THE PROBLEMS OF TRANSPORTATION 103 



deal in New England about the advantage of having cotton grown 

 at the mill door. Yet those conversant with the subject assure us 

 that freight rates play no part in the differential advantage which 

 the Southern mills enjoy over New England. In fact for many of 

 these mills, until very recently, it cost more to bring their raw mate- 

 rial two hundred miles than to carry it fifteen hundred to Boston. 

 The only real advantage for the South lies in its abundance of cheap 

 white labor and its freedom from legislative interference in the 

 interests of decency and humanity. Water-power and supply is a 

 powerful factor making for localization in manufactures. It still 

 determines the situation of certain industries, paper-mills for example. 

 But our cotton-mills are more and more relegating water-power to 

 the background in favor of coal. And, moreover, New York and 

 New England possess no monopoly of this gift of nature. Parts of 

 the South and West are overrun with it. Natural gas holds the 

 glass industry within its belt; but the life of this fuel supply is 

 highly uncertain. And, moreover, who can say what possibilities 

 lie before us in the line of electrical transmission of heat and power. 

 The twentieth century is not yet four years old. Niagara and many 

 of our interior rivers may offer great alternatives in the future loca- 

 tion of industry. Nor is our list of localizing influences yet 

 exhausted. A local supply of capital has been a powerful factor his- 

 torically in the geographical development of industry. But the 

 South and West have not only demonstrated their rehabilitation 

 as fields for Eastern investment. They have also developed indig- 

 enous supplies of capital, big with possibilities for the future. The 

 supply of available labor again has often determined territorial 

 division of labor. To be sure, the English cotton industry settled 

 in Lancashire because of its climate and in spite of its sparsity of 

 population; yet it is labor supply, and that alone, which to-day gives 

 our own South its hold on the world. Many highly specialized 

 centers of industry, Gloversville, New York, for hardware; Brock- 

 ton, Lynn, and Haverhill, Massachusetts, for foot-wear; Attleboro, 

 Massachusetts, with its gilded reputation for jewelry; Troy, New 

 York, for its linen and laundry work; these and a score of other 

 places owe much of their supremacy to their local supply of skilled 

 labor. Yet the migratory habits of our American population show 

 no signs of decline; and, moreover, the dangers of overcentralization 

 in labor-unionism are inducing many manufacturers to long for a 

 little more industrial seclusion. A noticeable decentralization of 

 industry from the latter cause may be detected. And finally every 

 improvement in the technique of transportation, making it almost as 

 profitable to carry raw materials in bulk a thousand miles on a 

 commodity rate as to transport the finished product even in car- 

 loads at high-class rates, helps along the same process. 



