontario & Western, Erie, and Delaware & Hudson are
popularly known as "coalers" because the larger part of their eastern
business consists in carrying anthracite coal.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF THREE COLLIERIES IN THE ANTHRACITE COAL BASIN
NEAR MAHANOY CITY, PA.]
Formerly much of the coal was shipped by canals, but the latter were
not able to compete with the railways, and most of the coal-canals have
been abandoned. The price of anthracite at tide-water (New York) varies
from $3.20 to $4.50 per long ton. At Philadelphia the price is about
one-fourth less. Buffalo is the chief lake-port for anthracite. Steam
sizes are about two-thirds the price of house fuel.
[Illustration: COAL FIELDS IN UNITED STATES]
Bituminous, or soft coal furnishes the larger part of the house fuel in
the United States, and nearly all the house coal used in other parts of
the world. It contains from fifteen to more than forty per cent. of
volatile matter, burning with a long and smoky flame. The coal which
contains twenty per cent. or less of volatile matter is a free-burning
coal that may develop heat enough to partly fuse the ash, forming
"clinkers"; it is therefore called "caking" coal, and is not only well
adapted for use as fuel and steam-making, but it is also a good smelting
coal.
Coal which contains more than thirty per cent. of volatile matter is
known as "fat" coal and is generally used in the manufacture of coke and
illuminating gas. Western Pennsylvania produces the largest amount of
fat coal, but it is found here and there in nearly all soft-coal
regions. A so-called smokeless bituminous coal occurs in various
localities; its low percentage of volatile matter makes it an excellent
house fuel.
Bituminous coal is mined in twenty-five States of the Union,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, and Ohio heading the list. In
about half the mines the coal is cut from the seam by means of machinery
and is known as machine-mined coal. A very large part of the product is
consumed within a short distance of the mines, and this is especially
true of the region about the upper Ohio River.
[Illustration: COAL PRODUCTION]
Most of the product is shipped to the large manufacturing cities of the
middle west, where it is used for steam as well as fuel; a very large
amount also is sent down the Ohio in barges to the lower Mississippi
River. The spot value of bituminous coal varies from $0.80 to $1.60 per
ton; the product of the Pacific coast mines, however, is from $3 to $5.
The output of the mines of the United States aggregates about two
hundred and forty million long tons yearly, and this is about one-third
of the world's product. For many years there has been an export trade to
Canada, the West Indies, Central and South America, amounting in 1900 to
8,000,000 tons. Within a few years, however, the decreased cost of
mining due to machinery, and the low rates of transportation to the
seaboard has developed an export trade to Russia, Germany, and France.
[Illustration: COAL]
A small amount of coal is imported into the United States. A superior
quality of Australian coal finds a ready market in Pacific coast points
as far north as San Francisco, and large quantities of Nanaimo, B.C.,
coal are sold in Oregon, Washington, and California. A small quantity of
the "slack" or waste of the Nova Scotia mines is imported to Boston to
be made into coke. The Canadian fields supply a considerable part of the
coal used in Montana.
=Coke and Coal-Tar Products.=--In the manufacture of iron and steel a fuel
having a high percentage of carbon free from volatile matter is
essential. The great cost of wood charcoal forbids its use, and so a
charcoal made from soft coal is used. Fat coal is heated in closed
chambers until the volatile matter is driven off. The product is "coke";
the closed chamber is an "oven." The ovens are built of stone or
fire-brick, in a long row. They are usually on an abrupt slope, so that
the coal can be dumped into the top, while the coke can be withdrawn
from the bottom, to be loaded into cars.
About three thousand one hundred and forty pounds of coal are required
to make a short ton of coke; from three thousand to five thousand cubic
feet of illuminating gas, together with varying amounts of coal-tar and
ammonia, are driven off and generally wasted. In a few instances
"scientific" ovens are in use for the purpose of saving these products;
but in the coal-mining regions such devices are the exception and not
the rule. The great waste of energy-products in the manufacture of coke
is partly offset by the employment of refuse and slack, which could not
be otherwise used.
There are more than five hundred and eighteen thousand coke-ovens in
the United States, of which eighty per cent. are in use. Most of them
are in the region about the upper Ohio River, and nearly half the total
number is in the vicinity of Connellsville. The region around
Birmingham, Ala., ranks next in number. The coke product of the United
States is more than twenty million short tons a year. This is
considerably less than the product of Great Britain, which is upward of
twenty-five million tons.
Most of the "scientific" ovens are near or in large cities where the
gas, after purification, is used for illuminating purposes. In some
instances the coke, and not the gas, is a by-product. The coal-tar is
used in part for fuel, but a portion of it goes to the chemical
laboratory, where it is made to yield ammonia, benzine, carbolic acid,
and aniline dyes to the value of nearly seven million dollars.
=Graphite.=--Graphite, plumbago, or "black lead," as it is popularly
named, is found in many parts of the United States, but only a few
localities produce a good commercial article; these are Ticonderoga, N.Y.,
which yields from six hundred to two thousand tons a year, and
Chester County, Pa., which yields a small but increasing amount; a good
quality is mined near Ottawa, Canada. It is extensively mined in Ceylon,
and this island produces the chief bulk of the world's ordinary product.
The finest grade comes from the Alibert mine in Siberia. A good article
is manufactured artificially at Niagara Falls.
Graphite is used as a stove polish and for crucibles; in the main,
however, it is employed in the manufacture of lead[41] pencils; for this
purpose only a very soft mineral, absolutely free from grit, is
employed, and the Siberian output is used almost wholly. One German firm
and two American firms supply most of the pencils used.
=Petroleum.=--Petroleum is the name given to a natural liquid mineral from
which the well-known illuminating oil "kerosene" is derived, and to
obtain which it is mined. Petroleum is a mixture of various compounds
known as hydrocarbons. Some of these compounds are gaseous, some are
liquid, and some are solid; all of them are articles of commercial
value. The petroleum from different localities differs greatly in
appearance and composition.
The pitch that coated Noah's ark, the slime of the builders of the Tower
of Babel, and the slime-pits of the Vale of Siddim all refer to mineral
products associated with petroleum. Under the name of "naphtha" it has
been known in Persia for thirty centuries, and for more than half as
long a flowing oil spring has existed in the Ionian Islands. The Seneca
Indians knew of a petroleum spring near the village of Cuba, N.Y., and
used it as a medicine long before the advent of the white man.
As early as 1850 illuminating oil, known as "coal" oil, was made in the
United States by distilling cannel coal, but this product was supplanted
within a few years by the natural petroleum discovered in Pennsylvania.
In 1859 Colonel Drake completed a well bored in solid rock near
Titusville, Pa. The venture proved successful, and in a few years
petroleum mining became one of the great industries of the United
States.
Petroleum is known to exist in a great many parts of the world; the
United States and Russia, however, produce practically all the
commercial product; a very small amount is obtained from a horizon on
the south slope of the Carpathian Mountains, situated in Rumania and
Galicia, Austria-Hungary. There are also a few producing wells in Peru,
Germany, Italy, Burma, Argentina, and Sumatra.
[Illustration: PETROLEUM FIELDS IN THE UNITED STATES]
In the United States the largest horizon is that of the Appalachian
region. Since 1859 it has produced more than forty million gallons of
crude oil. The Lima, Ind., horizon produces about twenty million
barrels. The California and Texas horizons have become very important
factors. The crude petroleum is transported partly in tank cars, but
mainly by means of long lines of pipe, flowing from one pumping station
to another by gravity. There are pipe-line terminals on the Great Lakes
and at Pittsburg, but the principal are at the refining and exporting
stations in New York, Philadelphia, and on the Delaware River.
A considerable amount is exported to European countries to be there
refined, but in the main the crude oil is refined before exporting it.
Some of the refined oil is exported in barrels, and some in tin cases;
the greater part, however, goes in tank steamers, and from these it is
pumped into tank cars to be distributed. Most of the product is
controlled by the Standard Oil Company, and it reaches nearly every
country in the world. It is carried into Arctic regions on sledges, and
over the African deserts by caravans. Great Britain, Germany, and the
Netherlands are the chief purchasers and distributors. The value of the
entire product is about one hundred and eighty-five million dollars.
The Russian oil-producing region is on and near the Apsheron peninsula,
a small area of Trans-Caucasia, that extends into the Caspian Sea; the
region is commonly known as the Baku field, and in 1900 the production
of crude oil surpassed that of the United States. The petroleum is
conveyed by pipe lines to the refineries at Baku. From this port it is
shipped in tank cars by rail to Batum, whence it is conveyed to the
various European markets. A considerable part of the product is sent by
tank steamers to Astrakhan, and thence up the Volga to Russian markets.
Great Britain takes about one-third; about the same amount is shipped to
Port Said for China, India, and other Asian markets; the rest is
consumed in central Europe.
=Petroleum Products.=--The various constituents of crude petroleum differ
greatly in character, some being much more volatile than others. They
are separated by distillation at different temperatures. By this process
naphtha, rhigoline, gasoline, benzine, and other highly inflammable
products are obtained in separate receivers. By a similar process the
illuminating or refined oil and the lubricating oils are also separated.
The residuum consists of a gummy mass from which paraffine and petroleum
jelly are extracted.
_Naphtha_ usually contains several volatile compounds, including
_benzine_ and _gasoline_. It is used as a solvent of grease and also of
crude india-rubber, but chiefly the manufacture of illuminating gas.
_Kerosene_ is the name commonly given to the refined oil. A good
quality should have a fire test of not less than one hundred and fifty
degrees; that is, when heated to that temperature, it should not give
off any inflammable gas. This test is now mandatory in most States.
_Lubricating oil_ is used almost wholly for the lubrication of heavy
machinery. It varies greatly in composition and quality.
_Paraffine_ or petroleum wax has largely superseded beeswax; it is used
mainly in the manufacture of candles and as an insulator for electric
wires. A native mineral paraffine, known as ozocerite, is mined in Utah
and Galicia; it is used as an insulating material.
"_Vaseline_," "_cosmoline_," or _petroleum "jelly"_ is very largely used
in pharmacy as the basis of ointments and also as a lubricant for heavy
machinery.
_Asphalt_ is produced by the distillation of petroleum, but the greater
part of the world's product comes from two "pitch lakes"--one in
Bermudez, Venezuela, the other in the island of Trinidad, off the
Venezuelan coast. The former is the larger and produces a superior
quality. Small deposits occur near Los Angeles, Cal., and in Utah. The
output of the Venezuelan asphalt is used almost wholly for street
pavement.
Probably no other mineral has had a wider influence on both social and
economic life, and the industrial arts, than petroleum and its
compounds. The kerosene lamp, the aniline dye, the insulation of
electric wires, the lubrication of machinery, the cosmetic, the
india-rubber solution, and the physician's sedative dose represent only
a few of the devices that are derived from petroleum.
=Natural Gas.=--A natural inflammable gas occurs in or near several of the
petroleum horizons. One important belt extends through western
Pennsylvania and New York, and another through northwestern Ohio and
northeastern Indiana. It is conveyed through pipe-lines and used both as
fuel and for lighting. Natural gas occurs in a great many localities,
but is used commercially only in the regions noted. It is better adapted
for making glass than any other fuel, and on this account extensive
glass-making establishments have concentrated in the natural-gas belt of
western Pennsylvania.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
The statement is sometimes made to the effect that coal is "condensed
sunlight"; is it true, or untrue; and why?
Why are the coal areas of Europe and America also areas of various
manufactures?
A recent cartoon had for its title--"John Bull and his coal piles
(_i.e._, coaling stations) rule the world"; show why this statement
contains a great deal of truth.
What are some of the advantages of steam-vessels over sailing-vessels?
Whale oil, crude turpentine, kerosene, and gas have been used each in
turn for illuminants; what is the advantage of each over the preceding?
Describe the structure of an ordinary kerosene lamp-burner, an argand
burner, a Welsbach burner.
For what are aniline, paraffine, naphtha, and carbolic acid used?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of anthracite, bituminous, and cannel coal, and coke
for comparison and study.
Obtain specimens of crude petroleum, naphtha, refined oil, aniline dye,
paraffine, and carbolic acid; note the properties of each. Throw away
the naphtha after using.
Read Mineral Resources of the United States on the foregoing subjects.
CHAPTER XIII
METALS OF THE ARTS AND SCIENCES
The development of modern civilization is directly connected with the
mining and manufacture of the useful metals. Their effect on the affairs
of mankind can be rightly understood only when they are studied in their
relations to one another, as well as to the people who used them. Next
to the discovery of the use of fire, an appreciation of the use of
metals has been the chief thing to develop the intellect of mankind.
When human beings discarded natural caves for artificially constructed
dwellings--when they began to cook their food and clothe their bodies,
they required tools. These, in the main, consisted of the spears and
arrow-heads used as weapons of the chase, and the axes and knives used
as constructive tools.
Rough stone gave place to flint because the latter would take a better
edge. For the same reason the people of central Europe sent to the
deserts of central Asia for jade wherewith to make axes and knives.
Again, for the same reason, jade was discarded, because an alloy of
copper and tin produced a bronze that would not only take a sharper edge
than stone, but it was hard enough to cut and dress the latter. Egypt
rose to a commanding position because of her control of the copper mines
in the Sinaitic peninsula, and subsequently of the gold products coming
from the upper Nile.
A meridian drawn through Cairo, Egypt, practically divides the world
into two kinds of civilization. East of this meridian the population is
almost wholly agricultural and, excepting Japan and India, the
character of the civilization has changed but little in the past 2,000
years. West of the line the population is essentially characterized as
metal-workers. It controls the world--not especially by virtue of a high
degree of intellectual development, but because it has availed itself of
the properties and characteristics of metals and their applications to
commerce.
The four metals that have had the greatest influence on western
civilization are gold, silver, iron, and copper. The discovery of gold
and silver has always resulted in a rapid settlement of the regions in
which the discoveries were made, and usually in the building of great
industrial centres. Thus, the discovery of gold in California was the
first step in making the United States a world power. The acquisition of
so large an amount of gold caused an industrial expansion that hurried
the Civil War, and led to the manufacture of iron and steel both for
agricultural machinery and railroad transportation. This, in turn,
brought the country so closely in touch with the affairs of China and
Japan, that European and American diplomacy in eastern Asia are a common
concern. The commercial position of Great Britain is very largely due to
her iron mines.
The production of Bessemer steel at a price far less than that of iron
at the beginning of the nineteenth century lowered the cost of
transporting commodities to the extent that large areas, once of
necessity very moderately productive of food-stuffs, are now densely
peopled because food-stuffs can be transported to these regions more
economically than they can be grown there. Thus, owing to the
improvements in iron and steel manufacture, the farmer of Minnesota, the
planter of Louisiana, the miner of Colorado, and the factory operative
of Massachusetts have each the same comforts of living that are enjoyed
by all the others, and have them at scarcely more than half the cost of
fifty years ago.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--THE NATIONAL STEEL COMPANY'S SMELTERY
AND ROLLING-MILLS, MINGO JUNCTION, OHIO]
The gradual decrease in the production of the silver mines near the
present site of Ergasteria proved a beginning of the fall of Athens; and
when gold was discovered in the Perim Mountains of Macedonia, the seat
of Greek power moved thither. Philip of Macedon hoarded the treasure
from the mines of Pangaeus, and with the capital thus acquired his son,
Alexander the Great, conquered the East, implanted Hellenic business
methods there, and drew the various trade routes between Europe and Asia
under one control.
In the fifteenth century copper from the mines near Budapest and silver
from the Schwarz Mountains of Germany were the resources that made
Germanic Europe pre-eminent. The wresting of the trade in these two
metals from Venice caused the rise of Antwerp and brought immense gains
to Luebeck, London, Brussels, Augsburg, and Nuremberg. In the latter part
of the nineteenth century copper again reached a high position of
importance from the fact that upon it largely depends electric motive
power and transportation.
=Iron.=--Iron is one of the most widely diffused of metals. It is abundant
in the sun; meteorites contain from more than ten to eighty or ninety
per cent. of it; all earths and rocks contain at least traces of it; and
in various places the deposits of ore in nearly pure form aggregate
cubic miles in extent.
In only a few localities is iron ore found in a metallic or "native"
form. Many meteorites consist of metallic iron mixed with nickel and
manganese, and in Greenland a volcanic dyke or ledge of metallic iron is
known to exist. The iron of commerce is derived from "ores," or chemical
compounds of iron and oxygen, or iron and carbon. The cheapness of the
product depends upon the ease with which the ore may be quarried,
transported to coal, and smelted. The following are the ores commonly
employed in the production of iron:
_Red hematite_ has a reddish metallic lustre and when pure contains
seventy per cent. of iron.[42] It is the most abundant of the workable
ores, and certainly the best for the manufacture of Bessemer steel. The
ores of the Lake Superior region are mainly red hematite, and the latter
constitutes more than four-fifths of the output of the United States.
[Illustration: THE COMPARATIVE PRODUCTION OF IRON AND STEEL]
_Brown hematite_, or limonite, has a chestnut brown color and contains
very nearly sixty per cent. of iron[43]; it includes the "bog" ores, and
is very abundant. Not far from one-quarter of the Appalachian ores are
brown hematite; it constitutes about one-eighth of the output of the
United States.
_Magnetic_ iron ore, or magnetite, of which loadstone, a natural magnet,
is an example, has a metallic, steel lustre and contains 72.4 per cent.
of iron.[44] Most of the ores obtained in Pennsylvania and New York are
magnetite. The magnetites furnish about one-sixteenth of the output of
the United States.
_Carbonate of Iron_, or siderite, occurs in a few localities, the ore
produced in Ohio being almost wholly of this kind. It contains when
pure about forty-eight per cent. of iron.[45] It constitutes less than
one per cent. of the output of the United States.
_Iron pyrites_, or sulphide of iron, sometimes called "fools' gold," is
a very common mineral. It is used in the manufacture of sulphuric acid,
but is worthless for the production of iron; indeed, the presence of a
very small percentage of sulphur in iron renders the latter worthless
for many purposes.
Extensive deposits of iron are known to exist in very nearly every
country in the world, but those which can be advantageously worked are
few in number. In order to be available, the deposits must be within
easy transporting distance of the people who use it, and likewise within
a short distance of the coal used to manufacture it.
For these reasons most of the workable deposits of ore are in or near
the great centres of population in western Europe and the eastern part
of the United States; as a matter of fact, practically all the iron and
steel of the latter country is produced in the populous centres of the
Atlantic slopes. In most great steel-making districts it is essential to
mix the native ores with special ores brought from a distance, the
latter being used to give strength and hardness to the resulting metal.
Ores from Sweden, and from Juragua, Cuba, are employed for this purpose
in the steel-making establishments of the United States.
In the past few years the United States has jumped from an insignificant
position in the production of iron and steel to the first rank among the
iron-producing countries. This great advance is due to the fortunate
geographic position of the iron ore and the coal, and also to the
discovery of the Bessemer process of making steel.
In general it is more economical to ship the ore to the coal than _vice
versa_. The position of the steel-making plant is largely determined by
the cost of moving the coke and ore, together with that of getting the
steel to the place of use. Formerly, iron manufacture in the United
States was not profitable unless the coal, ore, and limestone[46] were
very near to one another.
These conditions still obtain in the southern Appalachian mineral
fields; the ore and the coal are at no great distance apart, and a great
iron-making industry, in which Birmingham and Bessemer form the
principal centre, has grown into existence. For the greater part the
coal is coked; and in this form less than a ton[47] is sufficient to
make a ton of pig-iron. The smelteries and rolling-mills are built at
places where the materials are most conveniently hauled.
In the past few years the iron and steel industry which formerly centred
about the navigable waters at the head of the Ohio River, has undergone
a readjustment. Rolling-mills and smelteries exist at Pittsburg and
vicinity, and at Youngstown, New Castle, and other nearby localities,
but greater steel-making plants have been built along the south shores
of Lakes Michigan and Erie, all of which have come about because of
reasons that are purely geographic.
Immense deposits of excellent hematite ore in the old mountain-ranges
near Lake Superior have recently become available. For the greater part
the ore is very easily quarried. In many instances it is taken out of
the quarry or pit by steam-shovels which dump it into self-discharging
hopper-cars. Thence the ore is carried on a down grade to the nearest
shipping-port on the lake. There it is dumped into huge bunkers built at
the docks, and from these it slides down chutes into the holds of the
steam-barges. A 6,000-ton barge is loaded in less than two hours; a car
is unloaded in a few seconds.
[Illustration: MOVEMENT OF IRON ORE]
Water transportation is very cheap compared with railway transportation,
even when the road is built and equipped as an ore-hauling road. The ore
is therefore carried a distance varying from one thousand to one
thousand five hundred miles for less than it could be loaded, on cars
hauled one-tenth that distance by rail, and unloaded.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--ORE DOCKS]
At the south shore of Lake Erie, the ore meets the coke from western
Pennsylvania and coal from the Ohio coal-fields, and as a result new
centres of iron and steel manufacture have grown up along this line of
"least resistance." The ore is unloaded at the docks by means of
mechanical scoops and shovels. So cheaply and quickly is it mined and
transported that it is delivered to the smelteries at a cost varying
from $1.75 to $3.25 per ton.
[Illustration: LAKE SUPERIOR IRON ORE FIELDS]
There are three forms in which iron is used--cast iron, wrought iron,
and steel. Cast iron is crystalline and brittle. The product as it comes
from the blast furnace is called pig-iron. In making such commodities as
stoves, and articles that do not require great strength, the pig-iron is
again melted and cast into moulds which give them the required shape.
Cast iron contains from one to five per cent. of carbon.
Wrought iron is malleable, ductile, and very flexible; when pure it is
also very soft. It is prepared by melting pig-iron in furnaces having
such a shape that the molten metal can be stirred or "puddled" in
contact with the air. By this means the carbon is burnt out, and while
still at a white heat the pasty iron is kneaded or "wrought," in order
to expel other impurities.
Steel is a form of iron which is thought to contain a chemical compound
of iron with carbon. It is stronger than iron and finer in grain.
Formerly, steel was made by packing bars of pure iron in charcoal
powder, the whole being enclosed in clay retorts that were heated to
whiteness for about three days. The product obtained by this method is
known as cementation steel. It is still used in the manufacture of
cutlery, tools, and fine machinery; it is likewise very expensive. In
smelting certain ores it is easy to burn out the carbon in open
furnaces, and "open-hearth" steel is an important factor.
Just about the beginning of the Civil War, when the railways of the
United States were taxed beyond their capacity to carry the produce of
the country, it became apparent that something more durable than iron
must be used for rails. The locomotives, then weighing from twenty-five
to thirty-five tons each, were too light to haul the freight offered the
roads; they were also too heavy for the rails, which split at the ends
and frayed at the edges.
[Illustration: IRON AND STEEL]
The Bessemer process of making steel was the result of the demand for a
better and a cheaper method. By this process, the iron is put into a
"converter" along with certain Swedish or Cuban ores to give the product
hardness. A hot blast is then forced into the converter which not only
melts the mass but burns out the excess of carbon as well. The color of
the flame indicates the moment when the conversion to steel is
accomplished.
In 1860, before the establishment of the Bessemer process, steel
commanded a price of about one hundred and twenty-five dollars per ton;
at the beginning of the twentieth century steel billets were about
eighteen dollars per ton. In western Europe and the United States there
are used about three hundred pounds of iron and steel per capita; in
South America the rate of consumption is about fifteen pounds; in Asia
(Japan excepted) it is probably less than three pounds.
The economic results of low-priced steel are very far-reaching. Steam
boilers of steel carry a pressure of more than two hundred and fifty
pounds to each square inch of surface--about four times as great as in
the iron boilers formerly used. Locomotives of eighty tons draw the fast
passenger trains at a speed of sixty miles an hour. Ponderous
compounding engines weighing one hundred and twenty tons haul ninety or
more steel freight cars that carry each a load of 100,000 pounds. The
iron rails formerly in use weighed about forty pounds per yard; now
steel rails of one hundred pounds per yard are employed on most trunk
lines.
In the large commercial buildings steel girders have entirely supplanted
timber, while in nearly all modern buildings of more than six stories in
height, the frame is constructed of Bessemer steel. Indeed, a
steel-framed building of twenty-five stories has greater stability than
a brick or stone building of six. Such a structure as the "Flatiron
Building" in New York or the Masonic Temple in Chicago would have been
impossible without Bessemer steel.
In ocean commerce cheap steel has worked even a greater revolution. In
1860, a vessel of 4,000 tons displacement was thought to be almost up to
the limit. The Oceanic of the White Star Line has a displacement of
about twenty-eight thousand five hundred tons. This is nearly equalled
by the measurement of half a dozen other liners, and is exceeded by the
freighters built by Mr. J.J. Hill for the China trade.
[Illustration: _From a copyrighted photograph by C.L. Ritzmann, N.Y._
STEEL MANUFACTURE
THE FULLER (FLATIRON) BUILDING, NEW YORK CITY]
HISTORICAL
1619.--Iron works established on Falling Creek, Va.
1643.--First foundry in Massachusetts, at Lynn.
1658.--Blast furnace and forge at New Haven, Conn.
1679.--Father Hennepin discovers coal in Illinois.
1703.--Mordecai Lincoln, ancestor of Abraham Lincoln, establishes
iron works at Scituate, Mass.
1717.--First bar iron exported from American Colonies to West
Indies.
1728.--Steel made, Hebron, Ct.
1732.--Father of George Washington establishes furnace in Virginia.
1740.--First iron works in New York, near Hudson.
1750.--Bituminous coal mined in Virginia.
1766.--Anthracite coal discovered in Pennsylvania.
1770.--First rolling-mill in Colonies, Boonton, N.J.
1801-1803.--Lake Champlain iron district, New York, developed.
1812.--First rolling-mill at Pittsburg.
1828.--Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, first steam railway in the United
States, begun.
1829.--"Stourbridge Lion," first locomotive in America, used in
Delaware & Hudson Railway.
1830.--The T rail invented by Robert L. Stevens.
1830.--First American locomotive, "Tom Thumb," built by Peter
Cooper at Baltimore.
1830.--Twenty-three miles of railway in the United States.
1844.--Lake Superior iron ores discovered by William Burt.
1850.--First shipment of Lake Superior ore, ten tons.
1857.--Iron industry founded in Chicago.
1862.--Phoenix wrought iron column, or girder, first made.
1864.--Bessemer steel first made in the United States.
1865.--First Bessemer steel rails in the United States rolled at
Chicago.
1890.--First armor-plate made in the United States rolled at
Bethlehem, Pa.
1890.--The United States surpasses Great Britain in production of
pig-iron.
1900.--The United States leads in the production of open-hearth
steel.
=Gold.=--Gold is one of the metals earliest to be mined. It is mentioned
by the ancient profane as well as by sacred writers. Pictorial
representations of fusing and working the metal are sculptured on early
Egyptian tombs, and beautiful gold ornaments have been found that were
made by the prehistoric peoples who once occupied ancient Etruria, in
Italy. Columbus found gold ornaments in the possession of the aboriginal
Americans. The Incas of Peru and the Aztecs of Mexico possessed large
quantities of gold.
[Illustration: LEACHING (CYANIDE) TANKS DISSOLVING THE GOLD FROM THE
ROASTED ORE]
[Illustration: STOPING OUT A TUNNEL]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF MILL]
[Illustration: GOLD MINING]
Gold is one of the most widely diffused of metals. Traces of it are
found in practically all igneous and most sedimentary rocks. It occurs
in sea-water, and quite frequently in beach-sands. Traces of it are also
usually to be found in alluvial deposits and in the soils of most
mountain-folds. In spite of its wide diffusion, however, all the gold
that has been mined could be stored readily in the vaults of any large
New York bank.
In all probability most of the gold now in use has been deposited by
solution in quartz veins, the latter usually filling seams and crevices
in granitic or volcanic rocks. Quartz veins seldom yield very great
returns, but they furnish a steady supply of the metal. The rock must be
mined, hoisted to the surface, and crushed. The gold is then dissolved
by quicksilver (forming an amalgam from which the quicksilver is removed
by heat), by potassium cyanide solution, or by chlorine solution.
In many instances the quartz veins have been broken and weathered by
natural forces. In such cases the gold is usually carried off by swiftly
running water and deposited in the channel lower down. In this way
"placer" deposits of gold occur. Placer deposits are sometimes very
rich, but they are quickly exhausted. The first gold discovered in
California was placer gold.
Nearly all the gold mined in the United States has come from the western
highlands. In 1900, Colorado, California, South Dakota (Black Hills),
Montana, and Alaska yielded about seven-eighths of the entire product.
The placer mines of Alaska are confined mainly to the beach-sands and
the tributaries of Yukon River. Since 1849 the average annual yield of
gold in the United States is about forty-three million dollars.
The Guinea coast of Africa, Australia, California, the Transvaal of
South Africa, and Venezuela have each stood at the front in the
production of gold. The aggregate annual production of the world has
increased from one hundred and sixty million dollars in 1853 to more
than three hundred million dollars in 1900.
A considerable part of the gold product is used in gilding
picture-frames, book-titles, sign-letters, porcelain, and ornamental
brass work. Practically, all of this is lost, and in the United States
alone the loss aggregates about fifteen million dollars yearly. The
abrasion and unavoidable wear of gold coin is another great source of
loss.
An enormous amount is used in the manufacture of jewelry, most of which
is used over and over again. By far the greater part, however, is used
as a commercial medium of exchange--that is, as coin. For this purpose
its employment is wellnigh universal; and indeed this has been its chief
use since the beginning of written history. Gold coin of the United
States is 900 fine, that is, 900 parts of every thousand is pure gold;
gold coin of Great Britain is 916-2/3 fine. In each case a small amount
of silver, or silver and copper, is added to give the coin the requisite
hardness. The coining of gold, and also other metals, is a government
monopoly in every civilized country.
The fiat value of gold throughout the commercial world is the equivalent
of $20.6718 per troy ounce of fine metal; an eagle weighs, therefore,
2580 grains. The real value, however, is reckoned by a different and a
more accurate standard, namely, the labor of man, and this, the
sporadic finds of placer gold excepted, has not changed much in two
thousand years or more. The increased production has scarcely equalled
the demand for the metal; moreover, the longer a mine is worked the
greater becomes the expense of its operation. Improved processes for the
extraction of gold have not created any surplus of gold; indeed, the
supply is not equal to the demand; and this fact keeps the metal
practically at a fixed value.
=Silver.=--Silver is about as widely diffused as is gold, but it is more
plentiful. It is found sparingly in most of the older rocks and also in
sea-water. It was used by the Greeks for coinage more than eight hundred
years before the Christian era, and was known to the Jewish people in
very early times. According to the writer of the Book of Kings (1 Kings
x. 21), "It was nothing accounted of in the days of Solomon," but
Tacitus declares that in ancient Germany silver was even more valuable
than gold. The mines of Laureion (Laurium) gave the Greek state of
Attica its chief power, and the failure of the mines marked the
beginning of Athenian decline.
Silver is rarely found in a metallic state. For the greater part it
occurs combined with chlorine ("horn silver"), or with sulphur ("silver
glance"), or in combination with antimony and sulphur ("ruby ore"). The
ranges of the western highland region of the American continent yield
most of the present supply. The mines of Colorado, Montana, Utah, and
Idaho produce about six-sevenths of the yield in the United States,
which in 1900 was 74,500,000 ounces. In Europe the Hartz Mountains have
been famous for silver for several centuries.
About four-fifths of the silver bullion is used in the arts, most of it
being manufactured into ornaments or into table-service called "plate."
A considerable amount is used in photography, certain silver salts,
especially the chloride and the bromide, changing color by exposure to
the light. The remaining part of the silver output is made into coin.
The ratio of silver and gold has fluctuated much in the history of
civilization. In the United States the value of an ounce of fine silver
is fixed at $1.2929, thereby making the ratio 16 to 1. The silver
dollars, 900 fine, were coined on this basis, weighing 412.5 grains.
With the tremendous output of the silver mines between 1870 and 1880 the
price of silver fell to such an extent that, in time, most countries
limited the amount of coinage or demonetized it altogether. In the
United States the purchase of silver bullion for coinage has been
practically suspended, and the silver purchased is bought at the bullion
value--about fifty cents per troy ounce in 1900. In Japan the ratio has
been officially fixed at 32 to 1.
=Copper.=--Copper is probably the oldest metal known that has been used in
making tools. An alloy of copper and tin, hard enough to cut and dress
stone, succeeded the use of flint and jade, and its employment became so
general as to give the name "bronze" to the age following that
characterized by the use of stone implements.
Copper is very widely distributed. It occurs in quantities that pay for
mining in pretty nearly every country in the world. The rise of Egypt as
a commercial power was due to the fact that the Egyptians controlled the
world's trade in that metal, and it is highly probable that the
conquests of Cyprus at various times were chiefly for the possession of
the copper mines of Mount Olympus.
At the present time there are several great centres of production which
yield most of the metal used. These are the Rocky Mountain region,
including Mexico; the Lake Superior region of the United States; the
Andean region, including Chile, Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia; the
Iberian region, consisting of Spain and Portugal; and the Hartz
Mountain region of Germany. In 1900 they produced about four hundred and
fifty thousand tons, of which two hundred and eighty thousand were mined
in the United States.
Montana, the Lake Superior mines, and Arizona are the most productive
regions of the United States, and the mines of these three localities
yield more than half the world's product. Of these mines the Calumet and
Hecla of the Lake Superior region is the most famous. It was discovered
by Jesuit explorers about 1660, but was not worked until 1845. It is one
of the most productive mines in the world, its yearly output averaging
fifty million tons.
The export trade in copper is very important, amounting at the close of
the past century to about one hundred and seventy thousand short tons.
Of this amount, half goes to Germany (most of it through ports of the
Netherlands), and one-fifth each to France and Great Britain. The market
price to the consumer during the ten years closing the century averaged
about sixteen cents per pound. Most of the product is exported from New
York and Baltimore. The head-quarters of the great copper-mining
companies of America are at Boston. The imports of raw ores and partly
reduced ores called "regulus," come mainly from Mexico to New York and
Baltimore, and from Mexico and Japan to Puget Sound ports. The most
important American refineries are at New York and Baltimore.
A part of the copper is mixed with zinc to form brass, an alloy much
used in light machinery. A considerable quantity is rolled into sheets
to sheath building fronts and the iron hulls of vessels. By far the
greater part, however, is drawn into wire for carrying electricity, and
for this purpose it is surpassed by silver alone. The decrease in the
price of copper in the past few years is due, not to a falling off in
the demand, but to methods of reducing the ores and transporting the
product more economically.
=Aluminium.=--Aluminium is the base of clay, this mineral being its oxide.
It occurs in the various feldspars and feldspathic rocks, and in mica.
The expense of extracting the metal from these minerals has been so
great as to prohibit its commercial use. In 1870 there were probably
less than twenty pounds of the metal in existence, and it was to be
found only as a curiosity in the chemical laboratories. The discovery
that the metal could be extracted cheaply from cryolite, a mineral with
an aluminium base, obtained from Ivigtut, Greenland, led to a sparing
use of the metal in the economic arts.
The chief step in the production of the metal dates from the time that
the mineral _bauxite_, a hydroxide of aluminium and iron, was decomposed
in the electric furnace. The process has been repeatedly improved, and
under the patents covered by the Hall process the crude metal is now
produced at a market price of about eighteen cents per pound. The entire
production of the United States is controlled by the Pittsburg Reduction
Company, which also manufactures much of the commercial product of
England. The competitor of the Pittsburg Reduction Company is an
establishment in Germany, near Bremen.
Aluminium does not corrode; it is easily rolled, drawn, or cast; and,
bulk for bulk, it is less than one-third as heavy as copper. Because of
these properties it has a great and constantly growing economic value.
Because of its greater size, a pound of aluminium wire will carry a
greater electric current than a pound of copper wire of the same length.
It therefore has an increasing use as a conductor of electricity.
Bauxite, the mineral from which the metal is now chiefly extracted, is
obtained in two localities. One extends through Georgia and Alabama;
the other is in Arkansas.
=Lead.=--Lead is neither so abundant nor so widely diffused as iron,
copper, and the precious metals, but the supply is fully equal to the
demand. Lead ores, mainly galena or lead sulphide, occur abundantly in
the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah, producing more than half
the total output of the United States. In these localities, in Mexico,
and in the Andean states of South America it is used mainly in the
smelting of silver ores.
Metallic lead is used largely in the manufacture of water-pipes, and for
this purpose it must be very nearly pure. It is also rolled into sheets
to be used as lining for water-tanks. The fact that the edges of
sheet-lead and the ends of pipes may be readily joined with solder gives
to lead a great part of its economic value. Alloyed with arsenic it is
used in making shot; alloyed with antimony it forms type metal; alloyed
with tin it forms pewter and solder.
The greater part, however, is manufactured into the carbonate or "white"
lead that is used as a pigment, or paint. Red lead, an oxide, is a
pigment; litharge, also an oxide, is used for glazing the cheaper kinds
of pottery. About two hundred and thirty thousand tons of lead are
produced in the United States and one-half as much is imported--mainly
from Mexico and Canada. The linotype machines, now used in all large
printing establishments, have increased the demand for lead.
=Other Metals.=--Most of the remaining economic metals occur in small
quantities as compared with iron, copper, gold, and silver. Some of
them, however, are highly important from the fact that in various
industrial processes no substitutes for them are known.
_Quicksilver_, or _mercury_, is the only industrial metal that at
ordinary temperatures is a liquid. It is the base of the substance
calomel, a chloride, and corrosive sublimate, a dichloride, both of
which are employed as medicines. It is essential in the manufacture of
thermometers and barometers, but is used chiefly, however, as a solvent
of gold, which it separates from the finely powdered ore by solution or
amalgamation. Quicksilver occurs in the mineral cinnabar, a sulphide.
Nearly one-half the world's product comes from California. The New
Almaden mines of Santa Clara County produce over five thousand flasks
(each seventy-six and one-half pounds net); those of Napa County nearly
nine thousand flasks; the mines of the whole State yield about
twenty-six thousand flasks, valued at $1,200,000. Almaden, Spain, and
Idria, Austria, produce nearly all the rest of the output. An average of
about fifteen thousand flasks are exported from San Francisco, mainly to
the mines of Mexico, and Central and South America.
_Tin_ is about the only metal of industrial value whose ores are not
found in paying quantities in the United States. Small quantities occur
in San Bernardino County, Cal., and in the vicinity of Bering Strait,
Alaska, but it is doubtful if either will ever pay for development.
About three-fifths of the world's product comes from the Straits
Settlements on the Malay Peninsula; the nearby islands of Banca and
Billiton also yield a considerable quantity.
The mines of Cornwall, England, have been worked for two thousand years
and were probably the source of the tin that made the "bronze age." The
United States imports yearly about twenty million dollars worth of tin,
about half of which comes from the Straits Settlements. This is used
almost wholly for the manufacture of tin plate[48]--that is, sheet-iron
coated with tin. Much of the block tin imported from Great Britain is
returned there in the form of tin plate, being manufactured in the
United States much more economically than in Europe.
_Nickel_ occurs in New Caledonia, in Canada, and in the State of
Missouri. It is used in the manufacture of small coins and for plating
iron and steel. It is an essential in the metal known as "nickel steel"
which is now generally used in armor-plate and propeller-shafts, about
four per cent. of nickel being added to the steel. Most of the product
used in the United States is imported from Canada.
_Manganese_, a metal resembling iron, occurs in Russia, Brazil, and
Cuba, Russia producing about half the total output. It is used mainly to
give hardness to steel. The propeller-blades of large steamships are
usually made of manganese bronze. The building of war-ships in the
United States during the past few years has led to the extensive use of
manganese for armor-plate, and manganese ores to the amount of more than
two hundred and fifty thousand tons were imported in 1900. More than
one-half of this came from Russia; most of the remaining half from
Brazil.
_Zinc_ is abundant in nearly every part of the world. In the United
States the best known mines are in the Galena-Joplin District, in
Missouri and Kansas, which produce about two-thirds of the home
product--mainly from the ore _blende_, a sulphide. There are also
extensive zinc-mining operations in Illinois, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania. The lower Rhine District, Great Britain, and Silesia are
the chief European sources. Sheet-zinc is found in nearly every dwelling
in the United States, and zinc-coated or "galvanized" iron has become a
domestic necessity. Zinc-white is extensively used as a pigment. About
two hundred and fifty million pounds of crude zinc, or "spelter," are
produced in the United States; forty-five million pounds were exported
in 1900, mainly to Great Britain.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the qualities that make iron the most valuable of metals?
In what ways does commerce depend on iron and steel?
What substances are used for food, clothing, or domestic purposes that
are not manufactured by the aid of iron?
Ingot or billet steel is rated at about one cent per pound; the
hair-springs of watches are worth several thousand dollars per pound;
what makes the difference in their value?
What are the qualities that give to gold its value?
Would all the gold mined in the United States pay the national debt at
the end of the Civil War?
What causes have led to the increasing price of copper during the past
few years?
What is the market price each of copper, silver, steel rails, and
aluminium to-day?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Obtain specimens of the following iron ores: Hematite, brown hematite,
magnetite, carbonate, and pyrites. Note the color and physical
appearance of each; scratch the first four with a very hard steel point
and note the color of the streak.
Obtain specimens of pig-iron, cast iron, wrought iron, and cast steel;
note carefully the fracture or "break" of each; how does cast iron
differ from wrought iron?
Obtain specimens of the following copper ores: Malachite, azurite,
chalcopyrite, and red oxide; wet a very small fragment with an acid and
note the color when it is held in the flame of an alcohol lamp or a
Bunsen burner; dissolve a crystal of blue vitriol (copper sulphate) in
water and note what occurs if the end of a bright iron wire be dipped in
the solution.
Name the various uses to which nickel, tin, lead, and aluminium are put.
Consult the chapters on these subjects in any cyclopaedia.
[Illustration: TRANSPORTING SUGAR-CANE, CUBA]
[Illustration: SUGAR-CANE GROWING IN CUBA]
[Illustration: HAVEMEYER SUGAR-REFINERY, BROOKLYN, N.Y.]
CHAPTER XIV
SUGAR AND ITS COMMERCE
The term sugar is applied rather loosely to a large number of substances
characterized by the quality of sweetness. In a few instances the name
is given to certain mineral salts, such as sugar of lead, but in the
main the sugars are plant products very similar in chemical structure to
the starches. They are very closely connected with plant growth, and
even in animal life, starchy substances are changed to sugar in the
process of digestion. Although sugar does not sustain life, it is
necessary as an adjunct to other food-stuffs, and it is probably
consumed by a greater number of people than any other food-stuffs except
starch and water.
Three kinds of sugar are found in commerce, namely--_cane_-sugar,
_grape_-sugar, and _milk_-sugar. Cane-sugar occurs in the sap of the
sugar-cane, sorghum-cane, certain of the palms, and the juice of the
beet. Grape-sugar is the sweet principle of most fruits and of honey.
Sugar of milk occurs in milk, and in several kinds of nuts.
=Sugar-Cane Sugar.=--Cane-sugar is so called because until recently it was
derived almost wholly from the sap of the sugar-cane (_Saccharum
officinarum_). The plant belongs to the grass family and much resembles
maize before the latter has matured. It is thought to be native to Asia,
but it is now cultivated in nearly all tropical countries in the world.
Practically every moist tropical region in the world, the basins of the
Kongo and Amazon Rivers excepted, is a cane-sugar-producing region. As
a rule it is grown in the states under native rule for home consumption,
and in European colonial possessions for commercial purposes. India and
China are probably the foremost in the production of sugar-cane sugar,
but the product is not exported. Cuba, Java, the Gulf coast of the
United States, Mauritius, the Philippine and the Hawaiian Islands
produce the most of the supply that enters into commerce.
=Beet-Sugar.=--During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the
demands for sugar increased so greatly that it became necessary either
to raise the price of the commodity, or else to utilize some plant other
than the sugar-cane as a source. After a few years of experimental work
it was found that sugar could be readily extracted from the juice of the
common beet (_Beta vulgaris_). Several varieties of this plant have been
improved and are now very largely cultivated for the purpose. Beet-sugar
and cane-sugar are identical.
Almost all the beet-sugar of commerce comes from northwestern Europe;
Germany leads with nearly one-third the world's product; France,
Austria, and Russia follow, each producing about one-sixth. A small
amount is produced in the United States--mainly in California and
Michigan. The area of production, however, is increasing.
=Other Cane-Sugars.=--Maple-sugar is derived from the sap of several
species of maple-trees occurring mainly in the northeastern United
States and in Canada. The sap is obtained by tapping the trees in early
spring, a single tree often yielding several gallons. The value of
maple-sugar lies mainly in its pleasant flavor. It is used partly as a
confection, but in the main as a sirup. A very large part of the
maple-sirup and not a little of the sugar is artificial, consisting of
ordinary sugar colored with caramel and flavored with an extract
prepared from the maple-tree.
Sorghum-sugar is obtained from a cane known as Chinese grass, or Chinese
millet. It has been introduced into the United States from southeastern
Asia and Japan. The sorghum-cane grows well in the temperate zone, and
its cultivation in the Mississippi Valley States has been successful.
The sugar is not easily crystallizable, however, and it is usually made
into table-sirup.
Maguey-sugar is derived from the sap of the maguey-plant (_Agave
Americana_). It is much used in Mexico and the Central American states.
The method of manufacture is very crude and the product is not exported.
Palm-sugar is obtained from the sap of several species of palm growing
in India and Africa.
=Sugar Manufacture.=--Sugar manufacture includes three
processes--expressing the sap, evaporating, and refining. The first two
are carried on at or near the plantations; the last is an affair
requiring an immense capital and a most elaborately organized plant. The
refining is done mainly in the great centres of population at places
most convenient for transportation. The raw sugar may travel five or ten
thousand miles to reach the refinery; the refined product rarely travels
more than a thousand miles.
After it has been cut and stripped of its leaves the sugar-cane is
crushed between powerful rollers in order to express the juice. The
sugar-beet is rasped or ground to a pulp and then subjected to great
pressure. The expressed juice contains about ten or twelve per cent. of
sugar. In some factories the beet, or the cane, is cut into thin slices
and thrown into water, the juice being extracted by the solvent
properties of the latter. This is known as the "diffusion" process.
The juice is first strained or filtered under pressure in order to
remove all foreign matter and similar impurities. It is then clarified
by adding slacked lime, at the same time heating the liquid nearly to
the boiling point and skimming off the impurities that rise to the
surface. The purified juice is then boiled rapidly in vacuum pans until
it is greatly concentrated.
When the proper degree of concentration is reached, the liquid is
quickly run off into shallow pans, in which most of it immediately
crystallizes. The crystalline portion forms the _raw sugar_ of commerce;
the remaining part is molasses. The whole mass is then shovelled into a
centrifugal machine which in a few minutes separates the two products.
In purchasing raw sugar, the refiner was formerly at a loss to know just
how much pure sugar could be made from a given weight of the raw sugar.
In order to aid in making a correct determination, the Dutch government
formerly prepared sixteen samples put up in glass flasks and sealed.
These samples varied in color according to the amount of pure sugar
contained. The pure solution was known in commerce as No. 16 Dutch
standard, and this was generally taken all over the world as the
standard of pure sugar. Within recent years the polariscope, an optical
instrument that determines the percentage of sugar by means of polarized
light, has largely replaced the Dutch standard.
The refineries, as a rule, are built with reference to a minimum
handling and transportation of the raw product. The cane-sugar
refineries are mainly at the great seaports, where the raw sugar does
not pay railway transportation. The beet-sugar refineries are in the
midst of the beet-growing districts. So nearly perfect and economically
managed are these processes, that raw sugar imported from Europe or
from the West Indies, at a cost of from two and a quarter to two and a
half cents per pound, is refined and sold at retail at about five cents.
The margin of profit is so very close, however, that in the United
States, as well as most European states, the sugar industry is protected
by government enactments. In the United States imported raw sugar pays a
tariff in order to protect the cane-sugar industry of the Gulf coast and
the beet-sugar grower of the Western States. The duty at the close of
the nineteenth century was about 1.66 cents per pound; or, if the sugar
came from a foreign country paying a bounty on sugar exported, an
additional countervailing duty equal to the bounty was also charged.
In the various states of western Europe the beet-sugar industry is
governed by a cartel or agreement among the states, which makes the
whole business a gigantic combination arrayed against the tropical sugar
interests. In general, the government of each state pays a bounty on
every pound of beet-sugar exported. The real effect of the export bounty
is about the same as the imposition of a tax on the sugar purchased for
consumption at home.
Two-thirds of the entire sugar product are made from the beet, at an
average cost of about 2.5 cents a pound. In the tropical islands the
yield of cane-sugar per acre is about double that of beet-sugar and it
is produced for about five dollars less per ton. This difference is in
part offset by the fact that the raw cane-sugar must pay transportation
for a long distance to the place of consumption, and in part by the
government bounties paid on the beet product.
Both the political and the economic effects of beet sugar-making have
been far-reaching. In Germany the agricultural interests of the country
have been completely reorganized. The uncertain profits of cereal
food-stuffs have given place to the sure profits of beet-sugar
cultivation, with the result that the income of the Germans has been
enormously increased. In the other lowland countries of western Europe
the venture has been equally successful. Even the Netherlands has
profited by it.
In the case of Spain, the result of beet-sugar cultivation was
disastrous. The price of cane-sugar in Cuba and the Philippine Islands
fell to such a low point that the islands could not pay the taxes
imposed by the mother country. Instead of lowering the taxes and
adjusting affairs to the changed conditions, the Spaniards drove the
islands into rebellion, and the latter finally resulted in war with the
United States, and the loss of the colonies. Great Britain wisely
adjusted her colonial affairs to the changed conditions, but the British
colonies suffered greatly from beet-sugar competition.
=Production and Consumption.=--The production and consumption of sugar
increased about sevenfold during the latter half of the nineteenth
century, the increase being due very largely to the decreased price.
Thus, in 1850, white (loaf) sugar was a luxury, retailing at about
twenty cents per pound; in 1870 the wholesale price of pure granulated
sugar was fourteen cents; in 1902 it was not quite five cents.
Although the tropical countries are greatly handicapped by the political
legislation of the European states, they cannot supply the amount of
sugar required, unless the area of production be greatly extended. It is
also certain that without governmental protection, sugar growing in the
temperate zone cannot compete with that of the tropical countries.
Of the eight million tons of sugar yearly consumed, two-thirds are
beet-sugar. The annual consumption per capita is about ninety pounds in
Great Britain, seventy pounds in the United States, and not far from
thirty-five pounds in Germany and France. In Russia and the eastern
European countries it is less than fifteen pounds.
=Molasses.=--The molasses of commerce is the uncrystallizable sugar that
is left in the vacuum pans at the close of the process of evaporation.
The molasses formerly known as "sugar house" is a filthy product that
nowadays is scarcely used, except in the manufacture of rum. The color
of molasses is due mainly to the presence of "caramel" or half-charred
sugar; it cannot be wholly removed by any ordinary clarifying process.
Purified molasses is usually known as "sirup," and much of it is made by
boiling a solution of raw sugar to the proper degree of concentration. A
considerable part is made from the sap of the sorghum-cane, and probably
a larger quantity consists of glucose solution colored with caramel.
Maple-sirup, formerly a solution of maple-sugar, is now very largely
made from raw cane-sugar clarified and artificially flavored.
=Glucose.=--Glucose, or grape-sugar, is the natural sugar of the grape and
most small fruits. Honey is a nearly pure, concentrated solution of
glucose. Grape-sugar has, roughly, about three-fifths the sweetening
power of cane-sugar. Natural grape-sugar is too expensive for ordinary
commercial use; the commercial product, on the other hand, is
artificial, and is made mainly from cornstarch.
Glucose is employed in the cheaper kinds of confectionery in the United
States; most of it, however, is exported to Great Britain, the annual
product being worth about four million dollars. From the fact that it
can be made more economically from corn than from any other grain,
practically all the glucose is made in the United States.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
It frequently happens that the prices of sugar and tin-plate rise and
fall together; show how the fruit-crop may cause this fluctuation.
Which of the possessions of the United States are adaptable for
cane-sugar?--for beet-sugar?
In what ways has the manufacture of sugar brought about international
complications?
What is meant by "Dutch Standard" tests?--by polariscope tests?
FOR REFERENCE AND STUDY
Obtain specimens of rock candy, granulated sugar, raw sugar, and
caramel; observe each carefully with a magnifying glass and note the
difference.
World's Sugar Production.
CHAPTER XV
FORESTS AND FOREST PRODUCTS
Outside the food-stuffs, probably no other material is more generally
used by human beings than the products of the forests. More people are
sheltered by wooden dwellings than by those of brick or stone, and more
people are warmed by wood fires than by coal. Even in steam-making a
considerable power is still produced by the use of wood for fuel.
Neither stone nor metal can wholly take the place of wood as a building
material; indeed, for interior fittings, finishings, and furniture, no
artificial substitute has yet been found that is acceptable. For such
purposes it is carried to the interior of continents and transported
across the oceans; and although the cost has enormously increased, the
demand has scarcely fallen off.
=Forest Areas.=--The great belts of forests girdle the land surface of the
earth. A zone of tropical forest forms a broad belt on each side of the
equator, but mainly north of it. This forest includes most of the
ornamental woods, such as mahogany, ebony, rosewood, sandal-wood, etc.
It also includes the most useful teak as well as the rubber-tree and the
cinchona. Another forest belt in the north temperate zone is situated
mainly between the thirty-fifth and fiftieth parallels. It traverses
middle and northern Europe and the northern United States.
This forest contains the various species of pine, cedar, and other
conifers, the oaks, maples, elms, birches, etc. Most of the forests of
western Europe have been greatly depleted, though those of Norway and
Sweden are still productive. The forests of the United States, extending
from Maine to Dakota, have been so wellnigh exhausted that by 1950 only
a very little good lumber-making timber will be left.
The destruction of forests has been most wasteful. When a forest-covered
region is settled, a large area is burnt off in order to clear the land
for cultivation. In many instances the fires are never fully
extinguished until the forest disappears. The timber of the United
States has been depleted not only by frequent fires but in various other
ways. The lumbermen take the best trees and these are cut into
building-lumber. The railways follow the lumbermen, cutting out
everything suitable for ties. The paper-makers vie with the tie-cutters,
and what is left is the plunder of the charcoal-burner.
=Forestry.=--In most of Europe the care of the remaining forests is
usually a government charge. Only a certain number of mature trees may
be removed each year, and many are planted for each one removed--in the
aggregate, several million each year. In the United States, where the
value of the growing timber destroyed by fire each year nearly equals
the national debt, not very much has been done to either check the
ravage or to reforest the denuded areas. Many of the States, however,
encourage tree-planting. In several, Arbor Day is a holiday provided by
law.
The general Government has established timber preserves in several
localities in the West. The State of New York has converted the whole
Adirondack region into a great preserve. Forest wardens and guards are
employed both to keep fires in check and to prevent the ravages of
timber thieves; excepting the State preserves however, the means of
prevention are inadequate for either purpose.
[Illustration: THE LUMBER INDUSTRY--A LOG JAM]
To be valuable for lumber of the best quality, a forest tree must be
"clear"; that is, it must be free from knots at least fifteen feet from
the ground. In the case of pines and cedars, the clear part of the trunk
must have a greater length. To produce such conditions, the trees must
grow thickly together, in order that the lower branches may not mature.
The growth of trees thus set is very slow. Isolated pine-trees will
reach the size large enough for cutting in about fifty years, but the
lumber will be practically worthless because of the knots. On the other
hand, pine forests with the trees so thickly set as to make a clear,
merchantable lumber require at least a century for maturity.[49] Oak
forests require a much greater period.
As a rule, the forest growths of the United States are found in the
areas characterized by sandy and gravelly soils. Thus, the glaciated
region of the United States and Canada for the greater part is
forest-covered. The sand barrens along the Atlantic coast usually are
forest areas. The older bottom-lands of most rivers are often
forest-covered, especially when their soil is coarse and sandy.
There are large areas, however, in both the United States and Europe,
that are treeless. In some instances this condition, without doubt,
resulted from the fires that annually burnt the grass. With the
cessation of the prairie fires, forest growths have steadily increased.
In other instances these areas are treeless because the seeds of trees
have never been planted there. The high plains at the eastern base of
the Rocky Mountains are an example. This region is deficient in the
moisture required to give young trees the vigorous start that will
carry them to maturity. Moreover, the westerly winds and the streams of
this region come from localities also deficient in forestry, and there
are therefore no seeds to be carried.
As a rule, the distribution of forests is effected by the winds and by
moving water. The prevailing westerly winds of the temperate zones have
carried many species eastward and have extended the forest areas in that
direction. Freshets, floods, and overflows have been even more active in
carrying seeds, sprouts, and even trees into new territories. Waves and
currents have likewise played a similar part. Wherever the soil of the
region into which the species have been carried is moist and nutritious,
the forest growth has usually extended.
=The Pine Family.=--The pine family includes the various species of pine,
tamarack, spruce, hemlock, fir, juniper, larch, cypress, and cedar. A
few members of the family thrive in the warmer parts of the temperate
zone, but for the greater part they flourish between the fortieth and
sixtieth parallels. Most of the species found in low latitudes are
mountain-trees. They constitute the greater part of the American and
Russian forests. The American pine forest is thought to be the largest
in the world.
The _white pine_ (_Pinus strobus_) is the most valuable member of the
family. Its value is due in part to the fact that the wood is soft,
clear, and easily worked, and in part to the accessibility of the
forests. Not much inroad has yet been made upon the great Russian
forest, owing to the fact that the timber is too far away from seaports
and water transportation. Rough lumber becomes too expensive for use
when transported by land, but it will stand the expense of shipment by
water many miles.
The _Georgia_ or _long-leafed pine_ (_Pinus palustris_) is also
commonly called _pitch pine_, _turpentine pine_, and _southern pine_; it
grows chiefly along the south Atlantic coast and in the northern
counties of Georgia. It is harder than white pine and makes excellent
flooring.
The _sugar pine_ (_Pinus lambertiana_) occurs mainly in Oregon and
California. The grain is fine and soft and the trees reach a large
girth.
The _loblolly pine_ (_Pinus taeda_) has a considerably larger area than
the Georgia pine, extending into Indian Territory. The _short-leaf pine_
(_Pinus echinata_) occurs in small areas from New York to the Gulf of
Mexico, and across to Missouri; it is the Chattahoochee pine of Florida.
The _pitch pine_ (_Pinus rigida_) occurs in various areas mainly north
of the Ohio River and west of the prairies. The lumber cut annually from
these pines aggregates about thirty billion feet.
The common _white cedar_ (_Chamaecyparis thyoides_) occurs along the
Atlantic and Gulf coasts nearly to the Mississippi. On account of its
fine grain it is much used in cabinet work and as a finishing wood. _Red
cedar_, probably a different species, occurs along the Atlantic coast.
It is largely used in the manufacture of lead-pencils, and the forests
are wellnigh exhausted.
The _redwoods_ are confined to the California coast, mainly in the coast
ranges, near the ocean. Ordinary redwood (_Sequoia sempervirens_)
resembles red cedar, is soft, and very fine in grain, and shrinks but
little in seasoning. It is a most valuable timber both for common and
for ornamental use. It very frequently attains a diameter of five or six
feet; the big tree sometimes exceeds sixteen feet in diameter and
reaches a height of nearly four hundred feet.
=Other Industrial Woods.=--The oaks, like the pines, form a nearly
continuous belt across the northern continents, lying mainly south of
the pines; they do not extend much south of the thirtieth parallel. The
white oak of the New England plateau and Canada commands a high price on
account of its strength; a considerable quantity is exported.
The "quartering" of the lumber used in ornamental work is produced by
sawing the logs, which have been split in quarters, so that the
silver-grain shows on the faces of the boards. The bark of the oak is
rich in tannic acid and it is much used in tanning leather. _Cork oak_
(_Quercus suber_) grows mainly in Spain and Algeria.
_Black walnut_ (_Juglans nigra_) grows in the river-bottoms of the
Mississippi Valley and in Texas. The merchantable supply is not great,
and the wood is therefore growing more valuable each year. _Hickory_ is
used where great strength is required, and also for various
tool-handles. _Maple_ is largely employed in making furniture. _Ash_ is
a very common wood for tool-handles.
=Shade-Trees and Ornamental Woods.=--A large number of trees are yearly
transplanted, or else grown from seed, to be used as ornamental
shade-trees. For this purpose the elm, maple, acacia ("locust"), linden
("lime"), catalpa, ash, horse-chestnut ("buckeye"), poplar, and willow
are most common in ordinary temperate latitudes, both in Europe and
America. In warmer latitudes the Australian eucalyptus ("red gum" and
"blue gum"), magnolia, palmetto, laurel, arbutus, and tulip are common.
The local trade in ornamental trees is very heavy; the trade is local
for the reason that the transportation of them is very expensive.
=Tropical Woods and Tree Products.=--Many of the tropical woods are in
demand on account of their beautiful appearance, and in many species
this quality is combined with strength and hardness. _Mahogany_ is
obtained from Mexico and the Central American states, and also from the
West Indies. The former is classed as "Honduras"; the latter is
generally known as San Domingo mahogany and commands the highest price.
_Rosewood_ is obtained from Brazil, and is used almost exclusively in
piano-cases. Both are cut into thin veneers, to be glued to a less
expensive body.
_Ebony_ is the heart of a species of persimmon obtained mainly in Ceylon
and the East Indies. Very little of the so-called ebony is genuine, most
of the ebony of commerce consisting of fine-grained hardwood, stained
black. _Jarrah_, an Australian wood, is now very generally used for
street-paving, and for this purpose it has no superior. _Teak_ probably
has no equal for strength and durability. It is not touched by the
teredo and other marine worms.
_Boxwood_ (_Buxus balearica_) is a high-growing tree, native to India,
but growing best in the islands of the Mediterranean. The wood is very
hard, of yellowish-brown color, and so fine in grain that it finds a
ready market in nearly every part of the world. Probably the larger part
is used by engravers. A large amount of the wood is also used in the
manufacture of folding-rules, and in inlaying. Constantinople is the
principal market, and nearly ten thousand tons of the selected wood are
sold yearly.
_Lignum vitae_, or _guaiac wood_ (_Guaiacum officinale_), grows profusely
in the West Indies and along the Spanish Main. It is used both in
medicine and in the arts. Shavings of the wood steeped in water were
once considered a cure-all, hence the name. The wood is very hard,
heavy, and is split with the greatest difficulty. It is therefore much
employed in making mallet-heads, tool-handles, nine-pin balls, and
pulley-blocks. In tropical countries it is employed for railway ties.
West India ports are the chief markets, and the United States is the
chief consumer.
[Illustration: A LOG RAFT, WINONA, WIS.]
[Illustration: HAULING LOGS TO THE RIVER]
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1898, Detroit Photographic Co._
THE LUMBER INDUSTRY--A LOGGING STREAM, MENOMINEE, WIS.]
