Economic center

“ This indeed is not the only way in which the economic life of the outer area comes into the economist's purview, for he can study it for itself. This zone has its peculiar life, which is a distant reflection of the life of the center. It is a type of economic activity in which all the primary forces work, but in which friction abounds and adjustments are made with extreme slowness. For the present, what interests us is the life of the center itself, and in studying this we take account of the influence of the environment. ”

“ THE RURAL PROBLEM IS OF RECENT ORIGIN.—The most spectacular development in American economic life has been the introduction and growth of the factory system. Commerce and manufactures were important during even the colonial period, and during the first half century of our national history our dominant economic interest was the fostering of manufacturing, domestic trade, and transportation. With the development of manufacturing came the growth of the cities, and with the growth of the cities added attention was called to immigration, crime, health, and related social problems. ”

“ Our purpose is not to pass judgment on any one, but merely to call attention to the possible effect of such practices upon the process of industrial development.
Centralization, or concentration of population, industry and wealth is characteristic of all progressive peoples at the present time. Great economic advantages, through division of labor and cheapened production, have resulted ”

“ Everywhere, in short, within the central area there is a strong tendency to conform to economic standards in the matter of prices, wages, interest, industrial processes, and forms of economic organization. ”

“ The figures then do not convey sufficient information regarding the concentration of capital on the one hand and the standard of living on the other. And yet, in spite of all these deficiencies, the results of the latest census of June 12, 1907, present a picture of the most powerful concentration of capital in industry, commerce and traffic. They show that, hand in hand with the industrialization of our entire economic system, a concentration of all the means of production into a few hands is rapidly progressing. ”

“ A broad range of special economic incentives in these zones will help attract new business, new jobs, and new opportunity to America's inner cities and rural towns. Some will say our mission is to save free enterprise. I say we must free enterprise so that, together, we can save America. ”

“ Our goal of wider income distribution necessarily calls for regional dis­persal of industries to prevent undue concentration of economic activity in just one area and to spread the benefits of economic development throughout the country. To this end, the Board of Investments has launched an investment promotion drive in the provinces. ”

“ Our industries have increased their use of local raw materials for the benefit of all, and as a result of our controversial but successful program of decontrol, substantial investments have been realized with the employment of both local and foreign capital so as to help establish the solid economic base for further growth. ”

“ In mills and shops auxiliary capital so abounds as to take the place of the abundant land that is available in the other cases for making labor fruitful, and in villages and cities labor does not overtax the resources of the soil any more than it does on farms. It has area enough to live and to work on and tools and materials enough to work with. In a generally crowded country, the resort to commerce [Pg 217] and manufacturing relieves the pressure on the land, cities abound, and an abundance of capital averts the danger of a disastrous overcrowding. ”

“ The local industrial federation will have, as its chief task, the provision of a living and working place for people, hence the character of the industrial community will be determined with a view to the well-being of the inhabitants rather than to the profit of landlords. ”

“ In the first, the typical economic institutions are the manor and the gild; in the second, domestic manufacture and convertible husbandry are predominant; and in the third the factory system and capitalist farming take their places. [22] Trade, too, undergoes a similar evolution. In the first period it is intermunicipal rather than international. In the second period, within each nation trade is free and unfettered, and a considerable amount of territorial division of labour and regional specialisation results. ”

“ The whole structure of economic society has developed in response to the economic needs and in accordance with the economic activities of the community in which it exists.
When a part of the economic structure is built, it is expected to function. Mines, when opened, must produce coal; railroads, when completed, must provide transportation. Side by side with the problems involved in the kind of groupings that make up economic society, there is the question of the handling and direction of these groups. ”

“ It should be observed in this connection that the Margin of Production, the Economic frontier, is not a surveyor’s line, like the boundaries of a farm or a county or a State. It is a term for an Economic difference, from lower to higher degree in the desirability of particular Natural Resources though they be separated by long distances or short ones. ”

“ But with the increasing division of labor, production for direct personal consumption becomes of less and less importance compared with the production of means of production, and therewith also the sphere of governmental production increases. On the other side this field is extended by the development of commerce and of the great industries, which bursts the local bonds of the market for each branch of production one after another, and transforms one after another from a local into a national industry. ”

“ The industry, the capital of the North increased with enormous rapidity, under the influence of cheap labor and manufacturing ingenuity and enterprise, in the villages which swelled into towns, and the towns which became cities, under the unenvious eye of the South. She, on the contrary, toiled on slowly, clearing forests and draining swamps to find new cotton-grounds and rice-fields, for the employment of her only industry and for the development of her only capital—“involuntary labor.” ”

“ That the unprecedented growth in population and products of the whole country will require additional facilities—and cheaper ones for the more bulky articles of commerce to reach tide water and a market will be demanded in the near future—is equally demonstrable. ”

“ To have an ideal location factories must be so situated as to be near a large city which will assure the selling of goods, their shipment, and the chance to secure plenty of labor for the mills. Moreover, they must be built where, as I said, land is comparatively low priced and plentiful, and the taxes moderate. ”

