Frank Carney

“ Geographically Ohio needed transverse railroads; the lake and the river were its natural thoroughfares to markets; the wide, fertile major valleys of the state trend north-south, and its products move almost by gravity to one outlet or the other. Ohioans, except the immigrant ancestors, never gave further thought to the "Appalachian Barrier"; heir commercial friends on the seabooard looked after building the east-west lines.
The rivalry of the Atlantic ports in establishing through railroad transportation to the Mississippi basin was thus an advantage to Ohio. ”

“ Ohio has never been conspicuous for mineral resources: in the early days relative importance might be granted its output of iron ore; the annual production of bituminous coal, while of great advantage to the state, has never been very large, and even now its rank is fourth; natural gas and petroleum have been of much importance to the state, but these resources are always temporary; the supply of clay was great enough even under partial exploitation to stimulate the manufacture of clay products in which the state will be apt to hold a permanent position ”

“ The trend of scientific agriculture arising from the work of our colleges and from the federal department of agriculture indicates that there will be greater diversity in products as well as more stability in yield. The present marvelous output of the Mississippi basin is bound to be greatly increased. With the prospect of new markets through shorter hauls made possible by the Panama Canal route, and the improvement of waterways, supplementing the inadequate railroad facilities to New Orleans and other gulf ports, the Ohio River states will be stimulated as never before. ”

“ Manufacturing is invariably stimulated by shipping facilities. Excellent transportation service for decades has been available for producers in this state. Furthermore, the geographic center of population, now in Indiana, has been in and near Ohio for sixty years. Convenience of raw material, accessibility of markets through shipping facilities for finished products, and stability in the supply of labor insured by a normal equilibrium between wages and the cost of reasonable living are essential conditions to a state's maintaining its rank in manufacturing. ”

“ At the present time Ohio stands second only to Pennsylvania in its annual output of steel and iron products. If physiography is the arbiter, the southern shore of Lake Erie, before many years, will be the center of steel and iron production in this country. [11] The Pennsylvania center of this industry has a momentum and a capital investment that will enable it to stand out long against the logic of geography. Allied with this conservatism are the artificial combinations which tend always to restrain the development of new manufacturing centers. ”

“ But the human responses to natural resources and to geographic environment vary with the people. The same inorganic conditions have elicited a variety of reactions under shifting populations; this variation may after all be the best testimony of geographic influences. Move a people into a different physiography and for some time they will still be the children of their former surroundings. Adaptation is slow, but the law is relentless. ”

“ The history of commerce, the world over, shows how adjustments are inevitable so long as scientific progress is made in farming and manufacturing, and in transportation itself.
From the standpoint of agriculture, however, still another factor will be conspicuously influential before many years. Immigrants to this country in recent times have largely increased our urban population where employment without capital is found, chiefly in the manufacturing centers. A large percentage of these immigrants are farmers in training, and, as they accumulate money, they gravitate to the country. ”

“ By 1860 Ohio had what was considered in that day very ample railway facilities, a condition that contributed largely to the position the state at once took in manufacturing.
Ohio ranks fifth among the states in the gross value of its manufactured products. The state has always been quick in appreciating the demands of its trade environment. Its waterways, natural and artificial, before the period of steam roads, gave it an advantage. No state responded more promptly and effectively to the era of railroad construction. ”

“ Naturally the river town that was the most accessible to the agricultural areas became the shipping port. Cincinnati was the earliest clearing house for products that Ohio had to sell. Buying and selling are correlative transactions. A ready market stimulated a desire for things that were counted luxuries in the primitive days, consequently Cincinnati became a manufacturing town, and ever since it has been the leading manufacturing city of Ohio. ”

“ The geographical development of any state is usually a complicated problem. Some light, however, is generally thrown on the question by accounting for its particular city that leads all other centers of population. Sometimes the metropolis shifts; if so, a geographic law is always involved. For several decades Ohio was an agricultural community, pure and simple. Wealth increased slowly because there were no ready markets for disposing of products. The first important outlet for farm products came with the introduction of steamboats on the Ohio River v in 1810. ”

