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 four. The field of consumption

Collection:: Economics Books

PART FOUR THE FieLp oF CONSUMPTION CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO THE UNITED STATES AS A MARKET THE object of all kinds of industry and commerce is to provide consum- ers with the right kinds of goods. The word * consume ”’ sometimes means simply “ eat’ ; but it may also mean * use in any way.” In this sense every one of us is a consumer. Every day of our lives we consume food, shoe-leather, clothing, furniture, pencils, knives, and a hundred other things. Whenever we travel we consume a little share of a train, trolley car, steamboat, or automobile. When we go to a picture show we are among the consumers for whom the theater, the films, and the musical instruments were made. In fact, consumption is by far the most universal of the four fields of industrial and commer- cial geography. Vast numbers of people do not engage in either pri- mary production or manufacturing, and many have little to do with any transportation except that in which they themselves supply the power. But no one can live without being a consumer. It is for the sake of ourselves as consumers that we engage in primary production. in transportation, and in manufacturing. How the character of the consumers influences the market. In the ordinary language of business, the consumers are spoken of as * the market.” The wholesale market consists of the people who buy goods with the purpose of selling them again; the retail market consists of the people who buy goods for their own use, or at least with no purpose of selling them. Every business man needs to understand exactly what sort of market his goods will find. The farmers, for instance, raise wheat because there is a good market for it; but if they should all raise three times as much as now, the market would be destroyed. There would be so much wheat that the price would drop so low that the wheat farmers could scarcely make a living. Suppose a merchant wishes to sell textiles in the Amazon valley. Since the people there are few in number and poor, and live in a warm climate, he may be able to sell a small amount of thin cotton clothing; but he finds no market at all for heavy, expensive woolens. As a rule, backward peoples provide only a small market, while progressive peoples supply a large market. In the same way city people provide a larger market in proportion to their numbers than Po

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