_Logwood_ is the wood of a tree (_Haematoxylon campechianum_) growing in
Central America and the West Indies. The best quality comes from
Campeche, and it is marketed mainly from Central American ports. It is
almost universally used for dyeing the black of woollen and cotton
textiles, and logwood blacks are the standard of color-prints.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what structures has timber been supplanted by iron and steel?
In what manufactured article has timber supplanted the use of rags?
When a pine forest is cut away, what kinds of timber are apt to come up
in place of the pines?
In what manner does the railway draw upon the forests?--the
paper-maker?--the farmer?--the tanner?--the beaver?--the teredo, or
ship-worm?
From what country or countries do the following come: boxwood, rosewood,
sandal-wood, cinchona, bog oak, jarrah?
FOR STUDY AND REFERENCE
Make a list of the forestry growing in the State in which you live; so
far as possible, obtain a specimen of each wood, prepared so as to show
square, oblique, split, and polished sections; for what purpose, if any,
is each used?
Consult "Check-list of Forestry of the United States" (U.S. Department
of Agriculture).
CHAPTER XVI
SEA PRODUCTS AND FURS
The world's fish-catch amounts probably to more than one-quarter of a
billion dollars in value and employs upward of a million people; in the
United States 200,000 are employed. In some localities, such as the
oceanic islands, far distant from the grazing lands of the continents,
the flesh of fish is about the only fresh meat obtainable. Even on the
continents fish is more available and cheaper than beef. The
fish-producing areas pay no taxes; they require no cultivation;
moreover, they do not require to be purchased. In general, fish
supplements beef as an article of food; it is not a substitute for the
latter.
The whale-catch excepted, fish are generally caught in the shallow
waters of the continental coasts. The fish, in great schools, resort to
such localities at certain seasons, and the seasons in which they school
is the fisherman's opportunity. For the greater part, such shallows and
banks are spawning-places. Most of the fish, however, are caught off the
Atlantic coasts of Europe and North America, these localities being
nearest to the great centres of population.
=Whales.=--The whale is sought mainly in cold waters, and at the present
time the chief whaling-grounds are in the vicinity of Point Barrow. In
the first half of the nineteenth century whale-fishing was an industry
involving hundreds of vessels and a large aggregate capital. The
industry centred about New England seaports.
The train-oil obtained from the blubber of the animal was used partly
as a lubricant, but mainly for illuminating purposes. For this purpose,
however, it has been superseded by coal-oil, gas, and electricity. It is
still in demand as a lubricant, but the whale-oil of commerce is quite
as apt to come from the blubber of the porpoise or the sea-cow as from
the right whale. Whalebone is a horny substance taken from the animal's
jaw, and is worth from three dollars to eight dollars per pound. It is
used chiefly in the manufacture of whips. For other purposes, steel,
hard rubber, and celluloid have taken its place.
The substance called _spermaceti_ is derived from the sperm-whale, an
inhabitant of warm ocean-waters. Spermaceti is identical in its physical
properties with paraffine, and the latter is now almost universally its
substitute.
_Ambergris_, thought to be a morbid secretion or disease of the
sperm-whale, is found in the body cavity of the animal and also in
masses floating in the sea. It is used chiefly to give intensity to the
odor of perfumes, and the best quality brings as much as five dollars
per ounce. Most of the ambergris of commerce is obtained from the
neighborhood of the Bahama Islands.
=Cod.=--In the amount of the product the cod-fisheries are the most
important. The meat of the fish is not strong in flavor, and it is cured
with little expense. So valuable is the annual catch that the banks and
shallows which the schools frequent are governed by international
treaties.
The cod is a cold-water fish, and the fishing-grounds are confined to
rather high latitudes. The coast-waters of the Scandinavian peninsula
and the shores of the Canadian coast, especially the Banks of
Newfoundland, are the chief areas. The fishing-grounds of the Canadian
coast are closed to foreign vessels inside a three-mile limit; beyond
the limit they are occupied mainly by Canadian, French, and American
fishermen. By the terms of treaties foreign vessels may enter the
three-mile limit under restriction to purchase bait and food-supplies,
and to cure their fish.
A large part of the cod-catch is exported. Tropical countries buy much
of the product. In such countries it is more wholesome than meat; it is
cheaper; moreover, the salted cod will keep for an indefinite length of
time. A large part of the catch is sold to the Catholic states of Europe
and America, where during certain times the eating of the flesh of
animals is forbidden. Gloucester, Mass., London, England, and Trondhjem,
Norway, are great markets for salted fish. The oil from the liver of the
cod is much used in medicine.
=Herring, Alewives, and Sardine.=--The herring is a much smaller fish than
the cod, and, commercially, is much less important. They school in about
the same waters as the cod, but are caught at a different season,
gill-nets being usually employed. Practically no distinction is made
between full-grown herring and alewives of the same size. The fish are
usually cured by smoking, pickling, or salting, and in this form are
either exported or sold in interior markets.
The true sardine is found in latitudes a little farther south than the
schooling-grounds of the cod. The most important fisheries are along the
coasts of the Latin states of Europe. Sardine fishing is a great
industry all along the New England coast of the United States, but the
"sardines" marketed from this region are young herring. Indeed, nearly
all sorts of small fry are sold in boxes bearing spurious French labels.
=Salmon.=--Most of the salmon are caught in the rivers flowing into the
North Pacific Ocean. The fish are caught in traps and weirs at the time
of the spring run, when they ascend the river to spawn. The rivers are
frequently so congested with the salmon that thousands of tons are
caught in a single stream during the run.
The salmon canneries of the Columbia River are very extensive
establishments, but in the past few years they have been surpassed by
the Alaskan fisheries, which produce not far from fifty million pounds
each year. The dressed fish is cooked by steam, canned, and exported to
all parts of the world. The growth and development of the industry has
also made an enormous demand on the tin mines of the world. Canned
salmon is the largest fish export of the United States. There are
extensive salmon-fisheries in Norway, Japan, and Russia.
=Other Fish.=--_Mackerel_ and _haddock_ are caught near the shores of the
North Atlantic. Most of the mackerel-catch is pickled in brine and sold
in small kegs known as "kits." The _menhaden_-catch of the North
Atlantic is converted into fertilizer. The _halibut_ is a large fish
that is rarely preserved. The area in which it is caught is about the
same as that of the cod. _Shad_ are usually caught when ascending the
rivers of the middle Atlantic coast. In the United States, Chesapeake,
Delaware, and New York Bays yield the chief supply. The _bluefish_ and
_barracuda_ are warm-water fish. The market for fresh fish has been
greatly enlarged by the use of refrigerator-cars.
The _sturgeon_ is captured mainly in the rivers and lakes of the
temperate zone. Those of the Black Sea sometimes attain a weight of
2,000 pounds. The flesh is of less importance than the eggs, of which
caviare is made. Russian caviare is sold all over Europe and America,
and not a small part of the product is made in Maine. The caviare made
from the roe of the Delaware River sturgeon is exported to Germany. The
_tunny_ is confined to Mediterranean waters.
The _anchovy_ is caught on the coast of Europe; most of the product is
preserved, or made into the well-known "anchovy sauce." The
_beche-de-mere_, or "sea cucumber," is a product of Australasian and
Malaysian waters. Almost the whole catch is purchased by the Chinese,
and it is exported to all countries having a Chinese population.
=Oysters and Lobsters.=--The oyster is among the foremost sea products of
the United States in value. The oyster thrives best in moderately warm
and sheltered waters. The coves and estuaries along the middle Atlantic
coast produce the best in the world. Chesapeake Bay and Long Island
Sound yield the greater part of the output. In the latter waters
elaborate methods of propagation are carried out, and the yearly crop is
increasing both in quality and quantity. The output of the Chesapeake
beds has decreased materially; that of the Long Island Sound beds has
increased.
Oysters are plentiful along the Pacific coast of the United States and
also in European coast-waters, but they are inferior in size and
quality. The use of refrigerator-cars and vessels has extended the trade
to the extent that fresh oysters are shipped to points 2,000 miles
inland; they are also exported to Europe. Baltimore is the chief
oyster-market.
The consumption of the lobster has been so great that the catch of the
New England coast has decreased about one-half in the past fifty years,
and the United States is now an importer. Most of the import, amounting
to about one million dollars yearly, comes from Canada. The so-called
lobsters of the Pacific coast of the United States are not lobsters, but
crayfish.
=Fish Hatcheries.=--The demand for fish has grown so great in past years
that in many countries the waters, especially the lakes and rivers, are
restocked. The eggs are hatched and the young fry are fed until they
are large enough to take care of themselves. The chief hatchery and
laboratory of the United States Fish Commission is at Woods Holl, Mass.
As many as 860,000,000 eggs, small fry, and adult fish have been
distributed in a single year. The State of New York has also a similar
department for restocking its waters.
=Sponge.=--This substance is practically the skeleton of a low order of
animal, growing at the bottom of the sea. The sponge is cut from the
place of attachment, and the gelatinous matter is washed away after
putrefaction. The chief sponge-fisheries are in the neighborhood of
Florida and the Bahama Islands.
=Seal.=--The fur-seal is an amphibian, found only in cold waters. A few
pelts are obtained along the Greenland coast, but the chief
sealing-grounds of the world have been at the Pribilof Islands, in
Bering Sea. The pelts of the young males only are taken. The rookeries
of the Pribilof Islands have been so nearly exhausted, that the killing
season has been suspended for a term of years. Much illicit
seal-catching is still going on, however.
The skins are taken to London, via San Francisco, where the fur is dyed
a rich brown color; London is the chief market for dyed pelts; San
Francisco for raw pelts; and New York, Paris, and St. Petersburg for
garments. The pelts of the sea-otter are obtained mainly in the North
Pacific Ocean.
=Other Furs.=--The furs employed in the finest garments are in part the
pelts of land animals living in polar regions. The sable, stone-marten,
otter, beaver, and red fox are the most valuable. The Persian lamb,
however, is not a polar animal. The Russian Empire and Canada are the
chief sources of supply. The Hudson Bay Company, with head-quarters at
Fort Garry, near Winnipeg, controls most of the fur-trade of North
America; the Russian furs are marketed mainly at Lower Novgorod.
Leipzig, Germany, is also an important fur-market.
Enormous quantities of rabbit-skins from Australia and nutria from
Argentina are imported into the United States and Europe for the
manufacture of the felt of which hats are made. The amount of this
substance may be realized when one considers that not far from two
hundred million people in the two countries wear felt hats.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Note an instance in which the search for deep-sea fishing-grounds has
resulted in the discovery of unknown lands.
Why are not whale products as essential now as a century ago?
What international complications have arisen between the United States
and Great Britain concerning the cod-fisheries?--the seal-catch?
[Illustration: NORTH AMERICA]
CHAPTER XVII
THE UNITED STATES--THE SEAPORTS AND THE ATLANTIC COAST-PLAIN
The United States of America together with the possessions included
within the domain of the Republic comprise an area somewhat greater than
that of Europe.
With respect to latitude, the position of the main body of the United
States is extremely fortunate. Practically all its area is situated in
the warmer half of the temperate zone. Only a small part lies beyond the
northern limit of the corn belt; wheat, oats, and barley are cultivated
successfully throughout four-fifths of its extent in latitude; grass,
and therefore cattle and sheep are grown in nearly every part. Coal,
iron, copper, gold, and silver, the minerals and metals which give to a
nation its greatest material power, exist in abundance, and the
successful working of these deposits have placed the country upon a very
high commercial plane.
Topographically the United States may be divided into the following
regions:
The Atlantic Coast-Plain,
The Appalachian Ranges and the New England Plateau,
The Basin of the Great Lakes,
The Northern Mississippi Valley Region,
The Southern Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast,
The Arid Plains,
The Plateau Region,
The Pacific Coast Lowlands.
[Illustration: A HARBOR--NEW YORK BAY, AT THE BATTERY]
The topographic and climatic features of these various regions have had
a great influence not only on the political history of the country, but
their effect has been even greater in determining its industrial
development. They have resulted in the establishment of the various
industries, each in the locality best adapted to it, instead of their
diffusion without respect to the necessary conditions of environment.
The foregoing regions are also approximately areas of fundamental
industries. Thus, the New England plateau supplies the rest of the
United States with light manufactures, such as cotton textiles, woollen
clothing, hats, shoes, cutlery, books, writing-paper, household metal
wares, etc., but sells the excess abroad. The middle and southern
Appalachians, with the coal which forms their chief resource, supply the
rest of the country with structural steel, from ores obtained in the
lake regions, and sell the excess to foreign countries.
The northern Mississippi Valley grows nearly one-fourth of the world's
wheat-crop. The wheat of this region and the Pacific coast lowlands
supplies the country with bread-stuffs, and exports the excess to
western Europe. The Gulf states, which produce three-fourths of the
world's cotton-crop, supply the whole country and about one-half the
rest of the world besides with cotton textiles. The grazing regions
produce an excess of meat for export; the western highlands furnish the
gold and silver necessary to carry on the enormous commerce.
In the last twenty years the imports of merchandise per capita varied
but little from $11.50; the exports per capita varied from about $12 to
more than $18.
=The Atlantic Coast-Plain and the Seaports.=--Throughout most of its
extent the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is bordered by a low
coast-plain. Along the northeastern coast of the United States the
coast-plain is very narrow; south of New York Bay it has a width in
some places of more than two hundred miles.
The existence of this plain has had a marked effect on the commercial
development of the country. The sinking or "drowning" of the northern
part of it has made an exceedingly indented coast. The drowned valleys,
enclosed by ridges and headlands, form the best of harbors, and nearly
all of them are northeast of New York Bay. South of New York Bay good
harbors are comparatively few. For the greater part they occur only when
old, buried river-channels permit approach to the shore.
The most important port of entry in these harbors is _New York_, and it
derives its importance from two factors. It has a very capacious harbor,
into which vessels drawing as much as thirty-five feet may enter; its
situation at the lower end of a series of valleys and passes makes it
almost a dead level route from the Mississippi to the Atlantic seaboard.
The importance of New York as the commercial gateway between European
ports and the food-producing region of the American continent began when
the Erie Canal was opened between the Great Lakes and tide-water. The
completion of the canal for the first time opened the rich farming lands
of the interior to European markets. Probably a greater tonnage of
freight is carried yearly over this route than over any other channel of
trade in the world.
Not far from two-thirds of the foreign commerce of the country passes
through the port of New York. The water-front of the city has an
aggregate length of about three hundred miles, of which one-third is
available for anchorage. The docks and piers, including those of Jersey
City and Hoboken, aggregate about ninety miles in frontage.
About sixteen thousand sea-going craft enter and clear yearly, and an
average of nearly twenty large passenger and freight steamships arrive
and clear daily, about one-half of them being foreign. The latter
receive their cargoes from about three thousand freight-cars that are
daily switched into the various freight-yards, a large part of which is
through freight from the west.
The port of entry of _New York_ is a centre of population of about four
million, and although there are the industries usually found in great
communities, the greater business enterprises practically reduce
themselves to export, import, and exchange. For this reason New York
City is the financial, as well as the commercial centre of the
continent. Most of the great industrial corporations of the country have
their head offices in the city. These are financed by more than one
hundred banks, together with a clearing-house whose yearly business
amounted in 1902 to considerably more than seventy billions of
dollars.[50]
[Illustration: BOSTON HARBOR]
_Boston_ has been one of the leading ports of the United States for
considerably more than a century. It ranks second among the ports of the
United States. Regular lines of transit connect it with the principal
ports of Great Britain and Canada. The coast trade is also very heavy.
Boston is the financial and commercial centre of New England; the
cotton, woollen, and leather goods passing through the port find their
way to nearly every inhabited part of the world. The city controls a
considerable export trade of food-stuffs from the upper Mississippi
Valley. The vessels entering and clearing at Boston indicate a movement
of about four million five hundred thousand tons, about one-fourth that
of New York. The clearing-house exchanges average about six billion
dollars yearly.
_Philadelphia_, on account of its distance inland, is not fortunately
situated for ocean commerce. Steamships of deep draught reach their
docks at the lower end of the city under their own steam, but
sailing-craft pay heavy towage fees. There are regular lines to
Liverpool, Antwerp, West Indian ports, Baltimore, and Boston.
Philadelphia is the centre of the anthracite coal trade, and this is the
chief factor of its domestic trade. The imports of fruit from the West
Indies, carpet-wool from Europe, and raw sugar from the West Indies,
form the greater part of its foreign business. The manufactures are
mainly carpets and rugs, locomotives and iron steamships, and refined
sugar. The carpet-weaving and the ship-building plants are among the
largest in the world. The ocean movement of freight is more than three
million five hundred thousand tons yearly. The business of the
clearing-house in 1902 aggregated nearly six billion dollars.
_Baltimore_ is likewise handicapped by its distance inland.
Sailing-vessels, however, require only a short towage, the docks being
scarcely a dozen miles from Chesapeake Bay. The harbor is deep and
capacious. The Pennsylvania and Baltimore & Ohio railway systems have
made Baltimore an important railway centre. The completion of the Gould
railway system to the Atlantic seaboard has made the city second to New
York only in the export of corn, wheat, flour, and tobacco. The most
noteworthy local industry is the oyster product, which is the greatest
in the world. Nearly ten thousand people are employed, and during the
busy season--from September to the end of April--about thirty carloads
of oysters a day are shipped.
[Illustration: CHARLESTON HARBOR]
The yearly movement of marine freight, entering and clearing, aggregates
about three million tons. In 1902 the clearing-house exchanges
aggregated about two and one-quarter billion dollars.
_Portland_, Me., has good harbor facilities, but is distant from the
great lines of traffic. Steamship lines, which in summer make Montreal a
terminal point, occasionally make Portland their winter harbor. _Newport
News_, _Savannah_, _Charleston_, and _Brunswick_ are growing in
importance as clearing ports for the cotton and produce from the region
west of them. _Norfolk_ obtains importance on account of the United
States Navy-Yard; it is also the great peanut-market of the world.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the requisites of a good seaport?
What is meant by the draught of a vessel?
For what purposes are pilots?
How are navigable channels marked and designated?
From the Statistical Abstract find six or more of the leading exports
from each of the following ports: New York, Boston, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and the port nearest which you live.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Statistical Abstract of the United States.
Statesman's Year-Book.
Industrial Evolution of the United States--Chapter II.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE UNITED STATES--THE NEW ENGLAND PLATEAU AND THE APPALACHIAN REGION
The manufacturing regions of the United States, which connect the
country with the rest of the world, include mainly the New England
plateau and the Appalachian ranges.
=The New England Plateau.=--This region embraces the New England States
and practically includes all the eastern part of New York and northern
New Jersey. The abruptly sloping surface affords a great wealth of
water-power, and the region is one of the most important centres of
light manufacture in the world. This industry resulted very largely from
the conditions imposed by the War of 1812 and its consequent
non-intercourse acts.
The interruption of foreign commerce not only cut off the importation of
manufactured commodities, but also made idle the capital employed.
Manufacturing enterprises started in various parts of the United States,
but they prospered in this region for three reasons--an abundance of
power, plenty of capital, and business experience. Steam-power is
largely supplanting water-power in the manufacturing enterprises, and in
many instances the establishments have been moved to tide-water in order
to get their coal at the lowest rates of transportation.
Chief among the manufactures are cotton textiles, the yearly output of
which is about three hundred million dollars. About nine-tenths of the
cotton goods made are consumed at home. Of the remainder, China
purchases one-half. Great Britain and Canada take one-fourth, the South
American and Central American states purchase most of the remaining
output. The great improvement of spinning and weaving machinery has
enabled the cotton manufacturer to export his wares to about every
country in the world.
Boots, shoes, and other leather goods are also important manufactures.
The invention of improved machinery for making shoes has revolutionized
the industry to the extent that a pair of stylish shoes may be purchased
anywhere in the United States for about half the price charged in 1880.
Another result is the enormous importation of hides from South American
countries and Mexico.
The New England plateau is also the centre of a large number of
manufactures that require a high degree of mechanical skill and
intellectual training, such as small fire-arms, machinery, watches and
clocks, jewelry, machine-tools, etc. The location of such industries
depends but little upon climate, topography, or the cost of
transportation; it is wholly a question of an educated and trained
people. This region is likely to lose a considerable part of its
manufactures of cotton textiles, inasmuch as the industry is gradually
moving to the cotton-growing region. The manufactures requiring training
and skill, however, are likely to remain in the region where they have
grown up.
_Lawrence_, _Lowell_, _Manchester_, and _Nashua_--all on the Merrimac
River; _Lewiston_, _Waterville_, _Augusta_, _Woonsocket_, and
_Adams_--each situated at falls or rapids--are great centres of cotton
manufacture. Fall River has an abundance of water-power, and at the same
time is situated on tide-water. Having the advantage of good power and
cheap transportation, it has probably the greatest output of cotton
textiles of any city in the world. Textile establishments have also
grown up in the cities and towns of the Mohawk Valley, being attracted
by the excellent facilities for transportation and also by the available
water-power. _Lynn_, _Brockton_, _Haverhill_, _Marlboro_, and
_Worcester_ are centres of boot and shoe manufacture; they turn out
about two-thirds of the product of the United States.
_Bridgeport_ and _New Haven_ have very large plants for the manufacture
of fire-arms and fixed ammunition; _Waterbury_ and _Ansonia_ for
watches, clocks, and brass goods; _Meriden_ for silverware, and
_Waltham_ for watches. _Worcester_, _Hartford_, _North Adams_,
_Fitchburg_, and _Providence_ have each a great variety of manufactures.
The foreign commerce of these manufacturing centres is carried on mainly
through _Boston_. _New Haven_, _New Bedford_, _Providence_, _Salem_,
_Gloucester_, and _New London_ control each a very large local commerce.
South of New York Bay the Atlantic coast-plain attains an average width
of nearly two hundred miles. The pine forests of this plain yield
lumber, tar, pitch, and turpentine. The productive lands are valuable
chiefly for their output of dairy stuffs, fruit, and "garden truck,"
which find a ready market in the larger cities. In order to encourage
this industry, the railways make special rates for dairy products,
fruit, and vegetables, and afford quick transit for such freight.
Manufacturing industries are rapidly taking shape in this part of the
United States. Along the line where the coast-plain proper joins the
foot-hills of the Appalachian ranges, the rivers reach the lower levels
by rapids or falls. The estuaries into which they flow are usually
navigable for river-craft. The manufacturer thus has the double
advantage of water-power and low transportation. The opening of the
southern Appalachian coal-mines has also greatly encouraged manufacture
in this region. _Richmond_, _Columbia_, _Milledgeville_, _Augusta_, and
_Columbus_ are thus situated. Their manufactures are very largely
connected with the cotton-crop.
The domestic commerce of the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is
probably larger than that of any other similar region in the world. It
is considerably larger than the "round-the-island" trade of Great
Britain. Much of this trade is carried by steam-vessels, but the
three-masted schooner is everywhere in evidence, and these craft carry a
very large part of the coal that is moved by water. This trade is
restricted to vessels flying the American flag.
=The Appalachian Region.=--The middle and southern Appalachian region has
become the most important centre of iron and steel manufacture in the
world. This great development has resulted from several causes, the
chief being the existence of coal and unlimited quantities of iron ore
on the one hand, and unusual facilities for cheap transportation on the
other. There are practically three areas of steel manufacture--one along
the Ohio River and its tributaries in western Pennsylvania; another is
situated along the south shores of Lake Erie and Lake Michigan; the
third includes the Birmingham district in the southern Appalachians.
The steel-making plants of the Ohio River are located with reference to
the transportation of their products, and therefore are built usually
alongside the river. The coal or coke is commonly shipped in barges of
light draught; the manufactured products are carried by rail. The
greater part of the ore is brought from the Lake Superior region. It is
shipped at a very small cost from the ore quarries to the lake-shore,
and by rail from the lake-shore to the manufacturing plant. In order to
avoid heavy grades the ore railways are also built along the
river-valleys.
[Illustration: STEEL MANUFACTURE--ERECTING SHOP OF THE BALDWIN
LOCOMOTIVE WORKS, PHILADELPHIA]
Some of the various steel-making plants are equipped for the
manufacture of building or "structural" steel, others for rails and
railway equipments, still others for tin-plate, or for wire, or for tool
steel. In a few mills armor-plate and ordinary plate for steel vessels
form the exclusive product. The diversity of the product has led to the
organization of great corporations, each of which controls half-a-dozen
or more plants, the transportation lines necessary to carry the product,
the ore quarries, and the fuel-mines.
The wonderful development of the steel industry in the United States is
due to the use of labor-saving machinery, and to the superb
organization. The wages paid for labor are higher than those paid in
European steel-making centres; the cost of living is not materially
greater. The price of steel rails, which in 1880 was forty-eight dollars
per ton, in 1900 was about twenty dollars per ton.
_Pittsburg_, together with _Homestead_, _Carnegie_, _McKeesport_,
_Duquesne_, and _Braddock_, is the chief steel-making centre of the Ohio
River Valley. There are also large plants at _New Castle_, _Sharon_,
_Scranton_, _Johnstown_, _Bellaire_, _Youngstown_, _Mingo Junction_, and
_Wheeling_. The steel-plant and rolling-mills at _South Bethlehem_ are
designed especially for the manufacture of the heavy ordnance used in
the army and navy. Nearly all the cities and towns of Pennsylvania, West
Virginia, and eastern Ohio carry on manufacturing enterprises that
depend on coal mining and steel manufacture. The great and diversified
manufactures of Philadelphia are due to its fortunate situation at
tide-water, near the coal-mines. Cheap fuel and water transportation
have made it one of the great industrial centres of the world.
The anthracite coal of this region is used wholly for fuel and
steam-making; it is shipped partly by water from Philadelphia, but
mainly in specially constructed cars to the various points of
consumption. The soft coal is used also for fuel and steam-making, but a
large part of the product is converted into coke and used in the
steel-plants.
The petroleum of this region is a leading export of the country, the
states of western Europe being the chief purchasers. Of agricultural
products, hay, dairy products, and tobacco are the only ones of
importance. Natural gas is used both as a fuel and in manufactures.
The lake-shore centre of steel manufacture depends largely on the low
cost of transporting the iron ore, which in part is offset by the
increased cost of coal. The low cost of shipping the manufactured
product over nearly level trunk lines is a very substantial gain. _South
Chicago_, _Toledo_, _Sandusky_, _Lorain_, _Cleveland_, _Ashtabula_,
_Conneaut_, _Erie_, and _Buffalo_ are centres of steel manufacture or
ore shipment, because they are situated on this great trade-route or
line of least resistance.
The coal-mines and iron-making plants of the southern Appalachians have
a considerable area. The chief manufacturing centres are _Birmingham_,
_Richmond_, _Roanoke_, and _Chattanooga_. A considerable part of the
Virginia ores find their way to the Ohio River steel-mills. Open-hearth
steel is an important manufacture in Birmingham. A large part of the
ores smelted in the southern Appalachian region are made into foundry
iron.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What are the advantages and the disadvantages of manufacturing cotton
textiles in the New England States?
Why have the mining of ore and the manufacture of steel become generally
unprofitable in the New England States?
What causes have brought about the lowering of the prices of cotton
textiles during the past fifty years?--of shoes?
What makes the manufacture of artificial ice a precarious business north
of the latitude of Philadelphia?
What are the advantages and the disadvantages arising from the location
of a manufacturing industry at a seaport?
What is the design of a protective tariff? What are its advantages and
disadvantages?
Why are most of the great steel-making plants so remote from the mines
of iron ore used in making steel?
FOR COLLATERAL READING
Industrial Evolution of the United States--Chapters III-V.
Mineral Resources of the United States.
Outlines of Political Science--Chapters VIII-X.
CHAPTER XIX
THE UNITED STATES--THE BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES AND THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY
The principal agricultural region of the United States extends from the
Appalachian ranges to the Rocky Mountains. A certain amount of
bread-stuffs, meat, and dairy products are grown in nearly every part of
the country for local use, but the grain, meat, and cotton of this
region are designed for export, and are therefore factors in the world's
commerce. The basin of the Great Lakes connects the Mississippi Valley
with the Atlantic seaboard.
=The Basin of the Great Lakes.=--This region includes not only the Great
Lakes and the area drained by the streams flowing into them, but also a
considerable region surrounding that commercially is tributary to the
traffic passing over the lakes. This basin itself is a part of a
trade-route destined very shortly to become one of the greatest highways
of traffic in the world.
The lakes afford a navigable water-way which, measured due east and
west, aggregates nearly six hundred miles. This route is interrupted at
Niagara Falls and at St. Mary's Falls, between Lake Superior and Lake
Huron. On the Canadian side, Welland Canal, Lake Ontario, and the St.
Lawrence connect Lake Erie with tide-water. In the United States the
Erie Canal connects the lake with the Hudson River and New York Bay.
From the head of Lake Superior railway routes of minimum grades--the
Great Northern and the Northern Pacific[51]--cross the continent to
Puget Sound, the best harbor approach to the Pacific coast of the
American continent. The harbors of Puget Sound, moreover, are materially
nearer the great Asian ports than any other port of the United States.
The level margins of these lakes are roadbeds for many miles of railway
track; in many instances the railways are built on the tops of terraces
that once were shores of the lakes.
[Illustration: DULUTH]
_Duluth_, at the head of Lake Superior, became commercially important
when the St. Mary's Falls Canal was completed. Much of the tremendous
tonnage of freight passing through the canal is assembled at this place.
The freight shipped consists mainly of farm products collected from an
area reaching as far west as the Rocky Mountains. There is also a
considerable shipment of iron ores obtained near by. _Buffalo_, at the
lower end of Lake Erie, owes its activity to the trade in lumber, grain,
and other farm products that come from Western lake-ports. It is the
eastern terminus of the lake-commerce and the western terminus of the
Erie Canal.
_Chicago_, at the head of Lake Michigan, has a very heavy lake-trade.
The mouth of Chicago River, the natural harbor of the city, has been
improved by a system of basins and breakwaters. The river itself has
been converted into a ship and drainage canal that is connected with the
Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. It is now an outlet instead of a feeder
to the lake, and the city built about old Fort Dearborn has become the
greatest railway centre in the world.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF LOCKS AND CANAL, SAULT STE. MARIE]
_Milwaukee_ has a situation in many ways resembling that of Chicago,
its harbor being the mouth of Milwaukee River. Like Chicago, it owes its
importance to its lake-trade. _Detroit_ (with _Windsor_, Ont.) owes its
growth partly to its strategic position on the strait connecting Lake
Huron and Lake Erie, and partly for its position between the lakes. It
is an important collecting and distributing point for lake-freights, and
the chief centre of commerce with Canada. Several east-and-west trunk
lines and local lines of railway have freight terminals in the city; it
is also the centre of the most complete system of interurban electric
railways in the world. _Port Huron_ (with _Sarnia_, Ont.) has a
geographic position similar to that of Detroit, and is also an important
lake-port. The St. Clair River is tunnelled at this point. _Cleveland_,
_Toledo_, _Sandusky_, and _Erie_ contribute very largely to the
lake-trade. _Grand Rapids_ is the business centre of furniture
manufacture of the United States.
The great iron-ore ranges about Lake Superior have had much to do with
the growth of the local lake-trade. This has resulted in the
establishment of a large number of shipping-ports near the head of the
lakes, and also a number of receiving ports on the south shores of Lake
Erie and Lake Michigan. Some of the latter have become also great
manufacturing centres of structural iron and steel.
Various centres of industry at a considerable distance from the Great
Lakes are contributors to their trade. Thus, on account of the low rate
for grain between _Chicago_ and _New York City_--about 5-1/4 cents per
bushel--there are yearly very heavy shipments of the grain designed for
Liverpool. _St. Paul_ and _Minneapolis_ are also collecting and
distributing centres of lake-freights. A considerable part of the
business of the lake-region is carried on by the Canadians, who have
improved their resources for production and transportation to the
utmost.
[Illustration: _Copyright, Detroit Photographic Co._
AURORA IRON MINES, IRONWOOD, MICHIGAN]
=The Northern Mississippi Valley Region.=--This region extends from the
Appalachian ranges to the western limit of wheat and cotton growing. On
the south it is limited by the cotton-growing region. Its boundaries are
therefore climatic and commercial.
The surface is level; there is a rich, deep soil and an abundant
rainfall. It has therefore become one of the foremost regions of the
world in the production of corn, wheat, pork, dairy-stuffs, and general
farm produce. The evolution of farming machinery is the direct result of
topographic conditions. A level, fertile region naturally invites
grain-farming on a large scale. This, in turn, must depend very largely
on the ability of the farmer to plant and harvest his crops with the
minimum of expense and time.
Hand-work in harvesting and planting has almost wholly given way to
machine-work. Farming carried on under such conditions requires not only
a considerable capital, but close business management as well. Some of
the results have been very far-reaching. The machinery and other
equipments require capital, and this in late years has been borrowed
from Eastern capitalists. The prompt business methods of the
money-lender brought about no little friction, and it is only within
recent years that each adjusted himself to the requirements of the
other.
The system of machine-farming to a great extent has prevented the
subdivision of farms. As a rule, quarter and half sections represent the
size of most of the farms, but tracts varying from five thousand to ten
thousand acres are by no means uncommon. The chief drawback to this
method in the case of wheat-farming, however, is the low yield per acre.
The average yield per acre for the United States, a little more than
twelve bushels, is scarcely half the average yield in Europe. Although
the farmer has done much to reorganize his business methods, he has done
but little to maintain the productivity of his land.
[Illustration: THE WHEAT INDUSTRY--HARVESTING WITH McCORMICK
SELF-BINDING REAPERS]
The cities and towns of this region are mainly receiving and collecting
points for farm produce. Nearly every village is equipped with elevators
and grain-handling machinery; the larger towns, as a rule, have
stock-yards and the necessary facilities for cattle shipment; the large
cities are usually centres of meat-packing. Most of the meat-packing is
a necessity; for although cattle may be shipped alive and beef may be
transported in refrigerator ships and cars, pork is not marketable
unless pickled, salted, or smoked. The pork thus exported, aggregating
about six hundred million pounds yearly, must be prepared, therefore,
somewhere near the cornfields. Manufacturing enterprises are operated on
a very large scale, but in the main their products are farm-machinery
and the commodities required by a farming population.
Education in agriculture is provided for in nearly every State in the
Union. The agricultural colleges in the States composing this group rank
among the best in the world. In addition to the ordinary courses in such
institutions, there are also many experiment stations for the study of
economic plants, cattle diseases, and insect pests.
_Chicago_ is the largest food-market in the world. The industries of the
city are almost wholly connected with the commerce of grain, pork, meat,
and other food-stuffs. For the transportation of these commodities about
thirty great trunk lines enter the city and about twelve hundred
passenger trains daily arrive and depart from its stations.
The freight terminals are connected by transfer and belt lines, which
receive and distribute the cars passing between the eastern and the
western roads. More than five hundred freight trains, aggregating about
twenty thousand cars, arrive and depart daily.
_St. Louis_ originally derived its importance as a river-port of the
Mississippi, having been the connecting commercial link between the
upper and the lower river. In recent years it has become the metropolis
of the southern part of the food-producing region. In addition to the
river-trade, still largely controlled at this point, it is the focus of
more than twenty trunk lines of railway. Some of these, like the trunk
lines of Chicago, handle freight exchanged between the East and West;
but a large proportion are receiving and distributing roads for Southern
freight.
[Illustration: AUTOMOTIVE POWER IN THE INDUSTRIES OF THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY]
_St. Paul_ and _Minneapolis_ are the metropolis of the upper
Mississippi. The former grew from a trading-post at the head of
navigation; the latter gained its commercial prominence from the
water-power at the falls of St. Anthony. The former has become the chief
railway and distributing centre of the northern Mississippi Valley; the
latter has the greatest flour-mills in the world, and an extensive
lumber-trade. Both are situated on the trade-route between the United
States and Asian ports, and distribute a part of the trade that comes
from them.
The two _Kansas Cities_,[52] _Omaha_, _South Omaha_, and _Sioux City_
are stock-markets and meat-packing centres. The first two named are
collecting and distributing points not only for the Mississippi Valley,
but also for a considerable share of the Pacific Coast trade. Kansas
City is also a transfer station for the cotton destined for China. From
this place it is sent by way of Billings to Seattle, and thence shipped
to China.
_Cincinnati_ is the metropolis of the Ohio Valley. Its situation on a
bend of the river gives most excellent landing facilities; the easy
grade from the bluff to the bottom-lands along the flood-plain of Mill
Creek makes it accessible to the railways that enter the city. On
account of low rates of transportation by river-barges, about three
million tons of coal and one million tons of pig-iron and steel billets
are floated to the city to be manufactured into other steel products.
_Indianapolis_ is a great railway centre, where much of the freight
passing between Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburg is
exchanged. _Columbus_ (O.) is similarly situated as a railway and
farming centre.
[Illustration: CATTLE AND DAIRY PRODUCTS]
_Louisville_ is a market of the tobacco region, and has probably a
larger business in this industry than any other city in the world.
_Davenport_, _Rock Island_, and _Moline_ form a single commercial
centre, the last-named having the largest establishment for the
manufacture of ploughs in the world. _Dubuque_, _Burlington_, _Quincy_,
and _Muscatine_ are river-ports, all having a considerable trade in the
lumber that is carried down the river.
=The Southern Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast.=--This region receives a
generous warmth and rainfall. Cotton is its staple product, and nearly
all the industries are connected with the growth, shipment, and
manufacture of the crop and its side products. The cotton, raw or
manufactured, is sold in about every country in the world.
The commercial part of handling the cotton-crop begins within a very
few weeks from the time of the first picking. The baled cotton is hauled
by team from the plantation to the nearest market-town, an item
sometimes greater than the entire freightage from the nearest seaport to
Liverpool.
The season for export lasts from September until the middle of January,
during which time brokers are visiting the smaller markets in order to
buy it on commission. It is then shipped by rail or by river to the
nearest general market, where it is sold to the foreign buyers and
domestic manufacturers.
_New Orleans_, the metropolis of the South, has usually the heaviest
export of cotton, amounting to about one billion pounds each year. Much
of this is received by water from the various river-ports. The city is
not only a river-port, but an important seaport as well, controlling a
large part of the foreign commerce of the Gulf. Several trunk lines of
railway enter the city, which is a receiving and distributing depot for
both Atlantic and Pacific freights. A considerable part of the former
are sent by ocean steamships from New York. An elaborate system of
sewerage, well-paved streets, and a good water-supply--all recently put
into operation--have made the city one of the most attractive in the
United States.
_Galveston_ is destined to become a leading port for cotton export. It
has the advantage of a fine harbor on the seaboard, and the disadvantage
of a location so low that very heavy south winds flood the streets with
water from the Gulf. The growth of the export trade is due chiefly to
the increasing crop of Texas. Shipments from Galveston begin in
September, the Texas crop being the first to mature. _Savannah_ and _New
York_ rank next in their exports. _Pensacola_ and _Brunswick_ are also
important points of export. _Memphis_, _Vicksburg_, _Shreveport_,
_Houston_, and _Montgomery_ are important collecting stations for the
cotton.
About one-third of the crop is retained for manufacture in the United
States; one-third is purchased by Great Britain, one-sixth by Germany,
and most of the remainder by France, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Of the
manufactured cotton goods, the Chinese are the heaviest buyers, taking
about half the entire export. Most of the Chinese purchase is landed at
Shanghai.
In the main, the manufactures of this region closely concern the cotton
industry. The increase in the manufacture of textile goods has been very
great, and a large part of the cotton now manufactured in the New
England States and abroad, in time will be made in the cities and towns
of this section. In addition to the textile goods, cottonseed-oil is an
important product. A part of this is used in the mechanical arts, but
the refined oil is used mainly for domestic purposes. A considerable
part of the latter is used to adulterate olive-oil, and in some
instances is substituted for it. The refuse of the seed is made into
fertilizer.
_Atlanta_ is one of the foremost cities in the South in the manufacture
of cotton textiles and products. Commercially its situation resembles
that of Indianapolis; it is a focal point of the chief trunk lines of
railway in the South, and has the principal railway clearing-house. Like
New Orleans, it is an educational centre and one of the foremost in the
South. _Macon_, _Dallas_, _Fort Worth_, and _San Antonio_ are growing
commercial centres.
The manufacture of cane-sugar has been an industry of Louisiana for more
than a century. Since the advent of beet-sugar, however, it has been a
somewhat precarious venture, and has depended for existence very largely
upon tariff protection and bounties paid to the American sugar-makers.
Tobacco manufacture centres at Tampa and Key West. Cuban leaf is there
converted into cigars.
Fruit culture is a great industry. Millions of melons and great
quantities of pineapples, oranges, and small fruit form the early crop
that is shipped North. The orange groves are mainly in Florida. The crop
is exhausted about the time that California oranges are shipped East. A
great deal of tropical fruit is brought from Mexican, Central American,
and South American ports. This trade is controlled mainly at _Mobile_,
which is also a lumber-market.
=The Arid Plains and the Grazing Region.=--This region includes the high
plains approximately west of the 2,000-foot contour of level, together
with a part of the plateaus of the western highland region. It is
essentially one of grazing. Formerly there was an attempt to make
wheat-growing the chief industry, but on account of the limited rainfall
not more than three crops out of five reached maturity.
The earlier cattle-growing was carried on in a somewhat primitive
manner; the cattle herded on open lands, wandering from one range to
another, wherever the grazing might be good. The ownership of the cattle
was determined by the brand the animal bore,[53] and the herds were
"rounded up" twice a year to be sorted; at the round-up the "mavericks,"
or unmarked calves and yearlings, were branded. In time the ranges
became greatly overstocked; the winter losses by starvation were so
heavy that a better system became imperative. "Rustling," or
cattle-stealing, also became a factor in improving the methods of
cattle-ranching. The cautious rustler would purchase a few head of
cattle and add to the number by capturing stray mavericks.
[Illustration: A DESERT REGION--TOO DRY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF
FOOD-STUFFS]
[Illustration: OPEN GRAZING RANGES, IN WESTERN HIGHLANDS]
Both the legitimate graziers and the rustlers at first were bitterly
opposed to fencing the land. In time, however, the grazier was compelled
to do this, and also to grow alfalfa for winter foddering. The great
open ranges have therefore been broken up and fenced wholly or in part.
The fencing, moreover, has kept a dozen or more of the largest
wire-mills in the world turning out a product that is at once shipped
West. As a rule, the top wire is set on insulators and used for
telephone connection.[54] This method of cattle-growing has improved the
business in every way. The cattle are better kept; the loss by winter
killing is very small; the "long-horn" cattle have given place to the
best breeds of "meaters," which are heavier, and mature more quickly.
[Illustration: _Copyright, 1901, by Detroit Photographic Co._
ON A TEXAS CATTLE RANCH]
The success of stock-growing in this region is largely a question of
climate. The sparse rainfall permits the growth of several species of
grass that retain nutrition and vitality after turning brown under the
fierce summer heat. Ordinary turf-grass will not live in this region,
nor will it retain its nutrition after turning brown if rain falls upon
it. The native grass is not materially affected by a shower or two; it
is fairly good fodder even when buried under the winter's snow. The
existence of this industry, therefore, turns on a very delicate climatic
balance.
Of the beef grown in the United States the export product is derived
mainly from this region. Nearly four hundred thousand animals are
shipped alive; about three hundred million pounds of fresh beef are
shipped to the Atlantic seaboard in refrigerator-cars and then
transferred to refrigerator-steamships. Two-thirds of the cattle and
fresh beef exported are shipped from New York and Boston.
Upward of one hundred and fifty million pounds of canned and pickled
beef are also exported. All but a very small part of this product is
consumed in Great Britain, France, and Germany. The cattle are collected
for transportation at various stations and sidings along the railways
that traverse this region. _Cheyenne_ is one of the largest
cattle-markets in the world.
Wool has become a very valuable product, and the sheep grown in this
region number about one-half the total in the United States. The growing
of macaroni-wheat is extending to lands that fail to produce crops of
ordinary wheat.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what ways does the basin of the Great Lakes facilitate the commerce
of the United States?
How has the topography of the Mississippi Valley affected the evolution
of farming-machinery?
Why are shippers willing in many cases to pay an all-rail rate on wheat
sent to the Atlantic seaboard, nearly three times as great as the lake
and canal rates?
The acre-product of wheat in the United States is about twelve bushels;
in western Europe it varies from twenty-five to more than forty bushels;
to what is the difference due?
What is meant by sea-island cotton?--for what reasons is cotton imported
from Egypt and Peru into the United States?
In what manner is cotton used in the manufacture of pneumatic tires, and
why is it thus used?
What are refrigerator-cars?--refrigerator-steamships? Name some of the
regulations required in shipping cattle.
Why have American meats been debarred at times from European markets?
Find the value of cotton and meat exported to the following-named
countries: Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, China.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
The Wheat Problem--pp. 191 _et seq._
Statistical Abstract.
[Illustration: DIFFICULT RAILROADING--LAS ANIMAS CANYON]
CHAPTER XX
THE UNITED STATES--THE WESTERN HIGHLANDS AND TERRITORIAL POSSESSIONS
The western part of the United States consists of a succession of high
mountain-ranges extending nearly north and south. The two highest
ranges, each about two miles high, enclose a basin-shaped plateau about
one mile high. This basin is commonly called the "plateau region." The
rim ranges are broken in a few places by passes that the
transcontinental railways thread. West of the Sierra Nevada ranges are
the fertile Pacific coast lowlands.
=The Plateau Region.=--This region is generally arid, but on the higher
plateaus there is sufficient rainfall to produce a considerable forestry
and grazing. The general conditions of rainfall and topography forbid
any great development of agriculture. Farming is confined to the
river-flood-plains, the parks, and the old lake beds and margins.
A considerable area, estimated at more than two million acres, may be
made productive by irrigation, and the United States Government is
undertaking the construction of an elaborate and extensive system of
reservoirs for the impounding of stream and storm waters now running to
waste. The irrigated lands of this region, when their products are
accessible to markets, are very valuable. The river-bottom lands of New
Mexico, and the old margins of Great Salt Lake in Utah are examples.
They produce abundantly, and a single acre often yields as much as four
or five acres in regions of plentiful rainfall.
Not much of the crop of this region, the fruit and wool excepted,
leaves the vicinity in which it is grown, on account of the expense of
transportation. In the matter of the transportation of their
commodities, the dwellers of the western highland are doubly
handicapped. The building of railways is enormously expensive, and in a
region of sparse population there is comparatively little local freight
to be hauled. The difficulties of developing such a region from a
commercial stand-point, therefore, are very great.
Mining is the chief industry of this section, and silver, gold, and
copper are its most important products. Since the discovery of precious
metals in the United States, this region has produced gold and silver
bullion to the value of about four billion dollars. This sum is about
one-half the value of the railways of the country,[55] and from 1865 to
1880 a large part of the capital invested in railway building represents
the gold and silver of these mines. In the last twenty years of the past
century they produced an average of about one hundred and twenty-five
million dollars per year, and this average is constantly increasing.
Coal-measures extend along the eastern escarpment of the Rocky
Mountains, and these are destined at no remote day to create a centre of
steel and other manufactures. Several of the railways operate coal-mines
in Colorado and Wyoming for the fuel required. A limited supply of steel
is also made, the industry being protected by the great distance from
the Eastern smelteries.
[Illustration: GOLD MINING--CRIPPLE CREEK, COLORADO]
_Denver_ is the chief active centre of finance of the mining industry
in the western highlands, although many of the great enterprises derive
the capital necessary to develop them from _New York_ and _San
Francisco_. _Leadville_, _Cripple Creek_, _Butte_, _Helena_, and
_Deadwood_ are regions of gold and silver production. _Virginia City_ is
the operating centre of the famous Comstock mines. At _Anaconda_ is the
chief copper-mine of this region. _Salt Lake City_ and _Ogden_ are the
centre of the Mormon agricultural enterprises. _Santa Fe_, _Las Vegas_,
and _Albuquerque_ are centres of agricultural interests and
stock-growing.
_Spokane_ and _Walla Walla_ are commercial centres of the plains of the
Columbia River. The former is the focal point of a network of local
roads that collect the wheat and other farm products of this region; the
latter is the collecting point for much of the freight sent by
steamboats down the Columbia River from _Wallula_. Railway
transportation has largely superseded river-navigation for all except
local freights, however. _Boise City_ is the financial centre of
considerable mining interests.
=The Pacific Coast Lowlands.=--Climatically this region differs from the
rest of the United States in having a rainy and a dry season--that is,
the rainfall is wholly seasonal. In the northern part the rainfall is
sixty inches or more, and rain may be expected daily from the middle of
October to May. In central California the precipitation is about half as
much, the rainy season beginning later and ending earlier. In southern
California there are occasional showers during the winter months,
aggregating ten or twenty inches.
The level valley-lands have no superior for wheat-farming, and in but
one or two places is the rainfall insufficient to insure a good crop. In
the San Joaquin and southern valleys of California the harvest begins in
May, in the Sacramento Valley in June, and in the Willamette and Sound
Valleys of Oregon and Washington in July. The wheat goes mainly to Great
Britain by way of Cape Horn. It cannot be safely shipped in bulk, and
the manufacture of jute grain-sacks has become an important industry in
consequence. The yearly wheat product of this region is not far from
eighty million bushels.
Fruit is a valuable product of the foot-hills of the Sierras, and in
southern California oranges, lemons, and grapes are now the staple crop.
In some cases the average yield per acre has reached a value of five
hundred dollars. Some of the largest vineyards in the world are in this
region. The Zinfandel claret wine and the raisins find a market as far
east as London, and considerable quantities are sold in China and Japan.
The navel orange, although not native to California, reaches its finest
development in that State. A large part of the fruit-crop of California
is handled at Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York. It is
transported in special cars attached to fast trains.
Wool is an important crop. In the northern part the sheep thrive best in
the foot-hills. The valley of Umpqua River, Ore., produces nearly
seventeen million pounds of wool yearly, the staple being an ordinary
variety. California produces nearly as much of the finest merino staple.
A considerable part is manufactured in the mills of the Pacific coast.
The Mission Mills blankets made in San Francisco are without an equal
elsewhere.
The discovery of gold by John Marshall in 1848 resulted in a tremendous
inflow of people to the gold-fields of California. It also was a factor
in the acquisition of the territory composing the Pacific coast States.
The first mining consisted merely in separating the metal deposited in
the bed-rock of streams by washing away the lighter material. In time
the quartz ledges which had produced the placer gold became the chief
factor in gold mining. California is still one of the leading States in
the production of gold. Quicksilver mining is an important feature of
the mining interests of the Pacific coast, and the mines of the coast
ranges produce about half the world's output.
Lumber manufacture is an important industry. Douglas spruce, commonly
known as "Oregon pine," grows profusely on the western slopes of the
high ranges, the belt extending nearly to the Mexican border. It makes a
most excellent building-lumber, especially for bridge-timber and
framework. Masts and spars of this material are used in almost every
maritime country. Sugar-pine is less common, but is abundant. It is
largely used for interior work. Several species of redwood occur in
central California, confined to a limited area. The wood is fine-grained
and makes a most beautiful interior finish.
_San Francisco_ is the metropolis of the Pacific coast of the United
States. It is the terminus of the Santa Fe and Union Pacific railways,
and the centre of a network of local roads. Steamship lines connect the
city with Panama, the Hawaiian Islands, Japan, and Australian ports;
coast steamships reach to the various ports of Alaska, Oregon, and
California. It is also the financial as well as the commercial centre of
the Pacific coast. _Los Angeles_ is the centre of the fruit-growing
region; its port is _San Pedro_. _Stockton_, _Port Costa_, and
_Sacramento_, all on navigable waters, are wheat-markets. _Portland_
(Ore.) is the metropolis of the basin of the Columbia and Willamette
Rivers. Navigation of the former is interrupted by falls or rapids at
_Dalles_ and _Cascades_, but boats ascend as far as _Wallula_. The lower
Willamette is also made navigable by means of a canal and locks at
Oregon Falls.
Puget Sound is a "drowned valley," with an abundance of deep water. The
score or more of harbors are among the best in the world. _Seattle_ and
_Tacoma_, the leading ports, are terminals of great transcontinental
railways, and also of the most important trade-route across the
continent. Lines of steamships connect Seattle with Japan and China, and
the commerce passing through this gateway is drawn from a territory
that extends more than half-way around the world. These ports are
destined to become the chief American ports in the Asian trade.
=Alaska.=--The most productive industry of the insular part of the
territory is the fisheries. For many years the Pribilof Islands produced
practically all the seal-pelts used in the manufacture of seal-fur
garments. So many seals were killed, however, that the species seemed
likely to become extinct, and seal-catching has been forbidden for a
term of years.
[Illustration: PUGET SOUND]
The discovery of gold along the Klondike River and in the beach-sands of
Cape Nome was followed by the development of surface mines that produced
a large amount of gold. For the better transportation of products, a
railway has been completed from _Skagway_ across White Pass to _White
Horse_, the head of navigation of the Yukon. About twenty steamboats are
engaged in the commerce of the river. _Skagway_ and _Dyea_ are
collecting points for the commerce of the Klondike mines. _Juneau_ has
probably the largest quartz-mill in the world.
=Porto Rico.=--Porto Rico, formerly a Spanish colony, is now a possession
of the United States. The island is about the size of Connecticut and
has a population somewhat greater. The industries are almost wholly
agricultural, and nearly the whole surface is under cultivation. Sugar,
coffee, and tobacco are grown for export, and these constitute the chief
source of income. The coffee-crop, about sixty million pounds yearly, is
the most valuable product and commands a high price on account of its
superior quality. It is sold very largely to European coffee-merchants,
and is marketed as a "Mocha." Exports of fruit to the United States are
increasing. In 1900 the exports to United States markets, mainly sugar
and cattle products, were about six million dollars. The imports from
the United States were chiefly of cotton-prints and rice, to the amount
of nearly nine million dollars. The total export and import trade that
year was about twenty million dollars.
The facilities for the transportation of products are not good. The
railway lines have a total mileage of about one hundred and fifty miles.
An excellent wagon-road, built by the Spanish Government from San Juan
to Ponce, has been supplemented by several hundred miles of roads built
under the direction of the military authorities. _San Juan_ and _Ponce_
are the leading seaports and centres of trade.
=Hawaiian Islands.=--These islands were discovered by a Spanish sailor,
Gaetano, in 1549, and again visited by Captain Cook in 1778. Up to 1893
they formed a native kingdom. In 1893 foreign influence was sufficient
to overthrow the native government, and in 1898 they were formally
annexed to the United States and about the same time organized as a
territory. From an early date the geographic position of the islands has
made them a convenient mid-ocean post-station, and they have therefore
become a most important commercial centre.
[Illustration: HYDRAULIC GOLD MINING--CALIFORNIA]
Of the various islands composing the group, Hawaii, Maui, Oahu, Kaui,
Molokai, Lanai, and Niihau are inhabited. About one-fifth of the
population consists of native Hawaiians; a little more than one-fifth is
white; the remainder is composed of Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans.
The native population is decreasing. About ninety-five per cent. of the
property is owned by the white people--Americans, English, and Germans.
The volcanic soils are the very best sugar-lands, and a large amount of
capital is invested in this industry. The sugar-plantations employ more
than forty thousand laborers, all Japanese, Chinese, and Porto Ricans.
The value of the sugar export is nearly twenty-five million dollars
yearly; that of fruit, rice, and hides is about two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Coffee is rapidly becoming a leading product. The bulk
of the imports comes from the United States, and consists of clothing,
cotton textiles, lumber, and machinery.
_Honolulu_, on the island of Oahu, is the capital and commercial centre,
and foreign steamships and sailing-craft are scarcely ever absent from
its harbor. Regular steamship service connects this port with San
Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, B.C., and the principal ports of China
and Japan. It is connected with the other islands by a system of
wireless telegraphy. The city has the best of schools, business
organizations, hotels, and streets.
_Pearl Harbor_ contains a large area of water, most of which is deep
enough for the largest vessels afloat. It is intended to deepen the
entrance and establish a United States naval station at this place. The
village of _Hilo_ is the chief port of the island of Hawaii.
=The Philippine Islands= are an archipelago of about two thousand islands,
the two largest of which, Luzon and Mindanao, are each nearly the size
of New York State. Luzon is by far the most important.
After their cession to the United States (December 10, 1898), they were
held under military control, but this has given place to local
self-government as rapidly as the circumstances permitted. A general
school system has been established and is extended wherever practicable.
In a considerable number of the islands civil organization is still
impossible.
The following are the principal islands and their mineral resources:
----------------+----------------------+---------------------
NAME |CHIEF CITIES AND PORTS|MINERAL RESOURCES
----------------+----------------------+---------------------
Luzon |Manila, Lipa, Batangas|Coal, gold, copper
Mindanao |Zamboanga |Coal, gold, copper
Samar |Catbalogan |Coal, gold
Negros |Bacolor |Coal
Panay |Iloilo |Coal, gold, petroleum
Leyte |Tacloban |Coal, petroleum
Mindoro |Calapan |Coal, gold
Cebu |Cebu |Coal, petroleum, gold
----------------+----------------------+----------------------
The native population is mainly of the Malay race, but there are also
many Negritos. Of the native element the Tagals are the most advanced,
and are the dominant people. The foreign population includes nearly one
hundred thousand Chinese, who are the chief commercial factors of the
islands, and the leading industries are controlled by them. There is a
considerable population of Chinese and Tagal mixed blood, commonly known
as "Chinese mestizos"; they inherit, in the main, the Chinese
characteristics. The European and American population consists mainly of
officials, troops, and merchant-agents for Philippine products.
The principal products for export are "Manila" hemp, sugar, and tobacco.
The hemp is used in the manufacture of cordage and paper. On account of
the great strength of the fibre it has no equal among cordage fibres.
The imports from the United States consist mainly of machinery and
cotton textiles. The total trade of the islands amounted in 1901 to
about fifty million dollars, most of which was shared by Great Britain
and the United States.
Coal is mined in the island of Cebu and is abundant in most of the
islands. Iron ore, copper, and sulphur occur, but they have not been
made commercially available to any extent. Gold is mined in the island
of Luzon. A stable government only is needed to make these great
resources productive. An abundance of timber is found in most of the
islands. Cedar, ebony, and sapan-wood are available for ornamental
purposes; there is also a great variety of economic woods.
_Manila_ is the commercial centre. Manila Bay is one of the finest
harbors in the Pacific Ocean, but much work is necessary to give the
water-front a navigable depth for large steamships. With an improved
harbor the city is bound to be a great emporium of Oriental trade.
Steamship lines connect the city with Hongkong, Australia, Japan,
Singapore, and Liverpool. There is also a military transport service to
Seattle. A railway to Dagupan extends through the most important
agricultural region. The wagon-roads throughout the island are very
poor.
_Lipa_, _Batanzas_, _Bauan_, and _Cavite_ are cities of about forty
thousand population, all more or less connected with the industries of
Manila. _Iloilo_ is the second port of importance of the islands, and is
the centre of a considerable export trade in tobacco, hemp, sugar, and
sapan-wood. _Cebu_ is also a port having a considerable trade.
=Tutuila=, one of the Samoan Islands, was acquired by treaty for use as a
coal-depot and naval station. _Pago Pago_ is a port of call for
steamships between San Francisco and Australia. =Guam=, one of the Ladrone
Islands, is a naval station. These possessions are strategic and are
designed to secure the interests of the United States in the Pacific. An
ocean telegraphic cable connects the Pacific Ocean possessions with the
United States and Asia.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why are mountain-regions apt to be sparsely peopled?
Why are arid regions sparsely peopled, as a rule?
Why are not gold-mining settlements so apt to be permanent as
agricultural settlements?
From the Abstract of Statistics find the production of gold and silver
of this region for each ten years ending the last half of the century.
What causes the difference between the wool clip of southern California
and that of the Eastern States?
Follow the route of a grain-carrying ship from San Francisco to
Liverpool.
What are the advantages to the United States of the accession of the
Hawaiian Islands?--of the Philippine Islands?--of Alaska? What are the
disadvantages?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Mineral Resources of the United States.
Abstract of Statistics.
U.S. Coast Survey Chart of Alaska.
Map of Hawaiian Islands.
Map of Philippine Islands.
[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (EXTERIOR)]
[Illustration: NIAGARA POWER-HOUSE (INTERIOR)]
CHAPTER XXI
CANADA AND NEWFOUNDLAND
A very large part of Canada is so far north that the ordinary
food-stuffs cannot be grown there; the river-valleys of British Columbia
and the basin of the Saskatchewan excepted, there are but few marks of
human industry beyond the fiftieth parallel. The general conditions of
topography resemble those of the United States--a central plain between
the high Rocky Mountain ranges in the west and the lower Laurentian
ranges in the east.
Canada is an agricultural country, and because of the great skill with
which its resources have been made commercially available, it is the
most important colony of Great Britain. The basin of the Great Lakes and
the St. Lawrence River is the most populous part of the country. This
region is highly cultivated and produces dairy products, beef, and the
ordinary farm-crops.
From Lake Winnipeg westward, nearly to the Rocky Mountains, the land is
a succession of prairies admirably suited to wheat-growing.[56] The
wheat is a hard, spring variety, and the average yield per acre is about
one-fourth greater than the average yield in the United States.
The area of forestry includes the larger remaining part of the great
pine belt, together with a very heavy reserve of merchantable
oak-timber. The part of the forest area in Canada aggregates one and
one-quarter million square miles, and yields an annual product of about
eighty million dollars; about one-third of the lumber is exported.
The northerly region of Canada produces furs and pelts. As long ago as
1670, Charles II. granted to Prince Rupert and a stock company the lands
comprising a very large part of Canada around Hudson Bay, and secured to
them the sole right to trap the fur-bearing animals of the region. In
time the company, known as the Hudson Bay Company, transferred all its
lands to Canada, and out of the domain thus annexed various provinces
and unorganized districts have been created.
The company now exists as a corporation for the merchandise of furs. For
the greater part, Indians are employed as hunters and trappers, and the
pelts are collected at the various trading-posts, known as "houses" and
"factories," to be sent to the head-quarters of the company near
Winnipeg. Nearly every Arctic animal furnishes a merchantable pelt. The
cheaper skins are made into garments in Canada and the United States;
those commonly classed as furs are sold in London. Several other fur
companies are also operating in Canada.
The fisheries of the coast-waters and the Great Lakes are among the most
productive in the world. Everything within the three-mile limit of the
shore is reserved for Canadian fishermen. The smaller bays and coves are
reserved also within the three-mile limit. Beyond this limit the waters
are open to all, and a fleet of swift gun-boats is necessary to prevent
illicit fishing. Salmon, cod, lobsters, and herring form most of the
catch, amounting in value to upward of twenty million dollars yearly.
The output of minerals varies from year to year; since 1900 it has
averaged about sixty million dollars a year. The gold product
constitutes nearly one-half and the coal about one-sixth of the total
amount. Nickel, petroleum, silver, and lead form the rest of the output.
