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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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Introduction

Collection:: Economics Books

Modern Business Geography Finally, the materials or articles that have been produced, trans- ported, and manufactured are consumed. This fourth step is con- sumption. Things may be consumed in the sense of being eaten, as in the case of food, or of being worn out, as happens to shoes, chairs, or machines. Some things are consumed in the manufacturing stage, as are the materials used in making a clock; although the clock itself is then consumed by being worn out. We find, then, that business geography concerns itself with four great fields of man’s work: (1) primary production, (2) transporta- tion, (8) manufacturing, or secondary production, and (4) consump- tion. It will help us to understand these four fields, to find their limits and to know what is done in each of them, if a single commod- ity is followed through the four stages of its progress, beginning with its growth as a natural product and ending with its use in the field of consumption. Cotton is the commodity with which we shall begin our study; we shall trace its history from the seed on a Southern plantation to the cloth purchased in a store. PRIMARY PRODUCTION OF COTTON The care of the growing crop. The cotton farmer wishes the fiber to grow in great abundance and of good length. To insure the growth of such fiber he fertilizes the soil; he selects the seeds carefully and plants them in rows about three feet apart; later he thins the rows with a hoe, and destroys the weeds, so that each plant may have ample room to draw nourishment. He likewise fights the cutworm, the small gray beetle called the boll weevil, and the cotton flea. When the cotton plant is about four months old, some of the bolls have reached the size of an English walnut; these now burst, show- ing a snowy mass of fibers. Soon the field is invaded by groups of cotton pickers—negro men, women, and children,—with bags hung from their shoulders to hold the cotton. The same field must be picked many times, for the bolls are ripening and bursting from the first part of August until the frost comes, sometimes as late as December. Each plant yields on the average about twenty bolls. The cotton must be picked as it appears, else the wind may carry it away or soil it with dust, or the rain may injure the quality of the fiber. How machinery helps in cotton production. To pick cotton by hand is a slow and costly process, and the difficulty of getting enough labor at the proper season is great. Many machines have been invented to do the work ; but none has proved entirely satisfactory.

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