“ I believe that farming will continue to be one of Ohio's chief sources of wealth. Two thirds of its surface bears glacial soil which contains an abundant and various plant diet. Improved methods of preparing foods for distant markets, and the promise of these markets becoming more accessible through the River-Gulf-Panama Canal route will stimulate cultivation. The advantages of the Ohio River as a means of transportation elicited an early response. In 1794 regular trips, one in four weeks by keel sailboats, were begun between Cincinnati and Pittsburg ”

“ In nearly all parts of Ohio one may find holdings which afforded the original farmers a very doubtful living now yielding a constant profit under the tillage of immigrants. European methods of agriculture combined with ability to reef expenses to the vacillations of income make them successful. During the decade 1890-1900 the average size of a farm in Ohio was decreased 29.3 + per cent. Particularly in the northern part of the state, throughout the lake-plain belt, specialized and intensive agriculture is now common. ”

“ OHIO leads the states in its clay products, and its workable clays are practically inexhaustible. Ohio leads also in the number of presidents furnished the union, with unimpaired prospects for the future. ”

“ Baltimore lies two hundred miles nearer to the navigable waters of the West than New York, and about one hundred miles nearer to them than Philadelphia; to which may be added the important fact, that the easiest and by far the most practicable route through the ridge of mountains, which divides K the Atlantic from the western waters, is along the depression formed by the Potomac in its passage through them. ”

“ Using natural boundary lines, it would be difficult to divide North America into many states. Where such lines do exist, they have not always been utilized. Lake and river, however, form over half the border of Ohio. In general, a water boundary is an asset to a commonwealth ”

“ The pasture lands of Ohio have always been important and even at the present time they constitute about one third of the area of the tilled lands. The eastern and southeastern parts of the state, the portion encompassed by the Pennsylvanian formations, contain relatively a larger amount of pasture lands. For several decades Ohio was the leading state in the production of wool. ”

“ The general civilization and refinement of the citizens is far greater than might have been looked for in a state founded so recently, owing to the great number of families which have come directly from the highly educated part of New England, and have settled there. ”

“ Advantage always comes from proximity to great centers of business or culture whence energy radiates. Contiguity to activity is an incentive to endeavor. We can scarcely find an area of the earth so void of possibilities as not to experience some stimulation from without. The internal factors in this development are generally obvious. ”

“ But such commercial egoism will in time recognize the greater advantage in conforming to geographic laws. In reference to a particular nation it is probable that ultimate stability will be reached in the industries concerned largely with the inorganic. After the resources of a country have been thoroughly exploited, equilibrium should come, and be disturbed only by responses made to world-wide influences of commerce. ”

“ In the east especially these provident foreigners find no trouble in acquiring land because the natives are glad to get out of the country and into villages or cities, preferring to take their chances on earning as good a living there as they were accustomed to on the farm. The deserted farms in the east do not attest a serious impairment of the soil ”

“ Associated with its standing in live stock is the corollary fact that in Ohio slaughtering and meat packing is still the fourth industry, while in the whole country it ranks ninth in dairy products, and in the gross value of agricultural products it is third in the union. ”

“ This inheritance of the better eastern culture, which was stimulated and nurtured by the natural advantages of the region their ancestors were geographically guided into for settlement, accounts for the position won by Ohioans in public life as well as in arts and letters. ”

“ In extending the commercial structure inland he has not neglected even the slightest natural advantage. But after all, physiographically, the structure is somewhat awkward, and its maintenance expensive. In the organic world, man alone on occasion ignores physiography, but in time he finds it to his highest advantage to comply with the principles of topography. The gulf is the natural outlet of a large part of the Mississippi basin.
↑ Henry Howe, "Historical Collections of Ohio," Cincinnati, 1847, p. ”

“ But the cumulative results of about a century of opportunity for general culture must be reckoned among the assets of this state; its dozens of small colleges made it possible for thousands to obtain a training they otherwise would not have received. ”

“ The probable diversion of trade from the present great shipping ports on the Atlantic does not necessarily imply shrinkage in their business; it means a compliance with physiographic conditions that naturally divides the output of this great agricultural region, between the gulf and the ocean. A large part of the great interior looks to the gulf ”