Exclusive economic zone

“ Each part of this area quickly responds to influences that originate in any other part. If the steel mills in America make radical improvements in their machinery, this change should, in the absence of a strong monopoly, affect the price of rails in England, Germany, etc. Within the central region wages and interest tend toward uniformity, though, as we have seen, they do not attain it. Across the boundary which separates this center from the outer zone, economic influences act in a more feeble way and are unable to bring rates of wages and interest even to an approximate equality. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This legislation will permit States and localities to apply to the Federal Government for designation as urban enterprise zones. A broad range of special economic incentives in the zones will help attract new business, new jobs, new opportunity to America's inner cities and rural towns. Some will say our mission is to save free enterprise. Well, I say we must free enterprise so that together we can save America. ”

“ But, the rule that all commodities of equal cost of production have equal value in exchange is applicable only within the limits of the same economic territory (§ 107) , for it is frequently physically impossible, and still more frequently rendered difficult, by laws, customs and states of mind to transfer factors of production from one country to another simply on account of the more advantageous market they would there find. ”

“ Considering these conditions with the mechanics of the zone plan, we see that the only way prices can be systematically identical is for the zones of competitors to be so drawn as to be in whole or in part identical and for zone prices to be the same in those zones which coincide or overlap. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Farmer: Since we have been discussing this feature of publicity and independence, I have become so deeply impressed with the fact that every bank will be set free, will be able to act so independently, and that every commercial zone will be such a complete, such a perfect democratic republic in itself, that I have been wondering whether each zone could not create and carry its own reserve. ”

“ The discovery and production of commodities require a knowledge of the distribution of geological formations for mineral products, of the natural distribution, life-conditions and cultivation or breeding of plants and animals and of the labour market. Attention must also be paid to the artificial restrictions of political geography, to the legislative restrictions bearing on labour and trade as imposed in different countries, and, above all, to the incessant fluctuations of the economic conditions of supply and demand and the combinations of capitalists or workers which affect the market. ”

“ But, as suggested above, this is a piecemeal view of the problem, for economic laws and principles are no more confined within national boundaries than they are within city walls. If all the industries, both rural and urban, which are necessary for the full economic support of a self-sufficing population are considered without respect to national or municipal boundaries, it will be found that land is, in all civilized countries, a real limiting factor of production, which is the same as saying that the law of diminishing returns is everywhere in operaton where these conditions are considered. ”

“ The great agricultural districts of the West, for example, will gather from their crops this year several hundred millions of dollars. They have no real economic use for all this money in the farming districts; the large commercial and industrial undertakings that help to make America rich and powerful are not in that neighborhood. ”

“ Interstate commerce by land, once so slight as to be unworthy of the attention of the national legislature, has come to be the most important part of all trade, and it is not too much to say that the daily needs of the factory and the household are no longer dependent upon the resources of the locality, but are largely supplied by the products of other states. ”

“ As the first great national step in political economy, the selection and security of a location to direct and command commerce legitimately carried on, as an export and import metropolis, is essentially necessary. The facilities for a metropolis should be adequate—a rich, fertile, and productive country surrounding it, with some great staple (which the world requires as a commodity) of exportation. A convenient harbor as an outlet and inlet, and natural facilities for improvement, are among the necessary requirements for such a location. ”

“ At the same time, these commercial zones should be so harmonized and federated as to give to each the financial strength and power of all combined, precisely as every State is as strong and powerful politically as the Federal Government itself. ”

“ In the pressing necessity for finding new and (if possible) exclusive markets for increasing machinery products, and for commodities whose production has been artificially stimulated, is undoubtedly also to be found the clue to the policy which within recent years has mainly prompted Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain to seek to obtain new territorial possessions in Eastern and Central Africa, Southeastern Asia, and in New Guinea and other islands of Polynesia. ”

“ The coast is the natural habitat of the middleman. One strip of seaboard produces a middleman people, and then sends them out to appropriate other littorals, if geographic conditions are favorable; otherwise it is content with the transit trade of its own locality. It breeds essentially a race of merchants, shunning varied production, nursing monopoly by secrecy and every method to crush competition. The profits of trade attract all the free citizens, and the laboring class is small or slave. Expansion landward has no attraction in comparison with the seaward expansion of commerce. ”