Iron ore is abundant, but it is not at present available for production
on account of the distance from transportation.
Commerce is facilitated by about eighteen thousand miles of railway and
nearly three thousand miles of canal and improved river-navigation. One
ocean-to-ocean railway, the Canadian Pacific, is in operation; another,
an extension of the Grand Trunk, is under way. The rapids and shoals of
the St. Lawrence and Richelieu Rivers are surmounted by canals and
locks. Welland Canal connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, and the
Canadian lock at St. Mary's Falls joins Lake Superior to Lake Huron. By
means of the lakes and canals vessels drawing fourteen feet may load at
Canadian ports and discharge at Liverpool.
The harbors of the Atlantic coast have two great drawbacks--ice and high
tides. Some of the steamship lines make Portland, Me., their winter
terminus. The Pacific coast harbors are not obstructed by ice. An
attempt has been made in the direction of using Hudson Bay and Strait as
a grain-route, but the difficulties of navigation are very great and the
route is open only two months of the year.
Practically all the foreign trade is carried on with Great Britain and
the United States. The trade with each aggregates about one hundred and
fifty million dollars yearly. The exports are lumber and wood-pulp,
cheese and dairy products, wheat and flour, beef-cattle, hog products,
fish, and gold-quartz. The chief imports are steel, wool, sugar, and
cotton manufactures.
Politically, Canada consists of a number of provinces, each with the
usual corps of elective officers. A governor-general appointed by the
Crown of Great Britain is the chief executive officer.
=Nova Scotia.=--This province is prominent on account of its coal and
iron, and also because of its geographic position. The iron and coal are
utilized in steel smelteries and rolling-mills, glass-factories,
sugar-refineries, and textile-mills. It is one of the few localities in
the eastern part of the continent yielding gold. _Halifax_, the capital,
has one of the best harbors of the Atlantic coast of North America; it
is not often obstructed by ice, and is the chief winter port. Halifax is
the principal British naval station of North America, and this fact adds
much to its commercial activity.
=Prince Edward Island.=--The industries of this province are mainly
connected with the coast-fisheries. During the summer the island is
visited by thousands of fishing-vessels for the purpose of preparing the
catch for market. Fertilizer manufactured from the refuse is an
incidental product. _Charlottetown_ is the capital.
=New Brunswick.=--Fisheries and forest products are both resources of this
province. Coal is mined at _Grand Lake_, and an excellent lime for
export to the United States is made at _St. John_. Lumber, wood-pulp,
wooden sailing-vessels, cotton textiles, and structural steel for
ship-building are manufactured. A ship railway, seventeen miles long,
across the isthmus that connects this province to Nova Scotia, is under
construction. _St. John_, the capital, is the chief seat of trade.
=Quebec.=--This province was once a possession of France, and in the
greater part of it French customs are yet about as prevalent as they
were a century ago; moreover, the French population is increasing
rapidly. The English-speaking population lives mainly along the Vermont
border. As a rule the English are the manufacturers and traders; the
French people are the farmers.
_Montreal_ is the head of navigation of the St. Lawrence for ocean
steamships. It is also the chief centre of manufactures. These are
mainly sugar, rubber goods, textiles, light steel wares, and leather.
The last-named goes almost wholly to Great Britain; the rest are
consumed in Canada and the border American States. _Quebec_ is the most
strongly fortified city of the Dominion.
=Ontario.=--This province is a peninsula bordered by Lakes Huron, Erie,
and Ontario. Farming is the chief employment, and barley is an important
product. Most of it is used in the manufacture of malt, and "Canada
malt" is regarded as the best. Several of the trunk railways whose
terminals are in the United States traverse this peninsula. _Toronto_,
the capital and commercial centre, is one of the most rapidly growing
cities of North America. _Hamilton_ owes its existence to its harbor and
position at the head of Lake Ontario. _Ottawa_ is the capital of the
Dominion. At _Sudbury_ are the nickel-mines that are among the most
productive in the world.
=Manitoba=, =Saskatchewan=, and =Alberta=.--These provinces include the
level prairie lands of the Saskatchewan and the Red River of the North.
They comprise the great grain-field of Canada. A considerable part of
the wheat-growing lands are yet unproductive owing to the lack of
railways. Much of the product is carried to market by the Canadian
Pacific and its feeders, but a considerable part finds its way to the
Northern Pacific and Great Northern roads. The coal of Manitoba and
Alberta is an important fuel supply not only to the provinces and states
surrounding, but to the railways above named. A good quality of
anthracite coal is also mined in Alberta. _Winnipeg_, the metropolis of
the region, is one of the great railway centres of Canada.
=British Columbia.=--British Columbia, the Pacific coast province, has
several resources of great value. The gold mines led to its settlement
and commercial opening. The salmon-fisheries are surpassed by those of
the United States only. The beds of lignite coal have produced a very
large part of the coal used in the Pacific coast States. The forests
produce lumber for shipment both to the Atlantic coast of America and
the Pacific coast of Asia.
_Vancouver_, the terminus of the Canadian Pacific Railway, is connected
with various Asian ports by fast steamships. _Nanaimo_, _Wellington_,
and _Commox_ are the centres of the coal-mining industry. The
copper-mines at _Rossland_ produce most of the copper mined in Canada.
=Newfoundland.=--Although a Crown possession, Newfoundland is not a member
of the Dominion of Canada. The extensive fisheries are its chief
resource. The Labrador coast, which is used as a resort for curing and
preserving the catch, is attached to Newfoundland for the purpose of
government. _St. Johns_ is the capital.
The islands of Miquelon and St. Pierre, south of Newfoundland, are a
French possession. Fishing is the ostensible industry, but a great deal
of smuggling is carried on.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What, if any, climatic or topographic boundaries separate Canada and the
United States?
Which of the two countries is the more fortunately situated for the
production of food-stuffs?
Which will support the larger population?--why?
The harbors of the Labrador coast and of Cape Breton Island are superior
to those of the British Islands, situated in about the same latitude;
why do the latter have a commerce far greater than that of the former?
Compare the industries of the eastern, middle, and western regions of
Canada with the corresponding regions of the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Statesman's Year-Book.
Statistical Year-Book of Canada (official government publication,
Ottawa).
CHAPTER XXII
MEXICO--CENTRAL AMERICA--WEST INDIES
Mexico and the Central American states occupy the narrow, southerly part
of North America. Structurally they consist of a plateau about a mile
high, bordered on each side by a low coast-plain. The table-land, or
_tierra templada_, has about the same climate as southern California;
the low coast-plains, or _tierra caliente_, are tropical.
=Mexico.=--The United States of Mexico is the most important part of this
group. The people are of mixed Spanish and Indian blood, but there are
many families of pure Castilian descent. The latter, in general, are the
landed proprietors; the former constitute the tradesmen, herders, and
peons. There is also a large unproductive class, mainly of Indians, who
are living in a savage state. In general the manners and customs are
those of Spain.
The agricultural pursuits are in a backward condition, partly for the
want of good system and an educated people, but mainly for lack of the
capital and engineering skill to construct the irrigating canals that
are needed to make the land productive. Maize, rice, sugar (cane and
panocha), and wheat are grown for home consumption.
The agricultural products which connect Mexico with the rest of the
world are sisal-hemp (henequin), coffee, logwood, and fruit. Sisal-hemp
is grown in the state of Yucatan, and has become one of its chief
financial resources. Oaxaca coffee is usually sold as a "Mocha" berry.
The logwood goes mainly to British textile makers; and the fruit,
chiefly oranges and bananas, finds a market in the large cities of the
United States, to which large consignments of vanilla and tropical woods
are also sent. Cattle are grown on more than twenty thousand ranches,
and the greater part are sent alive to the markets of the United States.
The native long-horn stock is giving place to improved breeds.
[Illustration: MEXICO]
Gold and silver are the products that have made Mexico famous, and the
mines have produced a total of more than three billion dollars' worth of
precious metal. The native methods of mining have always been primitive,
and low-grade ores have been neglected. In recent years American and
European capital has been invested in low-grade mines, and the bullion
production has been about doubled in value; it is now about one hundred
million dollars yearly. Iron ore is abundant, and good coal exists.
The manufactures, at present of little importance, are growing rapidly.
The cotton-mills consume the home product and fill their deficiency from
the Texas crop. All the finer textiles, however, are imported. Most of
the commodities are supplied by the United States, Great Britain, and
Germany, the first-named having about half the trade. Most of the
hardware and machinery is purchased in the United States.
Railway systems, with American terminal points at El Paso, San Antonio,
and New Orleans, extend from the most productive parts of the country.
One of the most important railways crosses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,
and, in order to encourage commerce, the harbors at Coatzacoalcos and
Salina Cruz have been deepened and improved. This interoceanic route is
destined to become a very important factor in commerce. It shortens the
route between European ports and San Francisco by six thousand miles,
and between New York and San Francisco by twelve hundred miles.[57]
_Mexico_, the capital, is the financial and commercial centre. _Vera
Cruz_ and _Tampico_ are connected with the capital by railway, but both
have very poor port facilities. Steamship lines connect the former with
New York, New Orleans, Havana, and French ports. It is the chief port of
the country. _Matamoros_ on the American frontier has a considerable
cattle-trade. The crop of sisal-hemp is shipped mainly from _Progresso_
and _Merida_. _Acapulco_, _Manzanillo_, and _Mazatlan_ for want of
railway connections have but little trade. The first-named is one of the
best harbors in the world. _Guadalajara_ has important textile and
pottery manufactures.
=The Central American States.=--The physical features and climate of
these states resemble those of Mexico. The Spanish-speaking people live
in the table-lands, where the climate is healthful. The coast-plain of
the Atlantic is forest-covered and practically uninhabited save by
Indians. Guatemala is the most important state. A railway from _Puerto
Barrios_, its Atlantic port, through its capital, _Guatemala_, to its
Pacific port, _San Jose_, is nearly completed. British Honduras is a
British territory acquired mainly for the mahogany product, which is
shipped from _Belize_. Honduras has great resources in mines, cultivable
lands, and forests, but these are undeveloped. Salvador is the smallest
but most progressive state.
[Illustration: ROUTE OF PROPOSED NICARAGUA CANAL.]
Nicaragua is politically of importance on account of the possibilities
of an interoceanic canal. A treaty for this canal, involving both
Nicaragua and Great Britain, has already been signed by the powers
interested. Many engineers regard the Nicaragua as preferable to that of
the Panama canal. The shorter distance between New York and the Pacific
ports of the United States, a saving of about four hundred miles, is in
its favor. The longer distance of transit and the dangers of navigating
Lake Nicaragua are against it. Costa Rica is favorably situated for
commerce, but its resources are not developed. A railway from _Puerto
Limon_ is nearly completed to _Puenta Arenas_, an excellent harbor on
the Pacific side.
Coffee, hides, mahogany, and fruit are the only products of importance
that connect these states with the rest of the world. About half the
trade goes to the United States. The Germans and English supply a
considerable part of the textiles and manufactured articles. The coffee
of Costa Rica is a very superior product. Much of the mahogany and
forest products goes to Great Britain. Fruit-steamers call at the
Atlantic ports for bananas, which are sold in New Orleans and the
Atlantic cities.
=The West Indies.=--The climate and productions of these islands are
tropical in character. Sugar, fruit, coffee, tobacco, and cacao are the
leading products. From the stand-point of the planter, the sugar
industry has been a history of misfortunes. The abolition of slavery
ruined the industry in many of the islands belonging to Great Britain.
The competition of the beet-sugar made in Europe drove the Cubans into
insurrection on account of the excessive taxes levied by the Spaniards,
and ended in the Spanish-American War.
The fruit-crop--mainly pineapples, oranges, and grapefruit--is shipped
to the United States. New York, Philadelphia, and the Gulf ports are the
destination of the greater part of it.
Cuba, the largest island, is one of the most productive regions of the
world. The famous "Havana" tobacco grows mainly in the western part,
although practically all Cuban tobacco is classed under this name.
According to popular opinion it is pre-eminently the best in flavor,
and the price is not affected by that of other tobaccos.[58] About
two-thirds of the raw leaf and cigars are purchased by the tobacco
manufacturers of the United States. _Havana_, _Santiago_, and
_Cienfuegos_ are the shipping-ports; most of the export is landed at New
York, Key West, and Tampa.
From 1900 to 1903 the small fraction of the sugar industry that survived
the war and the insurrection was crippled by the high tariff on sugar
imported into the United States. The latter, which was designed to
protect the home sugar industry, was so high that the Cubans could not
afford to make sugar at the ruling prices in New York. Hides, honey, and
Spanish cedar for cigar-boxes are also important exports.
The United States is the chief customer of Cuba, and in turn supplies
the Cubans with flour, textile goods, hardware, and coal-oil. Smoked
meat from Latin America and preserved fish from Canada and Newfoundland
are the remaining imports. There are no manufactures of importance. The
railways are mainly for the purpose of handling the sugar-crop.
_Havana_, the capital and financial centre, is connected with New York,
New Orleans, and Key West by steamship lines. _Santiago_, _Matanzas_,
and _Cienfuegos_ are ports having a considerable trade.
The British possessions in the West Indies are commercially the most
important of the European possessions. The Bahamas are low-lying coral
islands, producing but little except sponges, fruit, and sisal-hemp.
_Nassau_, the only town of importance, is a winter resort. Fruit, sugar,
rum, coffee, and ginger are exported from _Kingston_, the port of
Jamaica. _St. Lucia_ has probably the strongest fortress in the
Caribbean Sea.
Barbados produces more sugar than any other British possession in the
West Indies. The raw sugar, muscovado, is shipped to the United States.
Bermuda, an outlying island, furnishes the Atlantic states with onions,
Easter lilies, and early potatoes. From Trinidad is obtained the
asphaltum, or natural tar, that is used for street paving. Brea Lake,
the source of the mineral, is leased to a New York company. Sugar and
cacao are also exported from Port of Spain. The products of St. Vincent
and Dominica are similar to those of the other islands.
The French own Martinique (_Fort de France_) and Guadeloupe (_Basse
Terre_). St. Thomas (_Charlotte Amalie_), St. Croix, and St. John are
Danish possessions. Various attempts to transfer the Danish islands to
the United States have failed. They are admirably adapted for naval
stations. The island of Haiti consists of two negro republics, Haiti and
San Domingo. The only important product is coffee. Most of the product
is shipped to the United States, which supplies coal oil and textiles in
return.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What part of the United States was formerly a possession of Mexico, and
how did it become a possession of the United States?
From a cyclopedia learn the character of the political organization of
Mexico and the Central American states.
From the report listed below find what commercial routes gain, and what
ones lose in distance by the Nicaragua, as compared with the Panama
canal.
From a good atlas make a list of the islands of the West Indies; name
the country to which each belongs, and its exports to the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
The Statesman's Year-Book.
Great Canals of the World--pp. 4058-4059.
[Illustration: SOUTH AMERICA]
CHAPTER XXIII
SOUTH AMERICA--THE ANDEAN STATES
In its general surface features South America resembles North
America--that is, a central plain is bordered by low ranges on the east
and by a high mountain system on the west. In the southern part,
midsummer is in January and midwinter in July. The mineral-producing
states are traversed by the ranges of the Andes and all of them except
Chile are situated on both slopes of the mountains.
=Colombia.=--This republic borders both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific
Ocean. One port excepted, however, most of its commerce is confined to
the shores of the Caribbean Sea. The lowlands east of the Andes are
admirably adapted for grazing, and such cattle products as hides, horns,
and tallow are articles of export. This region, however, even with the
present facilities for transportation, produces only a small fraction of
the products possible.
The intermontane valleys between the Andean ranges have the climate of
the temperate zone; wheat and sheep are produced. The chief industrial
development, however, is confined to the lands near the Caribbean coast.
Coffee, cacao, and tobacco are grown for export, the business of
cultivation being largely controlled by Americans and Europeans. Rubber,
copaiba, tolu, and vegetable ivory[59] are gathered by Indians from the
forests.
[Illustration: A PASS IN THE ANDES]
The montane region has long been famous for its mines of gold and
silver. The salt mines near Bogota are a government monopoly and yield a
considerable revenue. Near the same city are the famous Muzo emerald
mines.
The rivers are the chief channels of internal trade. During the rainy
season steamboats ascend the Orinoco to Cabugaro, about two hundred
miles from Bogota. About fifty steamboats are in commission on the
Magdalena and its tributary, the Cauca. Mule trains traversing wretched
trails require from one to two weeks to transport the goods from the
river landings to the chief centres of population. Improvements now
under way in clearing and canalizing these rivers will add about five
hundred miles of additional water-way. The railways consist of short
lines mainly used as portages around obstructions of the rivers.
An unstable government and an onerous system of export taxes hamper
trade. Coffee, a leading product, goes mainly to Europe. Cattle
products, and balsam of tolu are purchased mainly in the United States.
Great Britain purchases the gold and silver ores. The chief
imports--textiles, flour, and petroleum--are purchased in the United
States. _Bogota_ and _Medellin_ are the largest cities. The isolation of
the region in which they are situated shapes the indifferent foreign
policy of the government. _Barranquilla_, _Sabanilla_, and _Cartagena_
are the chief ports.
=Panama.=--This state, formerly a part of Colombia, includes the isthmus
of Panama. Geographically it belongs to North America, and practically
it can be approached from Colombia by water only. The secession of
Panama was brought about by the complications of the isthmian canal. A
treaty with the United States gives the latter sovereign control over
the canal and the strip of land ten miles wide bordering it. _Panama_
and _Colon_ are the two ports of the canal. The United States exercises
police and sanitary regulations in these cities, but it has no
sovereignty over them.
=Peru.=--Peru has great resources, both agricultural and mineral. Cotton
is one of the chief products. The ordinary fibre is excelled only by the
sea-island cotton of the United States; the long-staple fibre of the
Piura is the best grown. The former is generally employed for mixing
with wool in the manufacture of underwear, and is sold in the United
States and Europe; the latter, used in the manufacture of thread and the
web of pneumatic tires, goes mainly to Great Britain.
Cane-sugar is a very large export crop, Great Britain, the United
States, and Chile being the principal customers. The area of coffee
production is growing rapidly. Coca-growing has become an important
industry, and the plantations aggregate about three million trees;[60] a
large part of the product is sent to the chemical laboratories of the
United States. A small crop of rice for export is grown on the coast.
The Amazon forest products yield a considerable revenue. Rubber and
vegetable ivory are the most valuable. Cinchona, or Peruvian bark,
however, is the one for which the state is best known; and there is
probably not a drug-shop in the civilized world that does not carry it
in stock.[61]
Cattle are grown for their hides, and of these the United States is the
chief purchaser. The wool of the llama, alpaca, and vicuna is used in
manufacture of the cloth known as alpaca, and the value of the shipments
to Great Britain usually exceeds one million dollars a year. In the
mining regions the llama is used as a pack-animal, and a large part of
the mine products reach the markets by this means of transportation. The
mines yield silver and copper; in the main the ores are exported to
Great Britain to be smelted.
The products already named are the chief exports; the imports are cotton
textiles, machinery, steel wares, and coal-oil. Great Britain has about
one-half the foreign trade; the United States controls about one-fourth.
_Callao_, the port of _Lima_, is the market through which most of the
foreign trade is carried on. Steamship lines connect it with San
Francisco and with British ports. _Mollendo_ is the outlet of Bolivian
trade. The railways are short lines extending from the coast.
=Ecuador.=--This state has but little commercial importance. The only
cultivated products for export are cacao, coffee, and sugar. The
first-named constitutes three-fourths of the exports, and most of it
goes to France. The land is held in large estates, and most of the
laboring people are in a condition of practical slavery. The
bread-stuffs consumed by the foreign population and the land proprietors
are imported. Animals are grown for their hides and these are sold to
the United States.
Another manufacture that connects Ecuador with the rest of the world is
the so-called "Panama" hat. The material used is toquilla straw, the
mid-rib of the screw-pine (_Carlodovica palmata_). The prepared straw
can be plaited only when the atmosphere is very moist, and much of the
work is done at night. The hats are made by Indians, who are governed
by their own ideas regarding style and shape. They bring from
twenty-five to fifty dollars apiece in the American markets, where
nearly all the product is sold.[62]
Mule-paths are the only means of inland communication. There is a
considerable local traffic on the estuaries of the rivers, but this is
confined to the rainy seasons. A railway built by an American company is
in operation from _Guayaquil_, a short distance inland. This city is the
chief market for foreign goods, and it is the only foreign port of the
Pacific coast of South America in which the volume of trade of the
United States approximates that of Germany and Great Britain.
=Bolivia.=--Bolivia lost much of its possible commercial possible future
when, after a disastrous war, its Pacific coast frontage became a
possession of Chile. The agricultural lands are unfortunately situated
with reference to the mining population; as a result, a considerable
amount of food-stuffs must be imported from Argentina. Coffee, cacao,
and coca are the principal cultivated products. Rubber from the Amazon
forest is the most valuable vegetable product, but a considerable amount
of cinchona bark and ivory nuts are also exported.
The mines, however, are the chief wealth of the state and give it the
only excuse for its political existence. They produce silver, tin,
copper, gold, and borate of lime. Inasmuch as a large part of the ore
and ore products must be transported by llamas and mules, only the
richest mines can be profitably worked. With adequate means of
transportation, the mines should make Bolivia one of the most powerful
South American states.
Railways already connect _Oruro_ with the sea-coast. A railway now
under construction will connect _La Paz_ (the pass) with the Pacific
coast, and also Buenos Aires. Excellent roads to take the place of the
pack-trains are under construction.
Practically all the imports, consisting of cotton and woollen textiles,
machinery, and steel wares, are purchased in Great Britain. The exports
are more than double the imports. Most of the goods pass through the
Chilean port Antofagasto, or Mollendo, Peru. _La Paz_, _Oruro_, and
_Sucre_ are the chief cities.
The hypothetical state of Acre is situated in the angle where Bolivia,
Peru, and Brazil join. The rubber forests, together with the absence of
legal government, led to its existence. The government is wholly
insurrectionary, but it at least uses its powers to encourage the rubber
trade.
=Chile.=--This state comprises the narrow western slope of the Andes,
extending from the tropic of Capricorn to Cape Horn, a distance of about
three thousand miles. The resources of the state have been so skilfully
handled, that with the drawback of a very small proportion of cultivable
land, Chile is the foremost Andean state.
The cultivation of the ordinary crops is confined to the flood-plains of
the short rivers. These, as a rule, are from twenty to fifty miles long
and a mile or two in width. They are densely peopled and cultivated to
the limit. Between the river-valleys are long stretches of unproductive
land.
Within the valleys wheat, barley, fruit, and various food-stuffs are
grown. Of these there are not only enough for home consumption, but
considerable quantities are exported to Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Much
of the cultivable land requires to be watered, and the system of
irrigation has been developed with extraordinary skill. The grazing
lands are extensive. In the northern part an excellent quality of merino
wool is produced; the greater part of the clip, however, is an ordinary
fibre. The cattle furnish a considerable amount of leather for export.
The conditions which have made the northern part a desert have also
given to the state its greatest resource--nitre.[63] The nitrate occurs
in the northern desert region. The crude salt is crushed and partly
refined at the mines, and carried by rail to the nearest port. The
working of the nitrate beds is largely carried on by foreign companies.
Nearly all the product is used as a fertilizer in Germany, France, and
Great Britain. Nitrate constitutes about two-thirds of the exports.
Iodine and bromine are also obtained from the nitrates, and the Chilean
product yields nearly all the world's supply.
Copper is extensively mined and, next to the nitrates, is the most
valuable product. Great Britain is the customer for the greater part.
Coal occurs in the southern part of the state, and is mined for export
to the various states of the Pacific coast. It is not a good coal for
iron smelting, however, and about three times as much is imported as is
exported. A considerable part of the imported coal comes from Australia,
and with it structural steel is made from pig-iron that is also
imported.
Chile is well equipped with railways, a part of which has been built and
are operated by the state. The most important line traverses the valley
between the Andes and the coast ranges, from Concepcion to Valparaiso.
In this region are most of the manufacturing enterprises.
The imports are chiefly coal, machinery, textile goods, and sugar. The
British control about two-thirds of the foreign trade; the Germans and
the French have most of the remainder. The United States supplies the
Chileans with a part of the textiles, a considerable quantity of Oregon
pine, and practically all the coal-oil used.
[Illustration: VALPARASIO]
_Valparaiso_ is the chief business centre of the Pacific coast of South
America. Most of the forwarding business is carried on by British and
German merchants. The transandine railway, now about completed, will
make it one of the most important ports of the world. _Santiago_ is the
capital. _Concepcion_ and _Talca_ are important centres of trade.
_Chillan_ is the principal cattle-market of the Pacific coast of South
America. _Copiapo_ is the focal point of the mining interests. _Iquique_
is the port from which about all the nitrates are shipped. _Punta
Arenas_, one of the "end towns" of the world, is an ocean post-office
for vessels passing through the Straits of Magellan. It is about as far
south as Calgary, B.C., is north.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What will be the probable effect of an interoceanic canal on the
commerce of these states?
From the Abstract of Statistics make a list of the exports from the
United States to these countries.
From the statistics of trade in the Statesman's Year-Book compare the
trade of the United States with that of other countries in these states.
How have race characteristics affected the commerce and development of
these states?
What is meant by peonage?
What cities of the tropical part of these states are in the climate of
the temperate zone?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Carpenter's South America.
Vincent's Around and About South America.
Fiske's Discovery of America--Chapters IX-X.
Procure, if possible, specimens of the following: Cacao and its
products, ivory nuts, cinchona bark, crude nitrate, Panama straw, iodine
(in a sealed vial), llama wool, alpaca cloth, Peruvian cotton.
CHAPTER XXIV
SOUTH AMERICA--THE LOWLAND STATES
The eastern countries of South America are mainly lowland plains. The
llanos of the Orinoco and the pampas of Plate (La Plata) River are
grazing lands. The silvas of the Amazon are forest-covered. In tropical
regions the coast-plain is usually very unhealthful; the seaports
excepted, most of the cities and towns are therefore built on higher
land beyond the coast-plain.
=Venezuela.=--The greater part of Venezuela is a region of llanos, or
grassy plains, shut off from the harbors of the Caribbean Sea, by
mountain-ranges. On account of their pleasant climate the
mountain-valleys constitute the chief region of habitation. The plains
are flooded in the rainy season and sun-scorched during the period of
drought; they are therefore unfit for human habitation.
Coffee is cultivated in the montane region; and cacao in the lower coast
lands. Almost every part of the coast lowlands is fit for sugar
cultivation, and in order to encourage this industry, the importation of
sugar is forbidden. As is usual in similar cases, the domestic sugar is
poor in quality and high in price. Among the forest products rubber,
fustic, divi-divi,[64] and tonka beans, the last used as a perfume, are
the only ones of value. The cattle of the llanos, the native long-horns,
furnish a poor quality of hide, and poorer beef. A few thousand head are
shipped yearly down the Orinoco to be sent to Cuba and Porto Rico.
The placer gold-mines of the Yuruari country, a region also claimed by
Great Britain, have been very productive. Coal, iron ore, and asphaltum
are abundant. Concessions for mining the two last-named have been
granted to American companies. The pearl-fisheries around Margarita
Island, also leased to a foreign company, have become productive under
the new management.
The means of intercommunication are as primitive as those of Colombia.
Short railways extend from several seaports to the regions of
production, and from these coffee and cacao are the only exports of
importance. The Orinoco River is the natural outlet for the
cattle-region, but the commerce of this region is small. The lagoon of
Maracaibo is becoming the centre of a rapidly growing commercial region.
_Caracas_, the capital and largest city, receives the imports of
textiles, domestic wares, flour, and petroleum from the United States
and Great Britain. The railway to its port, _La Guaira_, is a remarkable
work of engineering. _Puerto Cabello_, the most important port, receives
the trade of _Valencia_. From _Maracaibo_, the port on the lagoon of the
same name, is shipped the Venezuelan coffee. _Ciudad Bolivar_ is the
river-port of the Orinoco and an important rubber-market.
=The Guianas.=--The surface conditions and climate of the Guianas resemble
those of Venezuela. The native products are also much the same, but good
business organization has made the countries bearing the general name
highly productive. For the greater part, the coast-plain is the region
of cultivation. Sugar is still the most important crop; but on account
of the fierce competition of beet-sugar, on many of the plantations
cane-sugar cultivation is unprofitable and has been abandoned for that
of rice, cacao, and tobacco. Great Britain, Holland, and France possess
the country. The divisions are known respectively as British Guiana,
Surinam, and Cayenne, and the trade of each accrues to the
mother-country. British Guiana is noted quite as much for its
gold-fields on the Venezuelan border (Cuyuni River) as for its vegetable
products. _Georgetown_, better known by the name of the surrounding
district, _Demerara_, is the focal point of business. _New Amsterdam_ is
also a port of considerable trade. The gold-mining interests centre at
_Bartica_.
[Illustration: A CACAO PLANTATION]
[Illustration: PREPARING THE BEANS FOR SHIPMENT]
[Illustration: CACAO-TREE]
[Illustration: MAKING CHOCOLATE]
Surinam, in addition to its export of vegetable products, contains rich
gold-mines, and these contribute a considerable revenue. _Paramaribo_ is
the port and centre of trade. Phosphates and gold are among the
important exports of Cayenne, whose port bears the same name.
=Brazil.=--This state, nearly the size of the United States, comprises
about half the area of South America. Much of it, including the greater
part of the Amazon River basin, is unfit for the growth of food-stuffs.
There are three regions of production. The Amazon forests yield the
greater part of the world's rubber supply. The middle coast region has
various agricultural products, of which cotton and cane-sugar are the
most important. From the southern region comes two-thirds of the world's
coffee-crop. There are productive gold-mines in the state of Minas
Geraes, but this region is best known for the "old mine" diamonds, the
finest produced.
The Amazon rubber-crop includes not only the crude gum obtained in
Brazil, but a considerable part, if not the most, of the crop from the
surrounding states. The bifurcating Cassiquiare, which flows both into
Amazonian and Orinocan waters, drains a very large area of forest which
yields the best rubber known. The yield of 1901 aggregated about one
hundred and thirty million pounds, of which about one-half was sold in
the United States, one-third in Liverpool, and the rest mainly in
Antwerp and Le Havre. The price of rubber is fixed in New York and
London.
The cotton and cane-sugar are grown in the middle coast region. The
cotton industry bids fair to add materially to the prosperity of the
state. A considerable part of the raw cotton is exported, but the
reserve is sufficient to keep ten thousand looms busy. About three
hundred and fifty million pounds of the raw sugar is purchased by the
refineries of the United States, and much of the remainder by British
dealers.
The seeds of a species of myrtle (_Bertholletia excelsa_) furnish the
Brazil nuts of commerce, large quantities of which are shipped to Europe
and the United States.[65] Manganese ore is also an important export,
and Great Britain purchases nearly all of it.
The coffee-crop of the southern states is the largest in the world; and
about eight hundred million pounds are landed yearly at the ports of the
United States. The coffee-crop, more than any other factor, has made the
great prosperity of the state; for while the rubber yield employs
comparatively few men and yields but little public revenue, the
coffee-crop has brought into Brazil an average of about fifty million
dollars a year for three-quarters of a century.
Cattle products also afford a considerable profit in the vicinity of the
coffee-region. The hides and tallow are shipped to the United States.
For want of refrigerating facilities, most of the beef is "jerked" (or
sun-dried), and shipped in this form to Cuba.
The facilities for transportation, the rivers excepted, are poor. The
Amazon is navigable for ocean steamships nearly to the junction of the
Ucayale. The Paraguay affords a navigable water-way to the mouth of
Plate River. Rapids and falls obstruct most of the rivers at the
junction of the Brazilian plateau and the low plains, but these streams
afford several thousand miles of navigable waters both above and below
the falls.
Nearly all the railways are plantation roads, extending from the various
ports to regions of production a few miles inland. The most important
railway development is that in the vicinity of Rio, where short local
roads to the suburban settlements and the coffee-plantations converge at
the harbor. About fourteen thousand miles of railway are completed and
under actual construction. A considerable part of the mileage is owned
and operated by the state, and it has become the policy of the latter to
control its roads and to encourage immigration. One result of this
policy is the increasing number of German and Italian colonies, that
establish settlements in every district penetrated by a new road.
In 1900 the total foreign trade aggregated upward of two hundred and
seventy-five million dollars. The imports consist of cotton and woollen
manufactures, structural steel and machinery, preserved fish and meats,
and coal-oil. Great Britain, Germany, the United States, and France have
nearly all the trade. The United States sells to Brazil textiles and
coal-oil to the amount of over eleven million dollars yearly, and buys
of the country coffee and rubber to the amount of six times as much.
_Rio de Janeiro_, commonly called "Rio," is the capital and commercial
centre. Its harbor is one of the best in South America. Formerly all the
coffee was shipped from this port, but the greater part now goes from
_Santos_. _Porto Alegre_, the port of the German colonies, has also a
growing export trade.
_Bahia_, _Pernambuco_ (or _Recife_), _Maceio_, _Ceara_ are the markets
for cotton, sugar, and tobacco, much of which is shipped to other
Brazilian ports for home consumption. _Para_ and _Ceara_ monopolize
nearly all the rubber trade. The position of _Manaos_, at the confluence
of several rivers, makes it one of the most important markets of the
Amazon basin, and most of the crude rubber is first collected there for
shipment. _Cuyaba_ is the commercial centre of the mining region; its
outlet is the Paraguay River, and Buenos Aires profits by its trade.
=Argentina and the Plate River Countries.=--These states are situated in a
latitude corresponding to that of the United States. The entire area
from the coast to the slopes of the Andes is a vast prairie-region. As a
result of position, climate, and surface the agricultural industries are
the same as in the United States--grazing and wheat-growing.
Cattle-growing is the chief employment, and the cost per head of rearing
stock is practically nothing. For want of better means of transportation
the shipments of live beef are not very heavy; the quality of the beef
is poor, and until recently there have been no adequate facilities for
getting it to market.[66] A small amount of refrigerator beef and a
large amount of jerked beef are exported, however. Near the markets,
there are large plants in which the hides, horns, tallow, and meat are
utilized--the last being converted to the famous "beef extract," which
finds a market all over the world.
The sheep industry is on a much better business basis. Both the wool and
the mutton have been improved by cross-breeding with good stock. As a
result the trade in mutton and wool has increased by leaps and bounds;
and nearly three million sheep carcasses are landed at the other ports
of Brazil, at Cuba, and at various European states. The wool is bought
mainly by Germany and France, but the United States is a heavy
purchaser. The quality of the fibre, formerly very poor, year by year is
improving.
Wheat, the staple product, is grown mainly within a radius of four
hundred miles around the mouth of Plate River. The area of cultivation
is increasing as the facilities for transportation are extended and,
little by little, is encroaching on the grazing lands. The wheat
industry is carried on very largely by German and Italian colonists.
Flax, grown for the seed, is a very large export crop. Maize, partly for
export and partly for home consumption, is also grown.
The timber resources, chiefly in Paraguay and the Gran Chaco, are very
great, but for want of means of transportation the timber-trade cannot
successfully compete with that of Central America and Mexico. Workable
gold and silver ores are abundant along the Andean cordillera; gold,
silver, and copper are exported to Europe. A poor quality of lignite
occurs in several provinces, but there are no available mines yielding
coal suitable for making steam. There are petroleum wells near Mendoza.
Most of the manufactures pertain to the preparation of cattle products,
although a considerable amount of coarse textiles are made in the larger
cities from the native cotton and wool. Hats, paper (made from grass),
and leather goods are also made. In general, all manufactures are
hampered by the difficulties of getting good fuel at a low price.
Transportation is carried on along Plate River and the lower parts of
its tributaries. The railway has become the chief factor in the carriage
of commodities, however, and the railways of Argentina have been
developed on the plans of North American roads. About twelve thousand
miles are in actual operation, one of which is a transcontinental line,
about completed between Buenos Aires and Valparaiso. Electric railways
have become very popular, and the mileage is rapidly increasing.
The import trade, consisting of textile goods, machinery, steel, and
petroleum, is carried on with Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium
(mainly transit trade), the United States, and Italy. The competition
between the European states for this trade is very strong, and not a
little has been acquired at the expense of the United States, whose
trade has not materially increased.
[Illustration: AREA OF THE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF MATE]
_Buenos Aires_ is the financial centre of this part of South America.
Among its industries is the largest meat-refrigerating plant in the
world. The harbor at _La Plata_ is excellent and has drawn a
considerable part of the foreign trade from Buenos Aires. _Rosario_,
_Cordoba_, _Santa Fe_, and _Parana_ are the markets of extensive farming
regions. _Mendoza_ is the focal point of the mining interests.
=Paraguay= has a large forest area, but for want of means of
transportation it is without value. Even the railway companies find it
cheaper to buy their ties in the United States and Australia, rather
than to procure them in Paraguay. In spite of the extent of good land,
the wheat and much of the bread-stuffs are purchased from Argentina.
Tobacco and mate are the only export crops, and they have but little
value. The Parana and Paraguay Rivers are the only commercial outlet of
the state.
=Uruguay.=--Owing to its foreign population Uruguay is becoming a rich
country. The native cattle have been improved by cross-breeding with
European stock, and the state has become one of the foremost cattle and
sheep ranges of the world. The value of animal products is not far from
forty million dollars yearly. These go mainly to Europe, and so also
does the wheat-crop.
France and Argentina purchase most of the exports and Great Britain
supplies most of the textiles and machinery imported. The trade of the
United States is about one-fourth that of Great Britain. _Montevideo_ is
the chief market and port. At _Fray Bentos_ is one of the largest plants
in the world for the manufacture of cattle products.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What kind of commerce has led to the establishment of the various ports
along the Spanish Main?
What advantages has the American fruit-shipper, trading at South
American ports, over his European competitor?
What is meant by "horse latitudes," and what was the origin of the name?
In what way may the opening of an interoceanic canal affect the
coffee-trade of Brazil?--the nitrate trade of Chile?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From the Abstract of Statistics find the exports of the United States to
each of these countries.
From the Statesman's Year-Book compare the trade of the United States in
each of these countries with that of Great Britain, France, Germany, and
Italy.
If possible, obtain specimens of the following: Crude rubber, pampas
grass, Brazil nuts (in pod), and raw coffee of several grades for
comparison with Java and Mocha coffees.
CHAPTER XXV
EUROPE--GREAT BRITAIN AND GERMANY
Almost all the commercial activity of Europe is south of the parallel
and west of the meridian of St. Petersburg. Most of the great industries
are controlled by Germanic and Latin peoples, and among these Great
Britain and Germany stand first.
=Great Britain and Ireland.=--The United Kingdom, or Great Britain and
Ireland, are commonly known as the British Isles. The British Empire
consists of the United Kingdom and its colonial possessions; it includes
also a large number of islands occupied as coaling stations and for
strategic purposes. All told, the empire embraces about one-seventh of
the land area of the world and about one-fourth its population.
The wonderful power and great commercial development is due not only to
conditions of geographic environment but also to the intelligence of a
people who have adjusted themselves to those conditions. The insular
position of the United Kingdom has given it natural protection, and for
more than eight hundred years there has been no successful invasion by a
foreign power. Its commercial position is both natural and artificial.
It has utilized the markets to the east and south, and has founded great
countries which it supplies with manufactured products.
[Illustration: THE BRITISH EMPIRE]
The position of the kingdom with respect to climate is fortunate. The
movement of the Gulf Stream on the American coast carries a large volume
of water into the latitude of the prevailing westerly winds, and these
in turn carry warm water to every part of the coast of the islands. As a
result, the harbors of the latter are never obstructed by ice; those of
the Labrador coast, situated in the same latitude, are blocked nearly
half the year.
The high latitude of the islands is an advantage so far as the
production of food-stuffs is concerned. The summer days in the latitude
of Liverpool are very nearly eighteen hours in length, and this fact
together with the mild winters, adds very largely to the food-producing
power of the islands.
The highlands afford considerable grazing. Great care is taken in
improving the stock, both of cattle and sheep. In the north the cattle
are bred mainly as meat producers; in the south for dairy products.
Durham, Alderney, and Jersey stock are exported to both Americas for
breeding purposes. The sheep of the highlands produce the heavy, coarse
wool of which the well known "cheviot" and "frieze" textiles are made.
Elsewhere they are bred for mutton, of which the "South Down" variety is
an example.
The lowland regions yield grain abundantly where cultivated. The average
yield per acre is about double that of the United States, and is
surpassed by that of Denmark only. Both Ireland and England are famous
for fine dairy products. These are becoming the chief resource of the
former country, which is practically without the coal necessary for
extensive manufacture. The fishing-grounds form an important food
resource.
The cultivated lands do not supply the food needed for consumption. The
grain-crop lasts scarcely three months; the meat-crop but little longer.
Bread-stuffs from the United States and India, and meats from the United
States, Australia, and New Zealand make up the shortage. The annual
import of food-stuffs amounts to more than fifty dollars per capita.
The growing of wool and flax for cloth-making became an industry of
great importance just after the accession of Henry VII. With the advent
of peace, it became possible to manufacture into cloth the fibres that
before had been sent for that purpose to Flanders. The utilization of
the coal and the iron ore years afterward brought about an economic
revolution that was intensified by the invention of the steam-engine and
the power-loom.
These quickly brought the country into the foremost rank as a
manufacturing centre. Moreover, they also demanded the foreign markets
that have made the country a maritime power as well--for an insular
country must also have the ships with which to carry its merchandise to
its markets.
The development of the manufactures, therefore, is inseparably connected
with that of the mineral and metal industries. From very early times the
metal deposits of the country have been a source of power. Copper and
tin were used by the aboriginal Britons long before Caesar's
reconnaissance of the islands, and it is not unlikely that the Bronze
Period was the natural development that resulted from the discovery of
these metals.
Coal occurs in various fields that extend from the River Clyde to the
River Severn. The annual output of these mines at the close of the
century was about two hundred and twenty-five million tons. In the past
century the inroads upon the visible supply were so great that the
output in the near future will be considerably lessened. Not far from
one-sixth of the output is sold to consumers in Russia and the
Mediterranean countries, but a growing sentiment to forbid any sale of
coal to foreign buyers is taking shape.
[Illustration: BRITISH ISLES]
Iron ores are fairly abundant, but the hematite required for the best
Bessemer steel is limited to the region about Manchester and Birmingham.
The shortage of this ore has become so apparent within recent years that
Great Britain has become a heavy purchaser of ores in foreign markets.
The coal in the Clyde basin is employed mainly in the manufacture of
railway iron, steamship material, and rolling stock. The manufacture of
Bessemer steel is gradually moving to the vicinity of South Wales, at
the ports of which foreign pig-iron can be most cheaply landed. In
west-central England the several coal-fields form a single centre of
manufacture, where are located some of the largest woollen and cotton
mills in Europe. It also includes the plants for the manufacture of
machinery, cutlery, and pottery.
The import trade of Great Britain consists mainly of food-stuffs and raw
materials.[67] Of the latter, cotton is by far the most important. Most
of it comes from the United States, but the Nile delta, Brazil, the
Dekkan of India, the Iran plateau, and the Piura Valley of Peru send
portions, each region having fibre of specific qualities designed for
specific uses. The native wool clip forms only a small part of the
amount used in manufacture. The remainder, more than three million
pounds, comes from Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
The supply of flax is small, and 100,000 tons are imported to meet the
wants of the mills. The greater part is purchased in Russia, but the
finer quality is imported from Belgium. Jute is purchased from India and
manufactured into burlap and rugs.
But little available standing timber remains, and lumber must,
therefore, be imported. The pine is purchased mainly in Sweden, Norway,
Canada, and the United States. A considerable amount of wood-pulp is
imported from Canada for paper-making. Mahogany for ornamental
manufactures is obtained from Africa and British Honduras. Oak, and the
woods for interior finish, are purchased largely from Canada and the
United States.
The export trade of Great Britain consists almost wholly of the articles
manufactured with British coal as the power. These are made from the raw
materials purchased abroad, and the stamp of the British craftsman is a
guarantee of excellence and honesty. Of the total export trade,
amounting yearly to about one billion, two hundred million dollars,
nearly one-third consists of cotton, woollen, linen, and jute textiles;
one-fifth consists of iron and steel manufactured stuffs made from
British ores. About one-third goes to the colonies of the
mother-country, with whom she keeps in close touch; Germany, the United
States, and the South American states are the chief foreign buyers.
For the handling and carriage of these goods there is an admirable
system of railways reaching from every part of the interior to the
numerous ports. The rolling stock and the locomotives are not nearly so
heavy as those used in the United States; the railway beds and track
equipment, on the whole, are probably the best in the world. Freight
rates are considerably higher than on the corresponding classes of
merchandise in the United States. The public highways are most
excellent, but the means of street traffic in the cities are very poor.
The harbor facilities at the various ports are of the best. The docks
and basins are usually arranged so that while the import goods are being
landed the export stuffs are made ready to be loaded. The facilities for
the rapid transfer of freights have been improved by the reconstruction
of the various river estuaries so as to make them ship-channels. The
estuaries of the Clyde, Tyne, and Mersey have been thus improved, while
Manchester has been made a seaport by an artificial canal. The British
merchant marine is the largest in the world, and about ninety per cent.
of the vessels are steamships.
_London_ is the capital; it is also one of the first commercial and
financial centres of the world. The Thames has not a sufficient depth of
water for the largest liners, and these dock usually about twenty miles
below the city. The colonial commerce at London is very heavy,
especially the India traffic, and it is mainly for this trade that the
British acquired the control of the Suez Canal.
_Liverpool_ is one of the most important ports of Europe, and receives
most of the American traffic. The White Star and Cunard Lines have their
terminals at this port.
_Southampton_ is also a port which receives a large share of American
traffic. The American and several foreign steamship lines discharge at
that place. _Hull_ and _Shields_ have a considerable part of the
European traffic. _Glasgow_ is one of the foremost centres of steel
ship-building. _Cardiff_ and _Swansea_ are ports connected with the coal
and iron trade. _Queenstown_ is a calling point for transatlantic
liners.
_Manchester_ is both a cotton port and a great market for the cotton
textiles made in the nearby towns of the Lancashire coal-field. _Leeds_
and _Bradford_ and the towns about them are the chief centres of woollen
manufacture. _Wilton_ and _Kidderminster_ are famous for carpets.
_Birmingham_ is the centre of the steel manufactures. _Sheffield_ has a
world-wide reputation for cutlery. In and near the Staffordshire
district are the potteries that have made the names of _Worcester_,
_Coalport_, _Doulton_, _Copeland_, and _Jackfield_ famous. _Belfast_ is
noted for its linen textiles, and also for some of the largest
steamships afloat that have been built in its yards. _Dundee_ is the
chief centre of jute manufacture.
=The German Empire.=--The German Empire consists of the kingdoms of
Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Wuertemburg, together with a number of
small states. The "free" cities of Hamburg, Bremen, and Luebeck, whose
independence was purchased in feudal times, are also incorporated within
the empire. The present empire was formed in 1871, at the close of the
war between Germany and France. The merging of the states into the
empire was designed as a political step, but it proved a great
industrial revolution as well.
The plain of Europe which slopes to the north and the Baltic Sea, the
flood-plains of the rivers excepted, is feebly productive of grain. It
is a fine grazing region, however, and the dairy products are of the
best quality. Among European states Russia alone surpasses Germany in
the number of cattle grown. The province of Schleswig-Holstein is famous
the world over for its fine cattle. Cavalry horses are a special feature
of the lowland plain, and the government is the chief buyer. The wool
product has hitherto been important, but the sheep ranges are being
turned into crop lands, on account of the increase of population in the
industrial regions.
The midland belt, however, between the coast-plain and the mountains, is
the chief food-producing part of Germany. Rye and wheat are grown
wherever possible, but the entire grain-crop is consumed in about eight
months. The United States, Argentina, and Russia supply the wheat and
flour; Russia supplies the rye.
[Illustration: GERMANY AND SCANDINAVIAN COUNTRIES]
The sugar-beet is by far the most important export crop, and Germany
produces yearly about one million, eight hundred thousand tons, or
nearly as much as Austria-Hungary and France combined. This industry is
encouraged by a bounty paid on all sugar exported.[68] A considerable
amount of raw beet-sugar is sold to the refineries of the United States;
Great Britain also is a heavy buyer. The home consumption is relatively
small, being about one-third per capita that of the United States.
Silesia, the Rhine Valley, and the lowlands of the Hartz Mountains are
the most important centres of the sugar industry.
Germany is rich in minerals.[69] Zinc occurs in abundance, and the mines
of Silesia furnish the world's chief supply. Most of the lithographic
stone in use is obtained in Bavaria. Copper and silver are mined in the
Erz and Hartz Mountains. During the sixteenth century the mines of the
latter region brought the states then forming Germany into commercial
prominence and thereby diverted the trade between the North and
Mediterranean Seas to the valleys of the Rhine and Elbe Rivers.
These two metal products made Germany a great financial power. The
Franco-Prussian War added to Germany the food-producing lands of the
Rhine and Moselle, and the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. At the same
time it gave the Germans organization by welding the various German
states into an empire. As a result there has been an industrial
development that has placed Germany in the class with the United States
and Great Britain.
By unifying the various interstate systems of commerce and
transportation, the iron and steel industry has greatly expanded. The
chief centre of this industry is the valley of the Ruhr River.
Coal-measures underlie an area somewhat larger than the basin of the
river. To the industrial centres of this valley iron ore is brought by
the Rhine and Moselle barges from Alsace-Lorraine and Luxemburg, and
also from the Hartz Mountains.
In the importance and extent of manufactures, Germany ranks next to
Great Britain among European states, and because of the extent of their
coal-fields the Germans seem destined in time to surpass their rivals.
The manufacture of textiles is one of the leading industries, and, next
to Great Britain, Germany is the heaviest purchaser of raw cotton from
the United States. The Rhine district is the chief centre of cotton
textile manufacture. Raw cotton is delivered to the mills by the Rhine
boats, and these carry the manufactured product to the seaboard. Central
and South America are the chief purchasers.
Woollen goods are also extensively manufactured, the industry being in
the region that produces Saxony wool. In Silesia and the lower Rhine
provinces there are also extensive woollen textile manufactures, but the
goods are made mainly from imported wool. Argentina and the other Plate
River countries are the chief buyers of these goods. There is a
considerable linen manufacture from German-grown flax, and silk-making,
mainly from raw silk imported from Italy.
The great expansion and financial success of the manufacturing
enterprises is due very largely to the admirable organization of the
lines of transportation. The rivers, with their connecting canals,
supplement the railways instead of competing with them. They are
utilized mainly for slow freights, while the railways carry the traffic
that demands speed. The possibilities of both inland water-ways and
railway transportation have been utilized by the Germans to the utmost,
with the result of a very low rate both for coal and ore, and for
structural iron and steel. The latter is carried from the various
steel-making plants in the Ruhr Valley to the seaboard at a rate of
eighty to ninety cents per ton.[70]
[Illustration: LUeBECK]
[Illustration: BREMEN]
All this has resulted in a wonderful commercial expansion of the
empire. In 1875 Germany was neither a maritime nor a naval power. At the
close of the century it ranked about with the United States as a naval
power, and far surpassed that country in the tonnage of merchant marine.
The German steamship fleet includes the largest and fastest vessels
afloat.
German trade may be summed up as an export of manufactured goods and an
import of food-stuffs and raw materials. At the close of the century the
annual movement of industrial products amounted to nearly two and
one-half billion dollars. About one-half the trade of the empire is
carried on with Great Britain, the United States, Austria-Hungary, and
Russia. A large part of the foreign trade is carried on through the
ports of Belgium and Holland.
_Berlin_, the capital, is one of the few cities having a population of
more than one million. It is not only a great centre of trade, but it is
one of the leading money-markets of Europe; it is also the chief railway
centre. _Hamburg_ and _Bremen_ are important ports of German-American
trade, the former being the largest seaport of continental Europe.
_Breslau_ is an important market, into which the raw materials of
eastern Europe are received, and from which they are sent to the
manufacturing districts. The art galleries of _Dresden_ have had the
effect of making that city a centre of art manufactures which are famous
the world over. _Luebeck_ is one of the free cities that was formerly in
the Hanse League.
The twin cities, _Barmen-Eberfeld_, in the Ruhr coal-field, form one of
the principal centres of cotton manufacture in the world. _Dortmund_ is
a coal-market. At _Essen_ are the steel-works founded by Herr Krupp.
They are the largest and one of the most complete plants in the world.
The output includes arms, heavy and light ordnance, and about every kind
of structural iron and steel used. About forty thousand men are
employed. _Chemnitz_ is an important point, not only of cotton
manufacture, but also of Saxony wools, underwear and shawls being its
most noteworthy products. At _Stettin_, _Danzig_, and _Kiel_ are built
the steamships that have given to Germany its great commercial power.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
In what ways are Great Britain and Germany commercial rivals?
What are the advantages of each with respect to position?--with respect
to natural resources?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports of
each;--the leading imports of each. What exports have they in common?
From the Abstract of Statistics find what commodities the United States
sells to each.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--Chapter III.
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Book III, Chapters III-V.
CHAPTER XXVI
EUROPE--THE BALTIC AND NORTH SEA STATES
These states, like Great Britain and Germany, belong to Germanic Europe,
and their situation around the North and Baltic Seas makes their
commercial interests much the same. From the stand-point of commerce
Holland might be regarded as an integral part of Germany, inasmuch as a
large part of the foreign commerce of Germany must reach the sea by
crossing that state.
=Sweden and Norway.=--Sweden and Norway occupy the region best known as
the Scandinavian peninsula. The western side faces the warm, moist winds
of the Atlantic, but the surface is too rugged to be productive. The
lands suitable for farming, on the other hand, are on the east side,
where, owing to the high latitude, the winters are extremely cold.
The plateau lands are in the latitude of the great pine-forest belt that
extends across the two continents. The forests of the Scandinavian
peninsula are near the most densely peopled part of Europe, and they are
also readily accessible. Moreover, the rugged surface offers unlimited
water-power. As a result Norway and Sweden practically control the
lumber-market of Europe, and their lumber products form one of the most
important exports of the kingdom. Norway pine competes with California
redwood in Australia. The "naval stores," tar and pitch, compete with
those of Georgia and the Carolinas. The wood-pulp from this region is
the chief supply of the paper-makers of Europe. Next to Russia, Sweden
has the largest lumber-trade in Europe. The Mediterranean states are the
chief buyers.
The mineral products are a considerable source of income. Building stone
is shipped to the nearby lowland countries. The famous Swedish
manganese-iron ores, essential in steel manufacture, are shipped to the
United States and Europe. For this purpose they compete with the ores of
Spain and Cuba. The mines of the Gellivare iron district are probably
the only iron-mines of consequence within the frigid zone. The ore is
sent to German and British smelteries.
The fisheries are the most important of Europe, and this fact has had a
great influence on the history of the people. Centuries ago the people
living about the _vigs_ or fjords of the west coast were compelled to
depend almost wholly on the fisheries for their food-supplies. As a
result they became the most famous sailors of the world. They
established settlements in Iceland and Greenland; they also planted a
colony in North America 500 years before the voyage of Columbus.
Herring, salmon, and cod are the principal catch of the fisheries, and
about four-fifths of the product is cured and exported to the Catholic
European states and to South America.
South of Kristiania farming is the principal industry. Much of the land
is suitable for wheat-growing, but the productive area is so small that
a considerable amount of bread-stuffs must be imported from the United
States. On account of the high latitude the winters are too long and
severe for any but the hardiest grains. Dairy products are commercially
the most important output of the farms, and they find a ready market in
the popular centres of Europe--London, Hamburg, Paris, and Berlin.
The lumber, furniture, matches, fish, ores, and dairy products sold
abroad do not pay for the bread-stuffs, coal, petroleum, clothing, and
machinery. In part, this is made up by the carrying trade of Norwegian
vessels; the rest of the deficit is more than met by the money which the
throngs of tourists spend during the summer months.
The United States buys from these countries fish and ores to the amount
of about three million dollars a year; it sells them cotton, petroleum,
bread-stuffs, and machinery to the amount of about twelve million
dollars.
_Stockholm_, the capital of Sweden, is the chief financial and
distributing centre of the Scandinavian trade. Its railway system
reaches about every area of production. Although having a good harbor of
its own, it must depend on _Trondhjem_ (Drontheim) for winter traffic,
because the Baltic ports are closed by ice three or four months of the
year. _Kristiania_, the capital of Norway, is the export market of the
fish and lumber products.
_Goteborg_, owing to recently completed railway and canal connections,
is becoming an important port of trade. It is convenient to other
European ports, and it is rarely closed by ice. _Bergen_, _Trondhjem_,
and _Hammerfest_ derive a heavy income from their fisheries and likewise
from the tourists who visit the coast during midsummer. The last-named
port, although farther north than any town in the world, has an open
harbor during the winter.
=Denmark.=--Denmark is essentially an agricultural state, and almost every
square mile of available land is under cultivation. Even the sand-dunes
have been reclaimed and converted into pasturage. The yield of wheat is
greater per acre than in any other country, but as only a small area is
sown, wheat and flour are imported.
About half the area of the state is used in growing fodder for horses
and cattle. The dairy products, especially butter, are unrivalled
elsewhere in Europe. The dairy business is largely controlled by a
cooperative association of dairymen and farmers. Pastures, fodder,
cattle, sheds, creameries, and all the processes involved are subject to
a most rigid sanitary inspection.
_Copenhagen_, the capital, is the financial centre of the kingdom.
Commercially it is one of the most important ports of Europe. Various
shipments consigned to Baltic ports are landed at this city; here the
cargoes break bulk and are again trans-shipped to their destination. In
order to facilitate this forwarding business, the Crown has made
Copenhagen a free port. Steamship lines connect it with New York,
British ports, and the East Indies.
A great deal of farming and dairy machinery is manufactured; coal,
cotton goods, and structural machinery are imported from the United
States. Little, however, is exported to that country, almost all the
dairy products being sold to Great Britain and other populous centres of
western Europe. _Aalborg_ and _Aarhuus_ are dairy-markets.
Greenland and Iceland are colonies of Denmark, and the fishing industry
of the kingdom is carried on mainly along the shores of these islands.
The furs, seal-skins, seal-oil, and eider-down of Greenland are a
government monopoly. The mineral cryolite occurs at Ivigtut and is mined
by soda-making establishments in the United States. Iceland produces
sheep, cattle, and fish; these are shipped from _Reikiavik_. The Faroe
Islands produce but little save wool, feathers, and birds' eggs.
=Belgium.=--Probably in no other country of Europe has nature done so
little and man so much to make a great state as in Belgium. The lowland
region has been made so fertile by artificial means that it yields more
wheat per acre than any other country except Denmark. The Ardennes
highland in the southeast is naturally unproductive, but it has become
one of the great manufacturing centres of Europe. Less than one-twelfth
of the area of the state is unproductive.
The coast, more than twoscore miles in extent, has not a single harbor
for large vessels, and the two navigable rivers, the Scheldt and Meuse,
flow into another state before reaching the sea.
[Illustration: HOLLAND AND BELGIUM]
The low sand-barrens next the coast have been reclaimed by means of a
grass that holds in place the sand that formerly shifted with each
movement of the wind. This region is now cultivated pasture-land that
produces the finest of horses, cattle, and dairy products. The dairy
products go mainly to London. The Flemish horses, like those of the
sand-barrens of Germany and France, are purchased in the large cities,
where heavy draught-horses are required. Many of them are sold to the
express companies of the United States.
Bordering the sand-barrens is a belt of land that produces grain and the
sugar-beet. Flax is an important product, and its cultivation has had
much to do with both the history and the political organization of the
state. Before the advent of the cotton industry, woollen and linen were
practically the only fibres used in cloth-making. Belgium was then the
chief flax-growing and cloth-making country, and all western Europe
depended upon the Flemish looms for cloth. This industry, therefore,
gave the country not only commercial prominence, but was largely
responsible for its political independence as well. Flax is still an
important product, and the linen textiles made in the state are without
a superior. Much of the flax is grown in the valley of the River Lys.
One of the most productive coal-fields of Europe stretches across
Belgium, and a few miles south of it are the iron-ore deposits that
extend also into Luxemburg and Germany. In addition to these, the
zinc-mines about Moresnet are among the richest in the world. Belgium
is, therefore, one of the great metal-working centres of Europe. A small
portion of the coal is exported to France, but most of it is required in
the manufactures.
_Liege_, _Seraing_, and _Verviers_ are the great centres of the metal
industry. They were built at the eastern extremity of the coal-field,
within easy reach of the iron ores. Firearms, railroad steel, and
tool-making machinery are the chief products of the region, and because
of the favorable situation, these products easily compete with the
manufactures of Germany and France.
_Ghent_ is the chief focal point for the flax product, which is
converted into the finest of linen cloth and art fabrics. Much of the
weaving and spinning machinery employed in Europe is made in this city.
_Mechlin_ and the villages near by are famous the world over for
hand-worked laces.
Expensive porcelains, art tiles, glassware, and cheap crockery are made
in the line of kilns that reaches almost from one end of the coal-field
to the other; these products, moreover, are extensively exported.
The railways are owned and operated by the state. They are managed so
judiciously, moreover, that the rates of carriage are lower than in most
European states. The Scheldt is navigable for large ocean steamers to
_Antwerp_, and this city is the great Belgian port for ocean traffic.
The city owes its importance to its position. One branch of the Scheldt
leads toward the Rhine; the other is connected by a canal with the
rivers of France; the main stem of the river points toward London. It is
therefore the meeting of three ways. It is the terminal of the
steamships of American, and of various other lines. It is also the depot
of the Kongo trade. Ship-canals deep enough for coasters and freighters
connect _Ghent_, _Bruges_, and _Brussels_ with tide-water. These are
about to be converted to deep-water ship-canals.
The foreign commerce of Belgium is much like that of other European
states. Wheat, meat, maize, cotton, and petroleum are imported mainly
from the United States; iron ore is purchased from Luxemburg and
Germany, and various raw materials are brought from France. In exchange
there are exported fine machinery, linen fabrics, porcelains, fire-arms,
glassware, and beet-sugar. From the Kongo state, at the head of which is
the King of the Belgians, are obtained rubber and ivory. The rubber is
sold mainly to the United States.
_Brussels_ is the capital and financial centre. On account of the state
control of the railways, it is also the directive centre of all the
industries pertaining to commerce and transportation.
=Holland.=--The names Holland and Netherlands mean "lowland," and the
state itself has a lower surface than any other country of Europe.
Nearly half the area is at high-tide level or else below it. A large
part, mainly the region about the Zuider[71] Sea, has been reclaimed
from the sea.
In the reclamation of these lands stone dikes are built to enclose a
given area, and from the basin thus constructed the water is pumped. The
reclaimed lands, or "polders," include not only the sea-bottom, but the
coast marshes as well; even the rivers are bordered with levees in order
to prevent overflows. Windmills are the machinery by which the water is
pumped from the polders into the sea. In no other part of the world is
wind-power so extensively used. Almost every acre of the polders is
under cultivation, and these lands grow a very large part of the
vegetables and flowers consumed in the great cities of England, France,
and Belgium.
