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Modern Business Geography

flour milling, and smelting, — but are also beginning to produce more
complex manufactured goods, such as farm machinery, which they have
hitherto taken in considerable quantities from the United States. If
the number of people were greater, Australia and New Zealand might
soon become important manufacturing regions.
South American industries. In the temperate parts of South America,
 the countries of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay display conditions
somewhat like those of Australia, but are not quite so advanced industrially.
 Argentina and Uruguay thus far have done little manufacturing
 except in preparing cereals and meat for the market. Chile,
with coal, iron, and copper within easy reach, has established steel
works at Corral and chemical works to produce iodine and borate of
lime from the famous Chilean nitrates.
India and China. The two most populous regions of Asia, India
and China, are in a much more backward stage of manufacturing than
are the countries hitherto discussed. In India a good deal is said about
the cotton and jute factories, which employ about a quarter of a million
 people apiece. But the goods made there are practically all of
the coarsest kind, while the total number of persons engaged in manufacturing
 among the entire 315,000,000 people of India is less than
among the 9,000,000 of Pennsylvania.
Since manufacturing in China has not been fostered by a progressive
government such as that of the British in India, it is even less developed
 than in India. Nevertheless, enormous deposits of coal and iron,
a vast and marvellously hardworking population, and a huge home
market, even though the people are poor, are conditions highly favorable
 to manufacturing. The great question is whether the Chinese
have the initiative and inventiveness to carry on the complicated
business of manufacturing without depending on foreigners.
Why oriental countries excel in handmade goods. Thus far we
have been considering only the kinds of manufactures made by machines.
But handmade goods, such as the beautiful oriental rugs of Turkey
and Persia, also enter into the world’s commerce. Their quantity is
indeed very small compared with the others, but their beauty often
gives them unusual importance. They are produced largely in oriental
 countries, partly because those countries, through long centuries
of development, have acquired great skill in certain lines, and partly
because western nations rarely have the patience to work long and
painstakingly on articles which might be made almost as well by machines
 and which rarely bring a price proportional to the work spent on
them.