Modern business geography

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1830562916

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-217337

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Huntington, Ellsworth http://d-nb.info/gnd/117070092; Cushing, Sumner W.

Title:: Modern business geography

Place of publication:: New York [usw.]

Publisher:: World Book Company

Year of publication:: 1930

Scope:: VIII, 352 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part one. The field of primary production

Collection:: Economics Books

The Mining Industry 111 caught. But when once any form of mineral wealth is taken from the rocks it can never be-replaced. It may indeed be used over and over, but nothing that man can do will cause a mine to furnish new ore when once the supply is exhausted, nor is there any known way of preventing the world’s present store of metals from being gradually worn out and lost. Why mining is limited to a few small regions. Mining can be carried on only in certain regions where minerals are stored. Coal must be mined where great quantities of dead trees and swampy reeds were buried long ago beneath thick layers of clay and sand. Gold can be mined only where it has been deposited in veins, or where the material from such veins has been carried away and laid down in gravel deposits. Man has no power to create new deposits or to transplant the old ones. With the other forms of primary production the case is different. Man can make a million bushels of wheat grow where not a wheat stalk grew before, as in Canada. He can raise a flock of a hundred million sheep where no sheep grazed before, as in South America. He can cause a forest to grow in a region that was only grassland, as in many parts of our prairies. He can carry plants from one country to another, and he can stock a river or lake with fish that are stran- gers to its waters. The possession of mineral deposits by a country is partly a matter of chance and partly a matter of political foresight. It is fortunate for the United States that its northern boundary was so run that it includes some of the richest of the world’s iron deposits; but since at that time no one knew the value of the minerals near the head of Lake Superior, credit for giving the deposits to this country must go to mere luck. On the other hand, it was not luck that gave Alaska to the United States; it was the political foresight of Secretary Seward. For two cents an acre he bought a vast region which up to 1920 had yielded more than $2.50 per acre, chiefly in gold. Today every advanced country is eager to obtain either political or commer- cial control of places that furnish any sort of mineral wealth, but espe- cially coal and petroleum. This eagerness has been a cause of politi- cal troubles in Mesopotamia, Manchuria, Mexico, Spitzbergen, and elsewhere. Why it is difficult to discover where minerals are located. In mining we have almost no way of knowing where we may reasonably expect the product to be found. We know that certain conditions of climate and soil favor the growth of oranges and cotton or the

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