The coast sand-barrens have been converted into pasture-lands that
produce draught-horses, beef cattle, and dairy cattle. The horses find a
ready market in the United States and the large European cities; the
dairy cattle not needed at home are exported, the United States being a
heavy purchaser. The beef cattle are grown mainly for the markets of
London. Dutch butter is used far beyond the boundaries of the state, and
Edam cheese reaches nearly every large city of Europe and America.
The sugar-beet is extensively cultivated, in spite of the great trade
resulting from the cane-sugar industry of the East Indies. It is more
profitable to import wheat from the United States and rye from Russia in
order to use the land for the sugar-beet.
Practically no timber suitable for lumber manufacture exists, and
building material therefore must be imported. Pine is purchased from
Russia, Scandinavia, and the United States. Stone is purchased wherever
it may be obtained as return freight, or as ballast. The coast fisheries
yield oysters, herrings, and "anchovies," which are not anchovies, but
sprats.
For want of coal and iron there are few manufactures, and the garden and
dairy products are about the only export articles. There is an
abundance of clay, and of this brick for road-making, tiles for building
purposes, and porcelains are made. But little of the raw sugar is
refined; most of it is sold to foreign refiners, and the United States
is one of the chief customers.
Holland is a great commercial country, and for more than five hundred
years the Dutch flag has been found in almost every large port of the
world. Much of the commerce is derived from the tobacco, sugar, and
coffee plantations of the Dutch East Indies.
A very large part of the commerce, however, is neither import or export
trade, but a "transit" commerce. Thus, American coal-oil is transferred
from the great ocean tank-steamers to smaller tank-boats, and is then
carried across the state into Germany, France, and Belgium, through the
numerous canals.
This trade applies also to many of the products of the German industries
which will not bear a heavy freight tariff, such as coal, ores, etc. It
reaches the Rhine and Rhone river-basins and extends even to the Danube.
Both Switzerland and Austria-Hungary send much of their exports through
Holland. All trade at the various ports and through the canals is free,
it being the policy to encourage and not to obstruct commerce.
_Amsterdam_, the constitutional capital, is one of the great financial
and banking centres of Europe. The completion of the Nord Holland canal
makes the docks and basins accessible to the largest steamships.
Diamond-cutting is one of the unique industries of the city. Since the
discovery of the African mines its former trade in diamonds has been
largely absorbed by London.
More than half the carrying trade of the state centres at _Rotterdam_.
By the improvement of the river estuaries and canals this city has
become one of the best ports of Europe, and the tonnage of goods
handled at the docks is enormously increasing. _Vlissingen_ (Flushing)
and the _Hook_ are railway terminals that handle much of the local
freights consigned to London. _Delft_ is famous the world over for the
beautiful porcelain made at its potteries.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How has the topography of each of these states affected its commerce?
How is their commerce affected by latitude and climate?
How has the cultivation of the sugar-beet affected the cane-sugar
industry in the British West Indies?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports and
imports of each country.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of the United States with
each of these countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire--pp. 153-159.
Gibbins's History of Commerce--Book III, Chapters I and VIII.
CHAPTER XXVII
EUROPE--THE MEDITERRANEAN STATES AND SWITZERLAND
The Mediterranean states are peopled mainly by races whose social and
economic development was moulded largely by the Roman occupation of the
Mediterranean basin for a period of more than one thousand years. The
occupations of the people have been shaped to a great extent by the
slope of the land and by the mountain-ranges that long isolated them
from the Germanic peoples north of the Alps.
=France.=--The position of France with respect to industrial development
is fortunate. The North Sea coast faces the ports of Great Britain; the
Atlantic ports are easily accessible to American centres of commerce;
the Mediterranean ports command a very large part of the trade of that
sea.
The easily travelled overland routes between the Mediterranean and North
Seas in very early times gave the country a commercial prominence that
ever since has been retained. Even before the time of Caesar it was a
famous trading-ground for Mediterranean merchants, and the conquest of
the country was not so much for the spoils of war as for the extension
of Roman commercial influence.
The greater part of France is an agricultural region, and nowhere is the
soil cultivated with greater skill. Although the state is not quite as
large as Texas, there are more farms than in all the United States,
their small size making thorough cultivation a necessity. Much of the
land is too valuable for wheat-farming, and so the eastern
manufacturing districts depend upon the Russian wheat-farms for their
supply. Northwestern France, however, has a surplus of wheat, and this
is sold to Great Britain.
[Illustration: FRANCE]
The sugar-beet is the most profitable crop, and its cultivation is aided
indirectly by the government, which gives a bounty on all exported
sugar. The area of sugar-beet cultivation will probably increase to its
limit for this reason.
The French farmer is an artist in the cultivation of small fruits, and
the latter form an important source of revenue. Of the fruit-crop, the
grape is by far the most important commercially. French wines,
especially the champagnes, are exported to a greater extent than the
wines of any other country.[72] Most of the wine is sold in Great
Britain and the countries north of the grape belt; a considerable part
is sold in the United States and the eastern countries. Champagne,
Bordeaux, the Loire, and the Rhone Valleys are famous wine districts.
Wine is also imported, to be refined or to be made into brandy.
Cattle-breeding, both for meat and for dairy purposes, is extensively
carried on. The meat is consumed at home. Butter is an important export,
especially in the northwest, where a large amount is made for London
consumers. This region produces Camembert and Neufchatel cheese, both of
which are largely exported; Brie cheese is made chiefly along the German
border. The Roquefort product, made of ewe's milk, is fermented in
limestone caves and cellars. All these varieties have a large sale, the
United States and Great Britain being heavy purchasers.
The Percheron draught-horse is raised for export as well as for home
use; mules are extensively raised for the army wagon-trains of Great
Britain and Germany. Sheep are grown for the finer grades of wool, but
so much of the sheep pasture has been given to the cultivation of the
sugar-beet, that a considerable part of the woollen textiles are now
made of wool imported from Argentina. A large part of the eggs and table
poultry consumed in London are products of northwestern France.
The coal-fields of the north produce nearly two-thirds of the total
amount consumed. Iron ores are found near the German border; they are
sent to coal-fields in the neighborhood of St. Etienne and Le Creuzot to
be manufactured into steel. Both coal and iron ore are deficient. To
meet the requirements of consumption, the former is imported from Great
Britain, Germany, and Belgium; the latter, mainly from Germany and
Spain.
The manufactures of France have a wide influence. From the coal and iron
are derived the intricate machinery that has made the country famous,
the railways, the powerful navy, and the merchant marine that has made
the country a great commercial nation. Because of the great creative
skill and taste of the people, French textiles are standards of good
taste, and they find a ready market in all parts of the world. In
textile manufactures more than one million people and upward of one
hundred thousand looms are employed.
The United States is a heavy buyer of the woollen cloths and the finer
qualities of dress goods. Inasmuch as these goods have not been
successfully imitated elsewhere, the French trade does not suffer from
competition. The best goods are made from the fleeces of French merino
sheep, and are manufactured mainly in the northern towns. The Gobelin
tapestries of Paris are famous the world over.
The cotton manufactures depend mainly on American cotton. About
two-thirds of the cotton is purchased in the United States, a part of
which returns in the form of fine goods that may be classed as muslins,
tulles, and art textiles. The market for such goods is also general. In
the manufacture of fine laces, such as the Point d'Alencon fabrics, the
French have few equals and no superiors. The flax is imported mainly
from Belgium.
Silk culture is aided by the government, and is carried on mainly in
the south. The amount grown, however, is insufficient to keep the
factories busy, and more than four-fifths of the raw silk and cocoons
are imported from Italy and other southern countries.
The chief imports to France are coal, raw textile fibres, wine, wheat,
and lumber. The last two products excepted, they are again exported in
the form of manufactured products. The great bulk of the imports comes
from Great Britain, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Russia, and
Argentina. In 1900 the import trade from these countries aggregated
about five hundred million dollars. The total export trade during the
same year was about eight hundred million dollars; it consisted mainly
of high-priced articles of luxury.
The foreign trade is supported by a navy, which ranks second among the
world's navies, and a merchant marine of more than fifteen thousand
vessels. Aside from the subsidies given to mail steamships, government
encouragement is given for the construction and equipment of home-built
vessels. It is a settled policy that French vessels shall carry French
traffic.
Of the 24,000 miles of railway, about 2,000 miles are owned by the
state. The rivers are connected by canals, and these furnish about 7,000
miles of navigable waters. As in Germany, the water-routes supplement
the railway lines. Practically all lines of transportation converge at
Paris.
_Paris_, the capital, is a great centre of finance, art, science, and
literature, whose influence in these features has been felt all over the
world. The character of fine textiles, and also the fashions in the
United States and Europe, are regulated largely in this city.
_Marseille_ is the chief seaport, and practically all the trade between
France and the Mediterranean countries is landed at this port; it is
also the focal point of the trade between France and her African
colonies, and a landing-place for the cotton brought from Egypt and
Brazil.
_Havre_, the port receiving most of the trade from the United States, is
the port of Paris. _Rouen_ is the chief seat of cotton manufacture.
_Paris_ and _Rheims_ are noted for shawls. _Lille_ and _Roubaix_ are
centres of woollen manufacture. _Lyons_ is the great seat of silk
manufacture.
=Italy.=--Italy is a spur of the Alps extending into the Mediterranean
Sea. From its earliest history it has been an agricultural state, and,
excepting the periods when it has been rent by wars, it has been one of
the most productive countries in the world.
Wheat is extensively grown, but the crop is insufficient for home
consumption, and the deficit is imported from Russia and Hungary. A
large part of the wheat-crop is grown in the valley of the Po River.
Flax and hemp are grown for export in this region; and corn for home
consumption is a general product. Cotton is a good crop in Sicily and
the south, but the amount is insufficient for use and must be made up by
imports from the United States and Egypt.
Silk, fruit, and vegetables are the staple products that connect Italy
commercially with the rest of the world. About a million people are
concerned in the silk industry, and Italy is one of the foremost
countries in the world in the production of raw silk. Most of the crop
is produced in northern Italy; western Europe and the United States are
the chief buyers. The silk of the Piedmont region is the best in
quality.
Fruit is the crop next in value to raw silk. Sicilian oranges and
lemons, from about twenty millions of trees, find a ready market in
Europe; the oranges come into competition with the California and
Florida oranges of the United States, in spite of the tariff imposed
against them by the latter country. Olives are probably the most
important fruit-crop. Both the preserved fruit and the oil are exported
to nearly every civilized people. Much of the oil is consumed at home,
very largely taking the place of meat and butter. Lucca-oil is regarded
as the best.
[Illustration: ITALY]
The grape-crop is enormous, and the fruit itself is exported. Some of
the fruit sold as "Malaga" grapes throughout the United States during
winter months comes from Italy. Chianti wine, from the vineyards around
Florence, has hitherto been regarded as an inferior product, but the
foreign demand for it is steadily increasing. The Marsala wines of
Sicily are largely exported.
Among mineral products the iron deposits in the island of Elba are
undoubtedly the most valuable, but they are yet undeveloped to any great
extent. The quarries at Carrara produce a fine marble that has made
Italy famous in sculpture and architecture. Much of the boracic acid
used in the arts comes from Tuscany, and the world's chief supply of
sulphur comes from the neighborhood of Mount Etna in Sicily. Of this
Americans buy about one-third.
On account of the lack of coal, the manufactures are restricted mainly
to art wares, such as jewelry, silk textiles, and fine glassware. The
Venetian glassware, the Florentine and mosaic jewelry, and the pink
coral ornaments are famous the world over. Within recent years, however,
imported coal, together with native lignite, have given steel
manufacture an impetus. Steel ships and rails made at home are meeting
the demands of commerce. Goods of American cotton are made for export to
Turkey and South American countries.
Raw silk, wine, olive-oil, straw goods, sulphur, and art goods are
exported. Cotton, wheat, tobacco, and farm machinery from the United
States, and coal, woollen textiles, and steel goods from Great Britain
are the chief imports. Most of the foreign trade is with the nearby
states. The raw silk goes to France.
Since the unification of Italy the railways have been readjusted to the
needs of commerce. Before that time the lines were wholly local in
character; with the readjustment they were organized into trunk lines.
They enter France through the Mont Cenis tunnel; they reach Switzerland
and Germany by way of St. Gotthard Pass; they cross the Austrian border
through Brenner Pass.
_Rome_, the capital, is a political rather than an industrial centre.
_Milan_, the Chicago of the kingdom, is the chief market for the crops
of northern Italy and a great railway centre. It is also the market for
raw silk. _Genoa_, the principal port, is the one at which most of the
trade of the United States is landed. _Naples_ monopolizes most of the
marine traffic between Italy and Great Britain. _Leghorn_ is famous for
its manufacture and trade in straw goods. A considerable part of the
grain harvested in the Po Valley is stored for shipment at _Venice_--not
in elevators, but in pits. _Palermo_ is the trading centre of Sicily.
Most of the sulphur is shipped from _Catania_. _Brindisi_ and _Ancona_
are shipping-points for the Suez Canal route.
=Spain and Portugal.=--The surface of these states is too rugged and the
climate too arid for any great agricultural development. Less than half
the area is under cultivation; nevertheless, they are famous for several
agricultural products--merino wool, wine, and fruit. The merino wool of
the Iberian peninsula has no equal for fine dress goods; it is imported
into almost every other country having woollen manufactures. A
considerable amount of ordinary wool is grown, but not enough for home
needs.
The fruit industry is an important source of income. Oranges, limes, and
lemons are extensively grown for exports; among these products is the
bitter orange, from which the famous liqueur curacao, a Dutch
manufacture, is made. The heavy, sweet port wine, now famous the world
over, was first made prominent in the vineyards of Spain and Portugal.
Malaga raisins are sold in nearly every part of England and America. The
olive is more extensively cultivated than in any other state, but both
the fruit and the oil are mainly consumed at home--the latter taking the
place of butter. Raw silk is grown for export to France.
Although a larger part of the peninsula must depend on the American and
Scandinavian forests for lumber, there is one tree product that is in
demand wherever bottles are used--namely, cork. The cork is prepared
from the bark of a tree (_Quercus suber_) commonly known as the cork
oak,[73] which grows freely in the Iberian peninsula and northern
Africa.
[Illustration: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL]
Metals and minerals of economic use are abundant. Iron ore is sold to
Great Britain, France, and Germany. Since the Spanish-American War,
however, there have been extensive developments in utilizing the coal
and the ore which before that time had been sold to other countries.
The undeveloped coal and iron resources are very great, and must figure
in the payment of a national debt that is near the limit of bankruptcy.
The state, however, is entering a period of industrial prosperity.
The most available metal resource is quicksilver. Of this metal the
mines in Almaden produce about one-half the world's supply. The working
of these mines is practically a government monopoly, and the income was
mortgaged for many years ahead when Spain was at war with her rebellious
colonies.
Both Spain and Portugal are poorly equipped with means for
transportation. The railways lack organization, and freight rates are
excessive. Not a little of the transportation still depends on the
ox-cart and the pack-train. The merchant marine has scarcely more than a
name; the foreign commerce is carried almost wholly in British or French
bottoms. The imports are mainly cotton, coal, lumber, and
food-stuffs--these in spite of the fact that every one save lumber might
be produced at home.
Wine and fruit products, iron ore, and quicksilver are leading exports.
Of these the United States purchases wine and raisins for home
consumption and lace and filigree work for the trade with Mexico. Spain
has a considerable trade in cotton goods with her colonies, the Canary
Islands, and the African provinces of Rio de Oro and Adrar.
Portugal likewise supplies her foreign possessions--Goa (India), Macao
(China), and the Cape Verde and Azores Islands--with home products. The
chief Portuguese trade, however, is with Great Britain and Brazil.
_Madrid_ is the capital of Spain. _Barcelona_ is the chief commercial
centre. _Valencia_, _Alicante_, _Cartagena_, and _Malaga_, are all ports
of fruit and wine trade. _Oporto_ has been made famous for the port wine
that bears its name. Probably not one per cent. of the port now used,
however, comes from Oporto, and not many Malaga raisins come from
Malaga.
=Switzerland.=--This state is situated in the heart of the highest Alps.
The southeastern half is above the altitude in which food-stuffs can be
produced, and probably no other inhabited country has a greater
proportion of its area above the limits of perpetual snow. A
considerable area of the mountain-slopes affords grazing. The
valley-lands of the lake-region produce a limited amount of food-stuffs,
but not enough for the sparse population.
Politically, Switzerland is a republic, having the position of a
"buffer" state between Germany, Italy, France, and Austria-Hungary.
Racially, the state is divided among Italians, French, and Germans; as a
matter of fact, however, the old Helvetian spirit, which not even Caesar
could destroy, is still a great factor in dominating the people; this,
with their montane environment, gives the Swiss a very positive
nationality.
The agricultural interests of the state are developed to their utmost;
two-thirds of the bread-stuffs, however, are purchased from the United
States, the plains of Bohemia, and Russia. Cherries, apples, grapes, and
other fruit are cultivated in every possible place, and as these can be
delivered to any part of western and central Europe within a day, the
fruit industry is a profitable one.
Cattle are bred for dairy purposes, but those for beef must be very
largely imported, Austria-Hungary and Italy selling the needed supply.
Goats are raised for their hides, and the latter are converted into
Morocco leather. Of the dairy products, cheese is in many respects the
most important; Gruyere cheese is exported to nearly every country. On
account of the long distance from populous centres milk cannot be
transported; much of it is, therefore, condensed, and in that form
exported.
A peculiar feature of the dairy industry is the fact that it is
constantly moving. The dairy herds begin to pasture in the lowlands as
soon as the snow melts, and as fast as the snow line recedes up the
mountains the cattle follow. The milk is converted into butter and
cheese wherever the herds may be, and the second crop of grass below
them is cut and cured for winter forage.
In spite of the fact that Switzerland has no available coal,[74]
manufacture is pre-eminently the industry of the state. During the long
winters the Alpine herdsman and his family whittle out wooden toys from
the stock of rough lumber laid by for the purpose. Farther down in the
valley-lands the exquisite brocades and muslins are made on hand-looms,
or by the aid of the abundant water-power. Each industrial district has
its special line of manufacture, so that there is scarcely an idle day
in the year.
In the cities and towns of the lowland district, watches, clocks,
music-boxes, and fine machinery are manufactured. For many years Swiss
watches were about the only ones used in the United States, but on
account of the competition of American watches this trade has fallen
off. The mechanical music-player, operated by perforated paper, has also
interfered with the trade in music-boxes.
Switzerland is provided with excellent facilities for transportation,
and this has done about as much for the commercial welfare of the state
as all other industrial enterprises. In proportion to its area, the
railway mileage is greater than that of the surrounding states. The
roads are well built and the rates of transportation are low.
In addition to the ordinary trip-tickets, monthly time-tickets are
issued to travellers, allowing the holders to travel when and where they
please within the limits of the state on all roads and lake-steamers.
These are sold to the traveller for about two-thirds the price of the
1,000-mile book of the American railway. The carriage roads have no
superiors, and they penetrate about every part of the state below the
snow line; they also cross the main passes of the Alps.
Through one or another of these passes most of the foreign traffic of
the state must be carried. To Genoa and Milan it crosses the Alps via
the St. Gotthard tunnel, or the Simplon Pass;[75] to Paris it goes by
the Rhone Valley; between Vienna and Switzerland, by the Arlberg tunnel;
and to Germany or to Amsterdam through the valley of the Main.
As a result of this most excellent system of transportation, Switzerland
is thronged with visiting tourists at all times of the year; moreover,
it has always been the policy of the Swiss Government not only to
provide for them, but also to make the country attractive to them. The
result has shown the wisdom of the policy. Indeed, the foreign tourist
has become one of the chief sources of income of the Swiss people, and
the latter profit by the transaction to the amount of about forty
million dollars a year.
About all the raw material used in manufacture must be imported. The
cotton is purchased mainly from the United States, and enters by way of
Marseille. The raw silk is purchased from Italy, China, and Japan. Coal,
sugar, food-stuffs, and steel are purchased from Germany, and this state
supplies about half the imports. From the United States are purchased
wheat, cotton, and coal-oil.
The manufactures are intended for export. The fine cotton textiles sold
to the United States are worth far more than the raw cotton purchased
therefrom. Silk textiles, straw wares, toys, watches, jewelry, and dairy
products are leading exports. The surrounding states are the chief
buyers, and none of them competes with Switzerland to any extent in the
character of the exports.
_Geneva_, situated at the head of the Rhone Valley, is the chief trade
depot; it is noted especially for the manufacture of watches, of which
many hundred thousand are made yearly. _Zurich_ is the centre of
manufactures of textiles and fine machinery. The silk-brocade industry
is centred chiefly in this city and _Basel_.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Why did not France prosper commercially prior to the time of the
revolution of 1793?
What are the chief natural advantages of the state in favor of
commercial development?
In what ways have the natural disadvantages of Switzerland been
overcome?
How has the loss of her colonies affected the industrial development of
Spain?
Comparing Spain and Italy, which has the better situation with reference
to the Suez Canal traffic?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the amount of foreign trade of each
state.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of each one with the
United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Adams's New Empire, pp. 160-168.
Fiske's Discovery of America, Vol. II, Chapter XI.
Procure for inspection specimens of raw silk and also of the choice
textile goods made in these states.
CHAPTER XXVIII
EUROPE--THE DANUBE AND BALKAN STATES
The Danube and Balkan states derive their commercial importance partly
from the large area in which bread-stuffs may be produced, and also
because the valley of the Danube has become an overland trade-route of
growing importance between the Suez Canal and the North Sea.
=Austria-Hungary.=--This empire is composed of the two monarchies, Austria
and Hungary, each practically self-governed, but united under a single
general government. The greater part of the country is walled in by the
ranges of the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains.
The region known as the Tyrol is topographically continuous with
Switzerland, and the people have Swiss characteristics. Galicia,
northeast of the Carpathian Mountains, the fragment of Poland that fell
to Austria at the time of partition, is a part of the great Russian
plain. Bohemia, which derives its name from the Keltic peoples, whom
Caesar called the Boii, comprises the upper part of the Elbe river-basin.
Its natural commercial outlet is Germany, but the race-hatred which the
Czechs have for the Germans, retards commercial progress. Hungary is a
country of plains occupying the lower basin of the Danube. The Huns are
of Asian origin. Austria proper occupies the upper valley of the Danube,
adjoining Germany; the country and the people are Germanic.
To the student of history it is a surprise that a country of such
diverse peoples, having but little in common save mutual race-hatred,
should hold together under the same general government. The explanation,
however, is found in the topography of the region. The basin of the
Danube is a great food-producing region, and the upper valley of the
Elbe River forms the easiest passage from the Black to the Baltic Sea.
The topography therefore gives the greater part of the country
commercial unity.
The climate and surface of the low plains of Hungary are much the same
as those of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Grain-growing and stock-raising are
the chief employments. High freight rates, a long haul, and the
competition of Russia and Roumania have retarded the development of
these industries, however. Bohemia is likewise a grain-growing country,
and the easy route into Germany through the Elbe Valley makes the
industry a profitable one. Bohemia is also in the sugar-beet area.
There is an abundance of coal in Austria, but most of it is unfit for
the manufacture of iron and steel. Steel manufacture, however, is
carried on, the industry being protected by the distance from the German
steel-making centres. The lead-mines about Bleiberg (or "Leadville") are
very productive; at Idria are the only quicksilver-mines in Europe that
compete with those of Almaden, Spain. The salt-mines near Krakow are in
a mass of rock-salt twelve hundred feet thick.
Most of the manufactured products are for home consumption. American
cotton and home-grown wool supply the greater part of the textiles. The
flour-mills are equipped with the very best of machinery, and much of
the product is for export to Germany and the countries to the south. The
manufactures that have made the state famous, however, are gloves and
glassware, both of which are widely exported. The sand, fluxes, and
coloring minerals of Bohemian glassware are all peculiar to the region,
and the wares, therefore, cannot be imitated elsewhere. The gloves are
made from the skins of Hungarian sheep and goats.
The railways are not well organized, and the mileage is insufficient for
the needs of the country. Ludwig Canal (in Germany) connects the Danube
with the Main, a navigable tributary of the Rhine; the Elbe is navigable
from a point above Prague to the Baltic; the Moravian Gate opens a
passage from Vienna northward; the Iron Gate, through which the Danube
flows, is the route to the Black Sea; Semmering Pass and its tunnel is
the gateway to the ports of the Adriatic. These great routes practically
converge at Vienna, which also is the great railway centre of the
empire.
The foreign trade consists mainly of the export of food-stuffs (of which
sugar and eggs are heavy items), fine cabinet ware, woollen textiles
(made from imported wool), barley and malt, and fine glassware. Much of
the German and Italian wine is sent to market in casks made of Austrian
stock; the coal goes mainly to Italy. The imports are raw cotton from
the United States and Egypt, wool, silk, and tobacco. Coal is both
exported and imported. The United States sells to Austria-Hungary
cotton, pork, and corn--buying porcelain ware, glassware, and gloves,
amounting to about one-fifth the value of the exports.
_Vienna_, the capital, is the financial centre and commercial
clearing-house of central Europe; it has also extensive manufactures.
_Budapest_ is the great focal point of Hungarian railways and commerce.
_Prague_ controls the coal, textile, and glass trade of Bohemia.
_Lemberg_ is the metropolis of Galicia. The states of Liechtenstein,
Bosnia, and Herzegovina are commercially under the control of Austria.
=The Lower Danube States.=--Roumania and Bulgaria, the plain of the lower
Danube, are enclosed by the Carpathian and Balkan ranges. They
constitute a great wheat-field whose chief commercial outlets are the
Iron Gate into Germanic Europe, and the Sulina mouth of the Danube into
the Black Sea. The growing of maize for home consumption and wheat for
export form the only noteworthy industries. Most of the grain is shipped
up the Danube and sold in Great Britain and Germany.
From the Iron Gate to the Black Sea the Danube is held as an
international highway, and the control of its navigation is directed by
a commission of the various European powers, having its head-quarters at
Galatz, Roumania.
[Illustration: TURKEY AND GREECE]
In the Balkan Mountains is the famous Vale of Roses which furnishes
about half the world's supply of attar-of-roses. The petals of the
damask rose are pressed between layers of cloth saturated with lard. The
latter absorbs the essential oil, from which it is easily removed. About
half a ton of roses are required to make a pound of the attar. Kazanlik,
noted also for rugs, is the great market for attar. _Galatz_ and
_Rustchuk_ are grain-markets and river-ports; from the latter a railway
extends to _Varna_, the chief port of the Black Sea. From _Sofia_, near
the Bulgarian frontier, a trunk line of railway extends through
Budapest to western Europe.
=Turkey-in-Europe.=--The European part of the Ottoman Empire has long been
politically known as the "Sick Man" of Europe, and so far as the
industries and commerce of the state are concerned, there is no excuse
for its separate existence as a state. Its political existence, however,
is regarded as a necessity, in order to prevent the Russians from
obtaining military and naval control of the Mediterranean and Black
Seas, and thereby becoming a menace to all western Europe. Less than
one-half the people are Turks; the greater part of the population
consists of Armenians, Jews, Magyars, and Latins.
Most of the country is rugged and unfit for grain-growing. The internal
government is bad, the taxes are so ruinous that the agricultural
resources are undeveloped, and every sort of farming is primitive. In
many instances the taxes levied on the growing crops become practical
confiscation when they are collected. Much of the cultivable land is
idle because there are no means of getting the crops to market.
Grapes and wine, silk, opium, mohair and wool, valonia (acorn cups used
in tanning leather), figs, hides, cigarettes, and carpets are the
leading exports, and these about half pay for the American cotton
textiles, woollen goods, coal-oil, sugar, and other food-stuffs
imported. Choice Mocha coffee is imported for home use, and poorer
grades are exported. Most of the foreign commerce is in the hands of
English and French merchants. Armenians, Jews, and Greeks are the native
middlemen and traders.
The native population is subject to the Sultan, whose rule is absolute;
most foreign merchants and residents are permitted by treaties to remain
subject to the regulations of the consuls.
_Constantinople_ is the capital. Its situation on the Bosphorus is such
that under any other European government it would command a tremendous
foreign commerce. It is naturally the focal point of the trade between
Europe and Asia. A trunk line of railway connects the city with Paris.
_Salonica_ is the port of western Turkey, and is likewise connected by
rail with western Europe. A great deal of the foreign commerce of the
state is now landed at this port.
[Illustration: HARBOR OF CONSTANTINOPLE]
The chief possessions of the Ottoman Empire are Asia Minor, Armenia,
Mesopotamia, Syria, and Arabia.
=Greece.=--Greece is a rugged peninsula, no part of which is more than
forty miles from the sea. The country is without resources in the way of
coal, timber, or available capital. Its former commercial position, in
ancient times, was due largely to the silver-mines near Ergasteria, and
subsequently to the gold-mines of eastern Macedonia; these, however, are
no longer productive.
There is but little land suitable for farming, and not far from one-half
the bread-stuffs must be imported. Much of the timber has been
destroyed, and this has resulted in a deterioration not only of the
water-power, but of the cultivable lands as well. The railway lines are
short and their business is local; there are practically no trunk line
connections with the great centres of commerce.
The harbors and the natural position of the country are its best
remaining resources. The Greeks are born sailors, and the country is in
the pathway of European and Asian commerce. Most of the grain-trade
between the Black and Mediterranean Seas is controlled by Greek
merchants, and the Greeks are everywhere in evidence in the carrying
trade of the Mediterranean. The construction of the Corinthian canal has
also given Greek commerce a material impetus.
The chief exports are Corinthian grapes--commonly known as
"currants"--fruit, and iron ore from Ergasteria. Great Britain, France,
and Belgium are the chief buyers of the fruit-crop. The exports scarcely
pay for the American cotton, Russian wheat, and the timber products that
are purchased abroad. There has been a material growth in the
manufacture of cotton, woollens, and silk in the past few years, much of
the work being done in households. _Athens_ is the capital and largest
city. _The Piraeus_ and _Patras_ are the chief ports.
=Servia= and =Montenegro= are stock-growing countries. The former has
suffered greatly from misgovernment and the waste of its resources.
Wine-cask stock and cattle are sold to Austria, which has five-sixths of
its trade. _Belgrade_ is its metropolis. Tobacco and live-stock are
exported from Montenegro to Austria.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
On a good map of central Europe trace an all-water route from the mouth
of the Danube to the ports of the lower Rhine and the North Sea; what
connection have the cities of Ratisbon and Lemberg with this route?
How do the forests of these states affect the wine industry of Germany?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the amount and movement of the
exports and imports of these countries.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the volume of trade of these
countries with the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL REFERENCE
Great Canals of the World--p. 4089.
A good map of central Europe.
[Illustration: RUSSIAN EMPIRE]
CHAPTER XXIX
EUROPE-ASIA--THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
The great plain of Eurasia, which borders about half the circuit of the
Arctic Ocean, is undivided by topographic barriers or boundaries. It is
physically a unit.
=Russia.=--Russia comprises more than one-half the area of Europe; the
Russian Empire embraces about one-half of Europe and Asia combined, and
constitutes more than one-seventh of the land surface of the earth. East
and west, from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok, the distance is about six
thousand miles. It has a similar position with respect to southern
Europe and China as has Canada to the United States.
In latitude the country is unfortunately situated. North of the latitude
of St. Petersburg the climate is too cold to grow bread-stuffs; a large
part of the country is, therefore, unproductive. The central belt is
forest-covered; the southern part, or "black earth" belt, comprises the
greater part of the productive lands, and this region is the chief
granary of Europe.
Russia is an agricultural country. Maize and rye grown for home
consumption, and wheat for export, are the chief products. Flax is a
leading export product, and the Russian crop constitutes about
four-fifths of the world's supply. Lands too remote from markets for
grain-growing produce cattle and sheep, which are grown mainly for their
hides and tallow. The wool of the Don is a very coarse textile that is
much used in the manufacture of American carpets; that of the arid
plateaus of the southern country is a fine rug wool.
Agriculture in Russia is on a much lower plane than in western Europe.
Most of the land is owned in large estates. Individual farming is rare,
land tillage being usually a community affair. A village community rents
or purchases a tract of land, and the latter is allotted to the families
composing it, a part of the land being reserved for pasturage. The
business is transacted by "elders," or trustees, who exercise a general
management and supervision over the "mir," or community.
The methods of farming are not the best, and an acre of land produces
scarcely one-third as much as the same area is made to yield in other
states. The farming class, or peasantry, was in a condition of serfdom
until within a few years. Poverty unfits them to compete with farmers of
western Europe; moreover, the laws of land ownership and tenure also
serve to discourage farming.
The metal and mineral resources are very great. Iron ore is abundant,
and the yearly output of both is greatly increasing. There are extensive
deposits in southern Russia, in the Ural Mountains, and in Poland. Coal
of good quality is plentiful, and coal mining is encouraged by a heavy
tariff on the foreign coal that enters regions where the home product is
available. The most productive coal-fields are those of the lower Don
River and of Poland.
Gold is obtained in various parts of Siberia and in the Ural Mountains,
but scarcely enough is mined for the requirements of coinage. Copper is
also mined in the Ural and Caucasus Mountains. More than nine-tenths of
the world's supply of platinum is also obtained in the Ural Mountains.
The petroleum fields of Transcaucasia have a yearly output a little
greater than those of the United States.
The forest area is surpassed only by the timber belt of North America,
both of which are in about the same latitudes. This area, within a very
few years, is destined to be the chief lumber supply of all Europe.
Moreover, the forests, the grain-growing lands, and the iron and coal
constitute national resources which are surpassed in no other countries
save the United States and China.
The Russian Government has done much to encourage manufactures.
Steel-making in the Ural district, in Poland, and in the iron regions of
the Don has progressed to the extent that home-made railway material and
rolling stock are now generally used. Farming machinery is made in the
cities of the grain-growing region. The manufacture of cotton, woollen,
and linen fabrics has developed to the extent that the state is becoming
an exporter rather than an importer of such goods.
Railway building has progressed under government aid, and about
two-thirds of the 37,000 miles of track are owned by the state. The
Transsiberian Railway connecting Vladivostok with the trunk lines of
Europe was built by the state both for strategic and economic purposes.
Large bodies of emigrants are carried into Siberia at nominal rates and
are settled on lands that are practically free. The return cargoes
consist of Chinese products--mainly silk textiles and tea--destined for
western Europe.
A network of railways covers the grain-growing districts; trunk lines,
mainly for strategic purposes, extend through Russian Turkestan to the
Chinese border. For many years Russia has endeavored to acquire the
territory that would afford commercial outlets to the Indian Ocean and
into China. In this the state has been thwarted by two great
powers--Great Britain and Japan. The construction of canals and the
improvements of river-navigation are under government management, and
the internal water-ways aggregate about fifty thousand miles of
navigation.
The foreign commerce is changing in character as manufactures develop.
Wheat, flour, timber products, flax, and petroleum are the chief
exports. Cotton, tea, wool, and coal are the leading imports, the
first-named coming mainly from the United States. Germany, Great
Britain, France, Holland, and the United States are the chief European
countries utilizing Russian trade. The commerce between Russia and China
is growing rapidly. The Transsiberian railway is its chief northern
outlet, and a branch of this road, now under construction, extends
through to the leading commercial centres of Manchuria, to Port Arthur.
A considerable amount of manufactured goods is sent to Asia Minor and
the Iran countries.
The most available ports opening into the Atlantic are on the Baltic
Sea, but these are blocked by ice in winter; the best ports are on the
Black Sea, but the Russians do not control the navigable waters that
connect them with the Atlantic.
Much of the internal trade is carried on by means of annual fairs. The
most important of these are held at _Nijni_, (lower) _Novgorod_,
_Kharkof_, _Kief_, and other points. At the first-named fair goods to
the amount of $80,000,000 have changed hands during a single season, and
the annual fair is the recognized common ground on which the oriental
traders meet the buyers of European and American firms.
Unlike the schemes of colonization of other European states, the various
possessions of the Czar are practically in a single area, the
dependencies being contiguous. The lines between them, with few
exceptions, are political rather than natural boundaries.
_St. Petersburg_, the capital, is the centre of finance and trade.
_Riga_ is the port from which most of the lumber is exported; it
receives the coal purchased from Great Britain for the factories of the
Baltic coast. The harbor of Riga is not greatly obstructed by ice.
_Archangel_ has an export trade of lumber and flax during the few months
when the White Sea is free from ice. _Odessa_ and _Rostof_ are the
grain-markets of the empire. _Astrakhan_ is the centre of trade for the
Iran countries, and _Baku_ is the petroleum-market. _Moscow_ is the
chief focal point of the railways; and in consequence has become a great
centre of manufacture and trade. _Warsaw_, next to Moscow, is the most
important city.
=Siberia.=--This great territory resembles Russia in surface and climatic
features. Like the former "west" of the United States, Siberia is the
open "east" into which much of the surplus population of Russia,
Germany, and the Scandinavian countries is moving, attracted by fine
farming lands. The European emigrant becomes a producer when settled in
Siberia, and, at the same time, a consumer of Russian manufactures. In
five years more than one million people thus became occupants of the new
country in Siberia. Russian trade is encouraged by a heavy tariff on
foreign goods brought into Siberia.
_Tobolsk_, _Tomsk_, and _Semipalatinsk_ are collecting stations for
Siberian products, and each is built on navigable waters. _Irkutsk_
receives the caravan trade that goes from Peking through _Urga_ and
_Kiakhta_, the frontier post of Chinese trade. _Vladivostok_ is the
great Pacific outlet and the terminus of the Transsiberian Railway. It
is ice-bound in winter. _Harbin_, in Manchuria, China, is a Russian
trading post of great commercial importance.
=Bokhara= and =Khiva= are Russian vassal states. The former was acquired
chiefly as a trade-route. A railway from _Krasnovodsk_ on the Caspian
Sea extends through _Merv_, _Bokhara_, and _Samarkand_ to _Kashgar_,
where it meets the caravan trade from central China. The building of
this railway has caused a great development of cotton-growing in these
countries, which furnish Europe and America with the choice Afghan,
Khiva, and Bokhara rugs.
=Transcaucasia=, now joined to Russia, is a part of the plateau of Iran. A
railway extends across the country from _Batum_ to _Baku_, connecting
the Black and Caspian Seas. Transcaucasia is the petroleum region of the
East. It is also noted for the Shirvan, Kabistan, Daghestan, and Kazak
rugs which are sold all over Europe and America. The so-called
"Cashmere" rugs are not a product of Kashmir, but are made in the town
of _Shemaka_. Kabistan rugs are made in _Kuba_. Kazak fabrics are
usually the sleeping-blankets of the Kazak (Cossack) rough-riders.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How will the development of the coal, iron, and lumber resources most
likely affect the industrial future of Russia?
Discuss the policy of Siberian immigration;--what are its advantages to
German colonists?
From the map accompanying this chapter show how the tributary streams of
the great rivers have served to extend Russian commerce through Siberia.
Note the situation of the cities and towns of Siberia with reference to
the rivers.
What effect has the high latitude of Russia on its agricultural
industries?
From the Statesman's Year-Book make a list of the leading exports and
imports of Russia by articles, and also the volume of trade with other
countries.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the statistics of trade between
Russia and the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Commercial life in Russia--preferably from the article, "Russia," in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
For a rug of the Caucasus type, see illustration, p. 351; compare the
Kabistan with the Persian piece--which has the floral and which the
geometric figures?
CHAPTER XXX
THE IRAN PLATEAU AND ARABIA
The countries of the Iran plateau extend from the Mediterranean Sea to
the valley of the Indus River. The Arabian Peninsula is not a part of
it, but its climate and general character are similar. The Iran
countries are exceedingly rugged, and a great part of their surface is
more than a mile above sea-level. The climate is one of great extremes;
the summer hot-waves and the winter hurricanes are probably unknown
elsewhere in severity. The greater part of Arabia is an unhabitable
desert.
[Illustration: THE RUG-MAKING COUNTRIES]
The rigorous conditions of surface and climate have placed their stamp
upon the population of the region. They are full of the intelligent
cunning and ferocity that mark people living under such conditions of
environment. In many parts the sterile soil and arid climate force the
sparse population into nomadic habits of life and predatory pursuits.
For the greater part, the land hardly yields enough food-stuffs for the
population, and any great development of agriculture is out of the
question. The flood-plain of the Tigris and Euphrates, and a few of the
river-valleys are highly productive.
[Illustration: AN ANTIQUE TREE-OF-LIFE, KERMANSHAH (PERSIAN) RUG]
Before the Christian era several trade-routes between Europe and the
Orient lay across this region, and along the caravan routes there were
the usual industries pertaining to commercial peoples. The cities of
Sinope, Trebizond, Astrabad, Phasis, Mashad, and Bactra (now Balkh) grew
into existence along one of the northern routes. Tyre, Nineveh, Tarsus,
Palmyra, Babylon, and Persepolis were founded along one or another of
the southern routes. Of these, Trebizond only retains its importance,
being a seaport with a considerable trade. The commerce that once passed
over this route was crushed out of existence during the invasions by
Jenghis Khan.
[Illustration: A KABISTAN RUG--CAUCASUS DISTRICT]
Of the various industries of the Iran plateau, practically but one
extends beyond its borders, namely, the manufacture of the textile
fabrics known as Oriental rugs. These are unique; they are made of
materials, colored with dyes, and are ornamented with designs that
cannot be successfully imitated anywhere else in the world. The filling
of the rugs consists of fine wool, selected not only from particular
localities, but also from certain parts of the fleece. The dye-stuffs
are common to other parts of the world, and their names--indigo,
saffron, coccus, madder, and orchil--are familiar. But both the wool and
the dye-stuffs possess qualities imparted to them by soil and climate
that are not found elsewhere.
The absence of floors, and of the furniture found in European dwellings,
make the rugs essential household articles rather than luxuries. The
hearth-rug, the bath-mat, the divan-cover, the sleeping-blanket, and the
saddle-mat must be regarded as necessities. Religion also has its
requirements, and the prayer rug, sometimes ornamented with the hands of
the Prophet, is a part of every household equipment, whether of the
nomadic Arab or the wealthy merchant. Each district and people have
their own designs and methods of workmanship, and the rugs of each are
easily distinguished.[76]
For the greater part these are gathered by caravans and conveyed to
convenient shipping-points. Nearly all the cottage-made product is
obtained in this manner. As a rule the rugs are named from the town or
district in which they are made. Smyrna and Constantinople are the chief
ports of shipment. Many of them find their way to European dealers, but
New York is probably the largest rug-market in the world. The great
majority are retailed at from ten to fifty dollars each; choice
fabrics, however, bring from three hundred to ten thousand dollars.
Oriental rugs are hand-woven, and a weaver frequently spends several
years on a single piece, earning perhaps less than ten cents a day. The
factory-made rugs are inferior to the cottage-manufactured product.
=Turkish Possessions.=--Anatolia is the common name of the Turkish
possession formerly known as Asia Minor. The name properly belongs,
however, to only a small part of the region. The Asiatic possessions of
the Ottoman Empire comprise Asia Minor, Armenia, Kurdistan, Syria,
Mesopotamia, and Arabia. The Armenians are the commercial people of the
greater part of this region, and although thousands have been massacred
because of Turkish hatred of them, they practically wield the chief
power because of their business enterprise.
During the Roman occupation many miles of roads were built from
Constantinople and other coast-points to the interior. One of these
extended to Mesopotamia, and became a much-travelled route of the trade
which centred at Constantinople. Within recent years German capitalists
have built railways along these roads, thereby creating a considerable
export trade in fruit, rugs, and mohair cloth.
_Angora_ and _Konieh_ (_Iconium_) are important marts. _Trebizond_ is
the chief port of the Black Sea, but it lacks railway connections with
the interior. _Smyrna_ is the chief port of the Mediterranean, and from
it are shipped to European and American markets the fruit and textile
fabrics that have made its importance. In Syria, _Damascus_, one of the
oldest cities in the world, is the centre of a considerable trade in
textile manufactures. Rugs, dates, figs, and damask fabrics are exported
to Europe through _Beirut_, its seaport, with which it is connected by
rail. Much of the stuffs exported is gathered from Persia. _Yafa_ is
the port of Jerusalem. _Bagdad_ is the chief trade-centre of
Mesopotamia.
=Arabia.=--Arabia is nominally a Turkish possession, but the coast-regions
only are under the control of the Sultan. The interior is peopled by
nomadic tribes, who do not acknowledge the sovereignty of Turkey. The
province of Yemen, on the Red Sea, is about the only noteworthy part of
the peninsula. Hides and Mocha coffee, gathered by Arab traders, are
shipped from the port of _Hodeida_. _Mecca_ is the yearly meeting-place
of thousands of Mohammedan pilgrims, who go thither as a religious duty;
it is also the centre from which Asiatic cholera radiates. _Aden_, the
chief coaling-station of the British Empire in the Indian Ocean, is also
a free port, having a considerable trade in American cotton and
coal-oil.
Although Arabia itself is practically of no commercial importance, the
same cannot be said of the Arabic people. They are keen, thrifty
traders, and as brutal in their instincts as they are keen. The commerce
which connects the western part of Asia with Europe is largely of their
making. They collect and transport the goods from the interior,
delivering them to Jewish and Armenian middlemen, who turn them over to
European and American merchants. Arab traders also control the greater
part of the commerce of northern Africa. The slave-trade, which is
wholly in their hands, is very largely the key to the situation. A party
of slave-dealers makes an attack upon a village and, after massacring
all who are not able-bodied, load the rest with the goods to be
transported to the coast.
=Persia.=--Persia is the modernized name of the province now called Fars,
or Farsistan. Within its borders, however, the name Persia is almost
unknown; the native people call the country Iran. In the times of
Cyrus, Xerxes, and Darius, Persia was one of the great powers of the
world. The cultivable lands produced an abundance of food-stuffs. The
mines of copper, lead, silver, and iron were worked to their utmost
extent, and the chief trade-routes between Europe and the Orient crossed
the country to the Indus River.
The conquest by Alexander the Great changed the course of trade and
diverted it to other routes, thus depriving the country of much of its
revenue; the invasions of the Arabs left the empire a hopeless wreck.
Iran blood dominates the country at the present time, it is true, but
the religion of Islam does not encourage any material development, and
the industries are now purely local. There is no organization of trade,
nor any system of transportation except by means of wretched wagon-roads
with innumerable toll-gates. "Turkish" tobacco, opium, and small fruits
are grown for export; silk and wool, however, are the most important
crops. The former is manufactured into brocaded textiles; the latter
into rugs and carpets. There are famous pearl-fisheries in the Persian
Gulf.
_Tabriz_, situated in the midst of an agricultural region, has important
manufactures of shawls and silk fabrics of world renown. The Tabriz rugs
are regarded as among the finest of the rug-maker's art. _Shiraz_, the
former capital, _Kermanshah_,[77] and _Hamadan_ are noted for rug and
carpet manufactures. _Mashad_ is the centre of the trade with Russia.
_Bushire_ and _Bender-Abbas_ are seaports, but have no great importance.
Most of the trade with Russia passes through the port of Trebizond.
=Afghanistan.=--The nomadic tribes that inhabit Afghanistan have but
little in common with the British civilization that is slowly but surely
closing in upon them, and driving them from routes of commerce. A
considerable local traffic is carried on between Bokhara and Herat, and
between Bokhara and Kabul through Balkh, all being fairly prosperous
centres of population in regions made productive by irrigation.
By far the most important route lies between Kabul and Peshawur, at the
head of the Indus River. A railway, the Sind-Pishin, extends along the
valley of this river from Karachi, a port of British India, to Peshawur,
also in British India near the Afghan border, and the route lies thence
through Khaibar Pass to Jelalabad and Kabul. A branch of this road is
completed through Bolan Pass nearly to Kandahar.
_Kabul_, the capital, is a military stronghold rather than a business
centre, although it is a collection depot for the Khiva-Bokhara rugs and
carpets that are marketed at Peshawur. _Kandahar_ has a growing trade
resulting from the railway of the Indus Valley. _Herat_ is the market of
the famous Herati rugs. There is no organized commercial system; a small
amount of British manufactures--mainly stuffs for domestic use--are
imported; rugs and dried fruit are the only exports to Europe and
America. The imports enter mainly by way of Karachi, India; the exports
are carried to Europe, for the greater part, by the Russian railway.
The importance of Afghanistan is due to its position as a buffer state
between Russia and British India. The various strategic points for
years, therefore, have been military strongholds. There is an old
saying: "Whoso would be master of India must first make himself lord of
Kabul." The meaning of this is seen in the history of Khaibar Pass,
which for many years has been a scene of slaughter; indeed, it has been
the chief gateway between occidental and oriental civilizations for
more than twenty centuries. Since the acquisition of India by Great
Britain Afghanistan has been under British protectoracy.
=Baluchistan.=--The general features of Baluchistan resemble those of the
other parts of the Iran plateau. The coast has no harbors in the proper
sense, but the anchorage off _Gwador_ has fair protection from storms
and heavy winds. The few valleys produce enough food-stuffs for the
half-savage population. There is but little organization to the
government save that which is military in character. The state is a
protectorate of Great Britain.
Rug-making is the only industry that connects Baluchistan with the rest
of the world. _Quetta_, the largest town, is a military station
controlling Bolan Pass. Its outlet is the Kandahar branch of the
Sind-Pishin Railway.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What climatic factors prevent these countries from being regions of
great production?
How do climate and soil affect the character of the wool clip?
How do Arabian horses compare with American thorough-bred stock with
respect to usefulness?--how do they compare with the mustang stock?
Why is Khaibar Pass regarded as the key to India?
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia (or from McCarthy's History of Our Own Times) read an
account of the British disaster at Kabul.
Study, if possible, one or more rugs of the following kinds, noting the
colors, designs, and warp of each: Bokhara (antique and modern),
Anatolian, Kermanshah, and Baluchistan.
CHAPTER XXXI
BRITISH INDIA AND THE EAST INDIES
These countries are in tropical latitudes and in the main are regions of
great productivity. A few native states that have resisted annexation
and conquest excepted, almost the entire area is divided among Great
Britain, Holland, and France.
[Illustration: INDIA]
=British India.=--The Empire of India comprises an area half as large as
the United States, situated on the southern slope of Asia. It covers the
same latitude as the span between the Venezuelan coast and the Ohio
River; from the Indus to the Siam frontier the distance is about two
thousand miles. It includes also settlements in the Malay peninsula.
Excepting the plateau of the Dekkan, and the slopes of the Himalayan
ranges, most of the surface consists of plains and low, rolling land
covered with a great depth of soil. Through these rich lands flow four
large rivers--the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Irawadi, which afford
a great deal of internal communication. The Himalaya Mountains on the
north and the Hindu Kush on the northwest practically shut off
communication from the northward, so that all communication in this
direction is concentrated at Khaibar and Bolan Passes, the most
important gateways by land approach.
British India is one of the most populous regions of the world; the
average population per square mile is about one hundred and eighty, a
density considerably greater than that of New York State. The entire
population is about three times that of the United States. Nearly all
the food-stuffs grown are required for home consumption; indeed, dry
years are apt to be followed by a shortage of food-stuffs. Years ago
famines followed any considerable deficiency of crops, but since the
completion of the admirable railway systems the necessary food-stuffs
are quickly shipped to the district where the shortage occurs.
The Hindus constitute about three-fourths of the population. Along the
northern border there are many peoples of Afghan and Turkic descent; in
Burma there is a considerable admixture of Mongol blood. An elaborate
system of social castes imposed by the teachings of Brahmanism has made
the introduction of western methods of education and civilization
somewhat difficult to carry out. The educational system of the
dominating Brahmanic caste, although of a very high order, does not fit
the people to cope with the commercialism of western civilization.
Five-sevenths of the population are engaged in agricultural labor. Rice,
wheat, millet, meat, and sugar are the chief food-crops. Of these, rice
and wheat[78] only are exported; the others are required for home
consumption.
The articles grown for export are jute, cotton, opium, oil-yielding
seeds, tea, and opium. No meat is exported, but hides form a large item
of foreign trade.
The jute is used in the manufacture of rugs and grain-sacks. It is
cultivated mainly in the delta-lands of the Ganges-Brahmaputra. A
considerable part of the product is now manufactured in India and in
China; some is also shipped to California, to be made into wheat-sacks;
perhaps the larger part is sent to Dundee, Scotland, where it is woven
into textile fabrics. The choicest product is used to mix with silk
fibre, or is employed in the manufacture of rugs and coverings.
Cotton cultivation is rapidly taking first rank among the industries of
India, for which the conditions of soil, climate, and market are
admirably adapted. India stands second in cotton-growing, and the area
of production is gradually increasing. Most of the crop is exported to
Europe for manufacture, although there is an increasing amount sold to
Japan. Great Britain is the largest purchaser, and the cotton goods
manufactured at Manchester are reshipped in large quantities to India.
Owing to the low wages paid for labor both in the fields and the mills,
cotton manufacture is a rapidly growing industry in India. In many cases
the yarn is manufactured in India and then sent to China to be made into
coarse cloth. Some of the mills are equipped with machinery made in the
United States.
Tea has become one of the most important crops of India. It is grown
mainly in Ceylon and Assam, and is said to have grown wild in the latter
state. The quality of Indian tea is regarded as superior to the Chinese
product, and Indian teas have therefore very largely supplanted those of
China, in British consumption.
Silk cultivation and manufacture have been growing rapidly in the past
few years; a considerable part of the product is "tussar," or wild silk.
The silk rugs of India are not equalled anywhere else in the world. Wool
is a product of the mountain-regions, but is almost wholly used in the
manufacture of rugs and coverings.
The British occupation of India is commercial rather than political.
India furnishes a most valuable market for British manufactures; it
supplies the British people with a large amount of raw material for
manufacture. The general government is administrative only so far as the
construction of railways, irrigating canals, and harbors, and the
organization of financial affairs are concerned.
There are about two hundred and fifty native states included within the
territory of British India. In addition to the native ruler, a British
governor or magistrate carries out the administrative features of the
British Government. For administrative purposes most of the native
states are grouped into eight provinces, or "presidencies."
=Bengal.=--The states of Bengal, mainly in the valley of the Ganges River,
produce most of the rice and wheat. _Calcutta_, the capital of the
empire, is a comparatively young city. The Hugli at this point is
navigable both for ocean and river craft. The situation of the city is
much like that of New York, and it is therefore finely adapted for
commerce. Railways extending from the various food-producing districts
and from other centres of commerce converge at Calcutta. The city is not
only the centre of administration, but the chief focus of commerce and
finance as well.
=Bombay.=--Bombay includes a number of states bordering on the Arabian
Sea. The city of _Bombay_ is built on an island of the same name. Its
situation on the west coast makes it the most convenient port for the
European trade that passes through the Suez Canal. The opening of the
route gave Bombay a tremendous growth, and it is destined to become a
great commercial factor in Indian Ocean trade. It is also a great
manufacturing centre for cotton textiles. _Ahmedabad_, an important
military station, is also an important centre of cotton manufacture and
wheat-trade.
=Sind.=--The native state Sind includes the greater part of the basin of
the Indus. Its importance is military and strategic rather than
commercial. The ability of Great Britain to hold India depends very
largely on British control of the Indus Valley and the passes leading
from it. The Sind-Pishin Railway traverses the Indus Valley from Karachi
to Peshawur. _Haidarabad_, one of the largest cities of India, is the
centre of an agricultural district. _Karachi_, the port near the mouth
of the Indus, next to Khaibar Pass, is the most important strategic
point of India, and one that the Russians for more than a century have
been trying to possess.
=Punjab.=--The states of the Punjab are mainly at the upper part of the
Indus. _Amritsar_ is an important centre for the manufacture of silk
rugs and carpets. A large number of these are sold in the United States
at prices varying from two hundred to six thousand dollars. The designs
for these textiles are often made in New York. _Peshawur_ is important
chiefly as a military station.
=Burma.=--British Burma includes the basin of the Irawadi River. The
uplands are wheat-fields; the lowlands produce rice. _Mandalay_ is a
river-port and commercial centre. _Rangoon_ is the seaport, with a
considerable ship-building industry that results from the teak forests.
Although the Irawadi is navigable for light craft, railways along the
valley have become a necessity; these centre at Rangoon.
The province of Madras is one of the most densely peopled parts of
India. The chief commercial products are cotton and teak-wood. _Madras_,
its commercial centre, has a very heavy foreign trade in hides, spices,
and cotton. The cotton manufactures are extensive. A yarn-dyed cotton
cloth, now imitated both in Europe and the United States, has made the
name famous.
=Kashmir.=--The native state Kashmir, situated high on the slopes of the
Karakorum Mountains, is known chiefly for the "Cashmere" shawls made
there. The shawls are hand-woven and represent the highest style of the
weaver's art. The best require many years each in the making; they
command prices varying from five hundred to five thousand dollars. This
industry centres at _Srinagar_.
=Other British States.=--The Straits Settlements are so called because
they face the Straits of Malacca. They include several colonies, chief
of which are Singapore, Penang, and Malacca. The Straits ports are free
from export and import duties, a regulation designed to encourage the
concentration of Malaysian products there--in other words, to encourage
a transit trade.
The policy has proved a wise one, and the trade at the three
ports--_Singapore_, _Penang_, and _Malacca_--aggregates about six
hundred million dollars yearly. About two-thirds of this sum represents
the business of Singapore. Tin constitutes about half the exports, a
large share going to the United States. Spices, rubber, gutta-percha,
tapioca, and rattan constitute the remaining trade. Rice, cotton cloth,
and opium are the imports.
The Federated Malay States, situated in the Malay peninsula, and the
northern part of Borneo are also British possessions. Their trade and
products are similar to the rest of the Malaysian possessions.
=Dutch East India.=--The Dutch possessions include nearly all the islands
of the Malay Archipelago and the western part of New Guinea. Of these,
Java and Sumatra are the most important. They are divided into
"residencies," and the administering officers exercise control over the
various plantations. In addition, there are numerous private
plantations. The colonial administration is admirable.
Cane-sugar, coffee, rice, indigo, pepper, tobacco, and tea are the chief
products. The sugar industry has been somewhat crippled by the
beet-sugar product of Europe. Java and Sumatra coffees are in demand all
over Europe and the United States. Sumatra wrappers for cigars find also
a ready market wherever cigars are manufactured. The cultivation of
cinchona, or Peruvian bark, has proved successful, and this substance is
becoming an important export. The islands of Banka and Billiton (with
Riouw) yield a very large part of the world's supply of tin, much of
which goes finally to the United States. The mother-country profits by
the trade of these islands in two ways: the Dutch merchants are
practically middlemen who create and manage the commerce; the Dutch
Government receives an import tax of six per cent., and a small export
tax on nearly all articles except sugar. _Batavia_ is the focal point of
the commerce.
=Siam.=--This kingdom is chiefly important as a buffer state between
French and British India, and little by little has been pared by these
nations until practically nothing but the basin of the Menam River
remains. The administration of the state is progressive, and much of the
resources have been developed in the last few years.
Rice and teak are the leading products. The rice is cultivated by
native laborers--much of it by enforced labor--and is sold to Hongkong,
British India, and the more northerly states. It is collected by Chinese
middlemen, and by them sold to British and German exporters. The
teak-wood business is managed by British firms. The logs are cut by
natives, hauled to the Menam River, and floated to Bangkok; there they
are squared and sent to European markets. Pepper and preserved fish are
also exported. The Menam River is the chief trade-route, and _Bangkok_,
at its mouth, is the focal point of trade.
=French India.=--The French control the region south of China, called
French Indo-China, together with various areas in the peninsula of
Hindustan; of these Pondicheri and Karical are the most important.
Indo-China includes the basin of Mekong River, and rice is the staple
product. The most productive rice-fields are the delta-lands of the
Mekong, formerly known as Cochin-China.
From these lands more than half a million tons of rice are exported, the
product being sold mainly at Hongkong and Singapore. Pepper is also an
export of considerable value. France, China, and the Philippine Islands
are the final destination of the rice export. The imports are mainly
textiles, machinery, and coal-oil from the United States. The machinery
pertains chiefly to the manufactures of cotton and silk textiles. On
account of cheaply mined coal, there is a considerable growth of this
industry. _Saigon_ is the business centre and port at which the Chinese
middlemen meet the European merchants and forwarders.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
What have been the chief effects of the British occupation of these
countries, so far as the natives are concerned?
What is the position of Khaibar Pass with respect to the commerce of
India?
How has the building of the Sind-Pishin Railway strengthened British
occupation of India?
Singapore and Batavia are the two great focal points of trade in the
East India Islands. At the former all trade is absolutely free; at the
latter there is both an import and an export tax. What are the
advantages of each policy?
From the Abstract of Statistics find the trade of the United States with
these countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia, preferably the Encyclopaedia Britannica, read the
following topics:
Caste
Lord Clive
Rattan
Pepper
CHAPTER XXXII
CHINA AND JAPAN
The relative position of China, Russia, and Japan is not unlike that of
continental Europe and Great Britain, and the struggle for supremacy in
the Japan and Yellow Seas is about the same as that which in times past
took place in the North Sea. In the latter case France and Holland were
the disturbing powers; in the former, it is Russia.
=The Chinese Empire.=--A comparison of the Chinese Empire with the United
States shows that the two countries have about the same position and
extent of latitude. There is also about the same proportion of
highlands, arid lands, and fertile lowlands. The similarity of the two
countries in geographic conditions is very marked.
The fertile lowland in the east and southeast is one of the most
productive regions in the world, and forms the chief resource of the
country; on account of its productivity it is densely peopled. The arid
and mountain lands are peopled mainly by cattle-herders and nomadic
tribes.
China is essentially an agricultural country, and the farms are held in
much the same way as in the United States, but the holdings are so small
that agricultural machinery is not required for their cultivation.
Wheat, millet, and pease are grown throughout the lowlands wherever they
can be cultivated. The cultivation of rice is confined mainly to the
coast lowlands. The amount of food-stuffs produced, however, is scarcely
sufficient for home consumption; indeed, a considerable amount is
imported, and the imports year by year are increasing. This is due not
so much to the density of population as to want of means of
transportation of the soil products from inland regions. It is often
much cheaper to import food-stuffs from abroad than to transport them,
even from an adjoining province.
Tea is extensively cultivated, and China exports nearly one-half of the
world's product; the total amount produced is considerably more than
half. Most of this goes to Great Britain and Canada. Raw silk is an
important product, and the mulberry-tree is extensively grown. Cotton is
one of the most general crops in the southern part of the empire,
especially along the lower Yangtze. It is a garden-crop, however, and
nearly all of it is consumed.
The mineral wealth is very great, and with proper management will make
China one of the most productive and powerful countries in the world.
