PREFACE 
The object of this text is the exposition of the principles of 
commercial geography as based on a knowledge of its more im- 
portant facts. It is regarded as necessary and advantageous to 
treat products and regions in a single volume, if perspective is 
observed and if both products and regions are made contributory 
to the unfolding of principles. To this end minor commodities 
and regions must surrender their place to facts of larger meaning. 
Part T offers an inductive approach to principles which are 
formally stated in Chapter VI. The author holds it wise to avoid 
an introductory statement of abstract relations, and has therefore 
chosen five products or staples of world-wide interest, treating 
them broadly as world products and as typical of all others in 
the geographic principles involved. No materials of commerce 
are more significant in themselves, or in their relations, than 
wheat, cotton, cattle, iron, and coal. 
Part II relates to the United States and opens with a brief 
review of physical features. To the usual account of plant, 
animal, and mineral substances, a chapter on water is added. 
This is amply justified by the importance which water has now 
assumed as a part of our natural resources. The chapters on 
concentration of industry, centers of general industry, transpor- 
tation, communication, and government relations afford a return 
to vital principles, unfolding them more fully than was possible 
in Chapter VI, and offering considerations which are of uni- 
versal application, though here developed in special reference 
to our own country. 
Part IIT deals with foreign countries. Canada is taken first, 
owing to its close geographic and commercial relations to the 
United States. It is followed by the chapters on the great in- 
dustrial and trading nations of western Europe. Grouping the