45* THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and the rehandling there, handicap them in competition with 

 Glasgow shippers of the same articles, which is one of the chief 

 reasons for the construction, now in progress, of the Manchester 

 ship-canal. In countries where deposits of coal and iron are com- 

 paratively rare, as in France, Germany, and elsewhere, the favored 

 spots necessarily become themselves the chief centers of manu- 

 facture and population. Furniture is a rather bulky and expen- 

 sive article to move about, and its manufacture, for use through a 

 large portion of the United States, has found an appropriate and 

 central position at Grand Rapids, Mich., where the most useful 

 native timbers and water-power are in abundance. 



The lighter metal and wood manufactures, the textiles, leather, 

 pottery, and miscellaneous small wares, in which the cost of trans- 

 port is relatively less important, are determined, as to their loca- 

 tion, by a much greater complexity of conditions, and the general 

 rules on this point are subject, in their case, to variation from 

 specially dominant influences. In order to combine the most ob- 

 vious advantages, they should not be situated too far from a sup- 

 ply of coal and iron, should be convenient to the sources of their 

 raw material, whether home or foreign, and to the markets where 

 their finished products are expected to find a sale. While, too, 

 each article and department of manufacture will usually succeed 

 best around a center of its own, where a skilled and adapted popu- 

 lation has become settled, it is still more important that all should 

 be conveniently clustered for mutual assistance. While these 

 conditions are more or less generally complied with in all great 

 manufacturing countries, they are most completely so in Great 

 Britain, partly by reason of its natural facilities, partly owing to 

 the absence of any fiscal interference by their own Government. 

 Thus it may be observed that the location of the cotton manufact- 

 ure in Lancashire, of the woolen in Yorkshire, and of the lighter 

 metal and miscellaneous in and around Birmingham, is in compli- 

 ance with those principles, as well as the subdivision and speciali- 

 zation of all these various industries, many of which and similar 

 ones may also be found in Scotland, which, to a certain extent, is 

 a smaller independent center. Subject to necessary geographical 

 differences, the location and arrangement of similar manufactures 

 in the United States and on the European continent follows as near- 

 ly as possible the same conditions. Only in New England had we 

 in existence a population capable of successfully undertaking the 

 production of the great variety of those articles when prematurely 

 called for by the imposition of our high protective tariff on their 

 importation ; and the situation of that country, in a corner, as it 

 were, of our territory, and without local supplies of coal and iron, 

 is not all that could be desired for the purpose. True, its sea- 

 ports, convenient for coastwise navigation, its abundant water- 