“ The total population does not exceed 100,000 people. According to the official reports, there exist within the limits of the free zone no industries worth mentioning, which is explained by the fact that all industrial products manufactured in the zone when sent into the interior of the country are required to pay the regular duties charged on imports into the country; and, on account of the protective tariff of the United States, it is impracticable to export such products to that country. ”

“ To enable them to yield a larger revenue to government, they require to have larger establishments as markets for land produce. 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. ”

“ The very name of this region accounts for the eagerness of the whites to establish factories on this coast and to explore the interior. Traders from all the European states were tempted to establish factories for the purpose of exchanging their wares for gold dust, and most of the Powers erected fortified stations to protect the trading posts of their subjects. The French, Prussians, Dutch, Danes, and Portuguese possessed such stations, but the English have become the exclusive heirs of the trade and political supremacy in this rich territory. ”

“ The effect of this process is to make one locality dependent on another locality. Once, as we have seen, the family was adequate to its own needs; now, we perceive the industrial producers of one district have become dependent on each other, and on the products of other districts and nations, for the supply of their needs. This industrial division and concentration gives increased importance to commerce, without which there could be no industrial development. ”

“ Prevented by our trade-restrictive system from obtaining a market in foreign nations for the immense surplus fabrics which this vast increase of power is capable of producing, there is only one other available resource,—to transplant our surplus working-population to new lands. This would not only bring about a salutary balance in our home economy, but at the same time, by raising up new and most valuable customers, would afford wide and extending fields of consumption, commensurate with the future increase of our powers of production. ”

“ And finally, another disadvantage, affecting important city interests, has been the increasing tendency toward the diversion of trade from established retail commercial concerns located in the central business district to enterprises newly founded in outer sections, often without the city boundaries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In short, the tendency, according to the Western farmers, of Free Trade, in the early stages of a country‘s existence, is to promote universal centralization, to destroy local centers and the commerce they create, to so tax the farmer with the cost of transport to the distant centers, consequent upon the absence of local markets, that he can grow but wheat and corn continuously, and cannot but exhaust his soil. ”

“ The great bulk of the business of this Territory is handled by outsiders at a distance from your settlements both as to importations and as to marketing your produce. You haul to market your butter and eggs, and the merchants dictate to you the price which they will pay, and you cannot help yourselves. In this way they grow rich on the profits, while you remain poor comparatively speaking, that is, you do not enjoy the benefits of your own labor and produce to the extent you might, if you were properly united. ”

“ As a favorable symptom, scattered location regularly marks the healthy growth of an expanding people, who throw out here and there detached centers of settlement far beyond the compact frontier, and fix these as the goal for the advance of their boundary. It is also a familiar feature of maritime commercial expansion, which is guided by no territorial ambition but merely aims to secure widely distributed trading stations at favorable coast points, in order to make the circle of commerce as ample and resourceful as possible. ”

“ We have, from soil and climate, a facility in rearing certain great agricultural staples, while other and older countries, with a dense population, and capital greatly accumulated, have equal facility in manufacturing various articles suited to our use; and thus a foundation is laid for an exchange of the products of labour, mutually advantageous. A duty, whether it be laid on imports or exports, must fall upon this exchange, and on which ever laid in our country, must in reality be paid by the American producer of the articles exchanged. ”

“ Were there a free market for the Eastern raiser of stock, milk, and food products generally, with the middleman's commissions properly restricted, Eastern farming would probably be profitable enough to hold its own against manufacturing and to compete successfully with the manufacturer for labor. ”

“ The eastern States are markets for the live stock of the western. It has been more beneficial to them to raise cotton, tobacco, and bread stuff, than live stock; but as these occupations are rendered less profitable by commercial restrictions and factory monopolies, the loss will re-act upon the western States, by diminishing the capital applicable to this species of internal commerce, and compelling the eastern to raise articles, which they would otherwise buy. The division of labour, if left free, invigorates industry, increases skill, and diffuses general benefits. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is when the transfer of goods is accompanied by a breaking of bulk or by a change of ownership, there being then added the complex mechanism of commercial exchange performed by importers, exporters, wholesalers, retailers, insurers, brokers and bankers, that wealth is accumulated and localized, with consequent power to control business for local benefit.
Manufactures are of constantly increasing importance in city growth, owing to the development of the factory system and the advantages of labor supply, transportation, and markets in the larger cities. ”