Coal is found in every one of the provinces, and the city of Peking is
supplied with an excellent quality of anthracite from the Fang-shan
mines, only a few miles distant. It is thought that the coal-fields are
the most extensive in the world. Iron ore of excellent quality is
abundant, and in several localities, notably in the province of Shansi,
the two are near each other.
Foreign capitalists are seeking to develop these resources in several
localities. The Germans have obtained mining concessions in Shantung
peninsula, and these involve the iron ore and coal occurring there. The
Peking syndicate, a London company, has also obtained a coal-mining
concession in Shansi.
[Illustration: EASTERN CHINA]
For the greater part the manufactures are home industries.[79] Until
recently most of the cotton cloth was made by means of cottage looms,
and the beautiful silk brocades which are not surpassed anywhere else in
the world are still made in this manner. Porcelain-making is one of the
oldest industries, and to this day the wares sold in Europe and America
are known as "china." Straw carpet, or matting, and fans for export are
also important exports.
The mill system of manufacture is rapidly gaining ground, however, and
foreign companies find it economical to carry the yarn made in India
from American cotton into China to be made into cloth. In the vicinity
of Shanghai alone there are nearly three hundred thousand spindles. This
phase of the industry is due largely to the factor of cheap labor; the
Chinese skilled laborer is intelligent; he does not object to a
sixteen-hour working-day at wages varying from five to twenty cents.
There is no great localization of industrial centres, as in the United
States and Europe. Each centre of population is practically
self-supporting and independent from an economic stand-point. The
introduction of western methods, however, is gradually changing this
feature.
All industries of a general character are hampered for want of good
means of transportation. The empire is traversed by a network of unpaved
roads; but although these are always in a wretched condition, an
enormous traffic is carried over them by means of wheel-barrows,
pack-animals, and by equally primitive methods.
The numerous rivers form an important means of communication. The
Yangtze is now available to commerce a distance of 2,000 miles, and the
opening of the Si Kiang (West River) adds a large area that is
commercially tributary to Canton and Hongkong. The most important
water-way is the Grand Canal, extending from Hang Chow to Tientsin. This
canal is by no means a good one as compared with American and European
standards. It was built not so much for the necessities of traffic, as
to avoid the numerous pirate vessels that infest the coasts. Junks,
row-boats, house-boats, and foreign steam craft are all employed for
traffic. The internal water-ways aggregate about fifteen thousand miles
in length.
[Illustration: A TEA-PLANTATION--PICKING THE LEAVES]
[Illustration: PREPARING THE LEAVES FOR ROASTING]
[Illustration: TEA-BALES FOR EXPORT THROUGH RUSSIA]
Of railways there were less than three hundred and fifty miles at the
close of the century, the most important being the line from Tientsin to
Peking. About five thousand miles are projected and under construction
by American and European companies. A branch of the Transsiberian
railway is under construction to Port Arthur. Telegraph and telephone
lines have become popular and have been extended to the interior a
considerable distance. There are upward of twenty thousand miles of wire
communication, the most important, in many respects, being a direct
overland line between Peking and European cities. Inasmuch as there are
no letters in the Chinese language, the difficulties in using the Morse
code of telegraphy are very great. In some cases the messages are
translated into a foreign language before they are transmitted; in
others, a thousand or more words in colloquial and commercial use are
numbered, and the number is telegraphed instead of the word.
Most of the business between the natives and foreigners is carried on by
means of middlemen, or "compradors," and these include both the
commission merchants and the native bankers. They are intelligent,
thrifty, and trustworthy. They are the most capable merchants in Asia,
and have few if any superiors among the merchants of western nations. A
very large part of the retail trade of the Philippine Islands is carried
on by Chinese merchants.
The Chinese Empire consists of China and the five dependencies, as shown
in the following table:
---------------------+-------------+-------------
| | CAPITAL OR
STATE | POPULATION | CHIEF TOWN
---------------------+-------------+-------------
China proper | 380,000,000 | Peking
Manchuria | 7,500,000 | Kirin
Tibet | 6,000,000 | Lassa
Mongolia | 2,000,000 | Urga
Jungaria | 600,000 | Kur-kara-usu
Eastern Turkestan | 600,000 | Yarkand
---------------------+-------------+--------------
The five dependencies are mainly arid, unproductive, and sparsely
peopled. Their chief importance consists in the fact that they are
"buffer states" between China proper and European states. They produce
little except meat, wool, and live-stock.
China proper is divided into provinces, each governed by a viceroy
appointed by the throne. All business with foreign powers is transacted
through a Foreign Office, the Wai-wu-pu (formerly the Tsung-li-Yamen).
The government business is managed by a Grand Council whose members are
advisers to the throne. The government is controlled mainly by Manchu
officials.
[Illustration: HONGKONG]
Until within a few years China nominally allowed no foreign traders
within her borders; recently, however, about forty cities, commonly
known as "treaty ports," have been opened to the trade of foreign
countries. Goods going inland any distance are required to pay a "liken"
or internal tariff at the border of each province.
Several concessions of territory within recent years have been forced
from China by foreign powers: thus, Great Britain has Hongkong Island
(with the peninsula of Kaulung) and Weihaiwei; Germany has Kiaochou on
the bay of the same name; France has Kwang chau wan harbor. These
concessions carry with them the control of the port and surrounding
territory. The German concession includes the right to mine coal and
iron, and to build railways within a territory of much larger extent. At
the close of the war between Russia and Japan, the latter acquired Port
Arthur, the gateway to Manchuria.
Whatever may be the political significance of the opening of the treaty
ports and the granting of the various concessions, the effect has been
to increase the trade of the United States with China about twenty-fold.
The imports from the United States consist mainly of cotton and cotton
cloth, coal-oil, and flour. The chief exports to all countries are tea,
silk goods, and porcelain ware. Most of those sent to the United States
are landed at Seattle or San Francisco. Great Britain, through the port
of Hongkong, has a larger trade than any other nation. Japan and the
United States have most of the remaining trade.
_Peking_, the capital, is politically, but not commercially, important.
The part occupied by the foreign legations is modern and well kept.
_Tientsin_, the port of Peking, is a larger city, with much more
business. _Canton_, the largest city of the empire, and _Hongkong_, are
the commercial centres of nearly all the British trade. Most of the
American and Japanese trade centres at _Shanghai_. _Niuchwang_, on the
Manchurian frontier, is important mainly as a strategic point. _Macao_,
a Portuguese possession, is the open door of Portugal into China.
The inland divisions of the Chinese Empire have but little commercial
importance. Musk, wool, and skins are obtained from Tibet, into whose
capital, _Lassa_, scarcely half-a-dozen Europeans have penetrated. The
closed condition is due to the opposition of the Lamas, an order of
Buddhist priests. Mongolia is a grazing region that supplies the Chinese
border country with goats, sheep, and horses. It also supplies the
camels required for the caravan tea-trade to the Russian frontiers.
Eastern Turkestan is mainly a desert. _Kashgar_, the metropolis of the
fertile portion, is the exchange market for Chinese and Russian
products. Most of the mineral known as jade is obtained there. Manchuria
is a grazing and wheat-growing country, exporting food stuffs and
ginseng into China. _Harbin_, a Russian trading post, is connected with
Peking and with European cities by railway.
[Illustration: JAPAN AND KOREA]
=Korea=, formerly a vassal of China, became an independent state after the
war between China and Japan, this step being forced by Russia. The
country is a natural market for Japanese manufactures, and in turn
supplies Japan with a considerable amount of food-stuffs. _Chemulpo_ is
the chief centre of its commerce.
=Japan.=--Japan is an insular empire, the commercial part of which has
about the same latitude as the Atlantic coast of the United States; the
empire extends from Formosa to Kamchatka. It is sometimes called the
"Great Britain of the East," and the people are also called the "Yankees
of the East." Structurally, the chain of islands consists of ranges of
volcanic mountains. The abundant rains, however, have made many fertile
river-valleys, and have fringed most of the islands with coast-plains.
Since the opening of Japan to foreigners the Japanese have so thoroughly
adapted themselves to western commercial methods that they have become
the dominating power in eastern Asia. Their influence has been greatly
strengthened by a treaty for defensive purposes with Great Britain. A
most excellent army and a modern navy make the alliance a strong one.
The Japanese are better adapted to mould the commercial policy of China
than any other people.
With a population of more than half that of the United States, occupying
an area not larger than the State of California, every square foot of
available land must be cultivated. Yet the Japanese not only grow most
of the food-stuffs they consume, but are able to export rice. There is
scant facility for growing beef cattle, but fish very largely takes the
place of beef. The cattle grown are used as draught-animals in farm
labor. Ordinary dairy products are but little used.
Rice, tea, and silk are the staple crops. Rice is grown on the coast
lowlands, the west or rainy side[80] producing the larger crop. The
Japanese crop is so superior that the larger part is exported, while an
inferior Chinese grain is imported for home consumption. The quality of
the Japanese rice is due to skilful cultivation.
[Illustration: NATIVE PLOUGHING RICE-FIELDS]
[Illustration: IRRIGATING A RICE-FIELD]
[Illustration: RICE-FIELDS]
Tea has become the staple crop, and is cultivated from Formosa to the
forty-fifth parallel. Tea-farms occupy nearly every acre of the
cultivable hill-side areas in some of the islands, and the soil is
enriched with a fertilizer made from fish and fish refuse, dried and
broken. Most of the tea product is made into green tea, and on account
of its quality it commands a high price. Formosa tea is considered the
best in the market.
Silk culture is confined almost wholly to the island of Hondo. The raw
silk is of superior quality, and the exported material is used mainly in
the manufacture of ribbons and brocades. A limited amount of cotton is
grown, but the staple is short, and its cultivation is not profitable
except in a few localities.
Among the forestry there is comparatively little timber suitable for
building purposes, and a considerable amount of timber is purchased from
the mills of Puget Sound. Bamboo is largely employed for buildings.
Camphor is the product of a tree (_Camphora officinarum_) allied to the
cinnamon and the sassafras. It is cultivated in the island of Kiushiu.
The best gum, however, is now obtained from Formosa, and this island now
controls the world's supply. The camphor product is a government
monopoly leased to a British company.
The lacquer-tree (_Rhus vernicifera_) grows mainly in the island of
Hondo. The sap, after preparation, forms the most durable varnish known.
Black lacquer is obtained by treating the sap with nutgalls. Lacquered
wooden-ware is sold all over Europe and the United States. The lacquered
surface is exceedingly hard and water-proof; it is not affected by
climate.
Gold, porcelain clay, silver, copper, and petroleum are mined. The gold
and silver are used both for coinage and in the arts; the clay has made
Japanese porcelains famous. The copper comes from the most productive
mines of Asia; a considerable amount is exported, but much is used in
the manufacture of Japanese bronze goods. Coal is mined, and this has
given a great impetus to manufacture; iron ore is deficient, and steel
must be imported. The quantity of petroleum is increasing yearly, and is
becoming an important factor in the world's product.
Manufacturing industries are giving shape to the industrial future of
the country. The cotton-mills alone employ seventy thousand people and
keep more than one million spindles busy. More than one million
operatives are engaged in textile manufactures. Much of the cloth, both
cotton and silk, is still woven on cottage looms. The cotton cloth is
sold mainly in China and Korea; the surplus silk textiles find a ready
market in the United States. The best straw matting used as a
floor-covering is now made in Japan and constitutes a very important
export.
Three thousand miles of railway aid the internal industries of the
country; several steamship lines to Hongkong and Shanghai, and one or
more each to Vladivostok, Bombay, San Francisco, Seattle, Honolulu,
Australia, and Vancouver (B.C.) carry the tea, raw silk, and
manufactured products to Europe and America. Much, if not most, of the
steamship interests are owned by the Japanese, and the lines are
encouraged by government subsidies. France and the United States buy
most of the raw silk. The latter country purchases most of the tea,
sending coal-oil, cotton, leather, and lumber in return. Great Britain
and Germany sell to the Japanese a large part of the textiles and the
machinery they use. The exports to the United States are consigned
mainly to San Francisco, New York and Seattle.
_Tokio_ is the capital; _Yokohama_ is the chief port for American
traffic, and the market for most of the foreign trade. Most of the trade
between China and Japan centres at _Nagasaki_, which is the Japanese
naval station. _Osaka_ and _Kioto_ are the chief centres of cotton and
textile manufactures.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How has the policy of seclusion affected the commercial development of
China?
What has been its effect on the social life of the people?
How did the cultivation of opium in India become a factor in the opening
of China to foreign trade?
What is meant by "treaty ports"? Make a list of those shown on the map
of eastern China.
Name two Chinese statesmen who have been factors in the relations
between China and the United States.
Compare the position of Japan with that of the British Isles with
reference to commerce.
What advantages has Japan with reference to latitude?--what
disadvantages with reference to cultivable lands?
From the Statesman's Year-Book find the leading exports and imports and
the volume of trade of these states.
From the Abstract of Statistics find the leading articles of trade
between these states and the United States.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia read the following topics: The opium war, Commodore
Perry's expedition.
CHAPTER XXXIII
AFRICA
Africa is in a state of commercial transition. During the last quarter
of the nineteenth century the partition of its area among European
nations left but few of the names that formerly were familiar. At the
beginning of the twentieth century the British, French, and Germans
controlled the greater part of the continent, although the Portuguese,
Belgians, Italians, and Spanish have various possessions.
The partition of Africa was designed for the expansion of European
markets. The population of Africa is about one hundred and seventy
million, and the continent is practically without manufacturing
enterprises. The people, therefore, must be supplied with clothing and
other commodities. In 1900 the total trade of Africa with the rest of
the world was about one and one-third billion dollars, of which the
United States had a little more than two per cent., mainly cotton cloth
and coal-oil.
=Egypt.=--The Egypt of the maps is a region of indefinite extent so far as
its western and southern boundaries are concerned; the Egypt of history
is the flood plain of the Nile. From the Mediterranean Sea to Cairo the
cultivable area is not far from one hundred miles in width; from Cairo
to Khartum it varies from three to seven or eight miles wide.
[Illustration: AFRICA]
The food-producing power of Egypt depends on the Nile. In lower Egypt a
considerable area is made productive at the ordinary stage of water by
means of irrigating canals, but in upper Egypt the crops must depend
upon the annual flood of the river, which occurs from June until
September. During this period the river varies from twenty-five to forty
feet above the low-water mark. In the irrigated regions three crops a
year may be produced; in the flooded lands only one is grown.
In order to add to the cultivable area two great engineering works have
been constructed. A barrage and lock control the flow of water at
Assiut; a huge dam at Assuan impounds the surplus of the flood season.
These structures, it is thought, will increase the productive power of
the country about one-fourth. Rice, maize (an Egyptian variety), sugar,
wheat, and beans are the staple crops.
Rice is the food of the native people, but the crop is insufficient, and
the deficit must be imported. The wheat, maize, and beans are grown for
export to Europe, the last named being extensively used for
horse-fodder. The sugar-growing industry is protected by the heavy yield
and the cheap fellahin labor. The raw sugar is sent to the refineries
along the Mediterranean. Onions are exported to the United States.
The cotton-crop is an important factor, and in spite of its own crop the
United States is a heavy purchaser of the long-staple Egyptian cotton,
which is used in the manufacture of thread and hosiery. The cultivation
of tobacco is forbidden by law, but Egyptian cigarettes are an item of
considerable importance. They are made of imported Turkish tobacco by
foreign workmen. There is a heavy export duty on native tobacco
exported, and the ban on the inferior native-grown article is intended
to prevent its admixture with the high-grade product from Turkey, and
thereby to keep up the standard of the cigarettes.
Egypt is nominally a vassal of Turkey, paying to the Sultan a yearly
tribute of $3,600,000. Great Britain's is the real controlling hand,
because the Suez Canal is Great Britain's gateway to India. By a
purchase of the stock held by a former Khedive, Great Britain secured
financial control of the canal, a necessary step from the fact that more
than half the trade carried through the canal is British commerce.
The country is deficient in the resources that make most nations
powerful. There is neither coal, iron, nor timber available, and these
must be imported. Great Britain supplies the first, and Norway the last.
Some traffic is carried on the Nile, but railways have been built
through the crop-lands. One of these threads the Nile Valley and will
become a part of the "Cape to Cairo" route.
_Alexandria_ is the port at which most of the Egyptian commerce lands.
_Cairo_, the largest city of Africa, derives its importance from its
position at the head of the Nile delta. It is a favorite winter-resort.
_Port Said_ and _Suez_ are the terminal ports of the Suez Canal; their
commerce is mainly the transit trade of the canal.
=Other Independent States.=--Most of the independent states of Africa are
in a condition of barbarism and have but little importance to the rest
of the world. Abyssinia has the natural advantages of gold, iron,
pasture-lands, and forestry, and the possibilities of cotton
cultivation. Valuable mining concessions have been granted to foreign
companies. Ivory, coffee, and gold are shipped to India in exchange for
textiles. A railway from the coast is under construction, but all the
traffic is carried by mule-trains, mainly to _Harrar_.
Morocco has an admirable strategic position at the entrance of the
Strait of Gibraltar, and is most likely, in time, to become a possession
of Spain. There are exported, mainly to Great Britain, beans, almonds,
goat-skins, and wool. The goat-skins are sumac-tanned and are still
used in making the best book-binding leather. Only a small part of the
so-called Morocco leather of commerce is genuine. There are no railways;
caravan routes from the Sahara cross the country. _Tangier_ and one or
two other ports are open to foreign trade. Coal-oil is the only import
from the United States.
The state of Liberia was established for the benefit of freed slaves
from the United States. The products are those of tropical Africa,
including caoutchouc. Coffee cultivation is extensively carried on, and
coffee is the leading export. _Monrovia_ is the chief centre of trade.
=North African Possessions.=--French influence is paramount in northern
Africa. Algeria and Tunis are both French colonies, and the caravan
trade of the Sahara is generally tributary to French trade. The region
known as the Tell, a strip between the coast and the Atlas Mountains, is
the chief agricultural region, and the products are similar to those on
the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. The ordinary grains are grown
for home consumption, but the macaroni wheat crop is manufactured into
macaroni paste for export. The fruit-crop, especially the olive, date,
and grape, and their products, is exported.
Esparto grass, for making paper, was formerly an important export, but
the increasing use of wood-pulp for this purpose has had the effect of
increasing the grazing area, and therefore the wool-crop. Date-palms
grow in great profusion, and the excess forms an important export, going
to nearly every part of Europe and the United States. A large part of
the crop, however, is consumed by the Arabs. Sumac-tanned goat-skins,
for book-binding leather, are also exported.
The colonies must import coal. Manufactures are therefore restricted to
the preparation of the fruit and food products. Sponges are an
important product. Railways provide the necessary transportation for the
crops. _Algiers_, the metropolis, is a finely built city and a favorite
winter-resort. _Oran_ is the shipping-port for grain and esparto grass.
_Biskra_ is the market for dates.
The caravan trade of northern Africa is considerable, and the greater
part converges at _Tripoli_, to which not far from ten thousand
camel-loads of merchandise are brought annually. This trade is carried
on mainly by the Arabs, who cover the region from _Timbuctu_ to Lake
Chad. They bring ivory, ostrich feathers, gold, goat-skins, and slaves.
In return they carry cloth, fire-arms, ammunition, and various
commodities to the negro villages of the Sudan. The district is a
possession of Turkey. Its chief exports are esparto grass, sponges, and
dye-stuffs.
=Central Africa.=--Central Africa is divided among the chief European
powers. Great Britain and Germany divide the lake-region and the
Zanzibar coast. On the Guinea coast the French are an additional factor.
The trade of these regions consists of an exchange of tropical
products--palm-oil, rubber, ebony, camwood, ivory, and hides--for cloth,
tobacco, fire-arms, beads and trinkets, and preserved foods. Most of
this trade is carried on by companies holding royal charters.
The Kongo State is a semi-official corporation of this character, the
King of the Belgians being its chief executive officer. The active
administration is carried on by agents of the company. The chief of each
tribe or village is required, under penalty, to furnish a certain quota
of crude rubber and other products; and between the agent and the Arab
slave-driver the natives have little to choose.
The Kongo River is the outlet of the state, and to facilitate the
transportation of the products, railways have been built, or are under
construction, around the rapids. This region is about the only
remaining source of elephant ivory, but most of the supply consists of
the tusks of animals long since dead. A fleet of steamboats carries the
commercial products to the coast. _Stanley Pool_, at the head of the
rapids, is the chief depot for collection. Ocean steamships ascend the
river to a point above _Boma_, the place of administration.
Nigeria and Ashanti are British possessions on the Guinea coast,[81]
having a trading company organization. Sierra Leone is an organized
colony, a product of which is the kola-nut. British East Africa is
important for strategic purposes, inasmuch as it includes the upper Nile
basin, a territory sometimes known as the Egyptian Sudan. _Akra_ is the
trading port of Nigeria, and _Khartum_ of the upper Nile Valley.
_Zanzibar_ is the metropolis of the east coast.
The French possessions include a large territory at the mouth of the
Kongo, the western part of the Sahara, and the islands of Madagascar and
Reunion. In German East Africa the commercial development has been
substantial, and large plantations for the cultivation of tropical
products are in operation. A railway from the coast to the lake-district
is under construction. _Mombasa_ is its commercial outlet.
The Italians have nominal possession of a territory facing the Strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb, and also of the peninsula of Guardafui. Their actual
possession, however, is restricted to the island and trading-post of
_Massawa_. Their attempts to conquer Abyssinia have been unsuccessful.
=Cape of Good Hope and the South African Colonies.=--Up to the time of the
Suez Canal, Cape of Good Hope was a sort of half-way house between
British ports and India, and this position made it commercially
important. Even at the present time more than fifteen hundred vessels,
many of them in the Indian Ocean trade, call at the chief port of the
colony every year.
Agriculture is the chief industry of these colonies, though not the one
yielding the greatest returns. Enough wheat, maize (or "mealies"), and
fruit are grown for home consumption, but the climate is too arid for
any excess of bread-stuffs. The aridity is a resource, however, in the
matter of wool, the superior quality of which is due largely to the
deficient rainfall. As a matter of fact the whole country is a great
grazing veldt; wool, a very fine quality of Angora mohair, hides, and
cattle products are exports.
From December to March the fruits ripen, and these, especially the
grapes, are carried in cold-storage vessels to British and other
European ports. The wine is likewise of excellent quality and is
becoming an export of great value. Both the fruit and the wine are
similar to those of Australia and California.
The business of ostrich farming is in the hands of several large
companies, and, next to the wool-crop, ostrich plumes are the leading
product. There are about a quarter of a million birds, and each produces
about one pound of feathers. The ordinary quality of plumes varies from
five to ten dollars a pound; very choice plumes command as much as two
hundred dollars a pound. London is the chief market for them, but most
of them sooner or later find their way to the milliners of the great
cities.
The diamond-mines of Griqualand West furnish practically the whole of
the world's supply. The mines are operated on a most thorough business
system, and the output of rough stones is carefully regulated to meet
the demand. All wholesale dealers know the output from year to year, and
no more stones are put upon the market than the number required to meet
the demand. All the Kimberley mines are now consolidated under one
company. The yearly output does not vary much from twenty million
dollars' worth of stones. The stones are marketed from Kimberley, but
London dealers buy most of them.
The mines that for several years produced more gold than any others in
existence are in the Transvaal.[82] Other undeveloped mines in the
territory of Rhodesia are known to be extremely rich in precious metals;
indeed, there is much evidence that the famous mines of Ophir were in
this region. Copper ore is an important export.
The industries of Natal colony do not differ materially from those of
Cape of Good Hope. The rainfall is sufficient for the growing of
sugar-cane, and sugar is an important export to the mother-country. The
colony has productive coal-mines, and these are destined to become an
important resource.
The home government has encouraged railway building, and a trunk line
through Rhodesia affords an outlet to the ports of the south coast. It
is the policy of the mother-country to extend this road along the
lake-region and the Nile Valley (known as the "Great Rift") to the
Mediterranean Sea. This plan when carried out will give Great Britain a
practical control of the trade of eastern Africa. The imports are mainly
textiles, machinery, and steel wares.
_Cape Town_ is the most important centre of trade in South Africa. A
considerable trade, however, is carried on at _Port Elizabeth_ and at
_Durban_, the port of Natal. _Kimberley_ is the seat of the
diamond-mining interests, and _Johannesberg_ of the gold-mines.
Germany and Portugal divide the southwest coast. _Walfisch Bay_ is the
outlet of the former. Portuguese East Africa is an outlet for the trade
of the Transvaal region, with which it is connected by rail. The port
_Lourenco Marquez_ has a fine harbor.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
Has the partition of Africa been an advantage or a disadvantage to the
native races of the continent?
What advantages will accrue to Great Britain from the Cape to Cairo
railway?
Compare the basin of the Kongo with that of the Amazon with respect to
climate, products, and civilization.
From Commercial Africa prepare a list of the exports and imports between
the United States and the various African countries.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
Statesman's Year-Book.
Commercial Africa--pp. 3679 and following.
From a cyclopaedia read the following topics: Ivory, Suez Canal,
Gibraltar, Livingstone, Diamonds, Canary Islands.
CHAPTER XXXIV
OCEANIA
Oceania, the island division of the world, includes Australasia and the
great groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Some of the larger islands
are regions of great productivity; others are important as
coaling-stations; still others have positions of great strategic value.
When it is considered that more than half the people in the world live
on the slopes of the Pacific Ocean, and that they depend on the
metal-working and manufacturing people of the Atlantic slopes for
clothing and commodities, it is apparent that the commerce of the
Pacific Ocean must reach enormous proportions.
For this reason the various island groups of Oceania have been acquired
by Europeans, and from the moment of their occupation their commercial
development began. The great majority of these groups are within the
limits of the sago-palm, bread-fruit, cocoanut, and banana, and these
yield not only the food-stuffs of the native people, but the export
products as well. Copra, or dried cocoanut meat, is the general export.
It is marketed in Marseille, London, and San Francisco. Sago is prepared
from the pith of a species of palm. Considerable quantities are also
exported, and it is used as a table delicacy. The banana is the
food-stuff upon which many millions of people must depend. In spite of
their small aggregate area, the food-producing power of these islands is
very great.[83]
On account of its central position, Honolulu, the capital and chief
port of Hawaii, is the most important mid-ocean station of the Pacific.
It is almost in the direct line of traffic between the Pacific ports of
the United States and Canada on the one hand, and those of Australia,
Japan and China on the other. It is also in the route of vessels that
may hereafter use the American isthmian canal in going between European
and Asian ports.
In the cultivation of export products native Malay labor is almost
always employed, inasmuch as Europeans cannot bear out-of-door labor in
the tropics. The natives are generally known as "Kanakas," and there is
not a little illicit traffic in their labor. Chinese and Japanese
coolies are also employed as laborers.
=The Commonwealth of Australia.=--The commonwealth of Australia consists
of the various states of Australia together with Tasmania. Their
position corresponds very closely to that of Mexico and Central America,
and the climate and products are not unlike. A considerable part of
Australia is a desert, and a large area is too arid for the production
of bread-stuffs; the eastern coast, however, receives abundant rains.
Australia produces nearly one-third of the wool-clip of the world. On
account of the climate, the quality of the wool, much of it merino, is
excellent. More than half the clip comes from New South Wales.
Two-thirds of the wool goes to Great Britain to be manufactured; nearly
all the rest is purchased by France, Germany, and Belgium. Less than two
per cent. is sold to the United States.
Since the introduction of cold-storage plants in steamships, Australia
has become a heavy exporter of meat. Areas long unproductive are now
cattle-ranges; mutton constitutes the heaviest shipment. Inasmuch as the
transportation is almost wholly by water, the cost is very light, and
the mutton can be sold to London dealers at less than four cents per
pound.
[Illustration: THE COMMERCE OF THE PACIFIC]
[Illustration: AUSTRALIA]
Wheat is grown mainly for home consumption. Grapes for wine and for
raisins are good-paying crops in Victoria and New South Wales. Both
products find a ready market in Great Britain. Australian claret is a
strong competitor of California claret for public favor, and the two are
similar in character. Cane-sugar is grown in the moist regions of
Queensland; it is the chief supply of the commonwealth and the
neighboring islands. The forests produce an abundance of hard woods, but
practically no building-timber. Jarrah wood paving-blocks are an
important export. British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon supply much
of the building-timber.
Gold has been the chief mineral product since the settlement of the
country. The mints convert the metal into coin. As a rule the value of
the exports exceeds that of the imports, and the excess swells the
amount of metal exported. The most productive mines are in the district
of Ballarat. Coal is abundant on the east coast, and a considerable part
is sold to California, and more to Asian ports. Tin is extensively mined
in Tasmania.
More than fifteen thousand miles of railway have been built to carry the
traffic of the country. Most of them were built by private corporations,
but on account of financial difficulties and poor service they were
acquired by the government. The policy proved a wise one.
Great Britain encourages the trade of her colonies, and gets about
three-fourths of the traffic of the commonwealth, the imports being
manufactured goods. Of the foreign trade the United States has about
half, nearly all of which is landed at San Francisco and Puget
Sound. Wool, cattle products, and coal are exported to the United
States, and the latter sends to Australia structural steel--mainly
rails--printing-paper, and coal-oil.
_Melbourne_ is the largest city. _Sydney_ is the port at which most of
the ocean trade is landed. _Brisbane_, mainly a coal and a wool market,
is connected with British Columbia by an ocean cable. Steamships by way
of the Suez Canal generally call at _Perth_ and _Adelaide_. _Hobart_ and
_Launcestown_ are the markets of Tasmania.
=New Zealand.=--This colony is one of the most prosperous and best
administered states in existence. The cultivable lands produce enough
wheat for home use, and an excess for export. Cattle and sheep are the
chief resource, however, and pretty nearly everything--meat, hides,
wool, horn, and bones--is exported. Dairy products are not forgotten,
and under the management of an association, these are of the best
quality.
New Zealand flax (_Phormium tenax_), a kind of marsh hemp, yields a
fibre used in making cordage. The kauri pine furnishes the chief supply
of lumber. A fossil kauri gum is collected for export; it makes a
varnish almost equal to Japanese lacquer. Gold is mined, and there being
no mint, all the bullion is exported. The only manufactures are those
which are connected with the meat export and the dairy industry. The
exports noted more than pay for the manufactured goods. Most of the
trade is carried on with Great Britain. _Wellington_, the capital, and
_Auckland_ are the centres of trade.
=New Guinea.=--This island, one of the largest in the world, is somewhat
larger than the State of Texas, or about one-third larger than Germany
or France. The gold-mines first led to the exploration and settlement of
the island, but it was soon apparent that the agricultural resources
were even more valuable, and it was divided among the British, Germans,
and Dutch.
The western part of the island is distinctly Asian in character; the
eastern and southern parts resemble Australia. Coffee, rice, and tobacco
plantations have been established in the former; grazing is the chief
industry in the latter. Ebony and bamboo are among the forest products.
=British Possessions.=--The Fiji Islands are among the most important
British possessions. They number about eighty habitable and twice as
many small islands. Sugar is the chief export product, and it goes
mainly to Australia and New Zealand. Cocoanuts are also a large item of
export trade. _Suva_ is the chief trading-port.
The Tonga Islands are nominally independent, but are practically a
British protectorate. Among other British possessions are Cook, Gilbert,
and Ellice archipelagoes, and Pitcairn Island.
=German Possessions.=--The Samoa Islands are perhaps the most important
German possession, and German planters have made them highly productive.
They were formerly held under a community-of-interest plan by Great
Britain, Germany, and the United States. A joint commission awarded the
greater part of the territory to Germany. In addition to the ordinary
products, pineapples and limes are exported. Most of the trade is
carried on by way of Australia. _Apia_ is the trading-port.
Bismarck Archipelago, and the Solomon, Marshall, and Caroline groups
have also been acquired by Germany. The last named was purchased from
Spain at the close of the Spanish-American War.
=French Possessions.=--New Caledonia, together with Loyalty Islands,
Fortuna, and the New Hebrides group, have great wealth in the matter of
resources. New Caledonia, a penal colony, has productive mines of chrome
iron ore and copper. It is the source of a considerable supply of nickel
and cobalt. A railway to the coast has been built for the carriage of
these products.
Tahiti is the principal island of the Society group, and under the
missions long established there, the natives have become civilized. In
addition to the usual trade, sugar and mother-of-pearl are important
exports.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
How will the commerce of the Pacific be changed by the construction of
an isthmian canal?
What has been the effect of the Australian wool-clip on the cloth-making
industry of England and Germany?
How will the acquisition of Hawaii and the Philippine Islands affect the
commerce of the United States?
From Commercial Australia find the trade of the United States with the
Commonwealth.
FOR COLLATERAL READING AND REFERENCE
From a cyclopaedia read the history of Australia as a convict colony.
Commercial Australia.
APPENDIX
TRADE OF THE PRINCIPAL COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY
Sells Buys
Country Imports Exports to U.S. from U.S.
Argentina $110,000,000 $161,850,000 $10,000,000 $11,000,000
Australia 201,000,000 224,000,000 5,263,000 28,164,000
Austria-
Hungary 335,486,000 383,748,000 10,000,000 6,844,000
Belgium 428,651,000 352,850,000 14,920,000 51,444,000
Bolivia 5,845,000 15,618,000 22 120,000
Brazil 97,330,000 165,461,000 64,914,000 11,517,000
Canada 181,238,000 177,443,000 42,482,000 105,790,000
Chile 46,916,000 61,201,000 7,474,000 4,507,000
China 203,421,000 124,528,000 18,126,000 18,176,000
Colombia 10,695,000 18,487,000 4,811,000 2,924,000
Cuba 66,584,000 63,278,000 46,664,000 27,007,000
Denmark 111,542,000 75,549,000 797,000 15,500,000
Ecuador 6,541,000 7,509,000 1,578,000 1,590,000
Egypt 75,366,000 77,754,000 8,867,000 1,321,000
France 843,255,000 774,497,000 81,315,000 78,406,000
Germany 1,290,254,000 1,054,685,000 99,970,000 184,679,000
Greece 26,782,000 18,100,000 1,447,000 286,000
India,
British 264,318,000 392,025,000 47,172,000 5,647,000
India,
Dutch 67,755,000 100,632,000 32,309,000 1,653,000
India,
French 36,576,000 30,513,000 ... 118,000
Italy 331,668,000 265,270,000 27,631,000 34,046,000
Japan 127,397,000 124,209,000 36,855,000 21,163,000
Mexico 64,036,000 77,583,000 17,273,000 83,722,000
Netherlands 815,442,000 695,763,000 17,273,000 83,722,000
Norway 83,255,000 43,616,000 ... ...
Peru 11,276,000 21,890,000 2,911,000 2,312,000
Philippine
Islands 30,279,000 23,215,000 4,421,000 4,027,000
Portugal 62,497,000 30,546,000 3,642,000 4,454,000
Roumania 41,878,000 54,041,000 101,000 31,000
Russia 269,493,000 375,276,000 7,236,000 6,506,000
Spain 161,867,000 129,399,000 7,041,000 16,786,000
Sweden 143,363,000 104,878,000 4,370,000 11,521,000
Switzerland 202,651,000 161,458,000 16,035,000 233,000
Turkey 103,110,000 64,876,000 2,437,000 184,000
United
Kingdom 2,540,265,000 1,362,729,000 155,292,000 598,767,000
United
States 903,321,000 1,355,482,000 ... ...
Uruguay 24,497,000 28,674,000 1,975,000 1,481,000
Venezuela 8,457,000 17,962,000 6,610,000 2,737,000
INDEX
Acapulco, 269
Acre, 281
Activities classified, 4
Adams, 220
Aden, 354
Adjustment to environment, 86
Afghanistan, 355
Alaska, 254
Alberta, 265
Alexandria, 384
Alfa, 124
Algeria, 385
Alpaca, 111, 115
Altitude, effects of, 32
Aluminium, 179
Amazon River, 53
Amber, 146
Ambergris, 204
American Indians, 86
Amritsar, 362
Amsterdam, 318
Anaconda, 250
Anchovy, 207
Angora wool, 115
Anthracite coal, 224
Appalachian region, 222
Arabia, 354
Argentina, 291
Arid region of U.S., 240
Arkwright, 108
Asian Rivers, navigation of, 53
Asphalt, 157
Assiniboia, 265
Astrakhan, 347
Athens, 341
Atlanta, 239
Atlantic coast-plain, 213, 221
Attar-of-roses, 338
Australia, 392
Austria-Hungary, 335
Bagdad, 354
Baku, 347, 348
Baltimore, 217
Baluchistan, 357
Banca, 181, 364
Barbados, 273
Barley, 101
Barmen-Elberfeld, 308
Batavia, 364
Bauxite, 179
Beef, exports of U.S., 244
Beet sugar, 186, 303, 321
Beginnings of cities, 82
Belgium, 313
Belgrade, 341
Bengal, 361
Benzine, 156
Bergen, 312
Berlin, 308
Bermuda, 273
Bessemer-steel boilers, 63
Big tree, 198
Billiton, 364
Birmingham, Ala., 165, 225
Birmingham, Eng., 302
Bismarck Archipelago, 397
Black walnut, 199
Blende, 182
Bluefish, 206
Boers, 86
Bogota, 277
Bohemian glass, 336
Boise City, 250
Bokhara, 347
Bolivia, 280
Bombay, 362
Bosnia, 337
Boston, 215
Boxwood, 200
Brass, 178
Brazil, 288
nuts, 289
Breakfast, travels of a, 1
Bremen, 308
Brenner Pass, 66
Brick tea, 134
Bridgeport, 221
British Columbia, 265
India, 358
Bronze Age, 181
Brussels, 316
Budapest, 337
Buenos Aires, 293
Buffalo, 225
Bulgaria, 338
Burlington, 237
Burma, British, 362
Burr clover, 34
Butte, 250
Cacao, 134
Cairo, 384
Calcutta, 123
California fruits, 251
Callao, 279
Camel's hair, 116
Camphor, 378
Canada, 261
Canadian Pacific Railway, 263
Canal, Chesapeake & Ohio, 56
Chicago ship, 56
Erie, 55
Grand, 370
Kaiser Wilhelm, 57
Ludwig, 337
Manchester, 57
Nicaragua, 59, 270
Nord Holland, 57, 318
Panama, 58
Rideau, 54
St. Mary's Falls, 228, 263
Suez, 57
Welland, 54, 263
Canyons, effects of, 18
Canton, 374
Caoutchouc, 141
Capacity of locomotives, 63, 64
Cape Nome, 254
Cape of Good Hope, 387
Cape Town, 389
Caravan tea, 134
Carpet wools, 112
Cashmere shawls, 363
Cattle-growing, 240
Cavite, 258
Cereals, 88
Charleston, 218
Cheviot, 112
Cheyenne, 244
Chicago, 84, 228, 230, 234
Chicago River, 228
Chicory, 131
Chile, 281
Chinook winds, 261
Chocolate, 136
Cigars, manufacture of, 137
Cincinnati, 236
Cities, growth of, 83
Clearing-houses, 215
Cleveland, 225, 230
Climate, 29
Clipper ship, 44
Cloth, antiquity of, 105
Coal, 148, 257, 258, 264, 265, 268, 298, 323, 333, 344, 365, 368, 379
areas of the world, 147
prices of, in U.S., 149
tar products, 153
Coast commerce of U.S., 222
Coastplains, 22
Coca, 278
Cocoa, 134
Cocoon silk, 119
Cod fisheries, 204
Coffee, 127, 271, 277, 290
Coke, 151
Colombia, 275
Columbus, voyages of, 11
Commerce in Western Europe, 13
Communal life, 81, 344
Competition and pools, 67
Constantinople, 340
Copal, 146
Copenhagen, 313
Copper, 159, 162, 177, 248, 266, 279, 344, 379
Cordage, 122
Corn, 98, 232
Corn, oil of, 100
Cotton, 106, 238, 269, 289, 302, 306, 326
Cotton, Egyptian, 109, 383
gin, 109
Indian, 360
Peruvian, 108, 278
sea island, 108
Cotton crop, distribution of, 239
Creosote, 145
Cripple Creek, 248
Crompton, 108
Crusades, wars of, 8
Cuba, 271
bast, 124
Currant grapes, 341
Da Gama, voyage of, 11
Dammar, 146
Davenport, 237
Deadwood, 250
Demerara, 286
Denmark, 312
Denver, 250
Detroit, 230
Diamonds, 388
Dias, voyage of, 11
Differentials, 71, 73
Divi-divi, 285
Division of industries, 41
Dubuque, 237
Dutch East Indies, 364
standards, 188
Eastern Turkestan, 376
Ebony, 200
Economic regions of U.S., 213
Ecuador, 279
Egypt, 381
Electric railways, 76
Eminent domain, 76
Esparto grass, 124, 385
Exchange of products, 5
Fairs, 346
Fall line, 53, 221
Fall River, 220
Felt hats, 209
Fertility of irrigated regions, 33
Feudalism, 7
Fiji Islands, 396
Fisheries, 266
Fish hatcheries, 207
Flax, 120, 300, 314, 343
New Zealand, 124
Forced draught, 63
Forest areas, 193, 261, 288, 299, 310
Fort Dearborn, 228
France, 320
Freight rates, 63, 69
French India, 365
Galveston, 238
Gasoline, 156
Geneva, 334
German Empire, 303
Ghent, 314, 316
Glucose, 100, 191
Gold, 166, 172, 248, 264, 268, 286, 344, 379, 395
Grain elevators, 94
Grape industry in New York, 36
Graphite, 153
Grasses, 88
Great Britain, 295
Great Central Plain, 22
Great Lakes, 227
Great Salt Lake, 247
Greece, 340
Griqualand West, 388
Guam, 258
Guatemala, 270
Guayaquil, 280
Guiana, 286
Gulf coast, 237
Gums, 141
Gutta-percha, 144
Halibut, 256
Halifax, 264
Hamburg, 308
Hamilton, 265
Hanse League, 13
Harbors, 26, 47, 84
Hargreaves, 109
Hartford, 221
Havana, 272
cigars, 137
Hawaiian Islands, 255
Helena, 250
Hematite, 163
Hemp, 121, 257
Henequen, 122
Herodotus quoted, 106
Herring fisheries, 205
Herzegovina, 337
Hickory, 199
Hilo, 256
Hodeida, 130
Holland, 316
Hongkong, 365, 374
Honolulu, 256, 392
Houston, 238
Hudson's Bay Company, 208, 262
Iloilo, 258
Inclination of axis, 36
Indianapolis, 237
Inland waters, 50
Intermontane valleys, 18
Interstate Commerce Commission, 76
Iodine, 282
Iquique, 283
Iran plateau, 349
Ireland, 265
Irkutsk, 347
Iron, 162, 236, 300, 323
galvanized, 182
ore, 163, 166, 300, 306, 311, 315, 323
Iron Gate, 338
Italy, 325
Jade, 159
Japan, 375
Jarrah, 200, 394
Java, 364
Joint tariff associations, 72
Jute, 122, 360
Kabue, 356
Kansas City, 236
Kashmir, 363
Kauri, 146, 396
Kerosene, 154, 157
Key West cigars, 137
Khaibar Pass, 356
Khiva, 347
Kiakhta, 347
Kiel, 309
Kimberley, 389, 390
Klondike mines, 254
Kongo River, navigation of, 54
Kongo State, 386
Korea, 376
Kristiania, 311, 312
Lac, 145
Lacquer, 378
La Guaira, 286
Lanolin, 114
Lassa, 374
Las Vegas, 250
Laudanum, 139
Lawrence, 220
Lead, 180
Lead pencils, 153
Leadville, 250
Leather goods, 221
Liechtenstein, 337
Lignum vitae, 200
Lithographic stone, 305
Liverpool, 302
Llama, 115
Lobster fisheries, 207
Locomotive, Central-Atlantic type, 64
Logwood, 201
London, 302
Los Angeles, 157, 252
Louisville, 237
Lourenco Marquez, 390
Lowell, 220
Lynn, 221
Macao, 374
Mackerel, 206
Mackintosh, 143
Madagascar, 387
Madras, 363
Magnetite, 163
Maguey sugar, 187
Mahogany, 199
Malay States, Federated, 363
Manchester, Eng., 382
Manchester, N.H., 220
Manchuria, 376
Mandalay, 362
Manganese, 182
Manila, 258
hemp, 121
Manitoba, 265
Maple, 199
sugar, 186
Marco Polo, 9
Martinique, 273
Mate, 136
Maverick, 240
Melbourne, 395
Memphis, 238
Merino wool, 111, 112
Metals, influence of, in cities, 85
Mexico, 267
city of, 269
Milan, 328
Mileage books, 72
Millet, 359
Milwaukee, 230
Mingo Junction, 224
Mining, 248
Minneapolis, 230, 236
Miquelon, 266
Mississippi River, 52
valley, 232
Mobile, 240
Mocha coffee, 130
Mohair, 115
Mohawk valley, 220
Molasses, 191
Moline, 237
Mongolia, 376
Mont Cenis tunnel, 66
Montenegro, 341
Montreal, 264
Morocco, 384
Mountains, contents of, 17
Moscow, 347
Mulberry, 116
Nagasaki, 380
Nankeen cotton, 108
Naphtha, 154, 156
Nashua, 220
Natural gas, 157
Naval stores, 145
Nearchus, 107
New Brunswick, 264
New Caledonia, 397
New England Plateau, 219
New Guinea, 396
New Haven, 221
New Orleans, 238
New York City, 84, 214, 215, 230, 238, 250
New Zealand, 395
New Zealand flax, 123, 396
Newfoundland, 266
Nicaragua, 270
Nickel, 182
Nieuwchwang, 374
Nigeria, 387
Nile River, barrage of, 383
floods of, 33
navigation of, 54
Nitrate, 282
Norfolk, 218
Northern Securities Company, 227
Norway, 310
Nova Scotia, 264
Novgorod, 209
Oak, 198
Oats, 101
Ocean steamships, 45
Odessa, 134, 347
Ogden, 250
Ohio River, 52
Oil of theobroma, 135
Old Government Java, 129
Oleo-resins, 141
Omaha, 236
Ontario, 265
Opium, 139, 360
Oregon pine, 252
Ottawa, 265
Oyster fisheries, 207
Pacific Coast lowlands, 250
Paddy, 103
Pago Pago Harbor, 258
Panama, 277
hats, 133, 279
Para, 291
Paraffine, 157
Paraguay, 293
tea, 136
Paris, 324
Passes, 19
Pearl Harbor, 256
Peking, 374
Penang, 363
Pepper, 365
Persia, 354
Persian lamb, 208
Peru, 278
Peshawur, 356, 362
Petroleum, 154, 225, 344, 379
jelly, 157
Philadelphia, 216
Philippine Islands, 256
Pine, 197
Piraeus, The, 341
Pitch, 145
Pittsburg, 106, 224
Plains, 21
Plaiting straw, 124
Plateaus, 21, 247
Ponce, 255
Pools, 68
Population, distribution of, 81
Pork, 234
Port Arthur, 347
Port Huron, 230
Port Said, 384
Port wine, 330
Portland, Me., 217
Portland, Ore., 252
Porto Rico, 254
Portugal, 328
Pribilof Islands, 208, 254
Prince Edward Island, 264
Providence, 221
Puget Sound, 228, 252
Punjab, 362
Pyrites, 164
Quebec, 264
city of, 265
Quicksilver, 180
Rabbit skins, 209
Railway, Canadian Pacific, 263
Chesapeake & Ohio, 71
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, 68
New York Central, 65, 67
Northern Pacific, 227
Sind-Pishin, 356
Southern, 71
Tehuantepec, 269
Transportation, 62
Transsiberian, 345, 372
Union Pacific, 66
Rainfall, effects of, 33
deficiency of, 33
Ramie, 123
Rangoon, 362
Raw silk, 118
Rebates, 71
Redwood, 198, 252
Resins, 141
Rhodesia, 389
Rice, 102, 359
Richmond, 221
Riga, 347
Rio Janeiro, 290
River navigation in Europe, 53
valleys, 21
Roads, macadamized, 78
Rock Island, 237
Rome, 327
Rotterdam, 318
Roumania, 338
Rubber, 141, 275, 278, 281, 288
Rug wools, 114
Rugs, oriental, 351, 355
Ruhr iron fields, 306
Russia, 343
Rye, 101, 344
Sacramento, 252
Sahara, 385
Saigon, 365
Sailing vessels, 47
St. Gotthard tunnel, 66
St. Louis, 234
St. Paul, 230, 236
St. Petersburg, 346
St. Pierre, 266
St. Thomas, 273
Salmon, 205
Salonica, 340
Samoa Islands, 396
San Antonio, 239
San Francisco, 252
San Joaquin valley, 250
San Juan, P.R., 255
San Pedro, 252
Sandarach, 146
Santa Fe, 250
Santiago, 283
Santos, 290
Saskatchewan, 265
Savannah, 238
Schooners, 44, 47
Scranton, 224
Seal fisheries, 208
Seasonal rains, 34
Seattle, 84, 252
Servia, 341
Shad, 256
Shanghai, 374
Sheep-growing, 242
Shell-lac, 145
Shoe manufacture, 221
Siam, 364
Siberia, 347
Silk, 116, 323, 326, 368, 378
Silver, 162, 176, 248, 268, 278, 304, 340
Sind, 362
Singapore, 363, 365
Sioux City, 236
Sisal hemp, 122, 267
Skagway, 254
Smyrna, 139, 353
Sorghum, 187
Sound Valley, 250
South Bethlehem, 224
South Chicago, 225
Southampton, 302
Spain, 328
Spermaceti, 204
Spokane, 250
Sponge, 208
Steel, Bessemer, 160, 169, 170, 222, 300, 304, 345
Stephenson, 63
Stockholm, 312
Stockton, 252
Sugar, 185, 289, 303, 314, 318, 364
Swash channel, 50
Sweden, 310
Switzerland, 331
Sydney, 395
Tacoma, 252
Tar, 145
Tea, 131, 360, 368, 378
Teak, 200, 365
Temperate zone, activities of, 32
Textiles, 105
Three-mile fishing limit, 262
Thrown silk, 118
Tientsin, 134, 374
Tin, 181, 364
Tobacco, 136, 237, 240, 364, 383
Tokio, 380
Toledo, 225
Topography and trade routes, 24
Toronto, 265
Torrid zone, temperature of, 30
Tortilla, Mexican, 100
Trade routes, ancient, 8
Transcaucasia, 348
Transvaal, 389
Treaty ports, 373
Trebizond, 351
Triple-expansion principle, 45
Tripoli, 386
Tunis, 385
Turf grass, 34
Turkey-in-Europe, 339
Turks invade Europe, 9
Turpentine, 144
Tussar silk, 119
Tutuila, 258
Tweed, 112
Uruguay, 294
Valparaiso, 283
Vancouver, 266
Vanderbilt locomotive fire-box, 64
Vanilla, 268
Vaseline, 157
Venezuela, 285
Vicksburg, 238
Vienna, 337
Virginia City, 250
Vladivostok, 347
Vuelta Abajo, 137
Vulcanized rubber, 142
Wai-wu-pu, 373
Walla Walla, 250
Warsaw, 347
Water-power, 84
Waterproof cloth, 143
Welland Canal, 263
Wellington, 396
Whale fisheries, 203
Wheat, 88, 96, 244, 344, 359, 367
White Pass, 254
Willamette Valley, 250
Winnipeg, 265
Wood-pulp, 124
Wool, 110,115, 117, 244, 251, 292, 297, 323
Yafa, 354
Yokohama, 380
Youngstown, 166
Yucatan, 267
Zinc, 182
Zinfandel, 251
Footnotes:
[1] If the edition for free distribution is exhausted, these may be
purchased from the Superintendent of Documents, Public Printer,
Washington, D.C.
[2] The greatness of Palmyra was due to the trade along this route, and
its decay began when the route was abandoned. The present town of Tadmor
is near the ruins of the former city.
[3] Cosmas Indicopleustes--in early life a merchant, in later years a
monk--visited India and Ceylon during the first part of the sixth
century. His writings contain much valuable knowledge, but in the main
they are theological arguments intended to disprove the Geography
written by Ptolemy.
[4] The date is variously given as 1169, 1200, and 1241.
[5] To Waldemar III. of Denmark it dictated terms that made its power in
Scandinavia supreme.
[6] For a complete list of books for reference, see p. xii.
[7] The record time on this route was made by the Lucania in five days,
seven hours, and twenty-three minutes, from Daunts Rock, Queenstown, to
Sandy Hook light. The fastest day's run yet recorded was made by the
Deutschland--601 nautical miles, a speed of 24.19 knots.
[8] In Congress the River and Harbor Bill always receives a generous
appropriation.
[9] In many instances goods designed for the spring trade in the Western
States are started via the canal in October, reaching their destination
at Chicago some time in April, the cargo having been frozen up in one or
another of the canal basins during the winter. The rate paid for this
slow transit is considerably less than the amount which otherwise would
have been paid for storage; moreover, it is nearly all clear profit to
the canal boatmen.
[10] The minimum depth of the canal is 22 feet; its width at the bottom
is 160 feet. It was begun September, 1892, and completed January 2,
1902, at a cost of thirty-four million dollars. More than forty million
cubic yards of earth and rock were excavated. All the bridges crossing
it are movable.
[11] This is on the supposition that night travel will be too dangerous
a risk. With a continuous travel the time would be about thirty-three
hours.
[12] On one great trunk system the average ton-mile rate in 1870 was one
and one-seventh cents; in 1900 it was just one-half that sum.
[13] The modern steam-making boiler has from thirty to one hundred or
more tubes passing through it from end to end. The heat from the
fire-box as a rule passes under the boiler and through the tubular
flues; it thus increases the heating surface very greatly. The forced
draught is made by allowing the exhaust steam to escape into the
smokestack, thereby increasing the draught through the fire-box.
[14] A single locomotive of the New York Central has hauled 4,000 tons
of freight at a speed of twenty-five miles an hour. A "camel-back" of
the Philadelphia & Reading hauled 4,800 tons of coal from the mines to
tide-water without a helper.
[15] The Vanderbilt boiler with cylindrical corrugated fire-box invented
by Cornelius Vanderbilt, great-grandson of the founder of the New York
Central, marks an important step in locomotive building. The cylindrical
form largely obviates the necessity of an array of stay-bolts to prevent
warping; the corrugated surface gives greater heating power.
[16] The Central-Atlantic type of locomotive illustrates a modern
improvement. The driving-wheels are placed a little forward of their
usual position, while the fire-box, formerly set between the wheels, now
overhangs each side of a pair of low trailing-wheels. By this means the
heating surface of the fire-box is increased nearly one-half. A lever
controlled by the engineer enables the latter to transfer 5,000 pounds
weight from the trucks to the driving-wheels when a grade is to be
surmounted. The daily run of such a locomotive is greatly increased.
(_See cut, p. 61._)
[17] A line from Vienna to Triest was opened about 1854; Germany was
joined to Italy across Brenner Pass in 1868; France was connected with
Italy through a tunnel near Mont Cenis in 1871; in 1882 the traffic of
Germany was opened to Mediterranean ports by a tunnel under St.
Gotthard. In this manner trunk systems have gradually developed.
[18] The building of the West Shore Railroad is an illustration. After
both roads had suffered tremendous losses the New York Central settled
the matter by purchasing the West Shore. This was one of a great number
of similar cases both in the United States and Europe.
[19] In Great Britain the ton-rate is about $2.30 per hundred miles; in
Germany, $1.75; in Russia, $1.30; in the United States, $0.70. The
difference is due as much to the length of distance hauled as to
economical management.
[20] Thus, A, B, and C are roads whose chief terminal points are Chicago
and New York City. The road C is the shortest of the three lines, but
its grades are very heavy. B is, say, one hundred miles longer, but has
no heavy grades. A is a very indirect route, and its New York traffic
must be trans-shipped at Boston, or perhaps at New London, and sent a
part of the way by water. If now an absolute ton-mile rate is fixed for
either road, it is evident that neither of the others can carry through
freight without altering rates. If C fixes a rate, then A and B must
either charge higher rates between Chicago and Montreal, or Chicago and
Albany, than between their terminals. And although this is illegal in
most States, the laws are evaded by "rebate," or repayment of a certain
sum to the shipper. Of the three roads B, on account of easy grades, is
in the best position to fix rates. It therefore makes, not the lowest
rate, but the one that will yield the best returns. C conforms to this,
and A takes what it can get, hauling at a very small profit. But if A
happens to be outside of the limits of the United States, it may openly
cut rates, because pretty nearly all the through freight it gets is
clear profit, and inasmuch as none of the laws of a State apply to the
Canadian portion of the road, it may do what the others cannot. And
while B is struggling with A, the three roads X, Y, and Z are perhaps
endeavoring to have some of the freight sent from Buffalo eastward over
their own lines. In instances similar to the foregoing it is customary
for B and C to divide the through business and to allow a "differential"
to A--that is, on account of its slower delivery of through freight, to
carry it at a slightly lower rate. B then adjusts its traffic with X, Y,
and Z in a similar manner; and on the whole this is the fairest way to
all concerned.
The following, one of many instances, shows the difficulties in fixing
rates that will not be unjust to either party: Danville and Lynchburg
compete for a certain trade. The Southern Railway passes through both
cities, but the Chesapeake & Ohio makes Lynchburg by another route;
Danville, therefore, is not a competing point, while Lynchburg is. As a
result, the Southern Railway charged $1.08 for a certain traffic from
Chicago to Danville and only 72 cents to Lynchburg, some distance
beyond, this being the rate over the other road. The matter finally
reached the Court of Appeals, and the latter sustained the Southern
Railway. The rate to Danville was shown to be not excessive, but if the
railway were required to maintain a rate to Lynchburg higher than 72
cents, it would lose all its traffic to that point, amounting to
$433,000 yearly. In a case of this kind there can be no help except by a
consolidation of the two roads; by virtue of the consolidation all the
Lynchburg freight will then go over the line having the easiest haul.
[21] That is, the Government pledged its credit for the money borrowed,
and in addition gave the companies alternate sections of public land on
both sides of the proposed line, the land-grants being designed partly
to encourage immigration and partly to increase the building funds of
the various companies. In several instances both the land-grants and the
money subsidies were scandalously used. At least one road used its
earnings to build a competing line and, after disposing of the
land-grant and pocketing the proceeds, allowed the Government to
foreclose the mortgage and sell the original road.
[22] From the Latin "castra," a camp.
[23] In 1897 the world's crop was 2,226,750,000 bushels, and as a
result, the countries in which the crop was short suffered from high
prices. Had it not been for the prompt carrying service of railways and
steamships famine would have resulted.
[24] In order to yield a crop of twenty-five bushels per acre the soil
must supply 110 lbs. of nitrogen, 45 lbs. of phosphoric acid, 30.5 lbs.
of lime, 14.5 lbs. of magnesia, and 142 lbs. of potash; these are
approximately the mineral elements taken out of the soil with each crop,
and it is needless to say that they must be replaced or the grain will
starve for want of nutrient substances.
[25] In the United States there are about seven wheat-districts, each
characterized by particular varieties that grow best in the given
locality. In the New England and most of the middle Atlantic division
Early Genesee Giant, Jones Winter Fife, and Fultz are chiefly grown. In
the Southern States Fultz, Fulcaster, Purple Straw, and May are
foremost. In the north central group of States Early Red Clawson, Poole,
Dawson's Golden Chaff, Buda Pest, and Fultz are common. In the Dakotas
and Minnesota Scotch Fife and Velvet Blue Stem (both spring wheats) are
generally planted. In Kansas and Texas and the adjacent locality the
principal varieties are Turkey, Fulcaster, and Mediterranean (all winter
wheats). In California and the southern plateau region Sonora,
California Club, and Defiance are the principal kinds (all winter
wheats). In Washington and Oregon Little Club, Red Chaff, and Blue Stem
(which are either winter or spring) are the main varieties.
[26] Sometimes the owner sends it to the nearest elevator at tide-water
where the grain is stored, not in bulk, but in the original packages,
subject to his demand. In the course of a month or six weeks it absorbs
so much moisture that the gain in weight more than pays the storage
charges.
[27] The elevators are equipped with "legs" or long spouts, within which
belts with metal scoops transfer the grain from car to vessel or _vice
versa_. The elevators at Buffalo will fill a canal-boat in an hour's
time, or load six grain-cars in five minutes. A large whaleback
steamship may be relieved of its 200,000 bushels in about three hours.
Most of the east-bound wheat of the Middle West is transferred to the
seaboard by rail, but that of the northwest, which forms the chief part
of the crop, is shipped from Duluth through the St. Marys Falls Canal to
Buffalo, where it is transferred to cars or to canal-boats. New York is
the leading export market, but Boston, New Orleans, Galveston,
Baltimore, and Philadelphia are also important shipping ports.
[28] The following is approximately the yield of the chief wheat-growing
countries in bushels per acre:
Denmark 42
England 29
New Zealand 26
Germany 23.2
Holland & Belgium 21.5
Hungary 18.5
France 19.5
Austria 16.3
Canada 15.5
United States 12.3
Argentina 12.2
Italy 12.1
Australia 10
India 9.2
Russia 8.6
Algeria 7.5
The low average in Australia, India, and Algeria is due mainly to lack
of rainfall; in the United States and Russia, mainly to unskilful
cultivation.
[29] It seems to have been introduced into Turkey from India about the
latter part of the fifteenth century, after which it was occasionally
heard of in Europe as "Turkey corn."
[30] The "tortilla," the national bread of the Mexican, consists of a
thick corn-meal paste pressed into thin wafers between the hands, and
baked on hot slabs of stone. The corn-meal "mush" of the American, the
"polenta" of the Italian, and the "mamaliga" of the Rumanian are all
practically corn-meal boiled to a thick paste in water.
[31] The gin, invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, enabled one man to do by
machinery about the same amount of work as previously had required one
hundred laborers. For want of the laws necessary to protect his
invention, Whitney was defrauded of the profits arising from it. Neither
Congress nor the courts gave him any relief from the numerous
infringements, and he died a poor man.
[32] The commercial distinction is a sensible one: hair is hard, crisp,
straight, and does not felt; wool is soft, curly, and felts readily.
[33] An ounce of eggs produces about forty thousand worms, and these,
during the grub stage, require about fifteen hundred pounds of leaves,
about one-half of which is actually consumed.
[34] Charles II. of England also forbade its use (1675) and attempted to
close the coffee-houses that had sprung up in London, but in spite of
the ban and the prohibitive tax laid upon it, the use of coffee became
general. Similar efforts to close the coffee-houses in Constantinople
failed.
[35] The full-grown leaf attains a length of from four to nine inches;
those picked rarely exceed one-and-a-half inches in length.
[36] Brick tea consists of leaves moulded into bricks under heavy
pressure. Refuse and stems are also thus prepared for the cheaper
grades.
[37] The following are the chief rubber-producing trees: _Siphonia
elastica_, or _Hevea brasiliensis_, Amazon forests, yields Para rubber;
_Manihot Glaziovii_, also a tapioca-producing shrub, Ceara province,
Brazil, furnishes Ceara rubber; _Castilloa elastica_, Central American
States, Nicaragua rubber; _Ficus elastica_, British India, and _Urceola
elastica_, Borneo, Indian rubber. There are rubber-producing trees in
Florida, but they have little commercial value at the present time.
