210 Modern Business Geography
mines and orchards of the Far West. To and from these regions all
kinds of products are easily transported.
The routes that connect New York with its hinterland. The chief
route from New York runs northward up the Hudson and then west-
ward along the Mohawk valley to the shores of the Great Lakes and
beyond. This is much the easiest route across the Appalachian Moun-
tains. It is followed by two railroads, the New York Central and the
West Shore. The waterways of the navigable Hudson River and the
Erie Barge Canal follow the same course. The Hudson-Mohawk route
is so easy and important that it has been called the highway of the con-
finent.
The other routes from New York westward are not so easy, for they
cross the rugged regions of northern New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania,
and western New York. Nevertheless they are followed by three
railroads : the Erie; the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western; and
the New York, Ontario, and Western. Two of the main routes by
which products reach New York run parallel to the coast, one going
northeast to New England and the other southwest to Philadelphia
and Baltimore. Much of New York’s commerce with the West passes
via Philadelphia over the Pennsylvania Railroad.
It is not surprising that with so great and productive a hinterland
and so many ways of reaching it, New York harbor carries on more
than 50 per cent of the total foreign commerce of the United States.
Nor is it surprising that such great cities as Newark, Jersey City,
Paterson, and Yonkers have grown up as suburbs of New York, and
share most of its advantages.
Other great cities and their relation to transportation. The other
important ports of the United States well illustrate how cities grow
up where routes from a productive hinterland reach a good harbor.
In the order of their location the most important of these ports are
Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Galveston. San Fran-
cisco, and Seattle.
Why Boston is the ‘“ hub ” of New England. Boston is on a splen-
did harbor at the head of Massachusetts Bay. Its special hinterland
includes nearly all parts of New England, except Connecticut. This
whole region calls upon Boston to market its varied manufactures, or
to furnish the raw materials needed in its industries. Since Boston
has some trade with regions as far away as the Great Plains and Can-
ada, it has a share in a hinterland far larger than New England; yet
primarily Boston, once jokingly called the “ Hub of the Universe,”
is merely the *“ hub ”’ of New England.