“ When we introduce into the problem dynamic elements we shall see that centralization, which makes shops larger instead of smaller, makes industries more productive, and that what happens when net profits appear is more often the enlarging of one establishment than the creation of new ones. ”

“ These establishments may be either public, and paid by Government; or they may be private, as manufactories, by which the land produce of these districts would be consumed by people employed in investing the value of their labour in commodities suited to the demand of distant markets, and more valuable than land produce in proportion to their weight and bulk. ”

“ These cities have obtained a voice of power in the councils of the nation. In America the industrial era came somewhat later, but the same process of centralizing industry went on at the waterfalls of Eastern rivers, at railroad centres, and at ocean, lake, and Gulf ports. Commerce has accelerated the growth of many of these manufacturing towns. ”

“ Urban centers of civilization have for their background a pastoral and agricultural source of food supplemented by fabrication, merchandising and financing. Instead of the occupational uniformity of the countryside, the city offers a wide range of occupations, increased productivity, quick and substantial profits resulting in a build-up of capital on one side and enlarged consumer spending on the other. ”

“ Some, and much the greater number of them, content themselves perforce with local commerce. Their production is determined by the needs of their population and that of the environs which extend two or three leagues around their walls and, in exchange for the manufactured articles which the city furnishes to them, attend to the food supply of the urban inhabitants. ”

“ Industrially, we have the decline of the old system of production in the countryside in which each manor or, at least, each district, was for the most part self-sufficing and self-supporting, where production was almost entirely for immediate use, and only the surplus was exchanged, and where such exchange as existed took place exclusively under the form of barter. In place of this, we find now something more than the beginnings of a national-market and distinct traces of that of a world-market. ”

“ Another great economy in such a colony is, that the whole of the middlemen’s and retailer’s profits would be saved, as well as the cost of the various forms of advertising, including commercial travellers and the high rents of retail shops in good situations, and that of railway freights, cartage, and other costs of world-wide or cross-country distribution. ”

“ If he has capital to start some kind of factory, we give him a piece of land free of charge. That is the American style. We put our hands in our pockets and pay out a little, knowing full well that we shall get it back in time in the greater prosperity of the town. ”

“ Now, there has been a general social and industrial rearrangement. Production and commerce pay no attention to state lines. The life of the country is no longer grouped about state capitals, but about the great centers of continental production and trade. ”

“ With a new network of community development banks and $1 billion to make the dream of enterprise zones real, we propose to bring new hope and new jobs to storefronts and factories from south Boston to south Texas to south central Los Angeles. ”

“ The development of large scale factory production, the benefit of combination in the competitive struggle, and the tremendous advantage of concentration in securing possession of the unoccupied opportunities, were so great that vast accumulations of capital became the normal agency of the industrial world. ”

“ The tendency of late years has been towards the construction of large centrals, either by the consolidation of a number of the smaller and older ones, or by the erection of new sugar houses, thus effecting vast economies in field transportation and factory labor, and bringing the cost of maintenance and manufacture to a minimum. ”

“ Country becomes city; centres of population which rest upon an industrial basis arise; in many cases growth of the various manufacturing industries is furthered by unfavourable agricultural conditions. Such industrial centres require markets and market-places; it is necessary for the producers of raw materials to come to market from the country with their goods, in order that they may meet [Pg 199] together with the craftsmen of the city, and with other producers from the country who offer their wares in turn. The market town is the point of departure for further culture. ”

“ Part 2 Manufacturing follows similar lines to wholesaling, the production of articles of great weight or bulk and small value seeking the waterfronts or railroads away from the centre of the city, both for economy in handling the product and because requiring a large area for a low utilization they must have cheap land. The manufacture of light articles of high value or that which consists of the final combination or finishing of products seeks the wholesale or retail stores which form their customers. ”

“ In such cases the temporary commercial centre not only reaps the profits of the broker, but all classes of its community benefit by the increase of employments, of floating capital, and of floating population. ”

“ The great industrial cities of North America manufacture these raw materials with profits so large and swiftly won that to the Old World they seem fantastic. In these plains, in these valleys, in these mountains, in these cities, laborers receive higher wages, merchant and manufacturer make their fortunes faster, capitalists come into contact with mightier interests, landlords draw higher rents from this prosperity, - all the sources of profit are more abundant than in Europe. ”

“ The specialisation of certain districts within the town, though far less rigid than in the mediæval town, is very noticeable in the larger centres of industry. Natural causes often determine this division of localities, as in the case of the riverside industries, brick-making and market-gardening in the outer suburbs. Round the central station in every large town, for convenience of work and life, settle a number of industries related to the carrying trade. Every trade, market, or exchange is a centre of attraction. ”

“ The increase of the general riches of the world, when accompanied with freedom of commercial intercourse, improvements in navigation, and inland communication by roads, canals, or railways, tends to give increased productiveness to the labor of every nation in particular, by enabling each locality to supply with its special products so much larger a market that a great extension of the division of labor in their production is an ordinary consequence. ”