African rubber is taken from a variety of plants.
[38] The process of vulcanizing was made practicable during the ten
years ending in 1850. It was invented and perfected by Goodyear in the
United States and by Hancock in England; for ordinary purposes, where
both strength and elasticity are required, about five per cent. of
sulphur is added. The addition of about fifty per cent. changes the
rubber to a hard black substance known as "ebonite," or "hard rubber."
[39] In 1823 a Scotchman, Mackintosh, applied the discovery, that rubber
gum was soluble in benzine, to the water-proofing of the cloth that
bears his name. This invention was about the first extensive commercial
use to which rubber had been put.
[40] From the fact that most of the dwellings in the United States are
built of wood, the United States is a very heavy consumer of turpentine.
[41] A slender strip of metallic lead was used instead of graphite in
the first pencils made. The use of graphite did not become general until
about 1850. The hardness of a pencil is regulated by mixing clay with
the powdered graphite.
[42] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[43] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[44] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[45] These percentages are on the supposition that the ores are
chemically pure; the percentage of metal actually obtained is somewhat
less.
[46] The limestone has no essential part in the smelting of the ore
except to produce an easily-flowing, liquid slag; hence it is called a
_flux_. Some ores smelt and flow so easily that a flux is not required.
[47] Under ordinary circumstances about two tons of coal, or
three-quarters of a ton of coke, are required to produce a ton of
pig-iron.
[48] Terne plate is sheet-iron coated with an alloy of lead and tin.
[49] Heredity is likewise a factor. The seeds of knotty, scraggly trees
are very apt to produce trees of their own kind and _vice versa_.
[50] This sum represents more than ten times the amount of gold coin now
in existence. Less than five per cent. of the business of the great
industrial centres is a cash business. Even if the money existed, the
transfer of such immense sums would greatly retard commerce. In order to
effect a speedy settlement of payments, clearing-houses are established.
At the clearing-house the representatives of the various banks meet
daily and liquidate the checks drawn against one another; and although
the total yearly volume of payment aggregates the sum mentioned above,
the _balances_ for a year are but little more than two billion dollars.
Even this does not always represent cash payment, for a bank that is a
debtor to another at the close of one day may be a creditor for an equal
sum on the next.
[51] These roads are financed by the Northern Securities Company and
form a link in the Hill-Morgan lines. Their intercontinental traffic is
large.
[52] Their dividing line is the centre of a street.
[53] The brand consisted of any specific device, such as an initial, a
monogram, or a conventional form that might be easily recognized. The
device was registered and imprinted with a red-hot iron on the flank of
the animal. Ear-marks, such as notches or similar devices, also
indicated ownership.
[54] In many cases Government land, not owned by the rancher, has been
fenced in. No objection was made, however, until the sheep-grazier came.
He demanded the removal of the fences, claiming that he had an equal
right to graze his herds on public lands. But inasmuch as a range once
grazed by sheep is ruined for cattle-growing, the quarrel between the
grazier and the rustler has become one in which both the grazier and the
rustler turned upon the sheep-owner.
[55] It is one-third of their capital stock plus the bonded
indebtedness.
[56] The high latitude of the wheat-region, which in most cases is too
cold for the growing of food-stuffs, in this region is tempered by
occasional warm winds known as "Chinook winds." These winds are the
saving feature of wheat-growing. They prevail also in British Columbia,
Washington, and Oregon.
[57] Freight rates from Coatzacoalcos to San Francisco are already fixed
at $6.50 per ton; by the transcontinental railways they vary from $12 to
$15 per ton.
[58] The entire Cuban crop is comparatively small, being but little more
than one-eighth that of the United States.
[59] Vegetable ivory is the seed or nut of a species of palm
(_Phytelephas macrocarpa_). The kernel of the nut gradually acquires the
hardness and appearance of the best ivory, for which it is employed as a
substitute.
[60] The leaves of this shrub (_Erythroxylon coca_) contain a stimulant
substance that in its effects is much like the active principle of
coffee. They are much used by the native laborers to ward off the
feeling of lassitude that comes with severe labor in a tropical climate.
A native porter will carry a load of one hundred pounds a distance of
sixty miles with no food or rest, but merely chewing a few coca-leaves.
The plant yields the substance _cocaine_, now in demand all over the
world as an anaesthetic in eye and throat surgery.
[61] More than a score of species of the tree from which this bark is
obtained grow in the higher eastern slopes of the Andes, but a very
large part is obtained from the tree, _Cinchona calisaya_. The medicinal
substance, quinine, is extracted from the bark, and in the past
half-century it has become the specific for malarial fevers. So great is
the demand for it, that the cinchona-tree is now cultivated in India,
Java, and Mexico.
[62] Only a very small proportion of the Panama hats in the market are
genuine. Many of the imitations, selling at retail for ten dollars or
more, are serviceable hats; most of them, however, have but little
worth.
[63] Nitre, or "nitrate," is a native nitrate of potash, or nitrate of
soda. The latter, commonly called cubic nitre or Chile saltpetre, is the
kind occurring in Chile. Inasmuch as it is very soluble, a plentiful
rainfall would soon leach it from the ground and carry it to the sea.
The nitrate is thought to be of vegetable origin.
[64] The pod of a shrub (_Caesalpina coriaria_); it contains a
considerable proportion of tannin and is used for tanning leather.
[65] The pericarp or pod contains about twenty-four prismatic-shaped
nuts.
[66] The cattle for Cuba and Brazil must be shipped in open pens in
crossing the tropics. With the exports for Europe the case is different.
If it is summer at the one port it is winter at the other, but it is
always summer in the tropics, and cattle-ships fit for one zone are not
fit for the other--hence the great difficulties in shipment of live
animals to Europe.
[67] For this reason Great Britain is practically a free-trade country.
A protective tariff on imported food-stuffs and materials to be
manufactured would hurt rather than protect British industries.
[68] This is equivalent to the imposition of a tax on all the sugar
consumed at home.
[69] Most of the lithographic stone is obtained at Solnhofen.
[70] This is a little greater than the average ton-mile rate on the New
York Central Railroad between New York and Chicago.
[71] The name Zuider, or Zuyder, means "south"; it was so named to
distinguish it from the North Sea.
[72] Some years ago many of the most valuable vineyards were destroyed
by an insect pest known as the _phylloxera_, introduced from California.
The trouble was overcome by replanting with American vines, the roots of
which were immune to the pest. On these roots were grafted the choice
French vines, the leaves and twigs of which were immune. In this manner
the vineyards were restored with vines that are proof against attack,
and the wine output has reached its normal amount.
[73] It is cultivated as an ornamental tree in the Southern States and
in California.
[74] A small vein of coal occurs near Freiburg.
[75] The St. Gotthard tunnel is almost nine and one-half miles long; the
Arlberg tunnel is six and one-half miles in length. The tunnel now
nearing completion under the Simplon Pass is more than twelve miles
long. Five railways cross the northern frontier into Germany, and German
commerce profits most by them.
[76] Persian rugs are the finest. As a rule the designs are floral and
many of them contain legendary history worked in fantastic but beautiful
patterns. Among those of especial merit are the Kermanshah tree-of-life
fabrics, now somewhat rare. The rugs of Tabriz and Shiraz are also of
high value. In general, Persian fabrics are characterized by very fine
weaving, a short pile, and elaborate designs. Turkoman rugs are usually
a rich brown or maroon in color, and are apt to contain slightly
elongated octagonal figures. The Bokhara and Khiva-Bokhara, or Afghan
rugs, are the best examples. The Baluchistan rugs are usually very dark
in color, with bright red designs and striped ends of cotton warp.
Turkish rugs are made almost wholly in Asia Minor or Anatolia. Large
carpets of American and European designs are made at Ushak and Smyrna.
"Smyrna" rugs are made in Philadelphia.
[77] The most valuable Kermanshah rug, now no longer made there, is the
tree-of-life prayer-rug, an illustration of which is shown on p. 350.
The design is emblematic of the story of the Garden of Eden.
[78] In 1900 the aggregate value of the wheat exported to Great Britain
was only L2,200.
[79] Since the treaty of 1901, which forbids the importation of
fire-arms, a number of large plants for the manufacture of fire-arms,
smokeless powder, and fixed ammunition have been established on the
lower Yangtze.
[80] The islands are mainly in the belt of prevailing westerly winds.
More rain, therefore, falls on the west than on the east coasts.
[81] This region is also known us the Gold Coast. Formerly it furnished
the chief British supply of gold, and the gold coin known as the
"guinea" received its name from this circumstance.
[82] This region was formerly comprised in the Boer republics, Orange
Free State and South African Republic. In 1899 they declared war against
Great Britain, with the result that they were defeated and annexed to
that country--the former as Orange Colony, the latter as Transvaal
Colony.
[83] It is estimated that twenty-two acres of land are necessary to
sustain one adult on fresh meat. The same area of wheat would feed
forty-two people; of oats about eighty-five people; of maize, potatoes,
and rice, one hundred and seventy people. But twenty-two acres planted
with bread-fruit or bananas will support about six thousand.
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Age of Big Business, by Burton J. Hendrick
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Age of Big Business
Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series
Author: Burton J. Hendrick
Editor: Allen Johnson
Posting Date: January 15, 2009 [EBook #3037]
Release Date: January, 2002
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AGE OF BIG BUSINESS ***
Produced by The James J. Kelly Library Of St. Gregory's
University, and Alev Akman
THE AGE OF BIG BUSINESS, A CHRONICLE OF THE CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY
By Burton J. Hendrick
New Haven: Yale University Press
Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co.
London: Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press
1919
CONTENTS
I. INDUSTRIAL AMERICA AT THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR
II. THE FIRST GREAT AMERICAN TRUST
III. THE EPIC OF STEEL
IV. THE TELEPHONE: AMERICA'S MOST POETICAL ACHIEVEMENT
V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES
VI. MAKING THE WORLD'S AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY
VII. THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THE AGE OF BIG BUSINESS
CHAPTER I. INDUSTRIAL AMERICA AT THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR
A comprehensive survey of the United States, at the end of the Civil
War, would reveal a state of society which bears little resemblance to
that of today. Almost all those commonplace fundamentals of existence,
the things that contribute to our bodily comfort while they vex us with
economic and political problems, had not yet made their appearance.
The America of Civil War days was a country without transcontinental
railroads, without telephones, without European cables, or wireless
stations, or automobiles, or electric lights, or sky-scrapers, or
million-dollar hotels, or trolley cars, or a thousand other contrivances
that today supply the conveniences and comforts of what we call our
American civilization. The cities of that period, with their unsewered
and unpaved streets, their dingy, flickering gaslights, their ambling
horse-cars, and their hideous slums, seemed appropriate settings for
the unformed social life and the rough-and-ready political methods of
American democracy. The railroads, with their fragile iron rails, their
little wheezy locomotives, their wooden bridges, their unheated coaches,
and their kerosene lamps, fairly typified the prevailing frontier
business and economic organization. But only by talking with the
business leaders of that time could we have understood the changes that
have taken place in fifty years. For the most part we speak a business
language which our fathers and grandfathers would not have comprehended.
The word "trust" had not become a part of their vocabulary; "restraint
of trade" was a phrase which only the antiquarian lawyer could
have interpreted; "interlocking directorates," "holding companies,"
"subsidiaries," "underwriting syndicates," and "community of
interest"--all this jargon of modern business would have signified
nothing to our immediate ancestors. Our nation of 1865 was a nation of
farmers, city artisans, and industrious, independent business men, and
small-scale manufacturers. Millionaires, though they were not unknown,
did not swarm all over the land. Luxury, though it had made great
progress in the latter years of the war, had not become the American
standard of well-being. The industrial story of the United States in
the last fifty years is the story of the most amazing economic
transformation that the world has ever known; a change which is fitly
typified in the evolution of the independent oil driller of western
Pennsylvania into the Standard Oil Company, and of the ancient open
air forge on the banks of the Allegheny into the United States Steel
Corporation.
The slow, unceasing ages had been accumulating a priceless inheritance
for the American people. Nearly all of their natural resources, in
1865, were still lying fallow, and even undiscovered in many instances.
Americans had begun, it is true, to exploit their more obvious, external
wealth, their forests and their land; the first had made them one of
the world's two greatest shipbuilding nations, while the second had
furnished a large part of the resources that had enabled the Federal
Government to fight what was, up to that time, the greatest war in
history. But the extensive prairie plains whose settlement was to
follow the railroad extensions of the sixties and the seventies--Kansas,
Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Minnesota, the Dakotas--had been only slightly
penetrated. This region, with a rainfall not too abundant and not too
scanty, with a cultivable soil extending from eight inches to twenty
feet under the ground, with hardly a rock in its whole extent, with
scarcely a tree, except where it bordered on the streams, has been
pronounced by competent scientists the finest farming country to
which man has ever set the plow. Our mineral wealth was likewise lying
everywhere ready to the uses of the new generation. The United States
now supplies the world with half its copper, but in 1865 it was
importing a considerable part of its own supply. It was not till
1859 that the first "oil gusher" of western Pennsylvania opened up an
entirely new source of wealth. Though we had the largest coal
deposits known to geologists, we were bringing large supplies of this
indispensable necessity from Nova Scotia. It has been said that coal
and iron are the two mineral products that have chiefly affected modern
civilization. Certainly the nations that have made the greatest progress
industrially and commercially--England, Germany, America--are the three
that possess these minerals in largest amount. From sixty to seventy
per cent of all the known coal deposits in the world were located in our
national domain. Nature had given no other nation anything even remotely
comparable to the four hundred and eighty square miles of anthracite in
western Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Enormous fields of bituminous
lay in those Appalachian ranges extending from Pennsylvania to Alabama,
in Michigan, in the Rocky Mountains, and in the Pacific regions. In
speaking of our iron it is necessary to use terms that are even more
extravagant. From colonial times Americans had worked the iron ore
plentifully scattered along the Atlantic coast, but the greatest field
of all, that in Minnesota, had not been scratched. From the settlement
of the country up to 1869 it had mined only 50,000,000 tons of iron
ore, while up to 1910 we had produced 685,000,000 tons. The streams and
waterfalls that, in the next sixty years, were to furnish the power
that would light our cities, propel our street-cars, drive our
transcontinental trains across the mountains, and perform numerous
domestic services, were running their useless courses to the sea.
Industrial America is a product of the decades succeeding the Civil
War; yet even in 1865 we were a large manufacturing nation. The leading
characteristic of our industries, as compared with present conditions,
was that they were individualized. Nearly all had outgrown the household
stage, the factory system had gained a foothold in nearly every line,
even the corporation had made its appearance, yet small-scale production
prevailed in practically every field. In the decade preceding the War,
vans were still making regular trips through New England and the Middle
States, leaving at farmhouses bundles of straw plait, which the members
of the household fashioned into hats. The farmers' wives and daughters
still supplemented the family income by working on goods for city
dealers in ready-made clothing. We can still see in Massachusetts rural
towns the little shoe shops in which the predecessors of the existing
factory workers soled and heeled the shoes which shod our armies in the
early days of the Civil War. Every city and town had its own slaughter
house; New York had more than two hundred; what is now Fifth Avenue was
frequently encumbered by large droves of cattle, and great stockyards
occupied territory which is now used for beautiful clubs, railroad
stations, hotels, and the highest class of retail establishments.
In this period before the Civil War comparatively small single owners,
or frequently copartnerships, controlled practically every industrial
field. Individual proprietors, not uncommonly powerful families which
were almost feudal in character, owned the great cotton and woolen mills
of New England. Separate proprietors, likewise, controlled the iron and
steel factories of New York State and Pennsylvania. Indeed it was not
until the War that corporations entered the iron industry, now regarded
as the field above all others adapted to this kind of organization. The
manufacture of sewing machines, firearms, and agricultural implements
started on a great scale in the Civil War; still, the prevailing unit
was the private owner or the partnership. In many manufacturing lines,
the joint stock company had become the prevailing organization, but even
in these fields the element that so characterizes our own age, that of
combination, was exerting practically no influence.
Competition was the order of the day: the industrial warfare of
the sixties was a free-for-all. A mere reference to the status of
manufactures in which the trust is now the all-prevailing fact will
make the contrast clear. In 1865 thousands of independent companies were
drilling oil in Pennsylvania and there were more than two hundred which
were refining the product. Nearly four hundred and fifty operators were
mining coal, not even dimly foreseeing the day when their business would
become a great railroad monopoly. The two hundred companies that were
making mowers and reapers, seventy-five of them located in New York
State, had formed no mental picture of the future International
Harvester Company. One of our first large industrial combinations was
that which in the early seventies absorbed the manufacturers of salt;
yet the close of the Civil War found fifty competing companies making
salt in the Saginaw Valley of Michigan. In the same State, about fifty
distinct ownerships controlled the copper mines, while in Nevada the
Comstock Lode had more than one hundred proprietors. The modern trust
movement has now absorbed even our lumber and mineral lands, but in 1865
these rich resources were parceled out among a multiplicity of owners:
No business has offered greater opportunities to the modern promoter of
combinations than our street railways. In 1865 most of our large cities
had their leisurely horse-car systems, yet practically every avenue had
its independent line. New York had thirty separate companies engaged
in the business of local transportation. Indeed the Civil War period
developed only one corporation that could be described as a "trust"
in the modern sense. This was the Western Union Telegraph Company.
Incredible as it may seem, more than fifty companies, ten years before
the Civil War, were engaged in the business of transmitting telegraphic
messages. These companies had built their telegraph lines precisely as
the railroads had laid their tracks; that is, independent lines were
constructed connecting two given points. It was inevitable, of course,
that all these scattered lines should come under a single control, for
the public convenience could not be served otherwise. This combination
was effected a few years before the War, when the Western Union
Telegraph Company, after a long and fierce contest, succeeded in
absorbing all its competitors. Similar forces were bringing together
certain continuous lines of railways, but the creation of huge trunk
systems had not yet taken place. How far our industrial era is removed
from that of fifty years ago is apparent when we recall that the
proposed capitalization of $15,000,000, caused by the merging of the
Boston and Worcester and the Western railroads, was widely denounced as
"monstrous" and as a corrupting force that would destroy our Republican
institutions. Naturally this small-scale ownership was reflected in the
distribution of wealth. The "swollen fortunes" of that period rested
upon the same foundation that had given stability for centuries to
the aristocracies of Europe. Social preeminence in large cities rested
almost entirely upon the ownership of land. The Astors, the Goelets,
the Rhinelanders, the Beekmans, the Brevoorts, and practically all the
mighty families that ruled the old Knickerbocker aristocracy in New York
were huge land proprietors. Their fortunes thus had precisely the
same foundation as that of the Prussian Junkers today. But their
accumulations compared only faintly with the fortunes that are
commonplace now. How many "millionaires" there were fifty years ago
we do not precisely know. The only definite information we have is a
pamphlet published in 1855 by Moses Yale Beach, proprietor of the New
York Sun, on the "Wealthy Men of New York." This records the names
of nineteen citizens who, in the estimation of well-qualified judges,
possessed more than a million dollars each. The richest man in the list
was William B. Astor, whose estate is estimated at $6,000,000. The next
richest man was Stephen Whitney, also a large landowner, whose
fortune is listed at $5,000,000. Then comes James Lenox, again a land
proprietor, with $3,000,000. The man who was to accumulate the first
monstrous American fortune, Cornelius Vanderbilt, is accredited with a
paltry $1,500,000. Mr. Beach's little pamphlet sheds the utmost light
upon the economic era preceding the Civil War. It really pictures an
industrial organization that belongs as much to ancient history as the
empire of the Caesars. His study lists about one thousand of New York's
"wealthy citizens." Yet the fact that a man qualified for entrance into
this Valhalla who had $100,000 to his credit and that nine-tenths
of those so chosen possessed only that amount shows the progress
concentrated riches have made in sixty years. How many New Yorkers of
today would look upon a man with $100,000 as "wealthy"?
The sources of these fortunes also show the economic changes our country
has undergone. Today, when we think of our much exploited millionaires,
the phrase "captains of industry" is the accepted description; in
Mr. Beach's time the popular designation was "merchant prince." His
catalogue contains no "oil magnates" or "steel kings" or "railroad
manipulators"; nearly all the industrial giants of ante-bellum
times--as distinguished from the socially prominent whose wealth was
inherited--had heaped together their accumulations in humdrum trade.
Perhaps Peter Cooper, who had made a million dollars in the manufacture
of isinglass and glue, and George Law, whose gains, equally large,
represented fortunate speculations in street railroads, faintly suggest
the approaching era; yet the fortunes which are really typical are those
of William Aspinwall, who made $4,000,000 in the shipping business, of
A. T. Stewart, whose $2,000,000 represented his earnings as a retail and
wholesale dry goods merchant, and of Peter Harmony, whose $1,000,000 had
been derived from happy trade ventures in Cuba and Spain. Many of the
reservoirs of this ante-bellum wealth sound strangely in our modern
ears. John Haggerty had made $1,000,000 as an auctioneer; William L.
Coggeswell had made half as much as a wine importer; Japhet Bishop had
rounded out an honest $600,000 from the profits of a hardware store;
while Phineas T. Barnum ranks high in the list by virtue of $800,000
accumulated in a business which it is hardly necessary to specify.
Indeed his name and that of the great landlords are almost the only
ones in this list that have descended to posterity. Yet they were the
Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Harrimans, the Fricks, and the Henry
Fords of their day.
Before the Civil War had ended, however, the transformation of the
United States from a nation of farmers and small-scale manufacturers
to a highly organized industrial state had begun. Probably the most
important single influence was the War itself. Those four years of
bitter conflict illustrate, perhaps more graphically than any similar
event in history, the power which military operations may exercise in
stimulating all the productive forces of a people. In thickly settled
nations, with few dormant resources and with practically no areas of
unoccupied land, a long war usually produces industrial disorganization
and financial exhaustion. The Napoleonic wars had this effect in Europe;
in particular they caused a period of social and industrial distress in
England. The few years immediately following Waterloo marked a period
when starving mobs rioted in the streets of London, setting fire to
the houses of the aristocracy and stoning the Prince Regent whenever he
dared to show his head in public, when cotton spindles ceased to turn,
when collieries closed down, when jails and workhouses were overflowing
with a wretched proletariat, and when gaunt and homeless women and
children crowded the country highways. No such disorders followed the
Civil War in this country, at least in the North and West. Spiritually
the struggle accomplished much in awakening the nation to a
consciousness of its great opportunities. The fact that we could
spend more than a million dollars a day--expenditures that hardly seem
startling in amount now, but which were almost unprecedented then--and
that soon after hostilities ceased we rapidly paid off our large debt,
directed the attention of foreign capitalists to our resources, and gave
them the utmost confidence in this new investment field. Immigration,
too, started after the war at a rate hitherto without parallel in our
annals. The Germans who had come in the years preceding the Civil War
had been largely political refugees and democratic idealists, but now,
in much larger numbers, began the influx of north and south Germans
whose dominating motive was economic. These Germans began to find their
way to the farms of the Mississippi Valley; the Irish began once more
to crowd our cities; the Slavs gravitated towards the mines of
Pennsylvania; the Scandinavians settled whole counties of certain
northwestern States; while the Jews began that conquest of the tailoring
industries that was ultimately to make them the clothiers of a hundred
million people. For this industrial development, America supplied the
land, the resources, and the business leaders, while Europe furnished
the liquid capital and the laborers.
Even more directly did the War stimulate our industrial development.
Perhaps the greatest effect was the way in which it changed our
transportation system. The mere necessity of constantly transporting
hundreds of thousands of troops and war supplies demanded reconstruction
and reequipment on an extensive scale. The American Civil War was the
first great conflict in which railroads played a conspicuous military
part, and their development during those four years naturally left them
in a strong position to meet the new necessities of peace. One of
the first effects of the War was to close the Mississippi River;
consequently the products of the Western farms had to go east by
railroad, and this fact led to that preeminence of the great trunk lines
which they retain to this day. Almost overnight Chicago became the great
Western shipping center, and though the river boats lingered for a
time on the Ohio and the Mississippi they grew fewer year by year.
Prosperity, greater than the country had ever known, prevailed
everywhere in the North throughout the last two years of the War.
So, too, feeding and supplying an army of millions of men laid the
foundation of many of our greatest industries. The Northern soldiers in
the early days of the war were clothed in garments so variegated
that they sometimes had trouble in telling friend from foe, and not
infrequently they shot at one another; so inadequately were our woolen
mills prepared to supply their uniforms! But larger government contracts
enabled the proprietors to reconstruct their mills, install modern
machines, and build up an organization and a prosperous business that
still endures. Making boots and shoes for Northern soldiers laid the
foundation of America's great shoe industry. Machinery had already been
applied to shoe manufacture, but only to a limited extent; under the
pressure of war conditions, however, American inventive skill found ways
of performing mechanically almost all the operations that had formerly
been done by hand. The McKay sewing machine, one of the greatest of our
inventions, which was perfected in the second year of the war, did as
much perhaps as any single device to keep our soldiers well shod and
comfortable. The necessity of feeding these same armies created our
great packing plants. Though McCormick had invented his reaper several
years before the war, the new agricultural machinery had made no great
headway. Without this machinery, however, our Western farmers could
never have harvested the gigantic crops which not only fed our soldiers
but laid the basis of our economic prosperity. Thus the War directly
established one of the greatest, and certainly one of the most romantic,
of our industries--that of agricultural machinery.
Above all, however, the victory at Appomattox threw upon the country
more than a million unemployed men. Our European critics predicted
that their return to civil life would produce dire social and political
consequences. But these critics were thinking in terms of their own
countries; they failed to consider that the United States had an immense
unoccupied domain which was waiting for development. The men who
fought the Civil War had demonstrated precisely the adventurous, hardy
instincts which were most needed in this great enterprise. Even before
the War ended, a great immigration started towards the mines and farms
of the trans-Mississippi country. There was probably no important town
or district west of the Alleghanies that did not absorb a considerable
number. In most instances, too, our ex-soldiers became leaders in
these new communities. Perhaps this movement has its most typical and
picturesque illustration in the extent to which the Northern soldiers
opened up the oil-producing regions of western Pennsylvania. Venango
County, where this great development started, boasted that it had more
ex-soldiers than any similar section of the United States.
The Civil War period also forced into prominence a few men whose methods
and whose achievements indicated, even though roughly and indistinctly,
a new type of industrial leadership. Every period has its outstanding
figure and, when the Civil War was approaching its end, one personality
had emerged from the humdrum characters of the time--one man who, in
energy, imagination, and genius, displayed the forces that were to
create a new American world. Although this man employed his great
talents in a field, that of railroad transportation, which lies outside
the scope of the present volume, yet in this comprehensive view I may
take Cornelius Vanderbilt as the symbol that links the old industrial
era with the new. He is worthy of more detailed study than he has ever
received, for in personality and accomplishments Vanderbilt is the most
romantic figure in the history of American finance. We must remember
that Vanderbilt was born in 1794 and that at the time we are considering
he was seventy-one years old. In the matter of years, therefore,
his career apparently belongs to the ante-bellum days, yet the most
remarkable fact about this remarkable man is that his real life work did
not begin until he had passed his seventieth year. In 1865 Vanderbilt's
fortune, consisting chiefly of a fleet of steamboats, amounted to about
$10,000,000; he died twelve years later, in 1877, leaving $104,000,000,
the first of those colossal American fortunes that were destined to
astound the world. The mere fact that this fortune was the accumulated
profit of only ten years shows perhaps more eloquently than any other
circumstance that the United States had entered a new economic age. That
new factor in the life of America and the world, the railroad, explains
his achievement. Vanderbilt was one of the most astonishing characters
in our history. His physical exterior made him perhaps the most imposing
figure in New York. In his old age, at seventy-three, Vanderbilt married
his second wife, a beautiful Southern widow who had just turned her
thirtieth year, and the appearance of the two, sitting side by side in
one of the Commodore's smartest turnouts, driving recklessly behind a
pair of the fastest trotters of the day, was a common sight in Central
Park. Nor did Vanderbilt look incongruous in this brilliant setting. His
tall and powerful frame was still erect, and his large, defiant head,
ruddy cheeks, sparkling, deep-set black eyes, and snowy white hair
and whiskers, made him look every inch the Commodore. These public
appearances lent a pleasanter and more sentimental aspect to
Vanderbilt's life than his intimates always perceived. For his manners
were harsh and uncouth; he was totally without education and could write
hardly half a dozen lines without outraging the spelling-book. Though he
loved his race-horses, had a fondness for music, and could sit through
long winter evenings while his young wife sang old Southern ballads,
Vanderbilt's ungovernable temper had placed him on bad terms with nearly
all his children--he had had thirteen, of whom eleven survived him--who
contested his will and exposed all his eccentricities to public view
on the ground that the man who created the New York Central system was
actually insane. Vanderbilt's methods and his temperament presented
such a contrast to the commonplace minds which had previously dominated
American business that this explanation of his career is perhaps not
surprising. He saw things in their largest aspects and in his big
transactions he seemed to act almost on impulse and intuition. He could
never explain the mental processes by which he arrived at important
decisions, though these decisions themselves were invariably sound. He
seems to have had, as he himself frequently said, almost a seer-like
faculty. He saw visions, and he believed in dreams and in signs. The
greatest practical genius of his time was a frequent attendant at
spiritualistic seances; he cultivated personally the society of mediums,
and in sickness he usually resorted to mental healers, mesmerists,
and clairvoyants. Before making investments or embarking in his great
railroad ventures, Vanderbilt visited spiritualists; we have one
circumstantial account of his summoning the wraith of Jim Fiske to
advise him in stock operations. His excessive vanity led him to print
his picture on all the Lake Shore bonds; he proposed to New York
City the construction in Central Park of a large monument that would
commemorate, side by side, the names of Vanderbilt and Washington; and
he actually erected a large statue to himself in his new Hudson River
station in St. John's Park. His attitude towards the public was shown in
his remark when one of his associates told him that "each and every one"
of certain transactions which he had just forced through "is absolutely
forbidden by the statutes of the State of New York." "My God, John!"
said the Commodore, "you don't suppose you can run a railroad in
accordance with the statutes of the State of New York, do you?" "Law!"
he once roared on a similar occasion, "What do I care about law? Hain't
I got the power?"
These things of course were the excrescences of an extremely vital,
overflowing, imaginative, energetic human being; they are traits that
not infrequently accompany genius. And the work which Vanderbilt did
remains an essential part of our economic organization today. Before his
time a trip to Chicago meant that the passenger changed trains seventeen
times, and that all freight had to be unloaded at a similar number
of places, carted across towns, and reloaded into other trains. The
magnificent railroad highway that extends up the banks of the Hudson,
through the Mohawk Valley, and alongside the borders of Lake Erie--a
water line route nearly the entire distance--was all but useless. It
is true that not all the consolidation of these lines was Vanderbilt's
work. In 1853 certain millionaires and politicians had linked together
the several separate lines extending from Albany to Buffalo, but they
had managed the new road so wretchedly that the largest stockholders in
1867 begged Vanderbilt to take over the control. By 1873 the Commodore
had acquired the Hudson River, extending from New York to Albany, the
New York Central extending from Albany to Buffalo, and the Lake Shore
which ran from Buffalo to Chicago. In a few years these roads had been
consolidated into a smoothly operating system. If, in transforming
these discordant railroads into one, Vanderbilt bribed legislatures and
corrupted courts, if he engaged in the largest stock-watering operations
on record up to that time, and took advantage of inside information to
make huge winnings on the stock exchange, he also ripped up the old iron
rails and relaid them with steel, put down four tracks where formerly
there had been two, replaced wooden bridges with steel, discarded the
old locomotives for new and more powerful ones, built splendid new
terminals, introduced economies in a hundred directions, cut down the
hours required in a New York-Chicago trip from fifty to twenty-four,
made his highway an expeditious line for transporting freight, and
transformed railroads that had formerly been the playthings of
Wall Street and that frequently could not meet their pay-rolls into
exceedingly profitable, high dividend paying properties. In this
operation Vanderbilt typified the era that was dawning--an era of
ruthlessness, of personal selfishness, of corruption, of disregard of
private rights, of contempt for law and legislatures, and yet of vast
and beneficial achievement. The men of this time may have traveled
roughshod to their goal, but after all, they opened up, in an amazingly
short time, a mighty continent to the uses of mankind. The triumph
of the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad under Vanderbilt, a
triumph which dazzled European investors as well as our own, and which
represented an entirely different business organization from anything
the nation had hitherto seen, appropriately ushered in the new business
era whose outlines will be sketched in the succeeding pages.
CHAPTER II. THE FIRST GREAT AMERICAN TRUST
When Cornelius Vanderbilt died in 1877, America's first great industrial
combination had become an established fact. In that year the Standard
Oil Company of Ohio controlled at least ninety per cent of the business
of refining and marketing petroleum. A new portent had appeared in our
economic life, a phenomenon that was destined to affect not only the
social and business existence of the every-day American but even his
political and legal institutions.
It seems natural enough at the present time to refer to petroleum as an
indispensable commodity. At the beginning of the Civil War, however,
any such description would have been absurd. Though petroleum was not
unknown, millions of American households were still burning candles,
whale oil, and other illuminants. Not until 1859 did our ancestors
realize that, concealed in the rocky of western Pennsylvania, lay
apparently inexhaustible quantities of a liquid which, when refined,
would give a light exceeding in brilliancy anything they had hitherto
known. The mere existence of petroleum, it is true, had been a familiar
fact for centuries. Herodotus mentions the oil pits of Babylon, and
Pliny informs us that this oil was actually used for lighting in certain
parts of Sicily. It had never become an object of universal use, simply
because no one had discovered how to obtain it in sufficient quantities.
No one had suspected, indeed, that petroleum existed practically in the
form of great subterranean rivers, lakes, or even seas. For ages this
great natural treasure had been seeking to advertise its presence by
occasionally seeping through the rocks and appearing on the surface of
watercourses. It had been doing this all over the world--in China,
in Russia, in Germany, in England, in our own country. Yet our obtuse
ancestors had for centuries refused to take the hint. We can find much
cause for self-congratulation in that it was apparently the American
mind that first acted upon this obvious suggestion.
In Venango County, Pennsylvania, petroleum floated in such quantities
on the surface of a branch of the Allegheny River that this small
watercourse had for generations been known as Oil Creek. The neighboring
farmers used to collect the oil and use it to grease their wagon axles;
others, more enterprising, made a business of gathering the floating
substance, packing it in bottles, and selling it broadcast as a
medicine. The most famous of these concoctions, "Seneca Oil," was widely
advertised as a sure cure for rheumatism, and had an extensive sale in
this country. "Kier's Rock Oil" afterwards had an even more extended
use. Samuel M. Kier, who exploited this comprehensive cure-all, made no
lasting contributions to medical science, but his method of obtaining
his medicament led indirectly to the establishment of a great industry.
In this western Pennsylvania region salt manufacture had been a thriving
business for many years; the salt was obtained from salt water by
means of artesian wells. This salt water usually came to the surface
contaminated with that same evil-smelling oil which floated so
constantly on top of the rivers and brooks. The salt makers spent
much time and money "purifying" their water from this substance, never
apparently suspecting that the really valuable product of their wells
was not the salt water they so carefully preserved, but the
petroleum which they threw away. Samuel M. Kier was originally a salt
manufacturer; more canny than his competitors, he sold the oil which
came up with his water as a patent medicine. In order to give a
mysterious virtue to this remedy, Kier printed on his labels the
information that it had been "pumped up with salt water about four
hundred feet below the earth's surface." His labels also contained the
convincing picture of an artesian well--a rough woodcut which really
laid the foundation of the Standard Oil Company.
In the late fifties Mr. George H. Bissell had become interested in rock
oil, not as an embrocation and as a cure for most human ills, but as a
light-giving material. A professor at Dartmouth had performed certain
experiments with this substance which had sunk deeply into Bissell's
imagination. So convinced was this young man that he could introduce
petroleum commercially that he leased certain fields in western
Pennsylvania and sent a specimen of the oil to Benjamin Silliman, Jr.,
Professor of Chemistry at Yale. Professor Silliman gave the product
a more complete analysis than it had ever previously received and
submitted a report which is still the great classic in the scientific
literature of petroleum. This report informed Bissell that the
substance, could be refined cheaply and easily, and that, when refined,
it made a splendid illuminant, besides yielding certain byproducts, such
as paraffin and naphtha, which had a great commercial value. So far,
Bissell's enterprise seemed to promise success, yet the great problem
still remained: how could he obtain this rock oil in amounts large
enough to make his enterprise a practical one? A chance glimpse of
Kier's label, with its picture of an artesian well, supplied Bissell
with his answer. He at once sent E. L. Drake into the oil-fields with
a complete drilling equipment, to look, not for saltwater, but for oil.
Nothing seems quite so obvious today as drilling a well into the rock
to discover oil, yet so strange was the idea in Drake's time that the
people of Titusville, where he started work, regarded him as a lunatic
and manifested a hostility to his enterprise that delayed operations for
several months. Yet one day in August, 1859, the coveted liquid began
flowing from "Drake's folly" at the rate of twenty-five barrels a day.
Because of this performance Drake has gone down to fame as the man
who "discovered oil." In the sense that his operation made petroleum
available to the uses of mankind, Drake was its discoverer, and his
achievement seems really a greater one than that of the men who first
made apparent our beds of coal, iron, copper, or even gold. For Drake
really uncovered an entirely new substance. And the country responded
spontaneously to Drake's success. For anything approaching the sudden
rush to the oil-fields we shall have to go to the discovery of gold in
California ten years before. Men flocked into western Pennsylvania by
the thousands; fortunes were made and lost almost instantaneously. Oil
flowed so plentifully in this region that it frequently ran upon the
ground, and the "gusher," which threw a stream of the precious liquid
sometimes a hundred feet and more into the air, became an almost
every-day occurrence. The discovery took the whole section by surprise;
there were no towns, no railways, and no wagon roads except a few
almost impassable lumber trails. Yet, almost in a twinkling, the whole
situation changed; towns sprang up overnight, roads were built, over
which teamsters could carry the oil to the nearest shipping points, and
the great trunk lines began to extend branches into the regions. The
one thing, next to Drake's well, that made the oil available, was the
discovery, which was made by Samuel Van Syckel, that a two-inch pipe,
starting at the well, could convey the oil for several miles to the
nearest railway station. In a few years the whole oil region of Venango
County was an inextricable tangle of these primitive pipelines. Thus,
before the Civil war had ended, the western Pennsylvania wilderness had
been transformed into the busy headquarters of a new industry. Companies
had been formed, many of them the wildest stock-jobbing operations,
refineries had been started, in a few years the whalers of New England
had almost lost their occupation, but millions of American homes, that
had hitherto had to spend the long winter evenings almost in darkness,
suddenly found themselves flooded with light. In Cleveland, in
Pittsburgh, in Philadelphia, in New York, and in the oil regions,
the business of refining and selling petroleum had reached extensive
proportions. Europe, although it had great undeveloped oil-fields of
its own, drew upon this new American enterprise to such an extent that,
eleven years after Drake's "discovery," petroleum had taken fourth place
among our exported articles.
The very year that Bissell had organized his petroleum company a boy of
sixteen had obtained his first job in a produce commission office on
a dock in Cleveland. As the curtain rises on the career of John D.
Rockefeller, we see him perched upon a high stool, adding up figures and
casting accounts, faithfully doing every odd office job that came his
way, earning his employer's respect for his industry, his sobriety,
and his unmistakable talents for business. Nor does this picture
inadequately visualize Rockefeller's whole after-life, and explain the
business qualities that made possible his unexampled success. It is,
indeed, the scene to which Mr. Rockefeller himself most frequently
reverts when, in his famous autobiographical discourses to his Cleveland
Sunday School, he calls our attention to the rules that inevitably lead
to industrial prosperity. "Thrift, thrift, Horatio," is the one idea
upon which the great captain of the oil business has always insisted.
Many have detected in these habits of mind only the cheese-paring
activities of a naturally narrow spirit. Rockefeller's old Cleveland
associates remember him as the greatest bargainer they had ever known,
as a man who had an eye for infinite details and an unquenchable
patience and resource in making economies. Yet Rockefeller was clearly
more than a pertinacious haggler over trifles. Certainly such a
diagnosis does not explain a man who has built up one of the world's
greatest organizations and accumulated the largest fortune which
has ever been placed at the disposal of one man. Indeed, Rockefeller
displayed unusual business ability even before he entered the oil
business. A young man who, at the age of nineteen, could start a
commission house and do a business of nearly five hundred thousand the
first year must have had commercial capacity to an extraordinary degree.
Fate had placed Rockefeller in Cleveland in the days when the oil
business had got well under way. In the early sixties a score or so of
refineries had started in this town, many of which were making large
profits. It is not surprising that Rockefeller, gazing at these black
and evil-smelling buildings from the vantage point of his commission
office, should have felt an impulse to join in the gamble. He plunged
into this new activity at the age of twenty-three. He possessed two
great advantages over most of his adventurous competitors; one was
a heavy bank account, representing his earnings in the commission
business, and the other a partner, Samuel Andrews, who was generally
regarded as a mechanical genius in the production of illuminating oil.
At the beginning, therefore, Rockefeller had the two essentials which
largely explain his subsequent career; an adequate liquid capital
and high technical resources. In the first few years the Rockefeller
houses--he rapidly organized three, one after another--competed with a
large number of other units in the oil business on somewhat more than
even terms. At this time Rockefeller was merely one of a large number of
successful oil refiners, yet during these early days a grandiose scheme
was taking shape in that quiet, insinuating, far-reaching brain. He
said nothing about it, even to his closest associates, yet it filled his
every waking hour. For this young man was taking a comprehensive sweep
of the world and he saw millions of people, in the Americas, in Europe,
and in Asia, whose need for the article in which he dealt would grow
more insistent every day. He saw that he was handling a product which
was becoming as much a necessity of life as the air itself. The young
man reached out to grasp this business. "All of it," we can picture
Rockefeller saying to himself, "all of it shall be mine." Any study of
Rockefeller's career must lead to the conclusion that, before he had
reached his thirtieth year, he had determined to monopolize this
growing necessity. The mere fact that this young man could form such a
stupendous plan indicates that in him we are meeting for the first time
a new type of industrial leader. At that time monopolies were unknown in
the United States. That certain old English Kings had frequently
granted exclusive trading privileges to favored merchants most educated
Americans knew; and their knowledge of monopolies extended little
further than this. Yet about 1868 John D. Rockefeller started
consciously to revive this ancient practice, and to bring under
one ownership the magnificent industry to which Drake's sensational
discovery had given rise.
Daring as was this conception, the resourcefulness and the skill with
which Rockefeller executed it were more startling still. Merely to
catalogue, one by one, the achievements of the ten succeeding fruitful
years, almost takes one's breath away. Indeed the whole operation
proceeded with such a Napoleonic rapidity of action that the outside
world had hardly grasped Rockefeller's intention before the monopoly
had been made complete. We catch one glimpse of Rockefeller, in 1868, as
head of the prosperous house of Rockefeller, Andrews, and Flagler,
and eight years afterwards we see him once more, this time the man who
controlled practically the entire petroleum business of the world. His
career of conquest began in 1870, when the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews,
and Flagler, joining hands with several large capitalists in Cleveland
and New York, was incorporated under the name of the Standard Oil
Company of Ohio. In 1870 about twenty-five independent refineries, many
of them prosperous and powerful, were manufacturing oil in the city
of Cleveland; two years afterward this new Standard Oil Company had
absorbed all of them except five: In these two critical years the oil
business of the largest refining center in the United States had thus
passed into Rockefeller's hands. By 1874 the greatest refineries in New
York and Philadelphia had likewise merged their identity with his own.
When Rockefeller began his acquisition, there were thirty independent
refineries operating in Pittsburgh, all of which, in four or five years,
passed one by one under his control. The largest refineries of Baltimore
surrendered in 1875.
These capitulations left only one important refining headquarters in the
United States which the Standard had not absorbed. This was that section
of western Pennsylvania where the oil business had had its origin. The
mere fact that this area was the headquarters of the oil supply gave it
great advantages as a place for manufacturing the finished product.
The oil regions regarded these advantages as giving them the right to
dominate the growing industry, and they had frequently proclaimed the
doctrine that the business belonged to them. They hated Rockefeller
as much as they feared him, yet at the very moment when the Titusville
operators were hanging him in effigy and posting the hoardings with
cabalistic signs against his corporation, this mysterious, almost
uncanny power was encircling them: Men who one night were addressing
public meetings denouncing the Standard influence would suddenly sell
out their holdings the next day. In 1875 John D. Archbold, a brilliant
young refiner who had grown up in the oil regions and who had gained
much local fame as opponent of the Standard, appeared in Titusville
as the President of the Acme Oil Company. At that time there were
twenty-seven independent refineries in this section. Archbold began
buying and leasing these establishments for his Acme Company, and in
about four years practically every one had passed under his control. The
Acme Company was merely a subsidiary of the Standard Oil. These rapid
purchasing campaigns gave the Standard ninety per cent of all the
refineries in the United States, but Rockefeller's scheme comprehended
more than the acquisition of refineries. In the main the Rockefeller
group left the production of crude oil in the hands of the private
drillers, but practically every other branch of the business passed
ultimately into their hands. Both the New York Central and the Erie
railroads surrendered to the Standard the large oil terminal stations
which they had maintained for years in New York. As a consequence, the
Standard obtained complete supervision of all oil sent by railroad into
New York, and it also secured the machinery of a complete espionage
system over the business of competitors. The Standard acquired companies
which had built up a large business in marketing oil. Even more dramatic
was its success in gathering up, one after another, these pipe lines
which represented the circulatory system of the oil industry. In the
early days these pipe lines were small and comparatively simple affairs.
They merely carried the crude oil from the wells to railroad centers;
from these stations the railroads transported it to the refineries at
Cleveland, New York, and other places. At an early day the construction
and management of these pipe lines became a separate industry. And now,
in 1873, the Standard Oil Company secured possession of a one-third
interest in the largest of these privately owned companies, the American
Transfer Company. Soon afterward the United Pipe Line Company went under
their control. In 1877 the Empire Transportation Company, a large
pipe line and refining corporation which the Pennsylvania Railroad had
controlled for many years, became a Standard subsidiary.
Meanwhile certain hardy spirits in the oil regions had conceived a much
more ambitious plan. Why not build great underground mains directly from
the oil regions to the seaboard, pump the crude oil directly to the city
refineries, and thus free themselves from dependence on the railroads?
At first the idea of pumping oil through pipes over the Alleghany
Mountains seemed grotesque, but competent engineers gave their
indorsement to the plan. A certain "Dr." Hostetter built for the
Columbia Conduit Company a trunk pipe line that extended thirty miles
from the oil regions to Pittsburgh. Hardly had Hostetter completed his
splendid project when the Standard Oil capitalists quietly appeared and
purchased it! For four years another group struggled with an even more
ambitious scheme, the construction of a conduit, five hundred miles
long, from the oil regions to Baltimore. The American people looked on
admiringly at the splendid enterprise whose projectors, led by General
Haupt, the builder of the Hoosac Tunnel, struggled against bankruptcy,
strikes, railroad opposition, and hostile legislatures, in their
attempts to push their pipe line to the sea. In 1879 the Tidewater
Company first began to pump their oil, and the American press hailed
their achievement as something that ranked with the laying of the
Atlantic Cable and the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. But in less
than two years the Rockefeller interest had entered into agreements with
the Tidewater Company that practically placed this great seaboard pipe
line in its hands.
Thus in less than ten years Rockefeller had realized his ambitious
dream; he now controlled practically everything concerned in the
manufacture and sale of petroleum. The change had come about so
stealthily, so secretly, and even so remorselessly that it impressed the
public almost as the work of some uncanny genius. What were the forces,
personal and economic, that had produced this new phenomenon in our
business life? In certain particulars the Standard Oil monopoly was the
product of well-understood principles. From his earliest days John D.
Rockefeller had struggled to eliminate the middleman. He established
factories to build his own barrels, to make his own acids; he created
his own selling firms, and, instead of paying large storage charges, he
constructed his own warehouses in New York. From his earliest days as a
refiner, he had adopted the principle of paying no man a profit, and of
performing all the intermediate acts that had formerly resulted in large
tribute to middlemen. Moreover, the Standard Oil Company was apparently
the first great American industrial enterprise that realized the
necessity of operating with an abundant capital. Not the least of Mr.
Rockefeller's achievements was his success in associating with the
new company men having great financial standing--Amasa Stone, Benjamin
Brewster, Oliver Jennings, and the like, capitalists whose banking
resources, placed at the disposition of the Standard, gave it an immense
advantage over its rivals. While his competitors were "kiting" checks
and waiting, hat in hand, on the good nature of the money lenders,
Rockefeller always had a large bank balance, upon which he could
instantly draw for his operations.
Nor must we overlook the fact that the Standard group contained a large
number of exceedingly able men. "They are mighty smart men," said the
despairing W. H. Vanderbilt, in 1879, when pressed to give his reasons
for granting rebates to the Rockefeller group. "I guess if you ever
had to deal with them you would find that out." In Rockefeller the
corporation possessed a man of tireless industry and unshakable
determination. Nothing could turn him aside from the work to which
he had put his hand. Public criticism and even denunciation, while
he resented it as unjust and regarded it as the product of a general
misunderstanding, never caused the leader of Standard Oil even
momentarily to flinch. He was a man of one idea, and he worked at it
day and night, taking no rest or recreation, skillfully turning to his
purpose every little advantage that came his way. His associates--men
like Flagler, Archbold, and Rogers--also had unusual talents, and
together they built up the splendid organization that still exists. They
exacted from their subordinates the last ounce of attention and energy
and they rewarded generously everybody who served them well. They showed
great judgment in establishing refineries at the most strategic points
and in giving up localities, such as Boston and Portland, which were
too far removed from their supplies. They established a marketing system
which enabled them to bring their oil directly from their own refineries
to the retailer, all in their own tank cars and tank wagons. They
extended their markets in foreign countries, so that now the Standard
sells the larger part of its products outside the United States.
They established chemical research laboratories which devised new and
inexpensive methods for refining the product and developed invaluable
byproducts, such as paraffin, naphtha, vaseline, and lubricating oils.
It is impossible to study the career of the Standard Oil Company
without concluding that we have here an example of a supreme business
intelligence working in a field which gave the widest possible scope of
action.
A high quality of organization, however, does not completely explain the
growth of this monopoly. The Standard Oil Company was the beneficiary of
methods that have deservedly received great public opprobrium. Of these
the one that stands forth most conspicuously is the railroad rebate.
Those who have attempted to trace the very origin of the Rockefeller
preeminence to railroad discrimination have not entirely succeeded. Only
the most hazy evidence exists that the firm of Rockefeller, Andrews,
and Flagler greatly profited from rebates. In fact, refined oil was not
transported from Cleveland to the seaboard by railroad until 1870, the
year that this firm dissolved; practically all of the product then went
by way of the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal. Possibly the Rockefeller
firm did get occasional rebates on crude oil from the oil regions to
the refineries, but so did their competitors. It is therefore not likely
that such favors had great influence in making this single firm the most
successful in the largest refining center. With the organization of
the Standard Oil Company, however, rebates became a more important
consideration.
The turning-point in the history of the oil industry came when the
Rockefeller interests acquired the Cleveland refineries. The details
concerning this act of generalship are fairly well known. The South
Improvement Company is a corporation that necessarily bulks large in
the history of the Standard Oil. Mr. Rockefeller and his associates have
always disclaimed the parentage of this organization. They assert--and
their assertion is doubtless true--that the only responsible begetters
were Thomas A. Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and
certain refineries in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia which, though they
were afterwards absorbed by the Standard, were at that time their
competitors. These refiners and the Pennsylvania, over which the
Standard Oil then was making no shipments, thus represented a group,
composed of railroads and refiners, which was antagonistic to the
Rockefeller interests. The South Improvement Company was an association
of refiners with which the railroads, chiefly the Pennsylvania, the New
York Central, and the Erie, made exclusive contracts for shipping oil.
Under these contracts rates to the seaboard were to be generally raised,
though the members of the South Improvement Company were to receive
liberal rebates. The refiners of Cleveland and Pittsburgh were to get
lower rates than the refiners located in the oil regions. But the clause
in these contracts that caused the greatest amazement and indignation
was one which gave the inside group rebates on every barrel of oil
shipped by its competitors.
It would be difficult to imagine any transaction more wicked than these
contracts. Carried into execution they inevitably meant the extinction
of every refiner who had not been admitted into the inside ring. Of the
two thousand shares of the South Improvement Company, the gentlemen who
were at that time most conspicuously identified with the Standard Oil
Company subscribed to five hundred and forty. Mr. Rockefeller has always
protested that he did not favor the scheme and that he became a party
to it simply because he could not afford to antagonize the powerful
Pennsylvania Railroad, which had originated it. When the details became
public property, a wave of indignation swept from the Atlantic to the
Pacific; the oil regions, which would have been the heaviest sufferers,
shut down their wells and so cut off the supply of crude oil; the New
York newspapers started a "crusade" against the South Improvement group
and Congress ordered an investigation. So fiercely was the public wrath
aroused that the railroads ran to cover, abrogated the contracts, signed
an agreement promising never more to grant rebates to any one, while the
Pennsylvania Legislature repealed the charter of the South Improvement
Company. This particular scheme, therefore, never came to maturity.
Before the South Improvement Company ended its corporate existence,
however, a great change had taken place in the oil situation.
Practically all the refineries in Cleveland had passed into the control
of the Standard Oil Company. The Standard has always denied that there
was any connection between the purchase of these great refineries and
the organization of the South Improvement Company. But there is
much evidence sustaining a contrary view, for many of these refiners
afterward went on the witness stand and told circumstantial stories, all
of which made precisely the same point. This was that the Standard men
had come to them, shown the contracts which had been made by the South
Improvement Company, and argued that, under these new conditions, the
refineries left outside the combination could not long survive. The
Standard's rivals were therefore urged to "come in," to take Standard
stock in return for their refineries, or, if they preferred, to sell
outright. Practically all saw the force in this argument and sold--in
most cases taking cash.
The acquisition of these Cleveland refineries made inevitable the
Rockefeller conquest of the oil industry. Up to that time the Standard
had refined about fifteen hundred barrels a day, and now suddenly its
capacity jumped to more than twelve thousand barrels. This one strategic
move had made Rockefeller master of about one-third of all the oil
business in the United States, and this fact explains the rapidity with
which the other citadels fell. There is no evidence that the Standard
exercised any pressure upon the great refineries in New York,
Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. Indeed these concerns manifested an
eagerness to join. The fact that, unlike the Cleveland refiners, many of
the firms in these other cities took Standard stock, and so became
parts of the new organization, is in itself significant. They evidently
realized that they were casting their fortunes with the winning side.
The huge shipments which the Standard now controlled explain this change
in front. Every day Mr. Rockefeller could send from Cleveland to
the seaboard a train, sixty cars long, loaded with the blue barrels
containing his celebrated liquid. That was a consideration for which any
railroad would at that time sell its soul. And the New York Central road
promptly made this sacrifice. Hardly had the ink dried on its written
promise not to grant any rebates when it began granting them to the
Standard Oil Company.
In those days the railroad rate was not the sacred, immutable thing
which it subsequently became, although the argument for equal treatment
of shippers existed theoretically just as strongly forty years ago as
it does today. The rebate was just as illegal then as it is at present;
there was no precise statute, it is true, which made it unlawful until
the Interstate Commerce Act was passed in 1887; but the common law had
always prohibited such discriminations. In the seventies and eighties,
however, railroad men like Cornelius Vanderbilt and Thomas A. Scott
were less interested in legal formalities than in getting freight. They
regarded transportation as a commodity to be bought and sold, like
so much sugar or wheat or coal, and they believed that the ordinary
principles which regulated private bargaining should also regulate the
sale of the article in which they dealt. According to this reasoning,
which was utterly false and iniquitous, but generally prevalent at the
time, the man who shipped the largest quantities of oil should get the
lowest rate.
The purchase of the Cleveland refineries made the Standard Oil group the
largest shippers and therefore they obtained the most advantageous terms
for transporting their product. Under these conditions they naturally
obtained the monopoly, the extent of which has been already described.
Their competitors could rage, hold public meetings, start riots,
threaten to lynch Mr. Rockefeller and all his associates, but they could
not long survive in face of these advantages. The only way in which
the smaller shippers could overcome this handicap was by acquiring
new methods of transportation. It was this necessity that inspired the
construction of pipe lines; but the Standard, as already described,
succeeded in absorbing these just about as rapidly as they were
constructed.
Not only did the Standard obtain railroad rebates but it developed the
most death-dealing methods in its system of marketing its oil. In
these campaigns it certainly overstepped the boundaries of legitimate
business, even according to the prevailing morals of its own or of any
other time. While it probably did not set fire to rival refineries, as
it has sometimes been accused of doing, it undoubtedly did resort to
somewhat Prussian methods of destroying the foe. This great corporation
divided the United States into several sections, over each of which it
appointed an agent, who in turn subdivided his territory into smaller
divisions, each one of which likewise had its captain. The order
imperatively issued to each agent was, "Sell all the oil that is sold
in your district." To these instructions he was rigidly held; success in
accomplishing his task meant advancement and an increased salary, with
a liberal pension in his old age, whereas failure meant a pitiless
dismissal. He was expected to supervise not only his own business, but
that of his rivals as well, to obtain access to their accounts, their
shipments, and their customers. It has been asserted, and the assertion
has been supported by considerable evidence, that these agents did not
hesitate to bribe railroad employees and in this way get access to their
competitors' bills of lading and records of their shipments, and that
they would even bribe dealers to cancel such orders and take the oil
from them at a lower price. This information laid the foundation for
those price-cutting campaigns that have brought the name of the Standard
Oil into such disfavor. And when the Standard cut, it cut to kill; the
only purpose was to drive the competitor from the field, and, when this
had been accomplished, the price of oil would promptly go up again. The
organization of "bogus companies," started purely for the purpose of
eliminating competitors, seems to have been a not infrequent practice.
This latter method emphasizes another quality that accompanied the
Standard's operations and so largely explains its unpopularity--the
secrecy with which it so commonly worked. Though the independent oil
refiners were combating the most powerful financial power of the time,
they were frequently fighting in the dark, never knowing where to
deliver their blows.
This same characteristic was manifested in the form of corporate
existence which the Standard adopted. The first great "trust" was a
trust not only in name but in fact. The Standard introduced not only a
new economic development into our national organization; it introduced
a new word into our language and an issue into American politics that
provided sustenance for the presidential campaigns of twenty-five years.
From the beginning the Standard Oil had always been a close corporation.
Originally it had had only ten stockholders, and this number had
gradually grown until, in 1881, there were forty-one. These men had
adopted a new and secretive method of combining their increasing
possessions into a single ownership. In 1873 the Standard Company had
increased its capital stock (originally $1,000,000) to $3,500,000, the
new certificates being exchanged for interests in the great New York
and Philadelphia refineries The Standard Oil Company of Ohio never had a
larger capital stock than that. As additional properties were acquired,
the interests were placed in the hands of trustees, who held them for
the joint benefit of the stockholders in the original company. In 1882
this idea was carried further, for then the Standard Oil Trust was
organized. The fact that the properties lay in so many different States,
many of which had laws intended to curb corporations, was evidently what
led to this form of consolidation. A trust was formed, consisting
of nine trustees, who held, for the benefit of the Standard Oil
stockholders, all the stock in the Standard and in the subsidiary
companies. Instead of certificates of stock the trustees issued
certificates of trust amounting to $70,000,000. Each Standard
stockholder received twenty of these certificates for each share which
he held of Standard stock. These certificates could be bought and sold
and passed on by inheritance precisely the same as stocks.
Ingenious as was this legal device, it did not stand the test of the
courts. In 1892 the Ohio Supreme Court declared the Standard Oil Trust
a violation of the law and demanded its dissolution. The persistent
attempts of the Standard to disregard this order increased its
reputation for lawlessness. Finally, in 1899, after Ohio had brought
another action, the trust was dissolved. The Standard interests now
reorganized all their holdings under the name of the Standard Oil
Company of New Jersey. Again, in 1911, the United States Supreme Court
declared this combination a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act,
and ordered its dissolution. By this time the Standard capitalists had
learned the value of public opinion as a corporate asset, and made no
attempt to evade the order of the court. The Standard Oil Company of New
Jersey proceeded to apportion among its stockholders the stock which it
held in thirty-seven other companies--refineries, pipe lines, producing
companies, marketing companies, and the like. Chief Justice White, in
rendering his decision, specifically ordered that, in dissolving their
combination, the Standard should make no agreement, contractual or
implied, which was intended still to retain their properties in one
ownership. As less than a dozen men owned a majority interest in the
Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, these same men naturally continued
to own a majority interest in the subsidiary companies. Though the
immediate effect of this famous decision therefore was not to cause a
separation in fact, this does not signify that, as time goes on, such a
real dissolution will not take place. It is not unlikely that, in a few
years, the transfers of the stock by inheritance or sale will weaken the
consolidated interest to a point where the companies that made up the
Standard Company will be distinct and competitive.
This is more likely to be the case since, long before the decision of
1911, the Standard Oil Company had ceased to be a monopoly. In the
early nineties there came to the front in the oil regions a man whose
organizing ability and indomitable will suggested the Standard Oil
leaders themselves. This man's soul burned with an intense hatred of the
Rockefeller group, and this sentiment, as much as his love of success,
inspired all his efforts. There is nothing finer in American business
history than the fifteen years' battle which Lewis Emery, Jr., fought
against the greatest financial power of the day. In 1901 this long
struggle met with complete success. Its monuments were the two great
trunk pipe lines which Emery had built from the Pennsylvania regions
to Marcus Hook, near Philadelphia, one for pumping refined and one for
pumping crude. The Pure Oil Company, Emery's creation, has survived
all its trials and has done an excellent business. And meanwhile other
independents sprang up with the discovery of oil in other parts of
the country. This discovery first astonished the Standard Oil men
themselves; when someone suggested to Archbold, thirty-five years ago,
that the midcontinent field probably contained large oil supplies,
he laughed, and said that he would drink all the oil ever discovered
outside of Pennsylvania. In these days a haunting fear pursued the
oil men that the Pennsylvania field would be exhausted and that their
business would be ended. This fear, as developments showed, had a
substantial basis; the Pennsylvania yield began to fail in the eighties
and nineties, until now it is an inconsiderable element in this gigantic
industry. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, California,
and other states in turn became the scene of the same exciting
and adventurous events that had followed the discovery of oil in
Pennsylvania. The Standard promptly extended its pipe lines into these
new areas, but other great companies also took part in the development.
