Modern business geography

Bibliographic data

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:: Part two. The field of transportation

Collection:: Economics Books

i178 Modern Business Geography (1) The people of highly progressive countries are energetic enough to carry out improvements. If a town in the United States grows up away from the railroad it tries to persuade the near- est railroad to build a branch line for it, and perhaps gives land for tracks, freight yard, and station. In Sweden many small railways are actually financed and managed by the local farmers. In backward countries, on the other hand, the people wait and wait, hoping perhaps that some one will build a railroad, but doing little to help get it. Progressive countries need many railroads because their peo- ple wish to move around a great deal and like to go rapidly. A business man in Chicago thinks little of a trip to Philadelphia, while most of the business men in Chungking rarely go outside their own city. (2) (3) In progressive countries, not only do people wish to travel rap- idly, but they work rapidly, use much machinery, and produce large quantities of goods to be transported. One man’s work mn a cutlery factory in Leeds, for example, may produce as many knives and hence require as much freight business as the work of a hundred men in the old-fashioned shops of Damascus. Again, since the most progressive people generally work hardest and use the greatest intelligence in their work, they have far more money than those of other countries. Where a mechanic in Buffalo gets seven dollars a day, a man of corresponding position in Delhi may get only fifty cents. Such large earnings not only provide capital for railroad building, but enable peo- ple to buy a great many articles which must be transported by the railways. All the savings of a whole year in a city like Can- ton, China, would build only a few dozen miles of railways. But the savings of an equally large American city, such as Cleve- land. would build hundreds of miles. (4) Why densely populated countries have many railroads. Suppose you were to motor around the city of Boston at a distance of twenty- five miles from the center. You would cross between twenty-five and thirty railroads, the number depending on which roads you took. On a similar ride around Chicago you would cross almost the same number of tracks, but you would see more freight trains and fewer passenger trains. On the same kind of ride around New York you would have to cross Long Island Sound and the broad Hudson River, but you would see an even larger number of railroads, more than thirty in all, and the trains would be even more numerous than around Boston and Chicago. Suppose now that you were to take a similar ride in northern Maine, or the western part of South Dakota. Not a single railroad would you

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