These companies, such as the Gulf Refining Company and the Texas
Refining Company, have their gathering pipe lines, their great trunk
lines, their marketing stations, and their export trade, like the
Standard; the Pure Oil Company has its tank cars, its tank ships, and
its barges on the great rivers of Europe. The ending of the rebate
system has stimulated the growth of independents, and the production of
crude oil and the market demand in a thousand directions has increased
the business to an extent which is now far beyond the ability of any
one corporation to monopolize. The Standard interests refine perhaps
something more than fifty per cent of the crude oil produced in this
country. But in recent years, Standard Oil has meant more than a
corporation dealing in this natural product. It has become the synonym
of a vast financial power reaching in all directions. The enormous
profits made by the Rockefeller group have found investments in other
fields. The Rockefellers became the owners of the great Mesaba iron ore
range in Minnesota and of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, the chief
competitor of United States Steel. It is the largest factor in several
of the greatest American banks. Above all, it is the single largest
railroad power in America today.
CHAPTER III. THE EPIC OF STEEL
It was the boast of a Roman Emperor that he had found the Eternal City
brick and left it marble. Similarly the present generation of Americans
inherited a country which was wood and have transformed it into steel.
That which chiefly distinguishes the physical America of today from that
of forty years ago is the extensive use of this metal. Our fathers used
steel very little in railway transportation; rails and locomotives were
usually made of iron, and wood was the prevailing material for railroad
bridges. Steel cars, both for passengers and for freight, are now
everywhere taking the place of the more flimsy substance. We travel
today in steel subways, transact our business in steel buildings, and
live in apartments and private houses which are made largely of steel.
The steel automobile has long since supplanted the wooden carriage; the
steel ship has displaced the iron and wooden vessel. The American farmer
now encloses his lands with steel wire, the Southern planter binds
his cotton with steel ties, and modern America could never gather her
abundant harvests without her mighty agricultural implements, all
of which are made of steel. Thus it is steel that shelters us, that
transports us, that feeds us, and that even clothes us.
This substance is such a commonplace element in our lives that we
take it for granted, like air and water and the soil itself; yet the
generation that fought the Civil War knew practically nothing of steel.
They were familiar with this metal only as a curiosity or as a material
used for the finer kinds of cutlery. How many Americans realize that
steel was used even less in 1865 than aluminum is used today? Nearly all
the men who have made the American Steel Age--such as Carnegie, Phipps,
Frick, and Schwab--are still living and some of them are even now
extremely active. Thirty-five years ago steel manufacture was regarded,
even in this country, as an almost exclusively British industry. In
1870 the American steel maker was the parvenu of the trade. American
railroads purchased their first steel rails in England, and the early
American steel makers went to Sheffield for their expert workmen. Yet,
in little more than ten years, American mills were selling agricultural
machinery in that same English town, American rails were displacing the
English product in all parts of the world, American locomotives were
drawing English trains on English railways, and American steel bridges
were spanning the Ganges and the Nile. Indeed, the United States soon
surpassed England. In the year before the World War the United Kingdom
produced 7,500,000 tons of steel a year, while the United States
produced 32,000,000 tons. Since the outbreak of the Great War, the
United States has probably made more steel than all the rest of the
world put together. "The nation that makes the cheapest steel," says Mr.
Carnegie, "has the other nations at its feet." When some future Buckle
analyzes the fundamental facts in the World War, he may possibly find
that steel precipitated it and that steel determined its outcome.
Three circumstances contributed to the rise of this greatest of American
industries: a new process for cheaply converting molten pig iron into
steel, the discovery of enormous deposits of ore in several sections
of the United States, and the entrance into the business of a hardy and
adventurous group of manufacturers and business men. Our steel industry
is thus another triumph of American inventive skill, made possible
by the richness of our mineral resources and the racial energy of our
people. An elementary scientific discovery introduced the great steel
age. Steel, of course, is merely iron which has been refined--freed from
certain impurities, such as carbon, sulphur, and phosphorus. We refine
our iron and turn it into steel precisely as we refine our sugar and
petroleum. From the days of Tubal Cain the iron worker had known that
heat would accomplish this purification; but heat, up to almost 1865,
was an exceedingly expensive commodity. For ages iron workers had
obtained the finer metal by applying this heat in the form of charcoal,
never once realizing that unlimited quantities of another fuel existed
on every hand. The man who first suggested that so commonplace a
substance as air, blown upon molten pig iron, would produce the
intensest heat and destroy its impurities, made possible our steel
railroads, our steel ships, and our steel cities. When William Kelly, an
owner of iron works near Eddyville, Kentucky, first proposed this method
in 1847, he met with the ridicule which usually greets the pioneer
inventor. When Henry Bessemer, several years afterward, read a paper
before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in
which he advocated the same principle, he was roared down as "a crazy
Frenchman," and the savants were so humiliated by the suggestion that
they voted to make no record of his "silly paper" in their official
minutes. Yet these two men, the American Kelly and the Englishman
Bessemer, were the creators of modern steel. The records of the American
Patent Office clearly show that Kelly made "Bessemer" steel many years
before Bessemer. In 1870 the American Government refused to extend
Bessemer's patent in this country on the ground that William Kelly had
a prior claim; in spite of this, Bessemer was undoubtedly the man
who developed the mechanical details and gave the process a universal
standing.
Though the Bessemer process made possible the production of steel by
tons instead of by pounds, it would never in itself have given the
nation its present preeminence in the steel industry. Iron had been
mined in the United States for two centuries on a small scale, the main
deposits being located in the Lake Champlain region of New York and
in western Pennsylvania. But these, and a hundred other places located
along the Atlantic coast, could not have produced ore in quantities
sufficient to satisfy the yawning jaws of the Bessemer converters. As
this new method poured out the liquid in thousands of tons, and as the
commercial demand extended in a dozen different directions, the cry went
up from the furnace's for more ore. And again Nature, which has favored
America in so many directions, came to her assistance. Manufacturers
in the steel regions began to recall strange stories which had been
floating down for many years from the wilderness surrounding Lake
Superior. The recollection of a famous voyage made in this region by
Philo M. Everett, as far back as 1845, now laid siege to the imagination
of the new generation of ironmasters. For years the Indians had told
Everett of the "mountains of iron" that lay on the Minnesota shore of
Lake Superior and had described their wonders in words that finally
impelled this hardy adventurer to make a voyage of exploration. For six
weeks, in company with two Indian guides, Everett had navigated a small
boat along the shores of the Lake, covering a distance that now takes
only a few hours. The Indians had long regarded this silent, red iron
region with a superstitious reverence, and now, as the little party
approached, they refused to complete the journey. "Iron Mountain!" they
said, pointing northward along the trail--"Indian not go near; white man
go!" The sight which presently met Everett's eyes repaid him well for
his solitary tramp in the forest. He found himself face to face with a
"mountain a hundred and fifty feet high, of solid ore, which looked as
bright as a bar of iron just broken." Other explorations subsequently
laid open the whole of the Minnesota fields, including the Mesaba,
which developed into the world's greatest iron range. America has other
regions rich in ore, particularly in Alabama, located alongside the
coal and limestone so necessary in steel production; yet it has drawn
two-thirds of its whole supply from these Lake Superior fields. Not only
the quantity, which is apparently limitless, but the quality explains
America's leadership in steel making.
Mining in Minnesota has a character which is not duplicated elsewhere.
When we think of an iron mine, we naturally picture subterranean caverns
and galleries, and strange, gnome-like creatures prowling about with
pick and shovel and drill. But mining in this section is a much simpler
proceeding. The precious mineral does not lie concealed deep within
the earth; it lies practically upon the surface. Removing it is not a
question of blasting with dynamite; it is merely a matter of lifting
it from the surface of the earth with a huge steam shovel. "Miners" in
Minnesota have none of the conventional aspects of their trade. They
operate precisely as did those who dug the Panama Canal. The railroad
cars run closely to the gigantic red pit. A huge steam shovel opens its
jaws, descends into an open amphitheater, licks up five tons at each
mouthful, and, swinging sideways over the open cars, neatly deposits its
booty. It is not surprising that ore can be produced at lower cost in
the United States than even in those countries where the most wretched
wages are paid. Evidently this one iron field, to say nothing of others
already worked, gives a permanence to our steel industry.
Not only did America have the material resources; what is even more
important, she had also the men. American industrial history presents
few groups more brilliant, more resourceful, and more picturesque than
that which, in the early seventies, started to turn these Minnesota ore
fields into steel--and into gold. These men had all the dash, all the
venturesomeness, all the speculative and even the gambling instinct,
needed for one of the greatest industrial adventures in our annals. All
had sprung from the simplest and humblest origins. They had served
their business apprenticeships as grocery clerks, errand boys, telegraph
messengers, and newspaper gamins. For the most part they had spent their
boyhood together, had played with each other as children, had attended
the same Sunday schools, had sung in the same church choirs, and, as
young men, had quarreled with each other over their sweethearts. The
Pittsburgh group comprised about forty men, most of whom retired as
millionaires, though their names for the most part signify little to
the present-day American. Kloman, Coleman, McCandless, Shinn, Stewart,
Jones, Vandervoort--are all important men in the history of American
steel. Thomas A. Scott and J. Edgar Thompson, men associated chiefly
with the creation of the Pennsylvania Railroad, also made their
contributions. But three or four men towered so preeminently above
their associates that today when we think of the human agencies that
constructed this mighty edifice, the names that insistently come to mind
are those of Carnegie, Phipps, Frick, and Schwab.
Books have been written to discredit Carnegie's work and to picture him
as the man who has stolen success from the labor of greater men.
Yet Carnegie is the one member of a brilliant company who had
the indispensable quality of genius. He had none of the plodding,
painstaking qualities of a Rockefeller; he had the fire, the
restlessness, the keen relish for adventure, and the imagination that
leaped far in advance of his competitors which we find so conspicuous in
the older Vanderbilt. Carnegie showed these qualities from his earliest
days. Driven as a child from his Scottish home by hunger, never having
gone to school after twelve, he found himself, at the age of thirteen,
living in a miserable hut in Allegheny, earning a dollar and twenty
cents a week as bobbin-boy in a cotton mill, while his mother augmented
the family income by taking in washing. Half a dozen years later Thomas
Scott, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, made Carnegie his
private secretary. How well the young man used his opportunities in this
occupation appeared afterward when he turned his wide acquaintanceship
among railroad men to practical use in the steel business. It was this
personal adaptability, indeed, that explains Carnegie's success. In the
narrow, methodical sense he was not a business man at all; he knew and
cared nothing for its dull routine and its labyrinthine details. As
a practical steel man his position is a negligible one. Though he was
profoundly impressed by his first sight of a Bessemer converter, he had
little interest in the every-day process of making steel. He had also
many personal weaknesses: his egotism was marked, he loved applause,
he was always seeking opportunities for self-exploitation, and he even
aspired to fame as an author and philosopher. The staid business men of
Pittsburgh early regarded Carnegie with disfavor; his daring impressed
them as rashness and his bold adventures as the plunging of the
speculator. Yet in all its aspects Carnegie's triumph was a personal
one. He was perhaps the greatest commercial traveler this country has
ever known. While his more methodical associates plodded along making
steel, Carnegie went out upon the highway, bringing in orders by the
millions. He showed this same personal quality in the organization
of his force. As a young man, entirely new to the steel industry, he
selected as the first manager of his works Captain Bill Jones; his
amazing judgment was justified when Jones developed into America's
greatest practical genius in making steel. "Here lies the man"--Carnegie
once suggested this line for his epitaph--"who knew how to get around
him men who were cleverer than himself." Carnegie inspired these
men with his own energy and restlessness; the spirit of the whole
establishment automatically became that of the pushing spirit of its
head. This little giant became the most remorseless pace-maker in the
steel regions. However astounding might be the results obtained by the
Carnegie works the captain at the head was never satisfied. As each
month's output surpassed that which had gone before, Carnegie always
came back with the same cry of "More." "We broke all records for
making steel last week!" a delighted superintendent once wired him and
immediately he received his answer, "Congratulations. Why not do it
every week?" This spirit explains the success of the Carnegie Company
in outdistancing all its competitors and gaining a worldwide preeminence
for the Pittsburgh district. But Carnegie did not make the mistake of
capitalizing all this prosperity for himself; his real greatness as an
American business man consists in the fact that he liberally shared the
profits with his associates. Ruthless he might be in appropriating their
last ounce of energy, yet he rewarded the successful men with golden
partnerships. Nothing delighted Carnegie more than to see the man whom
he had lifted from a puddler's furnace develop into a millionaire.
Henry Phipps, still living at the age of seventy-eight, was the only one
of Carnegie's early associates who remained with him to the end. Like
many of the others, Phipps had been Carnegie's playmate as a boy, so far
as any of them, in those early days, had opportunity to play; like all
his contemporaries also, Phipps had been wretchedly poor, his earliest
business opening having been as messenger boy for a jeweler. Phipps
had none of the dash and sparkle of Carnegie. He was the plodder, the
bookkeeper, the economizer, the man who had an eye for microscopic
details. "What we most admired in young Phipps," a Pittsburgh banker
once remarked, "is the way in which he could keep a check in the air
for three or four days." His abilities consisted mainly in keeping the
bankers complaisant, in smoothing the ruffled feelings of creditors, in
cutting out unnecessary expenditures, and in shaving prices.
Carnegie's other two more celebrated associates, Henry C. Frick and
Charles M. Schwab, were younger men. Frick was cold and masterful, as
hard, unyielding, and effective as the steel that formed the staple
of his existence. Schwab was enthusiastic, warm-hearted, and
happy-go-lucky; a man who ruled his employees and obtained his results
by appealing to their sympathies. The men of the steel yards feared
Frick as much as they loved "Charlie" Schwab. The earliest glimpses
which we get of these remarkable men suggest certain permanent
characteristics: Frick is pictured as the sober, industrious bookkeeper
in his grandfather's distillery; Schwab as the rollicking, whistling
driver of a stage between Loretto and Cresson. Frick came into the
steel business as a matter of deliberate choice, whereas Schwab became
associated with the Pittsburgh group more or less by accident.
The region of Connellsville contains almost 150 square miles underlaid
with coal that has a particular heat value when submitted to the process
known as coking. As early as the late eighties certain operators had
discovered this fact and were coking this coal on a small scale. It is
the highest tribute to Frick's intelligence that he alone foresaw
the part which this Connellsville coal was to play in building up the
Pittsburgh steel district. The panic of 1873, which laid low most of the
Connellsville operators, proved Frick's opportunity. Though he was only
twenty-four years old he succeeded, by his intelligence and earnestness,
in borrowing money to purchase certain Connellsville mines, then much
depreciated in price. From that moment, coke became Frick's obsession,
as steel had been Carnegie's. With his early profits he purchased more
coal lands until, by 1889, he owned ten thousand coke ovens and was
the undisputed "coke king" of Connellsville. Several years before
this, Carnegie had made Frick one of his marshals, coke having become
indispensable to the manufacture of steel, and in 1889 the former
distiller's accountant became Carnegie's commander-in-chief. Probably
the popular mind associates Frick chiefly with the importation of Slavs
as workmen, with the terrible strikes that followed in consequence
at Homestead, with the murderous attack made upon him by Berkman,
the anarchist, and with his bitter, long drawn-out quarrel with Andrew
Carnegie. Frick's stormy career was naturally the product of his
character.
On the other hand, temperamental pliability and lovableness were the
directing traits of the man who, in his way, made contributions quite as
solid to the extension of the Pittsburgh steel industry. Schwab worked
with the human material quite as successfully as other men worked with
iron ore, Bessemer furnaces, and coal. He handled successfully what was
perhaps the greatest task in management ever presented to a manufacturer
when to him fell the job of reorganizing the Homestead Works after the
strike of 1892 and of transforming thousands of riotous workmen into
orderly and interested producers of steel. In three or four years
practically every man on the premises had become "Charlie" Schwab's
personal friend, and the Homestead property which, until the day he took
charge, had been a colossal failure, had developed into one of the most
profitable holdings of the Carnegie Company. As his reward Schwab, at
the age of thirty-four, was made President of the Carnegie corporation.
Only sixteen years before he had entered the steel works as a stake
driver at a dollar a day.
When the Carnegie group began operations in the early seventies,
American steel, as a British writer remarked, was a "hot-house product";
yet in 1900 the Carnegie partners divided $40,000,000 as the profits of
a single year. They had demonstrated that the United States, despite
the high prices that prevailed everywhere, could make steel more
cheaply than any other country. Foreign observers have offered several
explanations for this achievement. American makers had an endless supply
of cheap and high-grade ore, cheaper coke, cheaper transportation, and
workmen of a superior skill. We must give due consideration to the fact
that their organization was more flexible than those of older
countries, and that it regulated promotion exclusively by merit and gave
exceptional opportunities to young men. American steel makers also
had scrap heaps whose size astounded the foreign observers; they never
hesitated to discard the most expensive plants if by so doing they could
reduce the cost of steel rails by a dollar a ton. Machinery for steel
making had a more extensive development in this country than in
England or Germany. Mr. Carnegie also enjoyed the advantages of a high
protective tariff, though about 1900 he discovered that his extremely
healthy infant no longer demanded this form of coddling. But probably
the Carnegie Company's greatest achievement was the abolition of the
middleman. In a few years it assembled all the essential elements of
steel making in its own hands. Frick's entrance into the combination
gave the concern an unlimited supply of the highest grade of coking
coal. In a few years, the Carnegie interests had acquired great holdings
in the Minnesota ore regions.
At first glance, the Pittsburgh region seems hardly the ideal place for
the making of steel. Fortune first placed the industry there because
all the raw materials, especially iron ore and coal, seemed to exist
in abundance. But the discovery of the Minnesota ore field, which alone
could supply this essential product in the amounts which the furnaces
demanded, immediately deprived the Pittsburgh region of its chief
advantage. As a result of this sudden development, the manufacturers of
Pittsburgh awoke one morning and discovered that their ore was located a
thousand miles away. To bring it to their converters necessitated a long
voyage by water and rail, with several reloadings. They overcame these
obstacles by developing machinery for handling ore and by acquiring the
raw materials and the connecting links of transportation. Ore which had
been lying in the wilds of Minnesota on Monday morning was thus brought
to Pittsburgh and made into steel rails or bridges or structural shapes
by Saturday night. The Carnegie Company first acquired sufficient
mineral lands to furnish ore for several generations and organized an
ore fleet which transported the products of the mines through the lakes
to ports on Lake Erie, particularly Ashtabula and Conneaut. The purchase
of the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad, which extended from Conneaut
to Pittsburgh, made this great transportation route complete. Besides
freeing their business from uncertainty, this elimination of middlemen
naturally produced great economies.
Probably Andrew Carnegie's shrewdness in naming his first plant the
J. Edgar Thompson Steel Works, after the powerful President of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, and in making Thompson and his associate Scott
partners, had much to do with his early success. These two gentlemen
conferred two priceless favors upon the struggling enterprise. They
became large purchasers of steel rails and their influence in this
direction extended far beyond the Pennsylvania Railroad. What was
perhaps even more important, they gave the Carnegie concerns railroad
rebates. The use of rebates, as a method of stifling competition and
building up a great industrial prosperity, is an offense which the
popular mind associates almost exclusively with the Standard Oil
Company, yet the Carnegie fortune, as well as that of John D.
Rockefeller, received an artificial stimulation of this kind.
Though incomparably the greatest of the American steel companies, the
Carnegie Steel Company by no means monopolized the field. In forty
years, indeed, an enormous steel area had grown up, including western
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, practically all of it drawing
its raw materials from those same teeming ore lands in the Lake Superior
region. Johnstown, Youngstown, Cleveland, Lorain, Chicago, and
Joliet, became headquarters of steel production almost as important as
Pittsburgh itself. Two entirely new steel kingdoms, each with its own
natural reservoirs of ore, grew up in Colorado and Alabama. The Colorado
Fuel and Iron Company, which possessed apparently inexhaustible mineral
lands in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and California, itself
produces not far from three million tons a year, almost half the present
production of Great Britain. The Alabama steel country has developed in
even more spectacular fashion. Birmingham, a hive of southern industry
placed almost as if by magic in the leisurely cotton lands of the South,
had no existence in 1870, when the Pittsburgh prosperity began. In the
Civil War, the present site of a city with a population of 140,000 was
merely a blacksmith shop in the fork of the roads. Yet this district has
advantages for the manufacture of steel that have no parallel elsewhere.
The steel companies which are located here do not have to bring their
materials laboriously from a distance but possess, immediately at
hand, apparently endless store of the three things needful for making
steel--iron ore, coal, and limestone. All these territories have their
personal romances and their heroes, many of them quite as picturesque as
those of the Pittsburgh group.
It is doubtful indeed if American industry presents any figure quite
as astonishing and variegated as that of John W. Gates, the man who
educated farmers all over the world to the use of wire fencing. Half
charlatan, half enthusiast, speculator, gambler, a man who created great
enterprises and who also destroyed them, at times an upbuilding force
and at other times a sinister influence, Gates completely typified a
period in American history that, along with much that was heroic and
splendid, had much also that was grotesque and sordid. The opera-bouffe
performance that laid the foundations of Gates's great industry was in
every way characteristic of this period. In 1871 Gates, then a clerk in
a hardware store at twenty-five dollars a week, made his first attempt
to sell barbed wire in the great cattle countries of the southwestern
States. When the cattle men in Texas first saw this barbed wire, they
ridiculed the idea that it could ever hold their steers. Gates selected
a plaza in San Antonio, fenced it in with his new product, and invited
the enemies to bring along their wildest specimens About thirty of
Texas' most ferocious cattle, placed within the enclosure, spent a whole
afternoon plunging at the barbs in a useless and tormenting attempt
to escape. This spectacular demonstration of efficiency launched Gates
fairly upon his career. He immediately began to sell his new fencing on
an enormous scale; in a few years the whole world was demanding it,
and it has become, as recent events have disclosed, a particularly
formidable munition of war. The American Steel and Wire Company, one
of the greatest of American corporations, was the ultimate outgrowth of
that lively afternoon in San Antonio.
In 1900 the Carnegie Steel Company was making one-quarter of all the
Bessemer steel produced in the United States. It owned in abundance
all the properties which were essential to its completed output--coal,
limestone, steel ships, railroads, and steel mills. In twenty-five
years, from 1875 to 1900, this manufacturing enterprise had paid the
Carnegie group profits aggregating $133,000,000, profits which, in the
closing years of the century, had increased at a stupendous rate. In
1898 Carnegie and his associates had divided $11,500,000, in 1899
their earnings had grown to $25,000,000, and in 1900 the aggregate had
suddenly jumped to $40,000,000. Of this latter sum Carnegie received
$25,000,000, Phipps $5,500,000, Frick $2,600,000, and Schwab $1,300,000.
And Carnegie's little group could see no limit to the growth of their
business and the expansion of their personal fortunes. Yet at that very
moment Carnegie was planning to play the part of a Charles V with the
large empire which he had pieced together--to abdicate his throne,
retire from business life, and spend his remaining days in quiet.
Many influences were impelling him to this decision. His triumph,
stupendous as it had been, also had had its alloy of sorrow. Indeed
this little Scotsman, now at the crowning of his glory, was one of the
loneliest figures in the world. Practically all the forty men with
whom he had been closely associated had vanished from the scene. He had
quarreled with his playmate and lifelong partner, Henry Phipps, and was
in the worst possible business and personal relations with Frick. He
had no son to carry on his work. He had become greatly interested in
his philanthropies, and he had declared that the man who died rich died
disgraced. Moreover, new influences were rising in the steel trade with
which Carnegie had little sympathy. Its national capital seemed to be
shifting from Pittsburgh to Wall Street. New men who knew nothing
about steel but who possessed an intimate acquaintance with stocks and
bonds--J. Pierpont Morgan, George W. Perkins, and their associates--were
branching out as controllers of large steel interests. Carnegie had no
interest in Wall Street; he has declared that he never speculated in his
life and that he would immediately dissociate himself from any partner
who would do so. This Wall Street coterie, in the years from 1898 to
1900, had made several large combinations in the steel trade. That was
the era when the trust mania had gained possession of the American mind
and when its worst features displayed themselves. The Federal Steel
Company, the American Bridge Company, the American Steel and Wire, the
National Tube Company, all representing the assembling of large works
which had been engaged as rivals in similar enterprises, were launched,
with the usual accompaniments of "underwriting syndicates," watered
stock, and Wall Street speculation. This sort of thing made no appeal to
Andrew Carnegie. His huge enterprise had always remained essentially a
copartnership, and he had frequently expressed his abhorrence of trusts.
Yet, in spite of his wish to retire from business and in spite of his
avowed intention to die poor, Carnegie now adopted the policy of the
Sibylline leaves to all prospective purchasers. Moore and Reid would
have purchased his interest for $157,000,000; when Rockefeller came
along the price had risen to $250,000,000; when the oil man shook his
head and retired, Carnegie immediately raised his price to $500,000,000.
It is doubtful whether he would have sold at all had not his Wall Street
competitors begun to encroach on a field which the little Scotsman
understood quite as well as they--the production and merchandising of
steel. The newly organized combinations were completing elaborate plans
to go after Carnegie's business. Then Carnegie, who had practically
retired from active life, again arrayed himself in his shirt-sleeves,
abandoned his career of authorship, and resumed his early trade. His
first attacks produced an immense reverberation in the House of Morgan.
He purchased a huge tract at Conneaut and began building a gigantic
plant for the manufacture of steel tubes, a business in which he had
not hitherto engaged. This was a blow aimed at one of Morgan's pet new
creations, the National Tube Company. Should Carnegie finish his works,
there was no doubt the Morgan enterprise would be ruined, for the new
plant would be far more modern and so could manufacture the product at
a much lower price; and, with Charles M. Schwab as active manager, what
possible chance would the older corporation have? But Carnegie struck
his enemy at an even more vulnerable point. The Pennsylvania Railroad
had a practical monopoly of traffic in and out of Pittsburgh, and
Pittsburgh "created" more freight business than any other city in the
world. Carnegie lent his powerful support to George J. Gould, who was
then extending his railroad system into the preempted field and was
also making surveys and had financed a company to build an entirely
new railroad from Pittsburgh to the Atlantic Coast. As Carnegie himself
controlled the larger part of the freight that made Pittsburgh such an
essential feeder to railroads, his new enterprise caused the greatest
alarm. At the same time Carnegie equipped a new and splendid fleet of
ore ships, his purpose being to enter a field of transportation which
John D. Rockefeller had found extremely profitable.
Such were the circumstances and such were the motives that gave birth
to the world's largest corporation. All one night, so the story goes,
Charles M. Schwab and John W. Gates discussed the steel situation
with J. Pierpont Morgan. There was only one possible solution, they
said--Andrew Carnegie must be bought out. By the time the morning sun
came through the windows Morgan had been convinced. "Go and ask him what
he will sell for," he said to Schwab. In a brief period Schwab came back
to Morgan with a letter which contained the following figures--five per
cent gold bonds $303,450,000; preferred stock $98,277,100; common stock
$90,279,000--a total of over $492,000,000. Carnegie demanded no cash;
he preferred to hold a huge first mortgage on a business whose golden
opportunities he knew so well. Morgan, who had been accustomed all his
life to dictate to other men, had now met a man who was able to dictate
to him. And he capitulated. The man who fifty-three years before had
started life in a new country as a bobbin-boy at a dollar and twenty
cents a week, now at the age of sixty-six retired from business the
second richest man in the world. With him retired a miscellaneous
assortment of millionaires whose fortunes he had made and whose
subsequent careers in the United States and in Europe have given a
peculiar significance to the name "Pittsburgh Millionaires." The United
States Steel Corporation, the combination that included not only the
Carnegie Company but seventy per cent of all the steel concerns in the
country, was really a trust made up of trusts. It had a capitalization
of a billion and a half, of which about $700,000,000 was composed of
the commodity usually known as "water"; but so greatly has its business
grown and so capably has it been managed that all this liquid material
has since been converted into more solid substance. The disappearance
of Andrew Carnegie and his coworkers and the emergence of this gigantic
enterprise completed the great business cycle in the steel trade.
The age of individual enterprise and competition had passed--that of
corporate control had arrived.
CHAPTER IV. THE TELEPHONE: "AMERICA'S MOST POETICAL ACHIEVEMENT"
A distinguished English journalist, who was visiting the United States,
in 1917, on an important governmental mission, had an almost sublime
illustration of the extent to which the telephone had developed on the
North American Continent. Sitting at a desk in a large office building
in New York, Lord Northcliffe took up two telephone receivers and placed
one at each ear. In the first he heard the surf beating at Coney Island,
New York, and in the other he heard, with equal distinctness, the
breakers pounding the beach at the Golden Gate, San Francisco. Certainly
this demonstration justified the statement made a few years before by
another English traveler. "What startles and frightens the backward
European in the United States," said Mr. Arnold Bennett, "is the
efficiency and fearful universality of the telephone. To me it was the
proudest achievement and the most poetical achievement of the American
people."
Lord Northcliffe's experience had a certain dramatic justice which
probably even he did not appreciate. He is the proprietor of the London
Times, a newspaper which, when the telephone was first introduced,
denounced it as the "latest American humbug" and declared that it "was
far inferior to the well-established system of speaking tubes." The
London Times delivered this solemn judgment in 1877. A year before, at
the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, Don Pedro, Emperor of Brazil,
picked up, almost accidentally, a queer cone-shaped instrument and put
it to his ear, "My God! It talks!" was his exclamation; an incident
which, when widely published in the press, first informed the American
people that another of the greatest inventions of all times had had its
birth on their own soil. Yet the initial judgment of the American people
did not differ essentially from the opinion which had been more coarsely
expressed by the leading English newspaper. Our fathers did not denounce
the telephone as an "American humbug," but they did describe it as a
curious electric "toy" and ridiculed the notion that it could ever have
any practical value. Even after Alexander Graham Bell and his associates
had completely demonstrated its usefulness, the Western Union Telegraph
Company refused to purchase all their patent rights for $100,000! Only
forty years have passed since the telephone made such an inauspicious
beginning. It remains now, as it was then, essentially an American
achievement. Other nations have their telephone systems, but it is
only in the United States that its possibilities have been even faintly
realized. It is not until Americans visit foreign countries that they
understand that, imperfect as in certain directions their industrial
and social organization may be, in this respect at least their nation is
preeminent.
The United States contains nearly all the telephones in existence, to
be exact, about seventy-five per cent. We have about ten million
telephones, while Canada, Central America, South America, Great Britain,
Europe, Asia, and Africa all combined have only about four million. In
order to make an impressive showing, however, we need not include the
backward peoples, for a comparison with the most enlightened nations
emphasizes the same point. Thus New York City has more telephones than
six European countries taken together--Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Norway,
Denmark, Italy, and the Netherlands. Chicago, with a population
of 2,000,000, has more telephones than the whole of France, with a
population of 40,000,000. Philadelphia, with 1,500,000, has more than
the Russian Empire, with 166,000,000. Boston has more telephones than
Austria-Hungary, Los Angeles more than the Netherlands, and Kansas City
more than Belgium. Several office buildings and hotels in New York City
have more instruments than the kingdoms of Greece or Bulgaria. The whole
of Great Britain and Ireland has about 650,000 telephones, which is only
about 200,000 more, than the city of New York.
Mere numbers, however, tell only half the story. It is when we compare
service that American superiority stands most manifest. The London
newspapers are constantly filled with letters abusing the English
telephone system. If these communications describe things accurately,
there is apparently no telephone vexation that the Englishman does not
have to endure. Delays in getting connections are apparently chronic.
At times it seems impossible to get connections at all, especially
from four to five in the afternoon--when the operators are taking tea.
Suburban connections, which in New York take about ninety seconds,
average half an hour in London, and many of the smaller cities have no
night service. An American thinks nothing of putting in a telephone; he
notifies his company and in a few days the instrument is installed. We
take a thing like this for granted. But there are places where a mere
telephone subscription, the privilege of having an instrument installed,
is a property right of considerable value and where the telephone
service has a "waiting list," like an exclusive club. In Japan one can
sell a telephone privilege at a good price, its value being daily quoted
on the Stock Exchange. Americans, by constantly using the telephone,
have developed what may be called a sixth sense, which enables them to
project their personalities over an almost unlimited area. In the
United States the telephone has become the one all-prevailing method of
communication. The European writes or telegraphs while the American
more frequently telephones. In this country the telephone penetrates
to places which even the mails never reach. The rural free delivery and
other forms of the mail service extend to 58,000 communities, while our
10,000,000 telephones encompass 70,000. We use this instrument for all
the varied experiences of life, domestic, social, and commercial. There
are residences in New York City that have private branch exchanges, like
a bank or a newspaper office. Hostesses are more and more falling into
the habit of telephoning invitations for dinner and other diversions.
Many people find telephone conversations more convenient than personal
interviews, and it is every day displacing the stenographer and the
traveling salesman.
Perhaps the most noteworthy achievement of the telephone is its
transformation of country life. In Europe, rural telephones are almost
unknown, while in the United States one-third of all our telephone
stations are in country districts. The farmer no longer depends upon
the mails; like the city man, he telephones. This instrument is thus the
greatest civilizing force we have, for civilization is very largely a
matter of intercommunication. Indeed, the telephone and other similar
agencies, such as the parcel post, the rural free delivery, better
roads, and the automobile, are rapidly transforming rural life in this
country. In several regions, especially in the Mississippi Valley, a
farmer who has no telephone is in a class by himself, like one who
has no mowing-machine. Thus the latest returns from Iowa, taken by the
census as far back as 1907, showed that seventy-three per cent of all
the farms--160,000 out of 220,000--had telephones and the proportion is
unquestionably greater now. Every other farmhouse from the Atlantic to
the Pacific contains at least one instrument. These statistics clearly
show that the telephone has removed half the terrors and isolation of
rural life. Many a lonely farmer's wife or daughter, on the approach of
a suspicious-looking character, has rushed to the telephone and called
up the neighbors, so that now tramps notoriously avoid houses that
shelter the protecting wires. In remote sections, insanity, especially
among women, is frequently the result of loneliness, a calamity which
the telephone is doing much to mitigate.
In the United States today there is one telephone to every nine persons.
This achievement represents American invention, genius, industrial
organization, and business enterprise at their best. The story of
American business contains many chapters and episodes which Americans
would willingly forget. But the American Telephone and Telegraph Company
represents an industry which has made not a single "swollen fortune,"
whose largest stockholder is the wife of Alexander Graham Bell, the
inventor (a woman who, being totally deaf, has never talked over the
telephone); which has not corrupted legislatures or courts; which has
steadily decreased the prices of its products as business and profits
have increased; which has never issued watered stock or declared
fictitious dividends; and which has always manifested a high sense of
responsibility in its dealings with the public.
Two forces, American science and American business capacity, have
accomplished this result. As a mechanism, this American telephone system
is the product not of one but of many minds. What most strikes
the imagination is the story of Alexander Graham Bell, yet other
names--Carty, Scribner, Pupin--play a large part in the story.
The man who discovered that an electric current had the power
of transmitting sound over a copper wire knew very little about
electricity. Had he known more about this agency and less about
acoustics, Bell once said himself, he would never have invented the
telephone. His father and grandfather had been teachers of the deaf and
dumb and had made important researches in acoustics. Alexander Graham
Bell, born in Edinburgh in March, 1847, and educated there and in
London, followed the ancestral example. This experience gave Bell an
expert knowledge of phonetics that laid the foundation for his life
work. His invention, indeed, is clearly associated with his attempts
to make the deaf and dumb talk. He was driven to America by ill-health,
coming first to Canada, and in 1871 he settled in Boston, where he
accepted a position in Boston University to introduce his system of
teaching deaf-mutes. He opened a school of "Vocal Physiology," and his
success in his chosen field brought him into association with the
people who afterward played an important part in the development of
the telephone. Not a single element of romance was lacking in Bell's
experience; his great invention even involved the love story of his
life. Two influential citizens of Boston, Thomas Sanders and Gardiner G.
Hubbard, had daughters who were deaf and dumb, and both engaged Bell's
services as teacher. Bell lived in Sanders's home for a considerable
period, dividing his time between teaching his little pupil how to talk
and puttering away at a proposed invention which he called a "harmonic
telegraph." Both Sanders and Hubbard had become greatly interested in
this contrivance and backed Bell financially while he worked. It was
Bell's idea that, by a system of tuning different telegraphic receivers
to different pitches, several telegraphic messages could be sent
simultaneously over the same wire. The idea was not original with Bell,
although he supposed that it was and was entirely unaware that, at the
particular moment when he started work, about twenty other inventors
were struggling with the same problem. It was one of these other twenty
experimenters, Elisha Gray, who ultimately perfected this instrument.
Bell's researches have an interest only in that they taught him much
about sound transmission and other kindred subjects and so paved the way
for his great conception. One day Hubbard and Sanders learned that Bell
had abandoned his "harmonic telegraph" and was experimenting with an
entirely new idea. This was the possibility of transmitting the human
voice over an electric wire. While working in Sanders's basement, Bell
had obtained from a doctor a dead man's ear, and it is said that while
he was minutely studying and analyzing this gruesome object, the idea of
the telephone first burst upon his mind. For years Bell had been engaged
in a task that seemed hopeless to most men--that of making deaf-mutes
talk. "If I can make a deaf-mute talk, I can make iron talk," he
declared. "If I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity as
the air varies in density," he said at another time, "I could transmit
sound telegraphically." Many others, of course, had dreamed of inventing
such an instrument. The story of the telephone concerns many men who
preceded Bell, one of whom, Philip Reis, produced, in 1861, a mechanism
that could send a few discordant sounds, though not the human voice,
over an electric wire. Reis seemed to have based his work upon an
article published in "The American Journal of Science" by Dr. C.G. Page,
of Salem, Mass., in 1837, in which he called attention to the sound
given out by an electric magnet when the circuit is opened or closed.
The work of these experimenters involves too many technicalities for
discussion in this place. The important facts are that they all involved
different principles from those worked out by Bell and that none of
them ever attained any practical importance. Reis, in particular, never
grasped the essential principles that ultimately made the telephone a
reality. His work occupies a place in telephone history only because
certain financial interests, many years after his death, brought it
to light in an attempt to discredit Bell's claim to priority as the
inventor. An investigator who seems to have grasped more clearly the
basic idea was the distinguished American inventor Elisha Gray, already
mentioned as the man who had succeeded in perfecting the "harmonic
telegraph." On February 14, 1876, Gray filed a caveat in the United
States Patent Office, setting forth pretty accurately the conception of
the electric telephone. The tragedy in Gray's work consists in the fact
that, two hours before his caveat had been put in, Bell had filed his
application for a patent on the completed instrument.
The champions of Bell and Gray may dispute the question of priority to
their heart's content; the historic fact is that the telephone dates
from a dramatic moment in the year 1876. Sanders and Hubbard, much
annoyed that Bell had abandoned his harmonic telegraph for so visionary
an idea as a long distance talking machine, refused to finance him
further unless he returned to his original quest. Disappointed and
disconsolate, Bell and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, had started work
on the top floor of the Williams Manufacturing Company's shop in Boston.
And now another chance happening turned Bell back once more to the
telephone. His magnetized telegraph wire stretched from one room
to another located in a remote part of the building. One day Watson
accidentally plucked a piece of clock wire that lay near this telegraph
wire, and Bell, working in another room, heard the twang. A few seconds
later Watson was startled when an excited and somewhat disheveled figure
burst into his room. "What was that?" shouted Bell. What had happened
was clearly manifest; a sound had been sent distinctly over an electric
wire. Bell's harmonic telegraph immediately went into the discard, and
the young inventor--Bell was then only twenty-nine--became a man of one
passionate idea. Yet final success did not come easily; the inventor
worked day and night for forty weeks before he had obtained satisfactory
results. It was on March 10, 1876, that Watson, in a distant room,
picked up the first telephone receiver and heard these words, the first
that had ever passed over a magnetized wire, "Come here, Watson; I want
you." The speaking instrument had become a reality, and the foundation
of the telephone, in all its present development, had been laid.
When the New York and San Francisco line was opened in January, 1915,
Alexander Graham Bell spoke these same words to his old associate,
Thomas Watson, located in San Francisco, both men using the same
instruments that had served so well on that historic occasion forty
years before.
Though Bell's first invention comprehended the great basic idea that
made it a success, the instrument itself bore few external resemblances
to that which has become so commonplace today. If one could transport
himself back to this early period and undergo the torture of using
this primitive telephone, he would appreciate somewhat the labor, the
patience, the inventive skill, and the business organization that have
produced the modern telephone. In the first place you would have no
separate transmitter and receiver. You would talk into a funnel-shaped
contrivance and then place it against your ear to get the returning
message. In order to make yourself heard, you would have to shout like a
Gloucester sea captain at the height of a storm. More than the speakers'
voices would come over the wire. It seemed to have become the playground
of a million devils; moanings, shriekings, mutterings, and noises of
all kinds would constantly interrupt the flow of speech. To call up your
"party" you would not merely lift the receiver as today; you would tap
with a lead pencil, or some other appliance, upon the diaphragm of your
transmitter. There were no separate telephone wires. The talking
at first was done over the telegraph lines. The earliest "centrals"
reminded most persons of madhouses, for the day of the polite,
soft-spoken telephone girl had not arrived. Instead, boys were rushing
around with the ends of wires which they were frantically attempting
to peg into the holes of the primitive switchboard and so establish
"connections." When not knocking down and fighting each other, these
boys were swearing into transmitters at the customers; and it is said
that the incurable profanity of these early "telephone boys" had much to
do with their supersession by girls. In the early days of the telephone,
each instrument had to carry its own battery, usually installed in a
little box under the transmitter. The early telephone wires, even in
the largest cities, were strung on poles, as they are in country and
suburban districts today. In places like New York and Chicago, these
thousands of overhanging wires not only destroyed the attractiveness of
the thoroughfare, but constantly interfered with the fire department and
proved to be public nuisances in other ways. A telephone wire, however,
loses much of its transmitting power when placed under ground, and it
took many years of experimenting before the engineers perfected these
subways. In these early days, of course, the telephone was purely a
local matter. Certain visionary enthusiasts had foreseen the possibility
of a national, long distance system, but a large amount of labor, both
in the laboratory and out, was to be expended before these aspirations
could become realities.
The transformation of this rudimentary means of communication into the
beautiful mechanism which we have today forms a splendid chapter in the
history of American invention. Of all the details in Bell's apparatus
the receiver is almost the only one that remains now what it was forty
years ago. The story of the transmitter in itself would fill a volume.
Edison's success in devising a transmitter which permitted talk in
ordinary conversational tones--an invention that became the property
of the Western Union Telegraph Company, which early embarked in the
telephone business--at one time seemed likely to force the Bell Company
out of business. But Emile Berliner and Francis Blake finally came
to the rescue with an excellent instrument, and the suggestion of an
English clergyman, the Reverend Henry Hummings, that carbon granules be
used on the diaphragm, made possible the present perfect instrument. The
magneto call bell--still used in certain backward districts--for many
years gave fair results for calling purposes, but the automatic switch,
which enables us to get central by merely picking up the receiver, has
made possible our great urban service. It was several years before the
telephone makers developed so essential a thing as a satisfactory wire.
Silver, which gave excellent results, was obviously too costly, and
copper, the other metal which had many desirable qualities, was too
soft. Thomas B. Doolittle solved this problem by inventing a hard-drawn
copper wire. A young man of twenty-two, John J. Carty, suggested a
simple device for exorcising the hundreds of "mysterious noises" that
had made the use of the telephone so agonizing. It was caused, Carty
pointed out, by the circumstance that the telephone, like the telegraph,
used a ground circuit for the return wire; the resultant scrapings and
moanings and howlings were merely the multitudinous voices of mother
earth herself. Mr. Carty began installing the metallic circuit in his
lines that is, he used wire, instead of the ground, to complete the
circuit. As a result of this improvement the telephone was immediately
cleared of these annoying interruptions. Mr. Carty, who is now Chief
Engineer of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, and the man
who has superintended all its extensions in recent years, is one of
the three or four men who have done most to create the present system.
Another is Charles E. Scribner, who, by his invention of that intricate
device, the multiple switchboard, has converted the telephone exchange
into a smoothly working, orderly place. Scribner's multiple switchboard
dates from about 1890. It was Mr. Scribner also who replaced the
individual system of dry cells with one common battery located at the
central exchange, an improvement which saved the Company 4,000,000 dry
cells a year. Then Barrett discovered a method of twisting fifty pairs
of wires--since grown to 2400 pairs-into a cable, wrapping them in paper
and molding them in lead, and the wires were now taken from poles and
placed in conduits underground.
But perhaps the most romantic figure in telephone history, next to Bell,
is that of a humble Servian immigrant who came to this country as a boy
and obtained his first employment as a rubber in a Turkish bath. Michael
I. Pupin was graduated from Columbia, studied afterward in Germany, and
became absorbed in the new subject of electromechanics. In particular he
became interested in a telephone problem that had bothered the greatest
experts for years. One thing that had prevented the great extension of
the telephone, especially for long distance work, was the size of the
wire. Long distance lines up to 1900 demanded wire about one-eighth
of an inch thick--as thick as a fairsized lead pencil; and, for this
reason, the New York-Chicago line, built in 1893, consumed 870,000
pounds of copper wire of this size. Naturally the enormous expense
stood in the way of any extended development. The same thickness also
interfered with cable extension. Only about a hundred wires could be
squeezed into one cable, against the eighteen hundred now compressed in
the same area. Because of these shortcomings, telephone progress, about
1900, was marking time, awaiting the arrival of a thin wire that would
do the work of a thick one. The importance of the problem is shown by
the fact that one-fourth of all the capital invested in the telephone
has been spent in copper. Professor Pupin, who had been a member of the
faculty of Columbia University since 1888, solved this problem in his
quiet laboratory and, by doing so, won the greatest prize in modern
telephone art. His researches resulted in the famous "Pupin coil" by the
expedient now known as "loading." When the scientists attempt to explain
this invention, they have to use all kinds of mathematical formulas and
curves and, in fact, they usually get to quarreling among themselves
over the points involved. What Professor Pupin has apparently done is
to free the wire from those miscellaneous disturbances known as
"induction." This Pupin invention involved another improvement
unsuspected by the inventor, which shows us the telephone in all its
mystery and beauty and even its sublimity. Soon after the Pupin coil
was introduced, it was discovered that, by crossing the wires of
two circuits at regular intervals, another unexplainable circuit was
induced. Because this third circuit travels apparently without wires,
in some manner which the scientists have not yet discovered, it is
appropriately known as the phantom circuit. The practical result is that
it is now possible to send three telephone messages and eight telegraph
messages over two pairs of wires--all at the same time. Professor
Pupin's invention has resulted in economies that amount to millions of
dollars, and has made possible long distance lines to practically every
part of the United States.
Thus many great inventive minds have produced the physical telephone.
We can point to several men--Bell, Blake, Carty, Scribner, Barrett,
Pupin--and say of each one, "Without his work the present telephone
system could not exist." But business genius, as well as mechanical
genius, explains this achievement. For the first four or five years
of its existence, the new invention had hard sailing. Bell and Thomas
Watson, in order to fortify their finances, were forced to travel around
the country, giving a kind of vaudeville entertainment. Bell made a
speech explaining the new invention, while a cornet player, located in
another part of the town, played solos, the music reaching the audience
through several telephone instruments placed against the walls. Watson,
also located at a distance, varied the program by singing songs via
telephone. These lecture tours not only gave Bell the money which
he sorely needed but advertised the innovation. There followed a few
scattering attempts to introduce the telephone into every-day use and
telephone exchanges were established in New York, Boston, Bridgeport,
and New Haven. But these pioneers had the hostility of the most powerful
corporation of the day--the Western Union Telegraph Company--and they
lacked aggressive leaders.
In 1878, Mr. Gardiner Hubbard, Bell's earliest backer, and now his
father-in-law, became acquainted with a young man who was then serving
in Washington as General Superintendent of the Railway Mail Service.
This young man was Theodore N. Vail. His energy and enterprise so
impressed Hubbard that he immediately asked Vail to become General
Manager of the company which he was then forming to exploit the
telephone. Viewed from the retrospection of forty years this offer
certainly looks like one of the greatest prizes in American business.
What it signified at that time, however, is apparent from the fact that
the office paid a salary of $3500 a year and that for the first ten
years Vail did not succeed in collecting a dollar of this princely
remuneration. Yet it was a happy fortune, not only for the Bell Company
but for the nation, that placed Vail at the head of this struggling
enterprise. There was a certain appropriateness in his selection, even
then. His granduncle, Stephen Vail, had built the engines for the first
steamship to cross the Atlantic. A cousin had worked with Morse while he
was inventing the telegraph. Vail, who was born in Carroll County, Ohio,
in 1845, after spending two years as a medical student, suddenly shifted
his plans and became a telegraph operator. Then he entered the Railway
Mail service; in this service he completely revolutionized the system
and introduced reforms that exist at the present time. A natural bent
had apparently directed Vail's mind towards methods of communication, a
fact that may perhaps explain the youthful enthusiasm with which he took
up the new venture and the vision with which he foresaw and planned its
future. For the chief fact about Vail is that he was a business man
with an imagination. The crazy little machine which he now undertook to
exploit did not interest him as a means of collecting tolls, floating
stock, and paying dividends. He saw in it a new method of spreading
American civilization and of contributing to the happiness and comfort
of millions of people. Indeed Vail had hardly seen the telephone when
a picture portraying the development which we are familiar with
today unfolded before his eyes. That the telephone has had a greater
development in America than elsewhere and that the United States has
avoided all those mistakes of organization that have so greatly hampered
its growth in other lands, is owing to the fact that Vail, when he first
took charge, mapped out the comprehensive policies which have guided his
corporation since.
Vail early adopted the "slogan" which has directed the Bell activities
for forty years--"One System! One Policy! Universal Service." In his
mind a telephone company was not a city affair, or even a state affair;
it was a national affair. His aim has been from the first a universal,
national service, all under one head, and reaching every hamlet, every
business house, factory, and home in the nation. The idea that any man,
anywhere, should be able to take down a receiver and talk to anyone,
anywhere else in the United States, was the conception which guided
Vail's labors from the first. He did not believe that a mass of
unrelated companies could give a satisfactory service; if circumstances
had ever made a national monopoly, that monopoly was certainly the
telephone. Having in view this national, universal, articulating
monopoly, Vail insisted on his second great principle, the
standardization of equipment. Every man's telephone must be precisely
like every other man's, and that must be the best which mechanical skill
and inventive genius could produce. To make this a reality and to secure
perfect supervision and upkeep, it was necessary that telephones should
not be sold but leased. By enforcing these ideas Vail saved the United
States from the chaos which exists in certain other countries, such as
France, where each subscriber purchases his own instrument, making his
selection from about forty different varieties. That certain dangers
were inherent in this universal system Vail understood. Monopoly all
too likely brings in excessive charges, poor service, and inside
speculation; but it was Vail's plan to justify his system by its works.
To this end he established a great engineering department which should
study all imaginable mechanical improvements, with the results which
have been described. He gave the greatest attention to every detail of
the service and particularly insisted on the fairest and most courteous
treatment of the public. The "please" which invariably accompanies the
telephone girl's request for a number--the familiar "number, please"--is
a trifle, but it epitomizes the whole spirit which Vail inspired
throughout his entire organization. Though there are plenty of people
who think that the existing telephone charges are too high, the fact
remains that the rate has steadily declined with the extension of
the business. Vail has also kept his company clear from the financial
scandals that have disgraced so many other great corporations. He has
never received any reward himself except his salary, such fortune as
he possesses being the result of personal business ventures in South
America during the twenty years from 1887 to 1907 that he was not
associated with the Bell interests.
Vail's first achievement was to rescue this invention from the greatest
calamity which would have befallen it. The Western Union Telegraph
Company, which in the early days had looked upon the telephone
as negligible, suddenly awoke one morning to a realization of its
importance. This Corporation had recently introduced its "printing
telegraph," a device that made it possible to communicate without the
intermediary operator. When news reached headquarters that subscribers
were dropping this new contrivance and subscribing to telephones, the
Western Union first understood that a competitor had entered their
field. Promptly organizing the American Speaking Telephone Company, the
Western Union, with all its wealth and prestige, proceeded to destroy
this insolent pigmy. Its methods of attack were unscrupulous and
underhanded, the least discreditable one being the use of its political
influence to prevent communities from giving franchises to the Bell
Company. But this corporation mainly relied for success upon the
wholesale manner in which it infringed the Bell patents. It raked
together all possible claimants to priority, from Philip Reis to Elisha
Gray, in its attempts to discredit Bell as the inventor. The Western
Union had only one legitimate advantage--the Edison transmitter--which
was unquestionably much superior to anything which the Bell Company
then possessed. Many Bell stockholders were discouraged in face of this
fierce opposition and wished to abandon the fight. Not so Vail. The mere
circumstance that the great capitalists of the Western Union had
taken up the telephone gave the public a confidence in its value which
otherwise it would not have had, a fact which Vail skillfully used in
attracting influential financial support. He boldly sued the Western
Union in 1878 for infringement of the Bell patents. The case was a
famous one; the whole history of the telephone was reviewed from the
earliest days, and the evidence as to rival claimants was placed on
record for all time. After about a year, Mr. George Clifford, perhaps
the best patent attorney of the day, who was conducting the case for the
Western Union, quietly informed his clients that they could never
win, for the records showed that Bell was the inventor. He advised the
Western Union to settle the case out of court and his advice was taken.
This great corporation war was concluded by a treaty (November 10, 1879)
in which the Western Union acknowledged that Bell was the inventor,
that his patents were valid, and agreed to retire from the telephone
business. The Bell Company, on its part, agreed to buy the Western Union
Telephone System, to pay the Western Union a royalty of twenty per cent
on all telephone rentals, and not to engage in the telegraph business.
Had this case been decided against the Bell Company it is almost certain
that the telephone would have been smothered in the interest of the
telegraph and its development delayed for many years.
Soon after the settlement of the Western Union suit, the original group
which had created the telephone withdrew from the scene. Bell went back
to teaching deaf-mutes. He has since busied himself with the study of
airplanes and wireless, and has invented an instrument for transmitting
sound by light. The new telephone company offered him $10,000 a year as
chief inventor, but he replied that he could not invent to order. Thomas
Sanders received somewhat less than $1,000,000 and lost most of it
exploiting a Colorado gold mine. Gardiner Hubbard withdrew from business
and devoted the last years of his life to the National Geographic
Society. Thomas Watson, after retiring from the telephone business,
bought a ship-building yard near Boston, which has been successful.
In making this settlement with the Western Union, the Bell interests not
only eliminated a competitor but gained great material advantages.
They took over about 56,000 telephone stations located in 55 cities
and towns. They also soon acquired the Western Electric Manufacturing
Company, which under the control of the Western Union had developed into
an important concern for the manufacture of telephone supplies. Under
the management of the Bell Company this corporation, which now has
extensive factories in Hawthorne, Ill., produces two-thirds of the
world's telephone apparatus. With the Western Electric Vail has realized
the fundamental conception underlying his ideal telephone system--the
standardization of equipment. For the accomplishment of his idea of
a national telephone system, instead of a parochial one, Mr. Vail
organized, in 1881, the American Bell Telephone Company, a corporation
that really represented the federalization of all the telephone
activities of the subsidiary companies. The United States was divided
into several sections, in each of which a separate company was organized
to develop the telephone possibilities of that particular area. In 1899
the American Telephone and Telegraph Company took over the business and
properties of the American Bell Company. The larger corporation built
toll lines, connected these smaller systems with one another, and
thus made it possible for Washington to talk to New York, New York to
Chicago, and ultimately--Boston to San Francisco. An enlightened policy
led the Bell Company frequently to establish exchanges in places where
there was little chance of immediate profit. Under this stimulation the
use of this instrument extended rapidly, yet it is in the last twenty
years that the telephone has grown with accelerated momentum. In 1887
there were 170,000 subscribers in the United States, and in 1900 there
were 610,000; but in 1906 the American Telephone and Telegraph Company
was furnishing its service to 2,550,000 stations, and in 1916 to
10,000,000. Clearly it is only since 1900 that the telephone has become
a commonplace of American existence. Up to 1900 it had grown at the rate
of about 13,000 a year; whereas since 1900 it has grown at the rate of
700,000 a year. The explanation is that charges have been so reduced
that the telephone has been brought within the reach of practically
every business house and every family. Until the year 1900 every
telephone subscriber had to pay $240 a year, and manifestly only
families in affluent circumstances could afford such a luxury. About
that time a new system of charges known as the "message rate" plan was
introduced, according to which the subscriber paid a moderate price for
a stipulated number of calls, and a pro rata charge for all calls in
excess of that number. Probably no single change in any business has had
such an instantaneous effect. The telephone, which had hitherto been an
external symbol of prosperity, suddenly became the possession of almost
every citizen.
Other companies than the Bell interests have participated in this
development. The only time the Bell Company has had no competitor, Mr.
Vail has said, was at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1876. Some of this
competition has benefited the public but much of it has accomplished
little except to enrich many not over-scrupulous promoters. Groups of
farmers who frequently started companies to furnish service at cost did
much to extend the use of the telephone. Many of the companies which,
when the Bell patents expired in 1895, sprang up in the Middle West,
also manifested great enterprise and gave excellent service. These
companies have made valuable contributions, of which perhaps the
automatic telephone, an instrument which enables a subscriber to call
up his "party" directly, without the mediation of "central," is the most
ingenious. Although due acknowledgment must be made of the honesty and
enterprise with which hundreds of the independents are managed, the fact
remains that they are a great economic waste. Most of them give only a
local service, no company having yet arisen which aims to duplicate the
comprehensive national plans of the greater corporation. As soon as an
independent obtains a foothold, the natural consequence is that every
business house and private household must either be contented with
half service, or double the cost of the telephone by subscribing to two
companies. It is not unlikely that the "independents" have exercised a
wholesome influence upon the Bell Corporation, but, as the principle of
government regulation rather than individual competition has now become
the established method of controlling monopoly, this influence will
possess less virtue in the future. In addition to these independent
enterprises, the telephone has unfortunately furnished an opportunity
for stockjobbing schemes on a considerable scale. The years from 1895 to
1905 witnessed the growth of many bubbles of this kind; one group of men
organized not far from two hundred telephone companies. They would
go into selected communities, promise a superior service at half the
current rates, enlist the cooperation of "leading" business men, sell
the stock largely in the city or town to be benefited, make large
profits in the construction of the lines and the sale of equipment--and
then decamp for pastures new. The multitudinous bankruptcies that
followed in the wake of such exploiters at length brought their
activities to an end.
CHAPTER V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC UTILITIES
The streets of practically all American cities, as they appeared in 1870
and as they appear today, present one of the greatest contrasts in our
industrial development. Fifty years ago only a few flickering gas
lamps lighted the most traveled thoroughfares. Only the most prosperous
business houses and homes had even this expensive illumination; most
obtained their artificial light from the new illuminant known as
kerosene. But it was the mechanism of city transportation that would
have looked the strangest in our eyes. New York City had built
the world's first horse-car line in 1832, and since that year this
peculiarly American contrivance has had the most extended development.
In 1870, indeed, practically every city of any importance had one
or more railways of this type. New York possessed thirty different
companies, each operating an independent system. In Philadelphia,
Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco the growth of urban transportation
had been equally haphazard. The idea of combining the several street
railways into one comprehensive corporation had apparently occurred to
no one. The passengers, in their peregrinations through the city,
had frequently to pay three or four fares; competition was thus the
universal rule. The mechanical equipment similarly represented a
primitive state of organization. Horses and mules, in many cases hideous
physical specimens of their breeds, furnished the motive power. The
cars were little "bobtailed" receptacles, usually badly painted and more
often than not in a desperate state of disrepair. In many cities the
driver presided as a solitary autocrat; the passengers on entrance
deposited their coins in a little fare box. At night tiny oil lamps
made the darkness visible; in winter time shivering passengers warmed
themselves by pulling their coat collars and furs closely about their
necks and thrusting their lower members into a heap of straw, piled
almost a foot deep on the floor.
Who would have thought, forty years ago, that the lighting of these dark
and dirty streets and the modernization of these local railway systems
would have given rise to one of the most astounding chapters in
our financial history and created hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
millionaires? When Thomas A. Edison invented the incandescent light, and
when Frank J. Sprague in 1887 constructed the first practicable
urban trolley line, in Richmond, Virginia, they liberated forces that
powerfully affected not only our social and economic life but
our political institutions. These two inventions introduced anew
phrase--"Public Utilities." Combined with the great growth and
prosperity of the cities they furnished a fruitful opportunity to
several particularly famous groups of financial adventurers. They led to
the organization of "syndicates" which devoted all their energies, for
a quarter of a century, to exploiting city lighting and transportation
systems. These syndicates made a business of entering city after city,
purchasing the scattered street railway lines and lighting companies,
equipping them with electricity, combining them into unified systems,
organizing large corporations, and floating huge issues of securities.
A single group of six men--Yerkes, Widener, Elkins, Dolan, Whitney,
and Ryan--combined the street railways, and in many cases the lighting
companies, of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and at least
a hundred towns and cities in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, New Hampshire, and Maine. Either jointly
or separately they controlled the gas and electric lighting companies
of Philadelphia, Reading, Harrisburg, Atlanta, Vicksburg, St. Augustine,
Minneapolis, Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City, Sioux City, Syracuse, and
about seventy other communities. A single corporation developed nearly
all the trolley lines and lighting companies of New Jersey; another
controlled similar utilities in San Francisco and other cities on the
Pacific Coast. In practically all instances these syndicates adopted
precisely the same plan of operation. In so far as their activities
resulted in cheap, comfortable, rapid, and comprehensive transit systems
and low-priced illumination, their activities greatly benefited the
public. The future historian of American society will probably attribute
enormous influence to the trolley car in linking urban community with
urban community, in extending the radius of the modern city, in freeing
urban workers from the demoralizing influences of the tenement, in
offering the poorer classes comfortable homes in the surrounding
country, and in extending general enlightenment by bringing about a
closer human intercourse. Indeed, there is probably no single influence
that has contributed so much to the pleasure and comfort of the masses
as the trolley car.
Yet the story that I shall have to tell is not a pleasant one. It is
impossible to write even a brief outline of this development without
plunging deeply into the two phases of American life of which we have
most cause to be ashamed; these are American municipal politics and
the speculative aspects of Wall Street. The predominating influences
in American city life have been the great franchise corporations.
Practically all the men that have had most to do with developing our
public utilities have also had the greatest influence in city politics.
In New York, Thomas F. Ryan and William C. Whitney were the powerful,
though invisible, powers in Tammany Hall. In Chicago, Charles T. Yerkes
controlled mayors and city councils; he even extended his influence
into the state government, controlling governors and legislatures. In
Philadelphia, Widener and Elkins dominated the City Hall and also became
part of the Quay machine of Pennsylvania. Mark Hanna, the most active
force in Cleveland railways, was also the political boss of the State.
Roswell P. Flower, chief agent in developing Brooklyn Rapid Transit,
had been Governor of New York; Patrick Calhoun, who monopolized the
utilities of San Francisco and other cities, presided likewise over the
city's inner politics. The Public Service Corporation of New Jersey
also comprised a large political power in city and state politics. It is
hardly an exaggeration to say that in the most active period, that
from 1880 to 1905, the powers that developed city railway and lighting
companies in American cities were identically the same owners that had
the most to do with city government. In the minds of these men politics
was necessarily as much a part of their business as trolley poles
and steel rails. This type of capitalist existed only on public
franchises--the right to occupy the public streets with their trolley
cars, gas mains, and electric light conduits; they could obtain these
privileges only from complaisant city governments, and the simplest way
to obtain them was to control these governments themselves. Herein we
have the simple formula which made possible one of the most profitable
and one of the most adventurous undertakings of our time.
An attempt to relate the history of all these syndicates would involve
endless repetition. If we have the history of one we have the history of
practically all. I have therefore selected, as typical, the operations
of the group that developed the street railways and, to a certain
extent, the public lighting companies, in our three greatest American
cities--New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
One of the men who started these enterprises actually had a criminal
record. William H. Kemble, an early member of the Philadelphia group,
had been indicted for attempting to bribe the Pennsylvania Legislature;
he had been convicted and sentenced to one year in the county jail and
had escaped imprisonment only by virtue of a pardon obtained through
political influence. Charles T. Yerkes, one of his partners in politics
and street railway enterprises, had been less fortunate, for he had
served seven months for assisting in the embezzlement of Philadelphia
funds in 1873. It was this circumstance in Yerkes's career which
impelled him to leave Philadelphia and settle in Chicago where, starting
as a small broker, he ultimately acquired sufficient resources and
influence to embark in that street railway business at which he had
already served an extensive apprenticeship. Under his domination, the
Chicago aldermen attained a gravity that made them notorious all over
the world. They openly sold Yerkes the use of the streets for cash and
constantly blocked the efforts which an infuriated populace made for
reform. Yerkes purchased the old street railway lines, lined his pockets
by making contracts for their reconstruction, issued large flotations of
watered stock, heaped securities upon securities and reorganization
upon reorganization and diverted their assets to business in a hundred
ingenious ways.
In spite of the crimes which Yerkes perpetrated in American cities,
there was something refreshing and ingratiating about the man.
Possibly this is because he did not associate any hypocrisy with his
depredations. "The secret of success in my business," he once frankly
said, "is to buy old junk, fix it up a little, and unload it upon other
fellows." Certain of his epigrams--such as, "It is the strap-hanger who
pays the dividends"--have likewise given him a genial immortality.
The fact that, after having reduced the railway system of Chicago to
financial pulp and physical dissolution, he finally unloaded the whole
useless mass, at a handsome personal profit, upon his old New York
friends, Whitney and Ryan, and decamped to London, where he carried
through huge transit enterprises, clearly demonstrated that Yerkes was a
buccaneer of no ordinary caliber.
Yerkes's difficulties in Philadelphia indirectly made possible the
career of Peter A. B. Widener. For Yerkes had become involved in the
defalcation of the City Treasurer, Joseph P. Mercer, whose translation
to the Eastern Penitentiary left vacant a municipal office into which
Mr. Widener now promptly stepped. Thus Mr. Widener, as is practically
the case with all these street railway magnates, was a municipal
politician before he became a financier. The fact that he attained the
city treasurership shows that he had already gone far, for it was the
most powerful office in Philadelphia. He had all those qualities of
suavity, joviality, firmness, and personal domination that made possible
success in American local politics a generation ago. His occupation
contributed to his advancement. In recent years Mr. Widener, as the
owner of great art galleries and the patron of philanthropic and
industrial institutions, has been a national figure of the utmost
dignity. Had you dropped into the Spring Garden Market in Philadelphia
forty years ago, you would have found a portly gentleman, clad in a
white apron, and armed with a cleaver, presiding over a shop decorated
with the design--"Peter A. B. Widener, Butcher." He was constantly
joking with his customers and visitors, and in the evening he was
accustomed to foregather with a group of well-chosen spirits who had
been long famous in Philadelphia as the "all-night poker players." A
successful butcher shop in Philadelphia in those days played about the
same part in local politics as did the saloon in New York City. Such
a station became the headquarters of political gossip and the meeting
ground of a political clique; and so Widener, the son of a poor German
bricklayer, rapidly became a political leader in the Twentieth Ward,
and soon found his power extending even to Harrisburg. A few years ago
Widener presided over a turbulent meeting of Metropolitan shareholders
in Newark, New Jersey. The proposal under consideration was the
transference of all the Metropolitan's visible assets to a company of
which the stockholders knew nothing. When several of these stockholders
arose and demanded that they be given an opportunity to discuss the
projected lease, Widener turned to them and said, in his politest and
blandest manner: "You can vote first and discuss afterward." Widener
displayed precisely these same qualities of ingratiating arrogance and
good-natured contempt as a Philadelphia politician. He was a man of
big frame, alert and decisive in his movements, and a ready talker;
in business he was given much to living in the clouds--a born
speculator--emphatically a "boomer." His sympathies were generous, at
times emotional; it is said that he has even been known to weep when
discussing his fine collection of Madonnas. He showed this personal
side in his lifelong friendship and business association with William
L. Elkins, a man much inferior to him in ability. Indeed, Elkins's great
fortune was little more than a free gift from Widener, who carried him
as a partner in all his deals. Elkins became Widener's bondsman when the
latter entered the City Treasurer's office; the two men lived near
each other on the same street, and this association was cemented when
Widener's oldest son married Elkins's daughter. Elkins had started life
as an entry clerk in a grocery store, had made money in the butter and
egg business, had "struck oil" at Titusville in 1862, and had succeeded
in exchanging his holdings for a block of Standard Oil stock. He too
became a Philadelphia politician, but he had certain hard qualities--he
was close-fisted, slow, plodding--that prevented him from achieving much
success.
For the other members of this group we must now change the scene to New
York City. In the early eighties certain powerful interests had formed
plans for controlling the New York transit fields. Prominent among
them was William Collins Whitney, a very different type of man from the
Philadelphians. Born in Conway, Massachusetts, in 1841, he came from a
long line of distinguished and intellectual New Englanders. At Yale his
wonderful mental gifts raised him far above his fellows; he divided
all scholastic honors there with his classmate, William Graham Sumner,
afterwards Yale's great political economist. Soon after graduation
Whitney came to New York and rapidly forged ahead as a lawyer.
Brilliant, polished, suave, he early displayed those qualities which
afterward made him the master mind of presidential Cabinets and the
maker of American Presidents. Physically handsome, loved by most men and
all women, he soon acquired a social standing that amounted almost to a
dictatorship. His early political activities had greatly benefited New
York. He became a member of that group which, under the leadership of
Joseph H. Choate and Samuel J. Tilden, accomplished the downfall of
William M. Tweed. Whitney remained Tilden's political protege for
several years. Though highbred and luxury-loving, as a young man he was
not averse to hard political work, and many old-timers still remember
the days when "Bill" Whitney delivered cart-tail harangues on the lower
east side. By 1884 he had become the most prominent Democrat in New
York--always a foe to Tammany--and as such he contributed largely to
Cleveland's first election, became Secretary of the Navy in Cleveland's
cabinet and that great President's close friend and adviser. As
Secretary of the Navy, Whitney, who found the fleet composed of a few
useless hulks left over from the days of Farragut, created the fighting
force that did such efficient service in the Spanish War. The fact that
the United States is now the third naval power is largely owing to these
early activities of Whitney.
Certainly all this national service forms a strange prelude to Whitney's
activities in the public utilities of New York and other cities. Had he
died, indeed, in his fiftieth year, his name would be renowned today as
a worker for the highest ideals of American citizenship. What suddenly
made him turn his back upon his past, join his former enemies in Tammany
Hall, and engage in these great speculative enterprises? The simplest
explanation is that, with his ability and ambition, Whitney had the
luxurious tastes of a Medici. At the height of his career his financial
success found expression in a magnificent house which he established
on Fifth Avenue. Its furnishings were one of the wonders of New York.
Whitney ransacked the art treasures of Europe, stripped medieval castles
of their carvings and tapestries, ripped whole staircases and ceilings
from the repose of centuries, and relaid them in this abode of splendor,
and here he entertained with a lavishness that astounded New York. This
single exploit pictures the man. Everything that Whitney did and was
his house, his financial transactions, his Wall Street speculations, the
rewards which he gave his friends assumed heroic proportions. But these
things all demanded money. The dilapidated horse railways of New York
offered him his most convenient opportunity for amassing it.
But Whitney had not proceeded far when he came face to face with a quiet
and energetic young man who had already made considerable progress in
the New York transit field. This was a Virginian of South Irish descent
who had started life as a humble broker's clerk twelve or fourteen years
before. His name was Thomas Fortune Ryan. Few men have wielded greater
power in American finance, but in 1884 Ryan was merely a ruddy-faced,
cleancut, and clean-living Irishman of thirty-three, who could be
depended on to execute quickly and faithfully orders on the New
York Stock Exchange--even though they were small ones--and who, in
unostentatious fashion, had already acquired much influence in Tammany
Hall. With his six feet of stature, his extremely slender figure, his
long legs, his long arms, his raiment--which always represented the
height of fashion and tended slightly toward the flashy--Ryan made a
conspicuous figure wherever he went. He was born in 1851, on a small
farm in Nelson County, Virginia. The Civil War, which broke out when
Ryan was a boy of ten, destroyed the family fortune and in 1868, when
seventeen, he began life as a dry-goods clerk in Baltimore, fulfilling
the tradition of the successful country boy in the large city by
marrying his employer's daughter. When his father-in-law failed, in
1870, Ryan came to New York, went to work in a broker's office, and
succeeded so well that, in a few years, he was able to purchase a seat
on the Stock Exchange. He was sufficiently skillful as a broker to
number Jay Gould among his customers and to inspire a prophecy by
William C. Whitney that, if he retained his health, he would become one
of the richest men in the country. Afterwards, when he knew him more
intimately, Whitney elaborated this estimate by saying that Ryan was
"the most adroit, suave, and noiseless man he had ever known." Ryan had
two compelling traits that soon won for him these influential admirers.
First of all was his marvelous industry. His genius was not spasmodic.
He worked steadily, regularly, never losing a moment, never getting
excited, going, day after day, the same monotonous dog-trot, easily
outdistancing scores of apparently stronger men. He also had the
indispensable faculty of silence. He has always been the least talkative
man in Wall Street, but, with all his reserve, he has remained the soul
of courtesy and outward good nature.
Here, then, we have the characters of this great impending drama--Yerkes
in Chicago, Widener and Elkins in Philadelphia, Whitney and Ryan in New
York. These five men did not invariably work as a unit. Yerkes, though
he had considerable interest in Philadelphia, which had been the scene
of his earliest exploits, limited his activities largely to Chicago.
Widener and Elkins, however, not only dominated Philadelphia traction
but participated in all of Yerkes's enterprises in Chicago and held
an equal interest with Whitney and Ryan in New York. The latter
Metropolitan pair, though they confined their interest chiefly to their
own city, at times transferred their attention to Chicago. Thus, for
nearly thirty years, these five men found their oyster in the transit
systems of America's three greatest cities--and, for that matter, in
many others also.
An attempt to trace the convolutions of America's street railway and
public lighting finance would involve a puzzling array of statistics and
an inextricable complexity of stocks, bonds, leases, holding companies,
operating companies, construction companies, reorganizations, and the
like. Difficult and apparently impenetrable as is this financial
morass, the essential facts still stand out plainly enough. As already
indicated, the fundamental basis upon which the whole system rested
was the control of municipal politics. The story of the Metropolitan's
manipulation of the New York street railways starts with one of the
most sordid episodes in the municipal annals of America's largest city.
Somewhat more than thirty years ago, a group of New York city fathers
acquired an international fame as the "boodle aldermen." These men had
finally given way to the importunities of a certain Jacob Sharp, an
eccentric New York character, who had for many years operated New
York City railways, and granted a franchise for the construction of
a horse-car line on lower Broadway. Soon after voting this franchise,
regarded as perhaps the most valuable in the world, these same aldermen
had begun to wear diamonds, to purchase real estate, and give other
outward evidences of unexpected prosperity. Presently, however, these
city fathers started a migration to Canada, Mexico, Spain, and other
countries where the processes of extradition did not work smoothly.
Sharp's enemies had succeeded in precipitating a legislative
investigation under the very capable leadership of Roscoe Conkling, who
had little difficulty in showing that Sharp had purchased his aldermen
for $500,000 cash. In a short time, such of the aldermen as were
accessible to the police were languishing in prison, and Sharp had been
arrested on twenty-one indictments for bribery and sentenced to four
years' hard labor--a sentence which he was saved from serving by his
lonely and miserable death in Ludlow Street Jail. In the delirium
preceding his dissolution Sharp raved constantly about his Broadway
railroad and his enemies; it was apparently his belief that the
investigation which had uncovered his rascality and the subsequent
"persecutions" had been engineered by certain of his rivals, either
to compel Sharp to disgorge his franchise or to produce the facts that
would justify the legislature in annulling it on the ground of fraud.
Though the complete history of this transaction can never be written, we
do possess certain facts that lend some color to this diagnosis. Up to
the time that Sharp had captured this franchise, Ryan, Whitney, and the
Philadelphians--not as partners, but as rivals--had competed with him
for this prize. At the trial of Arthur J. McQuade in 1886, a fellow
conspirator, who bore the somewhat suggestive name of Fullgraff, related
certain details which, if true, would indicate that Sharp's methods
differed from those of his rivals only in that they had proved more
successful. Thirteen members of the Board of Aldermen, said Fullgraff,
had formed a close corporation, elected a chairman, and adopted a policy
of "business unity in all important matters," which meant that they
proposed to keep together in order to secure the highest price for the
Broadway franchise. The cable railroad, which was the one with which Mr.
Ryan was identified, offered $750,000, half in bonds and half in cash.
Mr. Sharp, however, offered $500,000 all in cash. The aldermen voted in
favor of Sharp because cash was not only a more valuable commodity
than the bonds but, to use Alderman Fullgraff's own words--"less easily
traced." That Whitney financed lawsuits against the validity of Sharp's
franchise appears upon the record, and that Ryan was actively promoting
the Conkling investigation, is likewise a matter of evidence.
Sharp's victory had the great result of bringing together the three
forces--Ryan, Whitney, and the Philadelphians--who had hitherto combated
one another as rivals; that is, it caused the organization of the famous
Whitney-Ryan-Widener-Elkins syndicate. If these men had inspired all
those attacks on Sharp, their maneuver proved successful; for when the
investigation had attained its climax and public indignation against
Sharp had reached its most furious stage, that venerable corruptionist,
worn down by ill health, and almost crazed by the popular outcry, sold
his Broadway railroad to Peter A. B. Widener, William L. Elkins,
and William H. Kemble. Thomas F. Ryan became secretary of the new
corporation, and William C. Whitney an active participant in its
affairs.
This Broadway franchise formed the vertebral column of the New
York transit system; with it as a basis, the operators formed the
Metropolitan Street Railway Company in 1893, commonly known as the
"Metropolitan." They organized also the Metropolitan Traction Company,
an organization which enjoys an historic position as the first "holding
company" ever created in this country. Its peculiar attribute was that
it did not construct and operate street railways itself, but merely
owned other corporations that did so. Its only assets, that is, were
paper securities representing the ownership and control of other
companies. This "holding company," which has since become almost a
standardized form of corporation control in this country, was the
invention of Mr. Francis Lynde Stetson, one of America's greatest
corporation lawyers. "Mr. Stetson," Ryan is said to have remarked, "do
you know what you did when you drew up the papers of the Metropolitan
Traction Company? You made us a great big tin box."
The plan which Whitney and his associates now followed was to obtain
control, in various ways, of all the surface railways in New York and
place them under the leadership of the Metropolitan. Through their
political influences they obtained franchises of priceless value,
organized subsidiary street railway companies, and exchanged the stock
of these subsidiary companies for that of the Metropolitan. A few
illustrations will show the character of these transactions. They thus
acquired, practically as a free gift, a franchise to build a cable
railroad on Lexington Avenue. At an extremely liberal estimate, this
line cost perhaps $2,500,000 to construct, yet the syndicate turned this
over to the Metropolitan for $10,000,000 of Metropolitan securities.
They similarly acquired a franchise for a line on Columbus Avenue,
spending perhaps $500,000 in construction, and handing the completed
property over to the Metropolitan for $6,000,000. In exchange for these
two properties, representing a real investment, it has been maintained,
of $3,000,000, the inside syndicates received securities which had a
face value of $16,000,000 and which, as will appear subsequently, had
a market cash value of not far from $25,000,000. They purchased an
old horse-car line on Fulton Street, a line whose assets consisted of
one-third of a mile of tracks, ten little box cars, thirty horses, and
an operating deficit of $40,000 a year. At auction, its visible assets
might have brought $15,000; yet the syndicate turned this over to the
Metropolitan for $1,000,000. They spent $50,000 in constructing and
equipping a horse railroad on Twenty-eighth and Twenty-ninth Streets and
turned this over to the Metropolitan for $3,000,000. For two and a half
miles of railroad on Thirty-fourth Street, which represented a
cash expenditure of perhaps $100,000, they received $2,000,000 of
Metropolitan stock. But it is hardly necessary to catalogue more
instances; the plan of operations must now be fairly evident. It was
for the members of the syndicate, as individuals, to collect all the
properties and new franchises that were available and to transfer them
to the Metropolitan at enormously inflated values. So far, all these
deals were purely stock transactions--no cash had yet changed hands.
When the amalgamation was complete, the insiders found themselves in
possession of large amounts of Metropolitan stock. Their scheme for
transforming this paper into more tangible property forms the concluding
chapter of this Metropolitan story. *
* In 1897 the Traction Company dissolved, after distributing
$6,000,000 as "a voluntary dividend" among its stockholders.
Nearly all the properties actually purchased and transferred in the
manner described above, had little earning capacity, and therefore
little value; they were decrepit horse-car lines in unprofitable
territory. The really valuable roads were those that traversed the great
north and south thoroughfares--Lenox, Third, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, and
Ninth Avenues. Many old New York families and estates had held these
properties for years and had collected large annual dividends from
them. Naturally they had no desire to sell, yet their acquisition was
essential to the monopoly which the Whitney-Ryan syndicate aspired to
construct. They finally leased all these roads, under agreements which
guaranteed large annual rentals. In practically all these cases the
Metropolitan, in order to secure physical possession, agreed to pay
rentals that far exceeded the earning capacity of the road. What is the
explanation of such insane finance? We do not have the precise facts in
the matter of the New York railways; but similar operations in Chicago,
which have been officially made public, shed the utmost light upon
the situation. In order to get possession of a single road in Chicago,
Widener and Elkins guaranteed a thirty-five per cent dividend; to get
one Philadelphia line, they guaranteed 65 1/2 per cent on capital
paid in. This, of course, was not business; the motives actuating
the syndicate were purely speculative. In Chicago, Widener and Elkins
quietly made large purchases of the stock in these roads before they
leased them to the parent company. The exceedingly profitable lease
naturally gave such stocks a high value, in case they preferred to sell;
if they held them, they reaped huge rewards from the leases which they
had themselves decreed. Perhaps their most remarkable exploit was
the lease of the West Division Railway Company of Chicago to the West
Chicago Street Railroad. Widener and Elkins controlled the West Division
Railway; their partner, Charles T. Yerkes, controlled the latter
corporation. The negotiation of a lease, therefore, was a purely
informal matter; the partners were merely dealing with one another; yet
Widener and Elkins received a fee of $5,000,000 as personal compensation
for negotiating this lease!
But this whole leasing system, both in New York and Chicago, entailed
scandals perhaps even more reprehensible. All these leased properties,
when taken over, were horse-car lines, and their transformation into
electrically propelled systems involved reconstruction operations on an
extensive scale. It seems perfectly clear that the chief motive
which inspired these extravagant leases was the determination of the
individuals who made up the syndicate to obtain physical possession and
to make huge profits on construction. The "construction accounts" of the
Metropolitan in New York form the most mysterious and incredible chapter
in its history. The Metropolitan reports show that they spent anywhere
from $500,000 to $600,000 a mile building underground trolley lines
which, at their own extravagant estimate, should have cost only
$150,000. In a few years untold millions, wasted in this way,
disappeared from the Metropolitan treasury. In 1907 the Public
Service Commission of New York began investigating these "construction
accounts," but it had not proceeded far when the discovery was made that
all the Metropolitan books containing the information desired had been
destroyed. All the ledgers, journals, checks, and vouchers containing
the financial history of the Metropolitan since its organization in 1893
had been sold for $117 to a junkman, who had agreed in writing to grind
them into pulp, so that they would be safe from "prying eyes." We shall
therefore never know precisely how this money was spent. But here again
the Chicago transactions help us to an understanding. In 1898 Charles T.
Yerkes, with that cynical frankness which some people have regarded as
a redeeming trait in his character, opened his books for the preceding
twenty-five years to the Civic Federation of Chicago. These books
disclosed that Mr. Yerkes and his associates, Widener and Elkins, had
made many millions in reconstructing the Chicago lines at prices which
represented gross overcharges to the stockholders. For this purpose
Yerkes, Widener, and Elkins organized the United States Construction
Company and made contracts for installing the new electric systems on
the lines which they controlled by lease or stock ownership. It seems a
not unnatural suspicion that the vanished Metropolitan books would have
disclosed similar performances in New York.
The concluding chapter of this tragedy has its setting in the Stock
Exchange. These inside gentlemen, as already said, received no cash as
their profits from these manipulations--only stock. But in the eyes
of the public this stock represented an enormous value. Metropolitan
securities, for example, represented the control and ownership of all
the surface transit business in the city of New York. Naturally, it had
a great investment value. When it began to pay regularly seven per cent
dividends, the public appetite for Metropolitan became insatiable. The
eager purchasers did not know, what we know now, that the Metropolitan
did not earn these dividends and never could have earned them. The mere
fact that it was paying, as rentals on its leased lines, annual sums far
in excess of their earning capacity, necessarily prevented anything in
the nature of profitable operation. The unpleasant fact is that these
dividends were paid with borrowed money merely to make the stock
marketable. It is not unlikely that the padded construction accounts,
already described, may have concealed large disbursements of money
for unearned dividends. When the Metropolitan was listed in 1897, it
immediately went beyond par. The excitement that followed forms one of
the most memorable chapters in the history of Wall Street. The investing
public, egged on by daring and skillful stock manipulators, simply went
mad and purchased not only Metropolitan but street railway shares
that were then even more speculative. It was in these bubble days that
Brooklyn Rapid Transit soared to heights from which it subsequently
descended precipitately. Under this stimulus, Metropolitan stock
ultimately sold at $269 a share. While the whole investing public was
scrambling for Metropolitan, the members of the exploiting syndicate
found ample opportunity to sell. The real situation became apparent when
William C. Whitney died in 1904 leaving an estate valued at $40,000,000.
Not a single share of Metropolitan was found among his assets! The
final crash came in 1907, when the Metropolitan, a wrecked and plundered
shell, confessed insolvency and went into a receivership. Those who had
purchased its stock found their holdings as worthless as the traditional
western gold mine. The story of the Chicago and Philadelphia systems,
as well as that of numerous other cities, had been essentially the same.
The transit facilities of millions of Americans had merely become
the instruments of a group of speculators who had made huge personal
fortunes and had left, as a monument of their labors, street railway
lines whose gross overcapitalization was apparent to all and whose
physical dilapidation in many cases revealed the character of their
management.
It seems perhaps an exaggeration to say that the enterprises which have
resulted in equipping our American cities and suburbs with trolley lines
and electric lighting facilities have followed the plan of campaign
sketched above. Perhaps not all have repeated the worst excesses of
the syndicate that so remorselessly exploited New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia. Yet in most cases these elaborate undertakings have been
largely speculative in character. Huge issues of fictitious stock,
created purely for the benefit of inner rings, have been almost the
prevailing rule. Stock speculation and municipal corruption have
constantly gone hand in hand everywhere with the development of
the public utilities. The relation of franchise corporations to
municipalities is probably the thing which has chiefly opened the
eyes of Americans to certain glaring defects in their democratic
organization. The popular agitation which has resulted has led to great
political reforms. The one satisfaction which we can derive from such a
relation as that given above is that, after all, it is representative
of a past era in our political and economic life. No new "Metropolitan
syndicate" can ever repeat the operations of its predecessors.
Practically every State now has utility commissions which regulate
the granting of franchises, the issue of securities, the details of
construction and equipment and service. An awakened public conscience
has effectively ended the alliance between politics and franchise
corporations and the type of syndicate described in the foregoing pages
belongs as much to our American past as that rude frontier civilization
with which, after all, it had many characteristics in common.
CHAPTER VI. MAKING THE WORLD'S AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY
The Civil War in America did more than free the negro slave: it freed
the white man as well. In the Civil War agriculture, for the first time
in history, ceased to be exclusively a manual art. Up to that time the
typical agricultural laborer had been a bent figure, tending his fields
and garnering his crops with his own hands. Before the war had ended the
American farmer had assumed an erect position; the sickle and the scythe
had given way to a strange red chariot, which, with practically no
expenditure of human labor, easily did the work of a dozen men. Many
as have been America's contributions to civilization, hardly any have
exerted greater influence in promoting human welfare than her gift
of agricultural machinery. It seems astounding that, until McCormick
invented his reaper, in 1831, agricultural methods, in both the New and
the Old World, differed little from those that had prevailed in the days
of the Babylonians. The New England farmer sowed his fields and reaped
his crops with almost identically the same instruments as those which
had been used by the Roman farmer in the time of the Gracchi. Only a
comparatively few used the scythe; the great majority, with crooked
backs and bended knees, cut the grain with little hand sickles precisely
like those which are now dug up in Etruscan and Egyptian tombs.
Though McCormick had invented his reaper in 1831, and though many rival
machines had appeared in the twenty years preceding the Civil War, only
the farmers on the great western plains had used the new machinery to
any considerable extent. The agricultural papers and agricultural fairs
had not succeeded in popularizing these great laborsaving devices. Labor
was so abundant and so cheap that the farmer had no need of them. But
the Civil War took one man in three for the armies, and it was under
this pressure that the farmers really discovered the value of machinery.
A small boy or girl could mount a McCormick reaper and cut a dozen acres
of grain in a day. This circumstance made it possible to place millions
of soldiers in the field and to feed the armies from farms on which
mature men did very little work. But the reaper promoted the Northern
cause in other ways. Its use extended so in the early years of the war
that the products of the farms increased on an enormous scale, and the
surplus, exported to Europe, furnished the liquid capital that made
possible the financing of the war. Europe gazed in astonishment at a new
spectacle in history; that of a nation fighting the greatest war which
had been known up to that time, employing the greater part of her young
and vigorous men in the armies, and yet growing infinitely richer in the
process. The Civil War produced many new implements of warfare, such as
the machine gun and the revolving turret for battleships, but, so far as
determining the result was concerned, perhaps the most important was the
reaper.
Extensive as the use of agricultural machinery became in the Civil War,
that period only faintly foreshadowed the development that has taken
place since. The American farm is today like a huge factory; the use
of the hands has almost entirely disappeared; there are only a few
operations of husbandry that are not performed automatically. In Civil
War days the reaper merely cut the grain; now machinery rakes it up and
binds it into sheaves and threshes it. Similar mechanisms bind corn and
rice. Machinery is now used to plant potatoes; grain, cotton, and other
farm products are sown automatically. The husking bees that formed
one of our social diversions in Civil War days have disappeared, for
particular machines now rip the husks off the ears. Horse hay-forks and
horse hayrakes have supplanted manual labor. The mere names of scores
of modern instruments of farming, all unknown in Civil War days--hay
carriers, hay loaders, hay stackers, manure spreaders, horse corn
planters, corn drills, disk harrows, disk ploughs, steam ploughs,
tractors, and the like--give some suggestion of the extent to which
America has made mechanical the most ancient of occupations. In thus
transforming agriculture, we have developed not only our own Western
plains, but we have created new countries. Argentina could hardly exist
today except for American agricultural machinery. Ex-President Loubet
declared, a few years ago, that France would starve to death except
for the farming machines that were turned out in Chicago. There is
practically no part of the world where our self-binders are not used. In
many places America is not known as the land of freedom and opportunity,
but merely as "the place from which the reapers come." The traveler
suddenly comes upon these familiar agents in every European country,
in South America, in Egypt, China, Algiers, Siberia, India, Burma, and
Australia. For agricultural machinery remains today, what it has always
been, almost exclusively an American manufacture. It is practically the
only native American product that our European competitors have not
been able to imitate. Tariff walls, bounty systems, and all the other
artificial aids to manufacturing have not developed this industry in
foreign lands, and today the United States produces four-fifths of
all the agricultural machinery used in the world. The International
Harvester Company has its salesmen in more than fifty countries, and has
established large American factories in many nations of Europe.
One day, a few years before his death, Prince Bismarck was driving on
his estate, closely following a self-binder that had recently been put
to work. The venerable statesman, bent and feeble, seemed to find a deep
melancholy interest in the operation.
"Show me the thing that ties the knot," he said. It was taken to pieces
and explained to him in detail. "Can these machines be made in Germany?"
he asked.
"No, your Excellency," came the reply. "They can be made only in
America."
The old man gave a sigh. "Those Yankees are ingenious fellows," he said.
"This is a wonderful machine."
In this story of American success, four names stand out preeminently.
The men who made the greatest contributions were Cyrus H. McCormick,
C. W. Marsh, Charles B. Withington, and John F. Appleby. The name that
stands foremost, of course, is that of McCormick, but each of the others
made additions to his invention that have produced the present finished
machine. It seems like the stroke of an ironical fate which decreed
that since it was the invention of a Northerner, Eli Whitney, that made
inevitable the Civil War, so it was the invention of a Southerner, Cyrus
McCormick, that made inevitable the ending of that war in favor of the
North. McCormick was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on a farm
about eighteen miles from Staunton. He was a child of that pioneering
Scotch-Irish race which contributed so greatly to the settlement of this
region and which afterward made such inestimable additions to American
citizenship. The country in which he grew up was rough and, so far as
the conventionalities go, uncivilized; the family homestead was little
more than a log cabin; and existence meant a continual struggle with
a not particularly fruitful soil. The most remarkable figure in the
McCormick home circle, and the one whose every-day life exerted the
greatest influence on the boy, was his father. The older McCormick
had one obsessing idea that made him the favorite butt of the local
humorists. He believed that the labor spent in reaping grain was a
useless expenditure of human effort and that machinery might be made
to do the work. Other men, in this country and in Europe, had nourished
similar notions. Several Englishmen had invented reaping machines, all
of which had had only a single defect--they would not reap. An ingenious
English actor had developed a contrivance which would cut imitation
wheat on the stage, but no one had developed a machine that would work
satisfactorily in real life. Robert McCormick spent the larger part
of his days and nights tinkering at a practical machine. He finally
produced a horrific contrivance, made up of whirling sickles, knives,
and revolving rods, pushed from behind by two horses; when he tried this
upon a grain-field, however, it made a humiliating failure.
Evidently Robert McCormick had ambitions far beyond his powers; yet
without his absurd experiments the development of American agriculture
might have waited many years. They became the favorite topics of
conversation in the evening gatherings that took place about the family
log fire. Robert McCormick had several sons, and one manifested a
particular interest in his repeated failures. From the time he was seven
years old Cyrus Hall McCormick became his father's closest companion.
Others might ridicule and revile, but this chubby, bright-eyed,
intelligent little boy was always the keenest listener, the one comfort
which the father had against his jeering neighbors. He also became his
father's constant associate in his rough workshop. Soon, however, the
older man noticed a change in their relations. The boy was becoming
the teacher, and the father was taught. By the time Cyrus was eighteen,
indeed, he had advanced so far beyond his father that the latter had
become merely a proud observer. Young McCormick threw into the discard
all his father's ideas and struck out on entirely new lines. By the time
he had reached his twenty-second birthday he had constructed a machine
which, in all its essential details, is the one which we have today. He
had introduced seven principles, all of which are an indispensable part
of every reaper constructed now. One afternoon he drove his unlovely
contraption upon his father's farm, with no witnesses except his own
family. This group now witnessed the first successful attempt ever made
to reap with machinery. A few days later young McCormick gave a
public exhibition at Steele's Tavern, cutting six acres of oats in
an afternoon. The popular ridicule soon changed into acclaim; the new
invention was exhibited in a public square and Cyrus McCormick became a
local celebrity. Perhaps the words that pleased him most, however, were
those spoken by his father. "I am proud," said the old man, "to have a
son who can do what I failed to do."
This McCormick reaper dates from 1831; but it represented merely the
beginnings of the modern machine. It performed only a single function;
it simply cut the crop. When its sliding blade had performed this task,
the grain fell back upon a platform, and a farm hand, walking alongside,
raked this off upon the ground. A number of human harvesters followed,
picked up the bundles, and tied a few strips of grain around them,
making the sheaf. The work was exceedingly wearying and particularly
hard upon the women who were frequently impressed into service as
farm-hands. About 1858 two farmers named Marsh, who lived near De Kalb,
Illinois, solved this problem. They attached to their McCormick reaper a
moving platform upon which the cut grain was deposited. A footboard was
fixed to the machine upon which two men stood. As the grain came upon
this moving platform these men seized it, bound it into sheaves, and
threw it upon the field. Simple as this procedure seemed it really
worked a revolution in agriculture; for the first time since the
pronouncement of the primal curse, the farmer abandoned his hunchback
attitude and did his work standing erect. Yet this device also had
its disqualifications, the chief one being that it converted the human
sheaf-binder into a sweat-shop worker. It was necessary to bind the
grain as rapidly as the platform brought it up; the worker was
therefore kept in constant motion; and the consequences were frequently
distressing and nerve racking. Yet this "Marsh Harvester" remained the
great favorite with farmers from about 1860 to 1874.
All this time, however, there was a growing feeling that even the Marsh
harvester did not represent the final solution of the problem; the air
was full of talk and prophecies about self-binders, something that would
take the loose wheat from the platform and transform it into sheaves.
Hundreds of attempts failed until, in 1874, Charles B. Withington of
Janesville, Wisconsin, brought to McCormick a mechanism composed of two
steel arms which seized the grain, twisted a wire around it, cut the
wire, and tossed the completed sheaf to the earth. In actual practice
this contrivance worked with the utmost precision. Finally American
farmers had a machine that cut the grain, raked it up, and bound it
into sheaves ready for the mill. Human labor had apparently lost its
usefulness; a solitary man or woman, perched upon a seat and driving a
pair of horses, now performed all these operations of husbandry.
By this time, scores of manufacturers had entered the field in
opposition to McCormick, but his acquisition of Withington's invention
had apparently made his position secure. Indeed, for the next ten years
he had everything his own way. Then suddenly an ex-keeper of a drygoods
store in Maine crossed his path. This was William Deering, a character
quite as energetic, forceful, and pugnacious as was McCormick himself.
Though McCormick had made and sold thousands of his selfbinders, farmers
were already showing signs of discontent. The wire proved a continual
annoyance. It mingled with the straw and killed the cattle--at least so
the farmers complained; it cut their hands and even found its way, with
disastrous results, into the flour mills. Deering now appeared as the
owner of a startling invention by John F. Appleby. This did all that
the Withington machine did and did it better and quicker; and it had
the great advantage that it bound with twine instead of wire. The new
machine immediately swept aside all competitors; McCormick, to save his
reaper from disaster, presently perfected a twine binder of his own. The
appearance of Appleby's improvement in 1884 completes the cycle of the
McCormick reaper on its mechanical side The harvesting machine of fifty
nations today is the one to which Appleby put the final touches in 1884.
Since then nothing of any great importance has been added.
This outline of invention, however, comprises only part of the story.
The development of the reaper business presents a narrative quite as
adventurous as that of the reaper itself. Cyrus McCormick was not only
a great inventor; he was also a great businessman. So great was his
ability in this direction, indeed, that there has been a tendency to
discredit his achievements as a creative genius and to attribute his
success to his talents as an organizer and driver of industry. "I may
make a million dollars from this reaper," said McCormick, in the full
tide of enthusiasm over his invention; and these words indicate an
indispensable part of his program. He had no miserly instinct but he
had one overpowering ambition. It was McCormick's conviction, almost
religious in its fervor, that the harvester business of the world
belonged to him. As already indicated, plenty of other hardy spirits,
many of them almost as commanding personalities as himself, disputed the
empire. Not far from 12,000 patents on harvesting machines were granted
in this country in the fifty years following McCormick's invention, and
more than two hundred companies were formed to compete for the market.
McCormick always regarded these competitors as highwaymen who had
invaded a field which had been almost divinely set apart for himself. A
man of covenanting antecedents, heroic in his physical proportions, with
a massive, Jove-like head and beard, tirelessly devoted to his work,
watching every detail with a microscopic eye, marshaling a huge force
of workers who were as possessed by this one overruling idea as was
McCormick himself, he certainly presented an almost unassailable
battlefront to his antagonists. The competition that raged between
McCormick and the makers of rival machines was probably the fiercest
that has prevailed in any American industry. For marketing his machine
McCormick developed a system almost as ingenious as the machine itself.
The popularization of so ungainly and expensive a contrivance as the
harvester proved a slow and difficult task. McCormick at first attempted
to build his product on his Virginia farm and for many years it was
known as the Virginia Reaper. Nearly ten years passed, however,
before he sold his first machine. The farmer first refused to take it
seriously. "It's a great invention," he would say, "but I'm running
a farm, not a circus." About 1847 McCormick decided that the Western
prairies offered the finest field for its activities, and established
his factory at Chicago, then an ugly little town on the borders of a
swamp. This selection proved to be a stroke of genius, for it placed the
harvesting factory right at the door of its largest market.
The price of the harvester, however, seemed an insurmountable obstacle
to its extensive use. The early settlers of the Western plains had
little more than their brawny hands as capital, and the homestead
law furnished them their land practically free. In the eyes of a
large-seeing pioneer like McCormick this was capital enough. He
determined that his reaper should develop this extensive domain,
and that the crops themselves should pay the cost. Selling expensive
articles on the installment plan now seems a commonplace of business,
but in those days it was practically unknown. McCormick was the first
to see its possibilities. He established an agent, usually the general
storekeeper, in every agricultural center. Any farmer who had a modicum
of cash and who bore a reputation for thrift and honesty could purchase
a reaper. In payment he gave a series of notes, so timed that they fell
due at the end of harvesting seasons. Thus, as the money came in from
successive harvests, the pioneer paid off the notes, taking two, three,
or four years in the process. In the sixties and seventies immigrants
from the Eastern States and from Europe poured into the Mississippi
Valley by the hundreds of thousands. Almost the first person who greeted
the astonished Dane, German, or Swede was an agent of the harvester
company, offering to let him have one of these strange machines on
these terms. Thus the harvester, under McCormick's comprehensive selling
plans, did as much as the homestead act in opening up this great farming
region.
McCormick covered the whole agricultural United States with these
agents. In this his numerous competitors followed suit, and the
liveliest times ensued. From that day to this the agents of harvesting
implements have lent much animation and color to rural life in this
country. Half a dozen men were usually tugging away at one farmer at the
same time. The mere fact that the farmer had closed a contract did not
end his troubles, for "busting up competitors' sales" was part of the
agent's business. The situation frequently reached a point where there
was only one way to settle rival claims and that was by a field contest.
At a stated time two or three or four rival harvesters would suddenly
appear on the farmer's soil, each prepared to show, by actual test, its
superiority over the enemy. Farmers and idlers for miles around would
gather to witness the Homeric struggle. At a given signal the small
army of machines would spring savagely at a field of wheat. The one that
could cut the allotted area in the shortest time was regarded as the
winner. The harvester would rush on all kinds of fields, flat and hilly,
dry and wet, and would cut all kinds of crops, and even stubble. All
manner of tests were devised to prove one machine stronger than its
rival; a favorite idea was to chain two back to back, and have them
pulled apart by frantic careering horses; the one that suffered the
fewest breakdowns would be generally acclaimed from town to town.
Sometimes these field tests were the most exciting and spectacular
events at country fairs.
Thus the harvesting machine "pushed the frontier westward at the rate of
thirty miles a year," according to William H. Seward. It made American
and Canadian agriculture the most efficient in the world. The German
brags that his agriculture is superior to American, quoting as proof
the more bushels of wheat or potatoes he grows to an acre. But the
comparison is fallacious. The real test of efficiency is, not the crops
that are grown per acre, but the crops that are grown per man
employed. German efficiency gets its results by impressing women as
cultivators--depressing bent figures that are in themselves a sufficient
criticism upon any civilization. America gets its results by using a
minimum of human labor and letting machinery do the work. Thus America's
methods are superior not only from the standpoint of economics but of
social progress. All nations, including Germany, use our machinery, but
none to the extent that prevails on the North American Continent.
Perhaps McCormick's greatest achievement is that his machine has
banished famine wherever it is extensively used, at least in peace
times. Before the reaper appeared existence, even in the United States,
was primarily a primitive struggle for bread. The greatest service of
the harvester has been that it has freed the world--unless it is a world
distracted by disintegrating war--from a constant anxiety concerning its
food supply. The hundreds of thousands of binders, active in the fields
of every country, have made it certain that humankind shall not want for
its daily bread. When McCormick exhibited his harvester at the London
Exposition of 1851, the London Times ridiculed it as "a cross between
an Astley chariot, a wheel barrow, and a flying machine." Yet this same
grotesque object, widely used in Canada, Argentina, Australia, South
Africa, and India, becomes an engine that really holds the British
Empire together.
For the forty years succeeding the Civil War the manufacture of
harvesting machinery was a business in which many engaged, but in which
few survived. The wildest competition ruthlessly destroyed all but
half a dozen powerful firms. Cyrus McCormick died in 1884, but his sons
proved worthy successors; the McCormick factory still headed the list,
manufacturing, in 1900, one-third of all the self-binders used in the
world. The William Deering Company came next and then D. M. Osborne, J.
J. Glessner, and W. H. Jones, established factories that made existence
exceedingly uncomfortable for the pioneers. Whatever one may think of
the motives which caused so many combinations in the early years of
the twentieth century, there is no question that irresistible economic
forces compelled these great harvester companies to get together.
Quick profits in the shape of watered stock had nothing to do with
the formation of the International Harvester Company. All the men
who controlled these enterprises were individualists, with a natural
loathing for trusts, combinations, and pools. They wished for nothing
better than to continue fighting the Spartan battle that had made
existence such an exciting pastime for more than half a century. But the
simple fact was that these several concerns were destroying one another;
it was a question of joining hands, ending the competition that was
eating so deeply into their financial resources, or reducing the whole
business to chaos. When Mr. George W. Perkins, of J. P. Morgan
and Company, first attempted to combine these great companies, the
antagonisms which had been accumulated in many years of warfare
constantly threatened to defeat his end. He early discovered that the
only way to bring these men together was to keep them apart. The usual
way of creating such combinations is to collect the representative
leaders, place them around a table, and persuade them to talk the thing
over. Such an amicable situation, however, was impossible in the present
instance. Even when the four big men--McCormick, Deering, Glessner,
and Jones--were finally brought for the final treaty of peace to J. P.
Morgan's office, Mr. Perkins had to station them in four separate rooms
and flit from one to another arranging terms. Had these four men been
brought face to face, the Harvester Company would probably never have
been formed.
Having once signed their names, however, these once antagonistic
interests had little difficulty in forming a strong combination. The
company thus brought together manufactured 85 per cent of all the farm
machinery used in this country. It owned its own coal-fields and iron
mines and its own forests, and it produces most of the implements used
by 10,000,000 farmers. In 1847 Cyrus McCormick made 100 reapers and
sold them for $10,000; by 1902 the annual production of the corporation
amounted to hundreds of thousands of harvesters--besides an almost
endless assortment of other agricultural tools, ploughs, drills,
rakes, gasoline engines, tractors, threshers, cream separators, and the
like--and the sales had grown to about $75,000,000. This is merely the
financial measure of progress; the genuine achievements of McCormick's
invention are millions of acres of productive land and a farming
population which is without parallel elsewhere for its prosperity,
intelligence, manfulness, and general contentment.
CHAPTER VII. THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF THE AUTOMOBILE
In many manufacturing lines, American genius for organization and large
scale production has developed mammoth industries. In nearly all the
tendency to combination and concentration has exercised a predominating
influence. In the early years of the twentieth century the public
realized, for the first time, that one corporation, the American Sugar
Refining Company, controlled ninety-eight per cent of the business of
refining sugar. Six large interests--Armour, Swift, Morris, the National
Packing Company, Cudahy, and Schwarzschild and Sulzberger--had so
concentrated the packing business that, by 1905, they slaughtered
practically all the cattle shipped to Western centers and furnished
most of the beef consumed in the large cities east of Pittsburgh. The
"Tobacco Trust" had largely monopolized both the wholesale and retail
trade in this article of luxury and had also made extensive inroads into
the English market. The textile industry had not only transformed great
centers of New England into an American Lancashire, but the Southern
States, recovering from the demoralization of the Civil War, had begun
to spin their own cotton and to send the finished product to all parts
of the world. American shoe manufacturers had developed their art to
a point where "American shoes" had acquired a distinctive standing in
practically every European country.
It is hardly necessary to describe in detail each of these industries.
In their broad outlines they merely repeat the story of steel, of oil,
of agricultural machinery; they are the product of the same methods, the
same initiative. There is one branch of American manufacture, however,
that merits more detailed attention. If we scan the manufacturing
statistics of 1917, one amazing fact stares us in the face. There are
only three American industries whose product has attained the billion
mark; one of these is steel, the other food products, while the third
is an industry that was practically unknown in the United States fifteen
years ago. Superlatives come naturally to mind in discussing American
progress, but hardly any extravagant phrases could do justice to the
development of American automobiles. In 1899 the United States produced
3700 motor vehicles; in 1916 we made 1,500,000. The man who now makes a
personal profit of not far from $50,000,000 a year in this industry
was a puttering mechanic when the twentieth century came in. If we
capitalized Henry Ford's income, he is probably a richer man than
Rockefeller; yet, as recently as 1905 his possessions consisted of a
little shed of a factory which employed a dozen workmen. Dazzling as is
this personal success, its really important aspects are the things for
which it stands. The American automobile has had its wildcat days; for
the larger part, however, its leaders have paid little attention to Wall
Street, but have limited their activities exclusively to manufacturing.
Moreover, the automobile illustrates more completely than any other
industry the technical qualities that so largely explain our industrial
progress. Above all, American manufacturing has developed three
characteristics. These are quantity production, standardization, and
the use of labor-saving machinery. It is because Ford and other
manufacturers adapted these principles to making the automobile that the
American motor industry has reached such gigantic proportions.
A few years ago an English manufacturer, seeking the explanation of
America's ability to produce an excellent car so cheaply, made an
interesting experiment. He obtained three American automobiles, all of
the same "standardized" make, and gave them a long and racking tour over
English highways. Workmen then took apart the three cars and threw the
disjointed remains into a promiscuous heap. Every bolt, bar, gas tank,
motor, wheel, and tire was taken from its accustomed place and piled up,
a hideous mass of rubbish. Workmen then painstakingly put together three
cars from these disordered elements. Three chauffeurs jumped on these
cars, and they immediately started down the road and made a long journey
just as acceptably as before. The Englishman had learned the secret
of American success with automobiles. The one word "standardization"
explained the mystery.
Yet when, a few years before, the English referred to the American
automobile as a "glorified perambulator," the characterization was not
unjust. This new method of transportation was slow in finding favor
on our side of the Atlantic. America was sentimentally and practically
devoted to the horse as the motive power for vehicles; and the fact that
we had so few good roads also worked against the introduction of the
automobile. Yet here, as in Europe, the mechanically propelled wagon
made its appearance in early times. This vehicle, like the bicycle, is
not essentially a modern invention; the reason any one can manufacture
it is that practically all the basic ideas antedate 1840. Indeed,
the automobile is really older than the railroad. In the twenties and
thirties, steam stage coaches made regular trips between certain cities
in England and occasionally a much resounding power-driven carriage
would come careering through New York and Philadelphia, scaring all the
horses and precipitating the intervention of the authorities. The hardy
spirits who devised these engines, all of whose names are recorded in
the encyclopedias, deservedly rank as the "fathers" of the automobile.
The responsibility as the actual "inventor" can probably be no more
definitely placed. However, had it not been for two developments,
neither of them immediately related to the motor car, we should never
have had this efficient method of transportation. The real "fathers"
of the automobile are Gottlieb Daimler, the German who made the first
successful gasoline engine, and Charles Goodyear, the American who
discovered the secret of vulcanized rubber. Without this engine to form
the motive power and the pneumatic tire to give it four air cushions
to run on, the automobile would never have progressed beyond the steam
carriage stage. It is true that Charles Baldwin Selden, of Rochester,
has been pictured as the "inventor of the modern automobile" because,
as long ago as 1879, he applied for a patent on the idea of using a
gasoline engine as motive power, securing this basic patent in 1895, but
this, it must be admitted, forms a flimsy basis for such a pretentious
claim.
The French apparently led all nations in the manufacture of motor
vehicles, and in the early nineties their products began to make
occasional appearances on American roads. The type of American who owned
this imported machine was the same that owned steam yachts and a box at
the opera. Hardly any new development has aroused greater hostility. It
not only frightened horses, and so disturbed the popular traffic of
the time, but its speed, its glamour, its arrogance, and the haughty
behavior of its proprietor, had apparently transformed it into a new
badge of social cleavage. It thus immediately took its place as a new
gewgaw of the rich; that it had any other purpose to serve had occurred
to few people. Yet the French and English machines created an entirely
different reaction in the mind of an imaginative mechanic in Detroit.
Probably American annals contain no finer story than that of this simple
American workman. Yet from the beginning it seemed inevitable that Henry
Ford should play this appointed part in the world. Born in Michigan in
1863, the son of an English farmer who had emigrated to Michigan and
a Dutch mother, Ford had always demonstrated an interest in things far
removed from his farm. Only mechanical devices interested him. He liked
getting in the crops, because McCormick harvesters did most of the work;
it was only the machinery of the dairy that held him enthralled. He
developed destructive tendencies as a boy; he had to take everything to
pieces. He horrified a rich playmate by resolving his new watch into its
component parts--and promptly quieted him by putting it together again.
"Every clock in the house shuddered when it saw me coming," he recently
said. He constructed a small working forge in his school-yard, and built
a small steam engine that could make ten miles an hour. He spent his
winter evenings reading mechanical and scientific journals; he cared
little for general literature, but machinery in any form was almost a
pathological obsession. Some boys run away from the farm to join the
circus or to go to sea; Henry Ford at the age of sixteen ran away to get
a job in a machine shop. Here one anomaly immediately impressed him. No
two machines were made exactly alike; each was regarded as a separate
job. With his savings from his weekly wage of $2.50, young Ford
purchased a three dollar watch, and immediately dissected it. If several
thousand of these watches could be made, each one exactly alike, they
would cost only thirty-seven cents apiece. "Then," said Ford to himself,
"everybody could have one." He had fairly elaborated his plans to start
a factory on this basis when his father's illness called him back to the
farm.
This was about 1880; Ford's next conspicuous appearance in Detroit was
about 1892. This appearance was not only conspicuous; it was exceedingly
noisy. Detroit now knew him as the pilot of a queer affair that whirled
and lurched through her thoroughfares, making as much disturbance as
a freight train. In reading his technical journals Ford had met many
descriptions of horseless carriages; the consequence was that he had
again broken away from the farm, taken a job at $45 a month in a Detroit
machine shop, and devoted his evenings to the production of a gasoline
engine. His young wife was exceedingly concerned about his health;
the neighbors' snap judgment was that he was insane. Only two other
Americans, Charles B. Duryea and Ellwood Haynes, were attempting to
construct an automobile at that time. Long before Ford was ready with
his machine, others had begun to appear. Duryea turned out his first one
in 1892; and foreign makes began to appear in considerable numbers. But
the Detroit mechanic had a more comprehensive inspiration. He was not
working to make one of the finely upholstered and beautifully painted
vehicles that came from overseas. "Anything that isn't good for
everybody is no good at all," he said. Precisely as it was Vail's
ambition to make every American a user of the telephone and McCormick's
to make every farmer a user of his harvester, so it was Ford's
determination that every family should have an automobile. He was
apparently the only man in those times who saw that this new machine was
not primarily a luxury but a convenience. Yet all manufacturers, here
and in Europe, laughed at his idea. Why not give every poor man a Fifth
Avenue house? Frenchmen and Englishmen scouted the idea that any one
could make a cheap automobile. Its machinery was particularly refined
and called for the highest grade of steel; the clever Americans might
use their labor-saving devices on many products, but only skillful hand
work could turn out a motor car. European manufacturers regarded each
car as a separate problem; they individualized its manufacture almost as
scrupulously as a painter paints his portrait or a poet writes his
poem. The result was that only a man with several thousand dollars could
purchase one. But Henry Ford--and afterward other American makers--had
quite a different conception.
Henry Ford's earliest banker was the proprietor of a quick-lunch wagon
at which the inventor used to eat his midnight meal after his hard
evening's work in the shed. "Coffee Jim," to whom Ford confided
his hopes and aspirations on these occasions, was the only man
with available cash who had any faith in his ideas. Capital in more
substantial form, however, came in about 1902. With money advanced by
"Coffee Jim," Ford had built a machine which he entered in the Grosse
Point races that year. It was a hideous-looking affair, but it ran like
the wind and outdistanced all competitors. From that day Ford's career
has been an uninterrupted triumph. But he rejected the earliest offers
of capital because the millionaires would not agree to his terms. They
were looking for high prices and quick profits, while Ford's plans were
for low prices, large sales, and use of profits to extend the business
and reduce the cost of his machine. Henry Ford's greatness as a
manufacturer consists in the tenacity with which he has clung to this
conception. Contrary to general belief in the automobile industry he
maintained that a high sale price was not necessary for large profits;
indeed he declared that the lower the price, the larger the net earnings
would be. Nor did he believe that low wages meant prosperity. The most
efficient labor, no matter what the nominal cost might be, was the
most economical. The secret of success was the rapid production of
a serviceable article in large quantities. When Ford first talked of
turning out 10,000 automobiles a year, his associates asked him where
he was going to sell them. Ford's answer was that that was no problem at
all; the machines would sell themselves. He called attention to the
fact that there were millions of people in this country whose incomes
exceeded $1800 a year; all in that class would become prospective
purchasers of a low-priced automobile. There were 6,000,000 farmers;
what more receptive market could one ask? His only problem was the
technical one--how to produce his machine in sufficient quantities.
The bicycle business in this country had passed through a similar
experience. When first placed on the market bicycles were expensive;
it took $100 or $150 to buy one. In a few years, however, an excellent
machine was selling for $25 or $30. What explained this drop in price?
The answer is that the manufacturers learned to standardize their
product. Bicycle factories became not so much places where the articles
were manufactured as assembling rooms for putting them together.
The several parts were made in different places, each establishment
specializing in a particular part; they were then shipped to centers
where they were transformed into completed machines. The result was that
the United States, despite the high wages paid here, led the world in
bicycle making and flooded all countries with this utilitarian article.
Our great locomotive factories had developed on similar lines. Europeans
had always marveled that Americans could build these costly articles so
cheaply that they could undersell European makers. When they obtained a
glimpse of an American locomotive factory, the reason became plain. In
Europe each locomotive was a separate problem; no two, even in the same
shop, were exactly alike. But here locomotives are built in parts,
all duplicates of one another; the parts are then sent by machinery to
assembling rooms and rapidly put together. American harvesting machines
are built in the same way; whenever a farmer loses a part, he can go
to the country store and buy its duplicate, for the parts of the same
machine do not vary to the thousandth of an inch. The same principle
applies to hundreds of other articles.
Thus Henry Ford did not invent standardization; he merely applied this
great American idea to a product to which, because of the delicate
labor required, it seemed at first unadapted. He soon found that it was
cheaper to ship the parts of ten cars to a central point than to ship
ten completed cars. There would therefore be large savings in making
his parts in particular factories and shipping them to assembling
establishments. In this way the completed cars would always be near
their markets. Large production would mean that he could purchase his
raw materials at very low prices; high wages meant that he could get the
efficient labor which was demanded by his rapid fire method of campaign.
It was necessary to plan the making of every part to the minutest
detail, to have each part machined to its exact size, and to have every
screw, bolt, and bar precisely interchangeable. About the year 1907
the Ford factory was systematized on this basis. In that twelvemonth it
produced 10,000 machines, each one the absolute counterpart of the other
9999. American manufacturers until then had been content with a
few hundred a year! From that date the Ford production has rapidly
increased; until, in 1916, there were nearly 4,000,000 automobiles
in the United States--more than in all the rest of the world put
together--of which one-sixth were the output of the Ford factories. Many
other American manufacturers followed the Ford plan, with the result
that American automobiles are duplicating the story of American
bicycles; because of their cheapness and serviceability, they are
rapidly dominating the markets of the world. In the Great War American
machines have surpassed all in the work done under particularly exacting
circumstances.
A glimpse of a Ford assembling room--and we can see the same process in
other American factories--makes clear the reasons for this success. In
these rooms no fitting is done; the fragments of automobiles come in
automatically and are simply bolted together. First of all the units are
assembled in their several departments. The rear axles, the front axles,
the frames, the radiators, and the motors are all put together with the
same precision and exactness that marks the operation of the completed
car. Thus the wheels come from one part of the factory and are rolled on
an inclined plane to a particular spot. The tires are propelled by some
mysterious force to the same spot; as the two elements coincide, workmen
quickly put them together. In a long room the bodies are slowly advanced
on moving platforms at the rate of about a foot per minute. At the side
stand groups of men, each prepared to do his bit, their materials being
delivered at convenient points by chutes. As the tops pass by these men
quickly bolt them into place, and the completed body is sent to a place
where it awaits the chassis. This important section, comprising all the
machinery, starts at one end of a moving platform as a front and rear
axle bolted together with the frame. As this slowly advances, it passes
under a bridge containing a gasoline tank, which is quickly adjusted.
Farther on the motor is swung over by a small hoist and lowered into
position on the frame. Presently the dash slides down and is placed in
position behind the motor. As the rapidly accumulating mechanism passes
on, different workmen adjust the mufflers, exhaust pipes, the radiator,
and the wheels which, as already indicated, arrive on the scene
completely tired. Then a workman seats himself on the gasoline tank,
which contains a small quantity of its indispensable fuel, starts the
engine, and the thing moves out the door under its own power. It stops
for a moment outside; the completed body drops down from the second
floor, and a few bolts quickly put it securely in place. The workman
drives the now finished Ford to a loading platform, it is stored away
in a box car, and is started on its way to market. At the present time
about 2000 cars are daily turned out in this fashion. The nation demands
them at a more rapid rate than they can be made.
Herein we have what is probably America's greatest manufacturing
exploit. And this democratization of the automobile comprises more than
the acme of efficiency in the manufacturing art. The career of Henry
Ford has a symbolic significance as well. It may be taken as signalizing
the new ideals that have gained the upper hand in American industry. We
began this review of American business with Cornelius Vanderbilt as the
typical figure. It is a happy augury that it closes with Henry Ford in
the foreground. Vanderbilt, valuable as were many of his achievements,
represented that spirit of egotism that was rampant for the larger part
of the fifty years following the war. He was always seeking his own
advantage, and he never regarded the public interest as anything worth
a moment's consideration. With Ford, however, the spirit of service
has been the predominating motive. His earnings have been immeasurably
greater than Vanderbilt's; his income for two years amounts to nearly
Vanderbilt's total fortune at his death; but the piling up of riches
has been by no means his exclusive purpose. He has recognized that
his workmen are his partners and has liberally shared with them his
increasing profits. His money is not the product of speculation; Ford
is a stranger to Wall Street and has built his business independently
of the great banking interest. He has enjoyed no monopoly, as have the
Rockefellers; there are more than three hundred makers of automobiles
in the United States alone. He has spurned all solicitations to join
combinations. Far from asking tariff favors he has entered European
markets and undersold English, French, and German makers on their own
ground. Instead of taking advantage of a great public demand to increase
his prices, Ford has continuously lowered them. Though his idealism may
have led him into an occasional personal absurdity, as a business man
he may be taken as the full flower of American manufacturing genius.
Possibly America, as a consequence of universal war, is advancing to a
higher state of industrial organization; but an economic system is not
entirely evil that produces such an industry as that which has made the
automobile the servant of millions of Americans.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The materials are abundant for the history of American industry in the
last fifty years. They exist largely in the form of official documents.
Any one ambitious of studying this subject in great detail should
consult, first of all, the catalogs issued by that very valuable
institution, the Government Printing Office. The Bureau of Corporations
has published elaborate reports on such industries as petroleum
(Standard Oil Company), beef, tobacco, steel, and harvesting machinery,
which are indispensable in studying these great basic enterprises. The
American habit of legislative investigation and trust-fighting in the
courts, whatever its public value may have been, has at least had the
result of piling up mountains of material for the historian of American
industry. For one single corporation, the Standard Oil Company, a
great library of such literature exists. The nearly twenty volumes of
testimony, exhibits, and briefs assembled in the course of the Federal
suit which led to its dissolution is the ultimate source of material on
America's greatest trust. As most of our other great corporations--the
Steel Trust, the Harvester Company, the Tobacco Company, and the
like--have passed through similar ordeals, all the information the
student could ask concerning them exists in the same form. The archives
of such bodies as the Interstate Commerce Commission and Public Utility
Commissions of the States are also bulging with documentary
evidence. Thus all the material contained in this volume--and much
more--concerning the New York traction situation will be found in the
investigation conducted in 1907 by the Public Service Commission of New
York, Second District.
American business has also developed a great talent for publicity.
Nearly all our big corporations have assembled much material about
their own history, all of which is public property. Thus the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company can furnish detailed information on
every phase of its business and history. Indeed, one's respect for
the achievements of American industry is increased by the praiseworthy
curiosity which it displays about its own past and the readiness with
which it makes such material accessible to the public. Despite the
abundance of data, there is not a great amount of popular writing on
these subjects that has much fascination as literature or much value as
history. The only book that is really important is Miss Ida M. Tarbell's
"History of the Standard Oil Company," 2 vols. (new edition 1911). Of
other popular volumes the present writer has found most useful Herbert
N. Casson's "Romance of Steel" (1907), "History of the Telephone"
(1910), and "Cyrus Hall McCormick: His Life and Work" (1909); J.H.
Bridge's "Inside History of the Carnegie Steel Company" (1903); "Henry
Ford's Own Story" as told to Rose Wildes Lane (1917).
For Chapter V, the author has drawn from articles contributed by him
in 1907-8 to "McClure's Magazine" on "Great American Fortunes and their
Making;" and for Chapter IV, from an article contributed to the same
magazine in 1914, on "Telephones for the Millions."
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